School boards have become ground zero for America’s education culture wars, with fiery debates over race, gender, curriculum, and pandemic policies making national headlines. But beyond the noise, how well do these elected bodies actually represent their communities?
Political scientist Charles Murray paints a stark picture of America in 2050: a small but thriving “cognitive elite”—married, working, earning, raising children, pursuing fulfilling careers—alongside
I’m no fan of many so-called “equitable” grading reforms.
My last column on teacher standards focused on the how. How should we deliver professional development? How long? Which teachers? Who leads? They were recommendations for structural changes about the medium of delivery.
The age-old debate over whether principals or district offices should hold the reins in schools has gotten a fresh empirical test, courtesy of a new NBER working paper from Northwestern University economist Kirabo Jackson.
This week, Fordham’s president emeritus Checker Finn an
Editor’s note: This was first published on Mike Petrilli’s Substack, SCHOOLED.
The first time I encountered “no-zeros” grading, I was still a teacher. To demonstrate how to use a new data entry system, our technology coordinator plugged a zero into the software, and to everyone’s surprise, the online gradebook rounded up to 49.9 percent. He’d accidentally exposed a yet-to-be-announced grading policy (the “50 percent” rule).
We face a gnarly problem in reading instruction.
Critics contend that the National Assessment Governing Board, which sets policies for the Nation’s Report Card, sets the bar too high—that the definition of “proficient” is too challenging. This aligns with moves to lower the bar in parts of the country, including efforts in some states to make it easier for kids to pass end-of-year assessments or to eliminate those tests completely. This line of thinking and these polices are deeply misguided.
What do the conservative former U.S.
As a Los Angeles Unified School District parent during the pandemic, I had a front row seat as my fellow Democrats and their teachers union allies lit the match that turned a global health crisis into an education inferno.
The teacher pipeline concerns currently being debated in the media are not new. They’re merely the most recent iteration of a slow-burning problem that has become more acute since Covid school closures upended K–12 education. One suggestion for boosting the number and diversity of new teachers is to relax licensing requirements.
Nothing elicits a groan from teachers quite like the word “professional development” or “PD.” It conjures images of peppy consultants who spent less than a year in the classroom, state-mandated training videos with all the excitement of a dental waiting room, or a waste of five precious hours just days before the school year begins.
This week, Chandler Fritz, author of Harper’s Magazine’s cover
In K–12, we’ve often treated student experience data as a “nice to have.” As we confront another disappointing set of NAEP scores, a growing evidence base suggests that understanding how students experience school
Last week, the Houston Chronicle’s editorial board looked into claims by the Mikes (Mike Miles and Mike Morath) about the many Space City schools going from D’s or F’s to A’s and B’s on the state report card, thanks to the sweeping reforms undertaken in the d
From my experiences supporting districts to choose and use high-quality instructional materials (HQIM), I’ve seen that curriculum selection often breaks down where it matters the most: in classrooms.
There’s been a lot of smart analysis of the dismal NAEP results released last week. But here’s an alarming fact that you probably haven’t seen before: The cohort of students who scored at record-low levels in twelfth grade reading were part of the same generation of kids who scored at record-high levels in fourth grade. So what happened?
Scary NAEP results again. Harvard Graduate School of Education Academic Dean Marty West writes: “We must search for new explanations and solutions.” But how?
Editor's note: This was first published in the “Civic-Ready” issue of NASBE’s State Education Standard.
In recent years, school boards have become increasingly prominent sites for debate, conflict, and sometimes even violence. Parents, advocates, and community members have argued bitterly about curriculum content, parental rights, public health measures, and school safety. But how well do those at the helm–school board members–really represent the constituents they serve?
The latest twelfth-grade results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress are awful, as
This fall, students are returning to school amidst tighter cellphone restrictions. From California to Florida, a rare consensus of politicians, educators, and parents is rising against the dangers that smartphones pose to student learning and well-being. But it is too early to celebrate. Simply banning cellphones without curtailing other devices is like locking the front door while leaving the back door open.
By now, we’ve all heard the news from Minnesota: A lone gunman opened fire during morning mass at a Catholic elementary school, claiming innocent lives and traumatizing a whole community. As a former elementary school teacher and administrator, I can tell you that news of school shootings hits differently when you work in one.
I remember standing on my high school track, clutching my inhaler, knowing I was about to fail. Officially, the Obama administration had phased out the Presidential Fitness Test, but my district hadn’t gotten the memo. So, once a year, my Rhode Island classmates and I still lined up for the evaluation.
Every once in a while, an older research paper pops back into the discourse unexpectedly and invites another look.
Ashley Jochim, principal at the Center on Reinventin
As we broaden the scope of what we judge schools for without radically expanding their footprint on the lives of children, are we not setting everyone up for failure? And will we not also—inevitably—slack off on the modest versions of results-driven accountability that we’re barely managing to hold onto today?
