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Commentary
9.10.2014
Curriculum & Instruction, Standards

Common Core and the era of good behavior

We seemed to have welcomed good manners back to the Common Core debate. That doesn’t mean we’ve seen more advocacy either on behalf of the standards or knocking them, only that the tenor appears to have changed for the better. At least for the time being, detractors are no longer paranoid Neanderthals, and supporters have ceased to be communists on the federal or Gates Foundation dole.

Commentary
9.8.2014
Standards, Accountability & Testing

The importance of testing and the power of hard facts

Kathleen Porter-Magee

Over the past four years on this blog, I’ve strived to advance a substantive conversation around standards and assessment through complex (and hopefully interesting) policy arguments. But finding new things to advance a discussion sometimes means losing sight of large and obvious things that need to be said over and over again.

Commentary
9.8.2014

Farewell to Graham Down

There is little that I might add to Checker and Mike's wonderfully fitting tribute to Graham Down. They captured the very essence of a remarkable, multi-faceted, true Renaissance man.

Commentary
9.5.2014

Time to focus on tenure

Judging by the rhetoric of some legislators and wonks, it may come as a shock that public policy is not the stuff of magic whereby just the right regulatory language will, like one of Harry Potter’s spells, instantly reduce a monster of a problem to dust. Instead, policy is about the careful consideration of a series of tradeoffs. Education reformers in particular have been accused of leaping from one panacea to the next, rather than carefully considering practical alternatives. That doesn’t mean, however, there aren’t still a number of critical ingredients that must be a part of any witch’s brew to cure what ails our education system. One of them is the reform of, if not removal of, tenure.

Commentary
9.5.2014

Ferguson, reparations, and institutional roots

Andy’s odyssey: Part four: The most convincing argument against conservatism is that by defending longstanding institutions it ends up protecting longstanding injustices. Yes, there is a prima facie case for preservation: It’s sensible to safeguard

Commentary
9.4.2014
Standards

Connecting the dots: E. D. Hirsch, Jr., and Common Core

Robert Pondiscio

One of the arguments I’ve long made in support of Common Core is that properly understood and implemented, it’s a delivery mechanism for the ideas and work of E. D. Hirsch, Jr., and the Core Knowledge curriculum he created.

Commentary
9.3.2014

We'll Miss You, Graham Down

Michael J. Petrilli, Chester E. Finn, Jr.

Long before today’s education-reform movement was born, indeed long before A Nation at Risk, there was the Council for Basic Education (CBE), founded in 1956

Commentary
9.3.2014

Strings attached to NYC preschool dollars

The Education Gadfly

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s offer to subsidize full-day pre-K programs came with a number of strings attached, and many religious organizations are refusing to play along.

Commentary
9.3.2014

The Condition of College & Career Readiness

Jessica Poiner

Approximately 1.85 million students—or 57 percent of the U.S. high school class of 2014— took the ACT in 2014. That’s an 18 percent uptick since 2010, despite the overall number of graduates decreasing by 3 percent. Twelve states boast a 100 percent participation rate; yet all of them, predictably, have composite scores below the national average of 21.

Commentary
9.3.2014

What Effective Schools Do

Robert Pondiscio

This much-discussed study, published in the current edition of Education Next, finds that “oversubscribed charter schools” in Boston produce strong test-score gains but “do not improve students’ fluid cognitive skills.” Put another way, the study shows high-performing charters are getting great results improving “crystallized knowledge”—b

Commentary
9.3.2014
Standards

The states versus Secretary Duncan

Brandon L. Wright

Last week, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal sued the U.S. Department of Education over the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), with a particular focus on the role that Race to the Top (RTTT) played in encouraging their adoption. And three days later, rumors arose that Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin might haul that same agency into court for revoking its No Child Left Behind (NCLB) waiver.

Commentary
9.3.2014
Standards

Restarting the Common Core debate

Michael J. Petrilli

Over the past couple of years, a raucous debate has emerged over the Common Core, content standards in English and mathematics adopted by states nationwide. The debate has been marked by acrimony rather than analysis, but there is hope that both sides want a reset.

Commentary
9.3.2014
Standards, Curriculum & Instruction

5 questions for Rick Hess

Michael J. Petrilli

In NRO today, Rick Hess explores “five half-truths” that he says supporters of the Common Core like to propagate. These spurred five questions of my own:

Commentary
8.28.2014
Standards

Thanks, Bobby Jindal!

Robert Pondiscio

It’s too soon to guess TIME Magazine’s person of the year, but a clear favorite has emerged for Common Core person of the year: the man, woman, or group that has done the most to advance the adoption and implementation of Common Core State Standards in the U.S. Ladies and gentleman, for meritorious service to further the cause of rigorous academic standards and educational excellence, please put your hands together for the governor of the great state of Louisiana, Common Core Man of the Year, Bobby Jindal!”

Commentary
8.27.2014

Arne pumps oxygen back into Common Core implementation

The Education Gadfly

Last week, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan declared that states with NCLB waivers could wait until the 2015–16 school year to start tying test scores to teacher evaluations.

Commentary
8.27.2014
Charter Schools

An elder statesman speaks

Terry Ryan

Being an education reformer is often frustrating. No matter how zealously we push an idea or how smart we think it is, sometimes nothing changes. Or—the Common Core is a recent example—we make fast, bold gains at the outset, only to see our efforts watered down, neutered, or repudiated outright...

Commentary
8.27.2014
Curriculum & Instruction

Making teaching teachable

Robert Pondiscio

Many of our recent ed-reforms—e.g. Teach for America, alternative certification, the Hamilton Project, and various “new teacher” projects—implicitly subscribe to the idea that great teachers are born, not made. Ed schools, too, largely consider “training” teachers to be beneath their dignity. Hence the path to instructional excellence is to welcome all sorts of smart people into the classroom via all sorts of entry paths, then weed out those who don’t cut it.

Commentary
8.27.2014

Watch: UFT, your zebra stripes are showing

The New York chapter of the United Federation of Teachers participated in an anti-police brutality rally this past Saturday, prompting the question of what exactly does the union stand for: teachers or a political agenda?

Commentary
8.27.2014

Making sense of the ed-reform backlash

Michael J. Petrilli

This post is an excerpt from a speech I gave last week at the Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce’s state of the schools event.