Commentary
Evidence-Based Learning, Governance
Beyond free tuition: How college promise scholarships are perceived by awardees
Dozens of states and cities provide “college promise” programs.
Commentary
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Private School Choice, Teachers & School Leaders
The swirling private-school universe
The universe of private elementary-secondary schooling in America today is diverse and confusing, with innumerable twists and turns in efforts to use public funds to help families access schools that suit them—including private schools of all colors and stripes. But the virtue of these institutions is that they’re different, which also means very different from each other. Which complicates the quest to deploy public dollars to assist families to choose them.
Commentary
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
Does keeping students with the same teacher for multiple years boost outcomes?
The relationship between teacher and student has profound effects on learning. A new study explores whether schools can strengthen this relationship over time by keeping students with teachers for more than one year.
Commentary
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Advanced Education, Teachers & School Leaders
Hope and progress for gifted education
This is the first edition of “Advance,” a new Fordham Institute newsletter that will monitor the progress of gifted education. Here, Wright recounts recent developments that reinforce two truths: Gifted education is a clear and substantial good, and it can be much better.
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
Building better evidence on pre-K by strengthening assessments of children’s skills
Research has found that high-quality pre-K programs can have positive impacts on children’s learning and development, improving outcomes like literacy and math skills in the short-term and even increasing
Commentary
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
Exit interview: Carey Wright, Mississippi’s State Superintendent of Education
One of the most unlikely education stories of the last decade has been the rise of Mississippi as a star of NAEP and a science of reading proof point. When looking for models to follow, researchers and policy wonks usually point to places like Shanghai and Finland, even Massachusetts. But Mississippi? Who saw that coming?
Commentary
School Finance, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
ESSER is fueling one-size-fits-all strategies. Let’s use data to deliver more targeted efforts.
States and districts face no shortage of seemingly overwhelming problems, especially the devastating learning loss among vulnerable students from extended pandemic school closures. But leaders do have money: States and districts got $123 billion in federal emergency (ARP ESSER) relief.
Commentary
Evidence-Based Learning, Governance
Baked in: School quality and home values
If you want to know which schools are good, ask a realtor—so goes the conventional wisdom—and families often do so.
Commentary
Evidence-Based Learning, Governance
Complicating factors: Evaluating a federal program to increase access to dual enrollment
In 2016, the U.S. Department of Education launched an offshoot of the Pell Grant program intended to assist low-income high schoolers in accessing college credit through dual enrollment.
Commentary
Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
Public education’s compensation problem
Great education requires great teachers, but the existing system makes it too difficult to retain the best and replace the worst. Fixing this requires, among other things, more generous pay. Instead we face the profession’s persistent, declining productivity.
Commentary
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
The state of high-quality instructional materials
We know that most American students are suffering from unprecedented learning loss.
Commentary
Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
The mass exodus of teachers isn’t what you think it is. It’s far worse.
Districts across the land are witnessing a mass exit of teachers from classrooms, the likes of which has never been seen. It’s going to get worse, says Adams. And it isn’t about low salaries, paltry pensions, or lack of financial support. Teachers are leaving in droves because so many of our children are utterly broken, student behavior is abhorrent, and accountability is out of vogue in our schools.
Commentary
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
A “no zeroes” grading policy is the worst of all worlds
More and more schools across the U.S. have adopted a new grading fad: Teachers cannot assign a grade lower than 50 percent. If a student doesn’t turn in an assignment? 50 percent. Do they miss every problem on a vocabulary quiz? 50 percent.
Commentary
Evidence-Based Learning, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
Bus commutes and their academic impacts in New York City
Providing transportation for students to and from school is a basic requirement of most public school districts in America. During the 2018–19 school year, nearly 60 percent of all K–12 students nationwide, public and private, were transported by those ubiquitous yellow buses.
Commentary
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
Here’s why all students need agency rather than equity
As a charter school leader in the South Bronx for the past decade, Rowe has seen what happens when resources are forcibly removed from the “privileged” and given to the “unprivileged” in the pursuit of “equity” over “equality”—with little regard for students’ uniqueness, humanity, or agency. Better is to teach disadvantaged children to defy, rather than confirm, diminished expectations.
