Podcast
Private School Choice
#856: Why education savings accounts won’t bring educational pluralism, with Ashley Berner
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast,
Commentary
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Advanced Education, Teachers & School Leaders
Racial and ethnic gaps in advanced STEM achievement: 3 takeaways from recent research
Editor’s note: This is an edition of “Advance,” a newsletter from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute written by Brandon Wright, our Editorial Director, and published every other week. Its purpose is to monitor the progress of gifted education in America, including legal and legislative developments, policy and leadership changes, emerging research, grassroots efforts, and more.
Commentary
School Finance, Charter Schools, Governance, Private School Choice, Teachers & School Leaders
Parent navigators are worth the investment for school choice supporters
From 2015 to 2018, the start of spring meant I could expect to hear from parents across Florida. At the time, I worked for Step Up Students, the Florida-based organization that administers the nation’s largest education scholarship (i.e., voucher) program. My job was not in customer service. I was the editor of a blog focused on school choice issues.
Commentary
School Finance, Governance, Private School Choice, Teachers & School Leaders
How much education is a public responsibility?
So many of our debates about paying for higher education hinge on conflicting views of what’s the taxpayer’s responsibility and what’s the recipient’s. These days, that’s also true of pre-schooling and it also arises, albeit in different form, when we fight over vouchers, tax credits, ESAs and such. Is it society’s responsibility to pay for private schooling or is it the family’s?
Commentary
Governance, Private School Choice, Teachers & School Leaders
Will ESAs change America’s definition of “public education?”: An interview with Ashley Berner
Last week, two more states—Iowa and Utah—joined Arizona and West Virginia in adopting universal education savings accounts.
Commentary
Evidence-Based Learning, School Finance, Teachers & School Leaders
Schools have been adding teachers and student support staff, even as they serve fewer students
Editor’s note: This was first published by The 74.
Commentary
Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders
Americans are embracing non-college pathways to upward mobility
The pandemic changed what the American public wants from K–12 education.
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
Toward a broader conception of student success—and a broader conception of accountability
I have held firm to this belief since my early days of teaching: Getting students to proficiency and above in reading and math is a commitment to social justice and democracy. Education can empower students to change the world, especially when it counters cycles of poverty.
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, School Finance, Governance
Interpreting the Covid impact on achievement
The release of “The Nation’s Report Card” on October 24, 2022, created shock waves though out the country’s education and policy establishments.
Commentary
Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders
Dr. King and the liberal arts
Last week, as we celebrated the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., we recalled his civil rights activism as an admirable example of creating what John Lewis called “good trouble.” Dr. King is an American icon precisely because he possessed the wisdom and courage to hold America up to her own high standards: that all men are created equal and must be treated equally before the law.
Commentary
School Finance, Governance, Private School Choice
Public dollars, private schools
For the vast majority of America’s children, going to school has changed little from their parents’ generation, even their grandparents’: Where you live is where you learn, in a school run by your local public school district.
Commentary
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
Impact of community schools on attendance and achievement
Many experts have lauded community schools as a means of mitigating the impact of pandemic-era c
Commentary
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Advanced Education, Teachers & School Leaders
Driving equity in gifted policies: Insights from Harlem Academy in New York City
Editor’s note: This essay was part of an edition of “Advance,” a newsletter from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute that is published every other week. Its purpose is to monitor the progress of gifted education in America, including legal and legislative developments, policy and leadership changes, emerging research, grassroots efforts, and more.
Commentary
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
The true enemy of equity
Advocates have turned “equity” into a trigger word by pitting the concept against “excellence.” But that line of argument is not only politically unpopular, it’s wrong. In fact, excellence is not the enemy of equity, but the antidote to inequity.
Commentary
Curriculum & Instruction, Advanced Education, Teachers & School Leaders
National Working Group on Advanced Education: Summary of third meeting
Editor’s note: On November 17, 2022, seventeen members of the National Working Group on Advanced Education met for its third meeting in Indianapolis.
