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Cogs in the Machine: Big Data, Common Core, and National Testing
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The era of “Big Data” has overtaken the field of education. New technology promises to transform education, facilitating previously unimagined learning opportunities and, from a purely administrative standpoint, allowing educators to complete in seconds what used to consume laborious hours.
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How to Address Common Core’s Reading Standards: Licensure Tests for K-6 Teachers
The purpose of this report is to provide information to state legislators, boards of education, and departments of education on why they should adopt a stand-alone and comprehensive reading licensure test addressing Common Core’s reading standards. We do not tell states what test to adopt. Rather, we describe the features they should consider before they decide on a test that these prospective teachers should be required to pass if the state does not already require a reading test adequately addressing all of Common Core’s reading standards
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Common Core’s Validation: A Weak Foundation for a Crooked House
The final version of the Common Core standards was released in June 2010. Also released at the same time was a report containing the signatures of 24 members of the Common Core Validation Committee, a committee appointed in the summer of 2009 to review the various drafts of the standards and to assure the public that the standards in mathematics and English language arts were research-based, rigorous, and internationally competitive.
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The Dying of the Light: How Common Core Damages Poetry Instruction
The fate of poetry in the school curriculum may seem like an odd subject for a Pioneer Institute report. But we are struck by the absence of comments on what constitutes literary study in the schools from organizations that might be expected to have a professional interest in the school curriculum (e.g., National Council of Teachers of English, International Reading Association, Association of Supervisors and Curriculum Developers) and from higher education sources that might be expected to have a discipline-based interest in the topic (e.g., American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Modern Language Association).
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Testimony to the Missouri Elementary and Secondary Education Committee
Testimony to the Missouri Elementary and Secondary Education Committee provided in February 2014.
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Testimony to the Kansas House Standing Committee on Education
Testimony to the Kansas House Standing Committee on Education in February 2014.
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Matching Students to Excellent Tutors: How a Massachusetts Charter School Bridges Achievement Gaps
The pages that follow describe the history and impact of Match Corps in an attempt to capture this important educational innovation. This paper raises and answers questions about why Match’s tutoring models are so uncommonly effective and what that means for their potential impact on education beyond Match and beyond Boston. Finally, this work ends with recommendations for what policymakers and others should learn from Match, which has changed the lives of many students and stands to impact perceptions of what really makes a difference in schools.
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Matching Students to Excellent Teachers: How a Massachusetts Charter School Innovates with Teacher Preparation
Known throughout the Commonwealth and the nation as a network of high-performing charter public schools, Match Education takes a highly specific approach to education reform. Match aims to help students who have been traditionally underserved in the public school system achieve at very high levels, and it does so by taking a structured, ‘No Excuses’ approach to education.
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School Vouchers in Washington, DC: Lessons for Massachusetts
"School Vouchers in Washington, DC: Lessons for Massachusetts" was presented by Patrick Wolf in 2013.
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School Vouchers in Washington, D.C.: Lessons for Massachusetts
This report tells the story of the Opportunity Scholarship Program, paying special attention to lessons that can be applied to educational improvement in the urban areas of Massachusetts. Section 1 describes the design and initial implementation of the program. Section 2 outlines the main features of the rigorous experimental evaluation of the program’s impacts on participating students and parents. The main results of that evaluation are presented in Section 3. Section 4 concludes by discussing the implications of the OSP results for possible school choice reforms in Massachusetts.
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Charter Schools in New Orleans: Lessons for Massachusetts
While the remarkable turnaround in New Orleans was accelerated - and perhaps even made possible - by the very storm that nearly destroyed the city, it still has education experts looking for lessons that might be applied elsewhere. This paper looks at the public school reform efforts of New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina and its impact on student achievement. It also offers recommendations on how urban public schools in Massachusetts, which historically underperforms the commonwealth’s suburban school districts, could benefit from New Orleans’ experience.
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A Republic of Republics: How Common Core Undermines State and Local Autonomy over K-12 Education
By signing on to national standards and the assessments that will accompany them, participating states have ceded their autonomy to design and oversee the implementation of their own standards and tests. The implications of ceding this autonomy are varied. Not only do some states risk sacrificing high quality standards for national standards that may be less rigorous, but all states are sacrificing their ability to inform what students learn.
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Lowering the Bar: How Common Core Math Fails to Prepare High School Students for STEM
This paper began as a response to the attempt by Professor Jason Zimba, a lead writer of Common Core’s mathematics standards, to revise in 2013 what he said about the meaning of “college readiness” in 2010. Zimba’s original comments on this topic were uttered at the March 2010 meeting of the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education. In the official minutes of this meeting, we find the following: “Mr. Zimba said that the concept of college readiness is minimal and focuses on nonselective colleges.”
