Commentary
Topics
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance
New York’s portrait of a graduate is a disaster in the making. Here’s how to minimize the damage.
New York State is replacing its Regents high school exit exams with a yet-to-be-defined “portrait of a graduate” framework. It’s a terrible decision, as it exchanges clear academic standards for mush.
Commentary
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
The loophole quietly undoing America's third-grade reading laws
More than a dozen states now require that third graders who can’t read at grade level repeat the grade rather than advance to fourth, where every subject assumes literacy. The theory is sound. But in state after state, exemptions meant for a narrow set of students are being granted so widely that the policies aren’t benefiting the students they were designed for.
Commentary
Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders
Students should only use AI for things they already know how to do well
Most educators agree that there should be some guardrails regarding how students use AI in their independent work. Here, I argue for this guiding principle: Students should only use AI for things that they already know how to do well.
Commentary
Evidence-Based Learning, School Finance, Charter Schools, Governance, Private School Choice
The supply side of school choice: Who participates? Who doesn’t?
“If you build it, they will come” makes a great tagline for a mythical baseball movie but a poor strategy for educational improvement. Markets are not magic and are shaped by external factors that encourage or discourage participation.
Podcast
Governance
Head Start needs reforming, not dismantling | Episode 1032 of The Education Gadfly Show
Programming note: The Education Gadfly Show is taking a short end-of-summer
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Charter Schools, Governance, Private School Choice
Can charter schools survive universal school choice?
Echoing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s sentiments distancing herself from wokeness, a common sentiment among reformers seems to be that the bipartisan education reform era was “craazzy.” Standardized testing pep rallies, the glorified grant writing beauty pageant called Race to the Top, No Child Left Behind, guarantees of
Commentary
Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
Education’s ambulance-at-the-bottom problem
There’s an old adage that it’s better to build a sturdy fence at the top of a cliff than station an ambulance at the bottom.
Commentary
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
Ohio’s implementation of the science of reading
Approximately half of American adults read at a sixth-grade level or below, according to the Barbara Bush Foundation. The consequences of poor literacy skills are profound: higher unemployment rates, lower-paying work, and struggles with routine tasks such as reading prescriptions or bills.
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning
Expanded review process for determining school quality leads to minimal improvement
New York City Schools piloted an external qualitative review (QR) in a subset of its schools for the first time in 2005, intended to expand the definition of school quality via a school inspection-type model and to broaden the scope of educational accountability.
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning
What early test scores can tell us about a student’s future
Third-grade proficiency is one of the most consequential milestones in a child’s academic career. Around this time, students transition from learning foundational skills to using those skills to engage with more complex content.
Commentary
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Advanced Education, Personalized Learning, Teachers & School Leaders
Why it’s finally time to rethink age-based schooling
The past century has seen enormous developments in virtually all areas of life, from medicine to transportation to living standards and even to social and cultural attitudes. Yet our education system has not followed suit. One of the greatest illustrations of this is in the continued emphasis on age as the primary determinant of educational placement.
Podcast
Did the college-for-all backlash go too far? | Episode 1031 of The Education Gadfly Show
Mike Petrilli is solo on the podcast once again to revisit the college-for-all debate and consider whether the backlash has become an overcorrection.
Commentary
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Evidence-Based Learning, Facilities, School Finance, Charter Schools, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
Missouri narrowed its charter school funding gap. But it didn’t close it.
For those of us who have long pushed for charter schools to receive fair funding, progress has been slow, uneven, and hard-won. That’s why we at the Thomas B.
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
The Classic Learning Test has become a graduation loophole in Florida
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has called the CLT the nation’s new “gold standard.” USA Today’s blockbuster investigation, published today, suggests a more accurate label would be “boondoggle.” In Florida, the state that has done more than any other to
Commentary
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
Has the pendulum swung too far away from college for all?
College is on my mind because of two recent tidbits.
Podcast
Can a funding surge close the charter school gap? | Episode 1030 of The Education Gadfly Show
Andrew Camp and Collin Hitt join Mike Petrilli and David Gr
Report
Charter Schools
Moving Target: The Success and Failure of Missouri’s Charter School Funding Surge
In 2022, the state of Missouri made a concerted effort to eliminate its charter school funding gap. But how much progress has it actually made? And what have charters done with the additional funds?
Commentary
No, small families aren’t a tragedy
In the education policy world, much is being made of declining U.S. birthrates, and for good reason.
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School Finance, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
5 trends shaping America’s trillion-dollar school system
Editor’s note: This was first published by The 74.
Commentary
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
The Trump team gives Head Start the DOGE treatment
The past two weeks have seen a growing ruckus over big changes in the Head Start regs that are reportedly nearing completion by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).
Commentary
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
The reading crisis is changing the conversation
During my years at TIME magazine, the newsroom had a rule of thumb: If something happens once, it’s news. Twice is a coincidence. Three times? That’s a trend.
Commentary
Curriculum & Instruction
Against the Pinterest classroom
We’ve all visited those classrooms. They look like 30-gallon bags full of confetti, crepe paper, and Elmer’s glue exploded in the center. The bulletin boards are a mess of student work and neon posters, arts and crafts projects dangle from the ceiling, and groups of desks are buried in tassels and decorations. Must a classroom be a confusing and unrelenting assault on the senses?
Commentary
State solutions to school discipline
Editor’s note: This was first published by the American Enterprise Institute. Introduction
