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On the Eleventh Day of Christmas CER Gave To Me…

January 5, 2017 By

Great Funders Funding! 

(10th) Best of Teachers Teaching
(9th) Nine Data Dancing
(8th) Charter Schools Leading
(7th) Opportunity Scholars Expanding
(6th) Parent Power Growing
(5th) State Policy Changing
(4th) Reformie Ladies Lunching
(3rd) A Global Hub for Technology
 (2nd) Model Legislation
And a Nominee for Opportunity!

 

The 11th in our 12-ish days of Christmas series, intended to bring gifts to education reformers everywhere!

We would be remiss if we didn’t dedicate a day to those who put their money where their mouth is and back the idea that innovation and opportunity can thrive to produce better outcomes in education.

Of course, the first person that comes to mind is the late John Walton – the driving force behind the Walton Family Foundation’s original education reform investments who believed in school choice because it was the right thing to do.

Another “giant of freedom” is the late Lovett “Pete” Peters, who ardently believed all children deserve superb teachers and an excellent education. At the age of 75, Peters dedicated himself to improving education in his home state of Massachusetts and across the nation. His legacy lives on in the organization he founded (the Pioneer Institute) and the Massachusetts charter schools (of which he played a key role in bringing to the Commonwealth) achieving great results for kids today.

And speaking of great results, when comedian John Oliver inaccurately portrayed charter schools last summer, Janine Yass – a charter school founder and philanthropist – was one of the first to spring to action to make sure these falsehoods didn’t stick. “Your show hurt poor children,” she personally wrote to Oliver, and worked with the Center to give charter schools a voice trough the “Hey John Oliver, Back Off My Charter School!” video contest, awarding $100K to the charter school that best portrayed why their school worked better for them than their assigned district school. Janine and Jeff Yass epitomize the spirit of “Great Funders Funding” ed opportunity both nationally and in the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania area.

In the words of John Walton, “If you’re going to do something, you should do it the best you can do.” Those are words the Center lives by in our day-to-day work. And we owe a huge thank you to the Great Funders Funding out there who believe in that vision and make it possible for us to relentlessly pursue true innovation and opportunity in education – and not stand for anything less – so that US students, families and communities continue to reach new heights.

Filed Under: Commentary Tagged With:

On the Tenth Day of Christmas CER Gave to Me…

January 4, 2017 By

The Best of Teachers Teaching!

(9th) Nine Data Dancing
(8th) Charter Schools Leading
(7th) Opportunity Scholars Expanding
(6th) Parent Power Growing
(5th) State Policy Changing
(4th) Reformie Ladies Lunching
(3rd) A Global Hub for Technology
 (2nd) Model Legislation
And a Nominee for Opportunity!

 

The 10th in our 12-ish days of Christmas series, intended to bring gifts to education reformers everywhere!

by Dave Saba

“Your teachers teach!”

What a great statement from Texas Serenity Academy about teachers they received from the Teachers of Tomorrow alternative certification program. There are over 3.5 million teachers in schools today and many are doing an incredible job teaching America’s students. They challenge their students to learn while at the same time meeting the growing bureaucratic needs of an ever-expanding central office.

But PISA scores show that we must do better. We are too good to be 15th in reading, 35th in math and 18th in science.

Teachers have the greatest impact on student learning and yet our teaching pipeline is dry. Over the past 10 years the number of students selecting education as their major has dropped from 9.9 percent to 4.2 percent. Right now there are 116,000 openings in schools and it is only getting worse.

Some argue that there isn’t a teacher shortage and we have produced the right number of teachers. They argue that the problem is that too many are just not teaching, or don’t teach the right subjects or don’t want to teach in the right geography and they would be correct. They say we need to keep more great teachers in the classroom and they are right.  But if you are the HR person tasked with putting the right talent in front of a classroom full of kids, you absolutely know there is a shortage of great people who teach.

There is hope.  By increasing the number of onramps to teaching, we can ensure that HR has the right talent to put in front of those students. With opening up pathways that get the right teachers teaching, we can improve outcomes for all students!

Dave Saba is Chief Development Officer of Teachers of Tomorrow.

