Commentary
Real Results, Remaining Challenges: The Story of Texas Education Reform
by Craig Jerald, the Education Trust (published by the Business Roundtable)
Commentary
One Day, All Children & The Unlikely Triumph of Teach for America and What I Learned Along the Way
Like many skillful leaders whose successes throw them before the public's eye, Wendy Kopp has her share of detractors, including some within the ranks of the unique teaching corps she created.
Commentary
Bullying, Violence, Zero Tolerance, and Dodge Ball
Thirty percent of students surveyed in grades 6 through 10 have been involved in either bullying or being bullied themselves, according to a study released by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) earlier this month.
Report
Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
Professionalism and the Public Good: A Brief History of Teacher Certification
Why does our system of teacher certification emphasize training in pedagogy rather than subject-matter knowledge? The answer can be found in this report, which traces the emergence of state control over teacher certification. The focus is on efforts by the teacher education establishment to gain monopoly control over the licensing of teachers.
Report
Accountability & Testing, Governance
Education 2001: Getting the Job Done, A Memorandum to the President-Elect and the 107th Congress
President Bush campaigned on a strong education-reform platform, promising the American people that for the first time in a long time, commonsense?not special interest groups?would dictate federal education policy. Just before he entered the Oval Office, we handed him a briefing book on steps he could take to help transform the K-12 education system. In this "Memorandum to the President-Elect and the 107th Congress," we explained how the federal government has wasted billions of dollars on ineffective programs and offered suggestions for making continued federal funding matter.
Report
Standards
Good Science, Bad Science: Teaching Evolution in the States
More than one-third of the states get low grades for the standards they have developed for teaching evolution, according to this new report. This report is the first comprehensive analysis of how each state handles evolution in its science standards for the public schools.
Report
Private School Choice
Parochial Schools and Public Aid: Today's Catholic Schools
How much government aid do parochial schools and their students actually receive? Connell finds that public aid flows to church-affiliated schools through many channels, though amounts vary greatly from state to state. This report is especially timely in light of the Supreme Court's important decision upholding government aid to religious schools.
Report
Curriculum & Instruction, Standards
Politicizing Science Education
Science as a search for truth has come under attack from both the left and the right. This report explores four case studies of threats to the integrity of science education.
Report
School Finance, Governance
Can Philanthropy Fix Our Schools? Appraising Walter Annenberg's $500 Million Gift to Public Education
According to this new study, Ambassador Annenberg's gift has left only small footprints on the urban school systems it set out to reform. Good intentions and a generous checkbook were not enough to transform troubled urban schools. This report includes case studies of New York (by Raymond Domanico), Chicago (by Alexander Russo) and Philadelphia (by Carol Innerst) and an afterword by Chester E.Finn Jr. and Marci Kanstoroom.
Report
Curriculum & Instruction
Why Education Experts Resist Effective Practices (And What It Would Take to Make Education More Like Medicine)
Education experts tend to ignore research-based practices like Direct Instruction and instead embrace constructivist methods that are not backed by good research. This report by Douglas Carnine explains why.
Report
Standards
The State of State Standards 2000
According to this comprehensive report, only five states combine solid academic standards with strong school accountability.
Report
Governance
Strange Brew: Minnesota's Motley Mix of School Reforms
Minnesota was the first state to embrace many important education reforms, from statewide open enrollment to charter schools to tax credits for parents paying certain education expenses. This report, written by Dr. Mitchell Pearlstein, President of the Minneapolis-based Center of the American Experiment, tells the stories behind Minnesota's unique policy experiences. What lay behind Minnesota's worthy innovations? Who was responsible for the bad ideas? Mitch's short answer: governors were behind most of the proposals that expanded education choice, while the flawed policies emerged from the state's education bureaucracy.
Report
Standards, Teachers & School Leaders
Growing Better Teachers in the Garden State
This report explains how New Jersey has implemented high standards for teachers without causing a teacher shortage by creating an alternative certification program.
Report
Teachers & School Leaders
The Quest For Better Teachers: Grading The States
Most states are beginning to get serious about boosting the quality of their teaching force. Unfortunately, most of the steps they are taking point in the wrong direction. This 'report card' contains plenty of evidence of that fact-together with some happy exceptions and hopeful signs.
