Worldwide, learning loss and pandemic school closures were directly connected
Quantifying learning loss experienced by students whose schools closed for extended periods during the coronavirus pandemic is vital.
Quantifying learning loss experienced by students whose schools closed for extended periods during the coronavirus pandemic is vital.
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Kathleen Porter-Magee of Partnership Schools—a network of Catholic school
Every leader of a state or school system gets asked the question, “How do all of the things we are doing fit together?” It’s a question about “coherence”—the Holy Grail of education, says Freitag. And for the last two years, she has worked with leaders of four offices in one state with the goal of finding more of it. Here’s what she learned.
Last week, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed legislation that allowed high schoolers to use the Classic Learning Test (CLT)—a classical alternative to the SAT and ACT—to qualify for the state’s Bright Futures scholarship. Already accepted at over 200 colleges, this legislation is the CLT’s biggest boost yet.
Editor’s note: This was first published by The 74.
In recent years, the debate on the impact of financial resources in education has been petering out. Studies showing that more money for schools has had a discernable effect on student academic outcomes, particularly for students from lower-income families, keep accumulating.
As the school year winds down, and with the World Health Organization officially declaring the emergency phase of the Covid-19 pandemic over earlier this month, many students, parents, a
Editor’s note: This article was first published by The 74.
Indiana’s Republican governor just signed into law a bill that mandates, among other
Since the release of Chat GPT last year, the professional classes have suffered an existential dilemma.
It being National Charter Schools Week, I thought I would look at the progress that we have made since last year’s celebration.
The number of English learners in charter schools has increased markedly in recent years, but our knowledge of how well charters serve these students hasn’t kept pace with that growth. That’s why we conducted our new study, "Charter Schools and English Learners in the Lone Star State." It finds, among other things, that compared to their traditional public school peers, English learners in Texas charters are more likely to graduate high school and enroll in college. They also earn more money in the post-college years.
This year’s state legislative sessions, now coming to a close, have yielded a blizzard of high-profile victories on school choice, from the enactment of universal education savings accounts (ESA) programs, to the expansion of private school choice policies to serve many more families, to fairer funding for charter schools.
When it comes to K–12 education policy, the post-Covid period has become, more than almost anything else, the era of school choice. This success has opened new avenues for its growth and confronted choice supporters—particularly Catholic school supporters—with an important decision.
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.
Aaargh. Here we go again. The new National Assessment civics and history results are as deplorable as they were predictable. Whether they’ll also serve as the action-forcer that we need is far from certain.
Most American public school teachers are paid according to a fixed salary schedule that determines their income based only on their years of education and classroom experience.
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Bellwether co-founder and Virginia Board of Education member
This April marks forty years since the National Commission on Excellence in Education issued its blockbuster report “A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform.” The commission, which worked for eighteen months, was created in August 1981 by U.S. Secretary of Education Terrel Bell early in his tenure with President Ronald Reagan’s administration.
Note: On April 13, AEI’s Robert Pondiscio spoke at Harvard’s Program on Education Policy and Governance’s Colloquium Series, responding to Dr. Danielle S.
How to select students for advanced or elite academic programs has long been controversial. Critics of “holistic” admissions policies argue they often turn to mush—or inject bias into the process. At the other extreme, a few programs use nothing more than a single assessment to determine placement.
The National Commission on Excellence in Education’s release of a report titled “A Nation at Risk” in 1983 was a pivotal point in the history of American education.
There are many reasons to be skeptical of the universal ESA programs that are sweeping the nation, but they are worth rooting for anyway because they’ll likely lead traditional public schools to improve.
Editor’s note: This was first published in The 74. The education culture wars on issues like critical race theory and how to teach history create a false narrative and collective illusion on K–12 issues among Americans
When my son entered kindergarten at our local public school last fall, I never expected I’d have to become an ambassador and advocate for giftedness and gifted education. He has always been an eager, rapid learner—intensely curious and a social butterfly—so we expected his first year of elementary school to be one of mostly excitement, fun and joy.
The Georgia Department of Education has released a new version of proposed English language arts standards for public comment, and they contain a big surprise. If you dig into the “Texts” section and go to grade eleven, you’ll find this requirement:
The two pillars of democracy—trust and truth—are now cracked. Many Americans believe the political system is corrupt (e.g., rigged, racist), and some don’t believe the results of elections, even certifiably fair ones. Related, we have lost a shared standard of truth and, with it, shared criteria for distinguishing fact from falsehood.
When Tennessee House Republicans expelled, albeit briefly, two young, Black Democratic lawmakers late last week, it raised a number of unsettling questions—not only about the contours of our politics, but also about the future of educat
A little-noticed event in late 2022 destabilized a pillar of contemporary American K–12 education, namely that all schools considered part of the public system must be secular.
The ongoing debate over when students shoul