The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation's sponsorship annual report highlights our work with eleven schools that served 4,150 students in five Ohio cities during the 2016-17 school year. We value this opportunity to keep stakeholders and the public informed about our efforts, and provide information on each of the schools that we sponsor. Additionally,…

Creating smart, coherent education policy is painstaking work; there are technical, budgetary, and political challenges at almost every turn. But it is some of the most important work that state leaders can undertake. As Ohioans prepared to elect a new governor in late 2018, we at the Fordham Institute began rolling out a set of policy proposals…

This qualitative research explored first generation college students (FGCS) from a holistic perspective. The study investigated students' personal assets and provided the field of higher education an alternative to the pervasive deficit-orientation of this under resourced population. Psychological capital (Luthans, et al., 2006), framed within…

It is a truth not yet universally acknowledged that a venture based on information must be in want of a librarian. Librarians offer expertise in organizing and managing information, clarifying and supporting people's information needs, and enhancing people's information literacy skills. There are innumerable endeavors today in education, health,…

This non-experimental, quantitative study examined the extent selected state sociopolitical factors relate to adult participation in public two-year colleges, and assessed how Montana compares to those states enrolling the most adult students. Utilizing archived data from the National Center for Education Statistics' (NCES) Integrated…

For the last 30 years, the Public Policy Forum has collected and analyzed education data to produce an annual report on the demographics, academic performance, and finances of public school districts in southeast Wisconsin. In the three decades of producing this report, few years have exhibited as much change and transformation as this one. The…

The "2014 Comprehensive Biennial Report on Texas Public Schools" describes the status of Texas public education, as required by §39.332 of the Texas Education Code. The report contains 15 chapters on the following topics: (1) state progress on academic performance indicators; (2) student performance on state assessments; (3) performance…

Minimal evidence exists regarding the retrospective pretest's effectiveness as a tool to obtain usable, indirect evidence of student learning in open admissions institutions. The researcher conducted this study to determine if a retrospective pretest more accurately detected a change in students' knowledge compared to a conventional…

KIPP Delta succeeds at its stated mission, probably because of its careful attention to culture building. What distinguishes this KIPP school is thoughtful work linking the daily processes of schooling to the goals of schooling, in this case success in college. Day to day tactics reflect broader themes: having a clear mission and hiring staff who…

In the early 1900s, sociologist and civil-rights activist W.E.B. DuBois advocated the teaching of African-American studies in American schools. The goal was to teach a history and heritage that was being ignored, not just so blacks would better understand their own past, but so white society would be more respectful. But by 1968, when students…

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of open enrollment, curriculum alignment, and data-driven instruction on the test performance of English Language Learners (ELLs) and Re-designated Fluent English Proficient students (RFEPs) at Shangri-la High School. Participants of this study consisted of the student population enrolled in…

We use administrative data from the lottery-based open enrollment system in Beijing middle schools to obtain unbiased estimates of school fixed effects on student performance. To do this, we classify children in selection channels, with each channel representing a unique succession of lotteries through which a child was assigned to a school.…

This paper examines the competitive effects of a unique school choice program implemented in the late 1990s, Wisconsin's open enrollment program, which allows families to send their children to schools outside their home district. In contrast to other school choice programs, districts not only face negative consequences from losing students and…

Parental involvement in education has long been recognized as an important indicator of student academic achievement. Teachers, administrators, policy makers, and our state and federal government continue to recognize the vital role of the parent in education. Policies and mandates, with titles such as "No Child Left Behind" and…

Open access is central to the Community College mission. For this reason, any restriction in online enrollments should not be undertaken lightly. This study uses institutional data gathered from a large, urban community college to examine a policy aimed at increasing student retention in online courses by restricting those eligible to enroll based…