- Critics of charter schools, often in the face of thorough and convincing evidence of the benefits of school choice, too often fall back on an unsourced allegation. If charters teach rings around their district counterparts, they claim, it’s only because they scheme to weed out needy and underperforming students. It’s become such a common trope that New York City Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña blithely passed it along just last fall. But a new Manhattan Institute study has found that low-performing New York City students, who generally facing a higher risk of leaving their school than other kids, are no more likely to depart from a charter than a traditional public school. What’s more, special needs students and English-language learners are actually more likely to stay enrolled at a charter. Unfortunately, this new data is unlikely to make an impression on Fariña because…well, it’s data.
- We at Fordham find ourselves defending Common Core because we believe that it’s good for kids all around the country to be held to high standards. But it’s one thing for education reformers to line up in support of a policy; it’s quite another for career professionals to give it the same endorsement. A newly released report from Teach Plus strongly suggests that many teachers feel as favorably about Common Core-aligned assessments as we do. Nearly 80 percent of participants said they considered the PARCC tests to be of higher quality than the state tests that preceded them. They also indicated that the tests were closely aligned to what they were actually teaching in classrooms. Not every claim has to come from the horse’s mouth to be taken seriously—but it’s sure nice when they do.
- Clashes between governors and state education bureaucracies are nothing new. In fact, most of the air around that narrative has recently been taken up by Indiana Governor Mike Pence’s grappling with an elected superintendent. But Pence’s neighbor, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder, has now become the latest executive to attempt a dramatic schools shakeup, making a move to arrogate the state’s School Reform and Redesign Office. The department administers Michigan’s troubled Education Achievement Authority, a Frankenstein district cobbled together from fifteen of Detroit’s worst-performing schools (for more background, check out Fordham’s review of its history and major players from last fall). The EAA could almost certainly use better oversight; we’ll see if Snyder’s power play actually helps provide it.
- You’re probably bored to tears by now with the same old stories about the intersection between education reform and indie music. Still, you should take a moment and look through NPR’s great dispatch from the South By Southwest Edu Conference. The event gathered together a panoply of fresh voices for sessions on technology, higher education, and student privacy. More importantly, it gave education reformers a rare opportunity to rub elbows with rock stars (other than you, Checker).