Report
Charter Schools
Why Charter Schools? The Princeton Story
Nappi tells the engaging story of how Princeton parents tried to change 'the system' from within but had to resort to starting a charter school in order to raise academic standards.
Report
Standards
Making Standards Work: A Case Study of Washington State
This report takes a close look at the implementation of standards-based reform in one state, Washington, and asks why it was successful in some places but not others.
Report
Governance
Better Teachers, Better Schools
According to this 250-page volume, proposed federal and state policies aimed at boosting teacher-quality may well worsen the problem. Instead of adding even more politics-governance to the teacher training system, policymakers should open up the profession to well-educated individuals and should hold principals accountable for student learning.
Report
Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
The Teachers We Need and How to Get More of Them
A policy statement endorsed by governors, chief state school officers, state board members, prominent education thinkers and analysts, and veteran practitioners, which sets forth principles and policies to guide states as they prepare to hire a teaching force for the 21st century.
Report
Governance
Better By Design? A Consumer's Guide to Schoolwide Reform
This book is a guide to ten of today's best-known school designs. It is meant for parents, teachers, school board members, philanthropists, civic leaders and other 'consumers' who must evaluate which, if any, of these models they want to pursue.
Report
Accountability & Testing
Filling In the Blanks: Putting Standardized Tests to the Test
Cizek provides a helpful primer on standardized testing. He identifies key terms, clarifies important distinctions between types of tests, and explains how to interpret (and not to interpret) their scores.
Report
Charter Schools, Standards
Education Reform in the Dayton Area: Public Attitudes and Opinions
A survey of attitudes towards education reform in Dayton (where Mr. Fordham lived). View the survey results which show, among other things, overwhelming support for parental choice, charter schools, and higher standards.
Report
Curriculum & Instruction
Remediation in Higher Education: A Symposium
Is remediation in additional-topics providing a valuable service to society? Or does it amount to paying for someone's education twice? Read competing views of the issue in this rare Fordham look at the higher-education system.
Report
Advanced Education
The Tracking and Ability Grouping Debate
Tracking and ability grouping strategies differ widely from school to school. They diverge even more widely from their portrayal in the popular criticisms of the 1980s. This report digs into the sensitive matter of whether those criticisms are valid today. The answer tells a more complicated and more honest story than we have heard before on this topic.
Report
Standards
The State of State Standards (1998)
Three Fordham staff members analyze trends spotted in academic standards across the disciplines. They found that too many state standards are vague, anti-knowledge, entranced with 'relevance,' and focused on teaching rather than learning.
Report
Accountability & Testing, Governance
Spending More While Learning Less: U.S. School Productivity in International Perspective
With OECD data, Walberg shows that the United States' educational system is the 'least productive in the developed world.'
Report
Standards
State Science Standards
This review of state science standards is the final in our series of reports analyzing state standards in the five core content areas. For this review, author Lawrence S. Lerner analyzed the science standards of 36 states and found that state science standards are the strongest of the five disciplines we studied. Based on his analysis, six states earned 'A' grades, seven earned 'B's,' and only nine flunked.
Report
Standards
State Math Standards
In this review of state math standards, authors Raimi and Braden found a disturbing lack of 'mathematical reasoning' in most of the 47 state standards they examined; only three states earned 'A's' while 16 states flunked.
Report
Standards
State History Standards
The second in a series of evaluations of state standards, this is our first review of state history standards. In his analysis, author David W. Saxe offers a scathing indictment of state history standards, which he judged to be little better than the oft-ridiculed National History Standards; four earned 'A's' or 'B's,' while 19 states flunked.
Report
Standards
State Geography Standards
This is the third in a series of reports on state standards published by the Fordham Foundation and is our first-ever look at state standards for geography. Authors Susan Munroe and Terry Smith found reason for hope in a few of the excellent standards they found (like Colorado's), but most of the documents they analyzed were extremely weak; only six states earned 'A's' or 'B's,' while 18 states failed.
Report
Standards
State English Standards
Dr. Sandra Stotsky, the eminent authority on English language education, led off a Fordham series of standards reviews with a detailed critique of the English/Language Arts standards of 28 states. Massachusetts' were found to be the strongest, a beacon for other states to emulate.
