Supporting low birth weight babies helps long after infancy
A recent working paper from NBER takes the notion of “early intervention” f
A recent working paper from NBER takes the notion of “early intervention” f
With more than half of states closing their schools due to the coronavirus pandemic, hundreds of thousands of parents, grandparents, and other caregivers have become de facto “home schoolers” practically overnight. Students in this situation will likely be spending a fair amount of time on screens—as a lifeline, respite, or both. We have compiled some excellent suggestions—updated several times since initial publication—for making at least some of that time educational.
On this week’s podcast, Mike Petrilli, Checker Finn, and David Griffith discuss Mike and Checker’s new edited volume, How to Educate an American: The Conservative Vision for Tomorrow’s Schools. On the Research Minute, Amber Northern examines whether the nationwide rise in high school graduation rates is real, and whether high-stakes school accountability played a role.
This major essay comprises one of the concluding chapters of our new book, "How to Educate an American: The Conservative Vision for Tomorrow's Schools." Levin brilliantly—and soberingly—explains what conservatives have forfeited in the quest for bipartisan education reform. He contends that future efforts by conservatives to revitalize American education must emphasize “the formation of students as human beings and citizens,” including “habituation in virtue, inculcation in tradition, [and] veneration of the high and noble.”
Kids hear all the time that working hard and earning A’s and B’s in school will open opportunities for them later in life. Families rely on those grades to tell them whether their kids are getting what they need out of school to become happy, successful adults.
A couple years ago, a high-profile dispute played out between the Texas Education Agency (TEA) and the federal Department of Education, with a January 2019 New York Times headline pronouncing,
This report presents key findings from Learning in the Fast Lane: The Past, Present, and Future of Advanced Placement, by Chester E. Finn, Jr. and Andrew E. Scanlan, and published by Princeton University Press in 2019.
Fordham’s newest report, "Great Expectations," delves into high school grading practices and the impact they have on student outcomes. Turns out that higher standards benefit students of all types and in all kinds of schools. Whether black, Hispanic, white, male, or female, students learn more when taught by teachers with higher expectations. Unfortunately, American schools are gradually making it harder, not easier, for teachers to keep standards high.
One indicator of teachers’ expectations is their approach to grading—specifically, whether they subject students to more or less rigorous grading practices. Unfortunately, “grade inflation” is pervasive in U.S. high schools, as evidenced by rising GPAs even as SAT scores and other measures of academic performance have held stable or fallen. The result is that a “good” grade is no longer a clear marker of knowledge and skills. This report examines to what extent teachers’ grading standards affect student success.
Although most states are only about a year and a half into implementation of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), we’re seeing an uptick in conversations about what the next generation of school assessment and accountability systems should look like. Those discussions should begin with what we’ve learned since the passage of ESSA in 2015.
Considerable research suggests that “math skills better predict [individuals’] future earnings and other economic outcomes than other skills learned in high school,” report Eric A. Hanushek, Paul E. Peterson, and Ludger Woessmann.
Amid all of the hullabaloo over teacher evaluations, fewer states are now using test scores to assess the quality of their teacher workforce.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 marked a massive federal investment in our schools, with more than $100 billion to shore up school systems in the face of the Great Recession. Along with that largesse came two grant programs meant to encourage reform with all of those resources: Race to the Top and School Improvement Grants (SIGs).
A few years ago, as I was wrapping up grad school (where my dissertation was about migrant workers in China, of all things), I came across a bunch of fascinating podcast episodes about education policy and school reform.
We are endlessly tempted—and strongly encouraged by OECD’s Andreas Schleicher—to infer policy guidance from PISA results. If a country’s score goes up, maybe other countries should emulate its education practices and priorities, as they surely must be what’s causing the improvement.
The 2018 PISA results are out. Generally, countries scored within an expected range given their past records. Except one. The scores are astonishing for B-S-J-Z, an acronym for the four Chinese provinces that participated: Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang.
Several candidates in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary have criticized the inequities created by school funding formula
The latest PISA results largely mirror the findings from NAEP: America’s scores are mostly flat, with some widening of gaps between our high and low performers in reading and math because the higher achieving students are making progress while their less accomplished peers aren’t. America’s standing also improved because some of the highest-achieving countries lost ground. Here are five big takeaways.
In the latest episode of what promises to be a protracted saga in the Lone Star State, the Houston Federation of Teachers (HFT) recently filed a federal lawsuit to halt the state’s takeover of the Houston school district, one of the largest in the country.
Author’s Update, August 5, 2022: Analysis of NAEP demographic data shows that retaining students was in fact not a major contributor to Mississippi’s improved fourth grade NAEP results in the last few years—at least not the way this article suggested.
On this week’s podcast, Kristina Zeiser, senior researcher at American Institutes for Research, joins Mike Petrilli and David Griffith to talk a
When the New York City Council moved the other day to require every one of the city’s thirty-two community school districts to develop a school desegregation plan, it was yet one more example of municipal social engineering that prizes diversity over quality and mandatory over voluntary. If families with means don’t like their new school assignments, they’ll simply exit to charters, private schools or the suburbs, meaning that the city’s social engineers will mainly work their will on those with the least.
There’s been a lot of talk about racial equity in Montgomery County as of late.
“It’s like some bullsh-t way to get kids to pass.” That’s the cynical description of high school “credit recovery” programs an eleventh grader gave to the New York Post last year. But cynicism appears to be in order.
A new study by CALDER investigates how career and technical education (CTE) course-taking affects college enrollment, employment, and continuation into specific vocational or academic programs in college.
Last month, the Mississippi State Board of Education began a public comment period on a new proposal to eliminate the state requirement that students pass a U.S.
When I read the article in The 74 by the Colorado Education Initiative’s Rebecca Holmes introducing a one-day conference that would bring together educators, families, and students to discuss what school quality is and
What can be done to rescue failing schools?
Stereotype threat is when people inadvertently conform to negative stereotypes about a group they are in, for example their race or gender. A recent meta-analysis on the effects of stereotype threat has important implications for equity in the education system, the validity of standardized tests, and for teacher preparation.
The bad news from the latest Nation’s Report Card has us analysts wearing out our thesauruses. The good news is that a handful of states managed to make gains or stand pat on the assessment as their peers went backwards. Most noteworthy are D.C. and Mississippi, the only two locales where low achievers made gains. But several other states deserve credit for maintaining their scores in the face of adversity.