Displaying 421-450 of 1261 results
Commentary
10.27.2022
Accountability & Testing, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Treating my NAEP hangover

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

Monday was insane, with everyone and his grandmother (and her pet dog) attempting to make insightful, quotable comments on the avalanche of new data from the Nation’s Report Card. Some of it was indeed insightful, but much was simply self-promoting, as were many attempts to position oneself in advance as an expert to be taken seriously.

Commentary
10.27.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Advanced Education, Teachers & School Leaders

Determining the factors that lead to kindergarten ability group placement

Amber M. Northern, Ph.D.

Ability grouping—arranging students in a classroom into smaller learning groups based on their aptitude in a given subject—is a common practice among teachers as early as kindergarten.

Commentary
10.25.2022
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Advanced Education, Teachers & School Leaders

High-achieving middle schoolers have suffered devastating math losses, finds NAEP

Brandon L. Wright

Editor’s note: This is an edition of “Advance,” a newsletter from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute written by Brandon Wright, our Editorial Director, and published every other week. Its purpose is to monitor the progress of gifted education in America, including legal and legislative developments, policy and leadership changes, emerging research, grassroots efforts, and more.

Commentary
10.20.2022
Accountability & Testing, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Could NAEP affect midterm elections? And other questions about next week’s release.

Michael J. Petrilli

The 2022 results from the “main” National Assessment of Educational Progress will be released October 24. They’ll include fourth- and eighth-grade scores at the national level, as well as state by state and for two-dozen large urban districts. Especially after the Covid shut-downs, it’s a big freakin’ deal. Here are three major storylines to look forward to.

Commentary
10.20.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Must we battle over civics education?

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

In a way, the battles we’ve seen in recent years over what to teach schoolkids in civics class resemble the war in Ukraine: They’re wholly unnecessary—and may be entirely the work of aggressors.

Commentary
10.20.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, School Finance, Governance

Will pandemic learning loss cost $700 billion to fix?

Nat Malkus

A new study released this month by Kenneth Shores and Matthew Steinberg tackles the question of whether federal pandemic relief for public schools was provided in the right way and in the right amount.

Commentary
10.13.2022
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Jubilee for character education

Jennifer Frey

Even educators who recognize the value of character are often deeply skeptical that educators can teach virtue as a matter of practice because—apart from religious contexts--they have never seen it done successfully. For this reason, it is important that we draw attention to successful, non-partisan, secular models of exemplary character education. We find such a model in the UK’s Jubilee Center for Character and Virtues.

Commentary
10.13.2022
Curriculum & Instruction, Private School Choice, Teachers & School Leaders

Cultural sensitivity for me but not for thee

Robert Pondiscio, Elli Lucas

Imagine a close-knit community whose members take care of and look out for one another; enjoy strong, tight-knit families with many children, close social ties, and a deep sense of purpose and belonging; and seem mostly exempt from crime, suicide, substance abuse, and other such problems. Are the habits and institutions by which this community prepares its members for adult life successful?

Commentary
10.13.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

The impact of teacher recruiting efforts on student achievement

Jeff Murray

Everyone knows that teachers are the most important in-school factor affecting student achievement, so getting the best ones in front of the neediest students is critical.

Commentary
10.6.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Charter Schools, Governance

Why urban charters outperform traditional public schools

Michael J. Petrilli, David Griffith

High-quality studies continue to find that urban charter schools boost achievement and other outcomes by more than their traditional-public-school peers—an advantage that has only grown larger as the charter sector has expanded and matured. Where the research literature is less clear is why urban charter schools consistently, and increasingly, outperform district schools. Still, it does offer some hints and plausible hypotheses.

Commentary
10.6.2022
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Advanced Education, Teachers & School Leaders

High-achieving middle and high schoolers gain from latest NYC ed reform

Chester E. Finn, Jr., Brandon L. Wright

Amid nonstop controversy, New York City, which runs the nation’s largest school system, is again moving in the right direction when it comes to advancing the education of able students and opening opportunities to more high achievers. This after much retrograde activity during the regime of former Mayor Bill de Blasio.

Commentary
10.6.2022
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Instructional time lost to Covid will likely mean persistent and widening gaps in literacy

Robert Pondiscio

An analysis in the New York Times last month cheerily assured readers that Covid-related learning losses “look real but sub-catastrophic.” The damage also appears “to not be permanent, with students recovering at least some ground already,” opined David Wallace-Wells, a columnist for the NYT Magazi

Commentary
9.29.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Advanced Education, Teachers & School Leaders

Should schools group students by ability?