Filed Under: Commentary Tagged With: ,

Newswire: January 3, 2017 — 115th Congress In Session — Kentucky To Tackle Education Opportunity — What Bill Gates and Donald Trump Have In Common

January 3, 2017 By

#OPENINGDAY. Congress is back in session today, and CER CEO Jeanne Allen joined the bipartisan celebration for the 115th Congress. This is the 12th Congress CER has worked with to advance opportunity and innovation in education. And while much was accomplished in 2016, there’s still much to be done in 2017 to advance kinds of opportunities and innovations that will transform education and put learners of all ages on a surer path to success. Our list of ways the new administration can advance parent power coming soon…

OPPORTUNITY IN KY. The Bluegrass State is back in action and ready to tackle parent power in 2017 – and we’re excited to be working with leaders like Hal Heiner and others to make that happen. However, one charter school bill filed is severely limiting, and won’t create the kind of opportunities needed to ensure all children – from Louisville to more rural parts of the state – can achieve the American Dream.

DONALD TRUMP & BILL GATES. It turns out that Donald Trump and Bill Gates have an important shared interest, opines Jeanne Allen in the Washington Times.

CHRISTMAS ISN’T OVER. Lucky for you, we’re committed to bringing gifts to edreformers until the official end of the Christmas season. Ring in 2017 by sharing the series on social media – and stay tuned for the last 3 days coming to your inbox this week!

Filed Under: Newswire Weekly, Newswire

CER RELEASES THE FIRST 100 DAYS: AN AGENDA FOR FEDERAL ACTION ON EDUCATION

January 1, 2017 By
Filed Under: Press Releases

Donald Trump and Bill Gates find common ground

December 29, 2016 By

With interest in education innovation aligned, the nation’s schools get a boost

by Jeanne Allen
Washington Times
December 29, 2016

It turns out that Donald Trump and Bill Gates have an important shared interest. And it bodes very well for the prospects for success in the new administration.

After their hour-long meeting at Trump Tower last week, Mr. Gates told reporters gathered in the lobby that the two “had a good conversation about innovation, how it can help in health, education …”

Media stories have focused mostly on the atmospherics: a couple of billionaires who’d never met before, getting to know each other for the first time just a few short blocks from 30 Rock in Manhattan. Well, that may be the story line of interest on Entertainment Tonight or in People magazine. But it’s not the most significant story line, not by a country mile.

It’s that the most important interest they have in common isn’t money, it’s innovation and all that it produces.

Improving education in America has been my passion and my avocation for the better part of three decades, and with each passing year it has become more and more obvious to me that what Bill Gates described as the “wide ranging conversation about the power of innovation” that he’d shared with the president-elect is the most important conversation we must all have about our nation’s schools.

Let’s be clear: innovation is not the same thing as the latest fad to hit the classroom. “Inventive spelling” was one such fad some 20 years ago, and it produced a cohort of children whose basic literacy was in certain important respects worse than for children of the 19th century. It was a fad born of the notion that memorizing spelling and grammar were old-fashioned and inhibited creativity, rather than the process of mastering the building blocks of intelligent discourse and the ability to communicate effectively.

No, innovation in education is something very different. Often, it builds on things we’ve only recently discovered about how children learn. It also frequently makes use of technologies that didn’t exist when today’s eight year-olds were born (the first iPad took the world by storm only seven years ago). Educational innovation is at its very best when it combines new knowledge about how we learn (and how different individuals learn) with new technology that takes advantage of that new understanding.

Examples abound: augmented reality (AR) approaches to learning are being pursued by a number of firms, marrying sophisticated digital technology with innovative methods of engaging a child’s interest and excitement. Such approaches are proving especially effective in targeting children who would otherwise fall through the cracks in a traditional learning environment.

An amazing variety of other innovations were on display just this week at the annual New York EdTech conference.

Such innovative work is more likely to find a warm welcome in charter schools and private schools, where fresh approaches to education are already an integral feature of the environment. But receptiveness to innovation is essential in every school if they’re going to provide children with the best possible education, tailored as much as possible to the individual student’s talents and unique abilities.

Naturally enough, non-traditional schools are leading the way. Their entrepreneurial spirit is melding with that of scores of private sector companies working to transform new knowledge and new technology into a new paradigm for education.

As they prepare to disrupt conventional methods of governing in all sectors, President-elect Trump and his team will give new and vital impetus to the movement for educational choice. But what’s important to realize is that choice is less an end in itself, but a powerful means to the most important end: a vibrant and innovative system of schooling that maximizes every child’s opportunity to learn and succeed. The fact that Donald Trump and Bill Gates understand and appreciate that fact means that Betsy DeVos will have the support she needs to transform American education.

Jeanne Allen is the founder and CEO of the Center for Education Reform and a director of NY Ed Tech Week, a global education innovation festival held at New York University.

