Commentary
Is dumbing-down why graduation rates are up? In both high school and college?
Start with two unlovable but immutable realities:
Commentary
The effects of school discipline on families of color
A trio of researchers, Joanne W. Golann and Anna Lisa Weiss of Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College; and Mira Debs of Yale, set out to explore “what discipline means to Black and Latinx families” at two commonly available school choice options: a so-called “no excuses” charter school, and a pair of public Montessori magnet schools. This is a rich vein of ore to mine.
Commentary
How different post-secondary pathways affect the ability of disadvantaged students to attain credentials with labor market value
Education policy is rife with references to developing suitable “career pathways” that presumably start in high school and extend through college.
Commentary
SAT and adversity: Taking a second look
If you happen to be wondering what’s on tap for America’s next pity party, look no further than the Facebook video entitled “If someone doesn't understand privilege, show them this.” This four-minute tear-jerker has been viewed a staggering 112 million times.
Commentary
Teacher diversity in North Carolina: Sector differences in exposure and impact raise questions about how benefits are felt
A new report by Seth Gershenson sparks fresh ideas about new directions for the literature on student-teacher matching along demographic characteristics.
Commentary
Teacher diversity is yet another area where charter schools excel
Fordham’s newest study finds that black students in charter schools are about 50% more likely to have a same-race teacher than their black counterparts in traditional public schools, that the impact of having a same-race teacher is twice as large in charters, and that the effect of having a same-race teacher in charters is about twice as large for nonwhite students as for white students. They're doing a better job of recruiting diverse teachers, which gives kids of color a greater chance at having a teacher of their same race.
Commentary
The making of an edu-myth: The 30-million-word gap has not been “debunked”
Try this experiment. At your next professional development session, conference, or perhaps on social media, mention the famous “30-million-word gap” study, which demonstrated that low-income children hear far less spoken language before their first day of school than their affluent peers, setting in motion dramatic differences in vocabulary attainment and academic achievement.
Commentary
Back to the future: How to rescue and reinvent special education
To borrow from the familiar quip about the weather, everybody complains about special education, but nobody does anything about it. Why such policy neglect despite the dismal outcomes for the vast majority of the nearly seven million students in special education and the suffering of their anguished parents?
Podcast
Charter Schools, Teachers & School Leaders
The Education Gadfly Show: The benefits of having a same-race teacher
On this week's podcast, Seth Gershenson, Associate Professor at American University and author of Fordham's latest study, Student-Teacher Race Match in Charter and Traditional Public Schools, joins Mike Petrilli and David Griffith to discuss that research. On the Research Minute, Amber Northern examines how the actions of turnaround schools affect teacher mobility.
Commentary
Beating the drum for charter schools
Sarah Tantillo is an accomplished teacher, author, and battle-scarred veteran of the charter-school wars, particularly in New Jersey, where she taught for years at acclaimed North Star Academy and led the state charter school association.
Commentary
The education-health care perplex
As I observe health care rise to the top of the policy debates foreshadowing the 2020 election—seems to be second only to Donald Trump among the twenty-three Democrats now seeking the Oval Office—as K–12 education sinks lower on the policy horizon (such that several observers declare ed-reform
Report
Charter Schools, Teachers & School Leaders
Student-Teacher Race Match in Charter and Traditional Public Schools
There’s mounting evidence that, for children of color especially, having one or more teachers of the same race over the course of students’ educational careers seems to make a positive difference. But to what extent, if any, do the benefits of having a same-race teacher vary by type of school? Existing “race-match” studies fail to distinguish among the traditional district and charter school sectors. This study fills that gap and finds that the effects of having a same-race teacher appear stronger in charter schools than in the traditional district sector—and stronger still for nonwhite students.
Commentary
Fordham-CAP “Moonshot for Kids” competition is now open
In April, the Fordham Institute and the Center for American Progress announced a
Commentary
Good jobs don’t always require college
Many contemporary discussions on attending college seem to start with the premise that only folks with bachelor’s degrees have a clear path to good, paying jobs and further economic opportunity.
Commentary
Spelling bees and Tiger Woods
A pair of weekend essays heralding two new books point in very different directions regarding childhood, adolescence, and education—and portend tough choices for parents and educators. One is an anthropologist’s look at the spelling bee phenomenon as it has evolved in recent years. The other is a well-documented argument against the kind of youthful single-mindedness displayed by those spelling-bee fanatics (and their fanatical parents). It’s a quandary that inevitably connects to the larger policy issue of liberal education versus professionalism in college—and to the classic array of academic subjects versus CTE during high school.
