National Teachers & School Leaders

Displaying 1-30 of 1450 results

Commentary

10.9.2026

School Finance, Governance, Private School Choice, Teachers & School Leaders

One detail in FSTC proposed regs will reduce participation in public schools

Marguerite Roza, Maggie Cicco

Over the summer, Edunomics Lab predicted that, once up and at scale, the federal tax credit scholarship (FSTC) could generate some $1,000 per public school student. However, now that Treasury has released its long-awaited draft regulations, we’re downgrading that prediction. It all comes down to an onerous requirement that public school participants prove they are not super rich.

Commentary

10.8.2026

Accountability & Testing, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

A new documentary film chronicling the life and legacy of Rod Paige

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

On Monday, World Teachers’ Day, friends and relatives of the late Rod Paige released the trailer for a forthcoming film about his remarkable life and career. Titled Paragraphs of a Paige, the appetite-whetting trailer can be viewed here.

Commentary

10.8.2026

Accountability & Testing, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

School districts shouldn’t wait for the state to intervene

Miguel Solis

If you’ve paid even general attention to Texas education news over the past few years, you’ve likely heard some version of the phrase “local school districts being taken over by the state.” Maybe it registered as a Houston story, since that made statewide headlines.

Commentary

10.6.2026

Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Advanced Education, Teachers & School Leaders

Advanced education is common sense

Jonathan Plucker

If you want to be a faster runner, research says you should run more often and farther. I used this “run more” strategy over the past year and, I kid you not, my performance has improved quite drastically. Sometimes plain ol’ common sense is the answer to life’s many problems.

Commentary

10.2.2026

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

My son needed to leave his school, but I did not: A reflection on Nikole Hannah-Jones’s essay

Selim Tlili

“What we’re going to do for our kids’ education” might be the single most common discussion I have had in my social life as a parent. Like many parents in NYC and across the country, I was captivated by Nikole Hannah-Jones’s essay in the New York Times. Parents are constantly asking themselves, “Have I done right by my kid” when it comes to education.

Commentary

10.1.2026

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

The uneven ground of the no-zero grading policy landscape

Kennedy Sundberg

The push for no-zero grading policies, which prohibit assigning zeros for class assignments or tests, began during a broader “

Commentary

10.1.2026

Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

Do dual enrollment students still benefit despite failing college courses?

Jeff Murray

Dual enrollment (DE) programs allow students to take college courses for credit—usually at no cost—while still in high school. Students must pass the course in order to earn credit. Efforts to increase DE access mean more high schoolers than ever are taking college courses.

Commentary

10.1.2026

Evidence-Based Learning, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

The lessons we’re not learning from Nikole Hannah-Jones

Robert Pondiscio

I’m going to be impatient and blunt: Nikole Hannah-Jones’s daughter did not fail to learn fractions because she and her classmates were Black. Her teacher did not repeatedly fail to show up to work because the school was segregated. Neither did her assignments go ungraded because affluent children attended school elsewhere.

Commentary

9.28.2026

Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

It’s not AI vs. human grading. It’s which design choices you make.

Sidhi Baweja

During my school years, I was often called a student who “could do better.” I took feedback seriously and tried to act on it. But one teacher had already made up his mind about me. He thought I was lazy and naughty. There was a reason for it, but somehow that single incident became my identity, and it showed up in my grades. I kept wondering how to get out of his bad books. I never did.

Commentary

9.28.2026

Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Bans aren’t the answer

Emily Freitag

I have heard a number of leaders start discussions about AI with the question, “Are you for or against AI?”

Commentary

9.25.2026

Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

I also sent my children to a nonselective, overwhelmingly minority public school, but it wasn’t a sacrifice

Eva Moskowitz

When Nikole Hannah-Jones writes that her daughter finally told her, “Sometimes I wish instead of always thinking about other kids, you would have thought about me,” every parent who works in education should stop and sit with those words. I did.

Commentary

9.25.2026

Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

My son may be your child’s teacher this year—and why that should worry you

Alina Adams

My son is an NYC Teaching Fellow. This September, he is teaching special education middle school math in the Bronx.

Commentary

9.25.2026

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

The content opportunity: Prioritizing what we teach as much as how

Miah Daughtery

For decades, teacher professional learning in middle and high school has prioritized one thing above all else: pedagogy.

Commentary

9.24.2026

Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Teach For America was once a movement. What happened?

Dale Chu

This year, Teach For America marks its 35th anniversary. Few organizations have shaped education reform so profoundly. It produced not only achievement gains among students, but also an elite talent pipeline of TFA alumni. In recent years, however, those laudable outcomes have receded as the organization shifted its mission into more ideological terrain. Recent trends present an opportunity for Teach For America to rediscover what once made it so effective.

Commentary

9.22.2026

Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

How states can slow the staffing surge

Aaron Garth Smith

Public school funding is at record levels, but not enough money is making its way to teacher paychecks.

