This article examines a unique intervention in Chicago Public Schools (CPS) to uncover the causal impact on school performance of an evaluation system based on highly structured classroom observations of teacher practice. An iterative process of observation and conferencing focused on improving lesson planning and preparation, the classroom…

The Louisiana Scholarship Program (LSP), also known as the Student Scholarships for Educational Excellence Program, provides public funds for low-income students in low-performing public schools to enroll in local private schools. The program was initially piloted in New Orleans in 2008; Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal and the state legislature…

Should charter schools be required to enroll students labeled special needs at the same rate as local school districts, that is, educate their "fair share"? Or is it reasonable for a charter school to counsel special education students to go elsewhere, if another school would be a better fit? If "fair share" requirements are…

This article describes the budget crisis that the School District of Philadelphia has faced for the past few years. Three specific events triggered the 2012 crisis: an abrupt reduction in federal and state funding, the inability of the district to cut many of its costs, and political pressures on the district to spend available revenues in a given…

Research has been showing that the most important development in K-12 education over the past decade has been the emergence of a growing number of urban schools that have been convincingly shown to have dramatic positive effects on the achievement of disadvantaged students. Those with the strongest evidence of success are oversubscribed charter…

This article describes the efforts of a school superintendent to bring the best of charter school practices together with public school education in order to begin a program of collaboration and professional development for teachers, as well as a way to measure student success. The superintendent visited YES Prep and KIPP (Knowledge Is Power…

In January, 2014, the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Office for Civil Rights in the Department of Education (ED) issued a joint "Dear Colleague Letter" to K-12 schools. The topic discussed in their joint letter is whether administrators are punishing minority children more harshly than white children for…

This study takes advantage of the unexpected announcement of the Kalamazoo Promise to study its effects on student achievement and behavior in high school. The Kalamazoo Promise provides college scholarships to graduates of Kalamazoo Public Schools (KPS), a midsized urban school district in Michigan that is racially and economically diverse.…

American education has problems, almost everyone is willing to concede, but many think those problems are mostly concentrated in America's large urban school districts. In the elite suburbs, where wealthy and politically influential people tend to live, the schools are assumed to be world-class. Unfortunately, what everyone knows is wrong. Even…

Forty-two states and the District of Columbia have charter school laws today, and the nation's first such law celebrated its 20th anniversary in Minnesota this year. Charters, publicly funded schools formed by parents and community leaders, are expected to provide alternatives to traditional public schools. Yet despite the proliferation of charter…

Policymakers nationwide continue to wrestle with a basic question: At what grade level should students move to a new school? In the most common grade configuration in American school districts, public school students make two school transitions, entering a middle school in grade 6 or 7 and a high school in grade 9. This pattern reflects the…

Sometimes called "exam schools," academically selective institutions have long been a part of the American secondary-education landscape. The schools are diverse in origin and purpose. No single catalyst describes why or how they began as or morphed into academically selective institutions. A number of them were products of the country's efforts…

Education managers are typically inexperienced in and often reluctant to initiate cost-savings actions. Budget cuts may be poorly targeted, and students, particularly economically disadvantaged students, are swept up in the process as collateral damage. In California and Washington, bad budget cutting has already begun. Governors in these two…

Critics of voucher programs often argue that private schools do exclude most disabled students, and the matter occasionally has been the subject of litigation. Yet accurate information on students with disabilities served by private schools is notable for its absence. According to the authors, in 2006, the State of Wisconsin authorized their…

What is a school to do with children who are intellectually years ahead of their age group, their textbooks, the curriculum, and usually their teachers? When the National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC) surveyed states in 2008 about what they provide in the way of gifted education, it found the answer to be "not much." At least a dozen…