The Thomas B. Fordham Institute

Ohio Charter News Weekly – 9.18.26

Fri, 09/18/2026 - 13:16

Stories featured in Ohio Charter News Weekly may require a paid subscription to read in full. Now the actual news Last week, we were anticipating announcement of the winners of federal charter school grant funds here in Ohio. Today, we have the actual winners! Congratulations to all 9 schools that will receive Charter School Facilities Incentive grants and all 4 schools that will receive 2026 Charter Schools Program (CSP) grants. Philanthropy Here’s a look at the Haslam family—owners of the… Read More

Gadfly Bites 9/18/26—Professor Kogan says: Always read the appendixes

Fri, 09/18/2026 - 11:07

News stories featured in Gadfly Bites may require a paid subscription to read in full. You have been warned. More report card analysis today, focusing generally on big picture stats including chronic absenteeism. Coverage includes our own Aaron Churchill’s downbeat assessment that “At its current rate of improvement, Ohio will return to pre-pandemic chronic absenteeism rates sometime during the 2030s.” Yowza. The OCJ also highlights a couple of below-the-line stats, including numbers of… Read More

What we’re reading: September 18, 2026

Fri, 09/18/2026 - 09:00

WHAT WE’RE READING Alec Thompson looks at how Scotland abandoned its Great Tradition, a curriculum centered on content knowledge within a common core of subjects. Writing before the latest PISA scores showed Scotland tanking across the board compared to England, Alec discusses how abandoning a common course of rigorous study in favor of skills-based learning led to declining student achievement. It’s a fascinating history lesson on Scottish schools and another sign that England was right to… Read More

Cheers and Jeers: September 18, 2026

Fri, 09/18/2026 - 09:00

CHEERS Scholarship Prep South Bay charter school reports a 0 percent chronic absenteeism rate among a substantial number of children without stable housing. Jason Watts, Scholarship Prep’s CEO, shared the school’s strategies with Jed Wallace’s CharterFolk, noting that “the 54 scholars…didn’t stop experiencing homelessness because they enrolled at Scholarship Prep. Their circumstances didn’t change, but the support around them did.” — Also on the good news front: Sarah Schwartz discusses new … Read More

We’ve been treating college as a career plan, but it’s failing too many students

Fri, 09/18/2026 - 00:01

In one of Denver’s wealthiest suburbs, where median family income tops $150,000 and nearly every kid is expected to go to college, students are now lining up for trade certifications. Their parents aren’t worried; in fact, most of them are championing the move. For decades, Americans have been treating college as a career plan, spurred by the “college for all” movement—a decades-long educational and political push that aimed to make a four-year college degree the standard expectation and… Read More

What teachers should learn: An alternative graduate school curriculum

Fri, 09/18/2026 - 00:00

Earlier this month, I released a report reviewing coursework at ten graduate schools of education across the country. I won’t rehearse the findings at length here. Think lots of “queering education” and postcolonial theory and little phonics or classroom management. Now I like to believe that these “spot the woke” exercises are useful insofar as they expose malpractice and ideological drift. They’re most certainly fun. But I also acknowledge the old truism that criticism is easier than… Read More

College or career? On false positives and negatives

Thu, 09/17/2026 - 00:05

The backlash against the “college for all” movement was overdue. For too long, high schools treated a four-year degree as the default destination for too many students, without paying enough attention to how well students were prepared to embark on that pathway, the quality and costs of the colleges they might apply to, or the availability of alternatives that might be a better fit. But today we risk overcorrecting. The danger is replacing that overly broad default assumption with an overly… Read More

Student AI use is about much more than school rules

Thu, 09/17/2026 - 00:04

“The turbulent AI era is here. The choices we make now are critical.” So begins Bill Gates, calling for the world to wise up to the risks we face as the technology rapidly approaches capabilities beyond human imagination and control. It is not hyperbole to say that the stakes are high. The Pope has warned about the erosion of human ability to think. An Anthropic researcher publicly quit, citing concerns that the AI industry is acting recklessly given the “civilizational stakes” of its work.… Read More

The quickest way to expand school choice is to fill empty private school seats

Thu, 09/17/2026 - 00:03

Private-school choice advocates, particularly in red states, have a lot to be excited about right now. Since 2020, more than two dozen states have either expanded or created state-level choice programs, which means that 18 states now have choice programs that are either universal or near universal and 27 have already elected to participate in the new federal scholarship tax credit, which will take effect in 2027. Taken together, these policy developments have created an unprecedented… Read More

What state standards look like on the NAEP scale

Thu, 09/17/2026 - 00:02

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) regularly publishes reports using results from NAEP testing to compare the proficiency standards that states set for their students. Since standards vary across states, the results of state assessments can’t be used to directly compare students’ progress from place to place. But by placing a state standard or cut score onto the NAEP scale, which is a common metric, a NAEP-equivalent score of that standard can be generated and compared across… Read More

