Content Listing

Displaying 1-30 of 811 results

Commentary

4.3.2025

Evidence-Based Learning, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

The best colleges for political diversity

Michael J. Petrilli

It is decision time for the high school class of 2025, with commitments due to colleges by May 1. Among the many factors that students might consider when deciding whether a college is the right fit for them is the political climate on campus. Simply put, are both liberals and conservatives relatively well represented in the student body?

Commentary

4.3.2025

Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

12 guiding principles for the future of American education

Chad Aldeman

It’s a bleak time in education policy.

Commentary

3.27.2025

Evidence-Based Learning, School Finance, Governance, Private School Choice

Do education savings accounts increase the cost of private school tuition?

Amber M. Northern, Ph.D.

Education savings accounts (ESAs) are taxpayer-funded spending accounts with differing eligibility requirements and usage guidelines depending on the state. Between the 2021–22 and 2022–23 school years, participation in them nearly tripled nationally, rising to roughly 489,000 total students.

Commentary

3.12.2025

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

Barriers to teaching and assessing “soft skills”

Heena Kuwayama

Academic skills alone are not enough for students to find success later in life, whether in their career specifically or in their broader participation in s

Commentary

3.6.2025

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

Three good reasons teachers shouldn’t D.I.Y. their lessons (and shouldn’t be asked to)

Robert Pondiscio

Oregon professor Siegfried Engelmann wasn’t your typical education guru. He didn’t peddle feel-good platitudes or promote classroom fads—he treated teaching like a hard science, and he built Direct Instruction (DI) to prove it.

Commentary

3.6.2025

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

Defunding the teacher trainers

Frederick M. Hess

Earlier this month, the U.S.

Commentary

3.6.2025

Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction

Did the most well-known and influential study in K–12 education get it wrong?

Amber M. Northern, Ph.D.

Project STAR (Student/Teacher Achievement Ratio) is a widely-known experiment comparing class-size reduction and student achievement outcomes, conducted in the 1980s in Tennessee.

Commentary

3.6.2025

Evidence-Based Learning, Facilities

How school HVAC systems affect learning

Ali Schalop

When we talk about achievement and discipline gaps in education, we customarily focus on teaching quality, school funding, and student behavior. But what if some of these disparities have less to do with what teachers or students are doing and more to do with something as basic as air conditioning?

Students raising their hands in a school classroom

Commentary

2.27.2025

Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction

There is proof that knowledge works. And it’s overwhelming.

Robert Pondiscio

Jill Barshay of The Hechinger Report, one of the better education journalists working today, recently raised concerns about the empirical support for knowledge-rich curricula in improving reading comprehension. But the issue is not a lack of compelling evidence—there is prodigious evidence—but rather the difficulty of isolating long-term curricular effects in research.

Commentary

2.27.2025

Evidence-Based Learning, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Open enrollment deserves bipartisan support

Jude Schwalbach

In recent years, school choice has made impressive strides. Eleven states have codified universal or near-universal private school choice programs.

Commentary

2.27.2025

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

Hard lessons from the NAEP results

Tim Daly

Scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) were released on January 29. How were they?

Commentary

2.27.2025

Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction

Examining a new method of estimating homeschool participation

Jeff Murray

A valuable recent edition of the Journal of School Choice focused entirely on research around homeschooling, aiming to add useful data and rigorous analysis to this little-studied education sector.

Commentary

2.13.2025

Evidence-Based Learning, Charter Schools, Teachers & School Leaders

3 ways charter schools can help fix U.S. learning loss

Karega Rausch

Editor’s note: This was first published by The 74.

Commentary

2.13.2025

Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Advanced Education, Teachers & School Leaders

The impact of advanced education on underprivileged boys

Adam Tyner, Ph.D.

The gender gap in education is less talked about than many other achievement gaps, but it persists.

Commentary

2.13.2025

Evidence-Based Learning, School Finance, Teachers & School Leaders

Can a bonus payment help fill special education teacher positions? Evidence from Hawaii.

Jeff Murray

While some aspects of the putative

Commentary

2.11.2025

Evidence-Based Learning, Governance

Easy, DOGE. IES matters.

