Two-thirds of schoolchildren in America attend class in states with mediocre (or worse) expectations for what their students should learn. That's just one of the findings of Fordham's The State of State Standards 2006, which evaluates state academic standards. The average state grade is a "C-minus"--the same as six years earlier, even…

This first-ever thorough report reviews academic standards in world history in all 50 states and the District of Columbia to determine whether we are setting the solid, challenging expectations for our schools and children that will equip the next generation with the skills and knowledge it will need. The report, written by renowned historian…

Education policy leaders from across the political spectrum identified and evaluated four models that national standards and testing could take. These models are: (1) "The Whole Enchilada," the most direct and aggressive approach in which the federal government creates and enforces national standards and assessments, replacing the…

This report presents findings from a national examination of the organizations that sponsor, oversee and hold accountable U.S. charter schools. Its primary aim is to describe and characterize these crucial but little known organizations: What do they look like? How big are they? How do they go about their work? The results of this inquiry is a new…

At the request of Ohio's top government and education leaders, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, National Association of Charter School Authorizers, and National Alliance for Public Charter Schools have issued a report seeking to strengthen the state's charter school program. Among its 17 recommendations are calls for closing low-performing charter…

Education funding today is a mess, and a solution is needed that addresses its biggest problems: most disadvantaged students do not receive the funding they need; red tape and overhead waste time and money; and new types of education options, like charter schools, are starved for dollars. Unfortunately, until now, so-called solutions have…

Of all the controversies swirling around the nation's charter schools, none is more hotly contested than the debate over funding. Charter opponents charge that these autonomous public schools are draining scarce resources from public school districts. Proponents, by contrast, complain that charter schools do not get their fair share of public…

"Miracle" is a word you would expect to hear from people familiar with the Assumption Catholic School story--but don?t wait for it. More likely you will hear a name: Mary Anne Stanton. In just more than five years, Stanton has led Assumption and 12 other Catholic schools from high-poverty Washington, D.C. neighborhoods into a…

In an effort to upgrade and "professionalize" the ancient craft of teaching, educators have begun doing what all respected professions try to do sooner or later: define standards for assessing whether or not aspiring candidates are capable of performing the work well enough to be certified for practice. In 2000, the largest established agency that…

These are critical times for Ohio's system of educating its young people. Initiatives to reform the public schools have been gaining momentum for some time. Elected officials, organized interest groups, think tanks, and civic leaders are tugging and pulling at the system, trying to move it this way or that. But where do the people of Ohio--the…

The mission of this review is to appraise the new draft NAEP science framework and to determine whether it is up to snuff. This is an evaluation of the September 30, 2005, draft document, Science Framework for the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress (Framework), developed for the National Assessment Governing Board. The criteria is…

This report contains the typology of charter schools that were sought, based on Carpenter's careful sorting of 1,182 charter schools, representing 87 percent of all those operating in 2001-2002 in the five states (Arizona, California, Florida, Michigan, and Texas) that then accounted for the lion's share of U.S. charter schools. Carpenter sorted…

Until now, the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) has focused everyone's attention on reading and math--and on whether schools are making "adequate yearly progress" in those two core subjects. Although some states incorporate additional subjects into their own accountability systems, reading and math have dominated most discussions of state…

The importance of state academic standards soared in January 2002 with passage of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). Not only does that milestone law require all states to have demanding academic standards in place and to demonstrate steady student progress toward academic proficiency as set forth in those standards, it also links states'…

In 2002, when its voters approved a ballot measure calling for universal pre- Kindergarten by 2005-06, Florida joined a handful of states in which all children are eligible for free, publicly funded education in the year prior to Kindergarten. The passage of the referendum--which received more votes than Governor Jeb Bush garnered in his victory…