Commentary
What we're reading this week: January 20, 2022
Partisan overtones in the National School Boards Association’s letter to President Biden has led many members to withdraw or refuse to renew their membership.
Podcast
Commentary
Charter Schools, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
Now is not the time for OCR to meddle in school disciplinary policy
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
Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders
Mission, vision, and virtue
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.
Commentary
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
Stop focusing on class size
The Nation ran quite a headline last month: “To Reduce Inequality in Our Education System, Reduce Class Sizes.” Surely we might expect substantive evidence to follow such a pronouncement, especially in the midst of a staffing shortage.
Commentary
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
Not much to show nationally from a decade of teacher evaluation reforms
Spurred in large part by an infusion of over $4 billion in federal Race to the Top funds, beginning in 2009, nearly all states and the District of Columbia implemented major reforms to their teacher evaluation systems.
Commentary
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
Sharpening the picture of early pandemic schooling
While it’s no secret that pandemic-induced remote learning was a disaster for almost all students in 2020 and 2021, we must remind ourselves that in-person education models weren't so great
Commentary
Commentary
What we're reading this week: January 13, 2022
Democrats are losing the Asian American vote, and their position on education is a key reason.
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Charter Schools, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
Why authorizers shouldn’t shy away from helping their charter schools improve
A decade ago, most charter school authorizers agreed it was not their job to help struggling charter schools. But times have changed, and best practices in charter school authorizing are evolving.
Commentary
Republicans and school boards
Recent months have brought much hand-wringing and ink spilling over the possibility that hordes of Republicans are gearing up to plunge into local school board elections, this as part of their discovery that public education is rich with political opportunity (cue incoming Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin, his campaign advisors, and observant GOP strategists).
Commentary
Colorado’s curriculum crackdown
To start the year off on an upbeat note, Colorado’s muscular effort to improve K–3 reading curriculum finally appears to be paying off.
Commentary
Student retention and third-grade reading: It’s about the adults
Improving reading results, especially for Black and Hispanic students, is one of our top educational priorities. The numbers are dire, as we see almost half of these youngsters performing “Below Basic” on the fourth grade NAEP—a truly alarming level of performance.
Commentary
Early childhood education and later educational outcomes
Much attention has recently focused on early childhood education (ECE), thanks in part to its inclusion in President Biden’s Build Back Better bill. A new study by Robert C. Carr and colleagues investigated how the longitudinal effects of ECE are mediated by the quality of the K–12 schooling that follows.
Commentary
Commentary
Commentary
What we're reading this week: January 6, 2022
Keller Independent School District, under pressure by the state of Texas, is convening an anonymous committee to ban books they deem questionable.
Podcast
Accountability & Testing, ESSA, Curriculum & Instruction
Education Gadfly Show #801: Grumpy New Year with Checker Finn
Commentary
Fordham’s top 10 articles of 2021
The past year has brought hope and progress, but also setbacks and new challenges. At Fordham, we did our best to keep up with all of it, following our well-rehearsed practice of asking tough questions, conducting rigorous research, debating issues rather than propagandizing about them, and proposing workable solutions whenever we could. All of this is evident in Fordham’s 2021 commentary.
Commentary
The top Education Gadfly Show podcast episodes of 2021
This year, the Education Gadfly Show podcast covered many hot-button education issues. But our most-listened-to episodes reflect what we already knew: This was a big year for education politics!
Commentary
Evidence-Based Learning
Counting down the top education studies of 2021
Subscribers to our podcast, the Education Gadfly Show, are treated weekly to the Research Minute, a segment where I highlight a recent rigorous, useful, or intriguing education-related study (ideally all three).
Commentary
Evidence-Based Learning, Charter Schools, Governance
Charter attendance, education outcomes, and civic participation
For those of us old enough to remember, the “Rock the Vote” campaign in the 90’s showcased many celebrities—including Madonna in a red bikini and American flag—trying to convince young people to participate in elections.
Commentary
Commentary
What we're reading this week: December 23, 2021
The CDC’s case for masking in schools is flawed and doesn’t square with European and global health organizations’ guidance. —The Atlantic Gordon S. Wood, leading scholar of America’s Founding, exposes the 1619 Project’s historical illiteracy.
Podcast
Commentary
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
Civility, democracy, and education
Most of our founding fathers believed that a democracy is only as good as its citizens, since democracy only flourishes with citizens who are capable of governing themselves. But we have lost our understanding of the connection between virtue, self-government, and democracy. Indeed, few students today learn anything about virtue, let alone see any connection between it and the fate of our republic.
Commentary
Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
The long road to education recovery: Three ways for districts to redeem themselves
This school year was supposed to be the one when things returned back to normal. If only that were true.
Commentary
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders
Online courses and college degree completion
Students’ inability to enroll in required courses—due to capacity or scheduling constraints—can stymie progress toward a college degree. New findings published in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis suggest that online courses can help keep students on track to college graduation.
Commentary
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders
Boosting the effectiveness of STEM role models
Providing relatable role models for young people is a guiding principle by which STEM practitioners hope to motivate scientists of the future and diversify their ranks. Conscious of the importance of this endeavor, New York University researchers Jessica Gladstone and Andrei Cimpian examined the literature on role modeling to identify strategies for maximizing its motivational impact.
