Commentary
Charter Schools
Groundhog Day: The only thing missing is Bill Murray
Repeated failures of charter schools around Ohio seem endless; some hope may be around the corner.
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Is Mayor Coleman planning a “Nixon goes to China” strategy on education reform?
Can a union leader be a catalyst for true reform in city that desperately needs it?
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Schools still yearn to break free
Our advice to Gov. Kasich and Supt. Ross as they further discuss "deregulation" in K-12 education in Ohio.
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Commentary
Full steam ahead on PARCC
Ohio Gadfly looks at upcoming PARCC field tests in Ohio, a profile of home-schooling families, and Cleveland's new school choice website.
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OPSRC seeks a director for the Oklahoma City Ed Reform Collaborative
The Oklahoma City Ed Reform Collaborative, whose mission is to drive a cohesive and collaborative agenda of education-reform initiatives in Oklahoma City, is seeking an individual who wants to convene and engage a team of committed organizations and philanth
Commentary
“Extraordinary Authority Districts”: Design Considerations—Framework and Takeaways
As the number of chronically underperforming school districts continues to climb, some states are beginning to take control through Extraordinary Authority Districts (EADs).
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2013 State Teacher Policy Yearbook
The seventh installment of the National Council on Teacher Quality’s State Teacher Policy Yearbook, which analyzes and grades state policies bearing on teacher quality, struck a guardedly optimistic tone. Between 2011 and 2013, thirty-one states strengthened their policies on teacher-quality standards.
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Commentary
Learning that Lasts: Unpacking Variation in Teachers’ Effects on Students’ Long-Term Knowledge
Into the messy and political world of teacher-effectiveness research enter Susanna Loeb and colleagues, who examine whether math and English-language-arts (ELA) teachers differ in how they impact students’ long-term knowledge.
Commentary
The New School: How the Information Age Will Save American Education from Itself
Like any relic of the industrial revolution, it’s time we took a wrench to the American education system. Or a bulldozer, argues Glenn Reynolds, distinguished professor of law at the University of Tennessee and InstaPundit blogger. In this book, he contends that the system will soon break down and reform will be unavoidable.
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Choosing the Right Growth Measure
A new analysis by Mike Podgursky, Cory Koedel, and colleagues offers a handy tutorial of three major student growth measures and an argument for which one is best.
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Commentary
Districts are biting into the competition apple
“Of all human powers operating on the affairs of mankind, none is greater than that of competition,” said Senator Henry Clay in 1832. We’ve all bitten from the competition apple, and it tastes pretty good.
Commentary
Cleveland high-school (sort of) mentioned in the State of the Union
Ohio Gadfly lauds MC2STEM school, welcomes Dr. Michael Drake to the head of Ohio State University, tries to make sense of a new report discouraging replication of great urban schools (like MC2STEM), and celebrates National School Choice Week.
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The Columbus conflagration
Last week, State Auditor Dave Yost released the findings of his investigation into data scrubbing in Columbus City Schools. Fordham's Ohio policy minds give their take on the report and what it means for the district going forward.
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Charter Schools
Executive action we can support
The State of the Union was unusually light on education, though President Obama did touch on early-childhood education, ed tech, college access, and (of course) Race to the Top. However, the real action came the next morning, when the U.S.
Commentary
Charter Schools
120,000 kids in Ohio deserve a better law
Ohio ranked 28th out of 43 states and the District of Columbia on NAPCS' most recent ranking of charter school laws in the U.S. Ohio's kids and parents deserve better and now is the time.
Commentary
Teacher Performance Trajectories in High and Lower-Poverty Schools
Does the poverty level of a school impact how much a teacher improves (or not) over time? Analysts at CALDER sought the answer by studying elementary-school math teachers (at the fourth- and fifth-grade levels) in self-contained classrooms in North Carolina and Florida over time (eleven years for North Carolina and eight for Florida).
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One more time, but louder and with less listening
While presenting his 2014–15 budget for New York State, Governor Andrew Cuomo outlined his education priorities, proposing (among other things) a $1.5 billion pre-Kindergarten expansion to be funded—without a tax increase (as per his repeated pledges to reduce taxe
Commentary
Dipping into the public treasury, twice
Triple double-dips, data scrubbing, parental choice info, and OTES take us from Cleveland to Newark to Columbus and back to Cleveland again.
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Transfer Incentives for High-Performing Teachers: Final Results from a Multisite Randomized Experiment
The results are in from the Talent Transfer Initiative, a high-profile intervention that started in 2009. This randomized-experiment study, conducted by Mathematica, tracks the impact of moving effective teachers to disadvantaged elementary and middle schools. The intervention was implemented in ten school districts in seven states.
Commentary
A Personalized Future for Education: Moving into the Twenty-First Century and Beyond
In the last hundred years, the base of the United States economy has shifted from industry to knowledge—but the average American classroom operates in much the same way it always has: one teacher, up to thirty same-age students, four walls.
Commentary
Even Congress can surprise you
For the first time since 1989, all twelve of Congress’s annual spending bills have been rolled into one 1,600-page, $1.012 trillion “omnibus” package—and it’s tearing across Capitol Hill “like a greased pig,” going from
Commentary
Ohio's reforms better than most, but still have a way to go
Ohio earned a C- rating, placing the Buckeye State tenth in the nation in StudentsFirst’s second-annual “State Policy Report Card.” StudentsFirst is a national education-reform organization led by Michelle Rhee, the former chancellor of D.C. Public Schools.
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Common Core critic goes off the deep end, trashes childhoods of American Girls from 1764 to 1974 and up to the present
When a cherished part of your daughters' childhood is attacked, a Dad has to stand up.
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Advanced Education
Who Rises to the Top? Early Indicators
Nearly three decades ago, 320 students below the age of thirteen took the SAT math or verbal test and placed in the top 1 in 10,000 for their math- or verbal-reasoning ability (some called them “scary smart”).
Commentary
Quality Counts 2014: District Disruption & Revival
This year, Education Week’s Quality Counts report tells a story of districts facing formidable pressures, both external (such as budgetary and performance woes) and internal (demographic shifts), as well as a maturing market of expanded school options—and how this competitive environment is leading to governance change.
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The War on Poverty at 50: Education Edition
Wednesday marked the fiftieth anniversary of President Lyndon B.
Commentary
Reducing Student Mobility: A Randomized Trial of a Relationship-Building Intervention
We look at an ambitious experiment to try and ease the negative effects of high student mobility.