Creating Sustainable Teacher Career Trajectories: A 21st Century Imperative
The greatest challenge to staffing the nation's classrooms with the most motivated, highly qualified teachers is making teaching an attractive profession with career opportunities for those who seek those challenges.
Financing the Education of High-Need Students
Matt Richmond, Daniela FairchildSchool districts face an enormous financial burden when it comes to educating our highest-need students. Financing the Education of High-Need Students focuses on three specific challenges that are often encountered when districts—especially small ones—grapple with the costs of serving their highest-need special-education students.
Traversing the Teacher-Evaluation Terrain
Join the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, National Council on Teacher Quality, and School Improvement Network for a double feature on the latest teacher-evaluation research and a lively discussion about the best way forward on teacher-evaluation reform.
Right-sizing the Classroom: Making the Most of Great Teachers
Michael HansenIn the overwhelming majority of American classrooms, pupils are divided roughly equally among teachers of the same grade in the same school. Parceling them out uniformly is viewed as fair to teachers—and doing otherwise might be seen as unfair. Parents might wonder, too.
Common Core & Curriculum Controversies
Experts empty a barrel of Common Core myths and rumors. Gadfly Studios
Common Core in the Schools: A First Look at Reading Assignments
Tim Shanahan, Ann DuffettIn Common Core in the Schools: A First Look at Reading Assignments, researchers analyze what texts English teachers assign their students and the instructional techniques they used in the classroom.
Re-Imagining Teaching: Five Structures to Transform the Profession
Teacher preparation, evaluation, and the characteristics of effective teaching are at the center of contemporary education research and policymaking.
Ohio Pension Reform in Cleveland: New Teachers Beware
Robert M. Costrell, Larry MaloneyAt first glance, the recent teacher-retirement reforms in Ohio seem to bring good fiscal news to school systems in the Buckeye State. Thanks to Senate Bills 341 and 342—and a series of cutbacks on retiree healthcare—the Cleveland Metropolitan School District is projected to spend less on retirement costs in 2020 than it does today. But these reforms come at a big price.
What (ed-reformer) parents want
What (ed-reformer) parents want. Read What Parents Want: Education Preferences and Trade-offs and take the quiz to see if you fall into one of our parent categories.
What Parents Want: Education Preferences and Trade-offs
Dara Zeehandelaar Shaw, Ph.D., Amber M. Northern, Ph.D.This groundbreaking study finds that nearly all parents seek schools with a solid core curriculum in reading and math, an emphasis on science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education, and the development in students of good study habits, strong critical thinking skills, and excellent verbal and written communication skills.
Embracing the Common Core - Panel Discussion
Panelists Include: Stan Heffner - Ohio Superintendent of Public Instruction Michael Cohen - President of Achieve, Inc. Steve Dackin, superintendent of Reynoldsburg City Schools Eric Gordon, CEO of Cleveland Metropolitan Schools Debe Terhar, president of the State Board of Education Deb Tully, director of professionals issues for the Ohio Federation of Teachers Moderated by Chester E. Finn Jr., President, Thomas B. Fordham Institute
Embracing the Common Core - Q&A
Panelists Include: Stan Heffner - Ohio Superintendent of Public Instruction Michael Cohen - President of Achieve, Inc. Steve Dackin, superintendent of Reynoldsburg City Schools Eric Gordon, CEO of Cleveland Metropolitan Schools Debe Terhar, president of the State Board of Education Deb Tully, director of professionals issues for the Ohio Federation of Teachers Moderated by Chester E. Finn Jr., President, Thomas B. Fordham Institute
Driving Quality: Can charter incubators solve the problem of too many mediocre charter schools?
Recorded December 7, 2011 Communities across the country are struggling to meet parental demand for high quality school options, including high-performing charter schools. Yet, with hundreds of new charter schools opening every year, not nearly enough of them offer the quality education that parents crave and kids deserve. Indeed, far too many fail to deliver education any better than the troubled neighborhood schools that they are meant as alternatives to. But a new model for charter school growth has taken root in several cities and it appears to be boosting quality as well as quantity. Charter "incubators" are accelerating the launch and development of top-flight charter schools in communities that need them most. Incubators offer the promise of not only more school choice but schools that reliably deliver academic results. Join us at the Fordham Institute to hear from leaders that are running some of the best of these new organizations. Co-sponsored by the Cities for Education Entrepreneurship Trust (CEE-Trust), this discussion will analyze the key findings from a new policy brief by Public Impact, and provide lessons on how federal, state and local policymakers can help launch new quality charter schools while encouraging the culling of weak ones.
