Latest Articles
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High Schools: Small is Still Beautiful
Breaking up big, dysfunctional high schools into smaller units looked like a reform that failed. Look again.
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Raising Standards? Raising Dropout Rates?
President Obama wants to lower the dropout rate. He also wants to raise academic standards. But does one come at the expense of the other?
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The Testing Industry Under Common Core Standards
The new common core standards could be a boon to public school students. But will the standardized testing industry–and the states that employ it–create new tests to that support the standards?
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Sweating the Big Stuff: Scaling Up Charter Management Organizations
The extraordinary demands of educating disadvantaged students to higher standards, the challenges of attracting the talent required to do that work, the burden of finding and financing facilities, and often aggressive opposition from the traditional public education system have made the trifecta of scale, quality, and financial sustainability hard for charter management organizations to hit.
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Five Myths About Teacher Merit Pay
Originally appeared in The Washington Post. Education Secretary Arne Duncan says paying public school teachers based on their performance is his “highest priority,” and he plans to dole out hundreds of millions of dollars to states and school systems that embrace the idea. In the District, Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee has made such reform a…
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(Mandatory) School Choice in New York and Boston
By requiring many students to choice the public schools they attend, New York and Boston have redefined the school choice debate, to the benefit of students and their families
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Tell the Truth About Colleges
Making public information about how well colleges are educating their students would help introduce the concept of value into higher education for the first time
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Educating Urban America
A reveiw of new books on school reform by journalists Jay Mathews, Paul Tough, and David Whitman
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The Key to Teacher Reform in the District of Columbia: Better Evaluations
Testimony before the DC City Council on Michelle Rhee’s controversial new teacher evaluation system