Scott J. Peters, Jonathan Plucker

One of the most contentious debates in American education focuses on whether to group students into classrooms using some measure of prior achievement.

Commentary
9.29.2022
Accountability & Testing, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

America’s education crisis as a national security threat

Nicholas Eberstadt, Evan Abramsky

Since the end of World War II, the world’s population has not only gotten vastly bigger; it has also become vastly more educated. In nearly every country, the total number of years that citizens have attended school has grown faster than the population itself, and the number of college degrees conferred has grown even faster.

Commentary
9.29.2022
Accountability & Testing, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

California backtracks on withholding testing data

Dale Chu

Weeks away from the midterms, education apparatchiks in the nation’s most populous state are ramping up the election mischief by playing politics with what are expected to be dismal results from assessments taken by students last spring.

Commentary
9.29.2022
Governance

Conservatives’ disjointed education-reform agenda

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

Do today’s conservatives have an education-reform agenda worth paying attention to? Anything coherent? Anything beyond school choice and lots of it? Anything other than “fie on CRT and let’s not say gay, at least not in grade school.” Two efforts to answer those questions have popped up on my screen and desk in the past ten days. Neither quite does the job.

Commentary
9.23.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Career & Technical Education, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Credentials matter, but pathways matter more

Quentin Suffren

Credentials matter, but maybe not as much as many hope. That seems to be one of the takeaways from Fordham’s latest report by Matt Giani evaluating high school industry recognized credential (IRC) attainment and learner outcomes in Texas.

Commentary
9.22.2022
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Charter school achievement in D.C. was decimated by the pandemic. Here’s what we can learn from that.

Marc Porter Magee

Nine percent. That’s how many Black boys met expectations in math in D.C.’s traditional public schools in 2022, down from 17 percent before the pandemic. It’s also how many met those expectation in the city’s charter schools, down from 22 percent. The word “disaster” is used a lot lately, but it is absolutely the right fit here. There are, however, lessons we can learn from this catastrophe.

Commentary
9.16.2022
Career & Technical Education, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Industry-recognized credentials can be very transformational, depending on the local context

Dale Fowler

A new Fordham Institute report authored by University of Texas professor Matt Giani finds that industry-recognized credentials (IRCs) are “mostly not transformative” for the high school students who earn them. But the truth is that it’s all about the context.

Commentary
9.15.2022
Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Supporting student wellness through challenging academic learning

Eva Moskowitz

The pandemic accelerated a mental health crisis for children and teens that was already apparent prior to spring 2020. It is a serious issue, and schools have expanded mental health services to meet the needs of a greater number of struggling students. At the same time, as we commence a school year in which educators must continue the intensive work of repairing the pandemic’s academic damage, focusing on student emotional wellness does not require relinquishing academic learning.

Commentary
9.15.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Wanted: A Science of Reading Comprehension movement

Robert Pondiscio

Just in the nick of time for the last days of summer beach reading, there were a pair of big stories about reading instruction in TIME magazine and The New Yorker last month.

Commentary
9.15.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

A teacher’s-eye view of the culture of a “No Excuses” school

Daniel Buck

Whether or not the bipartisan education consensus is dead, one of its most visible and effective reforms lives on: so-called “No Excuses” model schools, institutions famous for their exacting behavioral and academic standards.

Commentary
9.15.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Four-day school weeks: Is the trade-off worth it?

Jeanette Luna

Four-day school weeks saw a sharp increase in popularity between 1999 and 2019, then the pandemic added impetus to the already growing trend—with districts seeing shortened school weeks as a way to retain teachers and cut expenses.

Commentary
9.13.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Advanced Education, Teachers & School Leaders

Rural gifted children are being neglected: An interview with Paula McGuire

Brandon L. Wright

Editor’s note: This is an edition of “Advance,” a newsletter from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute written by Brandon Wright, our Editorial Director, and published every other week. Its purpose is to monitor the progress of gifted education in America, including legal and legislative developments, policy and leadership changes, emerging research, grassroots efforts, and more.

Commentary
9.13.2022
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Explaining NAEP math “haves”: Software and private tutoring?

Mike Goldstein

Earlier this month, Michael Petrilli wrote about America’s top-quartile students making gains from 2009 to 2019 over their already high baseline—in math, reading, and science—and our lower-quartile kids declining from their already low baseline.

Commentary
9.12.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Career & Technical Education, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

The case for specialized career and technical education

Zeyu Xu, Ben Backes

About three-quarters of students in the U.S. take at least one credit in high school linked to career and technical education (CTE). When high school students take multiple CTE credits, they are often encouraged to focus in a specialized career pathway, like business, health sciences, or hospitality and tourism.