The author, a former school board member and currently head of nationwide parent organization, assesses the competition between charter and traditional public schools, concluding that the competition and acrimony among them does not help them deliver a better education. Policies should be focused on helping both types of schools improve education,…

With the strong leadership of Governor Andrew Cuomo, solid support from the state legislature, the Regents, and the New York State Education Department, and the unwavering commitment of Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York City, New York State has made significant strides over the past year in expanding access to high-quality full-day prekindergarten…

Housing choice vouchers provide low-income households with additional income to spend on rental housing in the private market. The assistance vouchers provide is substantial, offering the potential to dramatically expand the neighborhood--and associated public schools--that low-income households can reach. However, existing research on the program…

Independent colleges and universities are cautious adopters of online education for undergraduate students. These institutions seek to balance a tradition of student-focused pedagogy in face-to-face settings and faculty wariness of online courses against the promise of lower instructional costs, changing student expectations, and the potential for…

As participation in online learning continues to expand, higher education institutions must implement policies and procedures to ensure quality at the course, program, and institution levels. In this paper, the authors describe a process that the State University of New York (SUNY) System implemented, utilizing the OLC Quality Scorecard, to help…

Economic growth typically results when businesses, workers, investors, and entrepreneurs are free to compete, innovate, and work to better serve consumers by supplying new or improved goods and services. These incentives govern the marketplace, and when built upon a sound foundation of property rights, the rule of law, open trade, minimal…

Over the past 20 years, both charter schools and pre-kindergarten education have taken on increasingly prominent roles in the schooling of America's children. Charter schools in 43 states now serve more than 2.6 million students--roughly six percent of all students attending public schools. More than two-thirds of four-year-olds attend some form…

Textbooks are a vital component in many higher education contexts. Increasing textbook prices, coupled with general rising costs of higher education have led some instructors to experiment with substituting open educational resources (OER) for commercial textbooks as their primary class curriculum. This article synthesizes the results of 16…

In 1998, George Soros and Herb Sturz seized an opportunity to significantly improve children's lives by founding The After-School Corporation (TASC). They believed that increasing the quality and availability of after-school programs, with the ultimate goal of changing public policy, could transform the potential for many New York City kids who…

Publicly funded pre-K is often touted as a means to narrow achievement gaps, but this goal is less likely to be achieved if poor and/or minority children do not, at a minimum, attend equal quality pre-K as their non-poor, non-minority peers. In this paper, I find large "quality gaps" in public pre-K between poor, minority students and…

School and neighborhood segregation are recognized as pernicious and persistent problems across the United States, originally developed through intentional government policies, and perpetuated today by both public policy and private markets that have adapted to segregated systems of housing, education, and transportation. Housing and school…

While new teachers bring energy and passion into their classrooms and schools, they can find themselves incredibly challenged as they learn how to plan and implement lessons, collect, and use data to inform their instructional practices, build relationships with students and families, manage classroom behavior, and meet the varying academic,…

Industries in every state are struggling to find qualified applicants for jobs, while job seekers too often find they lack the skills needed to enter or move along a career pathway to a good job. Preparing a workforce that is poised to meet the needs of businesses and ultimately to make the state more economically competitive is a top priority for…

Strong evidence of the benefits of high-quality early childhood education for all children, and of the economic returns for the nation, has led to the rapid expansion of publicly funded prekindergarten (pre-K) in recent years and an explosion of interest among the public and policymakers in how best to increase access to high-quality early…

This report examines the structural divide between for-credit and noncredit postsecondary education and the problems it presents for people seeking better jobs with higher pay. It highlights innovative ways that some community colleges are trying to bridge the gap nationally--creating more seamless pathways between credit and noncredit…