Pennsylvania’s charter sector needs a scalpel, not a sledgehammer
Pennsylvania’s Democratic Governor Tom Wolf garnered headlines recently when he announced vague plans for taking funding away from the state’s public charter schools.
Pennsylvania’s Democratic Governor Tom Wolf garnered headlines recently when he announced vague plans for taking funding away from the state’s public charter schools.
A recent report by Eugene Judson, Nicole Bowers, and Kristi Glassmeyer investigates what classroom mechanisms compel students to enroll in Advanced Placement (AP) science and math courses and to complete their associated exams—and how that differs between low- and high-income schools.
Summer ’19 is showing its age: My daughter recently returned to school, bright yellow buses are canvassing my neighborhood again, and Pumpkin Spice Latte is back.
Very little previous research has looked at end-of-course exams. Our new study on their relationship to student outcomes helps remedy that. We learned much that’s worth knowing and sharing. Probably most important: EOCs, properly deployed, have positive academic benefits and do so without causing kids to drop out or graduation rates to falter.
Editor’s note: This is the final post in a series looking at whether and how the nation’s schools have improved over the past quarter-century or so (see the others here,
A dozen long years ago, when people were just beginning to take serious stock of what good and not-so-good was emerging from 2002’s enactment of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), we at Fordham, in league with the Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA), issued a 200-plus page analysis of the “proficiency” standards that states had by then been required to set and test for.
A new study from Georgetown University reaffirmed an uncomfortable but familiar finding: Socioeconomic status has a significant effect on students’ long-term outcomes, regardless of their academic performance in kindergarten or the quality of the schools they attend in K–12.
This report provides a rich longitudinal look at state policies related to end-of-course exams over the past twenty years and the effects of administering EOCs in different subjects on high school graduation rates and college entrance exam scores.
A few weeks back, New York City Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza said that principals would not be required to attend district meetings this coming September.
The past quarter-century has included dramatic progress of America’s lowest-performing students, many of whom are also low-income and children of color. But how’s the vast middle class doing? It’s a mixed bag: They still don’t read very well, but their math skills have improved a bit and they are graduating from college in higher and higher numbers.
During a political campaign, the savviest candidates excel at two things. First, they offer a compelling message that differentiates them from their competitors. Second—which demands true skill and sophistry—they ascribe all their own failings to those very same competitors, forcing them to answer for political, policy and social issues for which they are not responsible.
Controversy surrounds New York City’s selective-admission high schools and Mayor Bill de Blasio’s plan to change the time-honored path by which students gain entry to them; the dispute largely concerns how to ration the limited supply of a valued commodity in the face of mounting demand.
Ten years ago, then U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan issued a clarion call to turn around 5,000 of the nation’s most distressed schools, serving nearly three million students. It was an audacious goal set by an audacious leader—the likes of which are in terribly short supply these days. A decade later, states have fallen far short of his challenge, and the sticky problem of failing schools refuses to go away. But experience has provided three lessons to those who would make these efforts.
As I belong to the legion of education professionals that’s usually on the receiving end of the term “top-down,” I’m not too keen on the enterprise’s more top-down improvements.
On this week’s podcast, Kate Blosveren Kreamer, deputy executive director of Advance CTE, joins Mike Petrilli and David Griffith to discuss whether we should change the conjunction in “college and career readiness” to “or.” On the Research Minute, Amber Northern examines how teachers and principals view social and emotional learning.
The Fordham Institute’s recent survey of teachers has brought the issue of discipline reform back to the forefront. But even as teachers say that discipline policies are leading to unsafe educational environments, a new federal rule threatens to further exacerbate the issue.
The debate over school discipline reform is one of the most polarized in all of education. Advocates for reform believe that suspensions are racially biased and put students in a “school-to-prison pipeline.” Opponents worry that softer discipline approaches will make classrooms unruly, impeding efforts to help all students learn and narrow achievement gaps.
On this week’s podcast, Fordham’s own Checker Finn joins Mike Petrilli and David Griffith to discuss, during the week of Apollo 11’s fiftieth anniversary, how the moon landing related to American education. On the Research Minute, Amber Northern examines how restorative justice affects racial disproportionality in school discipline.
On this week’s podcast, Marc Porter Magee, CEO and founder of 50CAN, joins Mike Petrilli to discuss last month’s presidential debates, and the busy legislative sessions recently concluded in many states. On the Research Minute, Adam Tyner examines how socioeconomic status affects students’ growth mindsets.
On this week’s podcast, Julia Rafal-Baer, chief operating officer at Chiefs for Change, joins Mike Petrilli and David Griffith to discuss her organization’s recent report on the gender imbalances at the very top levels of educational leadership. On the Research Minute, Amber Northern examines how closing chronically underperforming schools affects neighborhood crime.
Good teachers are warm and compassionate people, and like parents, they tend to love all their kids equally. Nevertheless, they also have a special tenderness for the students who struggle in their classrooms and feel a particular urgency about meeting their needs. This often means less attention paid to high flyers. Educators tend to believe these children will be fine no matter what. But they’re are their own “high-needs” subgroup because they’re at the greatest risk for extreme boredom.
Earlier this week, I had the pleasure of speaking on a panel at the Education Writers Association’s (EWA) National Seminar, the largest annual gathering of journalists covering the education beat. With over five hundred education reporters in attendance, it was an opportunity to talk (on the record, of course) about the ins and outs of state accountability systems in the ESSA era, and to meet face-to-face with an assortment of folks I’ve long admired from afar and only previously known through social media.
Career and technical education (CTE) is enjoying its moment in the sun, with policymakers and educational leaders across the ideological spectrum embracing it as a solution to lagging upward mobility and distressed working class communities. On May 14, we posed these and other vexing questions to a panel of CTE experts. Watch the video now.
The Fordham-Hoover “Education 20/20” speaker series continued with our penultimate event on May 1, as we brought you another awesome duo. Rod Paige opened by arguing that tomorrow’s school reform needs to focus not just on changing schools, but even more on boosting student effort. Then Pete Wehner made a forceful, principled case for reviving old-fashioned character education in America’s schools.
Each year, the Education Commission of the States (ECS), based in my adopted home of Denver, reviews the governors’ State of the State addresses and offers an analysis of their main education components. Mentioned by at least thirty-six governors, this year’s top education priority was school finance, followed by workforce development, teacher quality, early learning, postsecondary financial aid, and school safety.
To our knowledge, no study has empirically examined the degree to which CTE course-taking in high school aligns with the kinds of work available in local labor markets, as our newest report does. It shows that the country needs local business, industrial, and secondary and postsecondary education sectors to join hands. At the top of their to-do list should be better integration of what is taught in local high school CTE programs with the skills, knowledge, and positions needed in area labor markets, both now and in the future.
The recent reauthorization of the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act—the principal federal education program supporting career and technical education (CTE)—expressly aims to “align workforce skills with labor market needs.” Our latest report examines whether students in high school CTE programs are more likely to take courses in high-demand and/or high-wage industries, both nationally and locally.
The Fordham-Hoover “Education 20/20” speaker series continued on April 11 with another star-studded double feature.
Last week, I explained why career and technical education will make agile learners America's future, and that maximizing their potential requires CTE that works well for students, employers, and school systems.
Seventeen-year-old Sandra can’t wait for school to start each day. Perhaps that’s because her school day looks nothing like what most of us envision a classic high school schedule to be.