NACSA's Third Thursdays // New School Applications: Do Authorizer Evaluations Predict the Success of New Charter Schools?
NACSA is honored to feature the report from the Thomas B.
NACSA is honored to feature the report from the Thomas B.
In recent months, housing programs for school teachers have begun to receive high-profile attention. And with good reason: As costs of living have risen, teacher salaries have not kept pace, thereby decreasing some educators’ ability to live near their workplaces. But are such policies actually a good thing? In short: We really don’t know.
Idaho’s public charter school law turned twenty-five last year. Over that quarter century, the statute has grown warts. It’s also too complicated, burdened by vestigial code and rules, and confusing to schools, authorizers,[1] and state education agencies alike.
Many states are overhauling their early literacy policies to align with the science of reading, an evidence-based approach that emphasizes phonics and knowledge building. Effectively implementing these reforms is crucial, as high-quality reading instruction can improve both academic and life outcomes for children.
Examination of Covid-era impacts on students, families, and schools continues apace. Getting a full picture of the fallout, who was affected, and how helps education leaders better direct their resources to serve impacted students.
Better late than never, New York State has stirred itself to change the way reading is taught in its 800-plus local school districts. Last month, Governor Kathy Hochul announced a plan to spend $10 million to train 20,000 teachers in the “science of reading,” including a “microcredentialing” program via the state’s public universities. Assuming the legislature grants the request, here’s how New York could maximize the program’s impact.
Last year, Colorado’s legislature established an “Accountability, Accreditation, Student Performance, and Resource Inequity Task Force”—a twenty-six-member behemoth charged with, among other things, making recommendations on the future of the state’s K–12 asses
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Lindsey Burke, the director of the Center for Education Policy at the Heritage Foundation, joi
As the population of English learners (ELs) in grades K–12 grows, so do the challenges school districts face in identifying gifted students and putting in place appropriate enrichment and acceleration opportunities for them.
Fordham’s latest report, "New Home, Same School," analyses the relationships among residential mobility, school mobility, and charter school enrollment. It finds, among other things, that changing schools is associated with a small decline in academic progress in math and a slight increase in suspensions—and that residentially mobile students in charter schools are less likely to change schools than their counterparts in traditional public schools.
This is the fourth in a series on doing educational equity right.
Now that President Trump has soundly defeated Governor Haley in New Hampshire and thus appears to have sewn up the GOP nomination, it’s time to consider what a second Trump term may mean for education.
Because the housing and education markets are linked, evictions and other involuntary changes in residence often force students to change schools at a time when they are vulnerable. But is disrupting at-risk students' education in this manner necessary?
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Douglas Lauen, a professor of public policy and sociology
Khaya Njumbe enrolled at GEO Academies’ 21st Century Charter School, in Gary, Indiana, when he was eleven years old. By age thirteen, he’d become the youngest student in state history to earn an associate degree.
If school funding is the issue around which it’s easiest to find common ground across left and right, school discipline might be the hardest. That shouldn’t be surprising, given how divisive our country’s debate has been on the related issue of criminal justice and law enforcement. But we can begin to bridge these ideological differences if we commit to “doing educational equity right.”
I used to judge teachers who quit midyear. How could they abandon their students? Didn’t they sign a contract? Could they just really not cut it? Well, now I get it. Midyear quitting may be unseemly, but it’s understandable.
Editor’s note: This was first published on the author’s Substack, The Education Daly.
Alternative licensure pathways—which equip prospective new educators for the classroom in ways other than traditional, university-based teacher preparation programs—aim to expand and diversify the ranks of K–12 teachers.
The U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Education and the Workforce ended 2023 with some tidings of potential joy for America’s workforce by approving two proposed bills on a strong bipartisan basis. Committee approval in one chamber is just a start, of course, but bipartisanship in the current House is a good sign.
Editor's note: This was first published on the author's Substack, The Education Daly.
Editor’s note: This was first published by ExcelinEd.
Last week, Petrilli identified three rules for “doing educational equity right” that will result in smart policy designs and make it likelier that the political right will get on board the equity train. Now let’s apply those rules to the topic of school finance.
Shortly before schools—and Fordham—shuttered their doors for the holiday break, Tim Daly asked a simple question in these pages: Should schools ban smart phones?
The education world lost a true reformer on Christmas Day—and the charter-school world lost one of its true heroes—when Linda Brown passed away at eighty-one at her home in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
“Suitcase words” have different meanings for different people. They’re everywhere in our political conversations and in K–12 education, and they include “social justice,” “parental rights,” and “accountability.” But the granddaddy of them all is surely “educational equity.” In coming weeks, this series will aim to unpack this phrase, and discuss what it would mean to do educational equity right.
“Truancy” may no longer be the right word for it, maybe not even “absenteeism,” for both imply being missing from a place where one is supposed to be. “Truancy,” with its overtone of misbehavior and illegality, suggests willfulness, i.e., that one is intentionally missing, while “absenteeism” is a more neutral term with no suggestion of motive.
A new report from the National Center for Research on Education Access and Choice adds to the robust literature on school choice in New Orleans, shedding light on the ways in which the centralized enrollment system in the Crescent City has grown and evolved, as well a
The Covid-19 pandemic created innumerable disruptions to the education system. Among them were challenges faced by teacher candidates trying to complete licensure requirements. In response, those requirements got waived in many places.
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Debbie Veney, a senior vice president at the National Alliance for Public