No, Professor Boaler, we should not stop talking about learning loss
Recently, Jo Boaler—a Stanford professor and one of the country’s foremost scholars of mathematics—took to the Hechinger Report to write about pandemic learning loss
Recently, Jo Boaler—a Stanford professor and one of the country’s foremost scholars of mathematics—took to the Hechinger Report to write about pandemic learning loss
Mississippi’s model for improving early literacy has been a standout since 2019, based on its nation-leading achievement growth on the fourth grade NAEP reading test.
The claim that the SAT and ACT drive inequities in higher education feeds the movement against standardized testing and has been at the heart of successful court cases, but this new brief argues that, whether colleges decide to go “test optional” or not, the implications for equity are actually minimal. Read more.
The SAT and ACT hold a controversial place in American education. This brief challenges the notion that college admissions exams drive inequities in college admissions and higher education attainment, as well as worsen broader social disparities.
What does it cost to retain a less-than-proficient student and provide him or her with remediation and additional support?
From 2015 to 2018, the start of spring meant I could expect to hear from parents across Florida. At the time, I worked for Step Up Students, the Florida-based organization that administers the nation’s largest education scholarship (i.e., voucher) program. My job was not in customer service. I was the editor of a blog focused on school choice issues.
I have held firm to this belief since my early days of teaching: Getting students to proficiency and above in reading and math is a commitment to social justice and democracy. Education can empower students to change the world, especially when it counters cycles of poverty.
The release of “The Nation’s Report Card” on October 24, 2022, created shock waves though out the country’s education and policy establishments.
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Mike Petrilli and David Griffith talk with
A common observation made by critics of school choice is that it has little to offer families in rural communities where the population isn’t large enough to support multiple schools, and where transportation is already burdensome. I’ve made the point myself, and I’m a school choice proponent.
One hallmark of charter schools—distinct from their traditional district peers—is flexibility in their HR practices.
School closures are awful. I won’t argue otherwise.
As one article at National Affairs put it, the cries about a nation-wide teacher shortage are “heavy on anecdote and speculation” but rather light on data.
By now the unfinished learning that resulted from the Covid-19 pandemic is old news.
In the wake of dismal NAEP reading scores released earlier this year,
On this week’s special, year-end Education Gadfly Show podcast, Mike Petrilli looks back on 2022’
In the wake of pandemic-related learning loss, there’s widespread agreement that we must find more time for learning and a number of schools and districts have added afterschool tutoring and summer school to their calendars.
In a new NEPC policy memo, Duke public policy professor Helen Ladd argues that charter schools “disrupt” what she claims are the four core goals of American education policy: “establishing coherent systems of schools,” “appropriate accountability for the use of public funds,” “limiting racial segregation and isolation,” and “attending to child poverty and disadvantage.” Griffith disputes all four counts.
Common sense, backed by research, tells us that families weigh a lot of information when making school choice decisions.
America’s high-achieving students in our elementary and secondary schools are more racially diverse today than two decades ago. But Black high achievers in particular have made only incremental gains. Given affirmative action's original purpose, such trends are more than a little disappointing.
Homework is the perennial bogeyman of K–12 education. In any given year, you’ll find people arguing that students, especially in elementary school, should have far less homework—or none at all. Eva Moskowitz, the founder and CEO of Success Academy charter schools, has the opposite opinion. She’s been running schools for sixteen years, and she’s only become more convinced that homework is not only necessary, but also a linchpin to effective K–12 education.
What parents are looking for in an ideal school choice scenario is often very different from what they settle for in the real world. Cost, distance, academic quality, safety, extracurricular options, and a host of other factors are all at play, meaning trade-offs are unavoidable. Recently-published research findings try to capture the matrix of compromises being made.
Editor’s note: This essay was part of an edition of “Advance,” a newsletter from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute that is published every other week. Its purpose is to monitor the progress of gifted education in America, including legal and legislative developments, policy and leadership changes, emerging research, grassroots efforts, and more.
“In light of this barometer of our kids’ success, there’s no time to waste to catch our kids up. We must continue to pour on the gas in our efforts,” Arizona Governor Doug Ducey said last Tuesday in response to the NAEP results.
It makes good sense for the federal government to provide grants to high-quality public charter schools seeking to open or expand. That’s the gist of a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released last month.
This study examines the role that high expectations should play in our nation’s academic recovery and how they operate in the traditional public, charter, and private school sectors.
This week’s news of sharp declines on the National Assessment of Educational Progress gave partisans yet another chance to relitigate the debate over keeping schools closed for in-person learning for much or all of the 2020–21 school year. We conservatives are eager to identify the teachers unions as the primary culprits, and we’re not wrong. But there is one complication we should acknowledge: the curious case of urban charter schools.
Monday was insane, with everyone and his grandmother (and her pet dog) attempting to make insightful, quotable comments on the avalanche of new data from the Nation’s Report Card. Some of it was indeed insightful, but much was simply self-promoting, as were many attempts to position oneself in advance as an expert to be taken seriously.
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Checker Finn joins Mike Petrilli and David Griffith to discuss the
Editor’s note: This is an edition of “Advance,” a newsletter from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute written by Brandon Wright, our Editorial Director, and published every other week. Its purpose is to monitor the progress of gifted education in America, including legal and legislative developments, policy and leadership changes, emerging research, grassroots efforts, and more.