By John Thompson. The latest report by the Education Research Association on New Orleans school reform, “Extreme Measures: When & How School Closures & Charter Takeovers Benefit Students,“ is consistent with the solid scholarship that informs its previous research. And it includes the important …
By John Thompson. Author’s Note: This post was drafted before the election, but held until after the anticipated defeats of Donald Trump and Massachusetts’s State Question 2. The assumption was that the timing would be right for a balanced discussion of the actual record of choice-driven reforms. Now, both …
By Anthony Cody. This week a Trump surrogate, Carl Higbie, cited the unconstitutional internment of Japanese Americans during World War Two as “precedent” for how potentially disloyal Muslims might be dealt with. Last summer, Newt Gingrich, now in Trump’s inner circle of advisors, and a possible choice for …
By Nora Cody. Donald Trump didn’t just win, he won Bigly. Everyone I know is shocked, stunned, and deeply saddened, but in many ways we should have seen this coming. Conditions in this country have produced a potent list of ingredients that led to this disaster of a recipe. First, and most importantly, we have …
By Ruth Rodriguez-Fey. Governor Charlie Baker has intensified his campaign to lift the cap on Charter Schools with the help of his wealthy investors from New York, I am re posting this letter to remind our Governor that his job is to ensure quality public schools for all the children of the Commonwealth, not just …
By John Thompson. Learning from the Federal Market-based Reforms: Lessons for the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), edited by William Mathis and Tina Trujillo, details the numerous “opportunity costs” that resulted from a generation of test-driven, competition-driven reform. The money and energy devoted to …
By John Thompson. As test-driven, competition-driven school reform gets closer to scrap heap of history (at least in terms of improving schools), we will see more great journalists, such as Dana Goldstein, Dale Russakoff, Nikole Hannah-Jones, and Paul Tough document its failures. We can expect more analyses where …
By Anthony Cody. Bill Gates has posted a blog in which he argues for government investment in various sectors, including educational technology. He suggests that the government should: Provide everyone on earth with affordable energy without contributing to climate change. Develop a vaccine for HIV and a cure for …
By John Thompson. Most of the chapters in Learning from the Federal Market-based Reforms: Lessons for the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), edited by William Mathis and Tina Trujillo, place the last 15 years of test-driven, competition-driven reforms in the context of the previous decade and a half. For …
By John Thompson. The contemporary school reform movement was rooted in the Michael Deaver, Lee Atwater, Karl Rove, and Dick Morris era of public relations spin. Being able to hire the best possible public relations expertise, reformers borrowed from Deaver’s success in using photos of Ronald Reagan getting …
