Commentary
Charter Schools
Coming soon - Quality in Adversity: Lessons from Ohio's best charter schools
Listening to some of the most important voices in the charter school debate
Commentary
Charter Schools
Public private districts and open enrollment
Many of Ohio's best districts are closed to open enrollment
Commentary
In 2016, every week is School Choice Week
If it isn’t already clear, let the Fordham Institute be the first one to state it outright: National School Choice Week 2016 has been a smashing success. The foundational principle of our movement—that every family deserves access to varied and excellent education options—has been expounded by an array of stirring speakers.
Commentary
Charter Schools
More than meets the eye: Ohio’s unimpressive charter law ranking
Looking behind the latest NAPCS rankings
Commentary
Curriculum & Instruction
Don't blame Common Core for publishers' lousy textbooks
If you’ve been keeping up with the Common Core scandal pages, you may be wondering who Dianne Barrow is.
Commentary
Is Ohio education fracturing the American Dream?
Two national reports grade Ohio poorly; signal trouble
Commentary
Curriculum & Instruction
NAEP computer-based writing pilot assessment: Fourth-grade performance
A new study from the Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences provides results for fourth-grade students on the 2012 NAEP pilot computer-based writing assessment. The study asks whether fourth graders can fully demonstrate their writing ability on a computer and what factors are related to their writing performance on said computers.
Commentary
Charter Schools
Governing urban schools in the future: What’s facing Philadelphia and Pennsylvania
Urban school governance is a moving target, in part because it’s pretty clear that there’s no best way to handle it and in part because no change in a city’s arrangements ever works as well as its promoters hoped.
Commentary
Charter Schools
Rays of hope in the Sunshine State
On the same day that Jeb Bush unveiled his education agenda, thousands of families in his home state marched in Tallahassee to support some of the very school choice programs he championed in office.
Commentary
Free tuition is a needless windfall for affluent voters and state institutions
Nothing in life is truly free—but don’t tell that to dogmatic liberals and their pandering politicians, who would turn the first two years of college into a new universal entitlement. This idea has the same fatal flaws as universal preschool: a needless windfall for affluent voters and state institutions that does very little to help the needy.
Commentary
The presumption that individuals of one racial group are smarter than others is a myth and stereotype
The presumption that individuals of one racial group are smarter than others is a myth and stereotype. Even efforts in the early twentieth century to align high intelligence with the majority or white culture were refuted. The groundbreaking work of Martin D.
Commentary
Curriculum & Instruction
The Bush education plan
Education reform has been a specialty of Jeb Bush’s, and his track record on this issue in Florida is unbeatable. He knows the topic up, down, and sideways.
Commentary
Curriculum & Instruction
Ten things every American should know
Nearly thirty years ago, a then-obscure University of Virginia professor named E.D. Hirsch, Jr. set off a hot national debate with the publication of Cultural Literacy.
Commentary
Curriculum & Instruction
Has your child's elementary school stopped teaching history, science, and other content? Here's how to do it yourself
In a perfect world, all children would have access to an inspiring, well-rounded education, especially in pre-K and elementary school. They need a solid grounding in history, science, art, music, and literature.
Commentary
Curriculum & Instruction
Can parents help with math homework? YES
My wife and I both spend time working with our kids on their homework. We have also made a family tradition of “Saturday School,” a routine that my wife and I instituted a couple of years ago because our kids’ school was using a pre-Common Core math curriculum that wasn’t keeping pace with the standards.
Commentary
Curriculum & Instruction
A fair shot at opportunity
Editor's note: This is the first in a series of blog posts that will be collaboratively published every Wednesday by the National Association for Gifted Children and the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. Each post in the series will exist both here on Flypaper and on the NAGC Blog.
Undefined
The El Chapo edition
The Friedrichs case and the future of teacher unions, whether schools are asking too much of young students, debating the role of federal regulation under ESSA, and computers’ effect on the writing gap. Mike Petrilli and Robert Pondiscio cohost, and Amber Northern delivers the Research Minute.
Commentary
AP at scale: Public school students in Advanced Placement
The expansion of the Advanced Placement program, on its face, is one of the great feel-good stories of education in my lifetime. Instead of being relegated to a boutique résumé item on the college applications of America’s most fortunate high schoolers, AP has broadened access to its more rigorous curriculum to kids across the country.
Commentary
Quality Counts 2016
This year marks the twentieth edition of Education Week’s annual “Quality Counts” report, but not much has changed from the nineteenth—or other editions of recent vintage. Massachusetts is still the tops—with a handsome 86.8 out of a possible hundred points—and the nation’s only B-plus state for education. Maryland, New Jersey, and Vermont are next in line, each earning a B.
Commentary
Charter Schools
Court watching
The ink is dry on the bill, the interest groups are mollified, and the lobbyists have made the first payments on their tastefully appointed condominiums. Now that the Every Student Achieves Act has become the law of the land, it’s time to examine its implications for our federal education bureaucracy.
Commentary
ESSA
The case for maximum state flexibility on ESSA accountability
Officials at the Department of Education have requested public comments by January 21 about areas in the new Every Student Succeeds Act where regulation might be “helpful or necessary.” My recommendation to the feds: Tread ver
Commentary
The phoniest statistic in education
Let’s just stop pussyfooting around and say it out loud: The “historic” peak in the country’s high school graduation rate is bullshit.
Commentary
Friedrichs teachers are paying more than just union dues
This week, teachers’ unions continued their battle over mandatory “agency fees” in the Supreme Court case Friedrichs v.
Commentary
Charter Schools
America's most disadvantaged students need real accountability, not ideology
In a recent blog post, Jason Bedrick of the Cato Institute attributes the apparently troubling results of a recent study on Louisiana’s private school voucher program to the theory that “[r]egulations intended to guarantee quality might well have had the opposite effect.
Commentary
Join us in Columbus on January 27 for Fordham’s latest report release
Lessons from Ohio’s best charter schools
Commentary
GOP hopefuls must stress K–12 in Columbia
Tomorrow in Columbia, South Carolina, the Jack Kemp Foundation will receive a coterie of scholars, policy mavens, and politicos at its Kemp Forum on Expanding Opportunity.
Commentary
Charter Schools
Louisiana's voucher program and student achievement
A new study from the National Bureau of Economic Research examines how Louisiana’s statewide voucher program affects student achievement. The Pelican State expanded its program statewide in 2012; by 2014, twelve thousand students had applied for more than six thousand slots to attend 126 private schools.
Commentary
Why parents don't need to fear Common Core math
I encountered a bit of advice this week that my dear mother would have welcomed during her brief and inglorious career as my pre-Algebra tutor: When it comes to assisting kids with their math assignments, parents can afford to do less.
Commentary
Called to Account: New Directions in School Accountability (Quality Counts 2016)
Both ranking and grades have dropped for Ohio
Undefined
The Trump edition
The miseducation of Donald Trump voters, a brave and bold take on sex education, student pressure in a New Jersey district, and the effectiveness of school vouchers in Louisiana.