Implementing ESSA: What to expect in 2016
The bill is signed, the law is enacted, the debates are a fading memory. Now a new phase of the fight begins. Join Mike Petrilli of the Thomas B.
The bill is signed, the law is enacted, the debates are a fading memory. Now a new phase of the fight begins. Join Mike Petrilli of the Thomas B.
With almost half of its students attending charter schools, Washington, D.C. is one the leading school-choice cities in the nation.
More than twelve million American students exercise some form of school choice by going to a charter, magnet, or private school——instead of attending a traditional public school.
When underprepared students enter postsecondary education, they face steep odds; Ninety percent of individuals who start community college in remedial courses leave without any sort of credential. And for low-income students, who make up 70 percent of those taking remedial courses, the odds are truly devastating.
Whether you think the end game of the current “mixed economy” of district and charter schools should be an all-charter system (as in New Orleans) or a dual model (as in Washington D.C.), for the foreseeable future most cities are likely to continue with a blend of these two sectors. So we wanted to know: Can they peacefully co-exist? Can they do better than that?
Questions of education governance are often considered moot by policymakers, who typically assume that the governance challenges plaguing their local schools are both universal and inevitable. Given the ubiquity of everything from local school boards to state superintendents, this seems to be a logical assumption.
School districts across the land are contending with rising education costs and constrained revenues. Yet state policies for assisting school districts in financial trouble are uneven and complex. Interventions are often haphazard, occur arbitrarily, and routinely place politics over sound economics.
In Pre-K and Charter Schools: Where State Policies Create Barriers to Collaboration, authors Sara Mead and Ashley LiBetti Mitchel examine thirty-six jurisdictions that have both charter schools and state-funded pre-K programs to determine where charters can provide state-funded pre-K.
Fordham President Mike Petrilli moderates a panel with the leaders of turnaround districts operating in Louisiana, Tennessee, and Michigan.
Fordham President Mike Petrilli talks with the TNTP helmsman about the organization’s future and the role of teacher evaluation in education reform.
In Redefining the School District in America, Nelson Smith reexamines existing recovery school districts (RSDs)—entities in Louisiana, Tennessee, and Michigan charged with running and turning around their state’s worst schools—and assembles the most comprehensive catalog of similar initiatives underway and under consideration elsewhere.
The need for standards-aligned curricula is the most cited Common Core challenge for states, districts, and schools. Yet five years into that implementation, teachers still report scrambling to find high-quality instructional materials. Despite publishers’ claims, there is a dearth of programs that are truly aligned to the demands of the Common Core for content and rigor.
The Harvard political scientist discusses his new book and how education reform can help disadvantaged kids.
A panel of experts discuss our recent study on school closures.
Gregg Toppo talks about his new book The Game Believes in You: How Digital Play Can Make Our Kids Smarter.
The myriad challenges facing school principals in the United States have been well documented, including limited opportunities for distributed leadership, inadequate training, and a lackluster pipeline for new leaders. Recently, the Fordham Institute teamed up with the London-based Education Foundation to seek a better understanding of England’s recent efforts to revamp school leadership.
Jonathan Plucker, Rena Subotnik, and Tricia Ebner discuss what the new standards portend for high achievers.
Gadfly editorial by Chester E. Finn, Jr. and Amber M. Northern
Testing, accountability, and the new ESEA.