Charter schools can’t afford to lose Republican support
Charter schools are in for a slog. It doesn’t matter who wins in November. Joe Biden is not a fan.
Charter schools are in for a slog. It doesn’t matter who wins in November. Joe Biden is not a fan.
Starting in 2010, Congress invested more than $1 billion to assist states with their literacy improvement efforts through the Striving Rea
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Marguerite Roza, the director of the Edunomics La
Watching the debate last night, all I could think about was my time spent on the playground with my toddler. Her wobbly legs ever close to tumbling down the ladder and causing me constant low-grade anxiety. I felt the same watching Biden fumble through answers, stare into space, and exhibit all the hallmarks of an aging man in cognitive decline.
Last month, Louisiana issued a series of common-sense recommendations titled, simply and winningly, “Let Teachers Teach.” The report hasn’t received nearly enough attention. It deserves to be studied closely in every state and school district if we’re serious about improving teacher job satisfaction, effectiveness, and raising student achievement.
You remember the six-foot rule. How could you forget?
Classical education has surged in popularity, with 264 new schools cropping up since 2019, a host
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.
Tennessee lawmakers adopted a new school funding formula in 2022, moving from a staffing-based to a per-pupil-based model with the intent of directing more state dollars to students who need them most.
“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?)
The Texas Education Agency has spent roughly three years piloting a promising set of ELA materials, which became freely available late last month: a structured and sequenced knowledge- and vocabulary-rich K–5 curriculum. The Lone Star State seems to well and truly understand the ingredients of language proficiency.
Texas is back in education news. In late May, The 74 reported that the state education agency is proposing to supplement its existing English instruction with lessons that include Biblical references.
Poland has been the economic tiger of Europe in recent decades and one of the fastest growing economies in the world over that time. In 1990, when I taught high school in a rural Polish town located in Silesia between Poznan and Wroclaw, Poland’s GDP was less than Ukraine’s.
Forty-five percent of U.S. public schools report feeling understaffed, 70 percent report that too few candidates are applying to teaching vacancies, and 86 percent report challenges hiring teachers in the 2023–24 school year.
Editor’s note: This was first published by Forbes.
In his recent column “Let’s Talk About Bad Teachers,” Michael Petrilli fearlessly seized the third rail of U.S. K–12 education.
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.
For thirty years, most education reformers have hung their hats on test-based accountability. Let's kick the tail of traditional public schools on standardized tests, as the thinking goes, and much else will take care of itself.
In April, Tim Daly penned an incisive three-part series on the trials and tribulations of teacher evaluation reforms.
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Alex Spurrier, an associate partner at Bellwether, joins Mike and David to discuss w
Editor’s note: This was first published by Education Next.
One of the most persistent myths in K–12 education is the idea that high-poverty schools are near-universally, significantly underfunded. However, the truth is much more complicated. As it turns out, poor districts get more money in almost every state—and school spending has an incredibly weak relationship with school quality in the first place.
In 2010, Katharine Birbalsingh gave a speech at Britain’s Conservative Party conference, after which the school where she was employed asked her not to return. She eventually established her own school, which now regularly boasts the highest growth scores of any K–12 educational institution in England. Buck recently spoke with her about her school's success.
Editor’s note: This was first published on the author’s Substack, “citizen stewart,” which covers race, education, and democracy.
Tim Daly, a friend with whom I usually and enthusiastically agree, recently published a three-part series autopsying the teacher-evaluation reforms of the 2010’s.
According to national data, children from low-income families and students of color do not have the same access to advanced courses as their more advantaged peers.
In his new book, “The Parent Revolution,” school choice advocate Corey DeAngelis explains the notable plummet in the public’s trust of public education, especially in the past five years. By his telling, school choice is the answer to all that ails us. But he’s likely overselling its healing powers.
As we observe another National Charter School Week, one fact is clear: Families are voting with their feet for charter schools.
I’ve made no secret of my fervent belief that curriculum is the overlooked lever in education reform. Replacing the slapdash, incoherent, and under-nourishing mélange of materials to which the typical U.S.
In an effort to avoid prescriptive top-down mandates, the school accountability provisions in the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) allow states flexibility in determining what measures they’ll use to assess school quality, how much “weight” they carry, and over what time periods they’re calculated.