The New York MIRACLE... Continues

Peter Meyer / June 14, 2011

Or is it the shame of New York?? One can never be sure.

According to Barbara Martinez in the Wall Street Journal, Gotham's four-year graduation rates are soaring, to a record 65% -- or so says Mayor Michael Bloomberg.? ?A great day for NYC? Yes and No. As Martinez says,

The enthusiasm was damped somewhat by the [New York] state Department of Education, which pointed out that most of the graduates weren't ready for college. In New York City, only 35% of those who graduated were deemed prepared for college. The state defines college readiness as achieving a score of 80 or better on the state math Regents exam and 75 or better on the English Regents exam.

I like Bloomberg ? and not just because he is rich and shorter than I am.? He is not defensive.? "Is it adequate? No," he said about the new graduation stats, but "getting a high-school diploma is a very big deal."

I happen to believe that Bloomberg (and Joel Klein) transformed ?a rinky-dink candy store,? as he once described the education system he inherited in 2001, into something more like a Target.? It's cool. It's red. Yes, there are still candy-store fans, but, bottom line, education in New York City is better than it has been in decades. And Bloomberg, to his credit, despite a stumble with Cathy Black, has not backed down on his promise to be an education mayor ? to take responsibility

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The New York MIRACLE... Continues

Forget Finland: What Ontario can teach us about good governance

yes Chester E. Finn, Jr. / June 6, 2011

Though American education has taken few actual steps to pattern itself on other countries, in recent years we've displayed a near-obsessive interest in how we're doing in relation to them (e.g. on TIMSS and PISA results), and in what they're doing and how they do it. We at Fordham have found ourselves doing this a couple of times and we've periodically reviewed major analyses of ?education success stories around the world? by the likes of McKinsey. We've also read our share?OK, more than our share?of paeans to Finland, Singapore, you name it. (At the U.S. Education Department, I helped lead a study of Japanese education as long ago as 1988.) I've also?long admired Marc Tucker's tireless efforts to get American educators and reformers to understand and appreciate how other nations address challenges that often resemble our own.

Which isn't to say I always agree with him. And that's true of his latest paper, too?drawn from a book coming out in September.?He seeks to determine "what education policy might look like in the United States if it was [sic] based on the experiences of our most successful competitors." In that role, he casts Canada (Ontario), Finland, and three East Asian lands (Japan, Singapore, and the Shanghai region of China.) And in fifty pages he offers a wealth of insights that are

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Forget Finland: What Ontario can teach us about good governance

Snyder Doing What's Best For Michigan, But Young Teachers Will Suffer

yes Chris Irvine / May 5, 2011

Michigan Governor Rick Snyder is a new name in education circles, but not to me. Having lived in the state my whole life, I proudly supported him from the days his popular, ?One Tough Nerd,? ads started popping on TV in early 2010. In the August primaries he pulled a shocking upset and went on to win the general election by a landslide. But since taking office, his efforts to erase deficits through drastic budget cuts have left him a villainous figure to many Michiganders. These are many of the same people you hear decrying his new education plan. By introducing these reforms while trimming the state's K-12 education budget by 4%, Snyder is hoping to do more with less. Personally, I couldn't be more in favor of the breath of fresh air he's blowing into the Michigan education system, but there's a lot more at play.

Snyder's plans, while promising, will take time to enact; schools, on the other hand, must act on his budget restrictions immediately. In Michigan, a state where union membership is mandatory for public school teachers, archaic ?last hired ? first fired? policies are still controlling who gets laid off. By not addressing collective bargaining, Snyder's education cutbacks will end up dealing an unintended blow: the jobs of young teachers. I know this because it could

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Snyder Doing What's Best For Michigan, But Young Teachers Will Suffer

Requirements for school board members?

Amy Fagan / May 5, 2011

As you may know, last week we hosted a terrific event here at the Fordham Institute, Are Local School Boards Vital in 21st Century America?

Our excellent panel consisted of: Anne L. Bryant, executive director of the National School Boards Association; Gene I. Maeroff, founding director of the Hechinger Institute, Teachers College, Columbia University and author of School Boards in America: A Flawed Exercise in Democracy; Christopher S. Barclay, president of the Montgomery County Board of Education, Maryland; and our own Chester E. Finn, Jr., president of the Fordham Institute. The group was moderated by Fordham Institute Executive Vice President Mike Petrilli.

I?wanted to?quickly highlight a recent?interview Mike did with EducationNews.org about the event. (There have been a few other write-ups about the event too, including this one from the NSBA.)

Also, since we didn't have time during the event to get to all of the questions that folks had emailed in, we thought we'd throw one out to the panelists after the fact and see what they had to say.

We actually saw a few email questions about credentials for school-board members. We'll paraphrase here. Basically folks wondered whether there should there be minimum requirements for local school-board candidates? An undergrad degree or at least a 2-year college degree? What are some other qualifications for those who are making curricular and budgetary decisions for the county's

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Requirements for school board members?