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Commentary
4.2.2021
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Lessons from Race to the Top

Emily Freitag

I have been thinking a lot about the early years of Race to the Top recently. I moved to Nashville in 2011 to work at the Tennessee Department of Education. Tennessee had won one of the first two Race to the Top grants with bipartisan legislation and an ambitious plan, and the state had $500 million to invest in innovative support to advance student learning.

Commentary
4.2.2021
Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

High expectations drive student success

Editor’s note: The Thomas B. Fordham Institute recently launched “The Acceleration Imperative,” an open-source, evidence-based resource designed to aid instructional leaders’ efforts to address the enormous challenges faced by their students, families, teachers, and staff over the past year.

Commentary
4.1.2021
Accountability & Testing, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Drawing a line in the sand on state testing

Dale Chu

The Biden team has issued its first responses to state requests to waive federal testing requirements because of the pandemic. Dale Chu reads the tea leaves, and concludes that the new Administration is trying to eat its cake and have it too.

Commentary
4.1.2021
Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

The sorry history of “what works” in school

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

My friend and colleague Mike Petrilli is understandably proud of Fordham’s spanking new Acceleration Imperative: A Plan to Address Elementary Students’ Unfinished Learning in the Wake of Covid-19.

Commentary
4.1.2021
Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

How to instill positive school culture

Editor’s note: The Thomas B. Fordham Institute recently launched “The Acceleration Imperative,” an open-source, evidence-based resource designed to aid instructional leaders’ efforts to address the enormous challenges faced by their students, families, teachers, and staff over the past year.

Commentary
4.1.2021
Accountability & Testing

What we're reading this week: April 1, 2021

The Education Gadfly

How can we do more to prevent teen suicides? —New York Times Pandemic pods are less sustainable and are harder to run than many parents thought.

Commentary
3.26.2021
Curriculum & Instruction, Personalized Learning, Teachers & School Leaders

How any school can personalize learning, part II

Beth Rabbitt

In part I of this two-part series, I wrote about three of the most common practices teachers implement in elementary schools that successfully personalize learning: giving each child a learning plan, organizing instruction around class-level and individual mastery, and using grouping an

Commentary
3.26.2021
School Finance, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Best- and worst-case scenarios for how school stimulus dollars will be spent

Chad Aldeman

In the last year, Congress has now invested nearly $200 billion to support K–12 education. It’s an unprecedented federal infusion of money, but will it lead to an unprecedented recovery effort? It’s worth taking a moment to pause and consider the range of possibilities. Best case

Commentary
3.25.2021
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

How districts and charter networks can best address unfinished learning

Michael J. Petrilli

Fordham’s new resource, “The Acceleration Imperative,” aims to give the nation’s chief academic officers a head start on planning for America’s educational recovery, with a focus on high-poverty elementary schools. It’s intentionally a work in progress, and already the product of thoughtful advice from more than three dozen experts. The intention is for it to continue evolving and improving with readers’ help, via a “crowdsourced” initiative on a new wiki site.

Commentary
3.25.2021
School Finance, Governance

The stimulus package won’t fix schools’ employee-benefit problem

Brandon L. Wright

Editor’s note: This is the second post in a series that puts the themes of 2020’s Getting the Most Bang for the Education Buck into today’s context, with particular attention to the effects of the pandemic and federal relief dollars.

Commentary
3.25.2021
Accountability & Testing, Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

CDC school guidelines, acceleration, stimulus, and other goings-on

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

The CDC’s revised guidelines for pupil spacing in school—three feet under most circumstances rather than six—opened a floodgate of gratitude from superintendents and parents.

Commentary
3.25.2021
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

The role of out-of-school supports in boosting academic outcomes

Amber M. Northern, Ph.D., Jeff Murray

Structured activities and services provided outside of the regular school day were increasingly the focus of public investment in the U.S. prior to the coronavirus pandemic.

Commentary
3.25.2021

What we're reading this week: March 25, 2021

The Education Gadfly

Remote learning has taken a toll, but increased flexibility and family time should be preserved as we move into a post-pandemic era. —The Atlantic While hard to define, “character education” is always happening in schools.

Report
3.23.2021
Curriculum & Instruction, Standards, Teachers & School Leaders

The Acceleration Imperative: A Plan to Address Elementary Students’ Unfinished Learning in the Wake of Covid-19

In school districts and charter school networks nationwide, instructional leaders are developing plans to address the enormous challenges faced by their students, families, teachers, and staff over the past year. To help kick-start their planning process, we are proud to present The Acceleration Imperative, an open-source, evidence-based document created with input from dozens of current and former chief academic officers, scholars, and others with deep expertise and experience in high-performing, high-poverty elementary schools.

Commentary
3.19.2021
Curriculum & Instruction, Personalized Learning, Teachers & School Leaders

How any school can personalize learning, part I

Beth Rabbitt

In a previous Flypaper post, Mike Petrilli described the challenge of personalizing instruction for our youngest learners as the “Mount Everest” of education.

Commentary
3.18.2021
Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

School choice proves no match for wokeness

Robert Pondiscio

School choice proponents argue that when parents vote with their feet—and dollars—schools listen. But choice is no match for the pandemic of wokeness that has seized K–12 education. The most advantaged, privileged, and powerful parents in America have been cowed into submissive silence when elite schools of choice adopt neoracist practices masquerading as “anti-racism.”

Commentary
3.18.2021
School Finance, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

A challenging funding future for schools—made worse by the pandemic

Brandon L. Wright

Editor’s note: This is the first post in a series that puts the themes of 2020’s Getting the Most Bang for the Education Buck into today’s context, with particular attention to the effects of the pandemic and federal relief dollars.

Commentary
3.18.2021
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

Beware the calls for post-Covid innovation

Dale Chu

Now that Uncle Sam’s check is in the mail, one of the biggest hopes for schools is that they will be able to leverage the massive infusion of cash to be more creative, imaginative, and innovative.

Commentary
3.12.2021
Charter Schools, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Power to the people: Further reflections

Bruno V. Manno

The Fordham Institute has published a two-part piece by Checker Finn on giving “power to the people,” as well as

Getty Images/Wavebreakmedia
Commentary
3.11.2021
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Personalized Learning, Teachers & School Leaders

How elementary schools can address unfinished learning through personalization

Michael J. Petrilli

Editor’s note: This is the fifth and final installment in a series of posts about envelope-pushing strategies that schools might embrace to address students’ learning loss in the wake of the pandemic.

Getty Images/Wavebreakmedia
Commentary
3.11.2021
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

Addressing learning loss in one easy lesson

Robert Pondiscio

One of the best-selling education books of the Covid era is one you’ve probably never read and maybe never even heard of. Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons was written nearly forty years ago by Siegfried Engelmann, who passed away in 2019.