The vanishing pre-K advantage
Before the coming of the pandemic, pre-K was a hot topic.
Before the coming of the pandemic, pre-K was a hot topic.
The Denver school board spent forty-five minutes Monday getting an update on its Black Excellence Resolution and worthy efforts being made at district and school levels to address systemic racism and implicit bias.
After the release of a new study I co-authored for the Thomas B.
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.
There used to be two sureties when it came to American K–12 education: Kids would attend school, and school leaders would demand more money.
Modeling the effects of a global pandemic while it’s ongoing seems like a prime example of “inexact science.” It’s also sure to depress. But it’s happening.
On this week’s podcast, Aaron Daly, COO of Brooklyn Laboratory Chart
When students at Anser Charter School in Garden City, Idaho, begin returning to in-person classes September 28, everything about school will look different than six months ago.
On this week’s podcast, Brandon Wright joins Mike Petrilli and David Griffith to discuss his and Rick Hess’s new edited volume,
American schoolchildren should not be taught to hate their country, or to view it as an “inherently racist” or “white supremacist” nation. But to move forward constructively on this point, instead of in a manner that further divides the country, it would be much better for a broad coalition of the center-right to the center-left to embrace a teaching of history that is clear-eyed, patriotic, and critical.
There’s much energy in the cosmos these days around civics education, history education, maybe even “patriotic” history and civics education.
This spring, the nation was slammed by a pandemic that has thus far killed nearly 200,000 Americans, thrown millions out of work, shuttered schools, and upended the rhythms of teaching and learning. Suddenly the kitchen table became a makeshift desk and “school” came to mean hours seated in front of a Chromebook.
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.
Covid-19 is upending what parents think about America’s schools, motivating them to seek different ways to educate their children. It’s also inspiring enterprising individuals and imaginative policymakers to create new ways to support that parent demand for change.
If schooling continues to be remote through the fall, as it seems to be in many districts across the country, what is to be done about the plight of kids who are at risk for child abuse or neglect?
The first-ever virtual political conventions have come and gone, during which neither party offered a serious path forward on education reform. The Democrats belong to the self-interested teacher unions, and the GOP has become a single-issue party in pursuit of choice, leaving us with a lot of talk but little action.
Some Democrats and Republicans have an unlikely alliance these days around one thing: their sudden rejection of the federal Charter Schools Program (CSP), which funds start-up costs for new, high-quality charter schools.
Around six months ago, stay-at-home orders and school closures upended normal life for children of all ages across the United States. The loss of academic learning has been a huge concern, but we’re not talking enough about the implications of long-term “social distancing” for babies, toddlers, and preschoolers.
The National Center for Rural Education Research Networks (NCRERN) is a recently established organization out of Harvard that studies and supports a network of rural school districts in New York and Ohio.
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
In late July, the Democratic Party released a policy platform that included stances on a variety of issues, including education.
The Republican party has no 2020 platform. They refer people looking for one to the 2016 version. That goes for education along with everything else. The Trump-Pence campaign website doesn’t display policy positions, either, though there’s a section on “promises kept” that includes one skimpy page on education.
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
Lost in the political noise of the debate on reopening schools is what parents think about this complicated puzzle. While their varied responses reflect this complexity, there is important consensus on many issues—though significant disagreement on one.
Last spring, the Covid-19 pandemic upended routines for over 56 million students and challenged more than 3.7 million teachers in over 130,000 schools nationwide to continue educating kids in an online format. This transition to “virtual learning” was understandably trying for all educators, schools, and districts, but some managed to do far better than others.
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.
Editor’s note: This was first published as part of the American Enterprise Institute’s Sketching a New Conservative Agenda Series.