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
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast (listen on
Tennessee schools have gotten a lot of negative coverage lately. But they’re also the scene of hugely important positive developments that no one is talking about.
Eight months out from a midterm election cycle that is shaping up to be a bloodbath for Democrats, Republican Senator Rick Scott recently released an “eleven-point plan to rescue America” that speaks volumes about the GOP’s posture on education. What’s most telling is what’s missing from Scott’s plan: a serious and good faith discussion of the most pressing issues facing our Covid-constrained education system.
The media have been full of
Opponents of school choice regularly criticize private schools for not taking all comers, contrasting them with traditional public schools, which they claim are open to all. But that’s not true in many places, especially wealthier suburbs, where public schools are typically restricted to students who live within geographic boundaries. Attending them requires a hefty mortgage and property taxes or sky-high rents that are out of the reach of low- and middle-income families.
As Michael Petrilli wrote in these pages a few weeks ago, the education reform movement has come to the realization that its belief in “college for all,” while well-intended, was misguided.
Thirteen states and D.C. still mandate face masks for students, as do myriad individual districts in places that defer to local leaders. In total, about half of American students have to wear a mask every day. But there’s little evidence that this mitigates the spread of Covid—a consideration that the Omicron variant has made less important anyway—and, more importantly, masking inflicts real educational and emotional harm on students.
Millions of Americans are quitting their jobs. “The Great Resignation” is causing a labor shortage in many industries, as workers leave for other jobs or simply stay home. The field of education is one that’s hurting.
Editor’s note: This testimony was given by Fordham Institute trustee Ian Rowe on January 20, 2022, to the U.S.
If New York politics were sane and rational—if our elected officials were serious about the pursuit of educational excellence and what’s best for children—the city’s charter school sector would be a point of civic pride.
Tracking in our high schools is simply a fact, and we would do well to stop pretending otherwise or believing that it could be any other way. At the very least, we should allow for diverging paths after tenth grade, and we need to completely rethink our approach for our lowest-performing kids.
Since the beginning of the common school movement in the 1800s, we have valued our institutions of public education for their unifying nature, and the creation of a literate populace is an essential element of that goal. But much modern-day English instruction accomplishes neither. These middle school and high school classrooms barely resemble what you or I remember from our school years.
School choice is on the rise. In the last few decades, families have benefited from an explosion of educational options.
When schools went online at the beginning of the pandemic, it was unclear how the sudden and disruptive shift would impact student behavior. Would cyberbullying, for example, increase with students spending more time on their devices? And would time away from other students increase bullying when students returned to buildings?
Editor’s note: This was first published by Fox News.
In many ways, the educational failures of the past several years—including those caused by the pandemic—were far worse than they needed to be because of long-standing characteristics of American public education. Namely, the tendency to place employees’ interests first, the disempowering of parents, and the failure to innovate.
The school board in McMinn County, Tennessee, voted 10-0 to remove Maus, a Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel by cartoonist Art Spiegelman, from its eighth grade curriculum last month, citing concerns about explicit language and disturbing illustrations.
Amid the raging culture fires engulfing our politics and schools comes a concerted push among some conservative groups to codify a “parents’ bill of rights.” House minority leader Kevin McCarthy rolled out
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast (listen on
One of the biggest shifts in education reform in recent years has been widening acknowledgment that the “college for all” mantra was misguided. Yet so far our commitment to “multiple pathways” to opportunity is almost all talk accompanied by very little action. High school course requirements and accountability systems continue to push almost all students into the college-prep track.
Fordham’s new study, based on data from 400 metropolitan statistical areas and 534 micropolitan statistical areas, finds that an increase in total charter school enrollment share is associated with a significant narrowing of a metro area’s racial and socioeconomic math achievement gaps. With the country reeling from a pandemic that’s caused widespread learning loss, especially for disadvantaged students, getting more children into charter schools could help reverse those dire trends.
Editor’s note: This essay was first published by The 74.
Confessions of a School Reformer, a new book by emeritus Stanford education professor Larry Cuban, still going strong at eighty-eight, combines personal memoir with a history and analysis of U.S.
A recent release from the Education Commission of the States reminds us that the term “virtual school” refers to several different types of educational options, and that the ecosystem—more important now than ever before—requires specific attention and support from policymakers.
A letter seeking federal law enforcement intervention into threats aimed at school board members has caused a hullabaloo one year into U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona’s otherwise unremarkable tenure. Though his role in soliciting the letter is unclear, some Congressional Republicans would love nothing more than to see him become the fall guy. They would do well to consider how their thirst for blood might cut both ways.
