Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Curriculum & Instruction, Advanced Education
America’s high achievers are doing surprisingly well on PISA
The latest PISA results were mostly grim.
Accountability & Testing
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Charter Schools, Governance
How long should charter school contract terms be?
A defining feature of charter schools is the oversight structure provided by the authorizer. It is an authorizer’s job to determine whether schools are fulfilling the terms of their charters across numerous areas, not least of which is student outcomes.
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Governance
What state standards look like on the NAEP scale
The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) regularly publishes reports using results from NAEP testing to compare the proficiency standards that states set for their students.
Podcast
Accountability & Testing
AI in schools: Ban it or embrace it? | Episode 1034 of The Education Gadfly Show
Mike Petrilli is back on the mic solo this week to weigh the case for and against banning AI in scho
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
What Massachusetts’s portrait of a learner gets right (and New York’s doesn’t)
When I taught high school in Virginia in the early 2020s, I was only vaguely aware of the existence of something called “portrait of a graduate.” Whatever this portrait was, it didn’t seem to impact my daily work, so it didn’t capture my attention. On the other hand, I knew my IB courses and our state assessments backward and forward. Those shaped what we did in the classroom.
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance
New York’s portrait of a graduate is a disaster in the making. Here’s how to minimize the damage.
New York State is replacing its Regents high school exit exams with a yet-to-be-defined “portrait of a graduate” framework. It’s a terrible decision, as it exchanges clear academic standards for mush.
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning
Expanded review process for determining school quality leads to minimal improvement
New York City Schools piloted an external qualitative review (QR) in a subset of its schools for the first time in 2005, intended to expand the definition of school quality via a school inspection-type model and to broaden the scope of educational accountability.
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning
What early test scores can tell us about a student’s future
Third-grade proficiency is one of the most consequential milestones in a child’s academic career. Around this time, students transition from learning foundational skills to using those skills to engage with more complex content.
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
The Classic Learning Test has become a graduation loophole in Florida
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has called the CLT the nation’s new “gold standard.” USA Today’s blockbuster investigation, published today, suggests a more accurate label would be “boondoggle.” In Florida, the state that has done more than any other to
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders
New NAEP data show boys have made a historic comeback in reading. Is it too good to be true?
New federal test score data from the long-term trend (LTT) report reveal a remarkable finding: For the first time in the 50 years of the assessment, nine-year-old boys are now scoring equally with girls in reading.
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Governance
Accountability is not just about improving instruction. It aims to shift local politics, too.
A few weeks ago, my colleague Robert Pondiscio argued convincingly that the accountability policies of the No Child Left Behind era did not work as effectively as they could have because schools did not know how to respond to the pressure they felt to improve instructional practice and deliver str
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders
There’s actually more to the i-Ready story: A rebuttal
Curriculum Associates CEO Kelly Sia recently defended her company’s flagship i-Ready platform to Fordham readers. The program, used by millions of students, has come under fire from teachers, parents, and students as part of an ed-tech backlash sweeping the nation.
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
Through-year assessments can improve a broken testing system
In a recent Flypaper post, Dale Chu argues that the promise of a single assessment system doing multiple things well is “too good to be true.” He says that through-year assessments (TYA)—tests administered periodically throughout the school year that culminate in a summative score—are tryi
Podcast
Accountability & Testing
The accountability vibe shift | Episode 1025 of The Education Gadfly Show
Mike Petrilli takes the mic to consider whether America’s schools need a renewed sense of urgency around
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Governance
On NCLB, Wiener and Petrilli fight to a draw
As Americans are discovering during this summer’s World Cup, soccer often produces an outcome that is unsatisfying to our domestic sports sensibilities: a tie. One team controls possession while the other creates better scoring chances. Both leave the pitch claiming vindication, but neither gets to declare victory.
Podcast
Accountability & Testing
Better NAEP news than you think | Episode 1022 of The Education Gadfly Show
Mike Petrilli flies solo to discuss the latest Long-Term Trend NAEP results and why the bounce-back amo
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
The assessment that does everything is too good to be true
More than a dozen states are designing, piloting, or implementing some form of through-year assessment as a replacement for the traditional end-of-year test used for federal accountability. But their enthusiasm rests on a shaky assumption: that a single assessment can simultaneously satisfy accountability requirements, improve instruction, provide timely feedback, reduce testing burden, preserve local flexibility, and produce valid statewide comparisons.
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
Why is Gen Z obsessed with technology?
Editor’s note: This is the second in a three-part series written by Elainah Elkins and Jill Hoppe, born in 1999 and 2000, respectively. There is growing discourse surrounding Gen Z, but the voices of Gen Zers themselves are often missing from the conversation. This is their response.
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Governance
The Nation’s Report Card gets an overdue upgrade
The National Assessment Government Board made some very good news last week, albeit a decade or two late, when it voted to commence more frequent testing of civics and, especially, to make 12th grade results available at the state level.
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Personalized Learning
When helping hurts: Rethinking special education accommodations
We need to talk about accommodations. Like puppies or grandma’s cookies, they are treated as unmitigated goods—at least in my experience. Should we not support all students? Should we not provide differentiated instruction? Who in their right mind could oppose offering accommodations, leveling the playing field, and helping students with special needs?
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Teachers & School Leaders
Accommodations are a concern, but don’t blame parents
When 20 percent of Harvard and Brown students and 38 percent of Stanford’s are eligible for accommodations even as just 3–4 percent of students in community colleges are, we have a crisis of trust in testing, fairness, and equity.
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
Why is Gen Z so anxious?
Editor’s note: This is the first in a three-part series written by Elainah Elkins and Jill Hoppe, born in 1999 and 2000, respectively. There is growing discourse surrounding Gen Z, but the voices of Gen Zers themselves are often missing from the conversation. This is their response.
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
Should states go back to paper-and-pencil testing?
Next month, my 11-year-old will join her classmates to take the state assessment.
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
Are we testing Idaho students twice for the same outcomes?
“We spend too much time on testing,” is a lament we hear often among Idaho educators. Surely it is a national sentiment as well.
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
A future for IES?
Thank you, Amber! My colleague Amber Northern, Fordham’s longtime senior vice president for research, has done American education a great service by recommending a future for the Institute for Education Sciences that goes far beyond undoing the damage done by DOGE a year ago.
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
Good schools don’t beat staff turnover. They’re built for it.
Education has never lacked miracle schools and stories. The real challenge isn’t identifying successful schools but learning how to recognize whether their success is institutional or temporary. So if we wanted to predict whether a school’s success will last, what should we look for?
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning
The predictive power of NAEP
Across the United States, a representative sample of thousands of fourth, eighth, and twelfth grade students has begun sitting for the National Assessment of Educational Progress. NAEP is administered independently of state-level standards but presents state- and national-level results.
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Private School Choice
School choice supporters keep moving the goal posts
Over the past decade or so, as the education reform movement has increasingly splintered along partisan lines, the number of people who support both charter schools and private school choice has shrunk to almost nothing. One cause of the growing divide is that some private school choice advocates are making demands that are increasingly outlandish.
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Charter Schools, Governance, Private School Choice
Will Mississippi muddy the waters on testing and accountability?
Mississippi has earned well-deserved plaudits for its outsized literacy gains in recent years, ranking first
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Governance
Next-gen NAEP initiative aims to modernize and improve
Over the next several weeks, more than 500,000 students across the country will take an updated version of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in math and reading, but more improvements may be on the way.
