Podcast
Accountability & Testing, Facilities, Governance
The Education Gadfly Show: Research Deep Dive: The impact of school closures
Commentary
Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
Reimagining school
The COVID-19 pandemic is first and foremost a healthcare crisis. But it also causes an identity crisis for schools. The next year and a half will require our education system to constantly reinvent itself in response to rapidly changing needs, and school system leaders will need grace, high expectations, and new mental models for what school can become to best serve students and families.
Commentary
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
A revolution in education, born of necessity
Given his track record of studying and analyzing the real world of classroom-based instruction, Doug Lemov may not be the person you’d expect to be paving the way forward on online learning. But if you view Lemov’s work through the lens of the entrepreneurial, “find a way” spirit that sparked the modern education reform movement, it makes a little more sense.
Commentary
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance
Students with disabilities: The whipping boy of coronavirus closures
The debate on how schools will provide special education in the near term has generated its fair share of extreme arguments.
Commentary
Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
How to make more autonomous schools effective
The education reform world is beset by many constant refrains. “Give schools more money,” for example, “recruit more highly-trained teachers,” or “schools need more autonomy.” But what do these things actually mean when put into practice? If reform is as easy as that, then why hasn’t someone done it already?
Podcast
Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
The Education Gadfly Show: How school districts are dealing with COVID-19
On this week’s podcast, Robin Lake, director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE), joins Mike Petrilli and David Griffi
Podcast
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance
The Education Gadfly Show: COVID-19 concerns: Special education and accountability
On this week’s podcast, Mike Petrilli and Checker Finn discuss Betsy DeVos’s quick and laudable U-turn on distance learning and
Commentary
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
With the coronavirus bearing down on schools, educational content providers have a chance to shine
If there were any doubt that the coronavirus pandemic would be disruptive to schools and families, the last few days have put that to rest.
Commentary
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
America’s schools and the formation of human beings
In addition to Bill Damon’s profound essay on “purpose,” Mike’s and my new book, How to Educate an American: The Conservative Vision for Tomorrow’s Schools
Commentary
Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
Social justice and K–12 education reform
Two views of social justice underly many debates in K–12 reform, and the differences between them lead to tensions and conflicts in discussions about policy and practice. One is invoked by progressives and geared toward activism and uniformity. The other is invoked by conservatives and—while also encouraging activism—is different in what it aims to accomplish.
Commentary
Governance
When more students are mentored by organizations in their communities, what happens?
Mentoring programs connect young people with caring adults who can offer support, guidance, and even tutoring. Research indicates that such programs can be valuable for students, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Commentary
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
Who am I to judge? The case for classical liberal education
The New York Times is no stranger to initiating debates over curricular content, as the release of the “1619 Project” by the New York Times Magazine last year demonstrates.
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Private School Choice, Standards, Teachers & School Leaders
Back to basics for conservative education reform
This major essay comprises one of the concluding chapters of our new book, "How to Educate an American: The Conservative Vision for Tomorrow's Schools." Levin brilliantly—and soberingly—explains what conservatives have forfeited in the quest for bipartisan education reform. He contends that future efforts by conservatives to revitalize American education must emphasize “the formation of students as human beings and citizens,” including “habituation in virtue, inculcation in tradition, [and] veneration of the high and noble.”
Commentary
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
Saving the science of reading from becoming the next edu-fad
“When the Gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers.” —Oscar Wilde
Commentary
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
Five lessons for early literacy efforts from other reform successes and failures
Everywhere you look, the science of reading is the toast of the town.
Commentary
Governance
Conservatives: It’s time to re-engage on education
Bipartisanship is in tatters, and that’s a big problem for education. Yet it’s also an opportunity for conservatives to recognize that the gains made with bipartisanship’s help meant suppressing some important differences and neglecting some vital elements of schooling. It’s time to lean into those differences, understand what’s been neglected or distorted, address some troubling voids, and see if we can renegotiate terms.
