Displaying 1141-1170 of 1431 results
Commentary
11.7.2019
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

Engaging families, early and often, is the best way to help students who are several grade levels behind

Vidya Sundaram, Elisabeth O’Bryon

During this past summer, Family Engagement Lab facilitated a gathering of parents to discuss parent-teacher partnerships at their elementary school. During the discussion, the group moderator pulled us aside to let us know that a parent was there because her child had been retained a grade and she did not know why.

Commentary
11.6.2019
Charter Schools, Governance

Why reformers will miss Secretary DeVos when she’s gone

Dale Chu

With less than a year to go until the 2020 presidential election, Elizabeth Warren’s ascendancy to ostensible Democratic frontrunner, and the release of her voluminously noxious education proposal, I fell into a fever dream of the same stra

Commentary
11.6.2019
Evidence-Based Learning, Teachers & School Leaders

The relationship between racial discipline and achievement gaps

Tran Le

A new study published in AERA Open investigates whether and to what extent racial discipline gaps are associated with racial achievement gaps in grades three through eight in school districts across the U.S. It also examines if these relationships persist after accounting for differences across districts.

Podcast
11.6.2019
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Standards

The Education Gadfly Show: NAEP 2019: It (was) the economy, stupid

On this week’s podcast, Marty West, a Harvard professor of education, joins Mike Petrilli and David Griffith to talk about last week’s NAEP results and their relationship to the Great Recession. On the Research Minute, Amber Northern examines how graduation requirements affect arrest rates.

Commentary
11.6.2019
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

From Play-doh to Plato: All students need to grapple with grade-level text

Harriett Janetos

My thirty-plus years in teaching have taken me on an unplanned path from Plato to Play-doh. When I taught Advanced Placement English to seniors three decades ago, I would have confidently bet against finding myself twenty-five years later teaching kindergarteners how to read.

Commentary
11.6.2019
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

Tailored paths that can combine pre-, on-, and post-grade skills are the solution for students below grade level in math

Joel Rose

Standards are written to reflect the instructional path that students should follow throughout their educational journey. In math, that includes concepts such as basic algebraic thinking in the early elementary grades, multiplying fractions in the fifth grade, working with ratios and rates in the sixth grade, and so forth. Let’s call this the “standard instructional path.”

Commentary
11.5.2019
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

Rigor or personalized learning? Just ask Dr. Seuss.

Jessica Shopoff

What’s the best way to help students who are several grade levels behind?

Commentary
11.4.2019
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

To help students who are several “grade levels” behind in reading, focus on building—and assessing—students’ knowledge

Natalie Wexler

What’s the best way to help students who are several grade levels behind? We can’t answer that question without first understanding what “grade level” means. Math and reading are quite different when it comes to assessing grade level, and I’m going to focus on reading.

Commentary
11.1.2019
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

To help students who are several grade levels behind, implement IEPs in elementary and middle school

Charles Ogundimu, Ph.D.

The obvious but fundamental question is: Why are the students several grade levels behind? Undoubtedly, the answer is complex and will include, inter alia, insufficient preparation (student and teacher), poor teaching, poverty, inadequate foundation, behavior, and other psycho-social factors.

Commentary
11.1.2019
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

On our Nation’s Report Card, strong leadership gets an “A”

Mike Magee

This week, the federal government released the results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)—known colloquially as “the Nation’s Report Card.” As always, the results are the subject of intense scrutiny, and are fodder for arguments on both sides of the political aisle and all sides of education debates.

Commentary
10.31.2019
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

2019 WONKATHON WINNER: Beyond the binary: We can foster equity in both opportunity and outcomes

Abby Javurek

Editor’s note: This was the first-place submission, out of nineteen, to Fordham’s 2019 Wonkathon, in which we asked participants to answer the question: “What’s the best way to help students who are several grade levels behind?”

Commentary
10.30.2019
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance

Classroom content: A conservative conundrum

Robert Pondiscio

The content of K–12 education is a minefield for conservatives. Over the past thirty years, education reformers who wanted parents to have choices for their children have tended to focus more on the creation of new public charter schools, or on private school scholarships, than on curriculum and classroom content.

Podcast
10.30.2019
Charter Schools, Governance, Private School Choice, Teachers & School Leaders

The Education Gadfly Show: On education, Warren’s got a pander for that

On this week’s podcast, Mike Petrilli and David Griffith talk to Checker Finn about Senator Warren’s flawed education proposal. On the Research Minute, Amber Northern examines improvements to the student teaching experience that can help candidates feel more prepared for success in the classroom.

Commentary
10.23.2019
Governance

Can that plan, Senator Warren!

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

Senator Elizabeth Warren revealed a K–12 plan on Monday that’s big, substantive—and awful. It would reverse most of the major education reforms of the past two decades, drive a stake through the heart of what’s left of bipartisan federal and state policy, and re-enshrine adult interests (especially those of the teacher unions) in place of children’s, while wasting immense sums of taxpayer dollars.

