The most important resolution: STEM education
Our nation’s education crisis is not exaggerated, nor is the risk to our economic prosperity and national security.
Our nation’s education crisis is not exaggerated, nor is the risk to our economic prosperity and national security.
The American Federation for Children applauds the folks over at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute for stirring up debate about academic accountability within private-school-choice programs via the release of their policy “toolkit” last week.
It’s no fun to argue with friends—at least not about serious matters—and worse to find respected colleagues slipping into error or avoiding reality.
Our slim new book Knowledge at the Core: Don Hirsch, Core Knowledge, and the Future of the Common Core has three large aims. First, it pays tribute to three decades of scholarship and service to American education by E. D. (Don) Hirsch, Jr., author of Cultural Literacy (and three other prescient books on education reform) and founder of the Core Knowledge Foundation.
Pop quiz! Which of the following statements is in the Common Core State Standards?(a) Through extensive reading of stories, dramas, poems, and myths from diverse cultures and different time periods, students gain literary and cultural knowledge.
We take a look at the hubbub over Fordham's recent voucher toolkit with an Ohio insider's view.
In his press conference introducing Carmen Fariña as New York City’s next schools chancellor, Mayor Bill de Blasio suggested that he had picked her over several other candidates because she was on the same page with him in opposing his predecessor Michael Bloomberg’s education reforms.
This week, we at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute released a “toolkit” for policymakers working to create or expand private-school-choice programs.
As voucher and tax-credit-scholarship programs have expanded in recent years, another promising development has been the incorporation into such programs of provisions that hold participating private schools to account for their students’ performance.
There were many important releases and developments this week—invaluable new SIG information from IES, Race to the Top audits, new Brookings “choice index”—and I couldn’t keep up! Those subjects and others will get fuller treatments from me next week. But until then, here are some worthwhile things to read over the weekend.
Earlier this week, AFT president Randi Weingarten came out against the use of value-added measures in teacher evaluations, citing recent VAM shortcomings in D.C. and Pittsburgh and launching the catchy slogan, “VAM is a sham.” VAM certainly is not perfect.
We’ve passed the time for standing by and patiently hoping that Ohio’s lowest-performing charter schools will improve on their own. Or that the authorizers of such charters will solve this problem on their own.
Readers of this blog have come to expect news from around the country, analysis, cogent commentary, and best-practice policy recommendations. All of that has been in large part due to the efforts of Adam Emerson.
Fordham invites you to what promises to be a fascinating panel discussion: Private Schools and Public Vouchers.
The Fordham Institute supports school choice, done right. That means designing voucher and tax-credit policies that provide an array of high-quality education options for kids that are also accountable to parents and taxpayers.
Attorney General Eric Holder’s claim that Louisiana’s voucher program contradicts federal des