Displaying 31-60 of 247 results
Report
8.25.2020
Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Schooling Covid-19: Lessons from leading charter networks from their transition to remote learning

Gregg Vanourek

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.

Report
6.9.2020
Standards

The State of the Sunshine State's Standards: The Florida B.E.S.T. Edition

Solomon Friedberg, Tim Shanahan, Francis Fennell, Douglas Fisher, Roger Howe

A decade ago, states across the nation adopted the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in an effort to raise the academic bar for their students. This has provoked countless political battles since then—including an especially intense one in Florida.

Report
5.19.2020
Career & Technical Education

What You Make Depends on Where You Live: College Earnings Across States and Metropolitan Areas

John V. Winters, Ph.D.

Yes, what you make depends on what you know and what credentials you carry. But it also depends on where you live. That's what we find in our new report by John V. Winters. The first-of-its-kind analysis compares mean earnings for full-time workers with different levels of education in all 50 states and D.C., over 100 metro areas, and rural America. Read it to learn more.

Report
2.4.2020
Accountability & Testing

Great Expectations: The Impact of Rigorous Grading Practices on Student Achievement

Seth Gershenson, Ph.D.

One indicator of teachers’ expectations is their approach to grading—specifically, whether they subject students to more or less rigorous grading practices. Unfortunately, “grade inflation” is pervasive in U.S. high schools, as evidenced by rising GPAs even as SAT scores and other measures of academic performance have held stable or fallen. The result is that a “good” grade is no longer a clear marker of knowledge and skills. This report examines to what extent teachers’ grading standards affect student success.

Report
12.10.2019
Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

The Supplemental Curriculum Bazaar: Is What's Online Any Good?

Morgan Polikoff, Jennifer Dean

Nearly all teachers today report using the Internet to obtain instructional materials, and many of them do so quite often. And while several organizations now offer impartial reviews of full curriculum products, very little is known about the content and quality of supplemental instructional materials.

Report
9.26.2019
Charter Schools

Rising Tide: Charter School Market Share and Student Achievement

David Griffith

Plenty of studies have compared the progress of students in charter schools versus traditional public schools. And more than a dozen have examined the “competitive effects” of charters on neighboring district schools.

Report
8.27.2019
Accountability & Testing

End-of-Course Exams and Student Outcomes

Adam Tyner, Ph.D., Matthew Larsen

Beginning in the late 1990s, many states took it upon themselves to institute end-of-course exams (EOCs) at the high school level, tests specifically designed to assess students’ mastery of the content that various subject-matter courses covered. But was this testing policy good for students? Find out in our new report.

Report
7.30.2019
Accountability & Testing, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Discipline Reform through the Eyes of Teachers

David Griffith, Adam Tyner, Ph.D.

The debate over school discipline reform is one of the most polarized in all of education. Advocates for reform believe that suspensions are racially biased and put students in a “school-to-prison pipeline.” Opponents worry that softer discipline approaches will make classrooms unruly, impeding efforts to help all students learn and narrow achievement gaps.

Report
6.4.2019
Charter Schools, Teachers & School Leaders

Student-Teacher Race Match in Charter and Traditional Public Schools

There’s mounting evidence that, for children of color especially, having one or more teachers of the same race over the course of students’ educational careers seems to make a positive difference. But to what extent, if any, do the benefits of having a same-race teacher vary by type of school? Existing “race-match” studies fail to distinguish among the traditional district and charter school sectors. This study fills that gap and finds that the effects of having a same-race teacher appear stronger in charter schools than in the traditional district sector—and stronger still for nonwhite students.

How Aligned is CTE
Report
4.3.2019
Career & Technical Education

How Aligned is Career and Technical Education to Local Labor Markets?

The recent reauthorization of the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act—the principal federal education program supporting career and technical education (CTE)—expressly aims to “align workforce skills with labor market needs.” Our latest report examines whether students in high school CTE programs are more likely to take courses in high-demand and/or high-wage industries, both nationally and locally.

How Aligned is CTE
Report
3.14.2019
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

Toward a Golden Age of Educational Practice

Michael J. Petrilli

In recent years, we have reached a homeostasis in education policy, characterized by clearer and fairer but lighter-touch accountability systems and the incremental growth of school choice options for families—but little appetite for big and bold new initiatives.

Report
11.29.2018
Accountability & Testing, ESSA, Curriculum & Instruction, Standards

Gotta Give 'Em Credit: State and District Variation in Credit Recovery Participation Rates

Adam Tyner, Ph.D., Nicholas Munyan-Penney

Credit recovery, or the practice of enabling high school students to retrieve credits from courses that they either failed or failed to complete, is at the crossroads of two big trends in education: the desire to move toward “competency based” education and a push to dramatically boost graduation rates.

