It’s been a busy year here at the Fordham Institute. In January, we launched a revamped website, making content easier to find and featuring niche blogs aligned with our reform priorities. We kept our signature Flypaper blog and added Common Core Watch, Choice Words, and Ohio Gadfly Daily. We have produced many timely, relevant studies, including our review of state science standards (State of State Science Standards 2012, January), our extensive appraisal of teacher-union strength in all fifty states (How Strong Are U.S. Teacher Unions?, October), and a first-of-its-kind analysis of student mobility in Ohio public schools (Student Nomads, November).
We would like to take this opportunity to wish everybody a happy new year and to thank you all for your readership. There is plenty more research and analysis in the pipeline for 2013. In the meantime, here are our most-viewed blog posts and videos from 2012.
The ten most popular blog posts
1. The fastest-gentrifying neighborhoods in the United States; Michael J. Petrilli / June 11, 2012
2. The Kindergarten Canon; Michael J. Petrilli / October 9, 2012
3. How will reading instruction change when aligned to the Common Core?; Kathleen Porter-Magee / January 27, 2012
4. Teach Like a Champion versus the Common Core: Do pre-reading activities help or hurt struggling students?; Kathleen Porter-Magee / February 3, 2012
5. Misdirection and self-interest: How Heinemann and Lucy Calkins are rewriting the Common Core; Kathleen Porter-Magee / August 6, 2012
6. The 50 zip codes with the largest growth in white population share, 2000-2010; Michael J. Petrilli / June 14, 2012
7. How the Common Core changes everything; Chester E. Finn, Jr. / September 27, 2012
8. Are "just right" books right for the Common Core?; Kathleen Porter-Magee / April 18, 2012
9. The case for public-school choice in the suburbs; Michael J. Petrilli / July 19, 2012
10. Charter school teachers would be hit hard by new Treasury Department ruling on pensions; Michael Podgursky, Stuart Buck, and Renita Thukral / January 23, 2012
Honorable Mentions: The disappointing but completely predictable results from SIG; Andy Smarick / November 19, 2012
What the Democratic Party platform used to say about school choice; Adam Emerson / September 7, 2012
The three most popular videos
The Tartans: The Story of the Sciotoville Community Schools
The Tartans is the story of Portsmouth East High School in South Eastern Ohio. Portsmouth City school district was going to close the facility in 2000—until the community rallied to form a charter school, thereby saving the school from shuttering. The Fordham Foundation has sponsored Sciotoville Community School and Sciotoville Elementary Academy's since July 2011.
Is American Education Coming Apart?
For all the talk of gaps in achievement, opportunity, and funding between ethnic and racial groups in American education, a different divide may also be splitting our schools and our future. In his acclaimed and controversial recent book, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010, scholar/pundit/provocateur Charles Murray describes a widening class schism. In this Fordham LIVE! event, he delivered a lecture on what that divide means for U.S. schools and education policy.
The Price of the Common Core
Amber Winkler discusses the findings of Fordham's 2012 report Putting a Price Tag on the Common Core, which outlines three models that states and local school districts could follow when implementing the new Common Core State Standards.
