The “gifted gap” was already growing before the pandemic
The Covid-19 pandemic has further exposed the inequities that have long existed in K–12 education system.
The Covid-19 pandemic has further exposed the inequities that have long existed in K–12 education system.
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.
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.
As state and district leaders face the challenges posed by Covid-19, safely reopening schools within the current budgets is first, second, and third on their priority list.
The National Assessment Governing Board is in the middle of an enormous effort to revamp its framework for assessing reading, a central element of the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Frameworks set forth what is to be assessed and how that’s to be done. Changing them is harder than moving a cemetery, requiring years of lead time, costing much money, and entailing endless palaver among people with divergent views of the subject. Unfortunately, in the proposed set of revisions, the bad outweighs the good by a considerable margin
Given its makeup, it’s no surprise that the task force report trots out the oft-refuted canard that charter schools “undermine” traditional schools. The National Education Association (NEA) used identical language in a 2017 policy statement pledging “forceful support” for limiting charter schools. “The growth of charters has undermined local public schools and communities, without producing any overall increase in student learning and growth,” the NEA claimed.
Figuring out how to safely reopen schools this fall was sure to be a hugely complicated logistical and academic challenge.
With all of the sniping back and forth about if or how schools will reopen this fall, the outlook for the coming school year is looking rather grim. Many school districts find themselves in a political pressure cooker, full of tensions about to bubble over as the resumption of school draws nearer. Educators remain caught in the tug of war between economists and epidemiologists.
There is a reason we’re told to respect our elders. It’s bracing and edifying to listen to voices of wisdom and experience. Those whose time grows short are compelled to speak clearly and directly. Thomas Sowell is one such voice.
There is a growing body of research that evaluates the effectiveness of supports for college students in helping the
The coronavirus pandemic has upended many facets of K–12 education but not the regular surveys of public school teachers and principals conducted several times annually for the RAND Corporation’s American Educator Panels.
Last month, Fordham released a detailed review of Florida’s latest K–12 academic standards for English language arts (ELA) and mathematics.
The Fordham Institute recently published an article called “Let’s rebuild special education when schools reopen,” by Anne Delfosse and Miriam Kurtzig Freedman. Reading it prompted both of us to offer our own thoughts, drawn from experience.
As the start of the school year rushes toward us, teachers across America are girding themselves for their new role as “essential workers” during a persistent pandemic. But one group of teachers has it particularly rough: U.S. history instructors, who must also perform their duties during a full-scale culture war over how to tell the American story, especially on the central issue of race. As tempting as it may be, they shouldn’t sidestep controversies or smooth the edges with bland, antiseptic readings. This would lead only to bored, disengaged students, and contribute to our woeful knowledge of our nation’s history.
Seventeen long years ago, I urged the creation of “religious charter schools,” either encouraging their start from scratch or—more realistically—allowing extant Catholic and other faith-based schools to convert to charter status
Last week, Bellwether Education Partners released three briefs examining the past, present, and future of modern school accountability systems.
Early reporting of suspected maltreatment is one key to mitigating the damage that abuse can inflict on a child. Yet with millions of school age children having their classroom time shortchanged due to the coronavirus, a primary source of detection for maltreatment has been cut off—teachers.
Editor’s note: This post was first sent as an email in The Bulwark’s newsletter “The Triad: Three things to read, from JVL.” 1. School?
Pass-fail ratings in schools are widespread this pandemic-stricken spring. But when “passing” denotes anything that’s not “failing,” what signifies excellence? What distinguishes a first-rate research paper or book review or math proof from one that’s barely serviceable? Where’s the recognition for a student whose class participation is well-prepared, attentive, thoughtful and articulate versus the pupil who yawns, smirks, whispers, peeks at his phone and responds to direct questions with surly, one-word answers? Grades surround us and we depend on them in one realm of our lives after another.
Today, Michigan became the first state to formally seek federal permission to suspend standardized testing in 2021 because of learning disruptions caused by the coronavirus.
Illness. Family emergencies. In-service training requirements. On average, classroom teachers in the U.S.
In the past twenty years, every state and the District of Columbia has passed state-level anti-bullying laws (ABLs), requiring school districts to develop policies that define bullying, encourage students to report victimization, and punish offenders.
We’ve reached the mop-up phase at the end of the fractured school year, the worst that most of us have ever seen. The consensus view, unsurprisingly, has been that the past few months have been a disaster. School districts were caught flat-footed and unprepared for the pandemic.
Editor’s note: This article was first published by the Overdeck Family Foundation.
David Steiner:
David Brooks has long been a stalwart supporter of education reform, both the choice-and-charters flavor and the testing-and-accountability variety.
A legitimate grievance against Confederate monuments has degraded into something deeply troubling. Statues of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Theodore Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and the like are now getting removed, toppled, or vandalized. It’s a threat to our history based on disapproval of some actions and practices of past individuals, never mind how central—even heroic—their roles were to the history that we want our kids to learn more about. Few young Americans are learning American history as it is. We shouldn’t want them to learn even less.
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.
Great Minds creates curricula in math, English language arts, and science for grades PK–12. I’m its founder and CEO, and when Covid-19 hit, we were ill-prepared for digital distance learning, like most everyone else.
The publication date for this admirable book is Tom Sowell’s ninetieth birthday (June 30, 2020), and I doubt that’s entirely coincidental. Though Jason Riley reported three years ago that Sowell was “putting down his pen,” that obviously didn’t happen. And we’re better off as a result.