The Baby New Year edition
The biggest education stories of 2015 (and 2016), how curriculum reform fared over the last twelve months, and the year’s best research studies.
The biggest education stories of 2015 (and 2016), how curriculum reform fared over the last twelve months, and the year’s best research studies.
ESSA implementation, TFA students who become TFA teachers, Justice Scalia’s ill-spoken comments on race, and the effect of teacher layoffs on teacher quality and student achievement.
Interstate test comparability, teacher absenteeism in high-poverty schools, special education in charter schools, and school choice in thirty American cities.
More than twelve million American students exercise some form of school choice by going to a charter, magnet, or private school——instead of attending a traditional public school.
The MCAS/PARCC hybrid assessment, Governor Baker’s new workforce skills initiative, Harvard’s new teacher training program, and the state of K-12 computer science education.
Whether you think the end game of the current “mixed economy” of district and charter schools should be an all-charter system (as in New Orleans) or a dual model (as in Washington D.C.), for the foreseeable future most cities are likely to continue with a blend of these two sectors. So we wanted to know: Can they peacefully co-exist? Can they do better than that?
Petrilli and Pondiscio discuss the fallen NAEP scores, debate the meaning of Obama’s pledge to reduce testing, and ponder school dress codes. Amber takes a look at NAEP’s alignment with Common Core math.
Intel’s withdrawal of its Science Talent Search sponsorship, the legitimacy of the “Asian advantage,” charter school policy’s importance to voters, and principals’ opinions of Teach For America alumni.
Arne Duncan’s resignation and legacy, John King’s succession to the crown, Friedrichs and the beginning of the new SCOTUS term, and peer effects in college.
A suburban college readiness gap, rethinking the high school graduation age, fracking’s effect on male dropout rates, and racial density in high schools.
Catholic schools and the Pope’s stateside visit, Bill de Blasio’s pre-K enrollment efforts, STEM education for gifted kids, and KIPP’s successful scale-up.
D.C.’s gender gap at top schools, mission statements, neighborhood school attendance boundaries, and test-based retention.
The Washington State Supreme Court's attack on charters, New York State’s Common Core review, mindfulness in education, and charter schools' impact on Georgia property values.
Education in New Orleans, school governance, Common Core-aligned assignments, and charter school openings in NYC.
Questions of education governance are often considered moot by policymakers, who typically assume that the governance challenges plaguing their local schools are both universal and inevitable. Given the ubiquity of everything from local school boards to state superintendents, this seems to be a logical assumption.
School districts across the land are contending with rising education costs and constrained revenues. Yet state policies for assisting school districts in financial trouble are uneven and complex. Interventions are often haphazard, occur arbitrarily, and routinely place politics over sound economics.
In Pre-K and Charter Schools: Where State Policies Create Barriers to Collaboration, authors Sara Mead and Ashley LiBetti Mitchel examine thirty-six jurisdictions that have both charter schools and state-funded pre-K programs to determine where charters can provide state-funded pre-K.
In Redefining the School District in America, Nelson Smith reexamines existing recovery school districts (RSDs)—entities in Louisiana, Tennessee, and Michigan charged with running and turning around their state’s worst schools—and assembles the most comprehensive catalog of similar initiatives underway and under consideration elsewhere.
The need for standards-aligned curricula is the most cited Common Core challenge for states, districts, and schools. Yet five years into that implementation, teachers still report scrambling to find high-quality instructional materials. Despite publishers’ claims, there is a dearth of programs that are truly aligned to the demands of the Common Core for content and rigor.
The myriad challenges facing school principals in the United States have been well documented, including limited opportunities for distributed leadership, inadequate training, and a lackluster pipeline for new leaders. Recently, the Fordham Institute teamed up with the London-based Education Foundation to seek a better understanding of England’s recent efforts to revamp school leadership.
Gadfly editorial by Chester E. Finn, Jr. and Amber M. Northern