The reading paradox: How standards mislead teachers
You can’t teach reading the way you teach other subjects. Kathleen Porter-Magee
You can’t teach reading the way you teach other subjects. Kathleen Porter-Magee
President Obama’s contempt for the Constitution, and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s unfortunate disregard of that document, have been loudly and justly decried by critics of executive overreach. Less heralded, but equally troubling, is the mission creep of the Office for Civil Rights as it works to reshape the education world and to right whatever alleged wrongs it thinks it sees.
Opportunities abound if only Catholic schools will seize them. by Chester E. Finn, Jr.
Fordham Institute to evaluate Common Core assessments on quality and content alignmentPARCC, Smarter Balanced, ACT Aspire, and Massachusetts participating in landmark studyMedia Contact:Michelle [email protected]
Give ‘em great books and get out of the way. Peter Sipe
Joe Sixpack: You’re not paying attention. And much of what you think you know is wrong. Morgan Polikoff
On Wednesday, CCSSO (the organization of state superintendents) joined with CGCS (the organization of big urban school districts) to announce joint plans to reassess and scale back testing programs.
Accountability works. But not in reading, which isn’t a subject or a skill. Robert Pondiscio
Testing works. Federal intrusiveness and poorly designed interventions are the real problem. Andy Smarick
The Education Trust has a proud and distinguished history. When the group got its start in the mid-1990s, achievement for poor and minority children was lagging, and the education policy community largely ignored their needs. Ed Trust changed all that with a single-minded focus on equity, hitched to the relatively new notion of school-level accountability.
Ed reform is dead. Long live ed reform. Chester E. Finn, Jr.
Every child should be in a school where he or she can learn effectively. That’s not a controversial goal in itself, but the methods meant to accomplish it can become hot buttons.
On September 9th, the Fordham Institute’s Mike Petrilli participated in an Intelligence Squared U.S. debate on the Common Core. These are his opening comments, as prepared for delivery.
Over the past four years on this blog, I’ve strived to advance a substantive conversation around standards and assessment through complex (and hopefully interesting) policy arguments. But finding new things to advance a discussion sometimes means losing sight of large and obvious things that need to be said over and over again.
Marc Tucker is the author of an important new report: Fixing Our National Accountability System. Although Marc and I disagree on the promise of Relinquishment (most specifically on charter schools), I agree with much of this thinking. But, in this report, Marc makes a strategic mistake in dismissing choice-based reforms. To put it another way: if there is a grand bargain to be made that significantly increases student achievement in the United States, it could look like this: Reduce testing frequency and increase testing rigor Improve the quality of the teaching force Increase charter schools and choice
I have a complicated relationship with testing.
I’ll have what she’s having.
A look at the most-recent evaluation of Florida's Tax Credit Scholarship Program shows some surprising findings with regard to math and reading scores.
A new Mathematica study persuasively puts to rest a common charge leveled at KIPP charter schools: that their test score gains are largely attributable to the attrition of their lowest-performing students. The authors compare nineteen KIPP middle schools to district schools and find no meaningful difference among those who walk in the door of each type of school.
With the release last week of half of the test questions from the most recent round of New York State Common Core ELA/Literacy and math tests, we can now begin to see if the tests are, as
Monday’s Politico story on the messaging battle over the Common Core has kicked up another round of recriminations, particularly on the Right.
The second part of our look at the possible data correlation between eighth-grade proficiency and college remediation.
Repost of a blog by Tom Vander Ark that appeared on the Getting Smart website on July 16, 2014.
One of the great misconceptions in education is that the reform movement is monolithic. There have always been competing camps, often defined on ideological grounds. Conservatives and libertarians tend to stress school choice, for example; liberals are much more comfortable with an intrusive federal role.
Common Core standards mean freedom to many teachers. Here's why.
We know from international data—PISA, TIMSS, and so on—that other countries produce more “high achievers” than we do (at least in relation to the
A recent study examined whether gifted programs benefit students at the margin: those who barely “made the cut” for admission into a program and those who barely missed it.
Checker Finn, chagrined at the lack of attention to gifted education in the U.S., has decided to study what other nations do.
I’m halfway through an ambitious research project, in which I examine how other countries educate their high-ability kids in the hope that we might pick up tips that would prove useful in improving the woeful state of “gifted education” in the U.S.