The gender gap in education is less talked about than many other achievement gaps, but it persists.
Opponents make lots of arguments against education savings accounts, tax-credit scholarship programs, and other forms of private school choice. But the complaint that schools aren’t required to test their students is generally false. We dig in and set the record straight
The Supreme Court agreed on Friday afternoon to hear a landmark religious charter schools case out of Oklahoma, and it’s a much bigger deal than you might imagine.
President-elect Donald Trump is about to return to Washington with a ragtag coalition, united in their rejection of the status quo. Yet this shared opposition has also led to a rash of infighting over a range of policy issues.
After more than a decade of trying to launch some form of education savings account/tax credit program for parent choice, it looks like Idaho’s legislature is likely to pass legislation this year to get it done.
I’m no “tech bro,” nor a fan of Ramaswamy (or Musk), but Vivek was right this time:
New York City is awash in “gifted and talented” children, otherwise known as high-achieving public school students who would benefit from advanced education. In some neighborhoods, for example, over 50 percent of students test in the top 10th percentile nationwide.
Virginia’s new accountability system incentivizes schools to provide valuable middle-school math pathways, resulting in more opportunities for Virginia students, especially the most underprivileged.
Editor’s note: This was first published on the author’s Substack, Governing Right.
The Founding Fathers never envisioned that executive orders would be a major policymaking tool, circumventing legislative and executive deliberations, political stalemates, and partisanship. But recent history has deemed them essential levers if there is to be urgent action on the most important matters of the day.
After an eventful year of politics and controversy—with more lurking on the horizon—several friends have shared their apprehension about holiday gatherings. No one wants to see Grandma serve the turkey wearing her red hat or Uncle Bob stick a “We’re not going back” flag in the cranberry sauce.
In the Fordham Institute policy report titled Think Again: Are Education Programs for High-Achievers Inherently Inequitable?, Brandon Wright outlines four claims describing arguments that opponents of advanced education programs use to advocate for their
Early-college high schools are those that fully incorporate college course-taking into the curriculum. They are not to be confused with a more-typical “dual enrollment” model, which allows students the opportunity to take college courses if they have time.
Yes, choice itself is a form of accountability, but “customer satisfaction” isn’t enough when tax dollars are in play—even for private-school choice programs. The public has a right to know that participating students are gaining essential skills. To that end, this post discusses four tiers of escalating accountability and where state policy should land, depending on the amount of taxpayer dollars provided to individual schools, among other considerations.
Editor’s note: This is an adapted excerpt from the author’s recent Fordham Institute report, “Think Again: Are Education Programs for High Achievers Inherently Inequitable?”
One of the most interesting and significant findings about charter schools in the last decade—outside of the fact that they tend to outperform traditional public schools (TPS)—is that growin
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Brandon Wright, Ford
This brief challenges the notion that marginalized students of high ability are harmed by advanced education, with implications for better screening measures and expansion of programs.
As the clock winds down towards Election Day, Colorado voters—myself included—face an important decision beyond the presidential contest: whether to amend the state constitution to enshrine a “right to school choice.” To be clear, the Centennial State has a long and proud record on the issue.
Of the school choice options available to many U.S. families today, few embody the spirit of “power to the parents” quite like education savings accounts (ESAs).
Modern States Education Alliance is a non-profit that makes college-level courses and college credit free to any learner anywhere, including high school students interested in advanced coursework. It offers thirty-two online courses free of charge at www.modernstates.org, including all the necessary textbooks and readings.
“Come see me in the office.” Uh oh. I probably got caught teaching again.
A recent article in the Boston Globe dug into a controversy that is dogging Massachusetts’s highly-regarded system of regional career and technical education (CTE) high schools.
Three decades ago, the College Board “recentered” the SAT. Now it’s “recalibrating” Advanced Placement. Though both adjustments in these enormously influential testing programs can be justified by psychometricians, both are also probable examples of what the late Senator Daniel P.
Academic advancement programs (especially those branded as “gifted and talented”) are often at the center of controversy about equity in education.
On Monday, Donald Trump chose Senator J.D. Vance as his running mate, signaling a doubling down on his MAGA brand. As far as education is concerned, this means tapping into broad parental discontent over educational and education-related issues, many of which were turbocharged by the pandemic.
The Advanced Placement program is undergoing a radical transformation. Over the last three years, the College Board has “recalibrated” nine of its most popular AP Exams so that approximately 500,000 more AP Exams will earn a 3+ score this year than they would have without recalibration.
Ten years ago, when Florida launched the nation’s second education savings account program, a beautiful thing happened. Friedrich Hayek would have called it “spontaneous order.” Parents, within days, began forming a multitude of Facebook groups where they traded advice on how to access the accounts, how to use them, and what learning options were available in their area.
“The Big Bang Theory” premiered September 2007. My husband has a nuclear engineering degree from MIT. Our younger son, then four, was a budding scientist. (Sample conversation: Him: Can’t come out of the bath. Working on surface tension and light refraction. Me: You mean splashing?)
A child’s age is only a crude proxy for their academic readiness, yet it’s the primary means by which we group children in school. More age variety in classrooms could allow for greater academic consistency; grade retention and grade acceleration could help us get there. So too could a new idea from Petrilli: transitional kindergarten–5.
