#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
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Kara Arundel, a senior reporter at K-12 Dive, joins Mike to disc
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.
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.
A simple observation: In the U.S., high school graduation rates have increased while other measures of academic achievement—from college entrance exam scores to high school
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).
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Tim Donahue, an English teacher at the Greenwich Country Day School, joins Mike to discu
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.
In a new report and accompanying factsheet, authors Jason Bedrick, Jay Greene, and Lindsey Burke of the Heritage Foundation look into
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Umut Özek and Louis Mariano, researchers at the Rand Corporation, join Mike to d
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.
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Denisha Allen, a senior fellow at the American Federation for Chil
There is plentiful research suggesting that, among in-school factors, teachers consistently matter the most when it comes to student testing outcomes.
A new study from a pair of Penn State University researchers finds that passing the U.S. Citizenship Test as a high school graduation requirement does nothing to improve youth voter turnout. Within the last decade, more than a third of U.S.
There is no shortage of research into the impacts of school and district accountability systems on education-related student outcomes.
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.
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, William McKenzie, a senior editorial advisor at the George W.
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Daniel Buck, Fordham’s editorial and policy associate, joins Mike and David to discuss the be