The power of positive deviance
I’m a fan and faithful listener of EconTalk, a podcast hosted by Russ Roberts of Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
I’m a fan and faithful listener of EconTalk, a podcast hosted by Russ Roberts of Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
A cottage industry of studies shows the critical relationship between having a same-race teacher and a host of short- and long- term educational outcomes, including test scores, expectations,
School quality can vary drastically within districts, so district-wide averages of ratings often leave out important information. This can cause problems for stakeholders, such as parents who use these data to choose communities in which to live. But just as individual school grades vary, the range of good versus bad schools may be substantially larger in some districts than in others.
Teach For America (TFA) has been recruiting and placing college graduates into underserved classrooms since 1989. Throughout this thirty-year tenure, the program’s teacher-training methods and recruitment strategies have evolved.
In a full employment economy, there are many options for purpose-driven, socially astute, and smart people.
Last fall, Jonathan Plucker and I lauded Montgomery County, Maryland, for improving and expanding its elementary school programs for the “highly gifted,” especially for minority students.
Career technical education (CTE) programs at community colleges are a promising way to prepare the workforce for jobs in growing occupations. But the programs with the best outcomes for students often have limited capacity or very low completion rates. One solution: Start students on a path towards high-returns fields early, through efforts such as high school CTE programs.
The most demonized game in the annals of grade school physical education is back in the news.
Twenty years ago, conservative ideas were gaining traction in K–12 education.
This is the first in a series of summer posts that will examine whether America’s schools have, despite charges to the contrary, improved over the past quarter-century of reform. That is a big, daunting question—but there’s no doubt that student outcomes have improved during the education reform era.
Last week, we at Fordham released a new study called Student-Teacher Race Match in Charter and Traditional Public Schools.
On this week’s podcast, Josh Boots, Founder and Executive Director of EmpowerK12, joins Mike Petrilli and David Griffith to discuss how high-performing schools use all sorts of data—and not just test scores—to improve their instruction and outcomes. On the Research Minute, Amber Northern examines recent increases in college completion rates.
Start with two unlovable but immutable realities:
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.
Education policy is rife with references to developing suitable “career pathways” that presumably start in high school and extend through college.
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.
A new report by Seth Gershenson sparks fresh ideas about new directions for the literature on student-teacher matching along demographic characteristics.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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
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.
In April, the Fordham Institute and the Center for American Progress announced a
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.
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.
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
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.
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.