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Shanker Blog
Rethinking Affirmative Action
Research suggests affirmative action is needed, not so much as compensation for historic injustices, but to counterbalance current biases that impede fairness.
Growth And Consequences In New York City’s School Rating System
New York City's school rating system correctly emphasizes test score progress over how highly students score, but there are serious questions as to the validity of the city's growth measure.
The Weighting Game
The debate over teacher evaluations focuses a great deal on how much test-based measures will count toward teachers' final scores. But this discussion ignores the fact that the importance of any one measure depends a great deal on the other measures.
Staff Matters: Social Resilience In Schools
Diverse social science traditions point to the same insight: Fixing teachers’ workplaces and strengthening teachers’ social networks is far more important than fixing, adding, or removing individual teachers.
Higher Education: Soaring Rhetoric, Skyrocketing Costs
Over the past several years, the mantra of “college for all” has become ubiquitous, at the same time the cost of higher education has increased dramatically.
What's New
Spending by Major Charter Management Organizations in Three States
Do charter schools do more – get better results – with less? If you ask this question, you’ll probably get very strong answers, ranging from the affirmative to the negative, often depending on the person’s overall view of charter schools. The reality, however, is that we really don’t know. There’s still relatively little solid empirical [...]
Does Money Matter in Education?
Over the past few years, due to massive budget deficits, governors, legislators and other elected officials are having to slash education spending. As a result, incredibly, there are at least 30 states in which state funding for 2011 is actually lower than in 2008. In some cases, including California, the amounts are over 20 percent [...]
Policy Brief: The Evidence on Charter Schools and Test Scores
Charter schools are among the most controversial issues in education today, with much of the debate focused on whether they produce better testing results than comparable regular public schools. Too often, these discussions either rely on a tiny handful of studies, or on raw, cross-sectional testing results, which are not valid measures of school effects. [...]
A Discussion on the Challenges Facing Government, Public Services and Public Sector Collective Bargaining in the U.S.
Based on a transcript of a seminar in Washington, D.C. sponsored by the Albert Shanker Institute entitled “The War Against Public Service and Public Employee Unions.” On June 8, 2011, leaders of U.S. public employee unions met in Washington, D.C. to discuss the crisis facing government and public services in the U.S. and to consider strategies and [...]
American Labor in U.S. History Textbooks
Albert Shanker Institute released a report on how labor’s story has been distorted in high school history textbooks.
Worthy of Attention
Democracy
Schools as Battlegrounds: Protecting Students, Teachers, and Schools from Attack
Of the 72 million primary school-age children not currently attending school worldwide, more than half — 39 million — live in countries afflicted by armed conflict.The Global State of Workers' Rights
A report from Freedom House, with help from the Shanker Institute, documents the state of labor rights around the world.
Education
Test Scores Often Misused in Policy Decisions
Misinterpretations of testing data not only plague our education debate, but they are also being used in high-stakes decisions by states and districts.How to Stop the Drop in Verbal Scores
E.D. Hirsch argues that the primary reason for falling SAT scores is not demographics or TV watching, but vast curricular changes, especially in the critical early grades.New School Year Brings Steep Cuts in State Funding for Schools
Elementary and high schools are receiving less state funding than last year in at least 37 states, and in at least 30 states school funding now stands below 2008 levels – often far below.
Labor
Ohio Public Employees Are Not Overcompensated
Jeffrey Keefe of the Economic Policy Institute rebuts a diversion from Senate Bill 5.Little Love for Labor
Coverage of our recent labor textbooks report in The Nation.