Charter School Achievement: What We Know, 5th Edition
Anna NicoteraNational Alliance for Public Charter SchoolsApril 2009
Anna NicoteraNational Alliance for Public Charter SchoolsApril 2009
Say you're a parent in a school district whose population is largely Haitian, African-American, and Hispanic. And say this district's board is dominated by Orthodox Jews who don't send their children to public schools and aren't happy about paying both high taxes and huge private school tuition bills. And say the board just voted to close an under-enrolled district school to curb costs.
The Advanced Placement (AP) Program is enjoying a growth spurt in the United States. Over the past five years, the number of high-school students taking at least one AP exam increased more than 50 percent. There's probably no education program in America that's been expanding faster.
What's the best way to improve a negative perception? Change the reality feeding it. That's the constructive tack being taken by the new leaders of the Arizona Charter Schools Association (ACSA) as they crack down on their state's surfeit of low-performing charters.
Within the education establishment, it's taken as an article of faith that schools should face budget cuts only after all other options have been exhausted. How about public safety? That's the debate playing out in Prince George's County, Maryland, a big Washington suburb now facing a massive budget shortfall.
Over the past five years, the number of students taking at least one Advanced Placement exam rose by more than half. This news is celebrated but is there a downside? To find out, Fordham commissioned the Farkas Duffett Research Group to survey AP teachers in the US. The AP program remains popular with its teachers. But there are signs that the move toward "open door" access to AP is starting to cause concern.
Fordham's latest report is out this morning; it focuses on the dramatic expansion of the Advancement Placement program in recent years. In 2002-2003, 1 million students participated in AP by taking at least one exam. Five years later, nearly 1.6 million did???a 50+ percent increase.
Certain segments of the edu-sphere like to call those of us at Fordham silly (though, I'll admit, colorful) names, like "
President Barack Obama's "first 100 days" come to an end today, as you may have noticed from the barrage of fawning press coverage (
NAEP long-term trend scores were released yesterday, and the results are quite positive.
Maybe the Obama administration has brought bipartisanship to Washington...just not the kind they had in mind. In this letter, a bipartisan group of US Senators chastises Secretary Duncan for denying DC scholarships to new students and urges ED to reconsider.
Read more about our new Advanced Placement Program report in this piece in the New York Times.
An interview with Steve Farkas, President of the Farkas Duffett Research Group . Fordham commissioned the FDR Group to research and write its latest report "Growing Pains in the Advanced Placement Program: Do Tough Trade-Offs Lie Ahead?"
Yesterday in the Ohio Senate Education Committee, school funding expert and Buckeye (OSU class of '66 and '72) Paul Hill offered testimony about how Ohio can go about reforming its system of school funding while at the same time raising student perf
Here are a few excerpts from award-winning School Choice Ohio (see here) essays written by students who received EdChoice scholarships this year. Students wrote concerning how their learning opportunities have helped them. The topic was "Voices of School Choice."
Ohio Board of Regents Chancellor Eric Fingerhut believes Ohio's teacher training system is not providing enough qualified teachers for Ohio's K-12 schools. Fingerhut shared his comments last week in a wide-ranging discussion with members of the Ohio Grantmakers Forum (see here).
A 16-year-old senior at the Dayton Early College Academy (DECA) has been selected as a Gates Millennium Scholar, a prestigious national scholarship award that will pay for his college education. Charles Wilkes is among 1,000 students selected for the award from more than 20,000 applicants.
One of the nation's foremost school-finance authorities said yesterday that Ohio can have a much better school system without paying vastly higher sums for education by getting smarter about how it spends education dollars.
While the Ohio House of Representatives is poised to pass a budget bill that would expand Advanced Placement (AP) courses to every high school in the state, a report released today by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute questions whether the rapid expansion of the popular program will jeopardize its quality.
Education in Ohio is full of irony, and nothing is more ironic than the connection of charter schools to the state's school funding debate that was triggered by the DeRolph Supreme Court decisions in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
By Brian L. CarpenterApril 2009This second edition of Brian L. Carpenter's classic, like the first edition, delivers valuable information on effective practices of charter-school governing boards in a straightforward and easy-to-understand fashion.
Yesterday's debate about the future of the Republican Party on education, sponsored by Fordham, left me feeling depressed.
In just a few minutes, the DC policy scene will be gathering here at Fordham for our third "Great Debate" on pressing education issues of the day.
Senator Alexander is up and is arguing that the GOP should follow President Lincoln's lead. He provided opportunities through laws such as the one creating Land-Grant Colleges and Universities. That "Lincoln Approach" was later followed by the GI Bill, Pell Grants, etc. That contrasts with the FDR "Command and Control" approach, which is dominant in k-12 education policy today.
Congressman Castle??just said??that national standards and assessments are "worthy of discussion." This is big news; few Republicans have been so open about considering supporting national standards. He worries that too many state standards are "dumbed down" and that encourages schools to "coast along."
He came from a marketing background, and it's well-known in the private sector that you have to have specialization, competition, lots of choices. Why can't we use that model in education? Nothing more different than our children: different learning styles, aptitudes, and family situations.
Congressman Mike Castle is arguing that there's a lot of common ground in education. Education politics aren't so much about Republicans and Democrats but about the NEA. He wasn't thrilled about what he saw in the stimulus bill, but he's waiting to see what the Administration has to propose in terms of other pieces of legislation.
We DC-based policy types are susceptible to getting dangerously far removed from the quotidian thrills and struggles of real schools. So I visited four schools earlier this week while in NYC. It was a complete delight.