Filed Under: CER in the News

On the 9th Day of Christmas CER Gave to Me…

December 29, 2016 By

9 Data Dancing!

(8th) Charter Schools Leading
(7th) Opportunity Scholars Expanding
(6th) Parent Power Growing
(5th) State Policy Changing
(4th) Reformie Ladies Lunching
(3rd) A Global Hub for Technology
 (2nd) Model Legislation
And a Nominee for Opportunity!

 

The 9th in our 12-ish days of Christmas series, intended to bring gifts to education reformers everywhere!

 

“Anyone can make data dance,” it’s been said.

That’s a reference often heard in research debates about whether or not someone’s findings are accurate, and usually to suggest that one person’s research is just as valid (or invalid) as another’s.

And yes, anyone can manipulate data, but not everyone uses the gold standard method of evaluations to help guide policy and decision-making. The gold standard is the term of art, for the best science to gauge whether something is working or not.  It uses real subjects, with similar characteristics, and tracks their progress to determine if the one major variable that distinguishes them might be responsible for their relative success or failure.

In the #edreform world that variable is most often a choice of schools. With literally thousands of comments, tweets, articles & the like constantly disparaging school choice results, CER brought together a distinguished panel of academicians and thought leaders this past November to create the first ever repository of “gold standard” guidelines for the education policy community. The forum was EdReform: Revived, and the findings from an ideologically diverse group conclusively demonstrate that not only does choice work for parents, its success from chartering to vouchers is clear and impactful from the student’s time in a choice school through college.

Giving new meaning to data dancing, these nine arbiters of data have demonstrated beyond a doubt that meaningful choice programs result in meaningful progress for kids. So start singing that tune….

Dr. Susan Dynarski
Professor of Education, Public Policy & Economics, Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, School of Education & Dept. of Economics

Mr. Max Eden
Senior Fellow, Manhattan Institute for Policy Research

Dr. Jay Greene
Distinguished Professor & Head of the Department of Education Reform, University of Arkansas

Dr. Michael Horn
Co-Founder & Distinguished Fellow, Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation

Dr. Ted Kolderie
Co-Founder & Senior Fellow, Education Evolving

Mr. Matthew Ladner
Senior Advisor, Policy & Research, The Foundation for Excellence in Education

Dr. Michael Q. McShane
Director of Education Policy, The Show-Me Institute

Ms. Mary Stafford
Co-Founder, TRUEnorth Education Partners

Dr. Marcus Winters
Senior Fellow, Manhattan Institute for Policy Research

 

Filed Under: Commentary Tagged With: ,

On the 8th Day of Christmas CER Gave to Me…

December 28, 2016 By

Charter Schools Leading!

(7th) Opportunity Scholars Expanding
(6th) Parent Power Growing
(5th) State Policy Changing
(4th) Reformie Ladies Lunching
(3rd) A Global Hub for Technology
(2nd) Model Legislation
And a Nominee for Opportunity!

 

The 8th in our 12-ish days of Christmas series, intended to bring gifts to education reformers everywhere!

Charter schools are no longer a marginal experiment in US education.

Charter schools were started as a bipartisan effort to give schools more freedom and flexibility to meet results currently not being attained by district schools. As Ember Reichgott Junge, former Minnesota state senator and author of the first charter school bill in the nation, explains, “Chartering trades regulation for results, bureaucracy for accountability.”

Today, there are more than 6,700 charters enrolling nearly three million children in 43 states and Washington DC, leading the way in outcomes for children. There are arts-based charter schools, online charter schools, charter schools focused on STEAM and STEM curriculums, charter schools focused on the classics, and much more. 

The beauty of charter schools is that there is no “one-size-fits-all” model, and parents and children are free to determine if a school is a good fit – a sharp contrast to the district model.

As a student from Natomas Charter School – the winner in our Back Off My Charter video contest – told HBO comedian John Oliver, “The world realizes that education is an archaic model that needs updating – that’s why we have charter schools. We experiment, challenge and create – we pioneer change in hopes that other traditional schools will follow suit.”

Filed Under: Commentary, Uncategorized Tagged With: ,

On the 7th Day of Christmas CER Gave to Me…

December 27, 2016 By

Opportunity Scholars Expanding!

(6th) Parent Power Growing
(5th) State Policy Changing
(4th) Reformie Ladies Lunching
(3rd) A Global Hub for Technology
(2nd) Model Legislation
And a Nominee for Opportunity!

