What do Americans want for their schools? Choice, yes. Charters, not so much
What’s a charter school? Or the Common Core? A new poll out today suggests many Americans are unfamiliar with the hottest topics in the education world, and that they’d rather trust their local schools and teachers—not the federal government, their elected officials, or unions—to figure out what’s best for kids. Surveys have long found that […]
Could New York’s Pre-k plan pit politics and posturing above kids?
No matter who ends up paying for universal pre-k program in New York, it seems that both Cuomo and de Blasio have a lot of work ahead. There hasn’t been enough room or enough money or enough support for such programs in years.
A new model for teacher preparation in California?
For years, California has attempted to reform its teacher preparation programs to better prepare new teachers for the classroom. Alternative routes have popped up to offer aspiring teachers, in many cases, a less expensive and faster route to teaching. The state’s extensive performance exams for teacher candidates have served as a model for the rest […]
Anatomy of a 6,000-hour deficit
As we recently reported, by the time a child from a low-income family reaches sixth grade, he or she has spent an estimated 6,000 fewer hours learning than a peer from a wealthy household. How did researchers come up with 6,000 hours? At a Halloween morning conference at the Ford Foundation (one of our funders […]
Study: New teachers more educated, of higher caliber
Teaching may be attracting a more academically successful group of people compared to previous years, according to a new study released Wednesday. Two researchers at the University of Washington examined four national data sets to determine how the characteristics of first-year teachers changed between 1993 and 2010. The study found that more new teachers have […]
Conflicting ideas about how to rate teacher prep programs
After winning a hard-fought battle against the teachers union to impose a new teacher evaluation system, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has turned to evaluating the training programs that produce the city’s teachers. The New York City Department of Education recently released what it dubs as “the nation’s first ever district level Teacher Preparation […]
Board OKs charter takeover of California public school after ‘parent trigger’
The real-life version of “Won’t Back Down” — the recent movie that promoted the controversial “parent trigger” law — appears to finally be getting a happier ending than the box office flop. Parent union members at Desert Trails Elementary School in Adelanto, Calif., have become the first in the nation to convert their struggling neighborhood […]
Giving teachers more power helps in turnaround of Boston schools
Six low-performing Boston schools participating in a pilot program that gives teachers more training, support, and leadership roles are showing higher growth on state tests than other low-performing city schools according to a report released Monday by the non-profit Teach Plus. The T3 Initiative program, a collaboration between Boston Public Schools and Teach Plus, began […]
No consensus on which skills should be included in teacher evaluations
At least 30 states are launching new systems to evaluate teachers using more rigorous criteria about what makes a good teacher, but so far there is little consensus on what the criteria should be. Can the quality of a teacher be measured by looking at just a few key skills, such as setting academic goals […]
Survey: Today’s teaching force is less experienced, more open to change
More inexperienced teachers are in today’s classrooms than ever before and they are more open than their veteran colleagues to performance-driven options for how they’re evaluated and paid, according to the results of a new survey conducted by the Boston-based nonprofit Teach Plus. For the first time in decades, more than 50 percent of the […]
