The Education Gadfly Show: The case for good schools as a state constitutional right
On this week’s podcast, Nina Rees, President and CEO of the National Alliance for Public
On this week’s podcast, Nina Rees, President and CEO of the National Alliance for Public
A legitimate grievance against Confederate monuments has degraded into something deeply troubling. Statues of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Theodore Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and the like are now getting removed, toppled, or vandalized. It’s a threat to our history based on disapproval of some actions and practices of past individuals, never mind how central—even heroic—their roles were to the history that we want our kids to learn more about. Few young Americans are learning American history as it is. We shouldn’t want them to learn even less.
Great Minds creates curricula in math, English language arts, and science for grades PK–12. I’m its founder and CEO, and when Covid-19 hit, we were ill-prepared for digital distance learning, like most everyone else.
At least we have stopped pretending that we’re making high school more modern.
On this week’s podcast, Checker Finn, Mike Petrilli, and David Griffith discuss what it takes for real change to happen in America.
America faces three urgent challenges right now: beating Covid-19, reforming law enforcement in the wake of the George Floyd's killing, and rebooting K-12 education. Each creates the opportunity for major, lasting change. Yet that won’t happen without successful models to view, sustained leadership with a modicum of centrism or bipartisanship, and—toughest of all—cultural shifts that demand and entrench those changes.
Last month, I examined nine of the top candidates for Democratic VP nominee and their views on education. The upshot was that there wasn’t much to get enthused about.
This spring’s school closures have challenged us to look at many things differently and to be open-minded, creative, and brave about moving toward necessary change. As we consider reopening schools in the fall, let’s hold on to that mindset and ask what should special education become? Does the forty-five-year-old federal law (IDEA) need a thorough redo? We believe it does.
As national unrest builds along with the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and too many others at the hands of police officers, people worldwide are responding with marches, protests, critical reflection, and grief. Right now, the Black Lives Matter movement rages on.
The start of a new school year is always filled with challenges. New teachers, new classes, and new expectations can be difficult for both teachers and students. But what if teachers and students haven’t been in school for six months or more? How can schools try and prepare to get back to a sense of normalcy after all of this?
A few years ago, a close friend and colleague made a surprising confession. Even though we worked at a charter school network devoted to civic education, she admitted to me that she’d never voted and wasn’t even registered. She felt guilty and hypocritical. How could she promote the virtue of voting to children starting in kindergarten but not vote herself?
In dozens of fields, federally-supported research and development translates into new ideas, technologies, and actions. Why not in education, particularly as the Covid-19 crisis makes it abundantly clear that our educational systems are severely lacking innovative technologies that could have improved the resiliency and flexibility of our classrooms and facilitated a nationwide shift to remote instruction?
Earlier this month, John Winters, associate professor from Iowa State University, released a study, What You Make Depends on Where You Live: College Earnings Across States and Metropolitan Areas, which examined the economic premium of earning different college credentials across all fif
Michael J. Petrilli’s recent article “Half-Time High School may be just what students need” is compelling. Yet proposals to cut school time in half in grades nine through twelve may be only half right.
Most people agree that a college education is a worthwhile investment for a young person. For example, across the U.S., bachelor’s degree holders earn on average 55 percent higher salaries than those with no education beyond high school. However, it is less well understood that there are stark geographical differences in how much return one gets on their educational investment.
When policymakers contend that their standards deserve to be replicated, especially when those policymakers lead big, highly regarded states like Florida, we at Fordham think their claims merit a closer look. So we gathered a team of expert reviewers to review the state's new standards, and published a new report based on their results. The verdict: Other states should indeed look for models to emulate, but they won’t find them in Florida.
In a few weeks, the planning underway for the start of the coming school year could take an interesting and unexpected turn.
As quickly as the NBA put its season on hold and the summer Olympics rescheduled, schools across America switched to “school from home.” It happened almost overnight. Regardless of teacher training, parent comfort, or students’ technology access—remote learning was the new reality.
All over the country, states, districts and task forces of every sort are wrestling with the question of how to safely reopen schools. This scenario planning is daunting, as schools must navigate a minefield of health, safety, legal, and instructional issues, and do so blindfolded by ever-changing and imperfect understanding of the virus itself.
The idea that all postsecondary education on average is good is misleading. The truth is, there’s significant variation in which academic degrees bring workers the most value, and why they do.
As protests against racism and police brutality erupt across the nation—during a worldwide pandemic, no less—Americans are coming to face the harsh reality that life as they previously knew it is no more. Until there’s a vaccine, the “normal” that was pre-Covid-19 can never be again, and the “normal” that was pre-George Floyd must never be again.
America’s schools could learn a lot about how to handle two hot-button issues from Joe Biden’s comments in response to George Floyd’s horrific murder: how to model and cultivate empathy for our fellow citizens, and how to teach an inclusive version of history. He carved a middle path between right and left that is anything but the mushy middle.
On May 21, driven by exquisitely progressive intentions, the regents of the University of California made the worst policy decision in the recent history of American higher education: to eliminate SAT and ACT admissions testing for in-state applicants to all nine of their undergraduate campuses, which comprise one of the country’s biggest and historically most prestigious state systems.
1. Problems with models Nobel Physicist Richard Feynman wrote about models: [Physicists have] learned to realize that whether they like a theory or they don’t like a theory is not the essential question.
The pandemic forced schools across the country to close and institute some form of remote learning, but their methods varied widely. To see just how much, analysts at the American Enterprise Institute and the Center on Reinventing Public Education have been examining how different public school districts and charter school networks have responded.
On this week’s podcast, Michael McShane, the director of national research at EdChoice, joins Mike Petrilli to discuss how Catholic
Even in the best of times, the path from high school to college is fraught. And these are not the best of times. COVID-19 disruptions have turned the light haze of college transition into a blinding fog.
The sudden shift to remote learning this spring demanded that schools innovate and adapt with incredible speed. The entire education world is trying to serve millions of suddenly home-bound students, and there’s simply no precedent for a challenge on that scale.
The shutdown of America’s high schools has deprived millions of students of rites we previously took for granted. Coursework can be transferred online to some degree, but no virtual environment can replace football games, choir concerts, musicals, and so much more that’s part of the American high school experience.
According to an opinion piece published in The Wall Street Journal, the election of Florida’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis in 2018 can be credited to African American women who voted to protect tax-credit scholarships and