Do Authorizer Evaluations Predict the Success of New Charter Schools?
As the sector’s gatekeepers, charter school authorizers are responsible for ensuring that schools in their purview set students up for success. But can authorizers predict which schools will meet that standard?
The Quest For Better Teachers: Grading The States
Most states are beginning to get serious about boosting the quality of their teaching force. Unfortunately, most of the steps they are taking point in the wrong direction. This 'report card' contains plenty of evidence of that fact-together with some happy exceptions and hopeful signs.
Why Charter Schools? The Princeton Story
Nappi tells the engaging story of how Princeton parents tried to change 'the system' from within but had to resort to starting a charter school in order to raise academic standards.
Making Standards Work: A Case Study of Washington State
This report takes a close look at the implementation of standards-based reform in one state, Washington, and asks why it was successful in some places but not others.
Better Teachers, Better Schools
According to this 250-page volume, proposed federal and state policies aimed at boosting teacher-quality may well worsen the problem. Instead of adding even more politics-governance to the teacher training system, policymakers should open up the profession to well-educated individuals and should hold principals accountable for student learning.
The Teachers We Need and How to Get More of Them
A policy statement endorsed by governors, chief state school officers, state board members, prominent education thinkers and analysts, and veteran practitioners, which sets forth principles and policies to guide states as they prepare to hire a teaching force for the 21st century.
Better By Design? A Consumer's Guide to Schoolwide Reform
This book is a guide to ten of today's best-known school designs. It is meant for parents, teachers, school board members, philanthropists, civic leaders and other 'consumers' who must evaluate which, if any, of these models they want to pursue.
Education Reform in the Dayton Area: Public Attitudes and Opinions
A survey of attitudes towards education reform in Dayton (where Mr. Fordham lived). View the survey results which show, among other things, overwhelming support for parental choice, charter schools, and higher standards.
Filling In the Blanks: Putting Standardized Tests to the Test
Cizek provides a helpful primer on standardized testing. He identifies key terms, clarifies important distinctions between types of tests, and explains how to interpret (and not to interpret) their scores.
Remediation in Higher Education: A Symposium
Is remediation in additional-topics providing a valuable service to society? Or does it amount to paying for someone's education twice? Read competing views of the issue in this rare Fordham look at the higher-education system.
The State of State Standards (1998)
Three Fordham staff members analyze trends spotted in academic standards across the disciplines. They found that too many state standards are vague, anti-knowledge, entranced with 'relevance,' and focused on teaching rather than learning.
Spending More While Learning Less: U.S. School Productivity in International Perspective
With OECD data, Walberg shows that the United States' educational system is the 'least productive in the developed world.'
The Tracking and Ability Grouping Debate
Tracking and ability grouping strategies differ widely from school to school. They diverge even more widely from their portrayal in the popular criticisms of the 1980s. This report digs into the sensitive matter of whether those criticisms are valid today. The answer tells a more complicated and more honest story than we have heard before on this topic.