You can read summaries of the latest No Child Left Behind (NCLB) reauthorization attempt, Sen. Tom Harkin’s Strengthening America’s Schools Act at Politics K-12 or New America, but here are 11 key takeaways from the bill:

1. Some Good Common Sense: If you wait 11 years (and counting) between reauthorization, there are going to be some common sense fixes that nearly everyone agrees Continue Reading »

In an Education Sector report released today—The New State Achievement Gap: How Waivers Could Make It Worse-Or Better—Constance Clark and I report the effects of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) on education inequality, the ill that the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) was long ago written to cure. ESEA was conceived, we should remember, as a way for the federal government to help stateContinue Reading »

More than 50 percent of students who have completed Algebra II in high school find themselves in a remedial math course in college. (Even 13 percent of those who complete Calculus do.) How can this happen?

A new report suggests that these students have been pushed through basic math concepts, such as math modeling and complex measurement, so they can complete high school graduation requiContinue Reading »

This guest blog post written by Danny Rosenthal, who is a graduate of Harvard Law School and a former high school math teacher. He practices labor and employment law in Washington, D.C.

Two years ago, Florida’s Alachua County was faced with a dilemma. Under the state’s new teacher evaluation law, the county was required to base 40 percent of evaluations on value-added student achievementContinue Reading »

We live in paradoxical times.

On the one hand, we are getting smarter. Since the 1980s political scientist James Flynn has tracked the rise in IQs globally. For instance, between 1953 and 2006 IQs have gone up a whopping 17.4 points. Rising IQs are now known as the “Flynn Effect.”

On the other hand, only 23 percent of fourth-graders can identify George Washington as thContinue Reading »

English teacher John Keating, played by Robin Williams, inspired his tony prep school students in the classic film, Dead Poet’s Society. But I always wondered: Could Mr. Keating hack it in a lower-performing, higher-poverty school?

A recent working paper indicates that, yes, highly effective teachers continue to be highly effective when they switch schools, regardless of the new school’sContinue Reading »

Two years ago, Steve Schneider, a high school guidance counselor in Sheboygan, Wisc., had been fairly satisfied. More than 90 percent of his students graduated every year, and according to senior exit surveys, about three-quarters went to a four-year institution, with the remaining enrolling in local, technical colleges.

Or so he thought.

In fact, about half of South High School gContinue Reading »

North Dakota withdrew its request for an ESEA waiver on Monday after months of working with the federal Department of Education on its plan.* According to North Dakota Superintendent of Public Instruction Kirsten Baesler, the disagreement boiled down to how the state should set performance targets for its schools, commonly called Annual Measurable Objectives (AMOs). North Dakota wanted to set lContinue 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 »