March 6, 2013 COMMENTARY BY: Jeanne L. Reid TOPICS: Education, Improving Access to Quality Public Schools
President Obama’s call to “make high-quality preschool available to every child in America” seems like the right thing to do if you look at the research on the cost-effectiveness of the highest-quality preschool programs and the accumulating studies on the benefits of state pre-Kindergarten programs. Should every family in American have access to affordable, high-quality preschool? Of course they should. But policy commentators on the political right are raising questions about using federal money to pay for preschool, focusing their criticism on Head Start, the Great Society program targeted to low-income children that has produced disappointing results. However, Obama’s policy initiative is a good idea for several reasons and creates an historic opportunity to do something Head Start has not: broaden access to high-quality preschools for children from economically diverse families.
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January 14, 2013 COMMENTARY BY: Halley Potter, Richard D. Kahlenberg TOPICS: Education, Improving Access to Quality Public Schools
If the Iowa City Community School District passes the proposed plan to diversify schools, it will join more than 80 districts across the nation that have responded to research on student achievement by giving more students the chance to attend mixed-income schools.
READ MOREJanuary 7, 2013 COMMENTARY BY: Suzanne Chang TOPICS: Education, Improving Access to Quality Public Schools
Iowa City is moving forward on a socioeconomic integration plan, citing TCF research by Senior Fellow Richard Kahlenberg. The Iowa Press-Citizen reports.
READ MOREJanuary 4, 2013 COMMENTARY BY: Richard D. Kahlenberg TOPICS: Education, Improving Access to Quality Public Schools
TCF Fellow Richard Kahlenberg's work on school integration discussed in the Washington Post. Read the article.
READ MOREDecember 1, 2012 COMMENTARY BY: The Century Foundation TOPICS: Education, Improving Access to Quality Public Schools
The New York Times recently editorialized in response to our research showing the benefits of race-neutral collegeadmissions policies which examine the benefits of wealth and class. Our research shows clearly that colleges can maintain or increase racial diversity on campus by using race-neutral admissions policies based on class. This is our response to the Times editorial
READ MOREOctober 17, 2010 COMMENTARY BY: Richard D. Kahlenberg TOPICS: Education, Improving Access to Quality Public Schools
Charter schools, publicly funded institutions that are given autonomy to experiment, have become a major part of the public school reform agenda in recent years. First proposed by teacher union leader Albert Shanker in 1988 as a way to give creative teachers a forum to try new ideas, the charter school model has morphed over the years, as charters have grown to educate 1.6 million students by the 2009–10 school year. Enthusiastically embraced by conservatives, in part because most charters have non-unionized teachers, the charter school model also has received major backing from the Obama administration, most notably as a solution to the problem of persistently failing, high-poverty public schools. With so much emphasis being placed on the potential of charter schools, it is important to have an accurate assessment of their performance. How well are charter schools working? And how might they be restructured to work better?
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Most K-12 education reforms are about trying to make "separate but equal" schools for rich and poor work well. The results of these efforts have been discouraging. The Century Foundation looks at ways to integrate public schools by economic status through public school choice. At the higher education level, we examine ways to open the doors of selective and non-selective institutions to students of modest means.
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Jeffrey Laurenti is senior fellow at The Century Foundation and works on issues relating to international law and institutions, the United Nations and related agencies, the maintenance of international peace and security, and the politics of American foreign policy.
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