Commentary
Wonkathon 2019: What’s the best way to help students who are several grade levels behind?
This year's Wonkathon is over, and the results are in! 2019's Wisest Wonk:
Podcast
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Standards
The Education Gadfly Show: NAEP 2019: It (was) the economy, stupid
On this week’s podcast, Marty West, a Harvard professor of education, joins Mike Petrilli and David Griffith to talk about last week’s NAEP results and their relationship to the Great Recession. On the Research Minute, Amber Northern examines how graduation requirements affect arrest rates.
Commentary
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders
From Play-doh to Plato: All students need to grapple with grade-level text
My thirty-plus years in teaching have taken me on an unplanned path from Plato to Play-doh. When I taught Advanced Placement English to seniors three decades ago, I would have confidently bet against finding myself twenty-five years later teaching kindergarteners how to read.
Commentary
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders
Tailored paths that can combine pre-, on-, and post-grade skills are the solution for students below grade level in math
Standards are written to reflect the instructional path that students should follow throughout their educational journey. In math, that includes concepts such as basic algebraic thinking in the early elementary grades, multiplying fractions in the fifth grade, working with ratios and rates in the sixth grade, and so forth. Let’s call this the “standard instructional path.”
Event
Accountability & Testing, Curriculum & Instruction, Advanced Education, Standards
Is Advanced Placement Good for Everyone? A Discussion with Partisans and Doubters
Learning in the Fast Lane: The Past, Present, and Future of Advanced Placement (Princeton, 2019), the new book by Chester Finn and Andrew Scanlan, tells the story of the Advanced Placement (AP) program, widely regarded as the gold standard for academic rigor in American high schools.
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders
To help students who are behind, find out if their assignments match their goals
A typical sixth-grade teacher we work with serves a wide range of students. She likely has some who read above grade level, some who are a little behind, a student who doesn’t speak English but has excellent reading and writing skills in another language, and several students—some of whom have diagnosed learning disabilities—who are reading at an early elementary level.
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders
Rigor or personalized learning? Just ask Dr. Seuss.
What’s the best way to help students who are several grade levels behind?
Commentary
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders
2019 WONKATHON THIRD-PLACE ENTRY: Follow schools’ leads to embrace personalized learning and academic rigor
Editor’s note: This was the third-place submission, out of nineteen, to Fordham’s 2019 Wonkathon, in which we asked participants to answer the question: “What’s the best way to help students who are several grade levels behind?”
Commentary
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders
To help students who are several “grade levels” behind in reading, focus on building—and assessing—students’ knowledge
What’s the best way to help students who are several grade levels behind? We can’t answer that question without first understanding what “grade level” means. Math and reading are quite different when it comes to assessing grade level, and I’m going to focus on reading.
Commentary
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
To help students who are several grade levels behind, implement IEPs in elementary and middle school
The obvious but fundamental question is: Why are the students several grade levels behind? Undoubtedly, the answer is complex and will include, inter alia, insufficient preparation (student and teacher), poor teaching, poverty, inadequate foundation, behavior, and other psycho-social factors.
Commentary
Advanced Education
Low-income students are profoundly underrepresented in gifted programs
Gifted education scholars have long pounded the drum regarding the need to increase racial and ethnic diversity in gifted programs. A recent study we published in the Harvard Educational Review suggests that increasing socioeconomic diversity needs similar attention.
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
On our Nation’s Report Card, strong leadership gets an “A”
This week, the federal government released the results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)—known colloquially as “the Nation’s Report Card.” As always, the results are the subject of intense scrutiny, and are fodder for arguments on both sides of the political aisle and all sides of education debates.
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
2019 WONKATHON WINNER: Beyond the binary: We can foster equity in both opportunity and outcomes
Editor’s note: This was the first-place submission, out of nineteen, to Fordham’s 2019 Wonkathon, in which we asked participants to answer the question: “What’s the best way to help students who are several grade levels behind?”
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Curriculum & Instruction, Standards
On NAEP, bright spots amidst the gloom
This year’s NAEP results are bleak. But they were foreseeable, with the Great Recession's effects still impeding progress. Demography need not be destiny though: A few jurisdictions bucked the overall trends and showed improvement. D.C. deserves much of the praise, given its ability to demonstrate sustained and significant progress over time, and its decade-plus commitment to fundamental reform. As does Mississippi, which has been on an upward trajectory for the last decade, especially in reading. Despite the dismal results, there’s hope if we can follow the lead of these notable locales.
