On paper, it seems like Joe Biden would champion the cause of expanding high-quality charter schools, given his identity as a longtime centrist Democrat. Yet he doesn't. Thankfully for charter supporters, there pragmatic ways to bring him around, should he win the election next month
In education, one of the more bizarre debates of the past quarter century has been over whether more money improves students’ outcomes. It’s tough to think of anywhere else in American life where we’d even have that discussion.
The Progressive Policy Institute’s indefatigable David Osborne, a long-time student of and advocate for quality charter schools, now joined by Tressa Pankovits, has penned a valu
On this week’s podcast, Fordham’s Checker Finn joins Mike Petrilli and David Griffith to discuss the growing, misguided war on selective-admissions
What are we teaching the children about our country? The short answer: not much.
Contrary to much public rhetoric, the evidence for expanding charter schools in urban areas is stronger than ever. To be sure, the research is less positive for charters operating outside of the nation’s urban centers. And multiple studies suggest that internet-based schools and charters that serve mostly middle-class students, perform worse than their district counterparts, at least on traditional test-score-based measures. But charters needn’t work everywhere to be of service to society.
The negative partisanship animating this year’s presidential contest notwithstanding, charter school advocates will have their hands full no matter who prevails.
For a number of years, Ohio’s charter school sector has been more of a punchline than an exemplar in national debates about charters. The criticisms, though sometimes exaggerated, were not entirely unwarranted.
The Denver school board spent forty-five minutes Monday getting an update on its Black Excellence Resolution and worthy efforts being made at district and school levels to address systemic racism and implicit bias.
There used to be two sureties when it came to American K–12 education: Kids would attend school, and school leaders would demand more money.
Modeling the effects of a global pandemic while it’s ongoing seems like a prime example of “inexact science.” It’s also sure to depress. But it’s happening.
On this week’s podcast, Aaron Daly, COO of Brooklyn Laboratory Chart
When students at Anser Charter School in Garden City, Idaho, begin returning to in-person classes September 28, everything about school will look different than six months ago.
On this week’s podcast, Brandon Wright joins Mike Petrilli and David Griffith to discuss his and Rick Hess’s new edited volume,
American schoolchildren should not be taught to hate their country, or to view it as an “inherently racist” or “white supremacist” nation. But to move forward constructively on this point, instead of in a manner that further divides the country, it would be much better for a broad coalition of the center-right to the center-left to embrace a teaching of history that is clear-eyed, patriotic, and critical.
There’s much energy in the cosmos these days around civics education, history education, maybe even “patriotic” history and civics education.
This spring, the nation was slammed by a pandemic that has thus far killed nearly 200,000 Americans, thrown millions out of work, shuttered schools, and upended the rhythms of teaching and learning. Suddenly the kitchen table became a makeshift desk and “school” came to mean hours seated in front of a Chromebook.
Ohio legislators recently introduced Senate Bill 358, which proposes to cancel all state testing scheduled for spring 2021. The provision calling for the cancellation of state exams would only go into effect if the state receives an assessment waiver from the U.S.
Covid-19 is upending what parents think about America’s schools, motivating them to seek different ways to educate their children. It’s also inspiring enterprising individuals and imaginative policymakers to create new ways to support that parent demand for change.
If schooling continues to be remote through the fall, as it seems to be in many districts across the country, what is to be done about the plight of kids who are at risk for child abuse or neglect?
The first-ever virtual political conventions have come and gone, during which neither party offered a serious path forward on education reform. The Democrats belong to the self-interested teacher unions, and the GOP has become a single-issue party in pursuit of choice, leaving us with a lot of talk but little action.
Some Democrats and Republicans have an unlikely alliance these days around one thing: their sudden rejection of the federal Charter Schools Program (CSP), which funds start-up costs for new, high-quality charter schools.
Around six months ago, stay-at-home orders and school closures upended normal life for children of all ages across the United States. The loss of academic learning has been a huge concern, but we’re not talking enough about the implications of long-term “social distancing” for babies, toddlers, and preschoolers.
The National Center for Rural Education Research Networks (NCRERN) is a recently established organization out of Harvard that studies and supports a network of rural school districts in New York and Ohio.
On this week’s podcast, Robin Lake, director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education, joins Mike Petrilli to discuss why politics seems to be
In late July, the Democratic Party released a policy platform that included stances on a variety of issues, including education.
The Republican party has no 2020 platform. They refer people looking for one to the 2016 version. That goes for education along with everything else. The Trump-Pence campaign website doesn’t display policy positions, either, though there’s a section on “promises kept” that includes one skimpy page on education.
Michael Petrilli has written that, “when it comes to education, conservatives should stand for excellence.” So should liberals, and I am a longtime activist on the Democrats’ left wing.
Lost in the political noise of the debate on reopening schools is what parents think about this complicated puzzle. While their varied responses reflect this complexity, there is important consensus on many issues—though significant disagreement on one.
Last spring, the Covid-19 pandemic upended routines for over 56 million students and challenged more than 3.7 million teachers in over 130,000 schools nationwide to continue educating kids in an online format. This transition to “virtual learning” was understandably trying for all educators, schools, and districts, but some managed to do far better than others.
