While Mississippi’s population is predominantly white, its public schools are less so. In fact, public schools in Mississippi remain nearly as segregated as they did in the 1960s, writes Alan Richard in the Hechinger Report. In 2010, 51 percent of the public school population in Mississippi was black but only 44 percent were white students—one of the lowest percentages of white stuContinue 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 »

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 »

Happy Birthday, NCLB. Education Week collected commentaries from some of the top education experts, including lawmakers and analysts, on No Child Left Behind and posted them on this page in commemoration of the bill’s 10-year-anniversary next week. The page also includes a fun word cloud that includes the responses from people who were asked to describe NCLB. (Education Week)

The cContinue Reading »

On Fox and Friends last Saturday, the president of Belmont University criticized early college high schools for “watering down the process” because “high schools have a role, they should play that role; and universities have a role.”

Unfortunately, this type of status quo thinking can impede innovations that help our neediest students.  Early college high schools were designed specificalContinue Reading »

I always learn something new when I read a report comparing state funding systems. And this recent report by Bruce Baker and coauthors is a solid one. Unfortunately, the authors had bad timing, and the data that they were using for the report was updated while the report was in production. You can find a quick update using 2008 data (here). With the exception of Delaware there was little changeContinue Reading »

Last week the California legislature passed a bill that significantly expanded the opportunity for students to be able to attend a school outside of a student’s district of residence as part of its Race to the Top package. Unfortunately, the state’s current budget woes may end up having the opposite effect of stopping choice from happening especially when a student wants to attend a school in aContinue Reading »

The Washington Post reports today that the Virginia Department of Education will study minority participation in gifted education programs in the state. As the press release notes,

Data reported by school divisions to VDOE show that while African-Americans make up 26 percent of the statewide student population, only 12 percent of students identified as gifted are black. Hispanics make upContinue Reading »

Last week, Education Sector hosted “School Choice a la Carte”, an online discussion about expanding school choice beyond the ‘brick and mortar’ options that are usually discussed (e.g., traditional public schools vs. charter schools) to allow for even more customization and choice in education. Much of the discussion focused on the opportunities this type of choice presents, particularly for stContinue Reading »

Our fascinating discussion on the future of educational choice winds up today (read the transcript).  In the discussion, a couple of different threads are coming together.

The first is that there is enormous potential for more personalized learning and the educational landscape is changing—rapidly. Tom Vander Ark opened up the discussion with his prediction that “we’re headeContinue Reading »