The Federal civil service adopted standardized testing in 1883. Are there lessons for education today?
One common refrain in debates around education is that standardized exams negatively impact applicants from disadvantaged backgrounds.
One common refrain in debates around education is that standardized exams negatively impact applicants from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Just over thirty years ago, the first public charter school law was passed in Minnesota. One year later, City Academy Charter School opened its doors in St. Paul. The charter sector now boasts more than 7,700 schools serving over 3.4 million students nationwide.
How do we see whether achievement gaps between groups of students are widening or narrowing? How can we tell whether eighth graders in Missouri do better or worse in math than their peers in Michigan and Maine? We wouldn’t know these things or much else about K–12 achievement in America without a little-known but vital test, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a.k.a. “NAEP” or the “Nation’s Report Card.” Assessing the Nation’s Report Card: Challenges and Choices for NAEP, authored by veteran education participant/analyst Chester E. Finn, Jr., examines the history of NAEP, the issues and challenges that it faces today, and ways to strengthen and modernize it for the future.
How do we know whether kids in Pennsylvania are better or worse readers at the end of middle school than their peers in Colorado? We wouldn’t know that or much else without a test that may have escaped your notice altogether, unless you’re some sort of education-obsessed policy maker or policy wonk like me. I’m talking about the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Jing Liu, Assistant Professor in Education Policy at the University of Maryla
For many parents and teachers, the Covid experience has confirmed at least two pieces of common sense: It’s hard for kids to learn if they’re not in school, and those who are in school tend to learn more.
The need to understand how schools can improve student attendance has never been greater. This study breaks new ground by examining high schools’ contributions to attendance—that is, their “attendance value-added.”
Editor’s note: This was first published by the American Enterprise Institute.
With Democrats facing trouble in the midterm elections, the Biden administration has inexplicably decided to try to stave off disaster by doubling down on the teachers unions’ hoary anti-reform agenda. One example is its not-so-sneak attack on charter schools in the form of execrable regulations that could bring charter growth to a standstill. But it’s not the only one.
Last week, Chester Finn used a recent vote of Denver’s anti-reform school board to make three points: first, that the “portfolio” reform there—based on school autonomy, family choice, and chartering out schools where kids aren’t learning—is finished; second, that Denver’s reversal predicts doom elsewhere for complex reform initiatives meant to transform the ways whole public systems operate; an
After living through the transformation of K–12 education in Alberta, Canada, we moved from Calgary to Colorado in 2010. Since then, we have watched the Denver Public Schools story unfold from next door in Jefferson County.
The influence of out-of-school activities such as sports and clubs on school outcomes has been an enduring
What makes an effective English language arts curriculum? Is it the books and other readings that it includes? The skills that it imparts to students? Something else?
A new edited volume, “Follow the Science to School,” aims to identify what science tells us about evidence-based practices in elementary schools, and describes what they look like in the real world of classrooms. Following the science into its application in this way—and sharing how it works on the ground—enables us to suggest workable answers to key questions rather than challenging every teacher, school, or district, to figure out those answers on their own.
Those who pay attention to the “Nation’s Report Card” tend to take it for granted. In truth, most people heed it not at all.
Not all college majors are created alike, but it turns out that employers want their new hires to exhibit many of same skills regardless of what they major in. A recent study examines online job ads as a proxy for what employers view as the skills inherent in various college majors.
The typical timeline for college-bound high school seniors is to start a few months after graduation—the first available opportunity. But is that unbroken path into college the right move for everyone? New research suggests that academic breaks after high school have both short- and long-term impacts on postsecondary enrollment and labor market outcomes.
Follow the Science to School: Evidence-based Practices for Elementary Education is published by John Catt Educational Press and is available for purchase from the John Catt Bookshop and Amazon.
Inflation is up, and no, I’m not talking about gas prices. I’m talking about some troubling trends observed among the 2019 graduating class of high school students in the recently released 2019 NAEP High School Transcript Study.
Joint Statement from Peggy G. Carr, Ph.D., Commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics and Lesley Muldoon, Executive Director of the National Assessment Governing Board
Editor's note: This post was originally published on tomloveless.com.
In cities across the country, selective high schools are facing increasing pressure to change their admissions policies to make their incoming student populations more socioeconomically and racially diverse. Closing these gaps is a laudable and important goal. But the most common strategies for accomplishing it are racially discriminatory, misguided, and ineffective.
Remote learning is hard to love. The nation’s forced experiment in online education the past few years has been a disaster for kids. Educators and parents alike have come to view virtual learning as a necessary evil at best, an ad hoc response to a national crisis.
A couple of weeks ago, I shared some ideas about how schools and districts can move away from the well-intentioned but deeply flawed “college for all” mindset that has permeated the education reform world and has, in turn, harmed many of the disadvantaged students whom the approach is m
It’s rare that a piece of social science makes you question the nature of your reality, but such was my reaction to the latest, much-discussed update on the performance of Tennessee’s pre-k program—or more specifically, on the fate of the 2,990 children from low-income families who applied to oversubscribed pre-K program sites across
In a laudable quest to boost the number of adults with postsecondary credentials, a number of states—including Ohio—are focusing time and treasure on former students who have earned some college credits but
In the past decade, the role of the teacher in schools has slowly shifted from pedagogue to therapist.
The media have been full of
Efforts to match Black and Hispanic students with teachers of their same race or ethnicity have shown positive outcomes
Is college worth it? How we answer that question depends on how we measure the impact of attending college. Ranking 4,500 Colleges by ROI (2022), a new project from the Center for Education and the Workforce at Georgetown University, provides us with a novel tool of measurement: return on investment, or ROI.