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

If DOGE actually sought the “government efficiency” in its name, it could help modernize the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences. But slashing and burning, as happened the other day, won’t improve matters. It’s just going to weaken the foremost truth squad in American education, the chief sponsor and funder of rigorous analysis, reliable data, and clear-eyed evaluations in a realm that needs more of those things, not less.

Commentary

1.30.2025

Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Governance

NAEP’s dead birds

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

The data are out, and as everybody now knows—and as Mike Petrilli foresaw—they’re pretty grim. Here’s the short version, straight from the National Center for Education Statistics:

Commentary

1.30.2025

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

Outcomes of a virtual literacy tutoring intervention in Massachusetts

Jeff Murray

Ignite Reading is one of many tutoring interventions unleashed upon America’s schools to try to mitigate learning loss experienced by students in the wake of pandemic-era school closures.

Commentary

1.30.2025

Evidence-Based Learning, School Finance, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Can setting a teacher salary floor improve student performance across a state?

Heena Kuwayama

Despite working longer hours and experiencing higher levels of stress

Developing Curriculum for Deep Thinking: The Knowledge Revival

Commentary

1.23.2025

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

The knowledge revival

Robert Pondiscio

Editor’s note: This piece was also published on the author’s new Substack, The Next 30 Years.

Commentary

1.23.2025

Evidence-Based Learning, Charter Schools, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Four principles to re-energize the charter school movement

Derrell Bradford

When I graduated from high school, the first charter schools in America were just opening their doors. But I have advocated for, worked with, and supported their right to serve families for more than twenty years now.

Commentary

1.23.2025

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

Is the new way to remediate community college students working?

Amber M. Northern, Ph.D.

Remedial courses can soak up time and money (with often poor results), but federal

Commentary

1.16.2025

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

Get ready for more bad news from NAEP 2024

Michael J. Petrilli

The forthcoming results from the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress—due out on January 29—are likely to be bad, bad, bad. The term we may hear a lot is that “the bottom is falling out,” if the scores for low-performing students in particular continue to plummet.

Commentary

1.9.2025

Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance

Third grade is too late to assess student literacy

Chad Aldeman

I’m going to give you a reading test. Ready? Say these words out loud: Chip Hill Jars Bep Fod Glork

Commentary

1.9.2025

Evidence-Based Learning, Governance

A system designed to preserve the status quo: New York City Public Schools’ kindergarten choice program

Amber M. Northern, Ph.D.

Allowing families to express their preferences for various schools—whether inside or beyond their geographically-zoned building or district—sounds good in theory. Indeed, we’ve been hearing for decades that a zip code should never determine the quality of a child’s education.

Commentary

1.9.2025

Evidence-Based Learning, Governance

Who and what you know: The impact of middle school diversity on New York’s high school choice program

Elainah Elkins

De facto segregation persists in schools across the United State

Commentary

12.19.2024

Facilities, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Don’t want to close underenrolled schools? Here’s how to make the math work.

Marguerite Roza

As enrollments drop, city after city is facing pressure to close half-empty schools. Fewer kids means fewer dollars. Consolidating two schools saves money because it means paying for one less principal, librarian, nurse, PE teacher, counselor, reading coach, clerk, custodian… you get the idea.

Commentary

12.19.2024

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

The state of global education in a post-pandemic world

Nuno Crato, Harry Anthony Patrinos

The recently released results from Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 2023 highlight a concerning decline in U.S. students’ performance in science and mathematics, with the country falling further behind peer countries. But it isn’t just America.

Commentary

12.19.2024

Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Governance

New international data on the persistent link between Covid school closures and learning loss

Jeff Murray

Emergency school closures aimed at minimizing the impact of the coronavirus pandemic disrupted the education trajectory of over one billion children worldwide starting in March 2020. However, the length and manner of closures varied greatly from country to country and education system to education system.

Commentary

12.13.2024

Evidence-Based Learning, Governance

Why education R & D should be on Trump’s agenda

Sara Schapiro

As President-elect Trump and his team prepare for the first 100 days of office, they are setting their policy agenda and striving to make good on their campaign promises. In education, that will include decreasing the federal role (if not eliminating the U.S.