Predicting students’ academic trajectory from third grade test scores
Thanks to the No Child Left Behind Act, annual testing in math and reading for students in grades three through eight became mandatory in every state beginning in 2005.
Thanks to the No Child Left Behind Act, annual testing in math and reading for students in grades three through eight became mandatory in every state beginning in 2005.
For many years, the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation (STBF) in Nebraska has provided full-ride college scholarships to eligible high school graduates in the state. This randomized study examines how such largesse affects higher education enrollment and degree completion.
For the past decade, Washington, D.C., schools have shone as a success story, with achievement for all students rising steadily in elementary and middle schools and more quickly than the national average.
With federal coronavirus relief, schools are wrestling with a host of thorny questions. Especially under the new Joe Biden administration, how much federal aid is coming? What rules will govern its use? Most importantly, how can schools spend the funds effectively when reopening schools, improving remote learning, and helping students get back on track?
The Covid-19 pandemic has run roughshod over so much of our education system, closing schools, sending students home to try to learn remotely, and obliterating last year’s summative state tests.
Most young children are surrounded by cell phones, tablets, and computers, both for personal use and, in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, for school. Studies show that extensive technology use can have negative effects on children’s development and academic achievement, but little research exists to show which children are most likely to become frequent users of technology.
Like traditional public schools, charter schools are publicly funded according to student enrollment. But compared to their district counterparts, charters have long received far less per-pupil funding.
Editor’s note: This is the first post in a five-part series about how to effectively scale-up high-dosage tutoring.
Charges of financial blunders have taken out district leaders before. Think the pandemic inoculates leaders from that possible fate? Think again.
Control of state legislatures is particularly important in a census year, but it’s also an often-overlooked element in driving substantive education policy changes. National politics takes up all the oxygen, but it’s state legislators who make most of the big decisions about how a state’s public-education system operates, is funded, is held accountable (if at all), and much more.
Spend a few minutes on education Twitter or listening to the loudest special-interest voices, and you’d think the future of public education hinges on whether Mitch McConnell, Nancy Pelosi, and the president can agree to another stimulus deal. That’s just a short-term Washington game—that will likely soon have a new roster of players.
On this week’s podcast, Karen Hawley Miles, CEO and president of Education Resource Strategies, joins Mike Petrilli and David Griffith
A recent study from Brown University’s Matthew A. Kraft and John P. Papay and Harvard’s Olivia L. Chi uses nine years of administrative data from Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools in North Carolina to examine teacher improvement through the lens of principal evaluations.
In education, one of the more bizarre debates of the past quarter century has been over whether more money improves students’ outcomes. It’s tough to think of anywhere else in American life where we’d even have that discussion.
Before the coming of the pandemic, pre-K was a hot topic.
After the release of a new study I co-authored for the Thomas B.
Last month, Teachers College Press is releasing Getting the Most Bang for the Education Buck, a new volume edited by Rick Hess and Brandon Wright.
Proponents of test-based accountability generally believe that robust systems—those that set high bars for achieving success, generate copious and transparent data, and impose substantive awards or consequences based on progress (or lack thereof)—are enough to boost student achievement. Another school of thought posits that more funding to schools does likewise.
If America is serious about wanting kids to become better readers, our elementary schools need to spend more time teaching social studies rather than doubling-down on “reading comprehension.” This may seem counterintuitive, but it’s the key takeaway from our new study. It’s also especially important for girls and those from lower-income and/or non-English-speaking homes.
A new study published last week by Fordham, Social Studies Instruction and Reading Comprehension: Evidence from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, suggests that to become better readers, elementary students should spend more time on social studies.
On this week’s podcast, Brandon Wright joins Mike Petrilli and David Griffith to discuss his and Rick Hess’s new edited volume,
On this week’s podcast, Timothy Daly, co-founder and CEO of EdNavigator, joins Mike Petrilli and David Griffith to discuss
Ohio legislators recently introduced Senate Bill 358, which proposes to cancel all state testing scheduled for spring 2021. The provision calling for the cancellation of state exams would only go into effect if the state receives an assessment waiver from the U.S.
On this week’s podcast, Robin Lake, director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education, joins Mike Petrilli to discuss why politics seems to be
Michael Petrilli has written that, “when it comes to education, conservatives should stand for excellence.” So should liberals, and I am a longtime activist on the Democrats’ left wing.
The Covid-19 pandemic has caused plenty of problems in education, but a recently published study offers a sliver of good news for schools that—despite recent budget constraints—may soon find themselves in need of additional teachers to make social distancing feasible
Equity need not be pitted against excellence. But let’s not pretend there are no trade-offs. The two are in tension, if not actual conflict, in many matters of policy and practice. We can assume that progressives will always take the “equity” side. So if conservatives don’t make excellence a priority—be it in matters organizational, academic, or related to extracurricular activities and other nonacademic pursuits—nobody will.
Perhaps it is only when we lose something that we realize its true value. A recent study by Matthew Kraft and Manuel Monti-Nussbaum finds that in-person teaching time in the classroom—now a precious commodity that many students and teachers won’t experience again for a while—was not properly safeguarded when we had it.
Between learning loss from an interrupted spring semester and new pandemic-related financial struggles that families are facing, many students are canceling, delaying, or changing their plans to enroll in higher education.