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Displaying 1-30 of 309 results
Commentary
6.9.2022
Accountability & Testing, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

The coming “second wave” of learning loss in 2023 and 2024

Michael Goldstein

Covid “learning loss” has two causes: the loss of in-person instruction in the spring of 2020 and the reliance on remote learning thereafter (which Tom Kane and colleagues quantify in an article in The Atlantic).

Podcast
6.8.2022
Accountability & Testing

Education Gadfly Show #823: How detrimental was remote learning?

On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Tom Kane, Harvard economist and director of its Center for Education Policy Research, explains the

Commentary
6.2.2022
Accountability & Testing, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, High Achievers, Teachers & School Leaders

How to narrow the excellence gap in early elementary school

Michael J. Petrilli

In recent weeks, I’ve dug into the “excellence gap“—the sharp divides along lines of race

Commentary
6.2.2022
Accountability & Testing, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Natalie Wexler goes astray on the NAEP reading test

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

Natalie Wexler has done much (along with the likes of Jeanne Chall, Don Hirsch, Dan Willingham, Kate Walsh, and Robert Pondiscio) to establish the fact that there’s science behind the act of reading and the related proposition that real reading (not just “decoding”) is no isolated skill but, rather, a complicated process of making sense of what one reads on the page in the context of what one a

Commentary
6.2.2022
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

How does a child’s religious background affect her choices about higher education?

Nathaniel Grossman

“From Bat Mitzvah to the Bar: Religious Habitus, Self-Concept, and Women’s Educational Outcomes,” a new study by Ilana Horwitz et al., analyzes the college-going rates of women raised by Jewish versus non-Jewish parents.

Podcast
6.1.2022
Accountability & Testing

Education Gadfly Show #822: Checker Finn: Why we need—and need to improve—NAEP

On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Checker Finn, the Fordham Institute’s president emeritus and a distinguished senior

Event
5.27.2022
Accountability & Testing

What you may not know—but should—about the Nation’s Report Card

Download the webinar PowerPoint.

Commentary
5.26.2022
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, High Achievers, Teachers & School Leaders

The excellence gap opens early

Michael J. Petrilli

Last week, I provided sobering evidence of the “excellence gap” among twelfth grade students—the sharp divides along lines of race and class in achievement at the highest levels.

Commentary
5.26.2022
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

Will every high schooler soon have a 4.0?

Adam Tyner, Ph.D.

Scholars and testing companies have been following grade inflation for decades. The first ACT study on the topic dates to the mid-1990s, while researchers have used SAT data to study grade inflation since the 1970s.

Podcast
5.24.2022
Accountability & Testing

Education Gadfly Show #821: Sec. Aimee Rogstad Guidera on the state of education in Virginia

  On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Virginia Secretary of Education Aimee Rogstad Guidera discuss

Commentary
5.19.2022
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

The excellence gap and underrepresentation at America’s most selective universities

Michael J. Petrilli

America’s education system suffers from a variety of “excellence gaps”—sharp disparities in performance by race and class at the highest levels of academic achievement. These gaps explain why college administrators turn to various forms of affirmative action in order to create freshmen classes that more closely represent the nation’s diversity—actions that may soon be declared unconstitutional. But when do these gaps start?

Commentary
5.19.2022
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

“What do you mean, ‘proficient’?” The saga of NAEP achievement levels

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

As I write this, representative samples of fourth and eighth graders are taking National Assessment of Educational Progress tests in math and English.

Commentary
5.19.2022
Accountability & Testing, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Standards, Teachers & School Leaders

Evidence, struggling math students, and California’s 2022 math framework

Tom Loveless

The proposed California Mathematics Framework generated a storm of controversy when the first draft was released in early 2021. Critics objected to the document’s condemnation of tracking and negative portrayal of acceleration for high-achieving students.

Commentary
5.12.2022
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Assessing the Nation’s Report Card: Challenges and choices for NAEP

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

NAEP is by far the country’s most important source of information on student achievement, achievement gaps and so much more, even though it’s invisible to most Americans. Yet NAEP is far from perfect—and could do so much more than it does. It’s time to wrestle with its challenges, shortcomings, and possible future scenarios.

Commentary
5.12.2022
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

The Federal civil service adopted standardized testing in 1883. Are there lessons for education today?

Christian Eggers

One common refrain in debates around education is that standardized exams negatively impact applicants from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Book
5.10.2022
Accountability & Testing

Assessing the Nation’s Report Card: Challenges and Choices for NAEP

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

How do we see whether achievement gaps between groups of students are widening or narrowing? How can we tell whether eighth graders in Missouri do better or worse in math than their peers in Michigan and Maine? We wouldn’t know these things or much else about K–12 achievement in America without a little-known but vital test, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a.k.a. “NAEP” or the “Nation’s Report Card.” Assessing the Nation’s Report Card: Challenges and Choices for NAEP, authored by veteran education participant/analyst Chester E. Finn, Jr., examines the history of NAEP, the issues and challenges that it faces today, and ways to strengthen and modernize it for the future.

