Displaying 511-540 of 1336 results
Commentary
2.24.2022
Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

Classics and Black history: Lessons from Dr. Anika Prather

Jennifer Frey

A common charge against classical education—education that is rooted in the classical texts of the Western ancient world and that seeks to develop the moral and intellectual character of its students—is that it is inextricably racist, sexist, and quite generally offensive or alienating to members of historically marginalized communities.

Commentary
2.24.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Career & Technical Education, Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

A principal explains how to repair the harm of “college for all”

Arthur Samuels

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.

Commentary
2.24.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

“Doing science” boosts academic achievement

Jeff Murray

In 2017, a team of researchers from Finland and Michigan State University who were eager to improve science instruction for secondary students launched a field trial for Crafting Engaging Science Environments (CESE), a project-based curriculum they created and aligned with the Next Gener

Commentary
2.24.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

Online credit recovery and long-term earnings potential

Jeff Murray

The Covid slide has both expanded the need for students to take remedial classes and produced greater familiarity with remote learning. As a result, online credit recovery options have become more necessary and readily accessible at the same time.

Commentary
2.17.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

End school mask mandates

Daniel Buck

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.

Commentary
2.17.2022
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Why I left the classroom during the Great Resignation

Nathaniel Grossman

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.

Commentary
2.17.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Incentivize individual agency to achieve upward mobility

Ian Rowe

Editor’s note: This testimony was given by Fordham Institute trustee Ian Rowe on January 20, 2022, to the U.S.

Commentary
2.17.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

Dual language education seems to be a promising route to academic progress

Amber M. Northern, Ph.D.

Dual language instruction (DL) is a version of bilingual education that renders instruction in two languages in the same classroom. It differs from the more common English-only classroom with pullout/separate services for students learning English as a second language (ESL). It also differs from language immersion in which students receive all instruction in their non-native language.

Commentary
2.11.2022
Charter Schools, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

The plot to weaken New York City charters

Robert Pondiscio

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.

Commentary
2.10.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Career & Technical Education, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Of course there’s tracking in high schools. Get over it.

Michael J. Petrilli

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.

Commentary
2.10.2022
Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

The pedagogy of the depressed

Robert Pondiscio

Editor’s note: This essay is adapted with permission from the cover story of the March issue of Commentary, “The Unbearable Bleakness of American Schooling.” The middle school two blocks from my New York City apartment is named for Jonas Salk.

Commentary
2.10.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

We’re teaching mediocrity in literature classrooms

Daniel Buck

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.

Commentary
2.10.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

How did the pandemic affect school bullying?

Julia Wolf

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?

Commentary
2.3.2022
Accountability & Testing, Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Private School Choice, Teachers & School Leaders

Did public education have it coming?

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

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.

Commentary
2.3.2022
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

The Maus that roared: Who do you want to decide what’s best for kids?

Robert Pondiscio

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.

Commentary
2.3.2022
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

The curriculum transparency trap

Dale Chu

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

Commentary
1.27.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Career & Technical Education, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

We all agree that college isn’t for everyone. We should start acting like it.

Michael J. Petrilli

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.

Commentary
1.27.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Charter school expansion narrows achievement gaps

Amber M. Northern, Ph.D., Michael J. Petrilli

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.

Commentary
1.27.2022
Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Private School Choice, Teachers & School Leaders

Americans have lost trust in public schools

Robert Pondiscio

Editor’s note: This essay was first published by The 74.

Commentary
1.27.2022
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

A century of school reform, through the eyes of Larry Cuban

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

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.

Commentary
1.27.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Virtual schools should get more support and attention

Jeff Murray

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.

Commentary
1.20.2022
Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Some Republicans want Miguel Cardona gone. They might come to regret it.

Dale Chu

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.

Commentary
1.20.2022
Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

On teaching courage

Jennifer Frey

In recent days, American students have been learning about Martin Luther King Jr. and his leadership in the American civil rights movement.

Commentary
1.20.2022
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

The case for starting NAEP in kindergarten

Michael J. Petrilli

Way back in the late 1960s, when federal officials and eminent psychologists were first designing the National Assessment of Educational Progress, they probably never contemplated testing students younger than nine. After all, the technology for mass testing at the time—bubble sheets and No.

Commentary
1.13.2022
Charter Schools, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Now is not the time for OCR to meddle in school disciplinary policy

Michael J. Petrilli

Any day now, Catherine Lhamon, the assistant U.S. secretary of education for civil rights, is expected to release new guidance for school districts that’ll reinstate an Obama-era policy limiting the use of suspensions and the like in the name of reducing racial disparities in “exclusionary discipline.” It couldn’t come at a worse time.

Commentary
1.13.2022
Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

Mission, vision, and virtue

Jennifer Frey

Education in the classical sense is padeia: a holistic approach to student formation that is geared towards the cultivation of the student’s mind, imagination, perception, and emotions so that they become the type of person who can flourish and thrive inside the school community and well beyond.