Suing for peace in education’s culture wars
Editor’s note: This is the second article in a two-part series. Part I urges readers to "listen more, empathize more, and demonize less" in these divisive times.
Editor’s note: This is the second article in a two-part series. Part I urges readers to "listen more, empathize more, and demonize less" in these divisive times.
A long simmering feud between Denver’s school board and superintendent finally burst into the open last week following months of tensions and mutual distrust.
The federal government should provide states with new funds that target students who struggled the most to adapt to remote learning.
In part one of this two-part essay, published last week, I reflected on Clare Basil’s “definitional” challenge to the growth of classical schools—schools that take “a unifying approach to intellectual and moral formation by developing the integrity of mind and heart,”
Now that the election is over—and yes, President Trump, it is over—all eyes are on the runoff elections in Georgia, given that they will determine control of the Senate for the first two years of the Biden administration. The conventional wisdom is that Republicans will win at least one of those seats, given that GOP turnout is usually higher in special elections.
Here in Fordham’s pages, I’ve previously written about the challenge of Covid-19 learning losses at the macro level. In this article, I focus on the micro level.
For those of us who still believe that results-based school accountability is an essential part of the education renewal that America sorely needs, not many things are looking great this week.
Two years ago, Seth Gershenson and Fordham published Grade Inflation in High Schools, groundbreaking research examining the relationship between students’ Algebra I course grades and end-of-course (EOC) test results in North Carolina.
Clare Basil recently shared some thoughtful observations about the growth of K–12 classical schools, schools that take “a unifying approach to intellectual and moral formation by developing the integrity of mind and heart”—a quote Basil borrows from the Institute for Classical Educat
When it comes to education and the incoming Biden administration, all eyes are on who is put forward, likely before the year is out, as the next secretary of education.
At the tail end of a recent symposium titled “Why children can’t read—and what we can do about it” hosted by American Enterprise Institute, Margaret Goldberg, a California first grade teacher and founder of the
Nothing better evokes education reform’s predicament today than what occurred in late July when the National Basketball Association restarted its 2020 season. Players were given the option of featuring on the back of their jerseys one of about thirty messages.
A perennial complaint about holding students accountable through grades and test scores is that these mechanisms are biased against already disadva
Research supports having classrooms keep only three feet of social distancing. In fact, more kids in school may prevent spread more than hybrid models. —Washington Post How will the forthcoming distribution of vaccines impact schooling?
I knew something was wrong when, during what was supposed to be a full day of remote learning, my thirteen-year-old son announced at 9:30 a.m. that he was free until 11:27 a.m., and then plopped onto the couch and flipped on the television.
Charges of financial blunders have taken out district leaders before. Think the pandemic inoculates leaders from that possible fate? Think again.
At a virtual town hall in Brooklyn about how the pandemic will change admissions to high-performing selective schools, New York City officials got a lecture on systemic racism.
When the 116th Congress adjourns, sometime before January 2021, Tennessee’s eighty-year-old senior senator, Lamar Alexander, will retire after three full terms. No one living today has had more far-reaching influence on American K–12 education. As we wish him many glorious years of retirement, we do well to recognize that his legacy will last even longer.
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.
“The pandemic has caused deep, ‘horrifying’ learning losses for Dallas children, and underscored the disparities among Black students, according to new Dallas Independent School District results.” —Dallas Morning News Indianapoli
Despite the divisiveness of the past four years, we should give peace a chance and heed President-Elect Biden’s plain but true words: “It’s time to put away the harsh rhetoric, lower the temperature, see each other again, listen to each other again. And to make progress, we have to stop treating our opponents as our enemies. They are not our enemies, they are Americans.”
Education wasn’t explicitly on the national ballot in 2020, but education is always on the ballot, even when you don’t see it. Now that the election is behind us, education reformers can focus again on states and communities, where most of the important decisions about K–12 education get made.
Divisiveness, anger, frustration, mistrust, and threats. That is the narrative emerging around the 2020 presidential election. What I saw on election day as an Ada County poll worker in Boise, Idaho, couldn’t have been more different. The election I witnessed and served was distinctly positive and hopeful.
As we conclude a particularly fraught and divisive presidential election, most Americans (and even those of us who live in D.C.) welcome a reprieve from the constant onslaught of negative political ads, contentious debates, and around-the-clock election coverage.
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.
Are schools essential or aren’t they? Are teachers essential workers or aren’t they? How would Americans respond if large numbers of doctors, nurses, policemen, firemen, and postal workers simply opted to stay home—and their unions defended them? If you’re essential, you go to work.
A U.S. Supreme Court decision is introducing a new type of charter school that’s likely to cheer conservatives but alarm many progressives: the religiously-affiliated charter. Those of us in the charter movement need to figure out how to keep them from splitting the charter coalition.
The winner of this election won’t resolve our nation’s deep-rooted social problems. For that, we need local, personal action. —Yuval Levin Parents are reconsidering schooling decisions as they weigh worsening Covid rates against the costs of isolation and disrupting routines for their children.
As we previously saw at the 4th grade and 8th grade levels, the just-released 2019 12 grade NAEP results were mostly flat or down. But we already knew from the 2015 results that this cohort of students entered high school performing below their older peers.