Podcast
Advanced Education
#944: More equitable advanced education programs, with Brandon Wright
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Brandon Wright, Ford
Report
Advanced Education
Think Again: Are Education Programs for High Achievers Inherently Inequitable?
This brief challenges the notion that marginalized students of high ability are harmed by advanced education, with implications for better screening measures and expansion of programs.
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
Once a hedgehog, now a fox: Ten lessons from six decades in the struggle to improve schools
The Greek poet Archilochus wrote that “the fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” Finn’s experience has made him more like the fox: as keen as ever to overhaul and revitalize American education, but having come to “knows many things” about that enterprise, is more a wary realist regarding its difficulty.
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Governance
American students underperform, but our economy overachieves
There is a large literature linking the quality of education to economic growth, and numerous economists and development agencies, including the
Commentary
School Finance, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
Districts spent $190 billion in federal pandemic funds. Did it work?
Editor’s note: This was first published by The 74. Say your boss gives you an unexpected bonus at work. Would you save the money, make those home upgrades you’ve been putting off or splurge on a nice vacation?
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Standards, Teachers & School Leaders
7 thoughts about elite college students who can’t read books
Rose Horowitch’s article in The Atlantic is getting lots of buzz.
Commentary
Evidence-Based Learning, Facilities, School Finance, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
Urban school drama has come to the leafy suburbs
A 6,000 student Midwestern district recently adopted a budget that would result—if all goes according to plan—in a $13.2 million deficit, or more than $2,000 per student. This follows $10 million shortfalls in each of the previous two years. Cash is dwindling.
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Charter Schools, Governance, Private School Choice
The “à la carte education” accountability conundrum
Of the school choice options available to many U.S. families today, few embody the spirit of “power to the parents” quite like education savings accounts (ESAs).
Commentary
Evidence-Based Learning, School Finance, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
The Texas-sized surge in uncertified teachers
Houston’s local ABC news affiliate recently ran a report that the Houston Independent School District, Texas’s largest, has more than 2,000 uncertified teachers (out of a teaching force of approximately 10,000).
Commentary
Evidence-Based Learning, Facilities, School Finance, Governance
Does spending on school facilities raise student test scores?
Schools across the country spend billions of dollars each year on the construction and renovation of their facilities—everything from roof repairs to new science labs and from classroom expansions to whole new buildings. How do these expenditures impact students and the taxpaying community around schools?
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Governance
Most schools in America are off track. Virginia is no different.
Governor Glenn Youngkin is under fire again from Virginia’s education establishment, this time because a new school accountability system his administration is promoting refuses to put lipstick on a pig.
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
3 ways to increase choice and decrease polarization in U.S. schools
Editor’s note: This was first published by The 74.
Commentary
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Advanced Education
Broader access to advanced coursework: An interview with Jefferson Pestronk, Executive Director of Modern States
Modern States Education Alliance is a non-profit that makes college-level courses and college credit free to any learner anywhere, including high school students interested in advanced coursework. It offers thirty-two online courses free of charge at www.modernstates.org, including all the necessary textbooks and readings.
Commentary
School Finance, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
Does more money matter to teachers? It’s not a simple yes or no question
As a candidate for president in 2020, Kamala Harris introduced a plan to raise teacher salaries by $13,500.
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Governance
When was American education’s best decade? And how can we tell?
This summer, the Washington Post’s (fantastic) “Department of Data” columnist, Andrew Van Dam, ran a fun feature about “America’s best decade,” according to public opinion.
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
It’s time for tough love to address chronic absenteeism
Despite an unprecedented infusion of resources, the latest data show that American students are struggling to recover
Commentary
Accountability & Testing
A timely evaluation of Massachusetts’s test-based graduation requirements
In 2003, as part of a broader education reform package, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts began requiring high school students to pass Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) exams in math, English language arts, and science in order to earn a diploma.
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
The complicated interplay between race, poverty, and schooling
Fordham’s new study by Paul L. Morgan and Eric Hengyu Hu, "Explaining Achievement Gaps: The Role of Socioeconomic Factors," raises as many questions as it answers. Among them: How can we explain the different patterns for the Black-White achievement gap for reading, on the one hand, and math and science, on the other? Why does SES explain so much more of the Hispanic-White gap than the Black-White gap? And what’s the role of family structure in explaining the Black-White and Hispanic-White gaps?
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning
RoadMAP to success: Using state assessment data to predict postsecondary success
A recent CALDER study by Darrin DeChane, Takkako Nomi, and Michael Podgursky utilizes test data from Missouri’s state assessment, known as MAP, to assess how well these test scores predict
Commentary
Curriculum & Instruction, Advanced Education, Teachers & School Leaders
I got caught teaching advanced students
“Come see me in the office.” Uh oh. I probably got caught teaching again.
Commentary
Evidence-Based Learning, Career & Technical Education, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Advanced Education, Teachers & School Leaders
Threading the needle on selective enrollment public schools
A recent article in the Boston Globe dug into a controversy that is dogging Massachusetts’s highly-regarded system of regional career and technical education (CTE) high schools.
Commentary
Evidence-Based Learning, School Finance, Governance
Modeling the impacts over time of education funding changes in Mississippi
The specific connection between increased school funding and student outcomes remains unclear—regardless of whether the added dollars are blanket or targeted—and the
Podcast
Accountability & Testing
#932: Yes, AP exams are getting easier, with Checker Finn
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Fordham’s Checker Finn joins Mike and David to discuss the changes in how the College
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
The case for standardized testing
By now, we’re well familiar with critiques of standardized testing opponents: tests rob schools of critical instructional time, encourage teaching to the test, place undue pressure on students and educators to perform, are educationally irrelevant, only provide a snapshot of student achievement at a specific moment in time, and are largely driven by family income levels, parents’ education, and
Podcast
Accountability & Testing, School Finance
#931: No, school closures aren’t racist, with Vlad Kogan
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Vlad Kogan, a professor at Ohio State University, joins Mike and David to discuss what ro
Commentary
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Advanced Education
Are AP exams getting easier?
Three decades ago, the College Board “recentered” the SAT. Now it’s “recalibrating” Advanced Placement. Though both adjustments in these enormously influential testing programs can be justified by psychometricians, both are also probable examples of what the late Senator Daniel P.
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance
Is “credit recovery” as bad as they say?
For several years now, critics have been blaring klaxons about the questionable quality and increasing
Podcast
Accountability & Testing
#930: What Vance and Harris mean for federal education policy, with Dale Chu
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Dale Chu, a senior visiting fellow at the Fordham Institute, joins M
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
Do testing and accountability improve student learning?
In a word, yes! It’s never enough, and there’s no resting on laurels, but we have solid evidence over thirty years in America and beyond that students learn more when they—and their schools—are held to account for what and how well they’re learning.
Commentary
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Advanced Education, Teachers & School Leaders
Advanced education programs are important to parents, poll finds
Academic advancement programs (especially those branded as “gifted and talented”) are often at the center of controversy about equity in education.
