In what seems to be an increasing (and welcome!) trend, Harvard economist Dr. Roland G. Fryer Jr. has been attempting to translate his empirical research into results for schools. Dr. Fryer won the prestigious John Bates Clark medal this year in part for his research on 39 New York City Read more
NewSchools Venture Fund has announced the launch NewSchools Catapult, the first endeavor of its new national strategy. Its goal over the next several years is to propel successive waves of education entrepreneurs to launch new schools – the kinds of audacious, life-altering schools that can truly prepare students to pursue Read more
On Thursday, May 28, Acting Commissioner Peggy G. Carr, National Center for Education Statistics, released The Condition of Education 2015. The indicators presented in The Condition of Education 2015 provide an update on the state of education in America and include findings on the demographics of American schools, U.S. resources Read more
The Center for Education Reform, an organization which supports the role that charter schools have to play in education reform in the U.S., has a new report out addressing individual states’ policies about charter schools. Following is an excerpt from their press release about the report: Of the 42 states Read more
For the current fiscal year, which ends on September 30, 2015, the Office of Innovation and Improvement (OII) will conduct 11 grant competitions in six program areas: Arts in Education, Charter Schools, Investing in Innovation, Opportunity Scholarship, Ready to Learn Television, and Supporting Effective Educator Development. Announcements of these competitions Read more
The American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think-tank that covers education issues, has a new series of videos out addressing the course of education reform in the United States. Following is an excerpt from their description of the series: Our schools are failing the most vulnerable kids. Everyone’s heard the scary Read more
The Equity Project Charter School in New York City is well known for the salary it pays its teachers — $125,000 of public funds available to all public charter schools. The question of course is what that sort of salary for teachers can accomplish. In a new study, Mathematica describes Read more
This new report from TNTP analyzes the impact of lockstep compensation systems, which pay teachers almost exclusively based on years of experience and academic credits, and proposes paying teachers for what really matters: how hard their jobs are and how well they do them. The report shows that paying teachers Read more
Thomas Kane, of the Harvard School of Education and writing for the Brookings Institution, has recently penned an important article describing an aggressive plan for helping American students catch up with their international peers over the next 10 years. Kane produces calculations that reveal that incremental reforms are unlikely to Read more
In an age of Teach For America, value-added teacher evaluations, and new challenges for teachers such as teaching to Common Core, teacher tenure is as big of an issue as ever. Many studies show that experienced teachers are more proficient, although there is some evidence that teachers can stagnate over Read more
The New York Times recently published an education article that asks, “Do teachers need to have experience?” They asked this question of five different educators who each inhabit different realms of the education field, and as might be expected, they received five unique answers to their question. We have picked Read more
An example of the ongoing battle in some states about how much autonomy should be given to Charter Schools recently occurred in Maryland. The soon to be opened Frederick Classical Charter School (FCCS) hoped to hire 9 new teachers that fit its model of classical education. In Maryland, however, the Read more
Teach For America (TFA) announced the winners of its annual Social Innovation Award, including education advocate-turned-filmmaker Kelly Amis, who was one of the first 500 college graduates to be accepted into this national teacher recruitment program. Amis will receive a $50,000 grant from TFA’s Social Entrepreneurship Initiative to support TEACHED, Read more
A Los Angeles High School is trying to prove that more individual instruction can be provided with larger class sizes. How might they accomplish this? Alliance Tennenbaum Family Technology High School hopes that blended learning, a model which for this school includes a third of their class time in traditional Read more
The Center for Education Reform has just issued its annual Charter School Law Report Card, and most states do not make the grade. The majority of states, according to the report, are only making “satisfactory” progress, and only 13 states have “strong” charter school laws. Among the nation’s 43 states Read more
On December 11, 2012, the Education Department announced the 16 winners of the Race to the Top school district grants (RTTD). 61 Finalists had been announced recently out of an original 372 districts that turned in applications in November. A total of $400 million was due to go out, and Read more