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 »

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 »

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 »

What will it take to create a system of schools that prepare all children to thrive and succeed in this century? This question is at the heart of the U.S. Department of Education’s very recent report, For Each and Every Child: A Strategy for Education Equity and Excellence. Directed by Congress in 2010, the department called together a distinguished 27- member commission to recommend polices toContinue Reading »

Most kids savor summer as a time of blissful idleness, filled with Marco Polo and Wii marathons. But not those at Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Talented Youth summer programs, rigorous academic camps for gifted students hosted by colleges across the country. These kids—some of them only ten-years-old—gather for over seven hours a day to debate Greek gods’ moral dilemmas and honeContinue Reading »

In today’s Washington Post and then on Fordham’s site here, Fordham’s Mike Petrilli and AEI’s Rick Hess write that we are “defining excellence down” by not sufficiently challenging high-achievers. They are concerned that the nation’s focus—federal education efforts in particular—will “compromise opportunities for our highest-achieving students.”

Petrilli and Hess seem to think the Continue Reading »

On the surface, today’s release of the 2011 Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA) NAEP results reveal more of the same: math scores, in general, are up across 18 of the largest urban districts since 2009, but reading scores are flat. The data include 3 new districts, Albuquerque, Dallas, and Hillsborough County (Tampa, FL). However, there are some interesting findings within the latest TUDA reContinue Reading »

“Split Classroom-Achievement Gap” Copyright © by Amanda Long.

More than any other provision of the Harkin-Enzi ESEA bill (synopsis here),  the rollback of federal accountability for student performance in schools and districts (no more AYP and targets for student achievement, no strict consequences for schools that fail to make AYP) has gotten the most attentioContinue Reading »

Mike Petrilli and Tom Loveless take to the pages of the NY Times to argue, yet again, that No Child Left Behind has been harmful to gifted students. Their real critique is with a recent report that attempts to show, with state test trend lines, that NCLB has benefited both top and bottom students. That’s a stretch to be sure, but Mike and Tom make their own equallContinue Reading »

On Monday Alexander Russo asked for more information on how Chicago Public Schools have fared under Superintendent Arne Duncan, a likely Secretary of Education candidate. Eduwonkette gave a harsh review of the data, but the truth is a little more mixed.

Since Duncan took over in 2001, Chicago has made statistically significant progress in fourth and eighth grade math and fourth grade reaContinue Reading »