Marcus A. Winters
Manhattan Institute
Boston, MA, United States
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Past articles by Marcus:
Do Retention Policies Affect Student Success?
In environments in FL and AZ that impose the threat of retention, schools and students increase their performance to a statistically significant degree. → Read More
Cory Booker Goes Down Fighting
The former Newark mayor refused to bow to teachers unions. You’ve got to hand it to Sen. Cory Booker. The former mayor of Newark, N.J., refused to be bullied when it comes to charter schools. That earned him the ire of teachers unions and contributed to the failure of his presidential... → Read More
How to Pay Teachers More without Busting the Bank
By balancing the ratio of salaries to retirement benefits and reforming pension structures, we can vastly improve the quality and cost of teacher compensation. Among Democratic presidential hopefuls, it’s become an article of faith that all teachers in America deserve a raise. Bernie Sanders... → Read More
When It Comes to School Quality in Your City, From New York to Dallas to Anchorage, Mind the Performance Gap
Every parent knows that school quality and student performance can vary widely in any given city. That’s why families look closely at the school quality in the neighborhoods they’re considering when they’re planning to move. What’s less understood is how cities across the country rank in... → Read More
How Can Parents Find High-Quality Schools in America's Big Cities?
A new report by Manhattan Institute’s Marcus Winters analyzes school quality across 68 American cities. He found no strong correlation between the variation in school quality and the proportion of low-income and minority students in a given school district. → Read More
New York City's Charter Schools: What the Research Shows
This report evaluates the current state of research on New York City charter schools. Overall, their effect on student performance is unambiguously positive. But the research is more dated and limited in scope than proponents and critics of charters appreciate. → Read More
Fool Me Twice? New York City Rejects Research Critical of Renewal Schools
New York City is experimenting with a policy that provides struggling “Renewal schools” with additional resources and community services in an attempt to turn them around rather than simply closing them. In some cases, the city has had to take additional aggressive steps: Last week, it... → Read More
De Blasio Pledged Progress for Schools. For $582 Million, Change Is Slow.
Editor's note: The following is article by education reporter Elizabeth Harris of The New York Times Even as New York City’s schools opened their doors for the new year this month, the clock was ticking on the future of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s boldest education initiative. His Renewal... → Read More
The NAACP's Campaign to Smear Charter Schools
The NAACP called for a moratorium on the rapid growth of charter schools last year and commissioned a task-force to hold hearings across seven cities to learn from various parents, teachers, administrators, and other stakeholders. Their just-released report from the task force relies heavily... → Read More
The NAACP's campaign to smear charter schools
The NAACP report either selectively cites or simply ignores the wide body of charter school research in order to support their preferred sto... → Read More
De Blasio's Renewal Schools Are Helping a Bit, but Not Compared to Far Less Costly Alternatives
When they came to office, Mayor de Blasio and Chancellor Carmen Fariña called for an end to the Bloomberg-era focus on identifying and closing ineffective schools. Instead, they promised to try as never before to turn these schools around. The city's Renewal Schools program, which designated... → Read More
Costly Progress: De Blasio's Renewal School Program
New York’s Renewal School Program (RSP) represented a big change to the city’s education policy: whereas former mayor Michael Bloomberg favored closing failing schools, RSP would fix them instead. → Read More
Renew Mayoral Control, No Strings Attached
An opponent of de Blasio's school leadership says this is an easy call → Read More
In Florida, School Performance Has Risen with Vouchers for Disabled Students
As schools compete, the state’s national education ranking skyrockets. → Read More
Cream-Skimming Is Not Driving Charters' Success in New York City
Charter school critics often argue that public schools of choice post high standardized test scores largely because they enroll only a select group of students who know to apply to them. A new comparison, however, finds that charters compete with, and, in some ways, surpass New York’s... → Read More
New York Charter Schools Outperform Traditional Selective Public Schools
Critics of charter schools in New York City often allege that charters score better on standardized tests, on average, than traditional public schools because charters “cream-skim” (i.e., attract) the brightest, most motivated, students. → Read More
School Funding Doesn't Add Up
Though $53.6 billion in "stabilization" funds has dramatically softened the blow, several states and public school districts still need to cut teacher payrolls to make ends meet.California, for one, intends to cut about 20,000 teachers - about 6 percent of public school teachers in the state -... → Read More
Why charters serve fewer English learners
As charter schools continue their expansion, the most important question still facing New York City is whether the independently-run, lottery-admission public schools offer sufficiently welcoming environments to all students. → Read More
Yes, NYC charter schools are working
Winters: Critics frequently argue that New York City's charter schools are no more effective than its traditional public schools. As proof, they almost invariably point to research by Stanford University's Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) showing that charter schools and nearby traditional public schools are equally effective on average. → Read More