On Common Core, we cry uncle

The Petrilli Putsch

As announced last fall, Michael J. Petrilli will be succeeding Chester E. Finn, Jr. as president of the Fordham Institute come August. Here’s an update on the transition.

Eva’s mom’s basement

The Dumbest Kids in the World

Do School Bus Drivers Add Value?

White Suburban Moms: An ethnography of race, place, gender, and education reform

Elementary/Secondary Information System

The opt-out movement crashes (literally)

Book Event: Cage-Busting Kindergarteners

Which ed-reformer are you?

A facilities fracas and well-deserved kudos

An ODE data guru gets a big honor and a Toledo charter school gets a big run around.

Skill-Based Sorting in the Era of College Prep for All: Costs and Benefits

To sort or not to sort? That question vexes many schools. And still will, despite this new research brief, which summarizes pros and cons of tracking students by skill level but fails to resolve anything. The authors looked at a number of studies of the effects of two Chicago Public Schools policies—one that reduced skill-based sorting and one that increased it.

Closing the Expectations Gap: 2013 Annual Report on the Alignment of State K–12 Policies and Practice with the Demands of College and Careers

This eighth edition of Achieve’s annual report monitoring states’ adoption of core academic expectations arrives at a critical moment—and underscores the mammoth challenges associated with standards implementation.

The New Opportunity to Lead: A vision for education in Massachusetts in the next 20 years

The Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education was born in response to A Nation at Risk, and in a 1991 report, it pointed the way toward the Bay State's much-praised 1993 education-reform act.

A case of a functioning school marketplace?

Life Skills Centers, a group of fifteen dropout-recovery charter schools operated by White Hat Management, is on the decline. Last year’s enrollment (school year 2012-13) was less than half that of 2006.

Down to the wire for one charter school

Hot off the presses: sometimes even a signed and sealed deal can't secure a facility for charter school.

Even with the success of most charter schools, it's time to consider doing a better job on the 'front end'

Guest commentary on the need for diligence on the part of authorizers at the front end of charter school creation.

Research and policymaking: Kissing cousins or long-lost relatives?

I had the good fortune of attending the Association for Education Finance and Policy (AEFP) conference last week. AEFP attracts some of the nation’s finest researchers along with a small smattering of policymakers and advocates.

2014 Brown Center Report on American Education: How Well Are American Students Learning?

Since 2000, the Brown Center has released an annual report taking on three important issues in education policy.

Politics over PARCC

The Common Core drama continues in Florida: after much coquetry, the Sunshine State has officially opted to abandon PARCC in

Kalamazoo, PILOTs, and Ohio’s cities

A Payments in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) plan in Kalamazoo has shown some early results; we look at the possible implications for urban education in Ohio.

2013 Digital Learning Report Card - Ohio gets a D

A slight improvement for Ohio in the annual digital learning report card

Raising the bar and reaching down to middle school

Breakthrough Schools in Cleveland and vocational education across Ohio are in the news.

Netflix Academy: The best streaming videos on Ancient Rome

Note: This post is part of our series, "Netflix Academy: The best educational videos available for streaming." Be sure to check out our previous Netflix Academy posts on 

True Grit: Trait-Level Perseverance and Passion for Long-Term Goals Predicts Effectiveness and Retention among Novice Teachers

“Grit” is a hot new buzzword—and what some believe to be the key to whether a student succeeds. But this study takes a slightly different tack, demonstrating a link between a teacher’s grit and her effectiveness and longevity in the classroom.

Strategic Parenting, Birth Order, and School Performance

Research has repeatedly found that being a firstborn can come with advantages—they tend to be natural leaders, have higher IQ’s, and are often chosen to

De Blasio has the charter-school blues

Perhaps New York mayor Bill de Blasio is starting to see that attacking charter schools is a better Democratic-primary strategy than governing philosophy.

New Evidence on Teacher Labor Supply

Do the characteristics of a school and its neighborhood affect whether prospective teachers apply to teach there?

Testing, testing—is this thing on?

Big changes are on the way for College Board’s SAT college-admission test.

The case for scrapping "indicators met"

Duplication is not always a good thing. Think about it, most of us don’t carry two cell phones. In a world with limited pants-pocket space, two phones would be senseless, right? Ohio’s school report cards have two essentially-the-same achievement components, both of which receive an A-F letter grade. It’s time to toss one of them for parsimony’s sake.