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Displaying 91-120 of 440 results
Commentary
10.13.2022
Curriculum & Instruction, Private School Choice, Teachers & School Leaders

Cultural sensitivity for me but not for thee

Robert Pondiscio, Elli Lucas

Imagine a close-knit community whose members take care of and look out for one another; enjoy strong, tight-knit families with many children, close social ties, and a deep sense of purpose and belonging; and seem mostly exempt from crime, suicide, substance abuse, and other such problems. Are the habits and institutions by which this community prepares its members for adult life successful?

Commentary
10.13.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

The impact of teacher recruiting efforts on student achievement

Jeff Murray

Everyone knows that teachers are the most important in-school factor affecting student achievement, so getting the best ones in front of the neediest students is critical.

Commentary
10.6.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Charter Schools, Governance

Why urban charters outperform traditional public schools

Michael J. Petrilli, David Griffith, Ph.D.

High-quality studies continue to find that urban charter schools boost achievement and other outcomes by more than their traditional-public-school peers—an advantage that has only grown larger as the charter sector has expanded and matured. Where the research literature is less clear is why urban charter schools consistently, and increasingly, outperform district schools. Still, it does offer some hints and plausible hypotheses.

Commentary
10.6.2022
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Advanced Education, Teachers & School Leaders

High-achieving middle and high schoolers gain from latest NYC ed reform

Chester E. Finn, Jr., Brandon L. Wright

Amid nonstop controversy, New York City, which runs the nation’s largest school system, is again moving in the right direction when it comes to advancing the education of able students and opening opportunities to more high achievers. This after much retrograde activity during the regime of former Mayor Bill de Blasio.

Commentary
10.6.2022
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Instructional time lost to Covid will likely mean persistent and widening gaps in literacy

Robert Pondiscio

An analysis in the New York Times last month cheerily assured readers that Covid-related learning losses “look real but sub-catastrophic.” The damage also appears “to not be permanent, with students recovering at least some ground already,” opined David Wallace-Wells, a columnist for the NYT Magazi

Commentary
10.6.2022

What we're reading this week: October 6, 2022

The Education Gadfly

A Georgia teachers union has endorsed the Republican incumbent for state superintendent because his Democratic challenger supports school choice.

Commentary
9.29.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Advanced Education, Teachers & School Leaders

Should schools group students by ability?

Scott J. Peters, Jonathan Plucker

One of the most contentious debates in American education focuses on whether to group students into classrooms using some measure of prior achievement.

Commentary
9.29.2022
Accountability & Testing, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

America’s education crisis as a national security threat

Nicholas Eberstadt, Evan Abramsky

Since the end of World War II, the world’s population has not only gotten vastly bigger; it has also become vastly more educated. In nearly every country, the total number of years that citizens have attended school has grown faster than the population itself, and the number of college degrees conferred has grown even faster.

Commentary
9.29.2022
Accountability & Testing, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

California backtracks on withholding testing data

Dale Chu

Weeks away from the midterms, education apparatchiks in the nation’s most populous state are ramping up the election mischief by playing politics with what are expected to be dismal results from assessments taken by students last spring.

Commentary
9.29.2022
Governance

Conservatives’ disjointed education-reform agenda

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

Do today’s conservatives have an education-reform agenda worth paying attention to? Anything coherent? Anything beyond school choice and lots of it? Anything other than “fie on CRT and let’s not say gay, at least not in grade school.” Two efforts to answer those questions have popped up on my screen and desk in the past ten days. Neither quite does the job.

Commentary
9.29.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

Accelerating math achievement through customized practice

Jeff Murray

For years, millions of U.S. students have taken the NWEA MAP Growth assessment. Data from these computer-adaptive assessments—which cover math, reading, language usage, and science—can help teachers determine which students need remediation or other supports and in which topic areas.

Commentary
9.29.2022

What we're reading this week: September 29, 2022

The Education Gadfly

Refugees from Ukraine are enrolling in Polish schools, where “schools and citizens are stretching resources to help them adjust.” —Wall Street Journal A new study suggests that students taught by Black and White graduates of historically Black colleges and u

Report
9.28.2022
Charter Schools

For-Profit Charter Schools: An evaluation of their spending and outcomes

Stéphane Lavertu, Long Tran

For-profit charter schools” are non-profit organizations that contract out some services to a for-profit organization—meaning the schools themselves are not for-profit. This study explores whether such contracting affects school quality.

Commentary
9.23.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Career & Technical Education, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Credentials matter, but pathways matter more

Quentin Suffren

Credentials matter, but maybe not as much as many hope. That seems to be one of the takeaways from Fordham’s latest report by Matt Giani evaluating high school industry recognized credential (IRC) attainment and learner outcomes in Texas.

Commentary
9.22.2022
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Charter school achievement in D.C. was decimated by the pandemic. Here’s what we can learn from that.

Marc Porter Magee

Nine percent. That’s how many Black boys met expectations in math in D.C.’s traditional public schools in 2022, down from 17 percent before the pandemic. It’s also how many met those expectation in the city’s charter schools, down from 22 percent. The word “disaster” is used a lot lately, but it is absolutely the right fit here. There are, however, lessons we can learn from this catastrophe.

Commentary
9.22.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Teachers & School Leaders

A pandemic back-to-school reminder: Friendships count

Bruno V. Manno

The school and college lockdowns that came with the pandemic brought formal education’s friend-making and relationship-sustaining roles front and center in a way few could have imagined. School-based friendships and other personal relationships—a form of social capital—help prepare young people to pursue opportunity and human flourishing.

Commentary
9.22.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

Which factors best predict classroom placements of students with disabilities?

Amber M. Northern, Ph.D.

A recent study from the Journal of Learning Disabilities sheds light on the vitally important question of which students with disabilities (SWDs) are placed primarily outside of general education classrooms. Specifically, analysts seek to document the level of racial or ethnic disparities in placement and whether those disparities are explained by bias or other factors.