Every teacher of struggling readers has experienced the moment when a student says, “I read it, but I didn’t get it.” It can be a bewildering experience. Why don’t they get it?
The clatter that rose in late 2021 over New York City’s plan to phase out its gifted and talented (G/T) programs had much to do with the presumed negative effects of such programs on racial sorting.
A recent CALDER study examines the effects that earlier-grade teachers have on students’ eighth-grade math outcomes by analyzing Washington State administrative data.
“Pandemic babies are behind after years of stress, isolation affected brain development.”—USA Today This insightful project surveys a parent focus group on American history, and how they want their kids to learn about race and gender in
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Tom Kane, Harvard economist and director of its Center for Education Policy Research, explains
Awful tragedies like the shooting in Uvalde notwithstanding, firearms will remain ubiquitous. The question is whether policymakers can bring measured thinking and nuance to bear in solving the thorny problem of gun violence in schools. This is particularly challenging in a media climate that hypes and distorts the prevalence of what happened in last week, even as schools continue to deal with the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic.
In recent weeks, I’ve dug into the “excellence gap“—the sharp divides along lines of race
Natalie Wexler has done much (along with the likes of Jeanne Chall, Don Hirsch, Dan Willingham, Kate Walsh, and Robert Pondiscio) to establish the fact that there’s science behind the act of reading and the related proposition that real reading (not just “decoding”) is no isolated skill but, rather, a complicated process of making sense of what one reads on the page in the context of what one a
“From Bat Mitzvah to the Bar: Religious Habitus, Self-Concept, and Women’s Educational Outcomes,” a new study by Ilana Horwitz et al., analyzes the college-going rates of women raised by Jewish versus non-Jewish parents.
Fears that private-school-choice programs will spark a public-school exodus are not supported by the data.
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Checker Finn, the Fordham Institute’s president emeritus and a distinguished seni
In my work on the teaching staff of a master’s level class in public policy, I am regularly dismayed by how often our students propose only governmental solutions to public problems.
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Few people in education reform have had greater impact than Kate Walsh, who recently handed over the reins of the National Council on Teacher Quality, which she led for twenty years. No one has done more to make raising the level of teacher preparation a focus of reform efforts. Here, Robert Pondiscio talks to her about her past, the present, and her views on what’s to come.
Last week, I provided sobering evidence of the “excellence gap” among twelfth grade students—the sharp divides along lines of race and class in achievement at the highest levels.
Many state teacher pension systems are woefully underfunded, impose significant costs on teachers and schools, and shortchange tho
Calls are rising for America’s aging high-school model to modernize, in part by accommodating work experience through hands-on internships or actual employment for students.
Scholars and testing companies have been following grade inflation for decades. The first ACT study on the topic dates to the mid-1990s, while researchers have used SAT data to study grade inflation since the 1970s.
“Paul Vallas: [Chicago Public Schools] has failed the city’s youths, and violence has resulted.
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Virginia Secretary of Education Aimee Rogstad Guidera discusses
America’s education system suffers from a variety of “excellence gaps”—sharp disparities in performance by race and class at the highest levels of academic achievement. These gaps explain why college administrators turn to various forms of affirmative action in order to create freshmen classes that more closely represent the nation’s diversity—actions that may soon be declared unconstitutional. But when do these gaps start?
As I write this, representative samples of fourth and eighth graders are taking National Assessment of Educational Progress tests in math and English.
The proposed California Mathematics Framework generated a storm of controversy when the first draft was released in early 2021. Critics objected to the document’s condemnation of tracking and negative portrayal of acceleration for high-achieving students.
Reams of research have reported contradictory outcomes for students with disabilities (SWDs) who are taught in general education classrooms alongside their non-disabled peers versus learning in settings with only SWDs. A new report focuses on teacher certification as a possible mechanism to explain the variations in outcomes.
Throughout the pandemic, we encountered much speculation about the impact that remote learning would have on student performance. The expected learning loss was a concern not just of American parents and educators, but of citizens all around the world.
“Many progressives view the [the study of economics] as their adversary. Yet it has often proved to be a singularly powerful ally.” —New Yorker During the pandemic, leniency in college grading and attendance policies made sense.
