The Florida LGBTQ controversy: A gut-check moment for school choice
Florida’s Tax Credit Scholarship program has provided more than 780,000 scholarships since its inception in 2001.
Florida’s Tax Credit Scholarship program has provided more than 780,000 scholarships since its inception in 2001.
A few years ago, as I was wrapping up grad school (where my dissertation was about migrant workers in China, of all things), I came across a bunch of fascinating podcast episodes about education policy and school reform.
The U.S. Department of Education recently proposed significant changes to the Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC), including eliminating the school finance portion.
A mere 6 percent of students are enrolled in charter schools nationwide, but there are sixteen cities in which at least one-third of public school students attend charters. Newark, New Jersey, is one of them.
Charter schools are increasingly under attack from the left.
Hard as it may be to believe, the Knowledge is Power Program, better known as KIPP, is now older than a lot of the people who teach in its schools.
Several candidates in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary have criticized the inequities created by school funding formula
After what happened last night at Elizabeth Warren’s rally in Atlanta, Democrats might want to reconsider their strategy of attacking school choice.
When the New York City Council moved the other day to require every one of the city’s thirty-two community school districts to develop a school desegregation plan, it was yet one more example of municipal social engineering that prizes diversity over quality and mandatory over voluntary. If families with means don’t like their new school assignments, they’ll simply exit to charters, private schools or the suburbs, meaning that the city’s social engineers will mainly work their will on those with the least.
The words “American Dream” are shorthand for describing an individual’s pathway to opportunity and a successful life. Historically, K–12 schools provide young people with the foundational knowledge and skills they need for achieving success and the American Dream.
Editor’s note: This was the second-place submission, out of nineteen, to Fordham’s 2019 Wonkathon, in which we asked participants to answer the question: “What’s the best way to help students who are several grade levels behind?”
In previous posts and in comments to the media, I’ve been making the case that the lingering effects of the Great Recession might partially explain the disappointing student achievement trends we’ve seen as of late, both on the Nation’s Report Card and on state assessments.
With less than a year to go until the 2020 presidential election, Elizabeth Warren’s ascendancy to ostensible Democratic frontrunner, and the release of her voluminously noxious education proposal, I fell into a fever dream of the same stra
What’s the best way to help students who are several grade levels behind?
Dear Directors:
Just weeks away from what could be a watershed school board election, Denver hosted a community
A woman scrubs the bathroom floor on her hands and knees, hair pulled back in a scarf. Another woman dressed in a business suit applies lipstick at the mirror. Both are mothers. Both are black. One is a congresswoman. The other cleans the toilets and floors in the congresswoman’s office.
On September 25th, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) issued a report titled “School Choice in the United States: 2019,” which sorely misrepresents the prevalence, value, and impact of school choice over the last twenty years.
I. A hypothesis All organizations are founded on a hypothesis. Deliberate organizations are explicit about their hypothesis. The City Fund’s hypothesis, where I’m the Managing Partner, is that educational opportunity in cities will increase if:
Robert Pondiscio won’t like my review of his new book, How the Other Half Learns.
Dozens of studies have found black and brown students in urban charter schools make substantially more academic progress than otherwise similar students in traditional public schools; literature suggests achievement in district-run schools increases in response to competition from charters; and Fordham’s new study confirms the logical implication of those two strands: an increase in the percentage of students in a community who enroll in charter schools leads to systemic gains.
For big urban districts, the larger the number of black and Hispanic students enrolled in charters, the more all children or color achieve—no matter what kind of school they attend.
Plenty of studies have compared the progress of students in charter schools versus traditional public schools. And more than a dozen have examined the “competitive effects” of charters on neighboring district schools.
Plenty of studies have compared the progress of students in charter schools versus traditional public schools. And more than a dozen have examined the “competitive effects” of charters on neighboring district schools.
Most states have spent the past decade overhauling their standards, tests, and accountability systems, and finally committing real resources to capacity-building, especially in the form of curriculum implementation. These pieces have only begun to come together in the last year or two, culminating with the release of school ratings as required by ESSA. What’s needed isn’t to spin the wheel of education policy once again, but to show some patience and commitment—and finish what we started.
The racial integration or segregation of K–12 schools is again a debate topic in education circles. Today’s controversy has a new twist: casting charter schools as the main antagonist to integration, claiming they resegregate public schools.
Imagine that you’re a sixth-grade math teacher. It’s the first day of school, and the vast majority of your students arrived multiple years behind where they should be. Your job is to teach them concepts such as understanding percentages and dividing fractions.
Editor’s note: This is the third in a series of posts looking at how two school networks—Rocketship Public Schools and Wildflower Schools—enable their students to meet standards at their own pace.
Charters schools are often criticized for not enrolling enough or not adequately serving special student populations, particularly students with special needs. A new study by Tufts University’s Elizabeth Setren evaluates this claim with a unique dataset in Boston.
In the last month, two reports have renewed questions about the current direction of states’ high school assessments.