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Do Low-Income Students Have Equal Access to the Highest-Performing Teachers?
Some hard numbers for the debate on the teacher-quality gap
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The Influence of Teachers: Reflections on Teaching and Leadership
A classic chicken-and-egg debate: Fix the teachers or fix the profession?
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Unsustainable: A Strategy for Making Public Schooling More Productive, Effective, and Affordable
Separate the faith from the church
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Illinois' reforms taking placing in dramatically different context than Ohio's
The Prairie State has captured attention for its recent overhaul of policies governing teacher tenure, transfer, and dismissal. Senate Bill 7 ?
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School choice accountability debate: The same thing over and over
In the 1993 movie Groundhog Day Bill Murray’s lead character finds himself reliving the same day in Punxsutawney, PA, over and over again. He despairs and ultimately tries to kill himself over and over again, but after discovering the futility of his effort starts to reexamine his life and priorities.
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ESEA reauthorization: What Ohioans should know
The education policy debates at the Statehouse might have some of us forgetting that another education debate is afoot on Capitol Hill, over the reauthorization of the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). ESEA is the law authorizing federal funding and policy directives for K-12 education; for the past ten years it’s been better known as No Child Left Beh
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Illinois' reforms taking placing in dramatically different context than Ohio's
The Prairie State has captured attention for its recent overhaul of policies governing teacher tenure, transfer, and dismissal.
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Double Jeopardy: How Third Reading Skills and Poverty Influence High School Graduation
A recent study produced by the Annie E.
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Incentivizing School Turnaround: A Proposal for Reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act
In recent months, education reformers have started buzzing about the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) and several, including Fordham’s own Checker Finn and Mike Petrilli, have
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Quality Authorizing for Online and Blended-Learning Charter Schools
A new monograph from the National Association of Charter School Authorizers examines authorizer (aka sponsor) oversight practices for online and “blended” (online instruction combined with traditional classroom instruction) charter schools, and finds that the development of authorizing practices for these schools lags behind the rate at which such schools are opening across the coun
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The Effect of Evaluation on Performance: Evidence from Longitudinal Student Achievement Data of Mid-career Teachers
As states and districts seek to overhaul teacher-evaluation systems, this NBER paper answers a salient question: Do evaluations actually improve a teacher’s performance? That’s one hope of reformers and unions alike—that clear and regular feedback will help instructors improve their craft.
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The False Promise of Class-Size Reduction
The title really says it all in the latest Center for American Progress report, The False Promise of Class-Size Reduction. Author Matthew Chingos highlighted research on class-size reduction (CSR) and found that placing students in smaller classes had no real impact on student achievement.
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Fighting the mathematics blues... with a museum?
In case you missed it, the Alliance for Excellent Education recently held a webinar discussing the results of the National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB)’s 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) High School Transcript Study, America’s High School Graduates. Discussants incl
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An early history of teacher pay systems in Ohio
Ohio's recently passed SB5 would make Ohio the first state in the country to mandate performance pay for educators.
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Is a backlash necessarily bad?
Richard Whitmire worries that Republican governors are pushing too far too fast on school reform?and that a big backlash is coming?or might already be here.
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Workplaces That Support High-Performing Teaching and Learning: Insights from Generation Y Teachers
In which the AFT makes young teachers seem more reformy than they really are
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The Effect of Evaluation on Performance: Evidence from Longitudinal Student Achievement Data of Mid-career Teachers
A hefty price tag?but maybe worth the cost
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The Finland Phenomenon: Inside the World???s Most Surprising School System
Smart lessons on teacher training and other thoughts on ?trust?
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Ohio district leaders should force more concessions in hurried-up contracts
Ohioans are waiting to see if Senate Bill 5, which would greatly reduce public sector collective bargaining in Ohio, can be repealed at the ballot box in November.
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Ohio reforms lag behind state's fiscal crisis
Ohio's policy makers are trying to set the conditions for schools and districts to make smart cuts, but the timing for this couldn't be worse. 2011 will be long remembered as the year school funding fell off the ???cliff.???
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The anti-???tight??? right vs. the anti-???loose??? left
Ideological positioning on ESEA reauthorization