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How Do We Help Already Struggling Students Learn How to Read?
We know from research that a student’s reading score can be better predicted by family environment than by schooling. The 2010 study “Children’s Access to Print Related Materials and Education-Related...
View ArticleLessons from Abroad on Student Success
The United States loses too many students between high school and college. Even students who have successfully completed the college preparatory curriculum still find themselves taking remedial classes...
View ArticleDon’t Kick This Pension Can Down the Road
In FY 2010, the state of New Jersey, facing a $2.2 billion budget shortfall, adopted a series of measures to close the gap. The budget delayed $940 million worth of pension fund contributions for FY...
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In Teacher Pensions, Even the Fixes Are Moving in the Wrong Direction
NCTQ’s new report on the state of state teacher pension plans is well worth your time. If you’re new to the pension issue, it does a great job of breaking down the issues in simple and clear language....
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Should All High-Schoolers Be Prepared The Same?
Technical degrees, certificates, apprenticeships, and other postsecondary offerings that can be earned in two years (or less) often carry a negative stigma, as if the careers they prepare students for...
View ArticleHow Not To Deal With Sandy Hook
Well, we should have seen that coming. As the nation continues to grieve for the teachers and children massacred in Connecticut last week, it was inevitable that some policymakers would begin to offer...
View ArticleThe Sandy Hook Tragedy: Guns Kill and So Does Culture
What is the nation to do when the lives of 20 precious and innocent first graders can be violently taken in the presumed safety of their neighborhood public school? What of the lives of the heroic...
View ArticleHow Much is Teacher Tenure Worth?
Last week Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell called for a two percent raise for Virginia teachers in exchange for lengthening the probation period for tenure from three years to five, adding incompetence...
View ArticlePromising Results for ACT Mandate
There’s an important new study out looking at what happened in states that mandated all high school juniors take a college entrance exam. It measured the impacts for the first two states with mandates...
View ArticleBiggest Surprises
People in Washington rarely like to admit they’ve been surprised. “I heard that last week,” they will often say when some bombshell hits the newspaper. Denizens of think tanks also don’t like...
View ArticleDoes SIG Hold the Key?
The Department of Education’s planned release of the first year of School Improvement Grant (SIG) data has important implications for the future of the program – and for reform generally. While much...
View ArticleA Comprehensive Review of the MET Project
On Tuesday the Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) Project released its third and final series of reports. The media has reported the main findings: that we can measure and predict effective teaching....
View ArticleCommon Core: What’s Educational Justice Got to Do With It?
Last spring I completed a study of American high schools; I looked at five schools serving very different economic and social communities. Here is the headline: If a student is not lucky enough to...
View ArticleCalling Rick Kahlenberg
A large-scale study of an economic integration experiment designed to break the link between income and neighborhood found “few detectable long-term effects on achievement and educational outcomes,...
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The Waiver Wire: Why Florida’s NCLB Waiver Shows Enormous Potential...
The mere mention of international measures of performance is rare in a NCLB waiver. Everyone knows how poorly American students stack up against their global peers on assessments like PISA, so it’s no...
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FAFSA Completion Rates in DC: So Far, the Grade is “Incomplete”
Only about one in eight high school seniors at District of Columbia public schools have completed a Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) at this stage in the application cycle. These...
View ArticleIgniting Idealism into Action: Breathing Life into Education
Two years ago my good friend and colleague Jill Iscol and I embarked on a project that would celebrate the amazing achievements of today’s young social visionaries. We interviewed some of the world’s...
View ArticlePensions Have an Impact on Achievement– But It’s Not What You Think
According to important new research, teacher pensions—both how generous they are and how they are structured—have important effects on the quality of the teaching workforce. This research provides some...
View ArticleHard Decisions Hurt Politicians? Not in Rhode Island.
Conventional wisdom states that when politicians make hard decisions, they’re punished at the polls. But Gina Raimondo of Rhode Island is proving to be the exception to the rule. In 2011, Raimondo,...
View ArticleESEA Reauthorization on Auto-Pilot
Saturday marks the one-year anniversary of the Obama administration’s first 10 approvals of comprehensive NCLB waivers.* The Senate HELP Committee marked the anniversary with a hearing today on early...
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