While the Ohio House of Representatives is poised to pass a budget bill that would expand Advanced Placement (AP) courses to every high school in the state, a report released today by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute questions whether the rapid expansion of the popular program will jeopardize its quality.
Education in Ohio is full of irony, and nothing is more ironic than the connection of charter schools to the state's school funding debate that was triggered by the DeRolph Supreme Court decisions in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
By Brian L. CarpenterApril 2009This second edition of Brian L. Carpenter's classic, like the first edition, delivers valuable information on effective practices of charter-school governing boards in a straightforward and easy-to-understand fashion.
Yesterday's debate about the future of the Republican Party on education, sponsored by Fordham, left me feeling depressed.
In just a few minutes, the DC policy scene will be gathering here at Fordham for our third "Great Debate" on pressing education issues of the day.
Senator Alexander is up and is arguing that the GOP should follow President Lincoln's lead. He provided opportunities through laws such as the one creating Land-Grant Colleges and Universities. That "Lincoln Approach" was later followed by the GI Bill, Pell Grants, etc. That contrasts with the FDR "Command and Control" approach, which is dominant in k-12 education policy today.
Congressman Castle??just said??that national standards and assessments are "worthy of discussion." This is big news; few Republicans have been so open about considering supporting national standards. He worries that too many state standards are "dumbed down" and that encourages schools to "coast along."
He came from a marketing background, and it's well-known in the private sector that you have to have specialization, competition, lots of choices. Why can't we use that model in education? Nothing more different than our children: different learning styles, aptitudes, and family situations.
Congressman Mike Castle is arguing that there's a lot of common ground in education. Education politics aren't so much about Republicans and Democrats but about the NEA. He wasn't thrilled about what he saw in the stimulus bill, but he's waiting to see what the Administration has to propose in terms of other pieces of legislation.
We DC-based policy types are susceptible to getting dangerously far removed from the quotidian thrills and struggles of real schools. So I visited four schools earlier this week while in NYC. It was a complete delight.
Yesterday on a mid-afternoon run to CVS, I walked past a bus on the corner of 16th and K streets. Guess what was on the side? An advertisement for the now defunct DC Opportunity Scholarship program. How depressing.
Education is full of irony. For example, in Ohio - as in other states - charter schools were born in the late 1990s out of lawmakers' exasperation with failed district schools that were constantly seeking more funding through adequacy lawsuits in the state courts.
It's amazing how thoroughly the subject of money has taken over America's education conversation in recent months. By comparison, you don't hear that much about NCLB problems and reauthorization challenges anymore, or about curriculum, test scores, even teaching and teachers, except for how many may lose their jobs.
Matthew Springer and Marcus WintersCenter for Civic Innovation at the Manhattan InstituteApril 2009
Neeta P. Fogg, Paul E. Harrington, and Ishwar KhatiwadaCenter for Labor Market Studies, Northeastern University for Philadelphia Workforce Investment BoardJanuary 2009
This was "education week" at the Supreme Court, with the justices hearing cases about student privacy and state obligations to fund programs for English language learners. While the former received most of the attention (it involved the strip search of a thirteen-year-old girl, after all), the latter could have greater implications for education policy.
Unless something unexpected happens during the Senate confirmation process, John Easton, who was just nominated by the White House, should be taking over as Director of the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) in a matter of weeks.
As if principals don't have enough land mines to avoid already, now they have to be delicate about decibels. San Antonio Police issued Olympia Elementary principal Terri LeBleu a ticket last week after a neighbor complained about the racket coming from her school during Family Fitness Day.
It's been said before and is being said again: America needs national standards. So proclaimed representatives from 41 states last week, who met in Chicago to affirm their commitment to common expectations in math and English.
Gadfly suffered some serious wing pains when news broke that teachers at New York's KIPP AMP planned to unionize; it would have been the third KIPP school in New York to have union ties (the other two, KIPP Academy and KIPP Infinity, have had union membership from the get-go because of a quirk i
Picking up on Andy's perspicacious observation last week, consider this quote:
It's well-documented that school funding, generally speaking, is too opaque.
In honor of Earth Day, we'd like to offer up and oldie but a goodie: last year's Fordham Earth Day video. Enjoy!
Students who attend a private school through Ohio's EdChoice Scholarship Program still take the state's achievement tests each spring. The results are reported to the state education department, but nothing much else is done with the data. The results aren't reported publicly.
At least that's how it appears to me. Almost everyone else has moved onto the stimulus and the economy, but not SCOTUS. See this report from Ed Week blogger Mark Walsh??on yesterday's hearing in Flores v. Horne.
Our president, Chester Finn Jr., and our distinguished visiting fellow Andy Smarick have penned a very nice piece in the Washington Post today about the crisis in urban Catholic schools and the need for the Obama administration to step up and help ???
