Governance

Displaying 1261-1290 of 1416 results
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.

Commentary
11.26.2019
Accountability & Testing, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Time to press “pause” on credit recovery

Adam Tyner, Ph.D.

“It’s like some bullsh-t way to get kids to pass.” That’s the cynical description of high school “credit recovery” programs an eleventh grader gave to the New York Post last year. But cynicism appears to be in order.

Commentary
11.13.2019
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

All 2019 Wonkathon submissions are in. Here’s what the wonks proposed.

Tran Le

The past decade’s shift to significantly higher academic standards and more rigorous assessments means that many more students are now far below grade-level expectations. In recent months and years, there’s been much debate about how best to help such students catch up.

Commentary
11.13.2019
Accountability & Testing, Governance

The states that are swimming against the NAEP tides

Michael J. Petrilli

The bad news from the latest Nation’s Report Card has us analysts wearing out our thesauruses. The good news is that a handful of states managed to make gains or stand pat on the assessment as their peers went backwards. Most noteworthy are D.C. and Mississippi, the only two locales where low achievers made gains. But several other states deserve credit for maintaining their scores in the face of adversity.

Commentary
11.12.2019
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Driving learning for all students: A framework for Multi-Tiered Systems of Support

Bonnie Hain, Laura Slover

In our work with schools at CenterPoint, we often are asked to help design or support the implementation of research-based, high quality curriculum. Almost invariably, discussions with school leaders turn to the connections among and between the core curriculum and the tiered supports for students who are off grade level and struggling to advance.

Commentary
11.12.2019
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

The best way to help students who are several grade levels behind is to do a better job of following their progress, or lack of it, in the long term

Barbara Gottschalk

By the time struggling students reach middle school, it’s pretty obvious it took time for them to get several grade levels behind. It’s also obvious we have numerous ways to help these students. I’m guessing many other submissions to Wonkathon 2019 describe these strategies and approaches. What isn’t so obvious, however, is what’s causing some students to struggle.

Commentary
11.8.2019
Accountability & Testing, School Finance, Governance

NAEP 2019: The terrible impact of the Great Recession

Michael J. Petrilli

In previous posts and in comments to the media, I’ve been making the case that the lingering effects of the Great Recession might partially explain the disappointing student achievement trends we’ve seen as of late, both on the Nation’s Report Card and on state assessments.

Commentary
11.8.2019
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

To ensure success for all students, state assessment makers must be learners, too

In the last two decades, since states began implementing standardized testing under No Child Left Behind, there has been much debate about the value of those assessments. In Louisiana, where I serve as an Assistant Superintendent, we know measurement of student learning is critical, and tests hold the power to define the academic bar for all students.

Commentary
11.6.2019
Charter Schools, Governance

Why reformers will miss Secretary DeVos when she’s gone

Dale Chu

With less than a year to go until the 2020 presidential election, Elizabeth Warren’s ascendancy to ostensible Democratic frontrunner, and the release of her voluminously noxious education proposal, I fell into a fever dream of the same stra

Commentary
11.1.2019
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

To help students who are several grade levels behind, implement IEPs in elementary and middle school

Charles Ogundimu, Ph.D.

The obvious but fundamental question is: Why are the students several grade levels behind? Undoubtedly, the answer is complex and will include, inter alia, insufficient preparation (student and teacher), poor teaching, poverty, inadequate foundation, behavior, and other psycho-social factors.

Commentary
11.1.2019
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

On our Nation’s Report Card, strong leadership gets an “A”

Mike Magee

This week, the federal government released the results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)—known colloquially as “the Nation’s Report Card.” As always, the results are the subject of intense scrutiny, and are fodder for arguments on both sides of the political aisle and all sides of education debates.

Commentary
10.31.2019
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

2019 WONKATHON WINNER: Beyond the binary: We can foster equity in both opportunity and outcomes

Abby Javurek

Editor’s note: This was the first-place submission, out of nineteen, to Fordham’s 2019 Wonkathon, in which we asked participants to answer the question: “What’s the best way to help students who are several grade levels behind?”

Commentary
10.30.2019
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance

Classroom content: A conservative conundrum

Robert Pondiscio

The content of K–12 education is a minefield for conservatives. Over the past thirty years, education reformers who wanted parents to have choices for their children have tended to focus more on the creation of new public charter schools, or on private school scholarships, than on curriculum and classroom content.

Podcast
10.30.2019
Charter Schools, Governance, Private School Choice, Teachers & School Leaders

The Education Gadfly Show: On education, Warren’s got a pander for that

On this week’s podcast, Mike Petrilli and David Griffith talk to Checker Finn about Senator Warren’s flawed education proposal. On the Research Minute, Amber Northern examines improvements to the student teaching experience that can help candidates feel more prepared for success in the classroom.

Commentary
10.23.2019
Governance

Can that plan, Senator Warren!

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

Senator Elizabeth Warren revealed a K–12 plan on Monday that’s big, substantive—and awful. It would reverse most of the major education reforms of the past two decades, drive a stake through the heart of what’s left of bipartisan federal and state policy, and re-enshrine adult interests (especially those of the teacher unions) in place of children’s, while wasting immense sums of taxpayer dollars.

Commentary
10.16.2019
Evidence-Based Learning, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Don’t oversell SEL

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

Social and emotional learning could do much good if deployed in pursuit of academic learning, but it runs multiple risks of going off the rails when its boosters ignore its limitations. It’s in this context that a recent brief by the NewSchools Venture Fund lands. There’s considerable wisdom in it, but leaders and policymakers should be careful what they do with the SEL measures for which it advocates. They should not, for example, incorporate them into accountability systems. Nor should they get so preoccupied with them that they neglect English, math, science, and history, or forget how much those matter in the real world.

Commentary
10.16.2019
Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

When a school is improving, stay out of the way, warns an important new book

Robert Pondiscio

There’s a not-so-secret tension that separates frontline educators from ed reformers, policymakers, and even district office poobahs. This tension, and the cost of top-down initiatives disrupting what’s working on the ground, form the through line of Eric Kalenze’s important new book, What the Academy Taught Us.