How money and time shape children’s early advantages

Thu, 09/17/2026 - 00:01

The importance of childhood investments to the trajectory of life is commonly accepted, but less is known about the size and sources of disparities in these investments. A recent study in Nature Communications sought to assess differences in childhood human capital investments across different racial and socioeconomic demographics. To expand the scope of investments across multiple areas of children’s lives, the researchers combine data from ten nationally representative surveys from 2010 to… Read More

Ohio takes a big step forward in tracking students’ workforce outcomes

Wed, 09/16/2026 - 10:54

Last month, the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce (DEW) unveiled a pair of brand-new resources that provide a snapshot of education and workforce outcomes for the state’s graduates. The dashboards, which were developed via a partnership among several groups[1], connect three primary data sources: the Education Management Information System (public and private high school graduation records), the National Student Clearinghouse (enrollment and graduation records for two-year, four-year,… Read More

Gadfly Bites 9/16/26—Inching forward

Wed, 09/16/2026 - 09:38

News stories featured in Gadfly Bites may require a paid subscription to read in full. You have been warned. School and district report cards were released yesterday morning. The overall takeaway is that things are generally trending in the right direction—early literacy, math and English test scores, and absenteeism—but Ohio is still some distance away from where we were in 2019…and the climb back remains agonizingly slow. (Cleveland.com, 9/14/26) Fordham’s Aaron Churchill said in a… Read More

Fordham Institute statement on Ohio school report cards

Tue, 09/15/2026 - 15:04

Today, the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce released school report cards for the 2025–26 school year. Data include state math and reading exam results as well as high school graduation and chronic absenteeism rates. They also feature star ratings that summarize schools’ performance through an “overall” rating and six “component” ratings. “The state’s report card has long provided a vital checkup on the academic progress of Ohio students,” said Aaron Churchill, Ohio Research… Read More

Gadfly Bites 9/14/26—The calculus of asterisks

Mon, 09/14/2026 - 09:53

News stories featured in Gadfly Bites may require a paid subscription to read in full. You have been warned. Lots of schools and districts out there are apparently bracing for lower report card scores when data are officially released tomorrow. (They have seen preliminary info already) This coverage, featuring comments from our report card guru Aaron Churchill, focuses specifically on changes made to the Early Literacy Component which the state teachers union believes will serve to lower… Read More

Ohio Charter News Weekly – 9.11.26

Fri, 09/11/2026 - 14:40

Stories featured in Ohio Charter News Weekly may require a paid subscription to read in full. News about news The Ohio Department of Education and Workforce (DEW) will soon be announcing the winners of $105 million in grant funding from the federal Charter Schools Program (CSP). As this coverage from Cleveland.com relates, 22 applicants were vying for funds in two categories: existing high-quality schools looking to expand, and schools looking to open new high-quality models in the state.… Read More

Gadfly Bites 9/11/26—The favorite side-gig of cowpokes and weavers

Fri, 09/11/2026 - 10:19

News stories featured in Gadfly Bites may require a paid subscription to read in full. You have been warned. Lots to talk about today; so let’s get right to it. Aaron Churchill is on hand to discuss Ohio’s $105 million grant funding from the federal Charter Schools Program grant program, the recipients of which will be announced by the state soon. Twenty-two applicants were vying for funds in two categories—existing high-quality schools looking to expand, and schools looking to open… Read More

What we’re reading: September 11, 2026

Fri, 09/11/2026 - 09:00

WHAT WE’RE READING Jocelyn Gecker shares Gallup’s new polling results, which show a sharp rise in dissatisfaction among U.S. adults. Once again, parents tend to think more highly of their own kids’ schools than the system as a whole: About two-thirds of parents with school-age children say they are satisfied with their child’s education, which is also a low point in the trend—parents haven’t had a similarly discontented view since 2013—but double the 32 percent satisfaction with U.S.… Read More

Cheers and Jeers: September 11, 2026

Fri, 09/11/2026 - 09:00

CHEERS Ben Sasse extols the virtues of football as “a character-forming institution that channels strength” during a time when boys struggle with factory-model schooling and the temptations and distractions of the digital world. In a world of instant gratification, it teaches perseverance through early practices and aching muscles. In an era of isolation, football creates community. It forms brotherhood through both misery and joy. In a culture of passivity, football privileges action. In… Read More

The strange education legacy of 9/11

Fri, 09/11/2026 - 00:01

I was teaching third grade in California when I heard the news on the way to school that a plane had collided with one of the World Trade Center towers. Twenty-five years later, many Americans, including my daughter, have no firsthand memory of that fateful day—the tragedy it wrought or the unity it inspired. For those who lived through it, the passage of time may have also changed how the attacks and their legacy are understood. These were the early days of the internet, before smartphones and… Read More