Here’s a quick look around at what had Fordham’s blogs buzzing over the past week:
- Analyzing twelfth-grade NAEP data, Mike Petrilli wondered on Flypaper, “could it be that increased graduation rates are driving down twelfth-grade performance?”
- Critiquing proposed charter school legislation in Connecticut, Adam Emerson warned on Choice Words, “An opt-out lottery would only discourage effective charter applicants who will see a burdensome and costly mandate getting in the way of their mission.”
- Reviewing a recent Ed Week op-ed by Tom Loveless on Common Core Watch, Kathleen Porter-Magee wrote, “the only way for states to see the kinds of achievement gains that the small handful of gap-closing schools have seen is to focus less on forcing the compliance-oriented implementation that Loveless describes and more on trying to understand how to empower teachers and leaders on the ground level to embrace the standards and to actually use them as the starting point for all curriculum development, formative and summative assessment, and instruction.”
- On the Ohio Gadfly Daily, Bianca Speranza gave kudos to Ohio State Auditor Steve Yost “for introducing a piece of legislation that attempts to create an environment of controls, increased education, and real repercussions, which in turn should lessen the temptation to mishandle public funds in the first place.”
- Matt Chingos of the Brookings Institution argued on Stretching the School Dollar, “if Obama and Romney want to buy the votes of struggling college students, they should at least propose the more efficient path of increasing the grants that students receive when they attend college, not decreasing the interest they pay after they leave.”
Want more? Be sure to download Fordham's latest publication, Education Reform for the Digital Era, and Mike Petrilli's new policy brief, "How School Districts Can Stretch the School Dollar." To stay on top of all of Fordham’s commentary, subscribe to the Gadfly Daily’s combined RSS feed.
