Last week, I provided sobering evidence of the “excellence gap” among twelfth grade students—the sharp divides along lines of race and class in achievement at the highest levels.
Calls are rising for America’s aging high-school model to modernize, in part by accommodating work experience through hands-on internships or actual employment for students.
Scholars and testing companies have been following grade inflation for decades. The first ACT study on the topic dates to the mid-1990s, while researchers have used SAT data to study grade inflation since the 1970s.
America’s education system suffers from a variety of “excellence gaps”—sharp disparities in performance by race and class at the highest levels of academic achievement. These gaps explain why college administrators turn to various forms of affirmative action in order to create freshmen classes that more closely represent the nation’s diversity—actions that may soon be declared unconstitutional. But when do these gaps start?
As I write this, representative samples of fourth and eighth graders are taking National Assessment of Educational Progress tests in math and English.
The proposed California Mathematics Framework generated a storm of controversy when the first draft was released in early 2021. Critics objected to the document’s condemnation of tracking and negative portrayal of acceleration for high-achieving students.
Reams of research have reported contradictory outcomes for students with disabilities (SWDs) who are taught in general education classrooms alongside their non-disabled peers versus learning in settings with only SWDs. A new report focuses on teacher certification as a possible mechanism to explain the variations in outcomes.
Throughout the pandemic, we encountered much speculation about the impact that remote learning would have on student performance. The expected learning loss was a concern not just of American parents and educators, but of citizens all around the world.
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Robert Pondiscio, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI
NAEP is by far the country’s most important source of information on student achievement, achievement gaps and so much more, even though it’s invisible to most Americans. Yet NAEP is far from perfect—and could do so much more than it does. It’s time to wrestle with its challenges, shortcomings, and possible future scenarios.
Georgia is the latest on a growing list of states that make financial literacy courses a requirement for high school graduation.
Should public schools strive to teach character to students? One group in Texas says no.
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Ashley Jochim, a principal at the Center on Reinventing Public Education, joins Mike
Just over thirty years ago, the first public charter school law was passed in Minnesota. One year later, City Academy Charter School opened its doors in St. Paul. The charter sector now boasts more than 7,700 schools serving over 3.4 million students nationwide.
The money is pouring in, but so are the education challenges. The Covid-19 pandemic has dramatically affected student achievement, particularly for poorer students and students of color.
Last week came news that more than 40 percent of math textbooks submitted for review in Florida were deemed incompatible with state standards or contained “prohibited topics” including reference
With schools and districts across the nation said to be reeling from staffing shortages, calls for action are loud and insistent.
Classical education is a holistic approach that is geared toward the cultivation of students’ minds, imagination, perception, and emotions so that they can be equipped with character traits that will help them to flourish and thrive both inside the school community and well beyond.
I spent most of my twenties in northeast North Carolina teaching English in a windowless, leak-prone trailer behind an overcrowded high school. Once I got through my first year as a rookie—what fun that was!—subsequent memories are fond (smell of mildew aside).
Non-test-based pathways to high school graduation raise concerns among accountability hawks as being low in rigor, subject to diminished standards,
As beloved TV personality Fred Rogers once quipped, “Play gives children a chance to practice what they are learning. . . . It’s the things we play with and the people who help us play that make a great difference in our lives.”
This whopping new report from a special committee of the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) is a whopping disappointment.
Editor’s note: This was first published by the American Enterprise Institute.
Covid-19 and the miseries it caused families, children, and educators around the world over the last two years seems finally to be ebbing. But in Poland where I am writing this, the plague has been followed by a brutal and senseless war in neighboring Ukraine.
With Democrats facing trouble in the midterm elections, the Biden administration has inexplicably decided to try to stave off disaster by doubling down on the teachers unions’ hoary anti-reform agenda. One example is its not-so-sneak attack on charter schools in the form of execrable regulations that could bring charter growth to a standstill. But it’s not the only one.
After living through the transformation of K–12 education in Alberta, Canada, we moved from Calgary to Colorado in 2010. Since then, we have watched the Denver Public Schools story unfold from next door in Jefferson County.
The influence of out-of-school activities such as sports and clubs on school outcomes has been an enduring
Earlier this year, I took to the pages of Education Next to make the case for NAEP to test starting in kindergarten, stating that, “The rationale for testing academic skills in the early elementary grades is powerful.” Therefore, “Starting NAEP in 4th grade is much too late.” I was wrong, and I’m sorry. Kindergarten is much too late. We must begin a program of NAEP testing for newborns.
It’s no secret that Denver’s latest school board is wreaking havoc on the suite of bold education reforms that the Mile High City was known for over the past two decades.
What makes an effective English language arts curriculum? Is it the books and other readings that it includes? The skills that it imparts to students? Something else?