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
The coming “second wave” of learning loss in 2023 and 2024
Covid “learning loss” has two causes: the loss of in-person instruction in the spring of 2020 and the reliance on remote learning thereafter (which Tom Kane and colleagues quantify in an article in The Atlantic
Commentary
Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
How to respond sensibly to the Uvalde shooting
Awful tragedies like the shooting in Uvalde notwithstanding, firearms will remain ubiquitous. The question is whether policymakers can bring measured thinking and nuance to bear in solving the thorny problem of gun violence in schools. This is particularly challenging in a media climate that hypes and distorts the prevalence of what happened in last week, even as schools continue to deal with the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic.
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Advanced Education, Teachers & School Leaders
How to narrow the excellence gap in early elementary school
In recent weeks, I’ve dug into the “excellence gap“—the sharp divides along lines of race
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
Natalie Wexler goes astray on the NAEP reading test
Natalie Wexler has done much (along with the likes of Jeanne Chall, Don Hirsch, Dan Willingham, Kate Walsh, and Robert Pondiscio) to establish the fact that there’s science behind the act of reading and the related proposition that real reading (not just “decoding”) is no isolated skill but, rather, a complicated process of making sense of what one reads on the page in the context of what one a
Commentary
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
The core conflict of interest in public education
In my work on the teaching staff of a master’s level class in public policy, I am regularly dismayed by how often our students propose only governmental solutions to public problems.
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Advanced Education, Teachers & School Leaders
The excellence gap opens early
Last week, I provided sobering evidence of the “excellence gap” among twelfth grade students—the sharp divides along lines of race and class in achievement at the highest levels.
Commentary
School Finance, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
Can states clean up their teacher pension messes?
Many state teacher pension systems are woefully underfunded, impose significant costs on teachers and schools, and shortchange tho
Commentary
Evidence-Based Learning, Career & Technical Education, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
Getting to work: The effect of school-year employment on student outcomes
Calls are rising for America’s aging high-school model to modernize, in part by accommodating work experience through hands-on internships or actual employment for students.
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
The excellence gap and underrepresentation at America’s most selective universities
America’s education system suffers from a variety of “excellence gaps”—sharp disparities in performance by race and class at the highest levels of academic achievement. These gaps explain why college administrators turn to various forms of affirmative action in order to create freshmen classes that more closely represent the nation’s diversity—actions that may soon be declared unconstitutional. But when do these gaps start?
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
“What do you mean, ‘proficient’?” The saga of NAEP achievement levels
As I write this, representative samples of fourth and eighth graders are taking National Assessment of Educational Progress tests in math and English.
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Standards, Teachers & School Leaders
Evidence, struggling math students, and California’s 2022 math framework
The proposed California Mathematics Framework generated a storm of controversy when the first draft was released in early 2021. Critics objected to the document’s condemnation of tracking and negative portrayal of acceleration for high-achieving students.
Commentary
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
What does teacher certification contribute to outcomes for students with disabilities?
Reams of research have reported contradictory outcomes for students with disabilities (SWDs) who are taught in general education classrooms alongside their non-disabled peers versus learning in settings with only SWDs. A new report focuses on teacher certification as a possible mechanism to explain the variations in outcomes.
Commentary
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
More data on the impact of remote and hybrid learning during the pandemic
Throughout the pandemic, we encountered much speculation about the impact that remote learning would have on student performance. The expected learning loss was a concern not just of American parents and educators, but of citizens all around the world.
Commentary
Charter Schools, Governance
When it comes to the Charter Schools Program, little details can have big impacts
Anyone who says the recently proposed Charter Schools Program (CSP) rules are just about scoring grant proposals and otherwise “ordinary” requirements (
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
Assessing the Nation’s Report Card: Challenges and choices for NAEP
NAEP is by far the country’s most important source of information on student achievement, achievement gaps and so much more, even though it’s invisible to most Americans. Yet NAEP is far from perfect—and could do so much more than it does. It’s time to wrestle with its challenges, shortcomings, and possible future scenarios.
