Career and technical education and the soft bigotry of low expectations
Tamar JacobyBeware the “soft bigotry of low expectations.” President George W. Bush’s trenchant warning resonated across the political spectrum when he voiced it to the NAACP in 2000, and it has more or less driven federal education policy ever since. For many, educators and noneducators alike, it remains a touchstone of how to think about racial equity.
The Education Gadfly Show: The education issues facing state legislatures in 2021
One option for giving children their pandemic year back: Add an extra year to elementary school, forever
Michael J. PetrilliEditor’s note: This is the second in a series of posts about envelope-pushing strategies schools might embrace to address students’ learning loss in the wake of the pandemic.
Without tests in 2021, we’ll never know which schools met the Covid-19 challenge
Michael J. PetrilliThe Covid-19 pandemic has run roughshod over so much of our education system, closing schools, sending students home to try to learn remotely, and obliterating last year’s summative state tests.
Charter schools are a Band-Aid when a heart transplant is needed
Marc TuckerThis post is adapted from an email conversation between Marc Tucker and Fordham’s Michael J. Petrilli, in which Marc was responding to Mike’s recent article, “The case for urban charter schools.” It also appeared in Fordham’s Flypaper newsletter.
Dan McKee, poised to be Rhode Island’s next governor, is a model of how to improve schools for all children
Erika SanziRhode Islanders just saw their governor, Gina Raimondo, tapped to become President-elect Biden’s Secretary of Commerce.
Bridging the Covid Divide: How States Can Measure Student Achievement Growth in the Absence of 2020 Test Scores
Ishtiaque Fazlul, Cory Koedel, Eric Parsons, Cheng QianWhen the Covid-19 pandemic hit the U.S. last spring, schools nationwide shut their doors and states cancelled annual standardized tests. Now federal and state policymakers are debating whether to cancel testing again in 2021. One factor they should consider is whether a two-year gap in testing will make it impossible to measure student-level achievement growth during this historic period.