#929: Equity and school closures, with Francis Pearman
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Francis Pearman, an assistant professor of education at Stanford University, joins Mike an
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Francis Pearman, an assistant professor of education at Stanford University, joins Mike an
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.
Red-state governors like Ron DeSantis, Brian Kemp, and Greg Abbott deserve credit for taking the political risk to reopen schools quickly during the pandemic, over the objections of officials in Democratic cities. They decided that education was too important to leave to the left. Now the country faces a different wave of school closings, and conservative governors must step up again.
Long after Covid-inspired shutdowns, schools remain chaotic according to recent surveys and umpteen stories of hallway brawls, bus fights, and general mayhem.
In my final college semester, I had the privilege of being a full-time student teacher at a Catholic middle school, teaching seventh and eigth grade history and theology. It was the highlight of my life. The students were curious, polite, and thoughtful, caring to one another and welcoming to me.
Knee-jerk reaction against public subsidies for religious education is unwise. That’s because allowing religious families to choose sectarian schools for their children could very well be a saving grace for our society. And you don’t have to be among the faithful to believe so.
Charter schools are in for a slog. It doesn’t matter who wins in November. Joe Biden is not a fan.
Inquiry-based learning in STEM classrooms, long a contentious topic, has been making news since the introduction of the controversial California Math Framework. This student-led approach aims to foster engagement by sparking curiosity and critical thinking.
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.
Peter Liljedahl opens his wildly popular book on mathematics instruction, Building Thinking Classrooms, with a bold gambit.
Classical education has surged in popularity, with 264 new schools cropping up since 2019, a host
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.
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Robert Pondiscio, a senior fellow at Fordham and the American Enterprise Institute
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.
As excitement grows around tutoring as a strategy to combat learning loss, advocates have rightly been encouraged by the growing
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.
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
The drumbeat for a more nuanced treatment of the Science of Reading got louder last week with a hard-hitting new Fordham Institute monograph, Think Again: Should Elementary Schools Teach Reading Comprehension? In it, author Daniel Buck chronicles the recent history
While 2023-24 had the usual ups and downs, on balance, American education seemed to bend towards normality: chronic absenteeism is improving, standardized testing is making a comeback, and phonics has finally won. There’s reason for optimism, but education reformers must be wary of making obvious, if appealing, errors.
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.
“Math and reading scores for 13-year-olds have hit their lowest scores in decades.” When the recent NAEP long-term trend results for 13-year-olds were published, the
In the effort to expand and diversify the teacher pipeline, states and districts have invested millions in actively recruiting and training teachers from local communities.
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.