Commentary
10.23.2019
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Standards, Teachers & School Leaders

Why struggling students remain below grade level, and how to help them

Mike Goldstein

Editor’s note: This is a submission to Fordham’s 2019 Wonkathon, in which we ask participants to answer the question: “What’s the best way to help students who are several grade levels behind?” This entry does so via answers to hypothe

Commentary
10.16.2019
Evidence-Based Learning, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Don’t oversell SEL

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

Social and emotional learning could do much good if deployed in pursuit of academic learning, but it runs multiple risks of going off the rails when its boosters ignore its limitations. It’s in this context that a recent brief by the NewSchools Venture Fund lands. There’s considerable wisdom in it, but leaders and policymakers should be careful what they do with the SEL measures for which it advocates. They should not, for example, incorporate them into accountability systems. Nor should they get so preoccupied with them that they neglect English, math, science, and history, or forget how much those matter in the real world.

Commentary
10.16.2019
Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

When a school is improving, stay out of the way, warns an important new book

Robert Pondiscio

There’s a not-so-secret tension that separates frontline educators from ed reformers, policymakers, and even district office poobahs. This tension, and the cost of top-down initiatives disrupting what’s working on the ground, form the through line of Eric Kalenze’s important new book, What the Academy Taught Us.

Commentary
10.16.2019
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning

Texas’s shale boom boosted local tax bases. Here’s how it affected schools.

Amber M. Northern, Ph.D.

New and fascinating research uses a creative study design and a unique data set to address whether a thriving local economy leads to better student outcomes. Specifically, it examines how the Texas boom in shale oil and gas drilling, which brought with it large and localized effects on wages and the tax base, impacted district schools.

Commentary
10.9.2019
Evidence-Based Learning, Charter Schools, Governance

When it comes to charter schools, it’s Democrats who are in denial

David Griffith

Dozens of studies have found black and brown students in urban charter schools make substantially more academic progress than otherwise similar students in traditional public schools; literature suggests achievement in district-run schools increases in response to competition from charters; and Fordham’s new study confirms the logical implication of those two strands: an increase in the percentage of students in a community who enroll in charter schools leads to systemic gains.

Commentary
10.9.2019
Evidence-Based Learning, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

No witch left behind

Dale Chu

Pop quiz: When was the first law providing for public education in America enacted? It’s true that the Bay State passed the first universal education law in 1852, but the very first law put down its roots two centuries earlier, also in what became Massachusetts.

Event
10.9.2019
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance

A Moonshot for Kids

What would happen if we invested $1 billion or more in bold education R & D initiatives designed to generate fresh, evidence-backed solutions to some of education’s toughest challenges? On November 5, at 4:00 p.m. ET, online and in Washington, D.C., the Center for American Progress and the Thomas B. Fordham Institute held a a “Shark-Tank” style competition. Ten early-round finalists presented their “billion-dollar Moonshot ideas” to a panel of tough judges, all for a chance to win $10,000 and have their idea propelled to widespread attention and potential major investment.

Commentary
10.4.2019
Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Restorative justice gone wrong: One mother’s horror story

Julia Carlson

In 2015, I started a three-year journey to acquire my doctorate in educational leadership. On top of going back to graduate school, I was a high school principal. It was a job I loved and for which I felt tremendous passion. The high school I led was plagued by a history of low academic performance, discipline issues, attendance problems, and low morale among faculty and staff.

Commentary
10.2.2019
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

The metric that matters most: Ask kids, “Are you in?”

Robert Pondiscio

Editor’s note: At last week’s PIE Network Summit in Austin, Texas, Fordham senior fellow Robert Pondiscio was asked to participate in a panel discussion on “What is the purpose of education?” His answer to the question consisted of the following remarks.

Commentary
10.2.2019
Evidence-Based Learning, Teachers & School Leaders

Closing the teacher quality gap

Pedro Enamorado

It’s long been surmised that the socioeconomic achievement gap is caused by—or at least, in part, persists because of—a teacher quality gap. Low-performing, high-poverty schools have significant issues that lead many educators to leave, whether to a different, less challenging position, or out of the profession entirely, contributing to measurable differences in teacher quality.

Commentary
9.25.2019
Accountability & Testing, ESSA, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

A new era of accountability in education has barely just begun

Michael J. Petrilli

Most states have spent the past decade overhauling their standards, tests, and accountability systems, and finally committing real resources to capacity-building, especially in the form of curriculum implementation. These pieces have only begun to come together in the last year or two, culminating with the release of school ratings as required by ESSA. What’s needed isn’t to spin the wheel of education policy once again, but to show some patience and commitment—and finish what we started.

Commentary
9.25.2019
Charter Schools, Governance

Charter schools point to new ways of racially integrating public schools

Bruno V. Manno

The racial integration or segregation of K–12 schools is again a debate topic in education circles. Today’s controversy has a new twist: casting charter schools as the main antagonist to integration, claiming they resegregate public schools.