Checker editorial 4-28-22 image
Commentary
4.28.2022
Accountability & Testing

The little-known test that matters the most

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

How do we know whether kids in Pennsylvania are better or worse readers at the end of middle school than their peers in Colorado? We wouldn’t know that or much else without a test that may have escaped your notice altogether, unless you’re some sort of education-obsessed policy maker or policy wonk like me. I’m talking about the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

Checker editorial 4-28-22 image
Podcast
4.19.2022
Accountability & Testing

Education Gadfly Show #816: Want kids back in school? Make sure they feel safe.

  On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Jing Liu, Assistant Professor in Education Policy at the University of Mar

MP AN blog 4-14-22 image
Commentary
4.14.2022
Accountability & Testing

A better way to measure student absenteeism

Amber M. Northern, Ph.D., Michael J. Petrilli

For many parents and teachers, the Covid experience has confirmed at least two pieces of common sense: It’s hard for kids to learn if they’re not in school, and those who are in school tend to learn more.

MP AN blog 4-14-22 image
Report
4.13.2022
Accountability & Testing

Imperfect Attendance: Toward a fairer measure of student absenteeism

Jing Liu, Ph.D.

The need to understand how schools can improve student attendance has never been greater. This study breaks new ground by examining high schools’ contributions to attendance—that is, their “attendance value-added.”

Commentary
4.7.2022
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Charter Schools, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Denver doesn’t spell doom for portfolio-style reform

Paul T. Hill

Last week, Chester Finn used a recent vote of Denver’s anti-reform school board to make three points: first, that the “portfolio” reform there—based on school autonomy, family choice, and chartering out schools where kids aren’t learning—is finished; second, that Denver’s reversal predicts doom elsewhere for complex reform initiatives meant to transform the ways whole public systems operate; an

Commentary
4.7.2022
Accountability & Testing, Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

More reform lessons from Denver

Susan Miller, Tom Coyne

After living through the transformation of K–12 education in Alberta, Canada, we moved from Calgary to Colorado in 2010. Since then, we have watched the Denver Public Schools story unfold from next door in Jefferson County.

Commentary
3.24.2022
Accountability & Testing, Governance

Lively days for NAEP

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

Those who pay attention to the “Nation’s Report Card” tend to take it for granted. In truth, most people heed it not at all.

Commentary
3.18.2022
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

Should we be worried about rising inflation?

Seth Gershenson

Inflation is up, and no, I’m not talking about gas prices. I’m talking about some troubling trends observed among the 2019 graduating class of high school students in the recently released 2019 NAEP High School Transcript Study.

Commentary
3.18.2022
Accountability & Testing, Governance

NAEP: Meeting today’s needs and building a national assessment for the future

Peggy G. Carr, Lesley Muldoon

Joint Statement from Peggy G. Carr, Ph.D., Commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics and Lesley Muldoon, Executive Director of the National Assessment Governing Board

Commentary
3.17.2022
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, High Achievers

San Francisco’s detracking experiment

Tom Loveless

Editor's note: This post was originally published on tomloveless.com.

Commentary
2.3.2022
Accountability & Testing, Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Private School Choice, Teachers & School Leaders

Did public education have it coming?

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

In many ways, the educational failures of the past several years—including those caused by the pandemic—were far worse than they needed to be because of long-standing characteristics of American public education. Namely, the tendency to place employees’ interests first, the disempowering of parents, and the failure to innovate.

Commentary
1.27.2022
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

A century of school reform, through the eyes of Larry Cuban

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

Confessions of a School Reformer, a new book by emeritus Stanford education professor Larry Cuban, still going strong at eighty-eight, combines personal memoir with a history and analysis of U.S.

Commentary
1.20.2022
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

The case for starting NAEP in kindergarten

Michael J. Petrilli

Way back in the late 1960s, when federal officials and eminent psychologists were first designing the National Assessment of Educational Progress, they probably never contemplated testing students younger than nine. After all, the technology for mass testing at the time—bubble sheets and No.

Commentary
1.7.2022
Accountability & Testing, Charter Schools, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Why authorizers shouldn’t shy away from helping their charter schools improve

Alex Medler

A decade ago, most charter school authorizers agreed it was not their job to help struggling charter schools. But times have changed, and best practices in charter school authorizing are evolving. Authorizers are exploring ways to support and encourage improvement in the charter schools they oversee, and some charter schools appreciate the change.

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