Month: August 2019

It’s Easy to Become ‘The Man’ – by Frederick Hess

Last week, I was struck by the response to “Of ESSA Plans and TPS Reports,” a short, acerbic take on how schooling’s fascination with strategic plans and bureaucratic reports can bring to mind some of the worst excesses of corporate culture. freegreatpicture A decade ago, most of those who thought of themselves as “reformers” worried that education was awash in paperwork, jargo...

What We’re Watching: Can We Bridge the Research-to-Policy Divide? – by Education Next

On June 15, 2017 at 10 am, the Fordham Institute will host a discussion about why education research and education policy are often disconnected and what can be done to fix this. As the event page explains Yet when it comes to informing the actual design and implementation of sound policies, from charter schooling to pre-school expansion to statewide accountability systems and...

In the News: (Another) Open Letter to Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan – by Education Next

Two weeks ago, Education Next published an Open Letter to Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan from Chester E. Finn, Jr. In the letter, Finn advised Zuckerberg and Chan to focus their education philanthropy on innovation outside the system instead of falling prey to the classic temptation of trying to reform school districts. By Jack1956 at English Wikipedia (Own work) [Public do...

What Do Education Reform Failures Have in Common? – by Jay P. Greene

Interventions in which students are “nudged” with text messages to do things that are thought to be good for them have yielded another disappointing result. In a newly released study, Kelli A. Bird, Benjamin L. Castleman, Jeffrey T. Denning, Joshua Goodman, Cait Lamberton, and Kelly Ochs Rosinger report: We investigate, through two randomized controlled trials, the impact of a...

Profiting from Educational Choice? – by Jason Bedrick

Last year, more than 250,000 students in 17 states used tax-credit scholarships to attend schools their families chose. Under such policies, taxpayers can receive tax credits worth between 50 percent to 100 percent of their donations to nonprofit scholarship organizations that help low- and middle-income students attend private schools. Because such policies are growing in size...

Segregation and the School Choice Movement – by Neal McCluskey

Senator Tim Scott refers to school choice as a civil rights issue. America is, rightly, having a reckoning on race. The nation’s history is scarred by its too-often horrific mistreatment of African Americans, from slavery, to Jim Crow, to discriminatory government housing policies that lasted into the 1960s. Righteous indignation can, and should, well up in one’s heart. Progres...

Pacesetter in Personalized Learning – by Joanne Jacobs

Students at Summit Public Schools spend much of their time working on rigorous, real-world projects. How does a thermometer work? A group of 7th graders discuss their ideas. Nearby, a student named Ferdinand is modifying a swallow so the bird can survive in the video-game fantasy world he’s designed on the computer. “I’m giving it spiked feathers,” he says with a grin. “My worl...

School Vouchers, LGBTQ Rights, and Religious Liberty – by Michael J. Petrilli

At a House budget hearing two weeks ago, Representative Katherine Clark (D-MA) pushed Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos to comment on a Christian school’s policy toward LGBT students and families. As described by the Boston Globe: Clark waited patiently for her turn to question DeVos in the packed hearing room, and when the opportunity came, she asked about the private Lightho...