As part of our Districts Rising publications, we sat down with new Boston Public Schools Superintendent Tommy Chang to talk about his vision for the 56,650-student school system. Chang came to BPS after being an instructional superintendent in the Los...
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When Mike Petrilli of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute declared an “accountability design competition” on January 5, 2016, with a submission deadline of January 26 and a 2,000 word count limit, we jumped right in. The competition asked for submissions...
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When the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) became law in 2015, it granted states unprecedented authority to innovate and create new accountability systems. In this brief we outline our vision for what a next-generation state accountability system could look like....
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Happy New Year from Education First! We hope you had a restful, joyous and peaceful holiday season. Now that the champagne bottles have been recycled, we are focused on what the future holds for students, educators and school systems in...
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Over three years, Education First has supported grantmaking and technical assistance to a network of grantee local and state advocacy organizations as they engaged in the critical tasks of educating state boards, legislators governors and the media; identifying and supporting teacher advocates; and engaging parents as new tests are adopted and administered and as score reports are released.
In some Race to the Top states, too often educators viewed new educator evaluation systems as burdensome mandates whose main purpose was to fire underperformers – and many evaluators lacked the capacity to differentiate ratings and connect evaluation to teacher support.
Try as they might, Ohio policymakers cannot regulate schools into excellence. Regrettably, however, heaping top-down regulations onto public schools has been the conventional approach taken by policymakers in Ohio and elsewhere.
Lackluster leadership and little information have hijacked the roll-out of the Smarter Balanced test in Oregon’s public schools this spring. As the legislative session begins wrapping up and school leaders start planning for next year, let’s set aside the hysteria...
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Education First and Public Impact are supporting a mid-sized urban district with a school turnaround model that puts excellent teaching and new teacher career pathways at the center of school redesign.
As the state of Ohio looks to deregulate its education system in favor of for individualization and customization, our brief looks at the ways Ohio policymakers can use this new flexibility to increase student achievement. Based on research of other...
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