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Looking Back to Move Forward: Charter School Authorizing in Massachusetts
Thus 20 years after the charter school movement began in Massachusetts, it is at a crossroads. This paper aims to point the Commonwealth in the right direction by exploring the history of charter school authorizations, with an eye to understanding how the current authorization process both sets Massachusetts apart from other states and stands to constrain the continued success of the charter school movement.
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Common Core Facts
Who developed Common Core's standards? Three private organizations in Washington DC: the National Governors Association (NGA), the Council for Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), and Achieve, Inc.—all funded for this purpose by a fourth private organization, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
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Claims and Facts about Common Core
Successful removal of the Common Core State Standards requires parents, educators, policymakers, and other stakeholders to have facts about what the standards are and what they are not. The following Claims and Facts address Common Core myths about the development, intent, content, and implementation of the standards.
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One-Page Primer on Common Core: Quality
When President Obama unveiled his “Race to the Top” (RttT) initiative in 2009, the idea was to award $4.35 billion in federal grant money to states to replicate policies that boosted student achievement. That quickly changed and the federal money was instead used to persuade states to adopt administration-backed nationalized K-12 English and math standards and tests.
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Shortchanging the Future: The Crisis of History and Civics in American Schools
The collective grasp of basic history and civics among American students is alarmingly weak. Beyond dispiriting test results on the National Assessment of Educational Progress and other measures, poor performance in history and civics portends a decay of the knowledge, skills, and dispositions needed for a lifetime of active, engaged citizenship.
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Lincoln’s Legacy for Our Time: A Transcript of Remarks Delivered by Civil War Historian James McPherson
When Abraham Lincoln breathed his last at 7:22 a.m. on April 15, 1865, Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton intoned: "Now he belongs to the ages."
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Online Learning 101: Starting a Virtual School And Its Challenges
Since the late 1990s, when the first fulltime virtual schools appeared, educators, IT professionals and government officials have been working through the practical issues involving technology, personnel, administration and funding. Around the country adoption of online learning has occurred in varying degrees. States such as Florida and California have been leaders, while elsewhere specific school districts have aggressively embraced the new model.
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Preserving Charter School Autonomy
Three years ago, with great incentive from the federal government, the Massachusetts state legislature raised the cap on charter schools in some underperforming districts across the Commonwealth. The move was welcomed by parents, students, and other concerned citizens in those communities—communities where charters have provided a high quality alternative to the traditional public system.
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Hands-On Achievement: Why Massachusetts Vocational Technical Schools Have Low Dropout Rates
More than one million students drop out of high school in the United States each year, setting them on courses of lost income, diminished health, and increased odds of incarceration. Collectively, their decision costs the nation hundreds of billions of dollars in lost revenue, lower economic activity and increased need for social services.
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The Rise and Fall of the Study of American History in Massachusetts
Across Massachusetts public schools, history teachers believe that the study of U.S. history through the grades is in jeopardy if not in a poor state altogether.1 To judge from recent national tests, students are graduating from the state’s high schools as well as from high schools across the country with little understanding of our nation’s history, its founding principles, its major institutions, and the central figures and events that shaped who we are as a people.
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“And You Shall Teach Them Diligently”: The History and Status of Jewish Day Schools in Massachusetts
Beginning in the late 1930s, the confluence of a number of social, ideological, religious, and demographic factors led to the rise of Orthodox day schools in Boston and elsewhere. In the ensuing decades, the Jewish community migrated to the Boston suburbs and even further to the west.
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Enrollment Trends in Massachusetts: An Update
Since 2003, enrollment in public schools in Massachusetts has fallen by 35,000 students, or 4%. The decline has occurred even while enrollment in the rest of the country has increased. The early years of this enrollment decline were documented in a Pioneer Institute report in 2008.
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Transcript: Why Huck Finn Matters: Classic Literature in Schooling
I have heard, read, or seen these statements within the last year. What fascinated and concerned me then and continues to fascinate and concern me today is the level, the preponderance, and the consistency of this vitriol. I have come to a singular conclusion: race continues to be a primary way many people construct, deconstruct, and understand meaning in our country today. Race and the role it plays in America's history continue to impact every individual, everyday.
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Testimony to the Utah 2012 Education Interim Committee
Testimony to the Utah 2012 Education Interim Committee in August 2012.
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Pioneer Institute Report on History in Schools
"Pioneer Institute Report on History in Schools" was presented in 2012.
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A Changing Bureaucracy: The History of the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education
The first part of this report looks closely at the background, structure, and function of the DESE in an attempt to understand how the agency has operated, how it currently operates, and what challenges, if any, the structure and operation of DESE pose for its ability to effectively exercise its increased authority. The second part recounts the recent history of the Department, especially its role in implementing the first wave of education reform, which came in the form of the 1993 Massachusetts Education Reform Act. In doing so, this work uncovers some of DESE's strengths and weaknesses in an attempt to highlight potential obstacles to successfully implementing the second wave of reform.
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