The top 10 EconTalk episodes on education
Adam Tyner, Ph.D.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.
Students of color lack access to advanced coursework, but there are solutions
Brandon L. WrightGifted education in the U.S. is too scarce and lacks substance, and that’s especially true for high achieving black and Latino children. A new report by the Education Trust concludes that this gap has “everything to do with policies, adult decisions, and practices and little to do with students’ academic abilities.”
Digging in the dirt for quality curriculum
Robert PondiscioA recent Fordham report finds that the quality of lessons that teachers get off the Internet is not very good. That’s no surprise but it obscures a bigger problem. If skilled practitioners in any profession feel compelled to scour the Internet for the basic tools of their trade that should concern us more than the quality of what they unearth. The very existence of a “vast curriculum bazaar” sends troubling signals about our general indifference to curriculum’s central role in learning, and our inattention to coherence and what gets taught.
Why don’t evidence-based practices take hold in schools?
Jeremy NoonanEducation Week’s recent report, Getting Reading Right, found that the most popular reading curricula in the country are not aligned with settled reading science.
Where R & D and school improvement meet, good things happen
Michael J. PetrilliFordham’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.
Watch the movie, don’t just read the script: Teaching vs. curriculum
Mike GoldsteinFordham has produced The Supplemental Curriculum Bazaar: Is What’s Online Any Good? Worth reading! Are popular materials offered on Teacher Pay Teachers, and similar sites, useful?