Education Next

School Reform Hits the Big Screen

Why 2010 is a banner year for the education documentary

Bye-Bye Blackboards

Interactive and expensive, whiteboards come to the classroom

Charters as Role Models

The charter school movement turns 14

this year, and its behavior, some might say, is “developmentally

appropriate.”

Disappearing Ink

What happens when the education reporter goes away?

Linky Love, Snark Attacks, and Fierce Debates about Teacher Quality?

A peek inside the education blogosphere

Arrested Development

Online training is the norm in other professions. Why not in K–12 education?

Opinion Leaders or Laggards?

Newspaper editorialists support charter schools, split on NCLB

Wikipedia or Wickedpedia?

Assessing the online encyclopedia’s impact on K–12 education

Let’s Talk About It

Talk radio’s take on K–12 education

Teacher’s Little Helper

New technologies target teacher performance

Testing the Limits of NCLB

Implementation is not the problem

The Key to Research Influence

Quality data and sound analysis matter, after all

No Business Like Show Business

Hollywood and Hip-Hop Discover Charter Schools

Misdirected Energy

Schools get an A in resisting reform.

The Cure

Will NCLB’s restructuring wonder drug prove meaningless?

A New New Federalism

The case for national standards and tests

The Public Thinks That Poor Kids Make for Bad Schools

Sadly, this is not too surprising. We all know that when someone says they are moving to a neighborhood with “good schools,” that really means “schools without too many poor kids.”

The Problem with “School Boards are the Problem”

For two weeks now I’ve been meaning to write about the provocative Washington Post column by Montgomery County (MD) school board member Laura Berthiaume. Her Op-Ed challenges some of my basic assumptions about school boards, in particular that they are one of the big problems in education.

I3 Is “New American Schools” All Over Again

Alexander Russo nailed it this morning when he wrote that “old school reforms win big in i3.” Indeed. What hit me when I saw the list of winners–especially the groups that brought home the big bucks–was that this is New American Schools all over again.

Will We Ever Get Past Race and Class?

For the better part of a week, Washington has been consumed by the Shirley Sherrod pseudo-scandal, leading many pundits to ponder race relations in America circa 2010. A better indicator, however, might be the goings-on in Wake County, North Carolina, where civil rights advocates are angrily protesting the decision of a newly elected school board to end the education system’s long-running busing program.

When the Teacher Contract is Not the Problem

Video: Emily Cohen talks with Education Next about state policies governing teacher quality that trump teacher contracts.

Tough Love for Charter Schools

Video: Chester Finn and Terry Ryan describe the efforts of the Fordham Institute to rescue struggling charter schools in Ohio while serving as a charter authorizer.

Is the Learning Disabilities Epidemic Waning?

Almost a decade ago, Fordham and the Progressive Policy Institute published a phone book-sized treatise, Rethinking Special Education for a New Century. One of its most important chapters was “Rethinking Learning Disabilities,” written by a who’s who of cognitive psychologists and reading experts, including Reid Lyon, Jack Fletcher, Sally Shaywitz, and Joseph Torgeson. They argued that most children with learning disabilities suffered from poor reading instruction, not an underlying neurological problem.

Answering Jay Greene’s Questions about National Standards

Jay Greene is upset that nobody has addressed his concerns about the Common Core State Standards initiative. I respect Jay a lot, and thinks he raises a number of fair points, but he’s playing a typical debater’s game: attacking your opponent’s ideas, rather than defending your own.

Boys and School

Video: Richard Whitmire talks with Education Next about how K-12 schools shortchange boys and what can be done to help boys do better in school.
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On May 17 AEI hosted a book forum on Richard Whitmire’s Why Boys Fail.

The Half-Broken Promise of Charter School Autonomy

Yes, we need to hold charters accountable, but we also need to live up to our promise to provide them real autonomy over their day-to-day work. So we wondered, how are policymakers and charter school authorizers doing on that score? According to a brand-new study conducted by Public Impact for Fordham, the answer is: not so great.

What Goes Up Must Come Down

I’ve been receiving angry emails from teachers who heard my sound-bytes on NBC Nightly News and Today earlier this week. I said that “our schools don’t just need to go on a diet, they need to adapt a whole new way of life. The money is gone and it’s not coming back anytime soon.” In my mind, that’s just stating the facts.

Maybe There’s No “Teacher Quality Gap” After All

It’s taken as an article of faith in the education reform community: we’re screwing poor kids by giving them less effective teachers than their more affluent peers enjoy. The evidence seems pretty much open-and-shut. Poor schools are home to more rookie teachers, those with less subject-matter knowledge, lower certification exam scores, you name it. But what if it’s not true?

