#915: Eliminating school boundaries, with Derrell Bradford
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Derrell Bradford, the president of 50CAN, joins Mike and David to discuss a new coalit
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Derrell Bradford, the president of 50CAN, joins Mike and David to discuss a new coalit
The school choice movement continues to rack up dramatic wins nationwide. This growth in “educational freedom,” as many advocates now call it, is a fantastic development. But under the surface of these victories, an important debate is brewing: how to balance the drive for maximum choice with other values, including fiscal responsibility and fairness.
Congress is currently considering legislation to update the way that the federal government funds education research and development.
Many of the conditions that led to the prominence of “no-excuses” charter schools a quarter-century ago have returned. For students, teachers, and parents who have never lost their appetite for safe and orderly schools, it can’t come soon enough.
It’s been more than two decades since Congress passed and President Bush (43) signed the Education Sciences Reform Act (ESRA), giving birth to the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) as we know it.
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.
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.
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Kara Arundel, a senior reporter at K-12 Dive, joins Mike to disc
After handily defeating his Republican rival for the governorship of red-hued Kentucky, Democrat Andy Beshear is having a moment as a center-left moderate who could run for president in 2028. But we education reformers should curb our enthusiasm because Beshear’s stances are alien to ours.
A simple observation: In the U.S., high school graduation rates have increased while other measures of academic achievement—from college entrance exam scores to high school
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Tim Donahue, an English teacher at the Greenwich Country Day School, joins Mike to discu
In a new report and accompanying factsheet, authors Jason Bedrick, Jay Greene, and Lindsey Burke of the Heritage Foundation look into
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Umut Özek and Louis Mariano, researchers at the Rand Corporation, join Mike to d
Microschools exist as a midpoint between homeschooling and traditional schools. Typically, the entire school will only have twenty-five students and one or two teachers—often parents, sometimes former educators looking for a more personal classroom, and occasionally local community members like doctors who have expertise to share.
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Denisha Allen, a senior fellow at the American Federation for Chil
A new study from a pair of Penn State University researchers finds that passing the U.S. Citizenship Test as a high school graduation requirement does nothing to improve youth voter turnout. Within the last decade, more than a third of U.S.
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, William McKenzie, a senior editorial advisor at the George W.
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Daniel Buck, Fordham’s editorial and policy associate, joins Mike and David to discuss the be
Not since former Governor Scott Walker bludgeoned the unions in my home state of Wisconsin has there been such national outrage over state-level education policies. Historically, state-scale education has been a secondary affair, rarely topping the list of people’s substantive or political priorities, and most decisions have been left to local decision-making.
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Aaron Churchill, Fordham’s Ohio research director, joins
Recent policy innovations such as education savings accounts, microgrants, and tax credits address some of the financial barriers that prevent families from accessing flexible education opportunities.
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, former Massachusetts Secretary of Education Jim Peyser joins Mike to discuss education
America’s school choice moment has finally arrived, but the vast majority of students nationwide still attend traditional public schools—and will for the foreseeable future. Conservatives would be wise to support policies that give families choices within the public education system. Cross-district open enrollment does precisely that, and it has strong bipartisan support.
While national school-choice advocates crow about recent legislative victories in states like Iowa, Utah, South Carolina, and West Virginia, setbacks and struggles simmer in Illinois, Montana, and Idaho.
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Paul DiPerna of EdChoice joins Mike Petrilli and David Griffith to di
Thomas Sowell famously quipped that “there are no solutions, only tradeoffs.” Even seemingly beneficial policies have repercussions. Reduce the prison population and crime increases. Close schools to prevent the spread of Covid and standardized test scores plummet. What’s more, even historic, society-altering changes come with side effects.
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Kathleen Porter-Magee of Partnership Schools—a network of Catholic school
This year’s state legislative sessions, now coming to a close, have yielded a blizzard of high-profile victories on school choice, from the enactment of universal education savings accounts (ESA) programs, to the expansion of private school choice policies to serve many more families, to fairer funding for charter schools.
Aaargh. Here we go again. The new National Assessment civics and history results are as deplorable as they were predictable. Whether they’ll also serve as the action-forcer that we need is far from certain.
This April marks forty years since the National Commission on Excellence in Education issued its blockbuster report “A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform.” The commission, which worked for eighteen months, was created in August 1981 by U.S. Secretary of Education Terrel Bell early in his tenure with President Ronald Reagan’s administration.