Commentary

9.18.2026

Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

We’ve been treating college as a career plan, but it’s failing too many students

Patrick O’Donnell

In one of Denver’s wealthiest suburbs, where median family income tops $150,000 and nearly every kid is expected to go to college, students are now lining up for trade certifications. Their parents aren’t worried; in fact, most of them are championing the move.

Commentary

9.18.2026

Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

What teachers should learn: An alternative graduate school curriculum

Daniel Buck

Earlier this month, I released a report reviewing coursework at ten graduate schools of education across the country. I won’t rehearse the findings at length here.

Commentary

9.17.2026

Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

College or career? On false positives and negatives

Matthew Carr

The backlash against “college for all” was overdue, but policymakers shouldn’t replace one flawed approach with another. Academic performance in high school can predict whether students will succeed in college, but it cannot tell us whether college—or another pathway—will leave a particular student better off. Better advising can help teenagers weigh each route’s tradeoffs.

Commentary

9.17.2026

Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Student AI use is about much more than school rules

Alicia Anderson

“The turbulent AI era is here.

Commentary

9.17.2026

Evidence-Based Learning, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

How money and time shape children’s early advantages

Kendall Rogers

The importance of childhood investments to the trajectory of life is commonly accepted, but less is known about the size and sources of disparities in these investments.

Commentary

9.11.2026

Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

The strange education legacy of 9/11

Dale Chu

The strange education legacy of 9/11 was, in many ways, an accident of history. The attacks helped propel an ambitious national education agenda into law, even as the political coalition behind it eventually unraveled. Twenty-five years later, the pandemic revealed just how far the country had moved from the consensus that once united reformers.

Commentary

9.11.2026

Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Private School Choice, Teachers & School Leaders

Alpha School’s Theranos problem

Van Schoales

I was recently walking around Austin, Texas. And a block from the new W Hotel, I passed Alpha School, housed in what looked like a tech office. Outside was a sign reading “Kids crush academics in two hours, build life skills, and thrive,” under a big photo of the founder.

Commentary

9.10.2026

Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

Screens, AI, and grade inflation are hollowing out the American high school experience

Amber M. Northern, Ph.D., Michael J. Petrilli

High school students report widespread screen distraction, AI misuse, and grading practices that make it easier to earn high marks without mastering the relevant material. A new Fordham survey suggests that we will only solve these problems by restoring the basic conditions for learning: attention, effort, honest work, and adults willing to hold adolescents to high expectations.

Commentary

9.10.2026

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

What Massachusetts’s portrait of a learner gets right (and New York’s doesn’t)

Meredith Coffey, Ph.D.

When I taught high school in Virginia in the early 2020s, I was only vaguely aware of the existence of something called “portrait of a graduate.” Whatever this portrait was, it didn’t seem to impact my daily work, so it didn’t capture my attention. On the other hand, I knew my IB courses and our state assessments backward and forward. Those shaped what we did in the classroom.

Commentary

9.10.2026

Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

Is this the post-homework era?

Alicia Anderson

In Fordham’s new survey of American high school students and recent graduates, less than half believe their school has realistic AI policies that keep up with the times.

Commentary

9.10.2026

School Finance, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Fewer students, more dollars, and harder choices

Mike McShane

At the beginning of the movie The Big Short, there is a title card with the epigram, “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” It attributes the quote to Mark Twain. Ironically, there isn’t any proof that Twain actually said or wrote that.

Commentary

9.3.2026

Curriculum & Instruction, Private School Choice, Teachers & School Leaders

America’s oldest school model may be its future

Stephanie Saroki de Garcia

Many of the qualities that will matter most for students going forward are those that cannot be automated: judgment, self-command, compassion, and courage. They are also traits that Catholic schools have spent generations cultivating. In an age hungry for meaning, Catholic schools understand what humans need to flourish.

Commentary

9.3.2026

Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Education got there first? The breakdown of traditional left-right delineations.

Andrew J. Rotherham

Education is rarely accused of being ahead of the curve. We’re usually the last to get the memo. Just consider how K–12 education delivery has been one of the few large sectors of the American economy not really disrupted by technology—it’s an open question whether that will even happen in the AI era. We treat things that are long settled in the literature as “who knows” jump balls.

Commentary

9.3.2026

School Finance, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Examining outcomes-based contracting in eight pilot districts

Jeff Murray

Contracted or purchased services (tutoring, professional development, after-school care, etc.) constitute the second-largest category of school district expenditures after staff compensation. They add up to tens of billions of dollars each year.

Commentary

8.28.2026

Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

The three prongs of education reform success: Policy, programs, and political perseverance

Patricia Levesque

Mississippi’s ongoing early literacy success was originally dubbed a miracle. Now we’re calling it a marathon. That’s a more accurate description, but it still doesn’t do justice to the years and years of sustained work it’s taken to catapult the state from the back of the pack to leading on reading—and to keep those results going strong.