#900: The best and worst of ed reform in 2023, with Checker Finn
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Checker Finn, Fordham’s president emeritus—and the original Education Gadfly—joi
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Checker Finn, Fordham’s president emeritus—and the original Education Gadfly—joi
The results from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) are in—an international standardized test of fifteen-year-olds and the first look at how countries compare post-pandemic—and the picture they paint of American education is disheartening. Here are four trends that you need to know: 1. U.S. math scores collapsed and reading stagnated.
Despite the amount of attention that school choice receives in the media and among policy wonks, politicians, and adult interest groups, the extent of actual competition in major school districts is not well understood. We were curious: Which education markets in America are the most competitive? And which markets have education reformers and choice-encouragers neglected or failed to penetrate?
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Jeanette Luna, a development and research associate at the Fordham Institute
Exposing traditional school districts to greater competition is a central goal of education reform in the United States. Yet because of the complexity of reform efforts, quantifying "competition" is challenging.
Recent legislative efforts across the country have strengthened efforts to align reading instruction with the science of reading. These laws typically require teachers to use methods and materials aligned to the solid evidence base on how children best learn to read.
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Tim Daly, the CEO of Ed Navigator, joins Mike to discuss the causes and harms of grade inflation—
Over the weekend, the New York Times published a hard-hitting 2,300-word expose by Dana Goldstein and colleagues asking “Why is the College Board pushing to expand Advanced Placement?” Its primary answer: to rake in tens of millions of dollars a year and to support CEO David Coleman’s exorbitant sal
In my previous post, we defined grade inflation and reviewed (lots of) new evidence suggesting that it is a barrier to pandemic recovery—especially for less privileged students. Today, we will identify solutions.
After handily defeating his Republican rival for the governorship of red-hued Kentucky, Democrat Andy Beshear is having a moment as a center-left moderate who could run for president in 2028. But we education reformers should curb our enthusiasm because Beshear’s stances are alien to ours.
Editor’s note: This was first published by The Liberty Fund.
Previous literature on school quality and teacher quality largely assumes that good schools and good teachers are beneficial for all enrolled children, which means that a school’s “value added” is typically calculated as the average effect on students.
The impact of school choice on traditional school districts, what scholars call its “competitive effects,” is an area in which there is much high-quality research. A new book critical of choice fails to wrestle with this fact.
Welcome to the latest installment of the Regulation Wars, a long-running family quarrel that centers on the perceived tensions between two of the charter school movement’s founding principles: innovation and execution (or, if you prefer, autonomy and accountability).
The New York Times recently covered the extraordinary academic achievement of Department of Defense schools, noting several factors that contribute to their success. But one important contributor—common values—was not mentioned.
One of the most important efforts in American education today is the project to displace the Carnegie Unit as the fundamental unit of measurement in high schools.
Microschools exist as a midpoint between homeschooling and traditional schools. Typically, the entire school will only have twenty-five students and one or two teachers—often parents, sometimes former educators looking for a more personal classroom, and occasionally local community members like doctors who have expertise to share.
Educators have long debated whether to retain students who do not meet grade level standards.
Texas legislators returned to Austin earlier this week to try once again to enact a statewide school-choice program in the form of edu
Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein of California died on September 29. She was ninety years of age and remarkable in many ways, beginning with being the first woman to serve as mayor of San Francisco after her predecessor was assassinated in 1978.
There is plentiful research suggesting that, among in-school factors, teachers consistently matter the most when it comes to student testing outcomes.
There is no shortage of research into the impacts of school and district accountability systems on education-related student outcomes.
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Nina Rees, the president and CEO of the National Alliance
Before Chipotle ushered in the phenomenon of being able to “have it your way,” the customization of a fast casual meal was relegated to condiments, not the entire entree.
A new report released last week by the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) explores the pandemic’s impact on America’s oldest students—those in high school and the 13.5 million who recently graduated.
When Texas education commissioner Mike Morath named Mike Miles as the superintendent of Houston ISD back in June, it represented a throwback of sorts to a more muscular period of school and district accountability.
Most public policy efforts are very specific about the individuals or groups intended to benefit from their implementation, and evaluations of such policies generally stick to impacts on the target population. However, education policies aimed at helping certain K–12 students can also have wider implications for other students.
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Checker Finn, Fordham’s president emeritus, joins Mike to discuss w
America’s recent achievement declines are far from unique. Consider, for example, Chile, whose academic progress, as measured by international assessments, also stalled out in the early to mid-2010s, just like ours did. And which is also facing a teenage mental health crisis, much like we are, as well as rising violence and disorder in and around their campuses. Are these worldwide phenomena?
For at least a decade, schools have been using online credit-recovery (OCR) courses to award bogus credits that satisfy graduation requirements, and thus inflating graduation rates.