Commentary
What Happens When States Have Genuine Alternative Certification?
Paul E. Peterson and Daniel NadlerEducation NextWinter 2009
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A Tale of Two Districts: A Comparative Study of Student-Based Funding and School-Based Decision Making in San Francisco and Oakland Unified School Districts
Jay Chambers, Larisa Shambaugh, Jesse Levin, Mari Muraki, Lindsay PolandAmerican Institutes for ResearchOctober 2008
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Randi's rewind
Ah, the two faces of Randi Weingarten. Perhaps overcome with election-induced fuzzies, she boldly proclaimed on Monday: "with the exception of vouchers... no issue should be off the table, provided it is good for children and fair to teachers." Reformers, take heart!
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School kids with lice--no dice?
Should the louse, that age-old creepy crawly elementary school pest, keep kids out of school? That's what a few school districts in Ohio are pondering. Some have strict "no nit" policies, insisting that kids can only return when all signs of lice are gone. Others take a more live and let live approach, permitting students to stay in class while being treated for their pesky visitors.
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Disturbing development
New York Times columnist David Brooks began his June 13th piece with a question: "Is Barack Obama really a force for change, or is he just a traditional Democrat with a patina of postpartisan rhetoric?"
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Report
Accountability & Testing, Charter Schools
Climbing to Quality 2007-2008 Fordham Sponsorship Accountability Report
This yearly report covers Fordham's sponsorship practices throughout the year as well as newsworthy events related to our sponsored charter schools. You can also find detailed reports on all of Fordham-sponsored schools. Each school report contains information on the school's academic performance, educational philosophy, and compliance for the 2007-2008 school year.
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Janet Napolitano, back in the running for Secretary of Education?
Several news outlets are reporting that President-Elect
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Janet Napolitano moves into second place in the ed sec race
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Will Obama kill education reform?
It's a good question. When he made Linda Darling-Hammond (cue: Mike groaning) his lead education advisor, we thought the odds were good.
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The Financial Crisis and State/Local Defined Benefit Plans
Center for Retirement Research, Boston CollegeNovember 2008
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Former top teacher offers Ed Trust meeting ideas for better teaching
Ohio's worsening economy and powerful teacher unions make tough the prospect of reforming how teachers are trained, hired, paid, and fired in this state. If policymakers are serious about improving teacher quality, however, they'd do well to follow the advice of Jason Kamras. Kamras is a former Washington, D.C., middle-school teacher and National Teacher of the Year who now works as D.C.
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about the Obamas' school choices
Chad Aldis, executive director of School Choice Ohio, has some thoughts on the Obama family's considerations concerning where to send their daughters to school in Washington, D.C.
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The Year in Review: Big changes in Fordham's charter-school profile
The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation became a charter-school sponsor in September 2004 when we signed a sponsorship agreement with the Ohio State Board of Education to serve as a sponsor of no more than 30 schools statewide.
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Data-palooza
Fordham's newest book, A Byte at the Apple: Rethinking Education Data for the Post-NCLB Era, is now available for your reading pleasure.
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Bill Richardson for Secretary of Education
Flypaper readers know that I've been partial to the selection of former North Carolina governor Jim Hunt as the n
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Education insiders still think it's going to be Secretary Duncan
Chicago superintendent Arne Duncan maintains his big lead today in our education insiders poll. Former South Carolina state superintendent Inez Tenenbaum has solidified her hold on the second-place spot, a proposition that makes libertarians nervous.
Report
Governance
A Byte at the Apple: Rethinking Education Data for the Post-NCLB Era
In A Byte at the Apple, leaders and scholars map the landscape of education data providers and users and explore why what's supplied by the former often fails to meet the needs of the latter. Most important, it explores potential solutions--including a system where a "backpack" of achievement information accompanies every student from place to place.
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Put your money where your mouth is
Libby Sternberg, a writer and onetime Gadfly contributor, issued the right retort to Representative Pete Hoekstra*, not
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It's the states, stupid
Last week I made the fairly obvious argument that GOP governors are the key to the Republican Party's renewal, including on the education issue.
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Education secretary poll: New week, same results
Our ten Washington insiders are back at work today, making their predictions for who will lead the U.S. Department of Education. And not much changed over the weekend, though Arne Duncan has certainly solidified his overwhelming lead:
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Reading the scholarship of our Fordham Scholar
Earlier this year, we ??tapped three young promising scholars for our new inaugural research grant program, known as the Fordham Scho
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Disturbing news from the UK
The American testing system has often been blamed for the simplification of curriculum, the cutting of art, music, and physical education classes, and the decline of quality education overall. Perhaps a laser-like focus on reading and math has produced some unintended consequences but it's a far cry better than recent developments in the United Kingdom.
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Similar sentiments
On Saturday, the Washington Post advised Barack and Michelle Obama that as they think about the pros and cons of various schools here in D.C., they might also want to keep in mind the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, which gives District parents the same power of choice for their own kids.
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The coming collapse of GOP support for No Child Left Behind
For better or for worse, I believe that arguments such as this one from Representative Pete Hoekstra (R-MI), in a letter in yesterday's