Think Again: Does "equitable" grading benefit students?
This policy brief challenges four key ideas that underpin “equity”-motivated trends in grading reforms.
America's Best (and Worst) Cities for School Choice
More than twelve million American students exercise some form of school choice by going to a charter, magnet, or private school——instead of attending a traditional public school.
Is Detente Possible? District-charter school relations in four cities
Whether you think the end game of the current “mixed economy” of district and charter schools should be an all-charter system (as in New Orleans) or a dual model (as in Washington D.C.), for the foreseeable future most cities are likely to continue with a blend of these two sectors. So we wanted to know: Can they peacefully co-exist? Can they do better than that?
Failing Our Brightest Kids: The Global Challenge of Educating High-Ability Students
In Failing Our Brightest Kids, Chester E. Finn, Jr. and Brandon L. Wright argue that for decades, the United States has focused too little on preparing students to achieve at high levels.
Schools of Thought: A Taxonomy of American Education Governance
Questions of education governance are often considered moot by policymakers, who typically assume that the governance challenges plaguing their local schools are both universal and inevitable. Given the ubiquity of everything from local school boards to state superintendents, this seems to be a logical assumption.
Who Should Be in Charge When School Districts Go into the Red?
School districts across the land are contending with rising education costs and constrained revenues. Yet state policies for assisting school districts in financial trouble are uneven and complex. Interventions are often haphazard, occur arbitrarily, and routinely place politics over sound economics.
Pre-K and Charter Schools: Where State Policies Create Barriers to Collaboration
In Pre-K and Charter Schools: Where State Policies Create Barriers to Collaboration, authors Sara Mead and Ashley LiBetti Mitchel examine thirty-six jurisdictions that have both charter schools and state-funded pre-K programs to determine where charters can provide state-funded pre-K.
Redefining the School District in America
In Redefining the School District in America, Nelson Smith reexamines existing recovery school districts (RSDs)—entities in Louisiana, Tennessee, and Michigan charged with running and turning around their state’s worst schools—and assembles the most comprehensive catalog of similar initiatives underway and under consideration elsewhere.
Uncommonly Engaging? A Review of the EngageNY English Language Arts Common Core Curriculum
The need for standards-aligned curricula is the most cited Common Core challenge for states, districts, and schools. Yet five years into that implementation, teachers still report scrambling to find high-quality instructional materials. Despite publishers’ claims, there is a dearth of programs that are truly aligned to the demands of the Common Core for content and rigor.
Developing School Leaders: What the U.S. Can Learn from England's Model
The myriad challenges facing school principals in the United States have been well documented, including limited opportunities for distributed leadership, inadequate training, and a lackluster pipeline for new leaders. Recently, the Fordham Institute teamed up with the London-based Education Foundation to seek a better understanding of England’s recent efforts to revamp school leadership.
Common Core and America's High-Achieving Students
Gadfly editorial by Chester E. Finn, Jr. and Amber M. Northern
Education for Upward Mobility
At the Education for Upward Mobility conference, the Thomas B.
Building a Lattice for School Leadership
Over the past decade, the English government has revamped that country’s approach to school leadership. At the center of the reform is the sensible idea that school leadership needs to be a team endeavor. While not a new idea—there’s been for years plenty of discussion about “distributed leadership” on both sides of the pond—the Brits got busy actually making it happen as opposed to jawboning about it. Central to their leadership structure is the formalization of three levels of school leaders, each with distinct roles and responsibilities: headteachers who lead schools (equivalent to the principal’s role in the U.S.), senior leaders or deputy heads who assist the headteacher (similar to the vice principal role in American education but...