Decades before “equity” became a buzzword in education, E. D. Hirsch, Jr. had his finger on what the word actually means: equal access for all children to the knowledge and verbal proficiency that makes full participation in American life possible.
On this week’s podcast, Karen Hawley Miles, CEO and president of Education Resource Strategies, joins Mike Petrilli and David Griffith
A recent study from Brown University’s Matthew A. Kraft and John P. Papay and Harvard’s Olivia L. Chi uses nine years of administrative data from Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools in North Carolina to examine teacher improvement through the lens of principal evaluations.
School districts in Texas are reporting troubling percentages of students failing remote courses, causing educators and parents to push for a return to in-person instruction.
On Wednesday, the government will release the 2019 National Assessment of Educational Progress scores for twelfth grade students.
On paper, it seems like Joe Biden would champion the cause of expanding high-quality charter schools, given his identity as a longtime centrist Democrat. Yet he doesn't. Thankfully for charter supporters, there pragmatic ways to bring him around, should he win the election next month
Early childhood literacy advocacy has been a quiet casualty of our current annus horribilis.
In education, one of the more bizarre debates of the past quarter century has been over whether more money improves students’ outcomes. It’s tough to think of anywhere else in American life where we’d even have that discussion.
The Progressive Policy Institute’s indefatigable David Osborne, a long-time student of and advocate for quality charter schools, now joined by Tressa Pankovits, has penned a valu
On this week’s podcast, Fordham’s Checker Finn joins Mike Petrilli and David Griffith to discuss the growing, misguided war on selective-admissions
During the pandemic, Kaneadsha Jones and her husband went seven months without steady work while caring for three daughters, one of whom is immunocompromised.
According to the Nation’s Report Card (NAEP), just one-third of U.S. fourth- and eighth-grade students can read proficiently. Among students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, it’s just one in five.
What are we teaching the children about our country? The short answer: not much.
Contrary to much public rhetoric, the evidence for expanding charter schools in urban areas is stronger than ever. To be sure, the research is less positive for charters operating outside of the nation’s urban centers. And multiple studies suggest that internet-based schools and charters that serve mostly middle-class students, perform worse than their district counterparts, at least on traditional test-score-based measures. But charters needn’t work everywhere to be of service to society.
The negative partisanship animating this year’s presidential contest notwithstanding, charter school advocates will have their hands full no matter who prevails.
For a number of years, Ohio’s charter school sector has been more of a punchline than an exemplar in national debates about charters. The criticisms, though sometimes exaggerated, were not entirely unwarranted.
Before the coming of the pandemic, pre-K was a hot topic.
The Denver school board spent forty-five minutes Monday getting an update on its Black Excellence Resolution and worthy efforts being made at district and school levels to address systemic racism and implicit bias.
For the past nine months, the battle against Covid-19 has required school districts to constantly adapt as conditions evolved. School indoor air quality is the next challenge districts must successfully meet if in-person instruction is to continue or resume. Let me begin with some points I think many people reading this agree on:
Teachers unions have become the main barriers to school reopenings in places where they are feasible. Students are the ones paying the price.
On this week’s podcast, Mike Petrilli and David Griffith are joined by Doug Lemov and Erica Woolway, co-managing director and chi
After the release of a new study I co-authored for the Thomas B.
“Too many aspiring teachers lack sufficient knowledge and preparation to guide students through these tough times.” —Hechinger Report Since before Covid-19, the Vision Coalition in Delaware has been rethinking high school to bring hands-on, technical, and projec
Two big public-school systems in the D.C. area are on the verge of letting their zeal for equity and racial justice lead to consequences they may end up regretting. Fairfax County, which operates one of America’s best known and most esteemed “exam schools,” is may use a lottery, rather than test scores and other quality measures, for admissions. And Loudoun County is considering revising its rules for “professional conduct” by school staff to punish employees—teachers included—in truly Orwellian ways.
Of the nearly 2,000 public school students beginning high school in the South Bronx (District 8 of NYC public schools) in 2015, only 2 percent graduated ready for college four years later.
Last month, Teachers College Press is releasing Getting the Most Bang for the Education Buck, a new volume edited by Rick Hess and Brandon Wright.
Proponents of test-based accountability generally believe that robust systems—those that set high bars for achieving success, generate copious and transparent data, and impose substantive awards or consequences based on progress (or lack thereof)—are enough to boost student achievement. Another school of thought posits that more funding to schools does likewise.
On this week’s podcast, Fordham’s Adam Tyner joins Mike Petrilli and David Griffith to discuss the
Only a quarter of students can name the three branches of government, and many young people are ignorant of the Holocaust. The best way to get civics back in the classroom is to test it. —Gov.
If America is serious about wanting kids to become better readers, our elementary schools need to spend more time teaching social studies rather than doubling-down on “reading comprehension.” This may seem counterintuitive, but it’s the key takeaway from our new study. It’s also especially important for girls and those from lower-income and/or non-English-speaking homes.
