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Checker on India's education system, now on Forbes.com
Checker recently visited schools in the slums of Hyderabad, India, where low-budget private schools are educating kids--and doing a pretty good job.
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Hopes, Fears, & Reality: A Balanced Look at American Charter Schools in 2008
Robin J. Lake, Ed.,National Charter School Research ProjectCenter on Reinventing Public Education, University of Washington at BothellDecember 2008
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Core Problems: Out-of-Field Teaching Persists in Key Academic Courses and High-Poverty Schools
Richard IngersollThe Education TrustNovember 2008
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Lawmakers get schooled on schools
Ohio Senate President Bill Harris believes Gov. Ted Strickland has generated high expectations on education, especially when it comes to the issue of school funding.
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Luckie strikes again!
The clock is winding down on the 127th General Assembly's lame-duck session, although lawmakers continue to introduce new bills. Such late entries rarely become law and are more often than not attempts by legislators to appease interest groups or make a political statement. Such seems to be the case with this week's introduction of House Bill 654 by Rep.
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Moving on up
The Thomas B. Fordham Institute's Capital City office is now located at 37 W. Broad Street, Suite 400, in downtown Columbus. You can still reach us by phone at 614-223-1580 or visit us online at www.edexcellence.net.
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Highlights from TIMSS 2007: Mathematics and Science Achievement of U.S. Fourth- and Eighth-Grade Students in an International Context
The Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study 2007 results were released Tuesday (see here) and they show American kids are making progress against their international peers. TIMSS is a rigorous international comparison of fourth- and eighth-grade students' math and science test scores across countries.
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How is the air around your child's school?
A USA Today newspaper story featuring poor air quality around some American schools, including one near Cincinnati, was superficial, according to the Ohio EPA, which said the article was the result of a snapshot and not rigorous testing.
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The last word
As the Bush Administration rounds the bend, officials from the President on down are working overtime to cement their "legacy." Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings told Education Week that she wants to be remembered as a "practical implementer of the law." (The law being the No Child Left Behind act whi
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FERPA facial
Good news for the harried education researcher: the Department of Education has released new regulations on the notoriously punctilious Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). The law, which was enacted in 1
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Finding common ground
Columbus has joined New York, Washington, Chicago, Indianapolis, New Orleans, and other education-minded cities in building a high-quality new-schools sector. To date, however, the Columbus City Schools has not driven this effort. It has, in fact, dragged it down. This should change.
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Buckeye Institute puts teacher and administrator salaries online
As part of its effort to promote transparency and accountability in government, the Buckeye Institute has created a searchable, online database of Ohio public school district teacher and administrator salaries (which account for roughly 80 percent of school budgets).
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Tiny TIMSS
Like a comet, the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study comes around every four years to offer insights about America's progress (or lack thereof) in these two critical domains.
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Permanent detention
Ever wish you could be paid to do nothing? That's right, the Teacher Reserve Pool saga continues. It's too bad, too, since we were pleased to learn last week of the reasonable reforms concerning New York City's notorious excessed teachers.
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School for $6 a month
It's not that I didn't believe James Tooley's books and articles asserting that an astonishing number of poor children in developing countries are being decently (and sometimes superbly)
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Michael Bennet, the Arne Duncan alternative?
We still think Arne Duncan is the likely pick for education secretary, but what if, for whatever reason (say, the
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Department of Education's new FERPA regulations
The Department of Education released its long-anticipated undated FERPA regulations yesterday, to be analyzed by the Data Quality Campaign in the coming weeks (and covered by the Wall Street Journal here.).
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Mike on NPR
Mike was on the air again yesterday! NPR's All Things Considered interviewed him for a story on the Trends in??International Mathematics and Science Study results.
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A trickle of TIMSS news
The 2007 results of the Trends in Mathematics and Science Study are to be released officially this morning (and I haven't managed to get my hands on a copy, darn it!), but some of the news is already starting to leak out:
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TIMSS: What gets tested gets taught
The Trends in??International Mathematics and Science Study results are out. Here's Fordham's official take:
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Arne dominates
Arne Duncan still dominates the field in our pick-the-next-education-secretary poll. Our ten Washington insiders are sticking with the likely nominee, but some voters are looking for the unexpected choice. If not the basketball extraordinaire from Chicago, who might it be?
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Diane Ravitch's take on TIMSS
From guest blogger Diane Ravitch, a Fordham board member and research professor at NYU:
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Senator Weingarten?
She's been in DC but a few weeks and already the pull of New York is calling her home--as a New York State Senator?
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Hubris alert!
The news media is clearly anticipating the announcement of an education secretary pick soon, because the k-12 issue hasn't gotten this much attention since George Bush and Ted Kennedy teamed up to pass the No Child Left Behind Act.
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Another guv bites the dust
I've been quite transparent about my interest in seeing the education secretary job filled by a sitting or former governor.
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The big money's on Arne Duncan
Perhaps the news that yet another governor has taken herself out of contention led our Washington Insiders to put even more of their chips on Chicago superintendent Arne Duncan in the race for the ed