Not mincing words
After his second attempt to dismantle the state's charter school program was thwarted, Ohio Governor Ted S
After his second attempt to dismantle the state's charter school program was thwarted, Ohio Governor Ted S
Ohio's charter school program dodged a bullet this recent budget cycle (here).
Join us Wednesday, August 19, for a panel discussion on how the changing education policy landscape is affecting both charter schools and voucher programs. The Obama administration is aggressively pushing to expand the number of charter schools available to American families.
Quotable "Sometimes I think, 'What if I'm sitting at the same desk she sat in?'" --Branaijah Melvin, 11-year-old student at Blessed Sacrament, Judge Sonia Sotomayor's K-8 school
As Andy reported last Friday, the DC Council has sent a letter to Secretary Duncan urging him to reconsider the fate of the DC Opportunity Scholarship program.
The Fordham Institute is unique in the school reform sector in that we have offices in both Washington, DC and Ohio
Feeling blue about school reform? This riveting no-nonsense address by Howard Fuller at last week's National Charter School Conference will relieve your doldrums.
This post, written by Bryan C. Hassel and Emily Ayscue Hassel of Public Impact, is a response to Andy Smarick's June 25 post about turnarounds.
Two weeks ago, our friends at Ki
Over the past five years, the number of students taking at least one Advanced Placement exam rose by more than half. This news is celebrated but is there a downside? To find out, Fordham commissioned the Farkas Duffett Research Group to survey AP teachers in the US. The AP program remains popular with its teachers. But there are signs that the move toward "open door" access to AP is starting to cause concern.
In this exciting, unique and challenging time, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute wants to congratulate President-Elect Obama and other new federal leaders. The federal government has a key role to play in creating a world-class education system in America but it's challenging to get that role right. This letter provides some guidance. Fordham experts review the current education policy landscape and its main players and offer their view of the ideal K-12 federal role. They also address the ten big policy battles looming on the horizon. The hope is that the letter will provide critical advice, insights and ideas for the new federal education leaders who are about to take on a big job.
This yearly report covers Fordham's sponsorship practices throughout the year as well as newsworthy events related to our sponsored charter schools. You can also find detailed reports on all of Fordham-sponsored schools. Each school report contains information on the school's academic performance, educational philosophy, and compliance for the 2007-2008 school year.
In A Byte at the Apple, leaders and scholars map the landscape of education data providers and users and explore why what's supplied by the former often fails to meet the needs of the latter. Most important, it explores potential solutions--including a system where a "backpack" of achievement information accompanies every student from place to place.
In public education today, individual schools are accountable under the federal No Child Left Behind Act as well as myriad state and local policy regimens for their students achievement and other vital outcomes. Increasingly, school leaders find their own job tenure and compensation tied to those outcomes as well. But do they possess the authority they need to lead their schools to heightened performance? Numerous surveys (conducted by Public Agenda, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, and others) suggest that many school leaders feel they do not. Thus an important public policy question arises: what factors help or hinder school leaders in exercising their authority and in which areas?
This publication reports the results of the first two (of five) studies of a multifaceted research investigation of the state of high-achieving students in the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) era. Part I examines achievement trends for high-achieving students since the early 1990s; Part II reports on teachers' own views of how schools are serving high-achieving pupils in the NCLB era.
The Oregonian reports that its state board of education last
Liam asks "if urban Catholic schools can't compete with charter schools, why do they deserve special help?"
Mike, I may agree with your point that Catholic schools should receive public funding.
Too Good to Last: The True Story of Reading First is an in-depth and alarming study of Reading First's betrayal. Under the leadership of White House domestic policy chief Margaret Spellings and with support from Congress, Reading First was to provide funding to primary-reading programs that were based on scientific research. Backlash and brouhaha followed. Aggrieved whole-language program proprietors complained bitterly that their wares couldn't be purchased with Reading First funds. Then the administration turned its back on Reading First, allowing the program to be gutted and starved of funding.
Update: The NBA's number 1 draft pick is against???i.e., not supportive of, never has been and never will be,
In the era of No Child Left Behind, principals are increasingly held accountable for student performance. But are teacher labor agreements giving them enough flexibility to manage effectively? The Leadership Limbo: Teacher Labor Agreements in America's Fifty Largest School Districts, answers this question and others.
This report examines whether the reputation the Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate programs have for academic excellence is truly deserved. Our expert reviewers looked at the four AP and IB courses most similar to the core content areas in American high schools--English, history, math, and science--and found that, in general, the courses do warrant praise. In a few cases, they deserve gold stars.
At first glance, the explosive growth of 'alternative' teacher certification--which is supposed to allow able individuals to teach in public schools without first passing through a college of education--appears to be one of the great success stories of modern education reform. But, as this report reveals, alternative certification programs have so far failed to provide a real alternative to traditional education schools. In fact, they represent a significant setback for education reform advocates.
America's true competitive edge over the long haul is not its technical prowess but its creativity, its imagination, its inventiveness. And those attributes are best inculcated not by skill-drill or 'STEM' but through liberal arts and sciences, liberally defined. Thus argues this new Fordham volume, edited by Chester E. Finn, Jr. and Diane Ravitch, which also explores what policymakers and educators at all levels can to do sustain liberal learning and sketches an unlovely future if we fail.
Though most public school principals believe that effective leadership of their schools requires authority over personnel decisions (e.g., staff selection, deployment, dismissal), they report having little such authority in practice. Based on a series of interviews with a small sample of district and charter-school principals, the report shows that most district principals encounter a sizable gap between the extent and kinds of authority that leaders need to be effective and the authority that they actually have.
January 8, 2007, was the fifth birthday of the No Child Left Behind Act. This isn't just another milestone to be celebrated (or mourned). The law is now due for an update from Congress. But will NCLB be reauthorized on schedule? What changes are likely? No one knows for sure, but the ubiquitous 'Washington insiders' might be in a better position than others to cast prognostications. While not a 'representative sample' of thousands, their inside knowledge adds valuable insight.
For information on Fordham's unique role as a charter school sponsor in Ohio, there's no better source than The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation Sponsorship Accountability Report 2005-06. The report offers a comprehensive account of Fordham's sponsorship policies and practices-as well as individual profiles of all Fordham-sponsored schools. Included in the profiles are descriptions of each school's educational program, school philosophy, and overall academic performance based on state achievement data.
Everyone agrees that education funding today is a mess. But a broad, bipartisan coalition now urges a new method of funding our public schools--one that finally ensures the students who need the most receive it, that empowers school leaders to make key decisions, and that opens the door to public school choice. It's a 100 percent solution to the most pressing problems in public school funding--and it's called Weighted Student Funding.
Belatedly, policymakers and researchers are recognizing that quality charter schools depend on quality charter school authorizing. This report presents findings from a pioneering national examination of the organizations that sponsor, oversee, and hold accountable U.S. charter schools. Its primary aim is to describe and characterize these crucial but little-known organizations.