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Charter Schools
National School Choice Week: A time to recognize outstanding choices
We recognize 25 of the best charter schools in Ohio.
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Charter Schools
Charter lessons for school choice, including accountability via authorizers
Yesterday at AEI’s terrific conference on “encouraging new and better schools” via school-choice programs, I presented a paper on
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Charter Schools
The Ticket
At less than an hour, this documentary, directed by Choice Media founder Bob Bowdon, provides a digestible overview of school choice and how it impacts families. The film’s slightly hokey structure is a transcontinental exploration of school choice by train.
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Charter Schools
Measuring Up to the Model: A Ranking of State Charter School Laws
A state’s laws and policies set the conditions for a thriving charter-school environment. Good policy can ensure that public charters have access to the resources they need and the freedom to innovate, while also ensuring accountability for academic outcomes. But not all state charter laws are created equal.
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Charter Schools
Replicating Quality: Policy Recommendations to Support the Replication and Growth of High-Performing Charter Schools and Networks
We take a look at Public Impact's recent publication of ten policy recommendations to foster growth of successful charters.
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Focus on success, not just improvement
I have been blessed with a few decades worth of work in education policy, and I have never seen a moment with more potential.
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The President on Education
On the K–12 education front, the president made no news and no big mistakes. He scarcely even mentioned teachers. Save for “Race to the Top,” he mentioned none of his administration’s more controversial (and sometimes worthy) initiatives such as charter schools, teacher evaluations, and state waivers from No Child Left Behind.
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Charter Schools
Utilizing charter schooling strengthens rural education
Today, Bellwether released a new report on the promise of charter schooling in rural America—and the very real challenges facing it.
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Charter Schools
Flipping Out: Controlled choice restricts options
Mike Petrilli and Rick Kahlenberg are among my favorite people (I don’t know Sam Chaltain, although I might like him, too), but their piece in Sunday’s Washington Post smacks of nanny-statism rather than school choice and educationa
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Charter Schools
Re: Flipping Out
Checker thinks that Sam Chaltain, Rick Kahlenberg, and I are engaging in “nanny-statism” when we propose a form of “controlled choice” in strategic locations of Washington, D.C., which he likens to “forced busing&rdqu
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Charter Schools
Executive action I can support: weighted lotteries for charter schools
Last night, President Obama promised to use the stroke of his pen to push forward initiatives upon which Congress refuses to act. In the education realm, this is nothing new (see: conditional ESEA waivers) and generally nothing to cheer. But just this morning, the U.S.
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Charter Schools
School choice and the beginnings of a conservative agenda for economic opportunity
President Obama is leaving us on the edge of our seats as to whether he will discuss certain topics in tonight's State of the Union address.
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Curriculum & Instruction
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.
Video
A tribute to the work of E. D. Hirsch, Jr.
A luminary on the importance of a sequential, content-rich curriculum.
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Charter Schools
The great Fordham toolkit debate
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.
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Charter Schools
Jay and Rick: Get real about voucher-school accountability
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.
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Twilight for the conservative era of school reform?
The funny thing about eras is that it’s hard to know which one you are in until it is coming to an end. As the fighting among conservatives heats up over the Common Core, the era of standards-driven reform that has defined conservative education policy for the past three decades is brought into sharper relief.
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How D.C. schools can ward off the ‘Big Flip’
From 2000 to 2010, the white share of the District of Columbia’s population grew from 30.8 percent to38 percent .
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A primer on Common Core–aligned assessments
A brief review of EducationFirst's take on PARCC and Smarter Balanced assessments
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Curriculum & Instruction
Knowledge at the Core
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.
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Staying the Course: Transition to the Common Core
As the Common Core debate rages on in blogs and statehouses, educators are getting on with the business of put
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Curriculum & Instruction
Policymakers: Stop being agnostic about curriculum
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.
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Standards
Knowledge at the Core: Don Hirsch, Core Knowledge, and the Future of the Common Core
Children cannot be truly literate without knowing about history, science, art, music, literature, civics, geography, and more. Indeed, they cannot satisfactorily comprehend what they read unless they possess the background knowledge that makes such comprehension possible.
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The lynchpin for charter-school reform
Authorizers are crucial cogs in the charter-school system in Ohio, both before a school opens its doors and while it is under contract to operate.