National lessons from New York City’s Cathie Black
Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s surprise announcement this morning that Cathie Black is resigning as New York City Schools Chancellor reveals some of the challenges inherent in hiring a non-educator to lead a large public-school district and inspire the confidence of teachers, parents and the public. In another shocker, New York State Education Commissioner David Steiner resigned […]
Online learning: A solution to the budget crisis?
As school systems around the country face severe financial problems, everyone’s talking about what might be cut from budgets. There is one area, however, where spending is likely to increase in many parts of America: online learning. Proponents say online classes have many benefits, including allowing students to go at their own pace and increasing […]
Can we raise standards and graduation rates at the same time?
The House Public Education Committee in the Texas Legislature has come under criticism this week for unanimously approving a bill that would take the teeth out of the end-of-course exams to be introduced next school year, as reported by the Dallas Morning News. The committee gave as its rationale a desire to give more control […]
Fewer ‘dropout factories’ nationally, but problems remain
Those crusading against the dropout problem had reason to celebrate this week. A report released by the U.S. Department of Education, “Building a Grad Nation,” announced that the number of “dropout factories” in the country – or high schools that fail to graduate at least 60 percent of their students – continued to drop. In […]
American Graduation Initiative gets new resources
President Barack Obama’s American Graduation Initiative (AGI) took a step forward today with the announcement of a “college completion tool kit” — as well as a new grant competition — by Vice President Joe Biden. Although first announced in July 2009, the AGI has seen little action on the federal stage aside from more money […]
The ‘untold story’ on federal loans: Delinquency
For years, how college students have fared in repaying their federal loans has been measured by the loan-default rate. U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan made headlines last September with the announcement that the default rate had risen to 7.0 percent for the 2008 national cohort, compared to 6.7 for the previous year — a […]
Survey of the American Teacher released
Results of the 27th annual MetLife Survey of the American Teacher were released today. Here’s a sample of some of the findings from surveys with teachers, students, parents and Fortune 1000 executives. You can check out the whole report here. Overall, 54 percent of teachers said that “graduating each and every student from high school […]
Could “micro-charters” be a way to fuel charter-school growth?
Charter schools are booming nationally. With 443 charters opening in 2009-10 alone, they grew 6.2 percent during that school year, according to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. But this growth isn’t enough, some say — while others are quick to remind us that not all of the new charters are of high quality. […]
Rural schools remembered
The U.S. Department of Education — if it wins budgetary approval for a third round of Race to the Top — is proposing to do things a bit differently this time. Instead of states competing against one another, individual districts would compete for grants from a $900 million pot — and the Department of Education […]
More lessons from Indianapolis
Ten days ago, The Hechinger Report took a look at Indianapolis, asking if charter schools — either through competition or collaboration — could be a means of improving achievement across a failing school system, as policymakers have often argued. Though charters themselves are doing well in the city, the public-school system is still struggling. Moreover, […]