Commentary
Evidence-Based Learning, Charter Schools, Governance, Private School Choice
Rural school choice is more common than you think
A common observation made by critics of school choice is that it has little to offer families in rural communities where the population isn’t large enough to support multiple schools, and where transportation is already burdensome. I’ve made the point myself, and I’m a school choice proponent.
Commentary
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
One teacher’s response to the reading wars
Sold a Story, the podcast series from American Public Media, is essential listening for parents and teachers. Through six episodes, host Emily Hanford documents how schools failed to adequately teach reading to students over the past thirty years.
Commentary
Evidence-Based Learning, Teachers & School Leaders
Challenges and disappointments in school superintendency: Lessons from Broad
School district superintendents have an unenviable job description—ranging from high-level policy decisions on curriculum and finance to small-scale daily operations questions and small-p politics with stakeholders at all levels—so it’s no surprise that many
Commentary
Evidence-Based Learning, Charter Schools, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
The impact of regulatory flexibility on the teacher workforce in Massachusetts charter schools
One hallmark of charter schools—distinct from their traditional district peers—is flexibility in their HR practices.
Podcast
Teachers & School Leaders
Education Gadfly Show #852: New Year’s resolutions for America’s schools, with Robert Pondiscio
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Mike Petrilli and David Griffith talk with
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Facilities, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
We need to prepare now for the school closures that are coming
School closures are awful. I won’t argue otherwise.
Commentary
Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
Charter school teacher turnover and retention
As one article at National Affairs put it, the cries about a nation-wide teacher shortage are “heavy on anecdote and speculation” but rather light on data.
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Advanced Education, Teachers & School Leaders
The typical gifted program is likely to become even less equitable
By now the unfinished learning that resulted from the Covid-19 pandemic is old news.
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
Would capturing student growth in grades K–2 lead to different school ratings?
In the wake of dismal NAEP reading scores released earlier this year,
Commentary
Curriculum & Instruction, Advanced Education, Teachers & School Leaders
10 signs of progress in gifted education—and reasons for hope in the new year
Editor’s note: This is an edition of “Advance,” a newsletter from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute written by Brandon Wright, our Editorial Director, and published every other week. Its purpose is to monitor the progress of gifted education in America, including legal and legislative developments, policy and leadership changes, emerging research, grassroots efforts, and more.
Commentary
Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders
Why learn to write?
Will artificial intelligence, operating via “bots” and other non-human intermediaries, replace English composition and the need to teach and learn it? My colleague Robert Pondiscio has written thoughtfully about this, and his answer is no.
Commentary
Evidence-Based Learning, Career & Technical Education, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Personalized Learning, Teachers & School Leaders
Friendships between rich and poor promote upward mobility: School career pathways program help do this
Economic connectedness is among the strongest predictors of upward income mobility—stronger than measures like school quality, job availability, family structure, or a community’s racial makeup.
Commentary
Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders
Artificial intelligence is not the end of high-school English
The internet is abuzz about “ChatGPT,” an artificial intelligence program that can generate remarkably solid pieces of prose in response to prompts both serious and whimsical, instantly, and in any imaginable style. Some find this thrilling. Others, mostly writers and teachers, are filled with existential dread. But let’s dispense with the idea that artificial intelligence will make writing instruction obsolete.
Commentary
Evidence-Based Learning, Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders
How to supercharge student learning
In the wake of pandemic-related learning loss, there’s widespread agreement that we must find more time for learning and a number of schools and districts have added afterschool tutoring and summer school to their calendars.
Commentary
Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders
For the love of memorization
Every year, I ask my students to memorize a poem, but I intentionally avoid using the word “memorize.” Rather, they must learn Robert Frost’s Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, Langston Hughes’s A Dream Deferred, or some other famous verse by heart. When memorized, poems become something we hold dear in our hearts and minds, growing almost into a mental keepsake.
