How did teacher evaluation become a thing?
Editor’s note: This was first published on the author’s Substack, The Education Daly. Are teachers interchangeable parts?
Editor’s note: This was first published on the author’s Substack, The Education Daly. Are teachers interchangeable parts?
For the past several months, Petrilli been pumping out posts about “doing educational equity right.” This series concludes with a twist by looking at three ways that schools are doing educational equity wrong: by engaging in the soft bigotry of low expectations, tying teachers’ hands without good reason, and acting like equity isn’t just an important thing, but the only thing.
Last weekend, I gave a talk at the U.S.
In the mid-1970s, Ference Marton and Roger Säljö of the University of Gothenburg in Sweden noticed that their students took different approaches to learning.
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Derrell Bradford, the president of 50CAN, joins Mike and David to discuss a new coalit
To gauge the magnitude of global learning loss during the pandemic, a team at the World Bank examined data from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) from 2018–2022, which tests fifteen-year-olds in math, reading, and science.
The school choice movement continues to rack up dramatic wins nationwide. This growth in “educational freedom,” as many advocates now call it, is a fantastic development. But under the surface of these victories, an important debate is brewing: how to balance the drive for maximum choice with other values, including fiscal responsibility and fairness.
The Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) are arguably the most important international tests in education. Both have been administered for decades in dozens of countries. Each new set of student outcomes is tracked, analyzed, and endlessly written about.
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Rick Hess, the director of education policy studies at the America
The closure of schools in response to the seismic disruptions of the Covid-19 pandemic has left an indelible mark on education worldwide. As nations grappled with closures lasting varying lengths of time, the implications for student learning became increasingly evident.
Congress is currently considering legislation to update the way that the federal government funds education research and development.
New York City public schools offer two types of gifted and talented education.
The findings of Fordham’s latest report, "Do Authorizer Evaluations Predict the Success of New Charter Schools?" suggest at least three takeaways: authorizers should pay close attention to applicants’ education and financial plans; should incorporate multiple data sources and perspectives; and must continue to hold approved schools accountable for their results.
This is the eighth in a series on doing educational equity right.
The hits just keep on coming: Earlier this month, a motley crew of former Colorado lawmakers helped spur the introduction of a grotesque piece of legislation aimed squarely at dismantling the state’s
For many students and teachers, the pivot from in-person to remote learning in March 2020 was a sudden lurch from the known to the unknown. Writ large, research shows the academic impact of that move was devastating. But details matter—and so do exceptions.
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Adam Kho, an assistant professor at the Rossier School of Education, and
As the sector’s gatekeepers, charter school authorizers are responsible for ensuring that schools in their purview set students up for success. But can authorizers predict which schools will meet that standard?
Many of the conditions that led to the prominence of “no-excuses” charter schools a quarter-century ago have returned. For students, teachers, and parents who have never lost their appetite for safe and orderly schools, it can’t come soon enough.
I recently watched a seventh-grade math lesson that did a better job than I ever did as a teacher asking kids relatable theoretical probability questions. How would you represent the probability of a six-foot-tall seventh grader? How would you represent the probability of getting a test in school in any given week? Making sense of where students were coming from was a fascinating puzzle.
Editor’s note: This was first published by The 74.
The way we grade student work is flawed—in some ways inequitable—and is in need of reform. But like so many things in American education, the push for “equitable grading” has often been implemented piecemeal, bringing along with it all manner of unintended consequences, the most important of which is lowered standards.
Late last year, researchers Sarah Cohodes and Susha Roy partnered with the MIT Department of Economics to release a paper summarizing the results of lottery-based charter studies. The topline conclusion is straightforward and promising:
School choice discussions often overlook intradistrict open enrollment, allowing students to attend any public school within their resident district.
Most young people who enroll in college after high school graduation do so in the hope that it will help them secure a good job. Similarly, many employers look to colleges as sources of high-quality candidates to fill job openings.
There are, generally speaking, two ways to report students’ performance on tests. One is normative, and it compares a student’s performance to his peers. The second is criterion, and it compares a student’s performance to learning standards, indicating grade-level proficiency and is independent of peers’ test performance.
The push for more “equitable” grading policies has exacerbated grade inflation while yielding little evidence of greater learning. Some aspects of traditional grading can indeed perpetuate inequities, but top-down policies that make grading more lenient are not the answer, especially as schools grapple with the academic and behavioral challenges of the post-pandemic era.
My friend Michael Petrilli just wrote a great essay about the “homework gap.” He sets aside the upper-class question (stressed out kids with too much of it) and steers readers to the gap (some kids do what’s assigned, some kids copy and cheat, and some kids skip it).
Districts have used almost $190 billion in ESSER funds to help students recover from pandemic learning loss by implementing a wide variety of initiatives, including
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Adam Tyner and Meredith Coffey, the national research director and a se