Assuring Highly Effective Teachers for All Ohio Students
A teacher's effectiveness has a tremendous impact on a child's learning and academic trajectory. Ohio has debated for many months about how best to strengthen the quality of its teaching force. The biennial budget adopted in June calls for the state to develop a model teacher evaluation framework by the end of 2011 and to adopt policies tying teacher evaluations to key personnel decisions such as compensation, placement, tenure, and dismissal. Likewise, school districts and charter schools must implement their own local evaluations, based on the state model, starting in 2013-14. It's evident that Ohio schools are about to undergo a major shift when it comes to how teachers are evaluated and developed, a change with great potential to impact student achievement. For this reason, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, along with the Nord Family Foundation and Ohio Grantmakers Forum, are convening this public discussion (and another one in Lorain) on assuring highly effective teachers for students across the state. Featured speakers include: Mike Miles, superintendent of Harrison School District 2 in Colorado, a school system on the cutting edge of teacher compensation reform, will review the teacher-effectiveness work his district is doing and the results they're seeing. Kate Walsh, President of the National Council on Teacher Quality, will discuss the state of teacher effectiveness nationally and what can be learned from research about teacher quality. Eric Gordon, new superintendent of the Cleveland Metropolitan School District, will provide an Ohio voice on the panel. Gordon was one of the major architects of CMSD's Academic Transformation plan, which garnered national recognition for its approach to school reform. Chester E. Finn, Jr., president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, moderated the discussion.
BASIS DC Symposium - Looking Inside Fully Integrated Schools
BASIS DC held a symposium on the new charter school they hope to open in the fall 2012. Panelists include DC At-Large Councilmember Sekou Biddle, Richard Kahlenberg, Senior Fellow at the Century Foundation, Jeanne Allen, President of Center for Education Reform, and Sam Chaltain, a DC-based educator and former chair of Inspired Teaching School. Fordham's Executive Vice President Mike Petrilli will moderate. For More information about BASIS DC, please contact Mary Siddall, [email protected]
Terry Ryan on Collective Bargaining in Ohio
Terry Ryan talks about his testimony on Senate Bill 5 and what it means for Ohio.
ESEA Briefing Book: "Reform Realism" Explained
Mike and Checker explain how NCLB got it backwards, and what "reform realism" would look like in practice.
Reform School: Tim Kitts
Tim Kitts of Florida's Bay Haven Charter Academy explains his "plus" model of school improvement, and the axes of curriculum and department structures.
Commentary on Appendix L: Alignment of the Next Generation Science Standards with the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics
W. Stephen WilsonAmong the shortcomings of the NGSS is its acute dearth of math content, even in situations where math is essential to the study and proper understanding of the science that students are being asked to master. Also problematic is the alignment of NGSS math with the Common Core State Standards for mathematics. Appendix L of the NGSS seeks to explain the alignment and apply math more thoroughly to NGSS science. This commentary by Johns Hopkins mathematician appraises that appendix. Download Commentary on Appendix L: Alignment of the Next Generation Science Standards with the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics to read the appraisal.
Exemplary Science Standards: How Does Your State Compare?
Kathleen Porter-Magee, Brandon L. Wright, Laurel HornWith states weighing whether to adopt the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), a new analysis from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute compares the existing science standards of thirty-eight states with the NGSS and with exemplary standards from three other states. (The thirty-eight are those states with standards that are either “clearly inferior” to the NGSS or “too close to call,” based on our Final Evaluation of the Next Generation Science Standards and The State of Science Standards 2012.)
Opt-Out or Cop-Out? A Debate on 'New' Accountability Systems
Growing numbers of parents, educators, and school administrators are calling for a local "opt-out" from state tests and accountability systems. Is this opt-out a cop-out? Or would students benefit from a system that their own teachers and principals devised? Should all schools be offered an opt-out alternative, one in which they propose to be held accountable to a different set of measures? What about opt-outs for high-achieving schools or schools with good reason to be different? Would such a system move us toward or away from the goals of the Common Core? As for charter schools, must they continue to be tethered to uniform statewide accountability systems? Or should we rekindle the concept of customizing each school's charter and performance expectations?
Milwaukee: Saved by Act 10...For Now
Robert M. Costrell, Larry MaloneyOne of three technical reports on retirement costs and school-district budgets.
Don't jump the NGSS bandwagon yet
Chester E. Finn, Jr. breaks down why Fordham does not support implementation of the NGSS.
Final Evaluation of the Next Generation Science Standards
Paul Gross, Douglas Buttrey, Ursula Goodenough, Noretta Koertge, Lawrence S. Lerner, Martha Schwartz, Richard SchwartzIn the final evaluation of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), the Thomas B. Fordham Institute grants the standards a C grade. The NGSS grade is superior to grades we granted to the science standards of sixteen states and the PISA framework in the State of State Science Standards 2012 but inferior to those of twelve states and the District of Columbia, as well as the NAEP and TIMSS frameworks.
A Crash Course in Teacher Pensions
Dara Zeehandelaar, author of The Big Squeeze: Retirement Costs and School District Budgets, explains teachers pensions and the difference between defined benefits and defined contribution plans that states offer teachers.
Paying the Pension Price in Philadelphia
Robert M. Costrell, Larry MaloneyOne of three technical reports on retirement costs and school-district budgets.