Education

Today’s children, especially those from poor families, face multiple challenges to getting the education they need to succeed in life. These challenges reinforce existing inequalities in living standards, making it quite difficult for disadvantaged students to break out of the cycle of poverty.

Ensuring that every child gets an education necessary to realize his or her full potential and succeed in life should be a top priority for the nation. Achieving that goal, however, requires more than a narrow focus on standardized test results. Too often, policy makers promote misguided policies and blame schools and teachers for low performance and achievement gaps. Guaranteeing an adequate education will require improving a child’s overall quality of life, access to health care, and community support using policies that are not traditionally associated with education. Poverty reduction and improved health care are two important prerequisites. It is not surprising that eight years after the No Child Left Behind Act required all public schools to measure student performance through standardized tests, many schools are simply “teaching to the test” while neglecting the well-rounded education students need, and achievement gaps have changed little.

Education is one of the core areas of focus for EPI, which has produced a large body of research on the factors that make schools successful, support teachers in their work, and ensure a well-rounded and adequate education for every child. In partnership with the Broader, Bolder Approach to Education Campaign, EPI recommends a new national education policy that would take a more comprehensive measure of student performance.

 

What’s new:

 

Redesigning Teacher Pay—A System for the Next Generation of Educators

Susan Moore Johnson and John P. Papay

Series editors Sean P. Corcoran and Joydeep Roy

This volume—the second in The Economic Policy Institute Series on Alternative Teacher Compensation Systems—provides a simple framework for designing and evaluating performance pay plans for teachers. Using this framework, authors Susan Moore Johnson and John P. Papay propose a simple, yet powerful plan for reforming compensation for the next generation of teachers.

Teachers, Performance Pay, and Accountability

Scott J. Adams, John Heywood, and Richard Rothstein

Series editors Sean P. Corcoran and Joydeep Roy

In this book, the first in the Economic Policy Institute Series on Alternative Teacher Compensation Systems, the authors argue that the use of merit pay systems based on quantitative measures is fraught with perverse consequences that often thwart the larger goal of improving the quality of services and outcomes, and that such systems are not widespread among private-sector professionals.

School Accountability: A Broader, Bolder Approach

This report from the Broader, Bolder Approach to Education Campaign makes a series of recommendations for a new national education policy that would take a more comprehensive measure of student performance.

Education Accountability Policy in the New Administration

Pedro Noguera and Richard Rothstein

The authors argue that federal education accountability policy is fundamentally flawed because it creates incentives for educators and other policy makers to myopically focus all effort on raising test scores, while ignoring critical thinking, citizenship development, and other essential areas of education.  

Grading Education: Getting Accountability Right

Richard Rothstein, Rebecca Jacobsen, and Tamara Wilder

In this book the authors argue that accountability policies like No Child Left Behind have narrowed the curriculum, misidentified both failing and successful schools, and established irresponsible expectations for what schools can accomplish. They outline a new kind of accountability plan, one that relies on higher-quality testing, focuses on professional evaluation, and builds on capacities we already possess.

The Hidden Costs of the Housing Crisis: The Long-Term Impact of Housing Affordability and Quality on Young Children’s Odds of Success

Joydeep Roy, Melissa Maynard, and Elaine Weiss

In recent years, researchers have found substantial evidence linking housing to a range of influences and outcomes with long-lasting impacts that are particularly critical to the health and education of children. This report, examines the links between housing and education in the United States, focusing on implications for cost-effective policy that has a real impact.

The Case for Collaborative School Reform

Ray Marshall

The Case for Collaborative School Reform argues that the most successful school reforms will be undertaken collaboratively between teachers, school district officials, and union leaders, focusing on the superior results of the reform efforts of the Toledo School District and the Toledo Federation of Teachers.

Using Administrative Data to Estimate Graduation Rates: Challenges, Proposed Solutions, and their Pitfalls

Joydeep Roy and Lawrence Mishel

In this paper the authors take a closer look at the different measures of high school graduation that have recently been proposed and argue that the nature of the variables used by researchers requires caution in calculating graduation rates, and the adjustments that have been proposed often impart significant downward bias to the estimates.

The Teaching Penalty: Teacher Pay Losing Ground

Sylvia A. Allegretto, Lawrence Mishel, and Sean P. Corcoran

This book expands upon the research published in How Does Teacher Pay Compare?

(2004) by providing new insights and updated data on the erosion of relative teacher pay. Earnings gains that appeared to benefit all college-educated workers during the late 1990s actually bypassed teachers, leaving them making less and less by comparison, a pay disadvantage that is not offset even when benefits are taken into account.

A Report Card on Comprehensive Equity: Racial Gaps in the Nation’s Youth Outcomes
Richard Rothstein, Rebecca Jacobsen, and Tamara Wilder

Education and youth development consists of more than basic skills. In this study the authors estimate the black-white achievement gaps in aspects of education and youth development that are generally neglected in common discourse—including critical thinking, social skills and a work ethic, citizenship and community responsibility, physical health, emotional health, appreciation of the arts and literature, and preparation for skilled work.