Displaying 541-570 of 1115 results
Commentary
11.11.2021
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

How media coverage of critical race theory misses the point

Robert Pondiscio

It is not a controversial statement to say that the debate over critical race theory in schools has shed more heat than light. This is not surprising. When a relatively obscure and arcane academic field suddenly becomes a high-profile political football, hotly debated on cable news shoutfests, it is almost certainly because it has been reduced to bumper-sticker simplicity.

Commentary
11.11.2021
Accountability & Testing, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Would eliminating college admissions tests really make education more equitable?

Adam Tyner, Ph.D.

When the University of California began phasing-out college admissions test scores as part of a recent legal settlement, the rationale was “equity.” Lawyers for the students who brought the lawsuit said that “SAT and ACT scores are largely a proxy for a student’s socioeconomic background and race,” rather than measures of ac

Commentary
11.4.2021
Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

2021 election recap: How four key school board races shook out

Dale Chu

While the gubernatorial upset in Virginia drew the brightest spotlight, Tuesday’s election featured an unusual surge in the number of school board candidates vying for thousands of seats all over the country. Four races were especially noteworthy, both for the charged political rancor leading up to November 2, as well as the potentially broader implications from the results.

Commentary
11.4.2021
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Reconnecting knowledge and virtue

Jennifer Frey

Editor’s note: We're happy to introduce Jennifer Frey, who will be writing regularly for the Fordham Institute over the next year. She is an associate professor at the University of South Carolina, where she focuses on virtue ethics.

Commentary
11.4.2021
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Lessons on protecting viewpoint diversity in classrooms

Robert Pondiscio, Tracey Schirra

A story that became a flashpoint in national conversations around the effects of “CRT bans” is reaching its denouement: This past week, a hearing officer appointed to adjudicate the case ruled that the Sullivan County, Tennessee, school board was justified in

Commentary
10.28.2021
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Not everyone’s on board with turning schooling into therapy

Robert Pondiscio

Schools have been concerned with character formation and values since Plato sat with students under an olive tree. Today’s “social and emotional learning” is consistent with this age-old impulse. But in its form and function it can represent something different—and more worrisome—than its progenitors, especially when employed without full discussion of its priorities and methods.

Commentary
10.28.2021
Accountability & Testing, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

The case for K–2 testing

Dale Chu

Under federal law, states must assess students annually in reading and math in grades 3–8 and at least once during high school, as well as testing science once in elementary, middle, and high school.

Commentary
10.28.2021
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

How reopening decisions affected public school disenrollment

Amber M. Northern, Ph.D.

During the first full school year after the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, enrollment in U.S. public schools fell by about 1.1 million students, or 2 percent of prior K–12 enrollment.

Commentary
10.21.2021
Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Declining NAEP scores are flashing red lights for the Covid generation

Michael J. Petrilli

Last week brought the latest results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress’s Long Term Trend series, and they were sobering. Just before the pandemic kicked in, U.S. thirteen-year-olds saw statistically-significant declines in both math and reading—a first in the study’s nearly 50-year history. Black, Hispanic, and low-achieving students saw the largest declines. Here’s the case that the Great Recession was largely at fault.

Commentary
10.15.2021
Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Reforming licensing policies will help alleviate teacher shortages

Shannon Whitworth

With the effects of the pandemic dragging on for another year, labor markets are acting strange and organizations are struggling to find qualified workers. Schools are no different. The teacher pipeline has slowed to a trickle as teacher preparation programs see fewer and fewer candidates. Teachers have been leaving the profession early.

Commentary
10.14.2021
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Advanced Education, Teachers & School Leaders

Bill de Blasio is decimating gifted education in New York. Will Eric Adams save it?

Brandon L. Wright

Mayor de Blasio is axing New York City’s long-standing gifted education programs. He plans to replace them with something else, but his proposal is almost entirely wrong. Fortunately, Eric Adams, who’s almost certain to replace him in January, has a vision of gifted education that’s mostly right, and he’ll enter office in time to fix de Blasio’s blunders.

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Commentary
10.14.2021
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

Sorry Edutopia, the research base on project-based learning remains weak

Daniel Buck

As one paper put it, there is a “paucity of robust research” on project-based learning. Yet in the ed-school world and in many journals and professional organizations, it’s often touted as a pedagogical gold standard.

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Commentary
10.14.2021
Evidence-Based Learning, Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

How well do diverse-by-design charter schools work?

