Editor’s Note: Last week, Education Sector released On Her Majesty’s School Inspection Service, which outlines how school inspections have become part of the accountability system in England. Would such a system work in the U.S.? We asked a variety of education experts to weigh in with their thoughts. We’ll share them throughout the week, and we encourage you to share your reactions as weContinue Reading »

Editor’s Note: Last week, Education Sector released On Her Majesty’s School Inspection Service, which outlines how school inspections have become part of the accountability system in England. Would such a system work in the U.S.? We asked a variety of education experts to weigh in with their thoughts. We’ll share them throughout the week, and we encourage you to share your reactions as well.Continue Reading »

The Costs of Online Learning, the latest in Fordham’s digital learning policy series, tackles the tricky question of per-pupil spending. And while the paper cannot offer definitive answers for policymakers and school leaders, it does provide a helpful primer on the overall economics of online and blended learning.

The top-line findings, that blended learning models cost an estimated $8,9Continue Reading »

In addition to the new Fordham reports that I reviewed yesterday, here’s what I’ve been reading/thinking about:

Teachers in the Age of Digital Instruction and School Finance in the Digital-Learning Era, two new working papers in the Fordham Institute’s series on digital learning, are welcome additions to the often narrow debates around online learning.

“Teachers,” written by Public Impact’s Bryan and Emily Hassel, opens with an important and refreshing perspective: “tContinue Reading »

Dan Goldhaber on the Need for More Transparent, More Accurate Teacher Evaluation Systems: “The importance placed on identifying good teachers and bad teachers stands in stark contrast to the teacher evaluation system.  …It is nearly impossible to use many existing evaluation methods for high-stakes personnel decisions such as: When all teachers are above average, how do you deContinue 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 »

Marguerite Roza of the Center on Reinventing Public Education observes that if the great recession forces school districts to cut their personnel budgets under “last in, first out” rules, they’ll end up firing substantially more teachers than they otherwise would, because the last in tend to be younger and lower-paid and thus you have to fire more of them to save the requisiteContinue Reading »

The stimulus proposal recently released by the House of Representatives includes a lot of money for education. That’s a good thing, unless you subscribe to the Petrilli school bankruptcy theory of education reform. But while Mike and his colleagues are wrong to think that financial stress will induce more reform-mindedness, they’re right to point out that there are better and worse Continue Reading »