Education Gadfly Show #819: The pod on (pandemic) pods
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Ashley Jochim, a principal at the Center on Reinventing Public Education, joins Mike
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Ashley Jochim, a principal at the Center on Reinventing Public Education, joins Mike
Just over thirty years ago, the first public charter school law was passed in Minnesota. One year later, City Academy Charter School opened its doors in St. Paul. The charter sector now boasts more than 7,700 schools serving over 3.4 million students nationwide.
The money is pouring in, but so are the education challenges. The Covid-19 pandemic has dramatically affected student achievement, particularly for poorer students and students of color.
The nationwide surge in violent crime, which preceded the pandemic but accelerated in 2020, has prompted a range of policy responses, from expanding
The Thomas B. Fordham Institute is pleased to announce the launch of the National Working Group on Advanced Education. The Working Group’s mission is to promote research, policies, and practices that will develop the full capacities of students with high academic potential, especially Black and Hispanic students and those coming from economically disadvantaged backgrounds.
Editor’s note: This was first published by the American Enterprise Institute.
With Democrats facing trouble in the midterm elections, the Biden administration has inexplicably decided to try to stave off disaster by doubling down on the teachers unions’ hoary anti-reform agenda. One example is its not-so-sneak attack on charter schools in the form of execrable regulations that could bring charter growth to a standstill. But it’s not the only one.
Last week, Chester Finn used a recent vote of Denver’s anti-reform school board to make three points: first, that the “portfolio” reform there—based on school autonomy, family choice, and chartering out schools where kids aren’t learning—is finished; second, that Denver’s reversal predicts doom elsewhere for complex reform initiatives meant to transform the ways whole public systems operate; an
The influence of out-of-school activities such as sports and clubs on school outcomes has been an enduring
Earlier this year, I took to the pages of Education Next to make the case for NAEP to test starting in kindergarten, stating that, “The rationale for testing academic skills in the early elementary grades is powerful.” Therefore, “Starting NAEP in 4th grade is much too late.” I was wrong, and I’m sorry. Kindergarten is much too late. We must begin a program of NAEP testing for newborns.
What makes an effective English language arts curriculum? Is it the books and other readings that it includes? The skills that it imparts to students? Something else?
A new edited volume, “Follow the Science to School,” aims to identify what science tells us about evidence-based practices in elementary schools, and describes what they look like in the real world of classrooms. Following the science into its application in this way—and sharing how it works on the ground—enables us to suggest workable answers to key questions rather than challenging every teacher, school, or district, to figure out those answers on their own.
Not all college majors are created alike, but it turns out that employers want their new hires to exhibit many of same skills regardless of what they major in. A recent study examines online job ads as a proxy for what employers view as the skills inherent in various college majors.
The typical timeline for college-bound high school seniors is to start a few months after graduation—the first available opportunity. But is that unbroken path into college the right move for everyone? New research suggests that academic breaks after high school have both short- and long-term impacts on postsecondary enrollment and labor market outcomes.
Follow the Science to School: Evidence-based Practices for Elementary Education is published by John Catt Educational Press and is available for purchase from the John Catt Bookshop and Amazon.
Inflation is up, and no, I’m not talking about gas prices. I’m talking about some troubling trends observed among the 2019 graduating class of high school students in the recently released 2019 NAEP High School Transcript Study.
High school-age Americans struggling mightily with academics aren’t well served by our current approach to secondary education. But there may be a better model that would give them a more worthwhile experience and lead to better long-term outcomes: Let them take jobs while still in high school—during the school day, during both their junior and senior years, full pay included, no strings attached.
Editor's note: This post was originally published on tomloveless.com.
In cities across the country, selective high schools are facing increasing pressure to change their admissions policies to make their incoming student populations more socioeconomically and racially diverse. Closing these gaps is a laudable and important goal. But the most common strategies for accomplishing it are racially discriminatory, misguided, and ineffective.
A couple of weeks ago, I shared some ideas about how schools and districts can move away from the well-intentioned but deeply flawed “college for all” mindset that has permeated the education reform world and has, in turn, harmed many of the disadvantaged students whom the approach is m
It’s rare that a piece of social science makes you question the nature of your reality, but such was my reaction to the latest, much-discussed update on the performance of Tennessee’s pre-k program—or more specifically, on the fate of the 2,990 children from low-income families who applied to oversubscribed pre-K program sites across
In a laudable quest to boost the number of adults with postsecondary credentials, a number of states—including Ohio—are focusing time and treasure on former students who have earned some college credits but
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast (listen on
In the past decade, the role of the teacher in schools has slowly shifted from pedagogue to therapist.
The media have been full of
Efforts to match Black and Hispanic students with teachers of their same race or ethnicity have shown positive outcomes
Is college worth it? How we answer that question depends on how we measure the impact of attending college. Ranking 4,500 Colleges by ROI (2022), a new project from the Center for Education and the Workforce at Georgetown University, provides us with a novel tool of measurement: return on investment, or ROI.
As Michael Petrilli wrote in these pages a few weeks ago, the education reform movement has come to the realization that its belief in “college for all,” while well-intended, was misguided.
In 2017, a team of researchers from Finland and Michigan State University who were eager to improve science instruction for secondary students launched a field trial for Crafting Engaging Science Environments (CESE), a project-based curriculum they created and aligned with the Next Gener
The Covid slide has both expanded the need for students to take remedial classes and produced greater familiarity with remote learning. As a result, online credit recovery options have become more necessary and readily accessible at the same time.