Commentary
Is teaching's diversity problem getting worse?
Decades of research show increases in teacher diversity, encouraging for a profession that’s long been disproportionately white and female.
Topics
Podcast
Accountability & Testing
The Education Gadfly Show: Education’s philanthropic shift
On this week’s podcast, Celine Coggins, executive director at Grantmakers for Education, joins Mike Petrilli and David Griffith to discuss philanthropy’s shift to the left on education policies. On the Research Minute, Amber Northern examines America’s persistent achievement gaps.
Commentary
At a tough time for education reform, Colorado defeat of charter school-defunding bill offers a ray of hope
Let’s not sugarcoat it: National education reform is in a tough patch, what with the emboldened teachers unions playing offense, a supportive but unpopular education secretary being used as a bogeyman, and internecine squabbles dominating the debate. Yet outside the deep-blue bubbles on the coasts, good things are still happening for kids. This week’s best example comes from Colorado.
Commentary
This week proved that the media still live in an upper-middle-class bubble
I won’t deny that the two big news stories of recent days—the tragic crash of a Boeing 737 Max 8 jet in Ethiopia, and the totally bonkers admissions scandal involving several of America’s elite universities—make for compelling reading. Planes dropping from the sky! Rich celebrities paying bribes!
Report
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders
Toward a Golden Age of Educational Practice
In recent years, we have reached a homeostasis in education policy, characterized by clearer and fairer but lighter-touch accountability systems and the incremental growth of school choice options for families—but little appetite for big and bold new initiatives.
Commentary
What education reformers believe
At conferences and online, there have been conversations of late about what it even means any more to be an “education reformer.” Here, Fordham’s president proposes an answer. Namely, we reformers believe that good schools deliver strong results for students—and all schools should be held to account for their results; our schools as a whole could be delivering much stronger results for all their students, but especially for disadvantaged children; and one size does not fit all, so we should embrace a pluralistic school system.
Commentary
Cultivating patriotism is the first job of civics education
Editor’s note: On March 13, 2019, Thomas B. Fordham Institute senior fellow Robert Pondiscio was a panelist at an event hosted by the Albert Shanker Institute in Washington, D.C., titled “Civic Education: Is There Common Ground.” The following is adapted from his remarks.
Commentary
To facilitate high-quality CTE, we must transform our education system
In the last two weeks, I explained how other states can learn from Colorado’s success in creating career and technical education programs that works well for students, emplo
Commentary
The truth about transportation troubles
If you think that student transportation is tricky for school districts—and there are numerous sources broadcasting that
Podcast
Charter Schools
The Education Gadfly Show: Richard Whitmire is all about the B.A.
On this week’s podcast, veteran education writer Richard Whitmire joins Mike Petrilli and David Griffith to discuss his forthcoming
Commentary
How private school choice affects student character
In theory, private schools are better positioned to provide moral education than are their public counterparts because they can tailor character lessons to those who choose to attend. A new study from Corey A. DeAngelis and Patrick J.
Commentary
Curriculum & Instruction
The limitations of "Learning by the Book"
The new study from the Harvard Center for Education Policy Research was clearly a herculean effort, with data collection across six states, surveys of thousands of teachers, and the participation of some of the nation’s leading researchers.
Commentary
Charter Schools
Running successful schools is all about attitude
I met with an architect a few days ago to discuss the needs of GEO Prep Academy’s new building in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. His original plan included classroom space big enough for each one of our 650 students. I told him to cut that number in half. He looked puzzled, so I explained that, for our high school to succeed, we really have to have the right attitude from day one.
Commentary
Career & Technical Education
Creating world-class CTE programs: Five lessons from Colorado
Last week, I explained why career and technical education will make agile learners America's future, and that maximizing their potential requires CTE that works well for students, employers, and school systems.
Commentary
Is education reform possible in America?
Since "A Nation at Risk" in 1983, the U.S. has engaged in nonstop efforts to raise K–12 academic outcomes and close tragic achievement gaps. These have produced modest gains. Yet the gaps remain large, and nothing has made close to the kind of positive difference that other nations’ efforts have achieved. This is, in part, because the U.S. lacks three key ingredients: a culture that values education, including learning itself; a conviction that parents, schools, and children themselves are jointly responsible for education; and a governance arrangement that points toward unimpeded and continuous improvement in the delivery system and its performance.
Commentary
Kids as political props
Preparing young people for active and engaged citizenship is an essential and neglected purpose of public education. How best to cultivate these qualities in school, however, is far from settled. In some circles, it takes the form of encouraging children to be directly involved in activism and advocacy, ostensibly student-led. But that’s morphing from a valuable instructional strategy into a manipulative and cynical use of children as political props in the service of causes they understand superficially, if at all. The recent video of young students confronting Senator Dianne Feinstein about the “Green New Deal” is a perfect example.
Podcast
The Education Gadfly Show: How KIPP-DC develops and retains teachers
On this week’s podcast, Susan Schaeffler, founder and CEO of KIPP DC, joins Mike Petrilli and David Griffith to discuss the Capital Teaching Residency and other efforts to build an effective and sustainable teacher corps. On the Research Minute, Amber Northern examines whether targeted text messages to parents can improve literacy in pre-kindergarteners.
Commentary
Instructional practices and classroom ability level
Efforts to define what it means to be college and career ready have advanced research about the types and the complexity of materials that students should be reading.
Commentary
Should New York City have more high-quality charter schools?
Since charter school legislation was introduced in New York State in 1998, the sector has grown at a steady clip.
Commentary
Dismantling New Mexico's reform edifice
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.
Event
Curriculum & Instruction
Education 20/20: William Damon & Robert P. George
The provocative Fordham-Hoover “Education 20/20” speaker series resumes on March 26th with another star-studded duo.
Commentary
2020 Democrats toss the ed reform hot potato
Prominent Democrats running for president or considering mounting a bid are already finding themselves pressured to atone for their records on education.
Commentary
Private School Choice
Let’s hear it for educational freedom!
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
Is a "good enough" school good enough for my kids?
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
Smarter teachers = higher student achievement
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
Career & Technical Education
Career and technical education will make agile learners America's future
Seventeen-year-old Sandra can’t wait for school to start each day. Perhaps that’s because her school day looks nothing like what most of us envision a classic high school schedule to be.
Commentary
The negative effects of teacher collective bargaining on male wages
“On strike for our students.” “Our kids deserve more
Commentary
How access to school ratings affects inequality
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
The Education Gadfly Show: Philadelphia’s brotherly love between charter, district, and parochial schools
On this week’s podcast, Mark Gleason, Executive Director of the Philadelphia Schools Partnership, joins Mike Petrilli to discuss the burgeoning, and surprisingly collaborative, school choice scene in the nation’s sixth largest city. On the Research Minute, Adam Tyner examines whether smarter teachers make smarter students.
Podcast
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.