Education Policy

To certain parties, the idea of adding more days to the academic calendar may be highly unpopular. Few students would willingly give up the freedom of a lengthy summer vacation. Many teachers also rely on this time to plan for the upcoming school year and take a much-needed deep breath.

Nonetheless, schools nationwide are finding that the benefits of such a plan outweigh the inconveniences. The National Center on Time & Learning, a non-profit research group based in Boston, hosts a database of the nation’s schools and the length of their school year. Today, more than 170 schools have moved to 190-plus-day school years, as com…

Teacher performance has become an incredibly scrutinized statistic in recent decades. With legislation such as No Child Left Behind (NCLB), schools were supposedly given clear and measurable goals for boosting lagging teacher and student performance. In an analytics driven world, this type of performance review is common and helpful. What many have taken issue with, however, are the tools we use to judge this performance. NCLB has raised the stakes for standardized testing. These tests are what measure a district's performance against its neighbors, and a state’s performance against the other 49 states. Standardized tests are designed to ensure that each…

A new study conducted as a joint effort by Harvard, the University of Chicago and UC San Diego has concluded that merit-based pay is an effective way to increase the performance and efficiency of teachers. Merit-based pay, or performance pay, as it is sometimes called, is a somewhat controversial practice that bases a teacher's salary on the success of their students. Merit-based pay …

Harvard University has released a fascinating new report conducted by the Harvard Program on Education Policy and Government and Education Next. The report is called "Achievement Growth: International and U.S. State Trends in Student Performance,” and presents some very intriguing finds. The report, which charts the progress of the United States in closing the international education gap, estimates the learning gains of students in the United States and 48 other countries from 1995 to 2009. In addition, the study examines changes in student performance in 41 states within the United States between 1992 and 2…

Following President Obama's executive action to halt deportation on young, undocumented immigrants pursuing their education, people across the country are trying to find out how their own states handle immigration. One of the issues that has arisen regards undocumented students in higher education: How are admissions criteria affected? Are they eligible for financial aid?

The National Forum on Higher Education for the Public Good surveyed the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (…