The Education Gadfly Show: All about AP
On this week’s podcast, Mike Petrilli talks with Checker Finn and Andrew Scanlan about their new book on the past, present, and future of Advanced Placement.
On this week’s podcast, Mike Petrilli talks with Checker Finn and Andrew Scanlan about their new book on the past, present, and future of Advanced Placement.
Charters schools are often criticized for not enrolling enough or not adequately serving special student populations, particularly students with special needs. A new study by Tufts University’s Elizabeth Setren evaluates this claim with a unique dataset in Boston.
Termed by the Washington Post’s Jay Mathews “the most comprehensive book on Advanced Placement, the most powerful educational tool in the country,” this book traces AP’s history from its mid-twentieth-century origins as a niche benefit for privileged students to its contemporary role as a vital springboard to college for high school students nationwide, including hundreds of thousands of poor and minority youngsters. It's a must-read for anyone with a stake in American K–12 education.
In the last month, two reports have renewed questions about the current direction of states’ high school assessments.
School closures hurt. While they are relatively uncommon nationwide, they are sometimes unavoidable—and they’re always painful, especially for the students and families who are displaced and who rarely see any educational benefit as a result.
Much of the initial response to Robert’s new book, "How The Other Half Learns," has focused on the winnowing effects of Success Academy’s enrollment process, which ensures that the children of only the most committed parents enroll and persist. But that’s just the start of the story. You have to look at what parent buy-in actually buys: a school culture that drives student achievement, and which can only be achieved when parents are active participants, not unwilling conscripts.
Editor’s note: This is the second in a series of posts looking at how two school networks—Rocketship Public Schools and Wildflower Schools—enable their students to master standards at their own pace. See the first post here.
Bellwether Education Partners, long interested in the improvement of school transportation systems, released no less than three papers on the topic this summer.
On this week’s podcast, Patrick Corvington, executive director of DC School Reform Now, joins Mike Petrilli and David Griffith to offer advice on how parents can play a role in improving their kids’ schools. On the Research Minute, Amber Northern examines the academic effects of early interventions for children born at a low birth-weight.
Five years ago, in an op-ed in the New York Daily News, Fordham senior fellow Robert Pondiscio looked at yet another round of jaw-dropping tests scores achieved by Eva Moskowitz’s network of Success Academy charter schools and urged educators and
As part of a national war against school choice, the California teachers union is pouring more than a million dollars a month into anti-charter legislative efforts. Unfortunately, a new “compromise” bill crafted by Governor Gavin Newsom whose language was released this week indicates the union is about to get a big return on its investment. Caprice Young, a Fordham Institute trustee and a leading figure in the state’s charter sector, explains how this painful moment came about—and what it means for California charter schools going forward.
Almost a decade ago, I wrote that “the greatest challenge facing America’s schools today [is] the enormous variation in the academic level of students coming into any given classroom.” Unlike plenty of what I’ve said over the years, this one has stood the test of time.
On this week’s podcast, Martin West, Harvard professor and editor-in-chief of Education Next, joins Mike Petrilli to
Pennsylvania’s Democratic Governor Tom Wolf garnered headlines recently when he announced vague plans for taking funding away from the state’s public charter schools.
A recent report by Eugene Judson, Nicole Bowers, and Kristi Glassmeyer investigates what classroom mechanisms compel students to enroll in Advanced Placement (AP) science and math courses and to complete their associated exams—and how that differs between low- and high-income schools.
Summer ’19 is showing its age: My daughter recently returned to school, bright yellow buses are canvassing my neighborhood again, and Pumpkin Spice Latte is back.
Editor’s note: This is the final post in a series looking at whether and how the nation’s schools have improved over the past quarter-century or so (see the others here,
A dozen long years ago, when people were just beginning to take serious stock of what good and not-so-good was emerging from 2002’s enactment of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), we at Fordham, in league with the Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA), issued a 200-plus page analysis of the “proficiency” standards that states had by then been required to set and test for.
A new study from Georgetown University reaffirmed an uncomfortable but familiar finding: Socioeconomic status has a significant effect on students’ long-term outcomes, regardless of their academic performance in kindergarten or the quality of the schools they attend in K–12.
A few weeks back, New York City Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza said that principals would not be required to attend district meetings this coming September.
The past quarter-century has included dramatic progress of America’s lowest-performing students, many of whom are also low-income and children of color. But how’s the vast middle class doing? It’s a mixed bag: They still don’t read very well, but their math skills have improved a bit and they are graduating from college in higher and higher numbers.
During a political campaign, the savviest candidates excel at two things. First, they offer a compelling message that differentiates them from their competitors. Second—which demands true skill and sophistry—they ascribe all their own failings to those very same competitors, forcing them to answer for political, policy and social issues for which they are not responsible.
Controversy surrounds New York City’s selective-admission high schools and Mayor Bill de Blasio’s plan to change the time-honored path by which students gain entry to them; the dispute largely concerns how to ration the limited supply of a valued commodity in the face of mounting demand.
Ten years ago, then U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan issued a clarion call to turn around 5,000 of the nation’s most distressed schools, serving nearly three million students. It was an audacious goal set by an audacious leader—the likes of which are in terribly short supply these days. A decade later, states have fallen far short of his challenge, and the sticky problem of failing schools refuses to go away. But experience has provided three lessons to those who would make these efforts.
For more than half a century now, back-to-school time has brought another Phi Delta Kappan survey of “the public’s attitudes toward the public schools.” They invariably recycle some familiar questions (e.g., the grades you would give your child’s schools and the nation’s schools). Other topics, however, come and go.
As I belong to the legion of education professionals that’s usually on the receiving end of the term “top-down,” I’m not too keen on the enterprise’s more top-down improvements.
This essay is part of the The Moonshot for Kids project, a joint initiative of the Fordham Institute and the Center for American Progress.
The Fordham Institute’s recent survey of teachers has brought the issue of discipline reform back to the forefront. But even as teachers say that discipline policies are leading to unsafe educational environments, a new federal rule threatens to further exacerbate the issue.
Headlines about colossal mismanagement issues in Ohio charters—the biggest being the ECOT meltdown—dominate the school choice narrative in the Buckeye State. These stories raise the question: Why are Ohio charters so bad? This query and the dominant narrative that flows from it have long provided cover for charter opponents, even as some of the negative coverage is well-deserved. But it’s the wrong question—and it distracts us from a bigger, far more compelling story.
The debate over school discipline reform is one of the most polarized in all of education. Advocates for reform believe that suspensions are racially biased and put students in a “school-to-prison pipeline.” Opponents worry that softer discipline approaches will make classrooms unruly, impeding efforts to help all students learn and narrow achievement gaps.