On The Road to Better Accountability: An Analysis of State Charter School Policies
New report on authorization practices across the United States.
New report on authorization practices across the United States.
Editor's note: This post is the second entry of a multi-part series of interviews featuring Fordham's own Andy Smarick and Jack Schneider, an assistant professor of education at Holy Cross.
Editor's note: This post is the first entry of a multi-part series of interviews featuring Fordham's own Andy Smarick and Jack Schneider, an assistant professor of education at Holy Cross.
In England, all schools feature “distributed leadership.” Here, not so much. Michael J. Petrilli and Amber M. Northern, Ph.D.
I recently wrote about exciting new charter school results in Washington, D.C..
As my Bellwether colleague (and D.C.
Looking back and looking forward at the Cristo Rey school model.
Looking at improvements in Texas charter school performance over the years.
The policy implications of a u-shaped curve vs. a rectangular-looking distribution
Get ready for another “Year of School Choice.” Michael J. Petrilli
Joe Sixpack: You’re not paying attention. And much of what you think you know is wrong. Morgan Polikoff
We know RSD. RSD is a friend of ours. EAA, you’re no RSD. Amber M. Northern, Ph.D. and Michael J. Petrilli
What happens when policymakers create statewide school districts to turn around their worst-performing public schools? In Louisiana and Tennessee, Recovery School Districts (RSDs) have made modest-to-strong progress for kids and serve as national models for what the future of education governance might hold.In the Great Lakes State, the story is more complicated.
The Thomas B. Fordham Institute’s Metro D.C. School Spending Explorer offers the public a great resource by sharing data on public school spending (at the school level) across the District.
[Editor’s note: This is the fifth in a series of personal reflections on the current state of education reform and contemporary conservatism by Andy Smarick, a Bernard Lee Schwartz senior policy fellow with the Thomas B.
Ed reform is dead. Long live ed reform. Chester E. Finn, Jr.
On the whole, the new guidance from the U.S.
There’s a lot of talk about disruptive innovation these days. It seems hardly a month goes by that we don’t see some sort of exciting new innovation that changes an industry. Sometimes it happens over and over again in the same space. First we had paper maps that were replaced by custom driving directions we could print out from MapQuest (remember those?).
Over the last month or so, there’ve been a number of notable stories highlighting the passing of the torch from urban districts to urban chartering. The former continue their long, slow decline while the latter experiences the exhilaration and growing pains of emerging adulthood.
With the release last month of the latest round test scores, Success Academy founder and CEO Eva Moskowitz is now a bona fide national-education-reform celebrity. She is also the latest in a line of educator-activists—like Michelle Rhee or Diane Ravitch—who embody, for supporters and opponents alike, one “side” of the education-reform debate.
On September 3, I participated in a launch event for Mike McShane’s new book, Education and Opportunity, a publication of AEI’s
Being an education reformer is often frustrating. No matter how zealously we push an idea or how smart we think it is, sometimes nothing changes. Or—the Common Core is a recent example—we make fast, bold gains at the outset, only to see our efforts watered down, neutered, or repudiated outright...
Back in May, Fordham published Expanding the Education Universe: A Fifty-State Strategy for Course Choice, where we explained the idea of “cour
Marc Tucker is the author of an important new report: Fixing Our National Accountability System. Although Marc and I disagree on the promise of Relinquishment (most specifically on charter schools), I agree with much of this thinking. But, in this report, Marc makes a strategic mistake in dismissing choice-based reforms. To put it another way: if there is a grand bargain to be made that significantly increases student achievement in the United States, it could look like this: Reduce testing frequency and increase testing rigor Improve the quality of the teaching force Increase charter schools and choice
I’ll have what she’s having.
A look at the most-recent evaluation of Florida's Tax Credit Scholarship Program shows some surprising findings with regard to math and reading scores.
As a huge fan of both school choice and the NFL, I love the idea of a major star leading a great school and becoming a voice for school reform. Successful athletes who take time to give back, work with young athletes, and ensure kids get a great education should be commended, right?
David Kirp had a piece in The New York Times on Sunday: Teaching is not a Business. You should check it out. My take on his piece:
A new Mathematica study persuasively puts to rest a common charge leveled at KIPP charter schools: that their test score gains are largely attributable to the attrition of their lowest-performing students. The authors compare nineteen KIPP middle schools to district schools and find no meaningful difference among those who walk in the door of each type of school.