A resounding "yes" to the Common Core

Common core, cost savings, and AP vs. dual enrollment are top topics in Ohio

Columbus: Where's the outrage?

Academic Content, Student Learning, and the Persistence of Preschool Effects

“Shoot for the Moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars”: this clichéd adage, often found on motivational posters, actually has something worthwhile to say. Sometimes where we set goals determines where we end up, even if the goal is seldom met.

March Madness comes early to the Hoosier State

Last week, in response to a tumultuous debate over the Common Core State Standards, the Indiana Department of Education released the first public draft of its new K–12 expectations for English language arts and math.

Mapping bad schools

Convention says that low-performing schools are mainly an inner-city problem. To a degree that is the case—urban public-school systems have long struggled to educate their students well. Cleveland’s public schools are something of a poster-child in this respect, and other urban schools systems in Ohio struggle just as mightily.

Ohio's dropout epidemic--and what can be done

Ohio is deeply mired in a dropout crisis, with more than 20,000 of its high-school students leaving school each year. A recent analysis found that 112,610 dropouts occurred between 2006 and 2010 in Ohio’s public-school system.

Work for Fordham-Ohio!

Are you passionate about improving academic outcomes for children? Do you have a keen interest in education reform, both here in the Buckeye State and across the country?

Hire Better Teachers Now: Using the Science of Selection to Find the Best Teachers for Your School

With teacher-tenure laws under scrutiny in California and contentious in plenty of other places, three human-resources experts make the case for avoiding hiring bad teachers in the first place rather than struggling to fire them after they prove to be ineff

ROAD TRIP!

When it comes to education in America, we’re more alike than different, according to The Education Roadtrip: A Survey of 6,400 Americans Across 8 Regions, a new poll from our friends at 50CAN.

The Kalamazoo Promise Scholarship

Does the lure of a college scholarship alter student behavior and academic performance? That’s what economists Timothy J. Bartik and Marta Lachowska seek to answer in studying the Kalamazoo Promise, which awards scholarships from anonymous donors to all Kalamazoo Public School graduates who gain entry into a Michigan college or university and maintain a 2.0 GPA while there.

The Triple Package

Gadfly’s grandfather had a saying: shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations. This means that hardworking parents of low socioeconomic status raise children of higher socioeconomic status, who then raise children of privilege who slip back down the income ladder.

Broken hearts in Motown

On Wednesday, Michigan superintendent Mike Flanagan dumped the Education Achievement Authority, saying it will no longer be exclusively responsible for Michigan’s failing 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.

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?

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.

If Mayors Ruled the World

We review the latest book by Benjamin Barber.

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.

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

“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).

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.

The enemy of my enemy?

The New York Board of Regents has recommended

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.

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.

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.

That’s quite the coincidence

The court case over teacher job protections in California is underway.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.