 

The 7th in our 12-ish days of Christmas series, intended to bring gifts to education reformers everywhere!

by Princess V. Lyles on behalf of Opportunity DC, a project of CER and Democracy Builders

The DC Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP) launched in 2004. This vital choice program provides low-income families with federally funded scholarships to attend independent schools throughout the District of Columbia. Since its inception, over 6,500 families have seen their opportunities expand.

Our holiday wish is to see the program expanded as soon as possible!

Throughout 2016 our team of grassroots organizers worked side by side with families who receive this scholarship. We listened to their stories, heard from their children, and supported their efforts as they plead with Members of Congress to sustain and grow this vital program. We stand behind these amazing families because we know that the OSP works! Graduation rates for OSP recipients surpass ninety percent, compared to 69% in DCPS.

OSP Scholars meeting with Senator Thom Tillis

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to education. As Americans we have choice in almost every aspect of our daily lives…and yet for many low-income families, their zip code alone is the determining factor in the quality or their school. The OSP provides an additional option for DC families who aren’t selected in the lottery for their choice of traditional or public charter schools. The program is a rising tide in DC that has lifted all boats, as all three sectors have seen tremendous academic gains in the past 12 years.

We hope Congress not only sustains and expands the OSP, but that they share the lessons learned from over a decade of true choice in DC with even more students across the nation. Join us in the fight! #EdChoiceMatters.

Filed Under: Commentary Tagged With: , ,

On the Sixth Day of Christmas CER gave to me…

December 22, 2016 By

Parent Power Growing!

(5th) State Policy Changing
(4th) Reformie Ladies Lunching
(3rd) A Global Hub for Technology
(2nd) Model Legislation
And a Nominee for Opportunity!

 

The 6th in our 12-ish days of Christmas series, intended to bring gifts to education reformers everywhere!

Parent Power is growing and evolving – not just in practice,
but in the way we think about and talk about what this term means. The lingo may have changed slightly, but the goal is still the same.

Let us explain.

The Center has more than two decades under its belt working to empower parents. And since 1999, CER has been providing Parent Power!, a program aimed at helping parents make sense of schooling. Parent Power! started out as a quarterly magazine, but as the World Wide Web grew, so did Parent Power!  CER has helped develop and network over 10,000 grassroots groups all across the country.

The Parent Power Index is CER’s vision for the next generation of Parent Power!

Why the switch from the alliterative title? Throughout 2016, The Center for Education Reform reenvisioned its focus and mission and began the important work of reframing the debate about education in America. No longer content just to reform education, CER is now dedicated to expanding educational opportunities that lead to improved economic outcomes for all Americans.

Our vision is a country and states that provide increased, quality educational opportunities that secure our nation’s freedom and future prosperity. At the heart of that prosperity is freedom, and the ability to apply the entrepreneurial spirit of this country to all education, where it is most urgently needed. And at the heart of that freedom is giving parents the fundamental power to choose the kind of education and learning environment that best suits their child’s needs.

Thus we are melding the power of innovation not present when we first helped start the modern EdReform movement, with the importance of opportunity as the lever by which all may participate in the American Dream. We have recast our purpose, values and programs and launched powerful efforts to restore sanity to education reform and expand the reach of all our collective efforts.

And now, more than ever, we expect to be breaking new records with unprecedented supporters of parent power taking over in Washington and in state capitals throughout the country.

Join us in ensuring results are achieved for this renewed, expanded Parent movement in 2017. (And don’t forget to check out a “Greatest Hits” compilation of the work products and results that helped us pave the way for our new vision!)

Filed Under: Commentary Tagged With: , ,

Now That’s What CER Calls Innovation and Opportunity, 2016

December 21, 2016 By

Throughout 2016, the Center for Education Reform reenvisioned its focus and mission and began the important work of reframing the debate about education in America. No longer content just to reform education, CER is now dedicated to expanding educational opportunities that lead to improved economic outcomes for all Americans.

Thus, we are melding the power of innovation not present when we first helped start the modern EdReform movement, with the importance of opportunity as the lever by which all may participate in the American Dream.

Now That’s What CER Calls Innovation and Opportunity, 2016 offers just a few highlights of our impactful year. But we cannot – and will not – stop here. Just as the “Now That’s What I Call Music!” album series is never-ending, the education landscape needs our never-ending and relentless dedication and focus on innovation and opportunity.

Feel free to download a PDF of the report.

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