How bad are the Common Core lessons on the Gettysburg Address?
Welcome to the new Common Core kerfuffle.
Welcome to the new Common Core kerfuffle.
The Tennessee Charter School Center (TCSC) is out with a terrific new report on Nashville’s schools landscape.
The Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice recently released a study that seeks to better understand the decision-making processes of parents who send their children to private schools.
For those of you following the interesting and ever-changing world of educator evaluations, a few recent happenings may be worth a look.
Do highly-motivated parents guarantee a seat in a good school?
Jay Greene wants school-choice supporters to relax the testing mandates in the newest and largest voucher programs in the nation.
School 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.
It seems the largest battle in education policy today centers on the question of whether or not the Obama administration cheerleading for the Common Core State Standards, a state-led initiative, represents an existential threat to federalism.
There is no doubt in my mind that Secretary of Education Arne Duncan cares deeply about disadvantaged kids. He deserves our admiration and respect for bringing a renewed sense of urgency to addressing America’s persistently failing schools.
Last month, USA Today reported that officials in the Brevard County Schools had broken Florida state law—on purpose. Their offense? Placing more kids in classrooms than Florida’s Class Size Reduction statute allows.
For decades, lowering class size has been touted as a strategy for improving student learning, despite loads of research asserting that it is not an effective solution.
What if I told you there were millions of American boys and girls living in communities where half of students are low-income, just one in five adults has earned a bachelor’s degree, and only 27 percent of high school graduates go on to college?
Recently, 2013 NAEP results were made public, and, as is typical for such bi-annual releases, there was lots of excitement, somberness, and everything in between.
Fordham released a paper by Michael Hansen projecting the impact on student learning if excellent eighth-grade teachers—those in the top 25 percent—were responsible for six or twelve more students per class.
On Tuesday, November 19, I gave the keynote speech at the American Center for School Choice event tied to the release of the report of its Commission on Faith-based Schools. The following is the text (edited for length) as it was prepared.
This post is adapted from comments prepared by Stefanie Sanford for the Manhattan Institute event on Civic Education and the Common Core.
In 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.
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.
In 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.
While the Common Core has hogged the national spotlight of late, standards-based reform is just one of many improvement strategies coursing through our nation’s schools and classrooms today. But will educators’ and policymakers’ obsession with the Common Core hinder the rest of the reform agenda?
The D.C. Charter Board recently released its annual ranking of charter schools in the nation’s capital, showing that one-third of the schools it sponsors deserve a top-performing, or Tier 1, status.
Three Columbus-area charter schools have had difficulties well beyond the run-of-the-mill start-up issues, possibly tarnishing other charter sponsors working hard to maintain quality, integrity, and transparency.