Ed Next Book Club: Sarah Carr on Hope Against Hope
In this installment of the Education Next book club, host Mike Petrilli talks with Sarah Carr about the successes and failures of New Orleans-style reform
In this installment of the Education Next book club, host Mike Petrilli talks with Sarah Carr about the successes and failures of New Orleans-style reform
This Fordham Institute publication—co-authored by President Chester E. Finn Jr. and VP Michael J. Petrilli—pushes folks to think about what comes next in the journey to common education standards and tests. Most states have adopted the Common Core English language arts and math standards, and most are also working on common assessments. But...now what? The standards won't implement themselves, but unless they are adopted in the classroom, nothing much will change. What implementation tasks are most urgent? What should be done across state lines? What should be left to individual states, districts, and private markets? Perhaps most perplexing, who will govern and own these standards and tests ten or twenty years from now?
This national survey of education school professors finds that, even as the U.S. grows more practical and demanding when it comes to K-12 education, most of the professoriate simply isn't there. They see themselves more as philosophers and agents of social change, not as master craftsmen sharing tradecraft. They also resist some promising reforms such as tying teacher pay to student test scores. Still, education professors are reform-minded in some areas, including tougher policies for awarding tenure to teachers and financial incentives for those who teach in tough neighborhoods. Read on to find out more.
The typical U.S. charter school lacks the autonomy it needs to succeed, once state, authorizer, and other impositions are considered. For some schools—in some states, with some authorizers—the picture is brighter but for many it's bleak. State-specific grades for charter autonomy range from A to F.
More than 1.7 million American children attend what we've dubbed "private public schools"—public schools that serve virtually no poor students. In some metropolitan areas, as many as one in six public-school students—and one in four white youngsters—attends such schools, of which the U.S. has about 2,800.
The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation is pleased to share our 2009-10 Sponsorship Accountability Report. The report, Renewal and Optimism: Five Years as an Ohio Charter Authorizer, contains a year in review for Ohio's charter school program, detailed information on the Fordham Foundation's work as a charter school sponsor, and data on the performance of our sponsored schools during that year.
When it comes to public-sector pensions, writes lead author Mike Lafferty in this report, "A major public-policy (and public-finance) problem has been defined and measured, debated and deliberated, but not yet solved. Except where it has been." As recounted in "Halting a Runaway Train: Reforming Teacher Pensions for the 21st Century," these exceptions turn out to be revealing—and encouraging. As leaders around the country struggle to overhaul America's controversial and precarious public-sector pensions, this study draws on examples from diverse fields to provide a primer on successful pension reform. Download to find valuable lessons for policymakers, workers, and taxpayers looking for timely solutions to a dire problem.
Guest blogger Alex Medler is the VP for Research and Evaluation at the National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA). Medler chaired the board of directors of Colorado's Charter School Institute, a statewide charter authorizer.
The New York Times continues to provide a generous medley of education reporting, including, of course, from their controversial "On Education" columnist Michael Winerip.? Alas, Winerip is not among the three recent stories I want to highlight here:
????On his presidential campaign website, Ron Paul describes his policy positions on twelve different issues, including abortion, health care, and the economy. Education is not among the headings. But ?homeschooling? is.
If you step back from day to day vitriol that characterizes the current education-policy ?debate,? and glimpse the larger picture, two worldviews on education reform emerge. One, articulated by the likes of Linda Darling-Hammond, Marc Tucker, David Cohen, and others, obsesses about curricular ?coherence,? and the lack thereof in our nation's schools.
I wrote a blog post here on Flypaper this week in response to what I'd seen as some unnecessary and unproductive personal jabs at actor Matt Damon, after he gave a brief speech at the Save Our Schools rally in D.
It was hardly a surprise that Indiana took home the Education Reform Idol trophy today.
In case it needs reiterating, Matt Damon is actually a pretty smart guy. He holds a Best Original Screenplay Oscar. He went to Harvard. He produces documentary films. He volunteers and donates to whole host of NGOs and non-profits. Sure, he's no authority of education, but he's probably the kind of person worth at least giving the benefit of the doubt.
Which of the five states competing to be America's next Education Reform Idol did the most to advance charter schools and private-school choice during the 2011 legislative session?
Florida deserves kudos for protecting about $55 million in funding for charter facilities in the face of budget cuts, but they're catching a lot of flak from traditional school advocates, EdWeek reports:
Matthew Stewart, a stay-at-home dad in a wealthy New Jersey suburb, is leading a battle against the "boutique" charter schools that are being planned for his community.
Today's Times (unless you read it online yesterday or the day before), covers some fertile educational ground in three important arenas.
Democracy Prep is expanding in a novel way next school year ? by taking over a failing charter school at its authorizer's behest. SUNY was set to deny Harlem Day Charter School's charter but instead asked for proposals to turn the school around. Democracy Prep stepped up.
As if the teachers unions need another reason to hate charter s
In this "Ed Short" from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, Amanda Olberg and Michael Podgursky examine how public charter schools handle pensions for their teachers. Some states give these schools the freedom to opt out of the traditional teacher-pension system; when given that option, how many charter schools take it? Olberg and Podgursky examine data from six charter-heavy states and find that charter participation rates in traditional pension systems vary greatly from state to state. When charter schools do not participate in state systems, they most often provide their teachers with defined-contribution plans (401(k) or 403(b)). But some opt-out charters offer no alternative retirement plans at all for their teachers. Read on to learn more.
Today, Fordham released our latest, "Charting a New Course to Retirement: How Charter Schools Handle Teacher Pensions." Authors Amanda Olberg and Michael Podgursky explain the report's findings here.
Leave it to Rick Hess to find the current lightening rod issue.
Pennsylvania is trying to fix a thorny problem with virtual schools. If two kids attend a virtual school, one from a high spending district that sends along $10,000 in their backpack to the virtual school, and another from low spending district that sends $6,000, the former child's district is subsidizing the latter's education. It's a tough issue.
First came the recruitment of State Superintendent Deborah Gist; next came winning $75 million in Race to the Top (RTTT) funds. Rhode Island has been on a whirlwind track toward education reform over the past couple years. And?as one with boatloads of Ocean State pride (who doesn't love coffee milk, water fire, and Dels lemonade?)?it's been fun to watch.
An analysis released in today's Education Gadfly finds that new charter schools in disadvantaged communities are almost four times as likely to reach above-average rates of student achievement as the closest district school.
The Harmony Charter school opus in today's Times is a great read.? It's very long, over 4,000 words, starting on the front page and covering two full pages on the inside of the paper.
Though American education has taken few actual steps to pattern itself on other countries, in recent years we've displayed a near-obsessive interest in how we're doing in relation to them (e.g. on TIMSS and PISA results), and in what they're doing and how they do it.
The US Department of Education has hired a new director of its Federal Charter Schools Program, which oversees a variety of grant programs for starting and replicating public charter schools, as well as credit enhancements to help them afford high-quality facilities.