Public charter schools and the Chipotlification of education
Before Chipotle ushered in the phenomenon of being able to “have it your way,” the customization of a fast casual meal was relegated to condiments, not the entire entree.
Before Chipotle ushered in the phenomenon of being able to “have it your way,” the customization of a fast casual meal was relegated to condiments, not the entire entree.
The Fordham Institute’s new report, Excellence Gaps by Race and Socioeconomic Status, authored by Meredith Coffey and Adam Tyner, is a significant addition to our growing knowledge about excellence gaps.
The Building Bridges Initiative has released an important new Call to Action, "A Generation at Risk." The Initiative is a partnership of Democrats for Education Reform and the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. We launched it eighteen months ago with the hope of bringing reformers together across left, right, and center. Our top goal was essential if modest: to rebuild relationships that had been frayed by the polarization of recent years. Our second was come to an agreement on a new reform agenda. We accomplished both.
Last month, I met a newly certified kindergarten teacher. Twenty-two years old, she was thrilled to be starting her first full-time teaching job. Passionate about her budding career, she shared detailed, insightful responses to my questions about teaching young children. She was also happily enrolled in a part-time master’s degree program in education policy.
When Texas education commissioner Mike Morath named Mike Miles as the superintendent of Houston ISD back in June, it represented a throwback of sorts to a more muscular period of school and district accountability.
Most public policy efforts are very specific about the individuals or groups intended to benefit from their implementation, and evaluations of such policies generally stick to impacts on the target population. However, education policies aimed at helping certain K–12 students can also have wider implications for other students.
Editor’s note: This is part two of a three-part series. Part one examined possible causes. This was first published on the author’s Substack, The Education Daly.
You may already know that back-to-school time means that nominations and applications are being accepted to join the National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB) a year from now. Here’s why you—and topnotch colleagues and friends—should take this seriously.
America’s recent achievement declines are far from unique. Consider, for example, Chile, whose academic progress, as measured by international assessments, also stalled out in the early to mid-2010s, just like ours did. And which is also facing a teenage mental health crisis, much like we are, as well as rising violence and disorder in and around their campuses. Are these worldwide phenomena?
Editor’s note: This was first published by Forbes.
Editor’s note: This was first published on the author’s Substack, The Education Daly.
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Adam Tyner, Fordham’s national research director, joins Mike to discuss dispariti
Getting advanced learners (a.k.a. “gifted” students) the education they need, and ensuring that this works equitably for youngsters from every sort of background, is substantially the responsibility of state leaders.
If you believe the media, it seems a dark lord has come to cut down the educational Eden that is the Houston Independent School District. He’s closing libraries to open detention centers.
Fordham’s latest study finds that fewer Black and Hispanic students from the highest-SES group are achieving at NAEP’s Advanced level than we would expect, given their socioeconomic status. That disparity clearly commands our attention. But so do the findings on Asian American high achievers—who deserve our attention for a different reason.
Enshrining into policy and practice ideological views on student gender to which a majority of Americans do not subscribe could easily be fatal to support for public education. Indeed, there are no words adequate to capture this level of hubris.
For at least a decade, schools have been using online credit-recovery (OCR) courses to award bogus credits that satisfy graduation requirements, and thus inflating graduation rates.
Ohio recently passed a historic state budget that includes, among other components, ambitious literacy reforms that require schools to follow the science of reading—an instructional approach that emphasizes phonics for building foundational lit
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, William McKenzie, a senior editorial advisor at the George W.
Accurate property assessments are a basic requirement for many school funding systems to function properly.
I must admit, I’d become something of an education fatalist. I know the research about direct instruction. I know the power of a knowledge-rich, well-sequenced curriculum and the promise of school choice. I know that individual schools and even whole charter systems can achieve amazing results. But I always wonder: Is it all for naught?
Early College High Schools are designed to be rigorous programs that partner with higher-education institutions to help teens earn college credit before graduation, with the aim of improving their chance of success after graduation.
The use of screens increased substantially during the Covid-19 pandemic. For the twice exceptional population—those identified as gifted with coexistent learning differences like ADHD, dyslexia, Autism, or processing disorders—this “epidemic within the pandemic” resulted in deeper isolation and greater parent frustration.
A remarkable increase in charter school funding across a number of states—and not just red—is finally addressing some of the deepest spending inequities in American education. But with Covid money drying up, declining student enrollment, and an aging population, tougher times lie ahead.
Not since former Governor Scott Walker bludgeoned the unions in my home state of Wisconsin has there been such national outrage over state-level education policies. Historically, state-scale education has been a secondary affair, rarely topping the list of people’s substantive or political priorities, and most decisions have been left to local decision-making.
Is Mississippi a cheater? Los Angeles Times business columnist Michael Hiltzik seems sure of it. Last month, the Pulitzer Prize–winning opinion writer published a column saying that Mississippi’s widely acclaimed reading improvement was just a mirage.
School closure is among the most heavy-handed interventions for turning around chronically underperforming schools.
One of the biggest shifts in education in recent years has been a gradual move away from the “college for all” mantra, and hard numbers show a concurrent decline in the proportion of high school students matriculating directly to college. Far from something to deplore, this trend is a positive development—but only so long as the right teenagers are choosing to enter the labor market rather than pursue college.
This month, Ohio joined a growing list of states and school systems that require schools to use high-quality instructional materials aligned to the science of reading, an approach to reading instruction that emphasizes
Stand Up Blue Valley is a pro-public-education parents’ association in Overland Park, Kansas (a large suburb of Kansas City) with a reputation for milquetoast advocacy promoting local control, informed voting, and opposition to school choice.