August 28, 2008
U.S. wins gold on final day of the 2008 Education Olympics!
They waited until the last second, but the Americans finally won a medal in this year's games—and a gold, no less. Pandemonium ensued on the set of Education Olympics Today. Until, that is, our delirious host was reminded of the overall medal count. Get the full story at edolympics.net.
WaPo giants clash over "paternalism" label
Jay Mathews thinks David Whitman's new book, released by Fordham last week, is "splendid," but he doesn't like the subtitle. George Will also likes the book, and argues that "paternalistic" is in fact an apt descriptor for the schools described therein.
Publications
August 25, 2008
Education Olympics 2008: The Games in Review
This report has a simple aim: to present results from international assessments so readers can judge for themselves how American students stack up globally. It's intended to be a standalone supplement to our "Education Olympics" web event held between August 8th and August 22nd, 2008 (see edolympics.net). It shows how the U.S. has performed internationally in education in recent years, and it provides a glimpse of how education looks in several top-performing nations.
August 15, 2008
Sweating the Small Stuff: Inner-City Schools and the New Paternalism
The most exciting innovation in education policy in the last decade is the emergence of highly effective schools in our nation’s inner cities, schools where disadvantaged teens make enormous gains in academic achievement. In this book, David Whitman takes readers inside six of these secondary schools and reveals the secret to their success: they are paternalistic.
June 18, 2008
High-Achieving Students in the Era of No Child Left Behind
This publication reports the results of the first two (of five) studies of a multifaceted research investigation of the state of high-achieving students in the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) era. Part I examines achievement trends for high-achieving students since the early 1990s; Part II reports on teachers' own views of how schools are serving high-achieving pupils in the NCLB era.
April 10, 2008
Who Will Save America's Urban Catholic Schools?
America's urban Catholic schools are in crisis. Over 1,300 of them have shut down since 1990, mostly in our cities. As a result, some 300,000 students have been displaced--double the number affected by Hurricanes Rita and Katrina. This report, which includes a comprehensive survey of the attitudes of U.S. Catholics and the broader public towards inner-city Catholic schools, examines this crisis and offers several suggestions for arresting and perhaps reversing this trend in the interests of better education.
October 4, 2007
The Proficiency Illusion
NCLB allows each state to define proficiency as it sees fit and design its own tests. This study compares state tests to benchmarks laid out by the Northwest Evaluation Association to evaluate proficiency cut scores for assessments in twenty-six states. The findings suggest that the tests states use to measure academic progress and student proficiency under NCLB are creating a false impression of success, especially in reading and especially in the early grades.
The Education Gadfly
A Weekly Bulletin of News and Analysis from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute
August 21, 2008, Volume 8, Number 32
Education Gadfly Show Podcast
