Commentary
Charter Schools
Redefining the school district in Michigan
We know RSD. RSD is a friend of ours. EAA, you’re no RSD. Amber M. Northern, Ph.D. and Michael J. Petrilli
Commentary
Charter Schools
NEW from Fordham: Redefining the School District in Michigan
What happens when policymakers create statewide school districts to turn around their worst-performing public schools? In Louisiana and Tennessee, Recovery School Districts (RSDs) have made modest-to-strong progress for kids and serve as national models for what the future of education governance might hold.In the Great Lakes State, the story is more complicated.
Report
Governance
Redefining the School District in Michigan
What happens when policymakers create statewide school districts to turn around their worst-performing public schools?
Commentary
Charter Schools
D.C. school spending: Don't forget to read the fine print
The Thomas B. Fordham Institute’s Metro D.C. School Spending Explorer offers the public a great resource by sharing data on public school spending (at the school level) across the District.
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Curriculum & Instruction, Standards
Let's tell the truth: High-stakes tests damage reading instruction
Accountability works. But not in reading, which isn’t a subject or a skill. Robert Pondiscio
Commentary
Standards, Curriculum & Instruction
What's right about Common Core
I confess I’m somewhat bewildered by the passionate arguments over the Common Core State Standards. Getting in high dudgeon about K–12 learning standards, which say almost nothing about what kids do in school all day, makes no more sense to me than getting apoplectic about food-handling procedures, which I seldom think about when pushing my cart through the grocery store.
Commentary
Charter Schools
Ed reform's blind spot: Catholic schools and social capital
[Editor’s note: This is the fifth in a series of personal reflections on the current state of education reform and contemporary conservatism by Andy Smarick, a Bernard Lee Schwartz senior policy fellow with the Thomas B.
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Standards, Charter Schools
Time for a Reboot
Ed reform is dead. Long live ed reform. Chester E. Finn, Jr.
Commentary
Commentary
Charter Schools
New OCR guidance on equitable resources: A godsend for charter schools?
On the whole, the new guidance from the U.S.
Commentary
Standards, Curriculum & Instruction
How to kill reading achievement
There’s more to Common Core than “close reading.” Robert Pondiscio
Commentary
Standards
In the Common Core era, different kids need different credentials
We need two kinds of high school diplomas. Chester E. Finn, Jr.
Commentary
Charter Schools
It’s time for Annenberg and AFT to be a little bit more “progressive”
There’s a lot of talk about disruptive innovation these days. It seems hardly a month goes by that we don’t see some sort of exciting new innovation that changes an industry. Sometimes it happens over and over again in the same space. First we had paper maps that were replaced by custom driving directions we could print out from MapQuest (remember those?).
Commentary
Standards, Curriculum & Instruction
Leveled reading: The making of a literacy myth
Among opponents of the Common Core, one of the more popular targets of vitriol is the standards’ focus on improving literacy by introducing higher levels of textual complexity into the instructional mix.
Commentary
Standards, Accountability & Testing
A new start on accountability
Every child should be in a school where he or she can learn effectively. That’s not a controversial goal in itself, but the methods meant to accomplish it can become hot buttons.
Commentary
Curriculum & Instruction, Standards
Montgomery County's elementary school curriculum: Where's the beef?
It was back-to-school night last week at my son’s elementary school in Montgomery County, Maryland, which meant that we moms and dads got a first look at “Learning for the Future: A Parent’s Guide to Grade 1 Curriculum 2.0.”
Commentary
Standards, Curriculum & Instruction
Where Common Core is not controversial
For over a year, I’ve been encouraging Common Core advocates to stop endlessly re-litigating the standards and instead to focus on getting implementation right. Taking my own advice last week, I traveled to Reno to see first-hand the work of the Core Task Project, the initiative driving implementation of the standards in Washoe County, Nevada.
Commentary
Charter Schools
A lion in winter and a coming of age
Over the last month or so, there’ve been a number of notable stories highlighting the passing of the torch from urban districts to urban chartering. The former continue their long, slow decline while the latter experiences the exhilaration and growing pains of emerging adulthood.
Commentary
Standards, Accountability & Testing
Embrace the Common Core
On September 9th, the Fordham Institute’s Mike Petrilli participated in an Intelligence Squared U.S. debate on the Common Core. These are his opening comments, as prepared for delivery.
Commentary
Charter Schools
What do we really know about Eva Moskowitz's success?
With the release last month of the latest round test scores, Success Academy founder and CEO Eva Moskowitz is now a bona fide national-education-reform celebrity. She is also the latest in a line of educator-activists—like Michelle Rhee or Diane Ravitch—who embody, for supporters and opponents alike, one “side” of the education-reform debate.
Commentary
Curriculum & Instruction, Standards
Common Core and the era of good behavior
We seemed to have welcomed good manners back to the Common Core debate. That doesn’t mean we’ve seen more advocacy either on behalf of the standards or knocking them, only that the tenor appears to have changed for the better. At least for the time being, detractors are no longer paranoid Neanderthals, and supporters have ceased to be communists on the federal or Gates Foundation dole.
Commentary
Charter Schools
Smart markets, diverse options, and Burke's caution
On September 3, I participated in a launch event for Mike McShane’s new book, Education and Opportunity, a publication of AEI’s
Commentary
Standards, Accountability & Testing
The importance of testing and the power of hard facts
Over the past four years on this blog, I’ve strived to advance a substantive conversation around standards and assessment through complex (and hopefully interesting) policy arguments. But finding new things to advance a discussion sometimes means losing sight of large and obvious things that need to be said over and over again.
Commentary
Standards
Connecting the dots: E. D. Hirsch, Jr., and Common Core
One of the arguments I’ve long made in support of Common Core is that properly understood and implemented, it’s a delivery mechanism for the ideas and work of E. D. Hirsch, Jr., and the Core Knowledge curriculum he created.
Commentary
Standards
The states versus Secretary Duncan
Last week, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal sued the U.S. Department of Education over the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), with a particular focus on the role that Race to the Top (RTTT) played in encouraging their adoption. And three days later, rumors arose that Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin might haul that same agency into court for revoking its No Child Left Behind (NCLB) waiver.
Commentary
Standards
Restarting the Common Core debate
Over the past couple of years, a raucous debate has emerged over the Common Core, content standards in English and mathematics adopted by states nationwide. The debate has been marked by acrimony rather than analysis, but there is hope that both sides want a reset.
Commentary
Standards, Curriculum & Instruction
5 questions for Rick Hess
In NRO today, Rick Hess explores “five half-truths” that he says supporters of the Common Core like to propagate. These spurred five questions of my own:
Commentary
Standards
Thanks, Bobby Jindal!
It’s too soon to guess TIME Magazine’s person of the year, but a clear favorite has emerged for Common Core person of the year: the man, woman, or group that has done the most to advance the adoption and implementation of Common Core State Standards in the U.S. Ladies and gentleman, for meritorious service to further the cause of rigorous academic standards and educational excellence, please put your hands together for the governor of the great state of Louisiana, Common Core Man of the Year, Bobby Jindal!”
Commentary
Charter Schools
An elder statesman speaks
Being an education reformer is often frustrating. No matter how zealously we push an idea or how smart we think it is, sometimes nothing changes. Or—the Common Core is a recent example—we make fast, bold gains at the outset, only to see our efforts watered down, neutered, or repudiated outright...
Commentary
Charter Schools
ExcelinEd on the dos and don'ts of course access
Back in May, Fordham published Expanding the Education Universe: A Fifty-State Strategy for Course Choice, where we explained the idea of “cour
