The most disadvantaged children in Massachusetts stand to benefit most if the state’s tight cap on charter schools is loosened—a policy decision that will face Bay State voters on Election Day.
By Amber M. Northern, Ph.D.
Drafting state learning standards is a task simultaneously critical and thankless. In New York, where I opened an elementary school a few years ago, we are once again revising our standards.
A quarter-century ago, Minnesota passed America’s first charter school law. While charters have veered from the expectation that they would act as “incubators of innovation,” they have become a transformative force in education that has racked up notable successes when serving disadvantaged inner-city kids.
By Chad L. Aldis and Jessica Poiner
By Chester E. Finn, Jr., Bruno V. Manno, and Brandon L. Wright
If the latest polls are to be believed, Hillary Clinton may be heading toward a landslide victory, especially as far as the Electoral College is concerned.
Over the past quarter-century, charter schools have gone from an upstart education experiment to a prominent, promising, and disruptive innovation in K–12 education. Indeed, few observers present at the creation of the first charter schools could have predicted how rapidly this movement would spread or how thoroughly it would come to dominate the education-reform agenda.
Find out why Fordham’s Mike Petrilli might have his school-reformer card repealed.
Regular readers know that I’m something of an apologist for “screen time,” at least within limits.
A new study by the Learning Policy Institute examines past and current trends in the teacher workforce to predict future educator supply levels. The study also examines motivations behind teacher attrition and suggests several policy options to mitigate the effects of teacher shortages.
This report from A+ Colorado examines Denver’s ProComp (Professional Compensation System for Teachers), a system forged collaboratively between the district and teachers union in 2005 that was on the vanguard of reforming teacher pay scales.
On this week’s podcast, Mike Petrilli, Alyssa Schwenk, and David Griffith discuss the titanic tussle between two tendentious tenets of school success measurement occurring among the mighty minds of Fordham and spilling out into the greater world. It’s proficiency vs. student growth. KA-THOOOOM! On the Research Minute, Amber tackles an early grade retention policy in Florida.
Next week Chester E. Finn, Jr., Bruno Manno, and Brandon Wright’s book Charter Schools at the Crossroads: Predicaments, Paradoxes, Possibilities will be released.
The Ohio Department of Education (ODE) recently released the results of its revised sponsor evaluation, including new ratings for all of the state’s charter-school sponsors.
NOTE: The publication of a recent Flypaper post arguing that growth measures (like “value added” or “student growth percentiles”) are a fairer way to evaluate schools than are proficiency measures drew quick reaction both
The University of Mount Union in Alliance, Ohio is home to one of the most successful college football programs in America. The Purple Raiders have won twelve national championships since 1993 and have appeared in the title game eleven years in a row—a record of excellence matched by few collegiate teams in any sport.
Public charter school boards are often overlooked when it comes to assessing who and what contributes to public charter school quality. Yet these boards play an essential role. They provide the strategic vision for the school, hire leaders to run the school, hold those leaders accountable for academic success, and provide financial oversight. My colleagues and I at the D.C.
The central problem with making growth the polestar of accountability systems, as Mike and Aaron argue, is that it is only convincing if one is rating schools from the perspective of a charter authorizer or local superintendent who wants to know whether a given scho
