Podcast
Curriculum & Instruction, Private School Choice, Teachers & School Leaders
The Education Gadfly Show #783: One teacher’s call for choice and content-rich curricula
Commentary
Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Private School Choice, Teachers & School Leaders
“Public education sucks” is a weak argument for school choice
I’ve long believed the best argument for school choice is to turn up the lights on what is possible when there’s room for a wide variety of schools, curricula, and cultures. Call it the When Harry Met Sally model.
Commentary
Charter Schools, Governance, Private School Choice, Teachers & School Leaders
We’re moving toward a more student-focused, parent-directed, pluralistic K–12 system
“Never in my lifetime have so many parents been so eager for so much education change.” So said longtime pollster Frank Luntz after surveying 1,000 public and private school parents on how the pandemic affected their view of schools.
Commentary
Evidence-Based Learning, Charter Schools, Private School Choice, Teachers & School Leaders
Districts are failing special-needs students. School choice is helping.
Public schools have long failed to serve adequately students with disabilities, but school closures, disastrous for the millions of children with special needs, may finally encourage a critical mass of parents to do something about it.
Commentary
Charter Schools, Governance, Private School Choice
Biden’s anticompetitive moves on charters and choice
Earlier this month, President Biden issued a sweeping executive order encouraging federal agencies to undertake a series of initiatives aimed at increasing competition in the U.S. economy. But there’s a mismatch between his approach to competition in the private sector and his support for monopoly when it comes to public education.
Commentary
Governance, Private School Choice, Teachers & School Leaders
Scaling up the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship program helped public schools improve
As supporters of school choice celebrate a remarkable season of legislative wins across the country, they can also add some research-based evidence to their grounds for satisfaction.
Podcast
Accountability & Testing, ESSA, Governance, Private School Choice
The Education Gadfly Show #777: O-H-I-O: School reform victories in the Buckeye State
Commentary
Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Private School Choice, Teachers & School Leaders
How ya gonna keep ‘em back in that old school?
If the pandemic vanished tomorrow and all U.S. schools instantly reopened in exactly the same fashion as they were operating last February, how many parents would be satisfied to return their daughters and sons to the same old familiar classrooms, teachers, schedules and curricula? A lot fewer than the same old schools and those who run and teach in them are expecting back!
Commentary
Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Private School Choice, Teachers & School Leaders
How anger over Covid closures can fuel the school choice movement
The father testifying before Virginia’s Loudon County school board
Commentary
Charter Schools, Private School Choice
For better or worse, religiously-affiliated charter schools are on their way
A U.S. Supreme Court decision is introducing a new type of charter school that’s likely to cheer conservatives but alarm many progressives: the religiously-affiliated charter. Those of us in the charter movement need to figure out how to keep them from splitting the charter coalition.
Commentary
Charter Schools, Private School Choice
How states can meet the rising demand for school choice
Six months into the pandemic, the nation’s forced experiment in remote learning has resumed. But our education system’s design is ill-suited to the unique quandaries posed by Covid-19. District officials continue to ask parents for grace and patience, and many have continued to oblige, but if current conditions persist into next year and beyond, demand for choice will almost certainly increase as a large number of parents keep their children at home.
Commentary
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Private School Choice, Teachers & School Leaders
Teacher unions vs. private schools
The private schools in Montgomery County, Maryland, where I live, are breathing a sigh of relief that, after much sturm und drang this past week, they’re back in charge of their own decisions about whether and how to re-open.
Podcast
School Finance, Private School Choice
The Education Gadfly Show: The crisis’s outsized impacts on Catholic schools
On this week’s podcast, Michael McShane, the director of national research at EdChoice, joins Mike Petrilli to discuss how Catholic
Commentary
Curriculum & Instruction, Private School Choice, Teachers & School Leaders
Keeping the teacher-student feedback loop intact during distance learning
Editor’s note: This blog post was first published by Partnership Schools.
Commentary
Curriculum & Instruction, Private School Choice, Teachers & School Leaders
A self-reflection tool for distance learners
Editor’s note: This blog post was first published by Partnership Schools.
