#911: The flaws in school funding formulas, with Rebecca Sibilia
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Rebecca Sibilia, the executive director of EdFund, joins Mike and David to deb
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Rebecca Sibilia, the executive director of EdFund, joins Mike and David to deb
Editor’s note: This was first published by The 74.
The way we grade student work is flawed—in some ways inequitable—and is in need of reform. But like so many things in American education, the push for “equitable grading” has often been implemented piecemeal, bringing along with it all manner of unintended consequences, the most important of which is lowered standards.
There are, generally speaking, two ways to report students’ performance on tests. One is normative, and it compares a student’s performance to his peers. The second is criterion, and it compares a student’s performance to learning standards, indicating grade-level proficiency and is independent of peers’ test performance.
The push for more “equitable” grading policies has exacerbated grade inflation while yielding little evidence of greater learning. Some aspects of traditional grading can indeed perpetuate inequities, but top-down policies that make grading more lenient are not the answer, especially as schools grapple with the academic and behavioral challenges of the post-pandemic era.
My friend Michael Petrilli just wrote a great essay about the “homework gap.” He sets aside the upper-class question (stressed out kids with too much of it) and steers readers to the gap (some kids do what’s assigned, some kids copy and cheat, and some kids skip it).
Districts have used almost $190 billion in ESSER funds to help students recover from pandemic learning loss by implementing a wide variety of initiatives, including
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Adam Tyner and Meredith Coffey, the national research director and a se
If we care about doing educational equity right, we need to call the bluff of those who want to lower expectations for students’ effort “because equity.” Those so-called advocates need to do some of their own homework—and penance—as well.
Marginalized students have long lacked access to advanced education programs in the U.S., compared to more advantaged peers, and have been under-identified and therefore underserved when such programs exist.
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Chad Aldis, Fordham’s Vice President of Ohio Policy, joins Mike and David t
In recent months, housing programs for school teachers have begun to receive high-profile attention. And with good reason: As costs of living have risen, teacher salaries have not kept pace, thereby decreasing some educators’ ability to live near their workplaces. But are such policies actually a good thing? In short: We really don’t know.
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
My students caught me smelling an old book once. While they were silently reading one day, I noticed a tattered book on the shelf. So what did I do? Following deep instincts, I pulled it down, cracked the spine, and breathed deeply. “Mr. Buck, what are you DOING?!” I turned around to find the whole class staring at me.
Many states are overhauling their early literacy policies to align with the science of reading, an evidence-based approach that emphasizes phonics and knowledge building. Effectively implementing these reforms is crucial, as high-quality reading instruction can improve both academic and life outcomes for children.
Better late than never, New York State has stirred itself to change the way reading is taught in its 800-plus local school districts. Last month, Governor Kathy Hochul announced a plan to spend $10 million to train 20,000 teachers in the “science of reading,” including a “microcredentialing” program via the state’s public universities. Assuming the legislature grants the request, here’s how New York could maximize the program’s impact.
Last year, Colorado’s legislature established an “Accountability, Accreditation, Student Performance, and Resource Inequity Task Force”—a twenty-six-member behemoth charged with, among other things, making recommendations on the future of the state’s K–12 asses
As the population of English learners (ELs) in grades K–12 grows, so do the challenges school districts face in identifying gifted students and putting in place appropriate enrichment and acceleration opportunities for them.
This is the fourth in a series on doing educational equity right.
Equitably funding education in America means providing more resources to students who need additional support.
Khaya Njumbe enrolled at GEO Academies’ 21st Century Charter School, in Gary, Indiana, when he was eleven years old. By age thirteen, he’d become the youngest student in state history to earn an associate degree.
Editor’s note: This was first published on the author’s Substack, The Education Daly.
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Angela Rachidi, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, joins
Last week, Petrilli identified three rules for “doing educational equity right” that will result in smart policy designs and make it likelier that the political right will get on board the equity train. Now let’s apply those rules to the topic of school finance.
Shortly before schools—and Fordham—shuttered their doors for the holiday break, Tim Daly asked a simple question in these pages: Should schools ban smart phones?
As former teachers in a variety of settings—charter, traditional public, and “transfer” schools—we read with great interest our colleague Daniel Buck’s recent piece, “In defense of the traditional classroom
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Ray Domanico, the director of education policy at the Manhattan institute, joins Mi
The education world lost a true reformer on Christmas Day—and the charter-school world lost one of its true heroes—when Linda Brown passed away at eighty-one at her home in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
“Truancy” may no longer be the right word for it, maybe not even “absenteeism,” for both imply being missing from a place where one is supposed to be. “Truancy,” with its overtone of misbehavior and illegality, suggests willfulness, i.e., that one is intentionally missing, while “absenteeism” is a more neutral term with no suggestion of motive.
The Covid-19 pandemic created innumerable disruptions to the education system. Among them were challenges faced by teacher candidates trying to complete licensure requirements. In response, those requirements got waived in many places.