Civics for today
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.
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.
Editor’s note: This essay is an entry in Fordham’s 2024 Wonkathon, which asked contributors to answer this question: “How can policymakers and practitioners radically reduce chronic absenteeism—at least below pre-pandemic levels and preferably much further?”
Editor’s note: This essay is an entry in Fordham’s 2024 Wonkathon, which asked contributors to answer this question: “How can policymakers and practitioners radically reduce chronic absenteeism—at least below pre-pandemic levels and preferably much further?”
About seven in ten (72 percent) high school teachers say that students being distracted by cellphones is a major problem in their classroom.
Everyone benefits from exemplars. We all need models to mimic and follow. In the policy realm that means states, legislatures and governors who pass policies and reforms that materially improve the lives of their residents.
Teacher voice is often missing from education policy discussions, leading to what can feel like an adversarial relationship between pundits and practitioners. Educators for Excellence (E4E) strives to reframe that relationship by amplifying the interests and concerns of teachers across the land.
Editor’s note: This essay is an entry in Fordham’s 2024 Wonkathon, which asked contributors to answer this question: “How can policymakers and practitioners radically reduce chronic absenteeism—at least below pre-pandemic levels and preferably much further?”
It may be true that Kamala Harris is, at heart, your typical progressive Democrat from California. But she has an unusual opportunity to shed some of that political baggage. Indicating that she will be open to education reform is one of the best ways to do so.
Editor’s note: This essay is an entry in Fordham’s 2024 Wonkathon, which asked contributors to answer this question: “How can policymakers and practitioners radically reduce chronic absenteeism—at least below pre-pandemic levels and preferably much further?”
In a word, yes! It’s never enough, and there’s no resting on laurels, but we have solid evidence over thirty years in America and beyond that students learn more when they—and their schools—are held to account for what and how well they’re learning.
Academic advancement programs (especially those branded as “gifted and talented”) are often at the center of controversy about equity in education.
On Monday, Donald Trump chose Senator J.D. Vance as his running mate, signaling a doubling down on his MAGA brand. As far as education is concerned, this means tapping into broad parental discontent over educational and education-related issues, many of which were turbocharged by the pandemic.
Perhaps no modern American education reform has enjoyed the success and staying power of charter schools. Three-plus decades after Minnesota passed the first charter law, 3.7 million students now attend charters, the majority of whom are children of color and come from low-income families.
Spend any length of time in education and you can’t help notice pendulum swings as ideas about what constitutes effective practice fall in and out of fashion. There’s no reason to expect the “science of reading” movement to be an exception.
The Advanced Placement program is undergoing a radical transformation. Over the last three years, the College Board has “recalibrated” nine of its most popular AP Exams so that approximately 500,000 more AP Exams will earn a 3+ score this year than they would have without recalibration.
Long after Covid-inspired shutdowns, schools remain chaotic according to recent surveys and umpteen stories of hallway brawls, bus fights, and general mayhem.
In my final college semester, I had the privilege of being a full-time student teacher at a Catholic middle school, teaching seventh and eigth grade history and theology. It was the highlight of my life. The students were curious, polite, and thoughtful, caring to one another and welcoming to me.
In the 2022–23 school year, an estimated 26 percent of public school students were chronically absent—a rate almost 10 percentage points higher than pre-pandemic.
The teaching profession may be in for a rough year ahead, but even without the looming layoffs as federal emergency funds come to an end, school districts are not focusing enough on keeping their best talent. And teachers themselves seem bearish on their profession.
Inquiry-based learning in STEM classrooms, long a contentious topic, has been making news since the introduction of the controversial California Math Framework. This student-led approach aims to foster engagement by sparking curiosity and critical thinking.
Starting in 2010, Congress invested more than $1 billion to assist states with their literacy improvement efforts through the Striving Rea
Last month, Louisiana issued a series of common-sense recommendations titled, simply and winningly, “Let Teachers Teach.” The report hasn’t received nearly enough attention. It deserves to be studied closely in every state and school district if we’re serious about improving teacher job satisfaction, effectiveness, and raising student achievement.
Peter Liljedahl opens his wildly popular book on mathematics instruction, Building Thinking Classrooms, with a bold gambit.
You remember the six-foot rule. How could you forget?
Ten years ago, when Florida launched the nation’s second education savings account program, a beautiful thing happened. Friedrich Hayek would have called it “spontaneous order.” Parents, within days, began forming a multitude of Facebook groups where they traded advice on how to access the accounts, how to use them, and what learning options were available in their area.
Poland has been the economic tiger of Europe in recent decades and one of the fastest growing economies in the world over that time. In 1990, when I taught high school in a rural Polish town located in Silesia between Poznan and Wroclaw, Poland’s GDP was less than Ukraine’s.
Forty-five percent of U.S. public schools report feeling understaffed, 70 percent report that too few candidates are applying to teaching vacancies, and 86 percent report challenges hiring teachers in the 2023–24 school year.
Editor’s note: This was first published by Forbes.
In his recent column “Let’s Talk About Bad Teachers,” Michael Petrilli fearlessly seized the third rail of U.S. K–12 education.
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.