William Rost

The persistence of racial segregation between and within school districts has motivated some in the school choice community to develop diverse-by-design charters (DBDCs), which are defined as schools without a 70 percent majority of students of any race or ethnicity, plus 30 to 70 percent low-income pupils.

Commentary
10.8.2021
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

How well are schools teaching disadvantaged students to read? In California, it depends where you live.

Todd Collins

How do we know if a school district is doing one of its most basic jobs—teaching students to read? That’s one of the main questions the California Reading Coalition, which I helped organize earlier this year, set out to answer with the California Reading Report Card, released in September.

Commentary
10.7.2021
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

The college gender gap begins in kindergarten

Michael J. Petrilli

A recent Wall Street Journal article set off a pundit-palooza on the topic of the female advantage in higher education, with many suggesting that young men have “given up on college.” But American students who are academically well-prepared for college continue to matriculate and graduate. It’s just that many more of them are female. The reason for that starts in kindergarten.

Commentary
10.7.2021
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Critical race theory distracts from academic underachievement

Bob Woodson, Ian Rowe

With a new school year underway, parents, teachers, and children anxiously return to classrooms amidst an ongoing coronavirus pandemic. But this year, school board members, teachers, academics, politicians, and parents continue to argue over critical race theory and how to enact its version of equity.

Commentary
10.7.2021
Evidence-Based Learning, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Do experts share responsibility for pitchfork-wielding mobs?

Adam Tyner, Ph.D.

Angry citizens, enraged over everything from mask mandates to “critical race theory,” have been storming school board meetings, threatening members, and driving some to quit, reports a

Commentary
10.5.2021
Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

There’s more to the education story than what’s in the news

Emily Freitag

Education news is pretty depressing these days. Last week’s feed included articles about cafeteria staffing shortages and supply chain concerns, reporting about declining enrollment, predictions about resignations due to vaccine mandates, findings on teacher stress, reporting about an uptick in student fights, and lots of documentation of demonization in adults’ battles over mask policy.

Commentary
10.1.2021
Evidence-Based Learning, Governance, Private School Choice, Teachers & School Leaders

The impact of voucher programs: A deep dive into the research

Pedro Enamorado

Last month, my colleagues Mike Petrilli and David Griffith had a conversation with Patrick Wolf, a leading school choice scholar at the University of Arkansas, about the impact of voucher programs on the Education Gadfly Show podcast.

Commentary
9.30.2021
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Advanced Education, Teachers & School Leaders

We are squandering the talents of too many low-income high achievers

Aaron Churchill , Michael J. Petrilli

Far too many high-achieving children are drifting through middle and high school. Despite their potential, they don’t end up taking AP exams, achieving high marks on their ACTs, or going to four-year colleges. This limits their ability to move up the social ladder, threatens U.S. economic competitiveness, and derails our aspirations for a more just society. We must stop buying into the false assumption that high-achieving kids will do fine on their own.

Commentary
9.30.2021
School Finance, Charter Schools, Governance, Private School Choice, Teachers & School Leaders

Use pandemic recovery funds to empower both schools and families

Bruno V. Manno

Covid-19 school shock disrupted our way of doing education, unbundling the familiar division of responsibilities among home, school, and community organizations. Nearly every parent of school-age children had to create from scratch a home learning environment using online technology and rebundling school services to meet their needs.

Commentary
9.30.2021
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Measuring the social, emotional, and academic toll of remote learning

Amber M. Northern, Ph.D.

After more than eighteen months of pandemic-induced commotion to education, data continue to roll in regarding various negative impacts on young people.

Commentary
9.23.2021
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Performative teaching is undermining trust in schools

Robert Pondiscio

Increasingly, teachers are not shy about expressing their views on charged racial and political views. This may be a symptom of a profound shift in our relationship with institutions and the role they play in our lives. Where institutions once functioned as molds of our character and behavior, they’re now platforms on which we stand to be seen. And this could be cratering our trust in them.

Commentary
9.23.2021
Curriculum & Instruction, Advanced Education, Teachers & School Leaders

Rigorous courses are a good thing—and good for equity

Brandon L. Wright

“As a broader mechanism for equity, [Advanced Placement] has fallen short, unable to overcome the powerful structural forces that disadvantage far too many students,” writes Anne Kim in a recent long-form article in Washington Monthly titled “AP’s Equity Face-Plant.” “If the ultimate goal