Class-size reduction, or CSR, is enormously popular with parents, teachers, and the public in general. The latest poll results indicate that 77 percent of Americans think that additional educational dollars should be spent on smaller classes rather than higher teacher salaries. Many parents believe that their children will benefit from Read more
For the past four years, New York City has experimented with merit pay. Recently their experiment came to a halt, after $57 million and no increase in test scores in schools that received bonus money. Why did NYC’s merit-pay program fail? According to the Wall Street Journal, one reason is Read more
In Customized Schooling (Harvard Education Press, 2011), editors Frederick M. Hess, the director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), and Bruno V. Manno, senior adviser, K-12 Education Reform Initiative at the Walton Family Foundation, lead a group of education experts to look at “how providers might Read more
Hot off the Brookings Institution press is Terry Moe’s magnum opus on teacher unions, Special Interest – Teachers Unions and America’s Public Schools. At more than 500 pages, it is deeply informative, profoundly insightful, fundamentally depressing, and yet ultimately somewhat hopeful about our children’s educational futures due to the combined forces Read more
A $99 million teacher bonus program that Washington legislators designed to lure good teachers into high-poverty schools has not worked as intended, according to a new analysis from the University of Washington Bothell’s Center on Reinventing Public Education. Washington State provides $5,000 bonuses to those teachers who undergo and pass Read more
A new paper from Public Impact titled Teacher Tenure Reform: Applying Lessons from the Civil Service and Higher Education examines lessons from higher education and the civil service and applies fresh thinking to offer new “elite” and “inclusive” tenure designs that could improve student learning and help grow the size Read more
Part 2 of the latest MetLife Survey of the American Teacher finds continuing challenges in preparing diverse learners for college and careers, and teachers say success depends on resources to address different student needs. More than 90 percent of all middle and high school teachers surveyed in the new MetLife Read more
There are many things we can’t predict about the future of education, but happily, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) has allowed us to look into the future of education statistics. For example, postsecondary enrollment rose by 34 percent between 1994 and 2008; NCES projects that it will increase Read more
Findings have been released from Part I of MetLife’s twenty-seventh annual education survey, which focuses on what it means to be “college- and career-ready.” In this poll of middle and high school teachers, students, public-education parents, and executives of Fortune 100 companies, MetLife investigates how stakeholder groups feel about the Read more
The Albert Shanker Institute has issued a “Call for Common Content.” The proposal would go beyond the academic standards adopted by all but 9 states to seek more specific details regarding the knowledge, skills and understandings required of students to meet each standard. Specifically, the “Call” states, “Attaining the goals Read more
A recent article by Sandy Kress, Stephanie Zechmann, and J. Matthew Schmitten published in the Harvard Journal on Legislation provides a well-researched look at NCLB and other national experiments in consequential accountability. “The “consequential accountability” model of education reform involves creating explicit standards for students, testing against those standards, and Read more
The New America Foundation’s Early Education Initiative released a report that highlights problems nationwide with the licensing and preparation of teachers who work with young children in pre-kindergarten, kindergarten, first-, second- and third-grade classrooms. The report, “Getting in Sync: Revamping Licensure and Preparation for Teachers in Pre-K, Kindergarten and the Read more
Principals arguably play the most important role in ensuring that excellent teaching occurs in their school. Principals’ Approaches to Developing Teacher Quality: Constraints and Opportunities in Hiring, Assigning, Evaluating and Developing Teachers by The Center for American Progress and The Education Trust provides key findings from a study of 30 Read more
Outdated rules and budget shortfalls could force schools nationwide to dismiss top teachers, with devastating consequences for the neediest students. As school districts across the country grapple with massive budget cuts, thousands of great teachers could lose their jobs despite a track record of success in the classroom, according to Read more
After adjusting for inflation, education spending per student has nearly tripled over the past four decades. But while some states and districts have spent their additional dollars wisely-and thus shown significant increases in student outcomes-overall student achievement has largely remained flat. To spark a national dialogue about educational productivity, the Read more
Effective teachers are critical to raising achievement and closing longstanding gaps among student subgroups. Unfortunately, access to effective teachers is not equitable or fair. Research shows that students in high-poverty schools are more likely than students in more affluent schools to have the least effective teachers. A new report from Read more