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Displaying 151-180 of 444 results
Book
8.7.2020
School Finance, Governance

Getting the Most Bang for the Education Buck

Brandon L. Wright

We spend too much time talking about how much to spend on schools but not enough on how those dollars are spent. Covid-19 has made this situation worse, as schools confront massive, looming budget shortfalls and the challenges of remote learning and public health. That’s on top of familiar issues like pensions, special education, technology, and all the rest. This book offers a workable path through this maze.

Commentary
8.7.2020
Facilities, Teachers & School Leaders

Seven steps to design safe and healthy school drop-off and entry routines

Eric Tucker, Sarah Haga, Aaron Daly, Sarah Pactor

As we prepare to reopen our schools, school administrators must examine our back-to-school rituals and upgrade plans for re-entry to account for the challenges presented by Covid-19. In particular, schools must create and clearly communicate the processes for school drop-off and arrival that support social distancing and wellness measures.

Commentary
8.5.2020
Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

Evidence that high school students can overcome disadvantage

Adam Tyner, Ph.D.

In the first chapter of their 2018 book, The Coddling of the American Mind, Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt argue that a distinctive feature of many modern, wealthy cultures is a broadened impulse to protect young people from difficulties.

Commentary
8.5.2020
Accountability & Testing

Mother of invention: Early evidence can inform new remote learning efforts

Amber M. Northern, Ph.D.

Five years ago, Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) launched an initiative called “Connected Education” in an effort to boost the number of students able to partake of Advanced Placement (AP) courses. More students meant more courses could be offered, but fiscal and personnel constraints prohibited them being offered in the traditional manner.

Commentary
8.5.2020
Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

What do school boards think about the 1619 Project curriculum?

Robert Pondiscio

A new survey of parents and school board members finds significant resistance, particularly among the latter group, to many of the controversial claims and ideas advanced by

Commentary
8.5.2020
Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

Balancing learning loss against social and emotional harm

Victoria McDougald

Few parents are thrilled at the prospect of more distance learning in the fall, but a majority of adults worry that school reopening will worsen the pandemic. Parents and educators are also rightly concerned about children falling behind academically, as well as the social and emotional consequences of prolonged isolation from peers and other adults. For advice on how to balance all this, we turned to two school-system leaders, Juan Cabrera and Eva Moskowitz.

Commentary
8.3.2020
Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Building a stronger, more equitable education system

LaVerne Evans Srinivasan

A massive amount of lost learning If ever there were a reminder that today’s young people are growing up with unprecedented challenges, it is the events of the past six months. With unfathomable speed, practically every aspect of our lives has been turned upside down.

Commentary
7.31.2020
Curriculum & Instruction, Advanced Education, Teachers & School Leaders

Many students with the potential to excel in STEM fields struggle in school

Joni Lakin, Jonathan Wai

Students who have the kinds of talent scientists and engineers need to solve problems by visualizing how objects could be rotated, combined or changed in three dimensions often struggle at school.

Commentary
7.29.2020
Governance

How gerrymandering can hurt education

Trinady Maddock

2020 brings the decennial national census, and with that comes a whole host of challenges and changes brought on by the redistricting that follows—or as it’s sometimes known in its more questionable forms, gerrymandering.

Commentary
7.29.2020
Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

The cancellers come for charter schools

Robert Pondiscio

Almost exactly twenty years ago, in August 2000, CBS News’s 60 Minutes aired a segment about a pair of charter schools—one in the South Bronx; another in Houston, Texas—founded by a duo of twenty-something White male teachers. To see it now is to catch a time capsule glimpse of a more earnest and hopeful time.

Commentary
7.29.2020
Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

School districts could try harder to reopen

Dale Chu

As coronavirus cases continue to rise, Colorado’s two largest school districts, Denver and Jeffco, recently announced their intention to start the school year remotely.

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
7.22.2020
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Tutoring as an effective strategy in our troubled times

Robert Slavin, David Steiner

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.

Commentary
7.22.2020
Accountability & Testing

Will NAEP wreck its reading assessment?

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

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

Commentary
7.17.2020
Charter Schools, Governance

Biden’s education plan should be more student-centric

Tressa Pankovits

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.