Some great ideas from our ESSA Accountability Design Competition
On Tuesday afternoon, we at the Fordham Institute will host a competition to present compelling designs for state accountability systems under the Every Student Succeeds Act.
On Tuesday afternoon, we at the Fordham Institute will host a competition to present compelling designs for state accountability systems under the Every Student Succeeds Act.
Editor's note: For a summary of noteworthy content from contenders' proposals, read "Some great ideas from our ESSA Accountability Design Competition."
Under the newly enacted Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), states now face the challenge of creating school accountability systems that can vastly improve upon the model required by No Child Left Behind (NCLB).
Officials at the Department of Education have requested public comments by January 21 about areas in the new Every Student Succeeds Act where regulation might be “helpful or necessary.” My recommendation to the feds: Tread ver
I re-read about fifty major articles, blog posts, and other missives about ESSA over the break, since this written record will serve as the foundation for years of commentary and analysis. Below are the five major themes that jumped out (along with gobs of the supporting links).1. The diminished role of Uncle Sam in schools
As everyone knows, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA)—the long-overdue reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act—was approved by overwhelming bipartisan majorities in the House and Senate and signed into law by the president in December.
More than twelve million American students exercise some form of school choice by going to a charter, magnet, or private school——instead of attending a traditional public school.
The dominant narrative about the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) is that it shifts authority over schools back to state governments. But this belies a key feature of the legislation.
Undoing damage inflicted by the blunt axe of test-driven accountability. Robert Pondiscio
Earlier this year, when it looked like ESEA finally had a chance of being reauthorized, I came up with a graphic for assessing the accountability provisions of the various proposals.
The ESEA reauthorization conferees delivered some good news for America’s high-achieving students last week.
The action is moving to the state level. It’s about time. Michael J. Petrilli
Editor's note: Politics K-12 reports that House and Senate negotiators have reached a preliminary compromise on reauthorization of No Child Left Behind.
Whether you think the end game of the current “mixed economy” of district and charter schools should be an all-charter system (as in New Orleans) or a dual model (as in Washington D.C.), for the foreseeable future most cities are likely to continue with a blend of these two sectors. So we wanted to know: Can they peacefully co-exist? Can they do better than that?
Boehner is out! McCarthy is in! No, wait, McCarthy is out!
A new report can’t see the forest for the trees. Robert Pondiscio
Questions of education governance are often considered moot by policymakers, who typically assume that the governance challenges plaguing their local schools are both universal and inevitable. Given the ubiquity of everything from local school boards to state superintendents, this seems to be a logical assumption.
If it becomes law, the federal government will have much less power than it does today. Michael J. Petrilli
School districts across the land are contending with rising education costs and constrained revenues. Yet state policies for assisting school districts in financial trouble are uneven and complex. Interventions are often haphazard, occur arbitrarily, and routinely place politics over sound economics.
The end is near. Hooray! Michael J. Petrilli
In Pre-K and Charter Schools: Where State Policies Create Barriers to Collaboration, authors Sara Mead and Ashley LiBetti Mitchel examine thirty-six jurisdictions that have both charter schools and state-funded pre-K programs to determine where charters can provide state-funded pre-K.
It’s finally here: Our best chance to update the Elementary and Secondary Education Act since its passage shortly after 9/11. A whole generation of students has come and gone, yet our nation’s key education law remains the same. There’s absolutely no good reason to delay reauthorization any longer. To the contrary; it’s sorely overdue.
In Redefining the School District in America, Nelson Smith reexamines existing recovery school districts (RSDs)—entities in Louisiana, Tennessee, and Michigan charged with running and turning around their state’s worst schools—and assembles the most comprehensive catalog of similar initiatives underway and under consideration elsewhere.
The myriad challenges facing school principals in the United States have been well documented, including limited opportunities for distributed leadership, inadequate training, and a lackluster pipeline for new leaders. Recently, the Fordham Institute teamed up with the London-based Education Foundation to seek a better understanding of England’s recent efforts to revamp school leadership.
Last week, I explained the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (a.k.a. No Child Left Behind) in a single table:
ESEA reauthorization explained in a single table
At the Education for Upward Mobility conference, the Thomas B.
What happens when policymakers create statewide school districts to turn around their worst-performing public schools?
The Thomas B. Fordham Institute set out to answer a basic (yet complicated) question: how much does each school in the D.C. metro area spend on day-to-day operations for each student it enrolls? In the Metro D.C.
The number of non-teaching staff in the United States (those employed by school systems but not serving as classroom teachers) has grown by 130 percent since 1970. Non-teachers—more than three million strong—now comprise half of the public school workforce. Their salaries and benefits absorb one-quarter of current education expenditures.