Commentary
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance
Classroom content: A conservative conundrum
The content of K–12 education is a minefield for conservatives. Over the past thirty years, education reformers who wanted parents to have choices for their children have tended to focus more on the creation of new public charter schools, or on private school scholarships, than on curriculum and classroom content.
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders
The zombie pedagogical debate
With Wonkathon season kicking into high gear, asking participants what’s the best way to help students who are several grade levels behind, it occurred to me that this year’s question, as fundamental and challenging as it may be, is a withering indictment o
Commentary
Career & Technical Education, Curriculum & Instruction
Opening STEM opportunities in Appalachia
With the backing of Chevron and local philanthropy, the Appalachia Partnership Initiative (API) was launched five years ago.
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Curriculum & Instruction
Innovation, grade-level standards, and what schools can learn from Teach to One: Math
Only 30 to 40 percent of high school students graduate college- or career-ready. And one of the main reasons may be traditional public schools’ focus on grade-level proficiency.
Podcast
Charter Schools, Governance, Private School Choice, Teachers & School Leaders
The Education Gadfly Show: On education, Warren’s got a pander for that
On this week’s podcast, Mike Petrilli and David Griffith talk to Checker Finn about Senator Warren’s flawed education proposal. On the Research Minute, Amber Northern examines improvements to the student teaching experience that can help candidates feel more prepared for success in the classroom.
Commentary
What to expect from the “Nation’s Report Card”: The long shadow of the Great Recession
There’s a saying in the investing world: “The trend is your friend.” In other words, if you want to predict the future direction of the market, especially in the short term, the safest bet is for the current trend to continue. (Amateur weather forecasting works much the same.)
Commentary
Charter Schools, Governance
An open letter to the Board of Directors of Ascend Learning
Dear Directors:
Commentary
Governance
Can that plan, Senator Warren!
Senator Elizabeth Warren revealed a K–12 plan on Monday that’s big, substantive—and awful. It would reverse most of the major education reforms of the past two decades, drive a stake through the heart of what’s left of bipartisan federal and state policy, and re-enshrine adult interests (especially those of the teacher unions) in place of children’s, while wasting immense sums of taxpayer dollars.
Podcast
Accountability & Testing, Curriculum & Instruction, Standards
The Education Gadfly Show: Early warning: Kindergarten readiness skills are trending downward
On this week’s podcast, Megan Kuhfeld, a research scientist at NWEA, joins Mike Petrilli to discuss her recent, sobering findings about the reading and math skills of children entering kindergarten. On the Research Minute, Adam Tyner examines how “stereotype threat” affects the results of cognitive ability tests.
Commentary
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Standards, Teachers & School Leaders
Why struggling students remain below grade level, and how to help them
Editor’s note: This is a submission to Fordham’s 2019 Wonkathon, in which we ask participants to answer the question: “What’s the best way to help students who are several grade levels behind?” This entry does so via answers to hypothe
Commentary
Do U.S. schools use discriminatory practices when suspending students with disabilities?
A new report evaluates whether and to what extent U.S. schools use discriminatory practices when suspending students with disabilities (SWD), including children of color.
Commentary
Curriculum & Instruction
What the research tells us about the outcomes of a good civics education
Americans today are woefully uninformed about our democracy, and many blame the poor state of civics education for it—and they have a point.
Commentary
Advanced Education
Failing and passing the “Tiffany Test,” part II
Part I discussed Robert Pondiscio’s “Tiffany Test”: How do high-achieving students fare as they move through a high-poverty elementary school?
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders
NewSchools isn't overselling SEL: A response to Checker Finn
Our team at NewSchools recently released a report titled, Using Expanded Measures of Student Success for School Improvement. In it, we share some on-the-ground lessons from innovative public schools in our portfolio.
Commentary
Accountability & Testing
Standardized tests remain the best way to fairly and equitably assess students
Educational testing is under attack.
Commentary
Evidence-Based Learning, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
Don’t oversell SEL
Social and emotional learning could do much good if deployed in pursuit of academic learning, but it runs multiple risks of going off the rails when its boosters ignore its limitations. It’s in this context that a recent brief by the NewSchools Venture Fund lands. There’s considerable wisdom in it, but leaders and policymakers should be careful what they do with the SEL measures for which it advocates. They should not, for example, incorporate them into accountability systems. Nor should they get so preoccupied with them that they neglect English, math, science, and history, or forget how much those matter in the real world.
