Displaying 1-30 of 319 results
Commentary
9.22.2022
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Charter school achievement in D.C. was decimated by the pandemic. Here’s what we can learn from that.

Marc Porter Magee

Nine percent. That’s how many Black boys met expectations in math in D.C.’s traditional public schools in 2022, down from 17 percent before the pandemic. It’s also how many met those expectation in the city’s charter schools, down from 22 percent. The word “disaster” is used a lot lately, but it is absolutely the right fit here. There are, however, lessons we can learn from this catastrophe.

Commentary
9.13.2022
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Explaining NAEP math “haves”: Software and private tutoring?

Mike Goldstein

Earlier this month, Michael Petrilli wrote about America’s top-quartile students making gains from 2009 to 2019 over their already high baseline—in math, reading, and science—and our lower-quartile kids declining from their already low baseline.

Commentary
9.8.2022
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Beware of whiplash from clashing achievement results

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

The last month has brought both bleak new NAEP results and a deeply researched piece on “a half-century of student progress nationwide.” The former abounds with gloom about the dire and declining state of U.S. educational achievement and widening gaps between groups. The latter is an upbeat rejoinder to the doomsayers and a well-documented celebration of half a century of gains and gap-narrowings. What’s going on here?

Commentary
9.8.2022
Accountability & Testing, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

It’s far too early to declare victory over Covid-era learning loss

Dale Chu

New findings released last week from the NAEP long-term trend assessment (LTT) suggest an alarming downswing among U.S. nine-year-olds in both math and reading between 2020 and 2022.

Commentary
8.31.2022
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Standards, Teachers & School Leaders

What national test scores tell us about American education before the pandemic

Michael J. Petrilli

NAGB officials recently reported on U.S. student achievement trends from 2009–19, and what they found was eye-opening. Whereas America’s higher achieving students held steady or even gained ground, our lowest performing kids saw test scores fall, at least in fourth and eighth grades and in reading and math. What might be causing these diverging trends?

Commentary
8.31.2022
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Governance, High Achievers

Pre-pandemic, more U.S. students were excelling in math

Brandon L. Wright

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.

Commentary
8.25.2022
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Career & Technical Education, Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Standards, Teachers & School Leaders

The evolving education reform agenda

Michael J. Petrilli

Earlier this month, I argued that “education reform is alive and well, even if the Washington Consensus is dead for now.” What’s more, I wrote that we should stay the course on the current reform strategy:

Commentary
7.1.2022
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Building better evidence on pre-K by strengthening assessments of children’s skills

Meghan McCormick

Research has found that high-quality pre-K programs can have positive impacts on children’s learning and development, improving outcomes like literacy and math skills in the short-term and even increasing

Commentary
6.9.2022
Accountability & Testing, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

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

Mike 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).

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.

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.

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.

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
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.”