Governance

Displaying 1051-1080 of 1416 results
Commentary
4.19.2021
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Three important considerations for selecting and implementing an elementary ELA curriculum

Editor’s note: The Thomas B. Fordham Institute recently launched “The Acceleration Imperative,” an open-source, evidence-based resource designed to aid instructional leaders’ efforts to address the enormous challenges faced by their students, families, teachers, and staff over the past year.

Commentary
4.15.2021
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

High-quality, knowledge-rich curriculum is essential

Editor’s note: The Thomas B. Fordham Institute recently launched “The Acceleration Imperative,” an open-source, evidence-based resource designed to aid instructional leaders’ efforts to address the enormous challenges faced by their students, families, teachers, and staff over the past year.

Commentary
4.15.2021
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Can teaching be improved by law?

Robert Pondiscio

If there’s one lesson education policymakers might have learned in the last twenty-five years, it’s that it’s not hard to make schools and districts do something, but it’s extremely hard to make them do it well.

Commentary
4.15.2021
Accountability & Testing, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Uncle Sam goes soft on state tests

Dale Chu

Things are getting messy in the world of assessment.

Commentary
4.15.2021
Evidence-Based Learning, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Mentors’ effect on middle school attendance

Melissa Gutwein

More than a year into the Covid-19 pandemic, lost instructional time is top of mind for anyone connected to education.

Commentary
4.12.2021
Evidence-Based Learning, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

A different K–12 world: Teens and parents on Covid-19 shock and schools

Bruno V. Manno

In the song “Ballad of a Thin Man,” Nobel Laureate Bob Dylan penned an iconic refrain that asks: “But something is happening/And ya’ don’t know what it is/Do you, Mister Jones?” That refrain seems an apt way to describe what K–12 education stakeholders are sensing as they reel in response to Covid-19 shock.

Commentary
4.9.2021
Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

How schools can return from the pandemic with strong mental health supports in place

Sarah Broome

This fall, most students will be returning to full-time, in-person instruction after one of the most disrupted years of their lives. All students will be coming back with varying degrees of adverse experiences. Some may have lost loved ones, had a parent lose their job, seen a parent go through illness, or even been sick themselves.

Commentary
4.8.2021
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Children learn best when they feel safe and valued

Editor’s note: The Thomas B. Fordham Institute recently launched “The Acceleration Imperative,” an open-source, evidence-based resource designed to aid instructional leaders’ efforts to address the enormous challenges faced by their students, families, teachers, and staff over the past year.

Commentary
4.8.2021
Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Proceed with caution: School reopening and Covid case rate data

Amber M. Northern, Ph.D.

School reopenings in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic are an ongoing, imperfect work in progress, and the science that school leaders and parents are being encouraged to follow is evolving.

Commentary
4.2.2021
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Lessons from Race to the Top

Emily Freitag

I have been thinking a lot about the early years of Race to the Top recently. I moved to Nashville in 2011 to work at the Tennessee Department of Education. Tennessee had won one of the first two Race to the Top grants with bipartisan legislation and an ambitious plan, and the state had $500 million to invest in innovative support to advance student learning.

Commentary
4.1.2021
Accountability & Testing, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Drawing a line in the sand on state testing

Dale Chu

The Biden team has issued its first responses to state requests to waive federal testing requirements because of the pandemic. Dale Chu reads the tea leaves, and concludes that the new Administration is trying to eat its cake and have it too.

Commentary
3.26.2021
School Finance, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Best- and worst-case scenarios for how school stimulus dollars will be spent

Chad Aldeman

In the last year, Congress has now invested nearly $200 billion to support K–12 education. It’s an unprecedented federal infusion of money, but will it lead to an unprecedented recovery effort? It’s worth taking a moment to pause and consider the range of possibilities. Best case

Commentary
3.25.2021
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

How districts and charter networks can best address unfinished learning

Michael J. Petrilli

Fordham’s new resource, “The Acceleration Imperative,” aims to give the nation’s chief academic officers a head start on planning for America’s educational recovery, with a focus on high-poverty elementary schools. It’s intentionally a work in progress, and already the product of thoughtful advice from more than three dozen experts. The intention is for it to continue evolving and improving with readers’ help, via a “crowdsourced” initiative on a new wiki site.

Commentary
3.25.2021
School Finance, Governance

The stimulus package won’t fix schools’ employee-benefit problem

Brandon L. Wright

Editor’s note: This is the second post in a series that puts the themes of 2020’s Getting the Most Bang for the Education Buck into today’s context, with particular attention to the effects of the pandemic and federal relief dollars.

Commentary
3.25.2021
Accountability & Testing, Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

CDC school guidelines, acceleration, stimulus, and other goings-on

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

The CDC’s revised guidelines for pupil spacing in school—three feet under most circumstances rather than six—opened a floodgate of gratitude from superintendents and parents.

Commentary
3.18.2021
School Finance, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

A challenging funding future for schools—made worse by the pandemic

Brandon L. Wright

Editor’s note: This is the first post in a series that puts the themes of 2020’s Getting the Most Bang for the Education Buck into today’s context, with particular attention to the effects of the pandemic and federal relief dollars.

Commentary
3.12.2021
Charter Schools, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Power to the people: Further reflections

Bruno V. Manno

The Fordham Institute has published a two-part piece by Checker Finn on giving “power to the people,” as well as

Getty Images/Wavebreakmedia
Commentary
3.11.2021
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Personalized Learning, Teachers & School Leaders

How elementary schools can address unfinished learning through personalization

Michael J. Petrilli

Editor’s note: This is the fifth and final installment in a series of posts about envelope-pushing strategies that schools might embrace to address students’ learning loss in the wake of the pandemic.

Getty Images/Wavebreakmedia
Commentary
3.11.2021
Charter Schools, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Working with communities is hard and complex—and vital

Karega Rausch

Centering the work of charter schooling and authorizing in communities means listening to the aspirations and needs they have for students—especially communities that have been overlooked and not prioritized, like communities of color, those from lower-income tax brackets, and those with disabilities—and delivering with, not to, them.

Commentary
3.4.2021
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Personalized learning for the wee ones in the wake of the pandemic, Part I

Michael J. Petrilli

Editor’s note: This is the fourth in a series of posts about envelope-pushing strategies that schools might embrace to address students’ learning loss in the wake of the pandemic.

Commentary
3.4.2021
Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Jay Mathews’s admirable optimism about American education

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

Yes, I blurbed it—and I like it. Yes, a visitor to our home, a worldly and skeptical sort, hefted it and looked at the title and asked me “Isn’t that awfully thick for a book about optimism regarding American public education?”

Commentary
3.4.2021
Evidence-Based Learning, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Digging deeply into the data on school turnarounds

Olivia Piontek

States embraced school turnaround efforts in the wake of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act in the early 2000s. These took various forms at first, as each state pursued their own turnaround strategies per NCLB’s requirements.