The Education Exchange

Demand for seats in charter schools remains high among families but public enthusiasm for continued growth of the charter sector seems to be slipping. Jason Riley, Wall Street Journal columnist and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, sits down with Paul E. Peterson to discuss where the opposition to charter schools is coming from.

The U.S. Department of Education is urging states and school districts to expand their school voucher programs. In this episode of the podcast, Paul talks with Dennis Epple, an economics professor at Carnegie Mellon and one of the co-authors of a paper that reviews the literature on voucher programs and comes up with recommendations for practitioners.

Steve Klinsky, founder and CEO of ModernStates.org, joins Paul Peterson to discuss his new charity, which offers students up to 40 transferrable college credits for free. Modern States presents a set of high-quality online courses, taught by real college professors, that students would typically take in their freshman year of college. Students access the courses and textbooks for free online and earn course credit by taking a College Board-certified exam upon completion—and Modern States will pay the testing fee for the first 10,000 students who take an end-of-course exam. Klinsky detailed the organization’s mission in a blog post here: http://educationnext.org/free-college-is-now-here-really-modern-states-education-alliance/

Margaret Raymond, director of CREDO at Stanford University, sits down with Paul Peterson to discuss CREDO's latest study on charter schools in New York City. Read the full report here: https://credo.stanford.edu/pdfs/nyc_report%202017%2010%2002%20FINAL.pdf

While serving as chancellor of D.C. Public Schools, Michelle Rhee developed an innovative system of teacher evaluation to incentivize high performance and teacher improvement. In this episode of the podcast, she talks with Paul Peterson about how the IMPACT system promotes teacher retention and performance through pay.

A new Fordham report finds that 28% of teachers in traditional district schools miss more than 10 school days a year for sick or personal leave while teachers in charter schools have lower rates absences. David Griffith of the Fordham Institute talks with Paul Peterson about the report and about where teacher absence rates are high and low. Read more about the study here: http://educationnext.org/public-schools-teacher-absenteeism

Diane Tavenner, CEO of Summit Schools, sits down with Paul E. Peterson to discuss how Summit is changing how schools are run, and why they've had so much success in student achievement.

n many sectors of our economy, there are serious shortages of applicants with the right skills for the available jobs. Many of these jobs do not require a college degree. Are too many students choosing four-year universities rather than getting a useful credential from a two year college? What happens to people who get specific job training rather than academic training when the job market changes? In this episode of the Education Exchange, Paul E. Peterson talks with economist Eric Hanushek about the challenges of ensuring that people get the skills they need for the jobs we have now and the jobs we'll have in the future.

The 2017 Education Next poll asked the public, parents, and teachers what share of teachers at your local public school are excellent, good, satisfactory and unsatisfactory. Overall, people are quite pleased with the quality of teachers in their local school, but the public sees 15 percent of teachers as unsatisfactory, and even teachers believe 11 percent are ineffective. EdNext Editor-in-chief Marty West joins Paul E. Peterson on this episode of the Education Exchange to discuss these findings from the 2017 Education Next Poll and more. Read the full poll here: http://educationnext.org/2017-ednext-poll-school-reform-public-opinion-school-choice-common-core-higher-ed/

Paul E. Peterson talks with Anna Egalite of N.C. State about her new study looking at why some private schools do and others don't participate in North Carolina's means-tested voucher program and also at how families make the decision about whether or not to use a school voucher. You can read the study at https://ced.ncsu.edu/elphd/research/the-impact-of-the-north-carolina-opportunity-scholarship-program/