Displaying 2551-2580 of 17774 results
Commentary
3.4.2019

Dismantling New Mexico's reform edifice

Dale Chu

New Mexico’s legislative session ends next week, but the local education lobby’s effort to dismantle the state’s education reform edifice is just getting underway. It's important we do whatever we can to help hold the line there. As a movement, we owe a debt of gratitude to Hanna Skandera, Christopher Ruszkowski, and many others who took it in the teeth in the fight for their students. Let’s not squander their legacy and hard work.

Commentary
2.28.2019
Private School Choice

Let’s hear it for educational freedom!

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

Twenty-five months after Donald Trump’s inauguration, his administration has just unveiled its big school-choice initiative—yes, the cause that, during his 2016 campaign, he termed the “new civil rights issue of our time,” the very same cause that Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has devoted her career to promoting.

Commentary
2.27.2019

Is a "good enough" school good enough for my kids?

Michael J. Petrilli

A “good enough” school isn’t adequate or average, much less mediocre, but rather one that, by design, helps to prepare kids for life’s endless frustrations. And public schools, thanks to their oft-exasperating rules and frequently-unruly students, tend to do this better than their elite counterparts. Academic learning might happen more efficiently and effectively with homeschooling or private schools. But maybe that shouldn’t be all we’re after. Read more.

Commentary
2.27.2019

Smarter teachers = higher student achievement

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

Everybody knows that teacher quality matters hugely in education, indeed may be the single most potent variable in a classroom, school or system. Yet it’s also an exceptionally elusive and inherently contentious quality.

Commentary
2.27.2019

How access to school ratings affects inequality

Jessie McBirney

We here at Fordham love a good school rating system, and one of the most popular independent rating platforms is GreatSchools. Once a California-specific hub for school quality information, GreatSchools went national in 2003 and now provides ratings for over 100,000 public schools around the country.

Podcast
2.20.2019
Governance

The Education Gadfly Show: Out of commission

On this week’s podcast, Mike Petrilli, Checker Finn, and David Griffith discuss Checker’s experience on Maryland’s Commission on Innovation and Excellence in Education, and its bold proposals for improving the state’s schools. On the Research Minute, Amber Northern examines the benefits of arts education.

Commentary
2.20.2019

Rethinking the way we coach, evaluate, and appreciate teachers

When I visit classrooms with the principals I coach in urban, suburban, and private schools, it’s obvious how hard most teachers are working, how much care they put into setting up their classrooms, and how much gumption it takes to work with young people six hours a day. I see lots of effective teaching—practices that one might rate as level 3 or 4 on a four-point rating scale—and very little that’s horrible, or level 1. But I do see a fair amount of mediocre, level 2 practices—for example, teachers giving out low-rigor, fill-in-the-blanks worksheets, calling only on students who raise their hands, or failing to answer kids’ unspoken question, “Why are we learning this?”

Commentary
2.20.2019

So long, Zig

This weekend saw the passing of Siegfried “Zig” Engelmann. He was a giant among educators and a true social justice warrior. By that, I mean that he dedicated his life to improving outcomes for the disadvantaged, not that he was some great wet lettuce who opined about emotional labor and set his critics three books to read before he would discuss anything with them.

Commentary
2.20.2019

Faint of art: New evidence bolsters the argument for arts education

Robert Pondiscio

It’s a shame that the arts need to justify their continued presence in schools, but if that’s a fact, this new study should help. Kids exposed to expanded arts education opportunities in Houston experienced “a 3.6 percentage point reduction in disciplinary infractions, an improvement of 13 percent of a standard deviation in standardized writing scores, and an increase of 8 percent of a standard deviation in their compassion for others.” Read more.

Commentary
2.20.2019

How well is the U.S. Department of Education monitoring grant recipients?

Sophie Sussman

One of the ways the U.S. Department of Education is supposed to facilitate student success is by awarding federally funded grants to various state and local programs, then independently assessing the performance of those grantees. Doing the latter job well will be increasingly important and challenging under the Every Student Succeeds Act, which allows for significantly more flexibility on how grantee programs can be designed and ran than under No Child Left Behind, the law’s predecessor.

Commentary
2.19.2019

Kirwan and the sacred cows

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

The long-awaited report of Maryland’s Commission on Innovation and Excellence in Education—aka Kirwan Commission—was released last week. I had the honor (and sometimes pleasure) to serve on this body for the past two years as it strove with fair success to develop and recommend a coherent package of bold changes intended to transform K–12 schools in the Old Line State.

Commentary
2.13.2019

"Knowledge map" your ELA curriculum

Robert Pondiscio

In an essay in The Washington Post last summer, Sonja Santelises, the courageous chief executive of Baltimore City Public Schools, described a problem commonly overlooked in school districts like hers: a “disjointed” curriculum that’s not simply lacking in rigor, but fails even to “connect [students’] experiences to other people’s histories and the larger world.” More than 80 percent of her district’s pupils are black, but according to Santelises, the world they saw....

Commentary
2.13.2019
Curriculum & Instruction

Instructional coaches: The heroes of the Golden Age of Educational Practice

Michael J. Petrilli

Shifting ed reform’s focus to improving practice is an acknowledgment that underperformance is not a failure of will, but a lack of capacity. It’s a talent-development and human capital-strategy, not an accountability play. Forcing changes in behavior, whether through lawmaking or lawsuit, may win compliance, but it doesn’t advance understanding and sophistication. Teachers need to understand the “why” behind evidence-based practice to implement it well and effectively.

Podcast
2.13.2019
School Finance

The Education Gadfly Show: The profit motive and education

On this week’s podcast, Neal McCluskey, director of Cato's Center for Educational Freedom, joins Mike Petrilli and David Griffith to discuss the appropriate role of for-profit entities in education. On the Research Minute, Amber Northern examines the effects tracking, instructional practices, and text complexity have on students who are struggling with reading in middle school.

Event
2.13.2019
Curriculum & Instruction

Education 20/20: Eliot Cohen and Yuval Levin

The second half of our Education 20/20 speaker series begins on February 12th as we bring you another double header. Eliot Cohen will argue for civic education that promotes patriotic history, one that not only educates and informs but also inspires. Yuval Levin will make the case for reasserting the role of education in character formation.

Podcast
2.6.2019

The Education Gadfly Show: Millennial parents and education reform

On this week’s podcast, Kristen Soltis Anderson, pollster and co-founder of Echelon Insights, joins Mike Petrilli and David Griffith to discuss what millennial parents think about education. On the Research Minute, Amber Northern examines how Florida’s tax credit scholarship program has affected participants’ college enrollment and degree attainment.