Displaying 31-60 of 67 results
Commentary
7.29.2020
School Finance, Governance

With its next stimulus bill, Congress should return federal education aid to its roots

Michael J. Petrilli

Senate Republicans released their relief bill this week, the HEALS act, which proposes to steer the bulk of education aid to schools that open for in-person instruction. This is triggering angry reactions from most of the education establishment. Here's a less controversial and more constructive suggestion: Return federal education policy to its roots and require schools to provide “targeted assistance” to their disadvantaged, low-achieving students.

Commentary
7.27.2020
Facilities, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

No easy choices except to be kind (and butt out!)

Erika Sanzi

If we are to survive the stress and uncertainty of this year’s school reopenings, we are going to have to learn how to lead from a place of grace and empathy. None of this is easy. There are not any good, let alone perfect, options. The conditions on the ground are changing daily, and the personal circumstances of each family—whether teacher or student—are different.

Commentary
7.22.2020
School Finance

How states have responded to school finance reforms

Amber M. Northern, Ph.D.

School funding mechanisms are the largest and perhaps most obvious levers for policymakers to pull when attempting to reform how education dollars are distributed. To wit, a new research report from a trio of scholars tells us that there were a whopping sixty-seven major school finance reforms (SFRs) across twenty-seven states between 1990 and 2014.

Commentary
7.22.2020
School Finance

Federal relief funding should be used to help schools reopen

Aaron Churchill

With Covid-19 cases on the rise and state budgets in crisis, federal lawmakers seem poised to pass another round of stimulus. It appears that K–12 education will receive a decent portion of the emergency aid, likely exceeding the $13.5 billion-plus provided to U.S.

Commentary
6.26.2020
Evidence-Based Learning

David Brooks, please don’t give up on education

Michael J. Petrilli

David Brooks has long been a stalwart supporter of education reform, both the choice-and-charters flavor and the testing-and-accountability variety.

Commentary
6.24.2020
Evidence-Based Learning, Advanced Education

Do programs for advanced learners work?

Jonathan Plucker

As I noted in a recent post, attitudes toward advanced education are cyclical. From gifted education to talent development programs, from honors classes to AP, we have experienced a largely positive stretch of media attention and state-level policy gains.

Commentary
6.17.2020
Evidence-Based Learning, Governance

How police killings affect children’s academic outcomes

Tran Le

As national unrest builds along with the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and too many others at the hands of police officers, people worldwide are responding with marches, protests, critical reflection, and grief. Right now, the Black Lives Matter movement rages on.

Commentary
6.17.2020
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

The case for statewide diagnostic assessments in the fall

Trinady Maddock

The start of a new school year is always filled with challenges. New teachers, new classes, and new expectations can be difficult for both teachers and students. But what if teachers and students haven’t been in school for six months or more? How can schools try and prepare to get back to a sense of normalcy after all of this?

Policy Brief
6.16.2020
Evidence-Based Learning, Governance

Moonshot for Education: A Federal Policy Proposal to Spur Effective Research and Development for K-12 Education

Thomas B. Fordham Institute, Center for American Progress

In dozens of fields, federally-supported research and development translates into new ideas, technologies, and actions. Why not in education, particularly as the Covid-19 crisis makes it abundantly clear that our educational systems are severely lacking innovative technologies that could have improved the resiliency and flexibility of our classrooms and facilitated a nationwide shift to remote instruction?

Commentary
5.26.2020
School Finance, Governance

Four reasons Republicans should support aid for state and local governments

Michael J. Petrilli, Chad L. Aldis

Conservatives are right to be leery of bailing out profligate state and local governments, especially for needs that bear little relationship to—and pre-date—the virus crisis and its economic consequences. A well-crafted bill would base the amount of funding for state and local governments upon an estimate of the actual costs and losses incurred as result of the pandemic. It cannot be a blank check to fund every item on a state’s wish list. But telling states to “make hard decisions” is not going to cut it.

Commentary
5.20.2020
Evidence-Based Learning, Career & Technical Education

What you make depends on where you live, not just whether you went to college

Amber M. Northern, Ph.D., Michael J. Petrilli

The COVID-19 pandemic and its economic fallout has yielded yet another cautionary tale about the perils of entering the workforce with nothing but a high school diploma. But that doesn’t mean that everyone needs a four-year college degree, or that we should build our high schools around that singular mission. In many American cities, workers with associate degrees earn middle-class wages.

Commentary
5.18.2020
Evidence-Based Learning

School discipline reform: A deep dive into the research

Tran Le

In January, we had the pleasure of featuring Matthew Steinberg, associate professor of education policy at George Mason University, on the Education Gadfly Show podcast. This episode was the second installment of our Research Deep Dive series, and our big topic of the day was school discipline reform.

Commentary
4.22.2020
School Finance

Schools brace for belt-tightening in the wake of coronavirus

Dale Chu

The financial fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic is part of a triple threat facing schools this fall: (1) students who are far off track academically and socially; (2) a decline in state revenue that will result in severe budget cuts; and (3) rising costs in response to the pandemic. The silver lining is that the financial pressure could provide cover to enterprising leaders interested in tackling thorny issues like pension obligations that might otherwise have gone unaddressed.

Commentary
4.22.2020
Evidence-Based Learning

Researchers warn about misuses of a common measure of childhood trauma

Robert Pondiscio

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

Commentary
4.13.2020
Evidence-Based Learning

Reading, writing, 'rithmetic...and the coronavirus reckoning

Dale Chu

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.

Commentary
2.4.2020
Evidence-Based Learning

Why is it so hard to improve reading achievement?

Timothy Shanahan

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.

Commentary
1.29.2020
Evidence-Based Learning, Teachers & School Leaders

The endless, rocky path to reading science

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

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.

Commentary
1.22.2020
Evidence-Based Learning

What American education could buy with a larger investment in research and development

Michael J. Petrilli

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.