Michael J. Petrilli

Governor Mitt Romney's long-awaited education address happened yesterday, but the most telling news broke the day before, when we learned that Margaret Spellings is no longer one of his education advisors. She quit on principle, I assume, because Romney decided to turn the page on No...

A clique of conservative groups is pushing the message that tomorrow's ALEC vote is part of a "growing movement" against federal intrusion vis-à-vis the Common Core standards. There's a problem with that line of reasoning: ALEC is already on record against federal intrusion into education vis-à-vis...

Three cheers for California's governor, state superintendent, and state board chair, for applying for a waiver from the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (aka No Child Left Behind) that doesn't kowtow to Washington.

While Jerry Brown, Tom Torlakson, and Mike Kirst deserve plenty of criticism for their indifference to education...

Despite some signs of economic recovery, school districts nationwide continue to struggle mightily. The combination of a depressed property tax base and built-in cost escalators produces recurring gaps that demand budget cuts every year just to keep doing the same old thing ... and the long-term outlook isn't much brighter.

I've been in favor of results-based accountability pretty much forever. And for good reason: before the era of academic standards, tests, and consequences, all manner of well-intended reforms failed to gain traction in the classroom. New curricula came and went; states and districts injected additional professional development into the schools;...

The conventional wisdom among reformers today is that "we know what to do, but we don't have the political will to do it." I'd frame it differently: We increasingly have good policies in place, but we don't know how to turn them into reality. And because most policies aren't self-implementing,...

UPDATE: This fantastic Gotham Schools article explains that New York's rating system was designed to guarantee that "effective" and "ineffective" teachers would be found all over the city. Which renders the New York Times story--and my post--basically moot.
Still, this wasn't the first bit of evidence showing that...

A few weeks ago, a couple of Japanese scholars dropped by the Fordham Institute offices for a visit. This happens every so often -- delegations of foreigners make the Washington ed-policy circuit, seeking a better understanding of America's schools. As with most Asian visitors I meet, these gentlemen were curious...

With a week to go until the February 21 deadline for the second round of Secretary Duncan's ESEA Waiverpalooza, states nationwide are studying the results of round one to figure out what federal officials did -- and didn't -- approve. And they are asking themselves a question: Is it even...

The entire school reform movement is predicated on a hypothesis: boosting student achievement, as measured by standardized tests, will enable greater prosperity, both for individuals and for the country as a whole. More specifically, improving students' reading, math, and science knowledge and skills will help poor children climb out of...

Democrats across and beyond the nation's capital -- in the administration, on Capitol Hill, in advocacy groups, and in think tanks -- are up in arms about the ESEA reauthorization proposals released by House GOP leaders on Friday....

The federal law that everybody loves to hate turns ten on Sunday. Here's what to think about it:

1. It worked! As Mark Schneider shows in his recent paper for Fordham -- and as Eric Hanushek and others demonstrated before him -- poor, minority, and low-achieving...

After its big referendum victory last week, Ohio teachers union vice president Bill Leibensperger said "There has always been room to talk. That's what collective bargaining is about. You bring adults around a table to talk about serious issues." He voiced an argument made by union supporters through the fight...

I glimpsed a quote from Kati Haycock yesterday, kicking off the Education Trust annual conference, saying that we can't let "bad parenting" be an excuse for poor educational results. She's absolutely right, of course. It's not like our schools are running on all cylinders (especially schools serving poor kids), and...

Liberal reformers and prominent editorial pages are raging mad about the Harkin-Enzi bill's supposedly weak approach to accountability in its ESEA update. Are they right to be? And is it true that Republicans have become teacher union stooges when it comes to federal education...

It's official: Federal policymakers across the political spectrum are finally willing to admit that Congress overreached when it passed No Child Left Behind and put Uncle Sam in the driver's seat on education accountability. First there was (Republican) Senator Lamar Alexander's proposal to get the feds out of...

Follower's of Fordham's work know that for the better part of three years, we've been pushing an approach to federal education policy that we call "Reform Realism" -- a pro-school reform orientation leavened with a realistic view of what the federal government can get right in education. Its...

For months -- no, years -- the ESEA discussion has been nothing short of maddening. While many pundits decry the lack of a "clear route to reauthorization," an obvious bipartisan solution has been sitting there, ready for the picking. It goes something like this: Step away from federal heavy-handedness around...

If you step back from day-to-day vitriol that characterizes the current education policy "debate" and glimpse the larger picture, two worldviews on education reform emerge. One, articulated by the likes of Linda Darling-Hammond, Marc Tucker, David Cohen and others, obsesses about curricular "coherence" and the lack thereof in...