The vibes for career-tech programs are great. But they’re too rare.
Education loomed small at both political conventions this summer—a shame considering what dire condition it’s in.
Education loomed small at both political conventions this summer—a shame considering what dire condition it’s in.
A recent article in the Boston Globe dug into a controversy that is dogging Massachusetts’s highly-regarded system of regional career and technical education (CTE) high schools.
School closures and remote learning led to widespread relaxation of student accountability at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. Lax requirements to turn in work, fewer graded assignments, and—most perniciously—policies mandating “no zeros” or “no failing grades” were adopted (or accelerated) to lighten the load of young people whose worlds had been turned upside down.
This essay focuses on A Republic, If We Can Teach It: Fixing America’s Civic Education Crisis, a new book by Jeffrey Sikkenga and Hoover research fellow (emeritus) David Davenport.
Peter Liljedahl opens his wildly popular book on mathematics instruction, Building Thinking Classrooms, with a bold gambit.
A child’s age is only a crude proxy for their academic readiness, yet it’s the primary means by which we group children in school. More age variety in classrooms could allow for greater academic consistency; grade retention and grade acceleration could help us get there. So too could a new idea from Petrilli: transitional kindergarten–5.
“Math and reading scores for 13-year-olds have hit their lowest scores in decades.” When the recent NAEP long-term trend results for 13-year-olds were published, the
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Dr.
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Rick Hess, the director of education policy studies at the America
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Alan Safran, the CEO and co-founder of Saga Education, joins Mike and David to discuss best prac
This essay first appeared in an slightly different form as part of the Center on Reinventing Public Education’s 2023 State of the American Student report.
It’s been more than two decades since Congress passed and President Bush (43) signed the Education Sciences Reform Act (ESRA), giving birth to the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) as we know it.
The U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Education and the Workforce ended 2023 with some tidings of potential joy for America’s workforce by approving two proposed bills on a strong bipartisan basis. Committee approval in one chamber is just a start, of course, but bipartisanship in the current House is a good sign.
Once a de facto means of maintaining within-school segregation, career and technical education (CTE) has, in recent years, experienced a favorable shift in public perception.
College for all has been the goal of K–12 schools for at least twenty-five years. This has meant that America’s schools typically do not provide young people with work experience. This experience gap has young people leaving high school with little understanding of work and practical pathways to jobs and careers.
A simple observation: In the U.S., high school graduation rates have increased while other measures of academic achievement—from college entrance exam scores to high school
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Tim Donahue, an English teacher at the Greenwich Country Day School, joins Mike to discu
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Umut Özek and Louis Mariano, researchers at the Rand Corporation, join Mike to d
There is plentiful research suggesting that, among in-school factors, teachers consistently matter the most when it comes to student testing outcomes.
Data show that America’s current manufacturing workforce is aging and retiring as the sector is expanding exponentially and its
A new study from a pair of Penn State University researchers finds that passing the U.S. Citizenship Test as a high school graduation requirement does nothing to improve youth voter turnout. Within the last decade, more than a third of U.S.
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, William McKenzie, a senior editorial advisor at the George W.
Not since former Governor Scott Walker bludgeoned the unions in my home state of Wisconsin has there been such national outrage over state-level education policies. Historically, state-scale education has been a secondary affair, rarely topping the list of people’s substantive or political priorities, and most decisions have been left to local decision-making.
One of the biggest shifts in education in recent years has been a gradual move away from the “college for all” mantra, and hard numbers show a concurrent decline in the proportion of high school students matriculating directly to college. Far from something to deplore, this trend is a positive development—but only so long as the right teenagers are choosing to enter the labor market rather than pursue college.
For folks who question the value of a traditional four-year college degree—whether they have done so for ages or have only recently lost faith—apprenticeships seem like a promising alternative for young people leaving
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, former Massachusetts Secretary of Education Jim Peyser joins Mike to discuss education
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Kevin Teasley, of the Greater Educational Opportunities F
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Nick Colangelo of the University of Iowa joins Mike Petr
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Rick Hess of the American Enterprise
Aaargh. Here we go again. The new National Assessment civics and history results are as deplorable as they were predictable. Whether they’ll also serve as the action-forcer that we need is far from certain.