What charter school authorizers can teach states on ESSA: It's hard to find indicators of school quality that aren’t test scores
By Kathryn Mullen Upton
By Kathryn Mullen Upton
By Michael J. Petrilli
Last week, several of my Fordham colleagues published a fantastic fifty-state review of accountability systems and how they impact high achievers. Lamentably, they found that most states do almost nothing to hold schools accountable for the progress of their most able pupils.
During the No Child Left Behind era of education reform, now winding down, teachers, schools and districts were tacitly encouraged to focus their efforts on raising the floor rather than raising the roof on student achievement. Whether by accident, choice or neglect, high-achievers as well as those merely "above proficient" received little attention. And why should they?
No Child Left Behind meant well, but it had a pernicious flaw: It created strong incentives for schools to focus all their energy on helping low-performing students get over a modest “proficiency” bar. Meanwhile, it ignored the educational needs of high achievers, who were likely to pass state reading and math tests regardless of what happened in the classroom.
No, I’m not referring to the Golden State’s rich palette of ethnic and other minority (and majority) groups, nor to its desire that they’ll live, work, and go to school in harmony, like Monet’s Water Lilies or Matisse’s Fauve masterpieces.
You're invited to join in the conversation and contribute to Ohio’s Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) plan.
Many education stakeholders see the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) as an opportunity to fix the most problematic provisions in NCLB. For many critics, the biggest bogeyman was too much standardized testing and its associated accountability measures.
Editor's note: This post reproduces a letter sent to Secretary of Education John King on July 29. Dear Mr. Secretary:
The new education law of the land—the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA)—has been the talk of the town since President Obama signed it into law in December 2015.
No Child Left Behind (NCLB) required states to identify and intervene in persistently low-performing schools.
By Elliot Regenstein
By Robert Pondiscio
Children with extraordinary gifts and talents experience drastically different needs. We parents, teachers, and advocates often get nervous calling attention to bright children, and we often fall into the trap of working under the radar or even making ourselves invisible.
Jamie Davies O’Leary
By Michael J. Petrilli and Brandon L. Wright
ESSA implementation means changes to Ohio's school report cards
As Flypaper readers know all too well, newly arrived Education Secretary John B. King, Jr., is in hot water with Congress, state governors, and various school reformers.
With our laser-like focus on American K–12 education (and the even narrower territory of American K–12 reform), it can be easy to forget that good schooling can be found in many forms—and many settings.
We look at the results of a recent survey around assessments
Earlier this month, eleven scholars, analysts, and advocates participated in our annual Wonkathon. The challenge we put to them was to find provisions in the Every Student Succeeds Act that could be used to expand parental choice.
As everyone knows, the Department of Education released its latest package of proposed regulations today. Among other issues, this round addresses the heart of the Every Student Succeeds Act: its accountability provisions.
At the same time we wrapped up our Wonkathon on parental choice under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), the Washington Post’s Jay Mathews published a column on the new law’s implications for s
It is disheartening that, in 2016, the recognition of gifted students of color may be more dependent on the race of their teachers than their demonstrated abilities.
The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), which was signed into law by President Obama in December, has been hailed as a bipartisan effort to fix the most problematic provisio
On May 5, the Congressional Research Service released a report on proposed U.S. Department of Education spending regulations under the Every Student Succeeds Act.
Editor's note: This is the final post in Fordham's 2016 Wonkathon. We've asked assorted education policy experts to answer this question: What are the "sleeper provisions" of ESSA that might encourage the further expansion of parental choice, at least if advocates seize the opportunity?