Early ESSA plans don't do enough to signal that all students are important
By Brandon L. Wright
By Brandon L. Wright
On this week's podcast, special guest Lindsey Burke, a director at the Heritage Foundation, joins Mike Petrilli and Alyssa Schwenk to discuss Arizona’s tax-scholarship program. During the Research Minute, Amber Northern examines the effects of riding a school bus on student absenteeism.
By Brandon L. Wright
A new report from the RAND Corporation examines trends across 27 counties in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia where fracking is a booming business. Nine of these counties are in Eastern Ohio, including Mahoning, Stark, Belmont, and several others.
On this week's podcast, Checker Finn, Alyssa Schwenk, and Brandon Wright discuss the drafting of an ESSA plan and what comes next for states that recently submitted theirs to the U.S. Department of Education. During the Research Minute, David Griffith examines the long-term effects of same-race teachers.
By Brandon L. Wright
Under the Every Student Succeeds Act, the federal School Improvement Grants program is gone, but the goal of school improvement remains. States must now use seven percent of their Title I allocation for these efforts, but are no longer constrained by a prescribed menu of intervention options.
Ohio’s draft plan for implementing the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) came out earlier this month, and we at Fordham continue to
In early February, the Ohio Department of Education (ODE) released the first draft of its state plan for the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).
By Brandon L. Wright
One of the hallmarks of school accountability is the identification of and intervention in persistently low-preforming schools.
Today Education Week released its annual Quality Counts report card for states. Ohio earned a C with an overall score of 74.2, aligning the Buckeye State for the second year in a row with national U.S. average (also 74.2).
Teacher evaluation was one of President Obama’s signature policies, and a controversial element of education reform during his tenure.
Countless studies have demonstrated that teacher quality is the most important school-based determinant of student learning, and that removing ineffective teachers from the classroom could greatly benefit students.
The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) has put the future of teacher evaluations firmly in the hands of states. Ohio is now in full control of deciding how to develop and best implement its nascent system.
Eleven weeks ago, in High Stakes for High Achievers: State Accountability in the Age of ESSA, the Fordham Institute reported that current K–8 accountability systems in most states give teachers scant reason to attend to the learning of high-achieving youngsters.
Tens of thousands of individuals across the United States volunteer their time, energy, and expertise as members of charter school boards. Yet as the charter sector has grown, we’ve learned remarkably little about these individuals who make key operational decisions about their schools and have legal and moral responsibilities for the education of children in their communities.
By Kathryn Mullen Upton
By Michael J. Petrilli
Last week, several of my Fordham colleagues published a fantastic fifty-state review of accountability systems and how they impact high achievers. Lamentably, they found that most states do almost nothing to hold schools accountable for the progress of their most able pupils.
During the No Child Left Behind era of education reform, now winding down, teachers, schools and districts were tacitly encouraged to focus their efforts on raising the floor rather than raising the roof on student achievement. Whether by accident, choice or neglect, high-achievers as well as those merely "above proficient" received little attention. And why should they?
No Child Left Behind meant well, but it had a pernicious flaw: It created strong incentives for schools to focus all their energy on helping low-performing students get over a modest “proficiency” bar. Meanwhile, it ignored the educational needs of high achievers, who were likely to pass state reading and math tests regardless of what happened in the classroom.
No, I’m not referring to the Golden State’s rich palette of ethnic and other minority (and majority) groups, nor to its desire that they’ll live, work, and go to school in harmony, like Monet’s Water Lilies or Matisse’s Fauve masterpieces.
You're invited to join in the conversation and contribute to Ohio’s Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) plan.
Many education stakeholders see the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) as an opportunity to fix the most problematic provisions in NCLB. For many critics, the biggest bogeyman was too much standardized testing and its associated accountability measures.
Editor's note: This post reproduces a letter sent to Secretary of Education John King on July 29. Dear Mr. Secretary:
The new education law of the land—the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA)—has been the talk of the town since President Obama signed it into law in December 2015.