“What if the valedictorians in America’s schools were the cool kids?” This is the question Nicholas Kristof posed in his recent column in The New York Times, imagining a culture in the U.S. where academic excellence carries the same social prestige as it does in some East Asian countries.
Like many people, when I entered the world of education policy, I encountered a trove of education research that was new to me but that largely tracked with my prior experiences as a teacher.
The rollout of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in 2010 began as a widely applauded, bipartisan policy aimed at providing an accessible curriculum focused on conceptual understanding that could form the foundation for K–12 education content for the next generation.
This week on The Education Gadfly Show, Mike Petrilli goes solo to talk about grade inflation—what it m
Aggressive immigration enforcement, including around schools, is leading many families to keep their kids home. Is it time for education reformers to join the #Resistance? Or should we work instead to find a narrow consensus around keeping schools open and safe?
Five months after the launch of ChatGPT, Sal Kahn, the founder of the online learning giant Kahn Academy, predicted that, “We’re at the cusp of using AI for probably the biggest positive transformation that education has ever seen.” As of now, this appears to have been an aspirational proclamation made with
It was a big January for my Hoosier family. I grew up in Bobby Knight’s Indiana, so IU’s incredible football National Championship win is a big deal in my home state.
There’s plenty of evidence that average grades,
Students with disabilities make up almost 15 percent of K–12 students in the U.S. These students have long been underrepresented in charter schools, which may offer different (or fewer) special education services than traditional public schools.
This week on The Education Gadfly Show, we’re joined by Elliot
For eleven years now, we at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute have hosted an annual Wonkathon on our Flypaper blog. Designed to generate substantive conversation around key issues in education reform, we invite policy “wonks” to submit responses to a question.
Over the past decade or so, as the education reform movement has increasingly splintered along partisan lines, the number of people who support both charter schools and private school choice has shrunk to almost nothing. One cause of the growing divide is that some private school choice advocates are making demands that are increasingly outlandish.
Mississippi has earned well-deserved plaudits for its outsized literacy gains in recent years, ranking first
Texas is once again at the center of a familiar but unresolved debate about literacy, culture, and the proper role of schools.
When high schoolers pass Advanced Placement (AP) exams, they can earn college credits, making them more likely to complete college within four years and likely increasing their earnings in adulthood.
A steady stream of recent research has reported on the pandemic’s disparate effects on education. Unsurprisingly, lost learning time hurt children, particularly those who needed the most support.
This week on The Education Gadfly Show, we’re joined by Karin Chenowet
Over the next several weeks, more than 500,000 students across the country will take an updated version of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in math and reading, but more improvements may be on the way.
WHAT WE’RE READING “Tennessee Republicans want a Houston-style takeover of Memphis schools. What does that mean?”—Bri Hatch, Chalkbeat Tennessee —
Screens have fundamentally shifted how young minds process information, form connections, and understand the world around them. This presents schools with a stark choice: Do we struggle against the current and try to restore traditional expectations? Or do we acknowledge that those ships have sailed and adapt our systems to meet students where they are? The tempting middle path where schools try to do both may be the worst option of all.
Dear governor, Do you want to be remembered for your leadership on education? Your state may be spending nearly half its budget on schools, and yet test scores continue to fall, especially for the students who need the most help.
A recent study offers a new look at charter schools’ special education performance. The Michigan findings show that special education students performed better in charter schools than in traditional public schools.
Traditional school districts have increasingly embraced giving students more options within their systems in recent decades, in response to growing charter and private school competition and the desire of district parents for more specialized programs and services for their children.
It is no secret that the Covid-19 pandemic disrupted K–12 education in the United States.
This week on The Education Gadfly Show, we’re marking National
