A self-reflection tool for distance learners
Editor’s note: This blog post was first published by Partnership Schools.
Editor’s note: This blog post was first published by Partnership Schools.
Denver Public Schools (DPS) has long prided itself on being ahead of the curve when it comes to education reform. It was one of the first major urban districts in the country to negotiate a pay-for-performance system for its teachers in 2005.
This year’s holiday from federally-mandated end-of-year assessments in math and English language arts will undoubtedly embolden test haters to declare once again—and louder than ever—that we never needed those damned exams in the first place and that our schools and students are far better off without them.
With schools shuttered nationwide by the COVID-19 pandemic, states had no choice but to cancel standardized testing for the 2019–20 school year. Although certainly less pressing than many other COVID-related issues, the test stoppage is a long-run concern for states and school districts that monitor student performance using annual tests.
On this week’s podcast, Mike Petrilli, Robert Pondiscio, and David Griffith debate how much we can expect districts to do du
Late last month, a remarkable article appeared in AJPM, the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, cautioning that a person’s ACE score is a “relatively crude measure of cumulative childhood stress exposure that can vary widely from person to person.” ACE stands for “Adverse Childhood Experience”; your “A
Three separate analyses were published last week on how the coronavirus might affect children’s learning. Echoing a piece I recently wrote, they all conclude that the current school closures could have a devastating impact on student achievement.
I proudly serve on the board of the Colorado League of Charter Schools.
On this week’s podcast, Mike Petrilli, Checker Finn, and David Griffith discuss Mike and Checker’s new edited volume, How to Educate an American: The Conservative Vision for Tomorrow’s Schools. On the Research Minute, Amber Northern examines whether the nationwide rise in high school graduation rates is real, and whether high-stakes school accountability played a role.
This major essay comprises one of the concluding chapters of our new book, "How to Educate an American: The Conservative Vision for Tomorrow's Schools." Levin brilliantly—and soberingly—explains what conservatives have forfeited in the quest for bipartisan education reform. He contends that future efforts by conservatives to revitalize American education must emphasize “the formation of students as human beings and citizens,” including “habituation in virtue, inculcation in tradition, [and] veneration of the high and noble.”
Kids hear all the time that working hard and earning A’s and B’s in school will open opportunities for them later in life. Families rely on those grades to tell them whether their kids are getting what they need out of school to become happy, successful adults.
This report presents key findings from Learning in the Fast Lane: The Past, Present, and Future of Advanced Placement, by Chester E. Finn, Jr. and Andrew E. Scanlan, and published by Princeton University Press in 2019.
Fordham’s newest report, "Great Expectations," delves into high school grading practices and the impact they have on student outcomes. Turns out that higher standards benefit students of all types and in all kinds of schools. Whether black, Hispanic, white, male, or female, students learn more when taught by teachers with higher expectations. Unfortunately, American schools are gradually making it harder, not easier, for teachers to keep standards high.
Florida’s Tax Credit Scholarship program has provided more than 780,000 scholarships since its inception in 2001.
Interesting question. Before I answer, let me ask one: What keeps Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, up at night? You know Amazon, the trillion-dollar corporation that delivers something like a five billion packages a year. I’m at a professional meeting. The chair asks what “levers” we have for improving reading achievement in the U.S.
One indicator of teachers’ expectations is their approach to grading—specifically, whether they subject students to more or less rigorous grading practices. Unfortunately, “grade inflation” is pervasive in U.S. high schools, as evidenced by rising GPAs even as SAT scores and other measures of academic performance have held stable or fallen. The result is that a “good” grade is no longer a clear marker of knowledge and skills. This report examines to what extent teachers’ grading standards affect student success.
Although most states are only about a year and a half into implementation of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), we’re seeing an uptick in conversations about what the next generation of school assessment and accountability systems should look like. Those discussions should begin with what we’ve learned since the passage of ESSA in 2015.
Last week, the Supreme Court heard arguments in Espinoza v.
The National Council on Teacher Quality just released its third review of America’s elementary teacher prep programs, seeking to determine, among other things, whether ed schools provide adequate instruction in scientifically-based reading instruction. The first investigation of this question, back in 2013, resulted in most programs receiving D’s and F’s, and just 35 percent earning A’s and B’s. But this year, slightly more than half of traditional prep programs received honors grades. That’s progress. But there are still miles to go.
Considerable research suggests that “math skills better predict [individuals’] future earnings and other economic outcomes than other skills learned in high school,” report Eric A. Hanushek, Paul E. Peterson, and Ludger Woessmann.
Children’s screen-time is an important issue.
The education world was slow on the uptake, but oral argument this week in the case of Espinoza v.
For R & D to work in education, we must consistently secure funding from governments and philanthropies. That means presenting them with realistic, sensible ideas that can be adopted and implemented at a reasonable cost—both in money and teachers’ time. Fordham and CAP’s Moonshot for Kids competition yielded proposals for several such tools.
I owe my education career to reader’s workshop, the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project, and its founder Lucy Calkins. I started as a mid-career switcher with a two-year commitment to teach fifth grade in a South Bronx public school. Two things about my school are worth knowing: It was the lowest-performing school in New York City’s lowest-performing district.
Amid all of the hullabaloo over teacher evaluations, fewer states are now using test scores to assess the quality of their teacher workforce.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 marked a massive federal investment in our schools, with more than $100 billion to shore up school systems in the face of the Great Recession. Along with that largesse came two grant programs meant to encourage reform with all of those resources: Race to the Top and School Improvement Grants (SIGs).
A few years ago, as I was wrapping up grad school (where my dissertation was about migrant workers in China, of all things), I came across a bunch of fascinating podcast episodes about education policy and school reform.
Education Week’s recent report, Getting Reading Right, found that the most popular reading curricula in the country are not aligned with settled reading science.
Fordham’s recent Moonshot for Kids competition, a collaboration with the Center for American Progress, highlighted the distinction between research and development and “school improvement.” They’re very different concepts. R & D is inherently top-down and school improvement mostly bottom-up. Yet bringing them into productive contact with one another is vital and might be the key to getting student outcomes moving in the right direction once again.