Education Policy Blog: Hosted by the Forum on the Future of Public Education

New models of funding higher education are currently being considered in debates throughout America. One recent debate concerns funding through “Pay It Forward” (PIF) programs. Since 2013, at least 24 states have considered legislation on PIF models of higher education finance. While details differ, the rapid proliferation of PIF program proposals shows a willingness to move from the current syst…

Cross-post by Larry Cuban As public charter schools have grown across the country since the early 1990s to more than 6,400 still largely located in big cities (there are 100,000 regular schools) , the debate over their existence, quality, and direction has continued unabated. Charters, enrolling over 2.5 million students (over 50 million attend U.S. public schools) continue to expand mostly in ur…

Webinar/Seminar: Dr. Kristen Buras – Charter Schools, Race, and Urban Space Where the Market Meets Grassroots Resistance (Tue, April 7th, 1pm (PDT)/3pm (CDT)) Dear colleagues and friends, You are cordially invited to join the upcoming webinar/seminar on the Marketization and Privatization in Education seminar series. The next session, with Dr. Kristen Buras (bio below), is on Charter Schools, Rac…

Recently, Dr. Christopher Lubienski and I were pleased to have our research , regarding media influence in education, published in the journal Education Policy Analysis Archives (EPAA). Better yet, and with irony in light of study topic and findings, [1] our work generated some media influence of its own. Organizations such as Media Matters and the Australian (see here and here ) covered the arti…

Networks of intermediary organizations (IONs) are penetrating the education policy space with a range of ideas and “evidence,” brokering knowledge to policy actors and the public at large. Increasingly, we are observing IOs gaining traction as key players in advocacy and policymaking in the U.S. public education sector around tenuous reforms such as charter schools, merit pay, vouchers, and Paren…

Among the myriad battles that comprise the existential wars over the fate of higher education in the 21 st century, the controversy over Massive Open Online Courses—or MOOCs—seems to have all the elements of a Tolkienesque epic. Like the protagonists ensconced in the mighty fortress of Helm’s Deep, many traditional universities view their educational way of life under assault from massive hordes …

The Forum on the Future of Public Education presents: The Impact of Privatization/Marketization on Teacher Preparation & the Teaching Profession April 13-14 Alice Campbell Alumni Center Detailed Schedule Below Research Presented By: Tina Trujillo , University of California, Berkley Tina Trujillo, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Education. She earned her Ph.D. i…

Recently, the media and internet has been blowing up over the higher education [HE] budget cuts proposed by Tea-Party associated governors: Scott Walker (WI), Bobby Jindal (LA), Doug Ducey (AZ), and Bruce Rauner (IL). However, these cuts should not be surprising to anyone as these governors ran on platforms clearly indicating they would be balancing budgets without generating additional revenue t…

Cross Post from the Scholars Strategy Network . At all levels from kindergarten to twelfth grade, American schools are making huge investments in digital education – with proponents often touting digital tools as a way to close achievement gaps and improve learning opportunities for economically and academically disadvantaged students. Digital instruction – using computers, netbooks, or handheld …

Join us on Thursday, March 5, for two public events that are part of the 2015 Cline Symposium, “ Restoring the Promise of Higher Education. ” The Cline Symposium is a major campus-wide event that draws an audience of nearly 200 students, faculty, and distinguished alumni from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign to discuss significant issues affecting the governance and welfare of democrat…

Last week the state of North Carolina expanded the use virtual education within the state.  The State Board of Education approved its first fulltime degree granting virtual charter schools – Two virtual charter school were approved ; North Carolina Virtual Academy which is affiliated with K12, Inc ., and North Carolina Connections Academy .  North Carolina is not new to virtual schooling; the cur…

Cross Posted from the Salt Lake Tribune On Jan. 9, President Obama outlined a plan to make "community colleges free for responsible students across America." Inspired by new policies underway in Tennessee and Chicago, the White House proposal calls for the federal government to pay three quarters of students' tuition and would require states to kick in the remaining quarter. In return, states are…

The fiftieth anniversary of the ESEA is coming up in April of 2015, and we’ll be hearing a lot about it – you know, “looking forward, looking back.” Make no mistake, I adore history and historians of the federal role. I like to kvetch about NCLB’s problems as much as the next College of Education faculty member. But my intellectual commitments are increasingly to policy analysis aimed at the futu…

Notwithstanding the great public relations machine that the charter school movement uses, scholars continue to debate the role of charter schools in the United States. Research suggests that charter schools are more segregated than traditional public schools , do not typically outperform traditional public schools in terms of academics and have a slew of issues in terms of financial accountabilit…

Prior to a grand jury failing to indict the officer who shot Michael Brown in Ferguson , Missouri this summer, Richard Rothstein released an important report examining the broader structural contexts that make Ferguson, like many inner-ring suburbs, likely to provide limited opportunities for its young people . His work connects nicely with more contemporary work I’ve done examining the opportuni…

This is the question that we asked in a recent policy brief that was released through the Wisconsin Center for the Advancement of Postsecondary Education . This policy brief is based on our prior work on cross-national higher education policy diffusion that considered postsecondary enrollment levels , completion levels , and the role of different types of tuition systems . In our work, we noticed…

I share my preliminary study on parental choice in San Antonio, TX as a comparative to my previous study of parental choice in post-apartheid. Both these studies are important because they both seek to inquire into the nature of parental choices, a growing phenomenon that presents distinct challenges and possibilities for their children. While there is abundance of research about African American…

In my previous blog , I argued that since the Great Recession there had been a strong relationship between the declines of state appropriations operations revenue and undergraduate international student enrollment within public research universities within the Big Ten. I also argued that the public is often ill-informed through the articles and stories via mass media mediums because these outlets…

cross posted from Public Schools Central In a recent posting on his Education Week blog “Straight Up,” Rick Hess resurrected Reid Lyon’s now tired assertion that in order to reform education. a good place to start is blowing up colleges of education. Only now Rick Hess thinks he has a better idea — a better “path.” Apparently, Hess spent some time with a few dozen education school deans. He fo…

The role of Intrinsic Motivation (IM) Theory in teaching has been growing in education research. This is particularly important as a tool for education reform that goes beyond training teachers on how to improve teaching methods but also focuses on learning. IM, as a new learning resource, is student-centered and encourages new teaching methods yet still being mindful of standards. It is for that…