Teacher Accountability: The Next Front in the School Reform Wars

The other day I floated the proposition that tenure reform, not choice, is the “Holy Grail” of education reform. Several thoughtful folks pushed back. Their comments helped to sharpen my thinking and reconsider my argument. Here’s the new version.

Tenure Reform, not Choice, is the Holy Grail

Many of us who support school choice do so because of our hope that competition will force recalcitrant districts and unions to reform. But there is a much more direct way to address the protection of bad teachers. Rather than use choice to set in motion a chain reaction that ends with the removal of bad teachers from the classroom, why not go right at the bad teachers themselves?

Helping African American Boys Succeed

Video: Kaleem Caire tells Education Next: “I was one of those young men who you would not think was ready for a rigorous education, but it was a rigorous environment that helped propel me to where I am.”

Race to the Top and Charter Schools

Video: Nelson Smith talks with Education Next about how charter-friendly the 16 Race to the Top finalists are.

Arne “Jellyby” Duncan?

That’s the charge from George Will, who picks up on Joshua Dunn’s recent blog post to give the Secretary of Education a hard time for crusading for “civil rights” while ignoring the D.C. scholarship program kids in his own backyard.

The Gates Conspiracy

A perceptive reader pointed this out to me. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation originally provided 15 states with $250,000 planning grants to help them prepare their Race to the Top applications. After a firestorm of controversy, Gates made similar grants available to the other states. But note this:
Original Gates States:
Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, [...]

Sweet Sixteen?

The news that 15 states plus the District of Columbia qualified as finalists in the first round of the “Race to the Top” is sure to anger many reformers, and for good reason.

The Future of Education Journalism

Video: Linda Perlstein talks with Education Next about what the decline of newspapers means for coverage of education.

“Public” Schools in Name Only

A new report from Fordham today identifies some 2,800 “private public schools” nationwide—public schools that serve virtually no poor students. More students attend these schools than attend charter schools. And in some metro areas, like New York’s, almost 30 percent of white students attend these exclusive schools.

Rick Hess in the House

Watch out edusphere, here comes Hess. Our good friend (and fellow executive editor at Ed Next) Rick Hess has launched a new blog, Rick Hess Straight Up on the coveted real estate of edweek.org. In his first post (992 words; Rick, it’s a blog, not a book!), Hess manages to skewer the NEA, the school [...]

“The Research on [Insert Preferred Policy Choice Here] Is As Clear As Anything in the Field of Education.”

Here’s a general rule: when you see sentences like the one above, know to be very, very skeptical.

To track or not to track? That’s not the question

With 2010 fast approaching, I’ve been hearing from several reporters asking about the best or worst education ideas of this decade. Here’s a sleeper issue that might deserve that moniker: the trend, seen in middle and high schools nationwide, to collapse the number of “tracks” offered to students in order to push more kids into challenging courses.

The Perpetual Stimulus

The Administration is foreshadowing a second stimulus package, this one likely to focus on bailing out local and state governments, including and especially public school systems. Last year a serious argument could be made that our economy was at risk of entering a deflationary cycle, and laying off a bunch of teachers didn’t make smart economic sense. But nobody can make the case today that giving the pink slip to thousands of teachers is going to wreck our economy and usher in the second Great Depression.

A “Race to the Top” Flip-Flop

The Wall Street Journal editorial page has already taken the Administration to task for backing away from some of its tougher “Race to the Top” provisions, but check out this morsel, thanks to Education Daily…

Book Alert: Leading for Equity

This self­-described “celebration” of the Montgomery County Public Schools, a 140,000-­student behemoth in the Washington, D.C., suburbs, is no doubt meant to add the district to the list of superstar systems worthy of national attention.

The One Winner in Today’s NAEP Release: Michelle Rhee

There’s not much good news in today’s National Assessment of Educational Progress results for mathematics. But there is a silver lining for DC schools chancellor Michelle Rhee: her schools, and those in just four states, were the only ones to post gains in both fourth and eighth grades over the past two years.

La crème de la crème

It’s true that charter opponents can’t look at the recent Hoxby study and claim that it unfairly compares one type of student to another. But it doesn’t prove at all that charter schools aren’t creaming. Of course they are creaming. And good for them for doing it.

High Achieving Kids Need Options, Too

On Friday, Tom Loveless and I published an op-ed in the New York Times that argued that our nation’s highest-achieving students are only making minimal gains in the era of NCLB, while low-achieving students have made huge strides since 2000.

The coming crash in school revenue?

Everyone knows that school spending has been rising at a steady clip for just about forever. But is the Era of Big Spending coming to an end?