National Education Policy Center (University of Colorado Boulder)
Author
Pub. Date
2022.
Description
For decades, politicians have struggled to make educational opportunity more widely avail able and less tied to where a child's parents can afford to live. The reviewed Bellwether Education Partners' recent report attempts to examine the availability of low-income rental units in school districts to understand whether districts in the largest 200 metropolitan areas are accessible to families in poverty. While the report's focus on the intersection...
Author
Pub. Date
2022.
Description
Summit Public Schools, a charter school organization operating schools in California and Oregon, published Pathways to Success: Exploring the Long-Term Outcomes of Alumni from Summit Public Schools in September 2021. The report claims that Summit alumni graduated from college at nearly double the national average and self-reported high levels of well-being, fulfillment, and workplace satisfaction. It also reports that alumni from socioeconomically...
3) State accountability rating systems: a review of school report cards as indicators of school quality
Author
Pub. Date
2022.
Description
A core premise of state school report cards is that publicizing information about how well schools and districts meet specified goals will incentivize school improvement. However, for report card rating systems to be potentially beneficial as a school improvement policy instrument, they must provide fair and valid indicators of school performance.
Author
Pub. Date
2022.
Description
Research suggests that public schools serving advantaged students are more likely than other public schools to benefit from private fundraising. The reviewed report fails to conclusively demonstrate two key claims: that schools serving wealthy student bodies are more likely to have private fundraising groups, and that larger shares of white students are associated with increased private spending. Nonetheless, the report's approach of calculating per-pupil...
Author
Pub. Date
2022.
Description
Advocates for increased privatization of public schools have long contended that private schools could provide equal or better outcomes at lesser costs. To bolster that argument, this EdChoice report asserts that voucher and voucher-like (tax credit scholarship and education savings account) programs have saved state and local treasuries some $12.4 to $28.3 billion dollars as student "switchers" use those programs to leave public schools and enter...
Author
Pub. Date
2020.
Description
School districts around the country have launched new reform strategies that are designed to expand autonomy for public schools, often called "Innovation Schools." Pursuant to these state- and local-level plans to create more autonomous schools, school leaders are granted greater amounts of authority over school operations such as curriculum, budgeting, and hiring, while districts continue to manage services related to teacher payroll and benefits....
Author
Pub. Date
2012.
Description
K12 Inc. enrolls more public school students than any other private education management organization in the U.S. Much has been written about K12 Inc. (referred to in this report simply as "K12") by financial analysts and investigative journalists because it is a large, publicly traded company and is the dominant player in the operation and expansion of full-time virtual schools. This report provides a new perspective on the nation's largest virtual...
Author
Pub. Date
2022.
Description
The U.S. test-based accountability model holds schools and teachers accountable for student outcomes with little attention to school improvement processes. Many other countries enact more school-centered accountability efforts, such as school self-evaluation followed by inspection (SSE/I) to examine school quality, as in similar systems in England, Wales, Northern Ireland, and the Netherlands. Accountability models from other countries cannot be naively...
Author
Pub. Date
2020.
Description
Summit Public Schools has aggressively marketed its Summit Learning Platform to schools across the United States since 2015. As a result, the Summit Learning Program is now one of the most prominent digital personalized learning programs in the United States. Summit Learning Program is available to potential "partner" schools as a free, off-the-shelf, personalized learning program. Summit's marketing message trades on the alleged success of its schools....
Author
Pub. Date
2017.
Description
This brief investigates whether closing schools and transferring students for the purpose of remedying low performance is an option educational decision makers should pursue. The logic of closing schools in response to low student performance goes like this: By closing low-performing schools and sending students to better-performing ones, student achievement will improve. The threat of closure may motivate low-performing schools (and their districts)...
Author
Pub. Date
2011.
Description
A summary of the larger report "Discipline Policies, Successful Schools, and Racial Justice." Each year, more than 3.25 million K-12 students are suspended at least once. African American students are suspended three times as often as white students.Hispanic students and Native American students are also suspended at higher rates than white students. This paper presents the facts about the following myths: (1) Suspending disruptive students is necessary...
17) Safe at school: addressing the school environment and LGBT safety through policy and legislation
Author
Pub. Date
[2010]
Description
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) students face a unique set of safety concerns each day. Over 85% report being harassed because of their sexual or gender identity, and over 20% report being physically attacked. Far too often teachers and administrators do nothing in response. In part because of this, the suicide rate for LGBT students continues to be 3-4 times higher than that of their straight counterparts, and in some parts of the...