Yesterday in his column, Jay Mathews asks a question that plagues many of us:"How do parents evaluate the schools their children may attend and escape the heartbreak of buying a great house that turns out to be in the attendance zone of a flawed school?"
Fordham has had a keen interest in the Ohio State Teachers Retirement System (STRS) since 2007. We frankly were not surprised last month when it came out that the STRS was facing serious funding shortfalls.
You probably remember the debate (over a year ago) between two competing education circles, the Broader, Bolder group and the Education Equality Project, as well as the mountains of press when Arne Duncan
Inspired by the "Graph of the Week" offered up by our friends at the Association of Independent Colleges and Universities of Ohio , we'll be rolling out regular graphics on Flypaper to illustrate interesting trends and facts about public education, especially as they relate to Fordham's home state of Ohio.
Over the weekend, the Columbus Dispatch ran a story that represents the proverbial icing on the Ohio teacher pension cake (for metaphor accuracy, the State Teacher Retirement System (STRS) is not just any old baked good; it's a calorie-laden mammoth that has grown so large it will bust the windows out of its own bakery-this, while the rest of the town is starving...).
The nation's economic woes are making life hard on state budget crafters around the country.?? While Ohio's unemployment rate has decreased slightly, we're nowhere near out of the woods yet, as evidenced by this particularly miserable news day for Ohio's schools:
There has been much ink spent on the debate around 21st century skills.
A Core Knowledge blog this week criticizes the concept of "learning styles" and educators' acceptance of this "unquestioned dogma." Specifically under critique is Michelle Rhee, whose DC Public Schools
Dr. Ben Chavis with Carey BlakelyNew American LibrarySeptember 2009
You may recall that in 2007, Fordham published a report critical of Ohio's state teacher pension funds. The report found that the current system was wildly unsustainable and essentially hindering recruitment of quality teachers.
Louise S. Mead and Anton MatesNational Center for Science EducationAugust, 2009
National education experts and top state leaders will come together October 5 in Columbus for a one-day conference about academic content standards. Panelists and speakers will share promising practices from across the country and around the world, talk about the current ‘common standards’ effort, and discuss what Ohio can do to achieve “world-class” standards.&nbs
The fiscal problems consuming states and school districts have gotten their fair share of press recently. The narrative is somewhat formulaic: _________??
Over at the Education Next blog, Martha Derthick laments the decline of "stately" schools:
Our friends at the State of Ohio Education blog rightly call Ohio's recent move to eliminate social studies tests in grades five and eight a "short-sighted decision," not just because a basic understanding of history, geography, civics, and current events is critical, but because Ohio students h
Don't miss this week's special edition of the Ohio Education Gadfly! One year ago, the Fordham Institute released a report titled Accelerating Student Learning in Ohio.
State education budgets across the country were temporarily buoyed by an infusion of federal stimulus money earlier this year.????
Yesterday's NY Times article points out that 97 percent of??NYC schools had received an A or B on city report cards. Given all the lamenting that goes on about the sorry state of public education in America (and rightly so), news like this is amusing.
Education Week features an insightful new study that finds excellent teachers tend to raise the performance of their peers.
Do you want a nitty gritty view of how funding issues and accountability ratings affect local school districts? Then you won't want to miss this week's Ohio Education Gadfly.
One frequently hears arguments that redirect blame from failing schools (and their teachers and principals) to ubiquitous social monsters that are bigger and hairier (poverty, broken families, crime) but also impossible to hold accountable.?? I get this. There are undeniable correlations between student achievement and socioeconomic status.
While funding for most public schools will be flat - and schools will be lucky with that - for innovative schools at both ends of the state's pre-K-12 education ladder, the budget is nothing short of doomsday.
Terry Ryan, Fordham's vice president for Ohio programs and policy, talks about the recently released performance data for Ohio's urban district and charter schools. Watch here.
Our friends at School Choice Ohio have joined the education blogosphere. Visit http://scohio.org/wordpress/ for the latest news and updates about choice in the Buckeye State.
The Cincinnati Enquirer reported on Friday that Cincinnati Public Schools will be the focus of a study by The New Teacher Project (TNTP).
This weekend saw a flurry of news stories on education in Ohio, and Fordham was in the middle of these in our usual roles of analysts and prognosticators.
In February, during the heated political debate around Governor Strickland's education reform plan, I wrote an opinion piece for the Columbus Dispatch that argued the governor's attack on for-profit charter schools "wou
Okay, I know I'm about the 31,487th person to pick up on this, but there's one factoid in the 2009 Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup poll of Americans' attitudes toward public schools that is driving me especially nutty.
Terry Ryan of our Ohio offices offers a concise explanation of our Ohio 2009 Education Report Card Analysis in this video.