Report
9.19.2018
Accountability & Testing

Grade Inflation in High Schools (2005–2016)

Although the vast majority of American parents believe their child is performing at or above grade level, in reality two-thirds of U.S. teenagers are ill-prepared for college when they leave high school.

Report
8.22.2018
Standards

The State of State Standards Post-Common Core

David Griffith, Victoria McDougald

Eight years ago, we compared states’ English language arts (ELA) and mathematics standards to what were then the newly-minted Common Core State Standards. That report found that the Common Core was clearer and more rigorous than the ELA standards in thirty-seven states and stronger than the math standards in thirty-nine states.

Report
7.17.2018
Curriculum & Instruction, Standards

Reading and Writing Instruction in America's Schools

David Griffith

Since 2010, when most states adopted the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), the Thomas B. Fordham Institute has been committed to monitoring their implementation.

Report
4.26.2018
Charter Schools, Governance

Charter School Deserts: High-Poverty Neighborhoods with Limited Educational Options

Andrew Saultz, Queenstar Mensa-Bonsu, Christopher Yaluma, James Hodges

2016–17 was one of the slowest-growth years for charter schools in recent memory. Nobody knows exactly why, but one hypothesis is saturation: With charters having achieved market share of over 20 percent in more than three dozen cities, perhaps school supply is starting to meet parental demand, making new charters less necessary and harder to launch.

Report
1.31.2018
Curriculum & Instruction, Advanced Education, Teachers & School Leaders

Is There a Gifted Gap? Gifted Education in High-Poverty Schools

Christopher Yaluma, Adam Tyner, Ph.D.

Schools have long failed to cultivate the innate talents of many of their young people, particularly high-ability girls and boys from disadvantaged and minority backgrounds. This failure harms the economy, widens income gaps, arrests upward mobility, and exacerbates civic decay and political division.

Report
12.5.2017
Governance

The Academic and Behavioral Consequences of Discipline Policy Reform

Matthew P. Steinberg, Johanna Lacoe

One important question about school discipline is whether it helps or harms those being disciplined. But a second, equally important question is whether a push to reduce the number of suspensions is harmful to the rule-abiding majority.

Report
11.14.2017
Accountability & Testing, ESSA, Governance

Rating the Ratings: An Analysis of the 51 ESSA Accountability Plans

Brandon L. Wright, Michael J. Petrilli

The Every Student Succeeds Act grants states more authority over their accountability systems than did No Child Left Behind, but have they seized the opportunity to develop school ratings that are clearer and fairer than those in the past?

Report
9.20.2017
Accountability & Testing, Charter Schools, Teachers & School Leaders

Teacher Absenteeism in Charter and Traditional Public Schools

David Griffith

Research confirms what common sense dictates: Students learn less when their teachers aren’t there. According to multiple studies, a ten-day increase in teacher absence results in at least ten fewer days of learning for students.

Report
7.27.2017
Accountability & Testing, ESSA

Rating the Ratings: Analyzing the First 17 ESSA Accountability Plans

Brandon L. Wright, Michael J. Petrilli

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) grants states more authority over their school accountability systems than did No Child Left Behind (NCLB)—meaning that states now have a greater opportunity to design improved school ratings. Rating the Ratings: Analyzing the First 17 ESSA Accountability Plans examines whether states are making the most of the moment.

Report
4.18.2017
Charter Schools

Three Signs That a Proposed Charter School Is at Risk of Failing

Anna Nicotera, David A. Stuit

It’s well established that some charter schools do far better than others at educating their students. This variability has profound implications for the children who attend those schools. Yet painful experience shows that rebooting or closing a low-performing school is a drawn-out and excruciating process.

Report
3.30.2017
ESSA, Charter Schools, Governance

Leveraging ESSA to Support Quality-School Growth

Nelson Smith, 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.

Report
3.14.2017
Curriculum & Instruction, Standards

The Right Tool for the Job: Improving Reading and Writing in the Classroom

Melody Arabo, Jonathan S. Budd, Shannon Garrison, Tabitha Pacheco

Although it’s been almost seven years since many states took the important step of elevating their academic standards by adopting the Common Core, teachers and administrators across the country still bemoan the lack of reliable information about which instructional materials are high-quality and best aligned to the new standards.  

Report
1.26.2017
School Finance, Teachers & School Leaders

(No) Money in the Bank: Which Retirement Systems Penalize New Teachers?

A new teacher’s pension is supposed to be a perk. The truth is that for the majority of the nation’s new teachers, what they can anticipate in retirement benefits will be worth less than what they contributed to the system while they were in the classroom, even if they stay for decades.

Report
11.15.2016
Accountability & Testing, ESSA, Advanced Education

High Stakes for High Schoolers: State Accountability in the Age of ESSA (Part II)

Michael J. Petrilli, David Griffith, Brandon L. Wright

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.

Report
9.29.2016
Charter Schools, Governance

Charter School Boards in the Nation's Capital

Juliet Squire, Allison Crean Davis

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.