Commentary
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Ohio's charters fall short on the Nation's Report Card
State's charter school program, as a whole, needs a major repair.
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Students With Disabilities Can Succeed! How the Baltimore City Public Schools Are Transforming Special Education
This report by Kalman “Buzzy” Hettleman reviews the One Year Plus policy currently being implemented in Baltimore City schools—a program built on the premise that high expectations will lead to strong outcomes in special education, just as they would in traditional education.
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Early Retirement Incentives and Student Achievement
This fascinating new study published by NBER examines whether early-retirement incentives impact student achievement. Researchers analyzed an early-retirement policy in Illinois that allowed teachers to retire early in 1992–93 and 1993–94.
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The Nation’s Report Card: A First Look: 2013 Mathematics and Reading
Does slow and steady win the race? That’s what education analysts are hoping after digging through the newly released math- and reading-achievement scores on the bi-yearly National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).
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Election mania
With the polls closed and votes counted, the most interesting school district in America will remain interesting:
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Fordham seeks spring interns
We’re scanning the horizon for resourceful, intelligent, detail-oriented, hard-working individuals capable of excelling in an intellectually stimulating and often intense work environment. In other words, we seek a new cohort of research interns. Research experience is desired, strong writing skills are a must, and a passion for education reform is greatly welcome.
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William McCallum's Common Core testimony in Wisconsin
Who I am and why I decided to work on the Common Core State Standards
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U.S. States in a Global Context: Results From the 2011 NAEP-TIMSS Linking Study
The latest study by IES attempts to document how American eighth graders compare to their peers around the globe. Using NAEP scores to predict performance on TIMSS, an international test that examines what students know about math and science, analysts included thirty-eight countries and nine other educational systems in their inquiry. And the results? Not terrible.
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State of the States 2013: Connect the Dots: Using evaluations of teacher effectiveness to inform policy and practice
The “fifty-state review” of educational policies has proliferated into a literary genre of its own.
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Testimony to the Wisconsin Select Committee for Review of the Common Core Standards Initiative
Senators and Representatives: It’s an honor to be with you today. My name is Mike Petrilli; I’m the executive vice president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a right-of-center education-policy think tank in Washington, D.C., that also does on-the-ground work in the great state of Ohio. I was honored to serve in the George W.
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U.S. States in a Global Context: Results from the 2011 NAEP-TIMSS Linking Study
Short review of new report of international test scores from the National Center for Education Statistics.
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Charter Schools
Remember whom open enrollment serves
Open enrollment options abound across Ohio - in cities, suburbs, and rural areas. It is often the school choice option of first resort. But is it bane or benefit for students?
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Charter Schools
Japan’s Robin Hood school-voucher program
I’ve been in Asia for other reasons (looking into the education of gifted students), but while on the ground in Tokyo, I learned of a fascinating policy dispute that, in the U.S., would be even more controversial.
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Quality School Ratings: Trends in Evaluating School Academic Quality
With Common Core implementation in full swing, states are, for the most part, reaching for the same academic achievement goals. Yet according to this new report from the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools (NAPCS), the accountability structures being developed in state and local jurisdictions continue to be disparate in scope and quality. Must this be the case?
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Incentives, Selection, and Teacher Performance: Evidence from IMPACT
IMPACT—the District of Columbia’s controversial teacher-evaluation system, ushered in by former D.C.
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Left in the dust: The educational plight of poor, rural students
College isn’t likely to be in the cards for students from poor, rural communities. Furthermore, for rural kids who go to college, they are the least likely to persist, in comparison to their peers from more affluent and/or urban areas.
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Breaking Ground: Yesterday’s Dropouts
It’s well known that graduating from high school is generally insufficient preparation to be competitive in today’s economy. Reformers hope, however, that higher standards through the Common Core might, in time, improve the value of the diploma. But what about those who don’t even graduate?
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The Experience of One New York City High School Cohort: Opportunities, Successes, and Challenges
In this study, researchers from Teachers College at Columbia University analyzed data from a cohort of 77,501 New York City public school students who entered ninth grade in 2005, seeking connections between students’ high school outcomes and college persistence and their achievement, background characteristics, and school environments.
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OECD Skills Outlook 2013: First Results from the Survey of Adult Skills
The OECD, much loved by education-data wonks for its yearly Education at a Glance report, has launched its
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Brain Hubs and Manufacturing Centers in the Fourth District
Reviews a research brief attempting to identify "brain hubs" in Ohio.
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An Opportunity Worth Pursuing
Fordham's new Vice President for Ohio Policy and Advocacy pens his inaugural address
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Staffing Design: The Missing Key to Teacher Quality 2.0
As part of the AEI Teacher Quality 2.0 series, the authors of this paper take on the delicate issue of school-staffing design.
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The Most Interesting School District in America? Douglas County’s Pursuit of Suburban Reform
We all know the story: the team that's always way back in the standings employs a brilliant new strategy to try to close the gap between itself and the wealthy powerhouses.
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Common Core testimony before the Tennessee Senate Education Committee
The following is the text from Mike Petrilli's testimony to the Tennessee Senate Education Committee on the Common Core, delivered on September 20, 2013.
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Walton's newest recruit: Marc Sternberg
Marc Sternberg—a senior deputy chancellor in the New York City school system since 2010, a stalwart s
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The Redesign of Urban School Systems: Case Studies in District Governance
This collection of case studies from the Center for Reform of School Systems’s Donald McAdams and the Broad Foundation’s Dan Katzir, intended for use in school-board-training institutes, explores the strategies used by twelve governance teams to implement major, district-wide reforms in nine of the nation’s largest school districts (four of which won the Broad Prize for Urban
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The Educational Value of Field Trips
This study reports on the first large-scale, randomized-control trial measuring the educational value of field trips. In 2011, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art opened in Arkansas and, because of the high demand for tours, the authors were able to randomly select student groups to go. They matched participating groups with control groups based on similar grade level and demographics.
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The Condition of College and Career Readiness 2013: Ohio
ACT recently released individual state reports that reviewed student performance on the 2012-2013 ACT college readiness assessment.