Governance

Displaying 1231-1260 of 1405 results
Commentary
3.11.2020
Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Social justice and K–12 education reform

Andy Smarick, Bruno V. Manno

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
3.5.2020
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Who am I to judge? The case for classical liberal education

Clare Basil

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
3.4.2020
Accountability & Testing, Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Private School Choice, Standards, Teachers & School Leaders

Back to basics for conservative education reform

Yuval Levin

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
2.26.2020
Governance

Conservatives: It’s time to re-engage on education

Michael J. Petrilli, Chester E. Finn, Jr.

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.

Event
2.24.2020
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
2.24.2020
Governance

How to Educate an American: The Conservative Vision for Tomorrow's Schools

Michael J. Petrilli, Chester E. Finn, Jr.

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
2.19.2020
Governance

Five reasons Congress should not block-grant the federal Charter Schools Program

Michael J. Petrilli

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
2.12.2020
Charter Schools, Governance

Has Trump turned against charter schools?

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

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
2.12.2020
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Training teachers to fail

Jasmine Lane, Jon Gustafson

There’s been a lot of talk recently about the reading crisis in U.S. schools.

Commentary
2.12.2020
Governance, Personalized Learning, Teachers & School Leaders

The harm of special education enrollment caps

Amber M. Northern, Ph.D.

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
2.6.2020
Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Beware the Democrats’ new teachers-union-loyalty test

Derrell Bradford

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
2.6.2020
Governance

Lamar Alexander’s education legacy

Dale Chu

No sooner had Senator Lamar Alexander released his statement last Thursday on the impeachment witness vote than the handwringing began.

Commentary
1.29.2020
Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Hiding in plain sight: Advancing SEL by tackling today’s urgent problems

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

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
1.22.2020
Accountability & Testing, Governance

School Improvement Grants worked well—at least in these four locales

Jessica Poiner

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 marked a massive federal investment in our schools, with more than $100 billion to shore up school systems in the face of the Great Recession. Along with that largesse came two grant programs meant to encourage reform with all of those resources: Race to the Top and School Improvement Grants (SIGs).

Commentary
1.17.2020
Governance

The real history of school desegregation, from 1954 to the present

R. Shep Melnick

One of the oddest features of the 2019–20 Democratic primary season has been the return of the busing issue. Half a century ago, it nearly tore the party apart. Judicially mandated reassignment of students to achieve racial balance proved to be the most unpopular policy since Prohibition, opposed by overwhelming majorities of white voters.

Commentary
1.17.2020
Evidence-Based Learning, School Finance, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Personalized Learning

The top 10 EconTalk episodes on education

Adam Tyner, Ph.D.

A few years ago, as I was wrapping up grad school (where my dissertation was about migrant workers in China, of all things), I came across a bunch of fascinating podcast episodes about education policy and school reform.

Commentary
1.16.2020
Governance

Weak board governance weakens K–12 performance

Tom Coyne

After spending most of my forty-year career working on organizational performance improvement, I have learned that some of the most important causes of poor performance are often the least visible.

Commentary
1.15.2020
Charter Schools, Governance

Fresh fuel for the charter school debate

Robert Pondiscio

A mere 6 percent of students are enrolled in charter schools nationwide, but there are sixteen cities in which at least one-third of public school students attend charters. Newark, New Jersey, is one of them.

Commentary
1.8.2020
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Where R & D and school improvement meet, good things happen

Michael J. Petrilli

Fordham’s recent Moonshot for Kids competition, a collaboration with the Center for American Progress, highlighted the distinction between research and development and “school improvement.” They’re very different concepts. R & D is inherently top-down and school improvement mostly bottom-up. Yet bringing them into productive contact with one another is vital and might be the key to getting student outcomes moving in the right direction once again.

Commentary
12.4.2019
Accountability & Testing, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

The Houston Federation of Teachers plays the Trump card

Dale Chu

In the latest episode of what promises to be a protracted saga in the Lone Star State, the Houston Federation of Teachers (HFT) recently filed a federal lawsuit to halt the state’s takeover of the Houston school district, one of the largest in the country.

Commentary
11.26.2019
Accountability & Testing, Charter Schools, Governance, Private School Choice

Even more social engineering in New York schools

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

When the New York City Council moved the other day to require every one of the city’s thirty-two community school districts to develop a school desegregation plan, it was yet one more example of municipal social engineering that prizes diversity over quality and mandatory over voluntary. If families with means don’t like their new school assignments, they’ll simply exit to charters, private schools or the suburbs, meaning that the city’s social engineers will mainly work their will on those with the least.