Mark Tapscott from the Washington Examiner explains why it’s happened. The Rev. Al Sharpton has come out against teachers’ unions and in favor of charter schools. “I’m not anti-charter schools. I’m pro-good charter schools. We want what’s best for our kids, even if it doesn’t follow the liberal status quo.” “I think there’s a new [...]
Michael Petrilli at Education Next has a very interesting video interview with Chester Finn and Terry Ryan about the new book they’ve written with Michael B. Lafferty. All three are from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. The book– Ohio’s Education Reform Challenges: Lessons from the Front Lines–chronicles Fordham’s attempts to help what they refer to [...]
Paul E. Peterson– Henry Lee Shattuck Professor of Government, Harvard University Director, Program on Education Policy and Governance and Editor-in-Chief of Education Next–has a new book out: Saving Schools: From Horace Mann to Virtual Learning. (Which I haven’t read yet.) Marcus A. Winters, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, writes at City Journal: Across [...]
Reason TV notes that out of the tragedy and devastation of Hurricane Katrina came at least one good thing. It meant a fresh start for schools–and kids– in New Orleans. Most of the new schools built since the hurricane are charter schools and, so far, their results look quite promising.
Sharon Cohen reports for AP about Urban Prep, an all-boys charter school in Chicago. There are many things that make Urban Prep different, but perhaps the most important one is that 100% of its first graduation class is headed to college. Along the way, boys’ lives have been changed — and very possibly saved. Urban [...]
Kevin Carey’s post at The Quick and the Ed clarifies what’s going on in education reform right now and how’s it’s changed since the passage of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) in 2001. We’re in what Carey calls the “post-NCLB era of education reform.” For one thing, today’s major players are different: When I began [...]
We’ve mentioned Madeleine Sackler’s documentary here before. Read the great interview Bari Weiss did with Sackler at the Wall Street Journal. One nugget among many: “We drove by that protest,” Ms. Sackler recalls. “We were on our way to another interview and we jumped out of the van and started filming.” There she discovered that [...]
The Foundry asks: Is Hollywood Turning on Teachers Unions? How did we get to the point where The Foundry is even asking the question? It seems to me that the unions are facing opposition on two fronts. One is the growing antipathy towards unions in general. Economic realities are forcing city and state governments to [...]
Today in the WSJ, Miriam Jordan straightforwardly describes what makes a school successful. What works is not a really a secret– high standards, high expectations, no excuses. Jordan looks at two similar kids who went to two different kinds of schools–schools with different philosophies– and the difference that made in their lives: In middle school, [...]
And while we’re speaking of New York, the NY Daily News reported this: Gov. Paterson gave a stunning reason Tuesday for why he can’t persuade lawmakers to boost the number of charter schools: He can’t afford to buy them off. “In the past, governors gave them all kinds of resources in exchange for support for [...]