Steven Hodas of the Center on Reinventing Public Education recently wrote a report describing the crucial role of what he called “DOS,” short for District Operating System. Hodas defines DOS as “a set of unsexy, below-the-radar functions like procurement, contracting, IT, and HR that determine the look and feel of Read more
About 39 million people ages 16 to 29 across the globe were not employed and were not participating in any kind of education or training in 2013. That’s 5 million more than before the economic crisis of 2008, a new OECD report stresses, and 2014 predictions don’t look much better. 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 Common Core State Standards began in 2009 as a state-led effort to measure the nation’s students against a shared benchmark. At first, the standards received broad acceptance. But as the standards rolled out–and as they continue to roll out–the Common Core has become a political football. With all of Read more
Andy Rotherham of Bellwether Education has a new article out in the US News & World Report that calls out a little-considered issue in education: the people who are making the decisions about education reform are by and large those people who did well in and enjoyed school. This means Read more
Jane Best and Emily Winslow at McREL Education have released a new brief focusing on current challenges of working toward equity in education. Particularly in a post Vergara vs. California education climate, educator equity and how to effectively distribute teachers to all students it is an issue on education professionals’ minds. Read more
Les Francis & Bo Cutter of Real Clear Education have written a new piece about how we need to rethink education based on the way that jobs and the economy are likely to work in coming decades. Here is an excerpt from it: The organization of work that was the Read more
Forbes Education recently released their list of 15 key higher education issues for 2015. Many of these will be prominent this year as the Obama Administration nears the end of its eight year run. You can expect this blog to discuss these issues over the coming year: The arrival of Read more
The folks over at Shanker Blog have been writing recently about how education reform cannot happen in a vacuum. Schools and the people in them are inherently social, so approaching education reform through a social lens makes sense. Here is a piece from one of their recent blogs: For the Read more
Recently, Education Week released the 19th edition of its annual Quality Counts report. This year’s installment explores the complex landscape that defines early-childhood services and programs across the country. To complement the report’s journalism, the Education Week Research Center also conducted an original analysis of participation in early-education programs, poverty-based Read more
Low income students are now a majority of the schoolchildren attending the nation’s public schools, according to a research bulletin issued today by the Southern Education Foundation (SEF). The latest data collected from the states by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) show that 51 percent of the students Read more
Education reformers are working diligently to design new teacher performance-based compensation systems and career pathways that reward high-quality teaching and offer opportunities for advancement without leaving the classroom. In this month’s issue brief, we explore various resources, research reports, and ideas related to teacher compensation to provide food for thought Read more
Whiteboard Advisors have gathered the predictions of Education Insiders related to what will happen with education policy in the wake of the recent midterm elections. Education Insiders express slight optimism that both K12 and higher education policies will become higher priorities with Republican control of the Senate, though agreement between Read more
A small group of Harvard students, backed by a national grass-roots student organization, has taken a very public stand against Teach for America. In a letter last month, they urged President Drew Faust to block TFA from recruiting on campus unless the group makes major changes – including repudiating key Read more
There is considerable variance in state performance standards, exposing a large gap in expectations between the states with the highest standards and the states with the lowest standards. Although this gap in expectations is large, many policymakers may not be aware of just how large it is. In general, the Read more
Matthew M. Chingos of The Brookings Institution has written a compelling new piece arguing that ending teacher tenure would have little impact on its own. Tenure for public school teachers is increasingly under attack, with the Vergara v. California judge ruling in June that “both students and teachers are unfairly, Read more