Commentary
Education’s “CRIKT” is “CUSS”
With school reform seemingly stuck in reverse, helpful hints on the path forward might lie beyond education’s boundaries.
Topics
Commentary
Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders
How to improve literacy after elementary school
It’s a bit of an education cliché to say “every teacher is a literacy teacher.” Since background knowledge is a fundamental building block of language proficiency, it’s technically true: A teacher in any subject can’t help but be a literacy teacher, even if the effects are diffuse.
Commentary
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders
Do flipped classrooms boost student outcomes?
Flipped classroom in K–12 and higher education have been popular for years.
Podcast
Charter Schools
The Education Gadfly Show: The meaning of Success Academy’s success
On this week’s podcast, Mike Petrilli and David Griffith talk with Robert Pondiscio about his new book on Success Academy.
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, ESSA, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Personalized Learning, Teachers & School Leaders
In math, grade-level tests are holding back low-achieving students
Imagine that you’re a sixth-grade math teacher. It’s the first day of school, and the vast majority of your students arrived multiple years behind where they should be. Your job is to teach them concepts such as understanding percentages and dividing fractions.
Commentary
“I see heaven in the eyes of these boys”: The birth of an all-male charter school in Southeast Washington, D.C.
Shawn Hardnett knows education. And he knows schools. And after working in public education for twenty-five years and visiting upwards of two hundred schools, one truth became impossible for him to ignore: A staggeringly low number of black boys are going to college.
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Advanced Education, Personalized Learning, Teachers & School Leaders
Why has AP succeeded when so many other reforms have failed?
American K–12 education is awash in reforms, nostrums, interventions, silver bullets, pilot programs, snake oil peddlers, advocates, and crusaders, not to mention innumerable private foundations that occasionally emerge from their endless cycles of strategic planning to unload their latest brainstorms upon the land. Yet when subjected to close scrutiny, not much actually “works.” The six-decade old Advanced Placement program is a rare and welcome exception.
Commentary
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Advanced Education, Personalized Learning, Teachers & School Leaders
Low public support for ability grouping is an opportunity for personalized pacing
The latest Education Next poll asked respondents whether they support ability grouping, whereby students take classes with peers at similar academic achievement levels, and for middle school the majority’s answer was no.
Commentary
Evidence-Based Learning, Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Advanced Education, Personalized Learning, Teachers & School Leaders
How two personalized learning models accelerate the progress of their high-achieving students
Editor’s note: This is the third in a series of posts looking at how two school networks—Rocketship Public Schools and Wildflower Schools—enable their students to meet standards at their own pace.
Podcast
Curriculum & Instruction, Advanced Education
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.
Commentary
Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
How charter school attendance affects students’ special-needs status
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.
Commentary
Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders
Teachers’ views on learning strategies and research
A new report by Ulrich Boser and The Learning Agency investigates what K–12 educators know—or mistakenly believe—about effective learning strategies and where they obtain information about learning research.
Book
Curriculum & Instruction, Advanced Education
Learning in the Fast Lane: The Past, Present, and Future of Advanced Placement
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.
Commentary
10 finalists announced in “Moonshot for Kids” competition
Today, the Center for American Progress and the Thomas B. Fordham Institute announced the selection of ten finalists in its joint “Moonshot for Kids” contest.
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, ESSA, Governance
Why end-of-course exams are being replaced by the ACT and SAT, and how to reverse that
In the last month, two reports have renewed questions about the current direction of states’ high school assessments.
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Charter Schools, Governance
The “Upgrade Rule”: How schools and districts can make school closures work better for families
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.
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Advanced Education, Standards, Teachers & School Leaders
The GAS Factor: Lessons learned at Success Academy
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.
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Standards, Teachers & School Leaders
The scourge of education malpractice
What if you were told that elementary schools in the United States are teaching children to be poor readers?
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Personalized Learning, Teachers & School Leaders
How personalized learning enthusiasts can ensure they aren’t lowering the bar for the kids who are behind
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.
Commentary
How attending college but not graduating affects employment
A new study by Matt S. Giani, Paul Attewell, and David Walling uses unemployment insurance data from 2015 to estimate the effect of completing some college on labor market outcomes of more than 200,000 Texas students who graduated high school in in the year 2000.
Commentary
Charter Schools, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
The inextricable links among school choice, school integration, and school transportation
Bellwether Education Partners, long interested in the improvement of school transportation systems, released no less than three papers on the topic this summer.
Podcast
Accountability & Testing, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
The Education Gadfly Show: Parents’ role in school improvement
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.
Book
Charter Schools
How the Other Half Learns: Equality, Excellence, and the Battle Over School Choice
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
Commentary
Evidence-Based Learning
Fixing education research in the United States
This essay, which first appeared on Marc’s blog at the National Center on Education and the Economy, illumines the problems addressed by The Moonshot for Kids project, a joint initiative of the Fordham Institute and the Center for America
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Curriculum & Instruction
End-of-course exams should be a matter of course
A new study released by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute looks at end-of-course exams (EOCs) and their relationship with high school graduation rates and college entrance exam scores.
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Charter Schools, Governance
A new reality for charter schools in California
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.
Commentary
Evidence-Based Learning, Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Personalized Learning, Teachers & School Leaders
In most elementary classrooms, kids are all over the map academically. Here’s how two schools cope.
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.
Podcast
Charter Schools, Private School Choice, Teachers & School Leaders
The Education Gadfly Show: Trends in public opinion on choice, testing, and teacher salaries
On this week’s podcast, Martin West, Harvard professor and editor-in-chief of Education Next, joins Mike Petrilli to
Commentary
School Finance, Charter Schools, Governance
Pennsylvania’s charter sector needs a scalpel, not a sledgehammer
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.
Commentary
Advanced Education, Teachers & School Leaders
How teachers encourage students to take AP classes
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.