Commentary
Schools aren’t democracies, but they shouldn’t be autocracies either
Earlier this month, Stephen Sawchuk wrote a thought-provoking article in Education Week—part of a project called “Citizen Z,” which aims to examine the current state of civics education—highlighting a skir
Commentary
The pragmatism of personalized pacing
The variance across students’ current abilities and interests is an age-old challenge for educators, and one that’s resulted in a long list of proposed solutions.
Podcast
The Education Gadfly Show: Rural schools and the urban bleed
On this week’s podcast, journalist Arielle Dreher joins Mike Petrilli and David Griffith to discuss the struggles of rural areas to hold on to their brightest residents. On the Research Minute, Amber Northern examines how different post-secondary pathways affect the ability of disadvantage students to attain credentials with labor market value.
Commentary
The negative effects of “crime-prone” peers
A recent study uses data from Charlotte-Mecklenberg Schools in North Carolina along with juvenile and adult arrest data to try to isolate the effect of peers on a range of outcomes, including long-term ones.
Commentary
The results of Florida’s education reforms are impressive. Their ROI is totally off the charts.
Florida is celebrating the twenty-year mark of its A+ Plan for Education, which brought accountability, parental choice, and evidence-based practices to the state’s schools. These efforts produced results that put almost every other state to shame, and lifted Florida from the middle of the pack to the top tier. But even more impressive is that these outcomes occurred while the state kept spending per pupil flat as a pancake. This makes Florida a serious outlier, and represents an incredible and laudable return on investment.
Commentary
New American Schools: A short, opinionated history, part III
This essay is part of the The Moonshot for Kids project, a joint initiative of the Fordham Institute and the Center for American Progress.
Podcast
Governance
The Education Gadfly Show: Education leadership’s gender imbalance
On this week’s podcast, Julia Rafal-Baer, chief operating officer at Chiefs for Change, joins Mike Petrilli and David Griffith to discuss her organization’s recent report on the gender imbalances at the very top levels of educational leadership. On the Research Minute, Amber Northern examines how closing chronically underperforming schools affects neighborhood crime.
Commentary
How does teachers union strength affect school funding allotments?
A recent study in The Review of Economics and Statistics looks at changes in school funding over the last several decades, a period when courts ordered states to remedy the huge funding inequalities that had resulted from local funding of education by allocating additional state funds to poorer districts.
Commentary
Finding the right balance in an early college high school
Early college high schools are those in which students pursue college credits as a requirement for graduation.
Podcast
The Education Gadfly Show: Can we really transform district schools?
On this week’s podcast, Donald P. Nielsen, program director of the Discovery Institute’s American Center for Transforming Education, joins Mike Petrilli and David Griffith to discuss the feasibility of empowering school administrators, and whether it’s feasible in district schools. On the Research Minute, Amber Northern examines efforts in Boston to scale up successful charter schools.
Commentary
New American Schools: A short, opinionated history, part II
This essay is part of the The Moonshot for Kids project, a joint initiative of the Fordham Institute and the Center for American Progress. This is the second of three parts.
Commentary
What we know about early learning
To a degree most of us would prefer not to acknowledge, classroom practice tends to run less on research and empirical evidence than on some combination of philosophy, faith, or personal preference.
Commentary
Examining high school student credential attainment compared to workforce demand
“Credentials Matter,” a new report released by the Foundation for Excellence in Education and Burning Glass Technologies, joins other recent
Commentary
Local norms improve equity in gifted identification
Almost every article on gifted education highlights inequity as an issue for the field. Indeed, inequity and large excellence gaps are among society’s most vexing educational problems, and scholars have proposed a variety of approaches to address them.
Commentary
Advanced Education
Are educators neglecting the needs of high-flying students?
Good teachers are warm and compassionate people, and like parents, they tend to love all their kids equally. Nevertheless, they also have a special tenderness for the students who struggle in their classrooms and feel a particular urgency about meeting their needs. This often means less attention paid to high flyers. Educators tend to believe these children will be fine no matter what. But they’re are their own “high-needs” subgroup because they’re at the greatest risk for extreme boredom.
