Displaying 1-30 of 36 results
Commentary
11.26.2019
Accountability & Testing, Charter Schools, Governance, Private School Choice

Even more social engineering in New York schools

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

When the New York City Council moved the other day to require every one of the city’s thirty-two community school districts to develop a school desegregation plan, it was yet one more example of municipal social engineering that prizes diversity over quality and mandatory over voluntary. If families with means don’t like their new school assignments, they’ll simply exit to charters, private schools or the suburbs, meaning that the city’s social engineers will mainly work their will on those with the least.

Commentary
11.26.2019
Accountability & Testing, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Time to press “pause” on credit recovery

Adam Tyner, Ph.D.

“It’s like some bullsh-t way to get kids to pass.” That’s the cynical description of high school “credit recovery” programs an eleventh grader gave to the New York Post last year. But cynicism appears to be in order.

Commentary
11.21.2019
Evidence-Based Learning, Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction

Social capital and schools’ opportunity equation

Bruno V. Manno

The words “American Dream” are shorthand for describing an individual’s pathway to opportunity and a successful life. Historically, K–12 schools provide young people with the foundational knowledge and skills they need for achieving success and the American Dream.

Commentary
11.15.2019
Accountability & Testing

Can you have accountability without consequences?

Tom Coyne

When I read the article in The 74 by the Colorado Education Initiative’s Rebecca Holmes introducing a one-day conference that would bring together educators, families, and students to discuss what school quality is and

Commentary
11.13.2019
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

All 2019 Wonkathon submissions are in. Here’s what the wonks proposed.

Tran Le

The past decade’s shift to significantly higher academic standards and more rigorous assessments means that many more students are now far below grade-level expectations. In recent months and years, there’s been much debate about how best to help such students catch up.

Commentary
11.13.2019
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning

The underwhelming effects of stereotype threat on standardized tests

Adam Tyner, Ph.D.

Stereotype threat is when people inadvertently conform to negative stereotypes about a group they are in, for example their race or gender. A recent meta-analysis on the effects of stereotype threat has important implications for equity in the education system, the validity of standardized tests, and for teacher preparation.

Commentary
11.13.2019
Accountability & Testing, Governance

The states that are swimming against the NAEP tides

Michael J. Petrilli

The bad news from the latest Nation’s Report Card has us analysts wearing out our thesauruses. The good news is that a handful of states managed to make gains or stand pat on the assessment as their peers went backwards. Most noteworthy are D.C. and Mississippi, the only two locales where low achievers made gains. But several other states deserve credit for maintaining their scores in the face of adversity.

Commentary
11.12.2019
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Driving learning for all students: A framework for Multi-Tiered Systems of Support

Bonnie Hain, Laura Slover

In our work with schools at CenterPoint, we often are asked to help design or support the implementation of research-based, high quality curriculum. Almost invariably, discussions with school leaders turn to the connections among and between the core curriculum and the tiered supports for students who are off grade level and struggling to advance.

Commentary
11.12.2019
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

The best way to help students who are several grade levels behind is to do a better job of following their progress, or lack of it, in the long term

Barbara Gottschalk

By the time struggling students reach middle school, it’s pretty obvious it took time for them to get several grade levels behind. It’s also obvious we have numerous ways to help these students. I’m guessing many other submissions to Wonkathon 2019 describe these strategies and approaches. What isn’t so obvious, however, is what’s causing some students to struggle.

Commentary
11.11.2019
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

2019 WONKATHON RUNNER-UP: Teachers and curricula aren’t enough for below-grade-level students. They also require scalable strategies tailored to their needs.

Jessica Varevice

Editor’s note: This was the second-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
11.11.2019
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

Fostering teacher quality and expertise is the best way to help students who are several grade levels behind

Candice McQueen

Research and our personal experience tell us that the single most important factor affecting student achievement is the quality of the teacher in the classroom. No technology, tool, or other seemingly magic program can help students who are several grade levels behind get back on track and ultimately thrive.

Commentary
11.8.2019
Accountability & Testing, School Finance, Governance

NAEP 2019: The terrible impact of the Great Recession

Michael J. Petrilli

In previous posts and in comments to the media, I’ve been making the case that the lingering effects of the Great Recession might partially explain the disappointing student achievement trends we’ve seen as of late, both on the Nation’s Report Card and on state assessments.

Commentary
11.8.2019
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

To ensure success for all students, state assessment makers must be learners, too

Jessica Baghian

In the last two decades, since states began implementing standardized testing under No Child Left Behind, there has been much debate about the value of those assessments. In Louisiana, where I serve as an Assistant Superintendent, we know measurement of student learning is critical, and tests hold the power to define the academic bar for all students.

Commentary
11.8.2019
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

If we want to accelerate student learning, we need to redesign the school day

David Liben, Meredith Liben

Historically, literacy instruction in the United States privileges the privileged. It starts in the earliest grades, when less systematic approaches favored in many early literacy curricula privilege students who arrive at school more comfortable with language and books.

Commentary
11.7.2019
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

Engaging families, early and often, is the best way to help students who are several grade levels behind

Vidya Sundaram, Elisabeth O’Bryon

During this past summer, Family Engagement Lab facilitated a gathering of parents to discuss parent-teacher partnerships at their elementary school. During the discussion, the group moderator pulled us aside to let us know that a parent was there because her child had been retained a grade and she did not know why.

Commentary
11.6.2019
Accountability & Testing, Advanced Education, Teachers & School Leaders

High achievers are doing better on NAEP, and that’s good news. Period.

Brandon L. Wright

Most everyone has read by now about the dismal scores on our Nation’s Report Card, which again measured how fourth and eighth graders did in math and reading. Aside from fourth grade math, marks on the 2019 National Assessment of Education Progress were generally flat or down, especially for our lowest-performing children. One prominent official remarked that “the bottom fell out.” But the results among high achievers offer a bright spot that has been mostly overlooked and undercelebrated.

Commentary
11.6.2019
Charter Schools, Governance

Why reformers will miss Secretary DeVos when she’s gone

Dale Chu

With less than a year to go until the 2020 presidential election, Elizabeth Warren’s ascendancy to ostensible Democratic frontrunner, and the release of her voluminously noxious education proposal, I fell into a fever dream of the same stra

Commentary
11.6.2019
Evidence-Based Learning, Teachers & School Leaders

The relationship between racial discipline and achievement gaps

Tran Le

A new study published in AERA Open investigates whether and to what extent racial discipline gaps are associated with racial achievement gaps in grades three through eight in school districts across the U.S. It also examines if these relationships persist after accounting for differences across districts.

Podcast
11.6.2019
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
11.6.2019
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

From Play-doh to Plato: All students need to grapple with grade-level text

Harriett Janetos

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
11.6.2019
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

Joel Rose

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
11.5.2019
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.