Displaying 61-90 of 203 results
Commentary
8.24.2023
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction

Long term outcomes of a home- and community-based literacy program

Jeff Murray

Future Forward began in Milwaukee in 2005 as SPARK—a small-scale, local effort to combine family engagement with intensive tutoring to help low-income elementary-age students improve their literacy skills. It has since expanded significantly, rebranded, and moved under the aegis of national nonprofit Education Analytics, Inc.

Commentary
8.17.2023
Curriculum & Instruction

Why AI hasn’t made coding skills obsolete

Adam Tyner, Ph.D.

Many states now require high school students to learn coding before they can graduate, and a host of organizations encourage students to build coding skills. Is this all a waste of time and energy now that chatbots can code? In a word, no.

Commentary
8.17.2023
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

Stop using learning stations

Daniel Buck

Can we stop with the learning stations already? My teacher prep endorsed them. My first instructional coach trained me in them. Every school that I’ve ever worked at has incorporated them. Look them up on Teachers Pay Teachers and you’ll find scores of activities for various literacy stations, each one promising that they are proven effective.

Podcast
8.15.2023
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Private School Choice

#883: The student behavior crisis, with Daniel Buck

On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Daniel Buck, Fordham’s editorial and policy associate, joins Mike and David to discuss the be

Commentary
8.10.2023
Curriculum & Instruction

Hard lessons from a veteran homeschooler

Larissa Phillips

In the last three years, the families of 1.8 million children switched to homeschooling, bringing the nationwide total to 4.3 million in 2022. But glib calls for parents to join those ranks gloss over some persistent challenges inherent in homeschooling. Phillips discovered these challenges firsthand when her family moved to rural upstate New York and began homeschooling their kids.

Commentary
8.10.2023
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Mike Schmoker’s achievable vision for education reform

Daniel Buck

I must admit, I’d become something of an education fatalist. I know the research about direct instruction. I know the power of a knowledge-rich, well-sequenced curriculum and the promise of school choice. I know that individual schools and even whole charter systems can achieve amazing results. But I always wonder: Is it all for naught?

Commentary
8.10.2023
Curriculum & Instruction

Learning by going: Springfield, Illinois

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

After a millennium or so in the world of ed policy, I nearly always think of education as stuff schools do that produces results on various metrics that (one hopes) enables education leaders and policymakers to make better decisions about what schools should do tomorrow.

Commentary
8.3.2023
School Finance, Charter Schools, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Fair funding finally flows to charters—but the window won’t stay open forever

Michael J. Petrilli

A remarkable increase in charter school funding across a number of states—and not just red—is finally addressing some of the deepest spending inequities in American education. But with Covid money drying up, declining student enrollment, and an aging population, tougher times lie ahead.

Commentary
8.3.2023
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Standards

Virginia leads the way on conservative education reform

Daniel Buck

Not since former Governor Scott Walker bludgeoned the unions in my home state of Wisconsin has there been such national outrage over state-level education policies. Historically, state-scale education has been a secondary affair, rarely topping the list of people’s substantive or political priorities, and most decisions have been left to local decision-making.

Commentary
8.3.2023
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance

Mississippi didn’t cheat. Its reading gains are real.

Todd Collins

Is Mississippi a cheater? Los Angeles Times business columnist Michael Hiltzik seems sure of it. Last month, the Pulitzer Prize–winning opinion writer published a column saying that Mississippi’s widely acclaimed reading improvement was just a mirage.

Commentary
8.3.2023
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

Assessing the operations and impacts of Teach For America in Indianapolis

Jeff Murray

The Indianapolis branch of Teach For America (TFA Indy) was established in 2008, expanding the national organization’s mission—to build and deploy a corps of high-quality education leaders to support high-needs students—into the Hoosier State.

Commentary
7.27.2023
Evidence-Based Learning, Career & Technical Education, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance

The college-going rate is down. Here’s hoping it falls even further.

Michael J. Petrilli

One of the biggest shifts in education in recent years has been a gradual move away from the “college for all” mantra, and hard numbers show a concurrent decline in the proportion of high school students matriculating directly to college. Far from something to deplore, this trend is a positive development—but only so long as the right teenagers are choosing to enter the labor market rather than pursue college.

Commentary
7.27.2023
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

It’s time to dump Reading Recovery

Aaron Churchill

This month, Ohio joined a growing list of states and school systems that require schools to use high-quality instructional materials aligned to the science of reading, an approach to reading instruction that emphasizes

Commentary
7.20.2023
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Advanced Education, Teachers & School Leaders

Building diverse college campuses starts in kindergarten

Michael J. Petrilli

Rather than wait until kids are leaving high school to try to even the playing field, we must start in kindergarten to identify the most academically talented students of all races and backgrounds and give them the support they need to excel.

Commentary
7.20.2023
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Is ed tech contributing to chronic absenteeism?

Meredith Coffey, Ph.D.

Nearly two years after federal data indicated that 99 percent of students had returned to in-person learning full-time, as many as one out of three students still haven’t really returned fu

Commentary
7.20.2023
Career & Technical Education, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance

The path to four million apprentices

Jeff Murray

For folks who question the value of a traditional four-year college degree—whether they have done so for ages or have only recently lost faith—apprenticeships seem like a promising alternative for young people leaving

Commentary
7.13.2023
School Finance, Governance

Low- and high-income schools now receive equal funding

Adam Tyner, Ph.D.

State-level school finance reforms and, to a lesser extent, increases in federal funding for schools have worked: America’s shamefully persistent inequities in school funding are finally a thing of the past. School funding is now generally progressive, meaning that students from poor families typically attend better-funded schools than students from wealthier families in the same state.

Golf ball in sand trap
Commentary
7.13.2023
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

The accountability conundrum

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

Editor's note: Read more about this topic in Finn's essay in National Affairs, "The Accountability Challenge."

Golf ball in sand trap
Commentary
7.13.2023
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Stop calling them book bans

Daniel Buck

You may have heard that conservative parent groups are banning books. From the Pulitzer-prize winning graphic novel Maus, to seemingly anything that addresses LGBT themes, such groups are challenging their inclusion in libraries and on curricula.

Commentary
7.13.2023
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction

Can great high schools really make a difference for low-income students?

Amber M. Northern, Ph.D.

How well do our public high schools prepare students—especially low-income students—for future success? A working paper from analysts at Brown and Harvard addresses that question, focusing on a number of consequential middle- and longer-term outcomes.

Report
7.11.2023
School Finance

Think Again: Is education funding in America still unequal?

Adam Tyner, Ph.D.

This brief challenges the notion that economically disadvantaged students receive less funding than other students, with implications for equalizing classroom resources and optimizing other social policies.

Commentary
7.6.2023
Evidence-Based Learning, Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Private School Choice, Teachers & School Leaders

Giving marginalized students better access to customized learning opportunities

Katrina Boone

Recent policy innovations such as education savings accounts, microgrants, and tax credits address some of the financial barriers that prevent families from accessing flexible education opportunities.

Commentary
7.6.2023
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Advanced Education, Teachers & School Leaders

Piloting an advanced learning curriculum for typically underserved students

Jeff Murray

In many schools, being identified as advanced or gifted doesn’t guarantee that students will receive “gifted services.” For low-income students, Black and Brown students, rural students, and many others, the odds of being identified as gifted and having access to advanced coursework are even lower than for their higher-income and White or Asian peers.