Greenwich, Conn., is home to families who can afford to buy anything and a public school system that can afford to teach everything (including ice-skating). A recent New York Times article recounts the excitement of the Bonillas, a low-income family willing to pay the high cost of living in Greenwich to get access to affluent and academically-sound schools. And they’re not alone.Continue Reading »

Diverse schooling carries many benefits but also brings big challenges—namely, juggling multiple academic and socioeconomic levels in the same classroom. Charters across the country recognize there is a growing need for diversity and are cropping up around the country. From a 2012 report on successful diverse charter schools by The Century Foundation and a phone interview with BlacContinue Reading »

The word “bricolage” means something “created from a variety of available things.” It seems appropriate then that Bricolage Academy in New Orleans seeks to benefit its students by creating a socio-economically diverse population. Guided by the philosophy that the world is constantly changing and will look very different in 20 years, Bricolage, which opens this fall,* seContinue Reading »

You can’t have one without the other. This is true of love and marriage, a horse and carriage, and steering and rowing mechanisms in educational innovation plans. Most education reform plans “steer” (withdraw funding from failing schools) or “row” (develop plans to turnaround failing schools). Few do both.

As educational reformers pioneer strategies for successfContinue Reading »

A new study of states’ ESEA waiver plans reveals that some states are side-stepping graduation rate requirements by reporting the data, but not including it in their accountability systems.

As a result, according to the Alliance for Excellent Education, many of the ESEA waivers granted by the Department of Education contradict the 2008 graduation rate regulationContinue Reading »

With Black History Month nearly complete, it’s appropriate to examine our progress on narrowing the black-white achievement gap in America.  After considering scores from 2003 and 2011, there is both good and bad news to report.

To get a sense of the United States’ progress in this area over the last decade, I took 4th and 8th grade, reading and mathematics scorContinue Reading »

While many still question the benefits of online learning, there is one fact that is undeniable:  online learning increases access which expands educational opportunity.  By accommodating more students, offering greater scheduling flexibility for non-traditional students, and reducing many overhead costs associated with traditional college courses, online learning in higher educatiContinue Reading »

The mere mention of international measures of performance is rare in a NCLB waiver. Everyone knows how poorly American students stack up against their global peers on assessments like PISA, so it’s no surprise that states shy away from comparing their own student achievement against international assessments. Instead, states choose to benchmark academic progress against their own past performanContinue Reading »

We know from research that a student’s reading score can be better predicted by family environment than by schooling. The 2010 study “Children’s Access to Print Related Materials and Education-Related Outcomes” commissioned by Reading is Fundamental concluded that greater access to books and other print materials in the home correlated with increases in a child’s reading performancContinue Reading »

Forty-six states and the District of Columbia have adopted the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) which are designed to give the United States a uniform metric of academic standards. As we move from No Child Left Behind’s focus on testing and achievement to the CCSS era of rigorous curriculum uniformity, the question arises: Does demanding high standards hurt struggling students?Continue Reading »