The Unbroken Window

Diane Ravitch writes in tomorrow’s WSJ about her conversion away from national testing standards and charter schools:
What we need is not a marketplace, but a coherent curriculum that prepares all students. And our government should commit to providing a good school in every neighborhood in the nation, just as we strive to provide a good [...]

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When Seth Andrew, a founder of Democracy Prep, set up his charter middle school in 2006, it occupied the same building as a traditional public middle school that opened the same year. “We both opened with sixth grade and about 100 kids, though we had more special-ed children and English language learners,” he says. “After [...]

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This Inside Higher Ed story claims that an injection of $2.4 billion “saved” public higher education last year – as the recession caused states to reduce funding for public schools by $2.8 billion. The difference was made up for by other fees and student tuition.
This is a really tiring story. How come the private for-profit [...]

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In addition to bringing in the era of post-partisanship, our President also promised to look at any and all scientific research to help him in his policy recommendations – especially when it comes to school policy. Add this to the list of research on school competition and choice that will be systematically ignored for the [...]

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The best solution is not always to “just watch it” though there are probably cases where that is necessary.
The report bluntly concludes that neither DeFleur and nor Thirer “reacted with sufficient objectivity and self-inquiry when faced with growing concerns from the [America East Conference] and its member institutions regarding the direction of [Binghamton’s] men’s basketball [...]

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In preparation for applications to graduate programs in the health professions, my wife is taking two classes at a local community college. Our gross tuition bill for this semester was $1,100 (if she were full-time, the bill would be slightly more than double). Note that this low tuition is a result of massive federal and [...]

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Jonah Rockoff just published a paper looking at early 20th century research into the impacts of class size on student performance. His conclusion is similar to what contemporary research on class size tends to find – that there is extremely mixed evidence of the impact of class size on performance.  His review of early 20th [...]

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What did the President say about being open to serious ideas grounded in serious research? Oh, that is reserved only for climate socialism.
This paper estimates the impact of charter school attendance on student achievement using data from Boston, where charter schools enroll a growing share of students.  We also evaluate an alternative to the charter [...]

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While I am not a fan of the legislation at all, early evidence seems to suggest that is has had some success:
The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act compelled states to design school-accountability systems based on annual student assessments. The effect of this Federal legislation on the distribution of student achievement is a highly controversial [...]

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It is possible that doing things outside the public school classroom improves learning outcomes better than anything currently being done inside the classroom:
This paper examines the impact of public health insurance expansions through both Medicaid and SCHIP on children’s educational outcomes, measured by 4th and 8th grade reading and math test scores, available from the [...]

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