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Private School Choice, Standards, Teachers & School Leaders
Back to basics for conservative education reform
This major essay comprises one of the concluding chapters of our new book, "How to Educate an American: The Conservative Vision for Tomorrow's Schools." Levin brilliantly—and soberingly—explains what conservatives have forfeited in the quest for bipartisan education reform. He contends that future efforts by conservatives to revitalize American education must emphasize “the formation of students as human beings and citizens,” including “habituation in virtue, inculcation in tradition, [and] veneration of the high and noble.”
Commentary
Charter Schools, Private School Choice
The Florida LGBTQ controversy: A gut-check moment for school choice
Florida’s Tax Credit Scholarship program has provided more than 780,000 scholarships since its inception in 2001.
Commentary
Private School Choice
We need schools that form the backbone of communities, and Catholic schools have been doing that for generations
Last week, the Supreme Court heard arguments in Espinoza v.
Commentary
Governance, Private School Choice
Espinoza and the myth of values-neutral schooling
The education world was slow on the uptake, but oral argument this week in the case of Espinoza v.
Commentary
Private School Choice
Why Catholic schools have regained their place in education reform
At the beginning of the modern ed-reform movement, getting onto four decades ago, urban Catholic schools were everywhere, serving as vital proof points in the debate about what was possible. While too many traditional public schools serving disadvantaged communities were either unsafe, failed to produce graduates with even basic skills, or both, urban Catholic schools stood apart.
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Charter Schools, Governance, Private School Choice
Even more social engineering in New York schools
When the New York City Council moved the other day to require every one of the city’s thirty-two community school districts to develop a school desegregation plan, it was yet one more example of municipal social engineering that prizes diversity over quality and mandatory over voluntary. If families with means don’t like their new school assignments, they’ll simply exit to charters, private schools or the suburbs, meaning that the city’s social engineers will mainly work their will on those with the least.
Podcast
Charter Schools, Governance, Private School Choice, Teachers & School Leaders
The Education Gadfly Show: On education, Warren’s got a pander for that
On this week’s podcast, Mike Petrilli and David Griffith talk to Checker Finn about Senator Warren’s flawed education proposal. On the Research Minute, Amber Northern examines improvements to the student teaching experience that can help candidates feel more prepared for success in the classroom.
Commentary
Charter Schools, Private School Choice
The real story: School choice is working
On September 25th, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) issued a report titled “School Choice in the United States: 2019,” which sorely misrepresents the prevalence, value, and impact of school choice over the last twenty years.
Podcast
Charter Schools, Private School Choice, Teachers & School Leaders
The Education Gadfly Show: Trends in public opinion on choice, testing, and teacher salaries
On this week’s podcast, Martin West, Harvard professor and editor-in-chief of Education Next, joins Mike Petrilli to
Commentary
Private School Choice
Let’s hear it for educational freedom!
Twenty-five months after Donald Trump’s inauguration, his administration has just unveiled its big school-choice initiative—yes, the cause that, during his 2016 campaign, he termed the “new civil rights issue of our time,” the very same cause that Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has devoted her career to promoting.
Commentary
Charter Schools, Private School Choice
What options do students have in areas where private school choice proposals were defeated?
The Education Gadfly
New Media
Charter Schools, Private School Choice
Do Private Schools Serve as Oases in Charter School Deserts?
Last April, we published a report by Andrew Saultz and colleagues highlighting “charter school deserts” across the country, or high poverty areas that lack charter schools.
Report
Private School Choice, Teachers & School Leaders
Self-Discipline and Catholic Schools: Evidence from Two National Cohorts
Regardless of where you stand on the debate currently raging over school discipline, one thing seems certain: Self-discipline is far better than the externally imposed kind.
Report
Charter Schools, Governance, Private School Choice
America's Best (and Worst) Cities for School Choice
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.
Report
Accountability & Testing, School Finance, Private School Choice
Public accountability & private-school choice
The Fordham Institute supports school choice, done right. That means designing voucher and tax-credit policies that provide an array of high-quality education options for kids that are also accountable to parents and taxpayers.
