Vermont has had school choice for over a century, and yet the struggle of one southern Vermont public school to close its doors and reopen as an independent school has stirred up all the controversy that one might expect elsewhere in the country. Despite significant pushback from some local voters, the independent school has ultimately been approved at both the local and state level. Still, oppContinue Reading »

I’m at an age when a lot of my friends are trying to figure out where to send their children to preschool. Because of what I do for a living, and because I serve on a board that oversees charter schools in the District, some of my friends ask me for advice about preschool options. More often, they simply want to complain to me about the frustrations of navigating what is an incredibly fraContinue 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 »

In his State of the Union Address on Tuesday night President Obama laid out a wide array of programs and initiatives including many in education. Most of them laudable and important, but I must confess one really got my attention. Roughly mid-way through his speech he proposed a Fix-it-First program, “to put people to work as soon as possible on our most urgent repairs.” To get this done he is Continue Reading »

Only about one in eight high school seniors at District of Columbia public schools have completed a Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) at this stage in the application cycle. These  completion rates suggest that while some District of Columbia high schools are well on their way to getting students financially prepared for college, others haven’t had a single student complete the fContinue Reading »

You can’t get federal student aid unless you fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). Research suggests that helping students complete a FAFSA can increase the number of students who receive financial aid, the amount of aid they receive–even the proportion of students who enroll in college. The American Council on Education estimates that nearly one in five low-income studContinue Reading »

Location, location, location—it matters in real estate, and the harsh reality is, it matters in student achievement, too. While wealthy Americans can pay for private school or move to a top-ranked district in suburbia, countless other parents are left with their neighborhood public school default. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, of course. But what if the choice is not good enoContinue Reading »

Yesterday, Al Roth wasn’t a big name in education reform. But hopefully,  this morning’s announcement that he was awarded the Nobel Prize will make his work more widely known. Why is an academic who specializes in game theory relevant to education? Because Roth has made a career out of using his economics skills to make markets work better.

Specifically, he applied his research tContinue Reading »