Do early graduation programs really save states money?
Earlier this year, The Hechinger Report took a look at an increasingly popular method of reforming high schools: providing a scholarship to a state public university to seniors who graduate in under four years. Indiana passed such legislation in April, and, according to a policy brief recently released by Jobs for the Future, similar laws [...]
New website showcases rocketing college costs
For parents and students struggling to figure out how to best compare the price tags of different colleges, life just got a little easier. The Department of Education unveiled on Thursday the College Affordability and Transparency Center, which houses several lists of colleges and their prices. The new website also showcases how much tuition has [...]
Are Obama’s higher education goals enough?
A new report out from the Center on Education and the Workforce underscores a point that politicians, like President Obama, have started drilling in their speeches: America is falling behind its peer countries when it comes to education. This paper, The Undereducated American, highlights in particular the dearth of American college graduates in the workforce. [...]
Taking a look at subgroups within a subgroup
The No Child Left Behind Act has received almost universal praise for its requirement that schools, districts and states disaggregate test scores according to things like race and socioeconomic status. Schools can’t hide behind high overall performance if a subgroup is doing poorly and, in theory, they are thus compelled to zero-in on traditionally disadvantaged [...]
Are start-up charters a better bet than traditional school turnarounds?
Opening up new charter schools is a more promising strategy than trying to turn around traditional public schools that are failing, according to a caveat-laden analysis in the most recent Education Gadfly from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. The study’s author, David Stuit, looked at 81 cases of charter start-ups opening near failing regular public schools. Because [...]
Special education classifications varied across the country
The number of children assigned to special education nationwide declined last year for the fourth year in a row, according to a new report released this week by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, but the same wasn’t true in every state. Not only does the percentage of students with an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) – [...]
How to expand a charter network
The charter-school movement faces a big problem: Advocates want it to keep expanding, but there’s a shortage of effective leaders. Although people have long bemoaned the pool of candidates to lead public schools, the problem has risen in prominence in the charter-school sector. Indeed, in reporting for a Washington Post article about charter school leadership [...]
A day in the life of Chinese students
When bemoaning the United States’ comparatively low test scores on international assessments, some are quick to point to one factor that sets Chinese students apart from their American peers: the length of the school day. Unlike in America, where the length of the school day general stays constant from first grade through high school (if [...]
A mixed picture on nationwide civics exam
When it comes to how much our country’s students know about civics, the results are decidedly mixed. Scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress 2010 civics test, released today, reveal that fourth-graders turned in a record performance. But there was no statistically significantly change for eighth-graders, and 12th-graders actually did worse this time than [...]
Does lecturing trump hands-on learning in the classroom?
For decades, many have frowned upon lecture-style classrooms in the U.S., where the teacher stands at the front of the classroom while all students listen and take notes. Instead, there’s been an emphasis on hands-on learning and problem-solving, where students learn by doing the work themselves. But a working paper from the right-leaning Program on [...]
