Education Sector

Education Sector is an independent, nonprofit, Washington, D.C.–based education policy think tank. It conducts research and analysis on a variety of PreK–12 and higher education issues. Many of the ideas that are surfaced through Education Sector ground the perspectives on reform of American educators and education policymakers.

The organization was founded in 2005 by Andrew J. Rotherham and Thomas Toch. Rotherham previously managed education policy issues for President Bill Clinton as Special Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy. He went on to launch the 21st Century Schools Project at the Progressive Policy Institute, the policy arm of the center–left Democratic Leadership Council. Rotherham has also served as a member of the Virginia Board of Education, and serves as an advisor to a variety of nonprofit education organizations. He writes a monthly online column for U.S. News & World Report.

Toch helped launch Education Week in the 1980s and spent a decade as a senior education correspondent for U.S. News & World Report. The author of two books and numerous articles on American education, Toch served as a guest scholar at the Brookings Institution and taught at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. His work twice has been nominated for National Magazine Awards, the magazine industry's equivalent of the Pulitzer Prizes. Toch left Education Sector in July 2009 to take a position as director of the Association of Independent Schools of Greater Washington.

Education Sector has a full–time staff and annually publishes more than 200 policy papers, magazine articles, op–eds, and other publications. The organization has four main areas of focus: (1) K–12 accountability, (2) public school choice, (3) human capital, and (4) undergraduate education.

Education Sector's K–12 accountability work has included an analysis of the testing industry's capacity to provide high–quality assessments to meet the demands of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), an exploration of the way states set cut scores on NCLB tests, and a series of papers focusing on the ways states game the NCLB system to artificially reduce the number of schools and districts identified as low performing. Education Sector staff also [Page 330]frequently brief members of the media and key state and federal policymakers on accountability issues. In 2008, the organization launched a new initiative focused on developing the next generation of K–12 accountability. A 2009 report focused on the development of “growth models” to measure school performance under NCLB, critiquing the model currently used in Tennessee.

In the area of public school choice, Education Sector has published several studies and papers related to the charter school sector, as well as analyses of the potential for interdistrict public school choice and the Florida special education voucher program. An Education Sector proposal for “smart charter school caps” has been considered by legislative leaders in a number of states.

Education Sector's human capital work has included a focus on teacher unionism and collective bargaining, including a qualitative study of the attitudes and positions of recently elected local union leaders, the cost of common collective bargaining positions, and an opinion survey of teacher attitudes toward their unions. The organization has also published analyses of teacher evaluation processes and efforts in Chattanooga, Tennessee, to improve teacher quality in low–performing elementary schools, and has provided recommendations for reforming the teacher quality provisions and funding programs in Title II of the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

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