Governor Glenn Youngkin is under fire again from Virginia’s education establishment, this time because a new school accountability system his administration is promoting refuses to put lipstick on a pig.
Editor’s note: This was first published by The 74.
This summer, the Washington Post’s (fantastic) “Department of Data” columnist, Andrew Van Dam, ran a fun feature about “America’s best decade,” according to public opinion.
Despite an unprecedented infusion of resources, the latest data show that American students are struggling to recover
Education loomed small at both political conventions this summer—a shame considering what dire condition it’s in.
In 2003, as part of a broader education reform package, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts began requiring high school students to pass Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) exams in math, English language arts, and science in order to earn a diploma.
Fordham’s new study by Paul L. Morgan and Eric Hengyu Hu, "Explaining Achievement Gaps: The Role of Socioeconomic Factors," raises as many questions as it answers. Among them: How can we explain the different patterns for the Black-White achievement gap for reading, on the one hand, and math and science, on the other? Why does SES explain so much more of the Hispanic-White gap than the Black-White gap? And what’s the role of family structure in explaining the Black-White and Hispanic-White gaps?
A recent CALDER study by Darrin DeChane, Takkako Nomi, and Michael Podgursky utilizes test data from Missouri’s state assessment, known as MAP, to assess how well these test scores predict
A recent article in the Boston Globe dug into a controversy that is dogging Massachusetts’s highly-regarded system of regional career and technical education (CTE) high schools.
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Fordham’s Checker Finn joins Mike and David to discuss the changes in how the College
By now, we’re well familiar with critiques of standardized testing opponents: tests rob schools of critical instructional time, encourage teaching to the test, place undue pressure on students and educators to perform, are educationally irrelevant, only provide a snapshot of student achievement at a specific moment in time, and are largely driven by family income levels, parents’ education, and
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Vlad Kogan, a professor at Ohio State University, joins Mike and David to discuss what ro
For several years now, critics have been blaring klaxons about the questionable quality and increasing
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Dale Chu, a senior visiting fellow at the Fordham Institute, joins M
In a word, yes! It’s never enough, and there’s no resting on laurels, but we have solid evidence over thirty years in America and beyond that students learn more when they—and their schools—are held to account for what and how well they’re learning.
The Advanced Placement program is undergoing a radical transformation. Over the last three years, the College Board has “recalibrated” nine of its most popular AP Exams so that approximately 500,000 more AP Exams will earn a 3+ score this year than they would have without recalibration.
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Kristen Huff, the vice president of assessment and research at Curric
Watching the debate last night, all I could think about was my time spent on the playground with my toddler. Her wobbly legs ever close to tumbling down the ladder and causing me constant low-grade anxiety. I felt the same watching Biden fumble through answers, stare into space, and exhibit all the hallmarks of an aging man in cognitive decline.
For thirty years, most education reformers have hung their hats on test-based accountability. Let's kick the tail of traditional public schools on standardized tests, as the thinking goes, and much else will take care of itself.
In April, Tim Daly penned an incisive three-part series on the trials and tribulations of teacher evaluation reforms.
“Math and reading scores for 13-year-olds have hit their lowest scores in decades.” When the recent NAEP long-term trend results for 13-year-olds were published, the
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Dr.
Tim Daly, a friend with whom I usually and enthusiastically agree, recently published a three-part series autopsying the teacher-evaluation reforms of the 2010’s.
In an effort to avoid prescriptive top-down mandates, the school accountability provisions in the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) allow states flexibility in determining what measures they’ll use to assess school quality, how much “weight” they carry, and over what time periods they’re calculated.
The issue of bad teachers is the proverbial Gordian Knot, and pulling on a single thread won’t untie it. If we want to get serious about ridding our schools of bad teachers, we must attack many difficult issues all at once—including low teacher pay, collective bargaining agreements, pension systems, and teacher evaluations. Alternatively, we might just focus on weeding out ineffective rookies.
Editor’s note: This is the third and final part in a series on teacher evaluation reform.
Editor’s note: This is the second part in a series on teacher evaluation reform. Part one recalled how teacher evaluation became a thing.
To gauge the magnitude of global learning loss during the pandemic, a team at the World Bank examined data from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) from 2018–2022, which tests fifteen-year-olds in math, reading, and science.
The Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) are arguably the most important international tests in education. Both have been administered for decades in dozens of countries. Each new set of student outcomes is tracked, analyzed, and endlessly written about.
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Rick Hess, the director of education policy studies at the America