Commentary
Governance
Reforming education the American Way: State by state, community by community
Editor’s note: What follows is a reprinting of the preface to an important new book, How to Educate an American: The Conservative Vision for Tomorrow’s Schools, edited by Fordham’s Michael J. Petrilli and Chester E.
Event
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Advanced Education, Teachers & School Leaders
WEBINAR: How to Educate an American—A conversation with Michael J. Petrilli and Chester E. Finn Jr.
America’s schools have ceded significant ground to trendy nostrums and policy cure-alls that do little to adequately teach young people the skills and knowledge required to realize their full potential and emerge from school as fully-functioning citizens. The latest round of dire NAEP civics and U.S. history scores underscore our continuing failure on the citizenship front.
Book
Governance
How to Educate an American: The Conservative Vision for Tomorrow's Schools
Featuring essays by twenty leading conservative thinkers, and anchored in tradition yet looking towards tomorrow, this book should be read by anyone concerned with teaching future generations to preserve the country’s heritage, embody its universal ethic, and pursue its founding ideals.
Commentary
Governance
Five reasons Congress should not block-grant the federal Charter Schools Program
As a center-right think tank, we whole-heartedly support turning prescriptive federal programs into block grants. Among other things, they reduce bureaucratic inefficiency and trust states to decide what’s best for their unique circumstances. But there are exceptions to our adoration, and one of them is the Trump Administration’s proposal to include the federal Charter Schools Program in a new mega-block-grant.
Commentary
Governance
The elite eight: The remaining Democratic presidential candidates and their views on education reform
With Iowa and New Hampshire in the rearview mirror, the original field of nearly thirty Democratic presidential candidates has now been winnowed down to eight. Six of them will face off on the debate stage this evening in Las Vegas.
Commentary
Charter Schools, Governance
Has Trump turned against charter schools?
The Trump administration’s proposed budget takes the Education Department’s $440 million program of financial assistance for charters and melds it with twenty-eight other programs into a big new K–12 block grant. Although there’s scant political likelihood that Congress will adopt the plan, the proposal itself will be interpreted and welcomed by charter foes as a sign that even Trump and his allies and supporters have lost their enthusiasm for these independent public schools of choice.
Commentary
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
Training teachers to fail
There’s been a lot of talk recently about the reading crisis in U.S. schools.
Commentary
Governance, Personalized Learning, Teachers & School Leaders
The harm of special education enrollment caps
A couple years ago, a high-profile dispute played out between the Texas Education Agency (TEA) and the federal Department of Education, with a January 2019 New York Times headline pronouncing,
Commentary
Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
Beware the Democrats’ new teachers-union-loyalty test
In The Gulag Archipelago, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn writes of a rally held for communist leader Josef Stalin. At the event’s end, a tribute to Stalin was called for. As Solzhenitsyn writes, “Of course, everyone stood up (just as everyone had leaped to his feet during the conference at every mention of his name)....
Commentary
Governance
Lamar Alexander’s education legacy
No sooner had Senator Lamar Alexander released his statement last Thursday on the impeachment witness vote than the handwringing began.
Commentary
Charter Schools, Private School Choice
The Florida LGBTQ controversy: A gut-check moment for school choice
Florida’s Tax Credit Scholarship program has provided more than 780,000 scholarships since its inception in 2001.
Commentary
Private School Choice
We need schools that form the backbone of communities, and Catholic schools have been doing that for generations
Last week, the Supreme Court heard arguments in Espinoza v.
Commentary
Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
Hiding in plain sight: Advancing SEL by tackling today’s urgent problems
Partisans of social-emotional learning are wont to make their case in utopian terms: Create better learning environments and good things will happen to kids, to academic achievement, to the society in which we live, etc. From the home page of the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL):
Commentary
Governance, Private School Choice
Espinoza and the myth of values-neutral schooling
The education world was slow on the uptake, but oral argument this week in the case of Espinoza v.
