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Ohio's Biennial Budget Sets the Conditions for Education Success
Charter schools, teacher quality, school accountability, and more
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Common Core: Not a communist plot, after all
Maybe, just maybe, conservatives think common standards are a good idea too
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Failing Liberty 101: How We Are Leaving Young Americans Unprepared for Citizenship in a Free Society
Reviving the American Dream
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Achievement Gaps: How Hispanic Students in Public Schools Perform in Mathematics and Reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress
Big gains for all but a yawning rift remains
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Ohio's Biennial Budget Sets the Conditions for Education Success
Gov. John Kasich is slated to sign Ohio’s biennial budget today (it’s a 5,000 page document), legislation that not only appropriates funding for the Buckeye State until 2013 but that also includes hundreds of pages of education-policy changes—most of which will move Ohio forward in significant ways.
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Observations from a state budget debate newbie
When I came on with Fordham it was in the summer of 2009, just after a notoriously difficult budget battle during which Fordham unsuccessfully fought against then Gov. Strickland's inputs-heavy ?evidence-based? model of school funding, though successfully fought against the Governor's and lawmakers' attempts to decimate charter schools (among lots of other battles).
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Charter Schools
Ed reform victories in Ohio budget
A legislative conference committee has reported out its version of Ohio's next operating budget.?? The Senate and House are expected to approve the committee's report today and tomorrow, with Governor Kasich signing it into law Thursday.??
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Setting the record straight: Fordham and charter-school sponsorship
Why Fordham authorizes charter schools despite the costs and hassles
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METCO Merits More: The History and Status of METCO
A tried-and-true integration program gets support from across the ideological spectrum
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Eliminating the Achievement Gap: A White Paper on How Charter Schools Can Help District Leaders
Three cheers for portfolio school districts
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Setting the record straight: Fordham and charter school sponsorship
Ohio has echoed with controversy in recent weeks regarding House-passed changes to the state’s charter law that would decimate an already weak charter-school accountability system (see here,
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Districts should embrace budget provisions that reward high-performing charters
Among the many differences the conference committee must resolve between the House and Senate versions of the state budget is a Senate provision that would reward exceptional charter schools with low-cost facilities. Specifically:
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Gadfly analysis: Charter start-ups vs. district turnarounds vs. closure
Earlier this month Fordham released an analysis in the national Education Gadfly showing that when it comes to serving kids in the neediest communities, charter school start-ups have a far greater chance (nearly quadruple) of success than a district turnaround.
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Columbus Collegiate's first graduating class: The path was hard but the results great
Nikki Baszynski reflects on the eighth-grade graduation ceremony at Columbus Collegiate Academy (CCA), a Fordham-authorized middle school serving students in grades six through eight (the vast majority of whom are economically disadvantaged).
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Restructuring Resources for High-Performing Schools
With ever increasingly tight public school budgets, Education Resource Strategies (ERS) could not be timelier in the release of its policy brief related to how to maximize school spending.
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Preparing for Growth: Human Capital Innovations in Public Charter Schools
The growth of high-performing charter schools and charter-management organizations (CMOs) is critical for such schools to become sound alternative for more needy kids. To expand, however, CMOs must overcome the challenge of finding superior teachers and school leaders.
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Can NCLB Choice Work? Modeling the Effects of Interdistrict Choice on Student Access to Higher-Performing Schools
No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation stipulated that a Title I school is in need of improvement if it fails to meet AYP for two consecutive years, and that students attending those schools are eligible to transfer to another public school within the district. How many students are taking advantage of this provision though?
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Too many As at ed schools?
Education Week’s Sean Cavanagh surveys the status of parent-trigger proposals in states across the nation in his latest article, Legislative Momentum Stalls for 'Parent Trigger' Proposals.
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Fixation on merit pay in Ohio crowds out more vital conversations
Potentially drastic changes to teacher personnel policy in Ohio have been at the heart of heated debates for the last five or six months, precipitated by provisions in controversial SB 5, Ohio's collective bargaining law, as well as about-to-be-passed state biennial budget HB 153.
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Charter Schools
Setting the record straight: The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation and charter school sponsorship
There has been a lot of controversy in Ohio in recent weeks around House-proposed legislative changes to the state's charter law that would decimate an already weak charter school accountability system (see here,
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