Time for change
Harvard's Graduate School of Education released today?a report, Pathways to Prosperity, which, to judge by the heft of those who contributed to the document's ?Advance Praise?
Stretching the School Dollar
Michael J. Petrilli, Marguerite Roza, Ph.D.This policy brief lists fifteen concrete ways that states can "stretch the school dollar" in these difficult financial times. It is written by Marguerite Roza, senior data and economics advisor at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Michael J. Petrilli, executive vice president at the Fordham Institute.
Stretching the School Dollar: How Schools and Districts Can Save Money While Serving Students Best
Eric OsbergIn this volume, a diverse group of experts—scholars, educators, journalists, and entrepreneurs—offer wisdom and advice on how schools and districts can cut costs, eliminate inefficient spending, and better manage their funds in order to free up resources to drive school reform.
America's Best (and Worst) Cities for School Reform: Attracting Entrepreneurs and Change Agents
Stafford Palmieri, Janie ScullThis study tackles a key question: Which of thirty major U.S. cities have cultivated a healthy environment for school reform to flourish (and which have not)? Nine reform-friendly locales surged to the front. Read on to learn more.
Blogging "Teach Like a Champion"
Kathleen Porter-MageeI downloaded Teach Like Champion 49 Techniques That Put Students on the Path to College by Doug Lemov this weekend, and have scarcely been able to put it down.
Like the tide, great standards lift all boats
Kathleen Porter-MageeThere's a debate brewing about how much???if at all???great standards contribute to education reform. This week, the Wall Street Journal published an editorial saying that they are not as important to student achievement as universal choice.
Common Core education standards get A- and B from Fordham experts
Kathleen Porter-MageeAnyone who's been following the debate over national standards knows that two weeks ago, the National Governors Association (NGA) together with the Council of Chief State Schools Officers (CCSSO) released the much-anticipated public draft of the K-12 math and English language arts (ELA) Common Core State Standards.[quote]
Can failing schools be turned around or is it better to close them?
Watch our debate on school turnarounds vs. closures, and don't miss insightful and provocative comments from the panelists, including this one from Andres Alonso, CEO of Baltimore City Public Schools:
Open source education
Stafford PalmieriYou can find whatever your heart desires on the internet, and that's in part thanks to something called open source. It's a bit of an amorphous term, but that hasn't stopped this Utah virtual charter school from diving in to this potentially revolutionizing movement. Open source is just as its name implies--open.
Today's Quotable and Notable
Quotable: "I think it would be a tragedy to talk about Martin Luther King Jr., while not being able to talk about the fact that he had a strong Christian faith. I'm hoping that's not the direction we're headed." - Jonathan Saenz, Lobbyist, Free Market Foundation
The implications of tracking and detracking
Our latest report, "Tracking and Detracking: High Achievers in Massachusetts Middle Schools ," analyzes the implications of tracking, or grouping students i
Flypaper readers debate Education Schools and MUCH more
Amber M. Northern, Ph.D.A week ago, I posted this in response to Secretary Duncan's speech about education schools at Teachers College. Over the course of several days, there were 11 comments posted that, when printed out, clocked in at 20 pages (single spaced, mind you).
Arne Duncan and the E.D. Hirsch imperative
Amber M. Northern, Ph.D.Whew, I just finished reading Secretary Duncan's??meaty address to the faculty and students at Teachers College at Columbia University.
Fordham's newest report assesses Common Core education standards
The Fordham Institute's newest report???-Stars By Which to Navigate? Scanning National and International Education Standards in 2009--reviews the ???Common Core???
Unschooling: the worst education idea... ever?
Chester E. Finn, Jr.The worst education idea of the year turns out not to be a new idea at all. "Unschooling" has roots in Rousseau, in Summerhill, in John Holt and Ivan Illich and any number of other progressive/romantic/libertarian nihilists.
David Whitman interview
David Whitman, fresh off of being honored by the American Independent Writers, has now done an interview with EducationNews.org about his book, Sweating the Small Stuff: Inner-City S
Sweating the Small Stuff: Inner-City Schools and the New Paternalism
David WhitmanThe most exciting innovation in education policy in the last decade is the emergence of highly effective schools in our nation's inner cities, schools where disadvantaged teens make big gains in academic achievement. In this book, David Whitman takes readers inside six of these secondary schools—many of them charter schools—and reveals the secret to their success: They are paternalistic.
Who Will Save America's Urban Catholic Schools?
Scott HamiltonAmerica's urban Catholic schools are in crisis. Over 1,300 of them have shut down since 1990, mostly in our cities. As a result, some 300,000 students have been displaced--double the number affected by Hurricanes Rita and Katrina. This report, which includes a comprehensive survey of the attitudes of U.S. Catholics and the broader public towards inner-city Catholic schools, examines this crisis and offers several suggestions for arresting and perhaps reversing this trend in the interests of better education.
The California Reading Revival
Michael J. PetrilliOver at the "ELL Advocates" blog, whole language apologist Stephen Krashen makes a lame attempt to poke holes in Sol Stern's recent Fordham r
Too much
For the same reason I'm opposed to sex-ed class in schools, I'm opposed to clubs like this. A parent sends his students to a public school to receive a rigorous education in the core curriculum.
1.e4 e5 2.f4
Coby LoupThe New York Times reports today that Idaho will set aside somewhere from $200,000 to $600,000 to fund a pilot program that will make chess education available to all second- and third-graders. The state will use a curriculum called First Move, which was developed by the Seattle-based nonprofit Foundation for Chess.
Obama's education solution in search of a problem
Michael J. PetrilliOver at The Corner, Victor Davis Hanson wonders why Barack Obama is so worried about teaching students about oppression. He quotes a recent "news source":
Fund The Child: Bringing Equity, Autonomy, and Portability to Ohio School Finance
Ohio can boast of praiseworthy gains over the past decade in making school funding more equitable across districts, but there is more work to be done. To mitigate the school-finance inequities that remain within districts and gear school funding toward the realities of student mobility, school choice and effective school-based management, this report recommends that Ohio embrace Weighted Student Funding (WSF), which allocates resources based on the needs of individual students and by sending dollars directly to schools rather than lodging most spending decisions at the district level.
Ignorance is not bliss
Are we rearing a nation of ignorant students? This is the question posed in the latest report, Still at Risk, by Fordham's sister organization, Common Core.
Beyond the Basics: Achieving a Liberal Education for All Children
Chester E. Finn, Jr., Diane RavitchAmerica's true competitive edge over the long haul is not its technical prowess but its creativity, its imagination, its inventiveness. And those attributes are best inculcated not by skill-drill or 'STEM' but through liberal arts and sciences, liberally defined. Thus argues this new Fordham volume, edited by Chester E. Finn, Jr. and Diane Ravitch, which also explores what policymakers and educators at all levels can to do sustain liberal learning and sketches an unlovely future if we fail.
Whole-Language High Jinks
Louisa MoatsIf you thought whole-language reading instruction had been relegated to the scrap heap of history, think again. Many such programs (proven to be ineffective) are still around, but they're hiding behind phrases like 'balanced literacy' in order to win contracts from school districts and avoid public scrutiny. Louisa Moats calls them out in Fordham's new report, Whole-Language High Jinks.
Fund the Child
Everyone agrees that education funding today is a mess. But a broad, bipartisan coalition now urges a new method of funding our public schools--one that finally ensures the students who need the most receive it, that empowers school leaders to make key decisions, and that opens the door to public school choice. It's a 100 percent solution to the most pressing problems in public school funding--and it's called Weighted Student Funding.