Teachers & School Leaders

Displaying 661-690 of 1450 results
Commentary
12.1.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Career & Technical Education, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

How rethinking industry-recognized credentials could boost student success

Amber M. Northern, Ph.D.

Early in my career, I taught high school in North Carolina. One of the coolest things we did was partner annually with the local Habitat for Humanity team. Each year, students in my school’s construction-trades classes built a modular home from the ground up, doing the masonry, carpentry, electrical work, plumbing—all of it.

Commentary
12.1.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

The noose tightens around failed reading programs in schools

Robert Pondiscio

There was a remarkable moment near the end of last week’s ExcelinEd conference in Salt Lake City—one that I never would have thought possible and might have scoffed had someone predicted it, even a few short years ago.

Commentary
12.1.2022
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Break high schools’ monopoly on awarding credit and diplomas

Peter Robertson

Editor’s note: This essay is an entry in Fordham’s 2022 Wonkathon, which asked contributors to address a fundamental and challenging question: “How can states remove policies barriers that are keeping educators from reinventing high schools?”

Commentary
12.1.2022
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Policy doesn’t block high school redesign. Lack of will does.

Ed Jones

Editor’s note: This essay is an entry in Fordham’s 2022 Wonkathon, which asked contributors to address a fundamental and challenging question: “How can states remove policies barriers that are keeping educators from reinventing high schools?”

Commentary
11.22.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Career & Technical Education, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

The case for career and technical education

Amber M. Northern, Ph.D., Jeanette Luna

With rising college costs and sky-high college dropout rates—almost one-third of American undergraduates quit before completing their degree—young people are lookin

Commentary
11.18.2022
Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

“Pragmatism wins”: What the midterms mean for education policy

Nathaniel Grossman

So much for the “red wave.” Republicans expected sweeping victories in last week’s midterm elections that never materialized. Instead, Democrats outperformed expectations by maintaining control of the Senate and holding Republicans to a razor-thin majority in the House of Representatives.

Commentary
11.17.2022
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Advanced Education, Teachers & School Leaders

With affirmative action before the Supreme Court, here’s the state of diversity among high achievers

Michael J. Petrilli

America’s high-achieving students in our elementary and secondary schools are more racially diverse today than two decades ago. But Black high achievers in particular have made only incremental gains. Given affirmative action's original purpose, such trends are more than a little disappointing.

Commentary
11.17.2022
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Public education is drifting from its founding ideals and public purpose

Robert Pondiscio

Editor’s note: Last week, the Jack Miller Center convened a National Summit on Civic Education at Mount Vernon, the Virginia home of George Washington. Robert Pondiscio delivered the keynote address. This is adapted from his remarks.

Commentary
11.17.2022
Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Parent groups win big despite Republican losses

Daniel Buck

Considering President Joe Biden’s historically low approval ratings, many predicted a Republican wave in the midterms. Well, the wave turned out to be a gentle lapping at the toes.

Commentary
11.10.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

Why homework matters

Eva Moskowitz

Homework is the perennial bogeyman of K–12 education. In any given year, you’ll find people arguing that students, especially in elementary school, should have far less homework—or none at all. Eva Moskowitz, the founder and CEO of Success Academy charter schools, has the opposite opinion. She’s been running schools for sixteen years, and she’s only become more convinced that homework is not only necessary, but also a linchpin to effective K–12 education.

Commentary
11.10.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

Impacts of a content-rich literacy intervention

Amber M. Northern, Ph.D.

Teaching young children to read fluently by the end of third grade is fast becoming a national priorit

Commentary
11.10.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

School choice and parental compromise

Jeff Murray

What parents are looking for in an ideal school choice scenario is often very different from what they settle for in the real world. Cost, distance, academic quality, safety, extracurricular options, and a host of other factors are all at play, meaning trade-offs are unavoidable. Recently-published research findings try to capture the matrix of compromises being made.

Commentary
11.8.2022
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Advanced Education, Teachers & School Leaders

The future of exam schools

Hilde Kahn

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
11.4.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

High expectations in the classroom: When the unlikely becomes the possible

Stuart Kime

For any teacher, administrator, or policymaker who wants to make strong choices that are likely to benefit their students’ outcomes, Seth Gershenson’s recently-published Fordham Institute report on “the power of expectations in district and

Commentary
11.4.2022
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Governors should stop spinning NAEP results and start proposing solutions

Marc Porter Magee, Ned Stanley

“In light of this barometer of our kids’ success, there’s no time to waste to catch our kids up. We must continue to pour on the gas in our efforts,” Arizona Governor Doug Ducey said last Tuesday in response to the NAEP results.

Commentary
11.3.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Lowering expectations for students isn’t the answer to pandemic learning loss

Amber M. Northern, Ph.D., David Griffith, Ph.D.

Fordham’s new study, “The Power of Expectations in District and Charter Schools,” seeks to examine the role that high expectations should play in our nation’s academic recovery and supply deeper understanding of whether and how such expectations operate in the traditional public, charter, and private school sectors. It finds, among other things, that teacher expectations have a positive impact on long-run outcomes and that expectations tend to be higher in charter schools.

Commentary
11.3.2022
Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Holistic admissions: The good, the bad, the ugly

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

As the Supreme Court weighs the future of race-sensitive affirmative action in admitting students to selective colleges, all manner of ideas are popping up for how to achieve “diversity” in the entering class without explicitly counting by race.

Commentary
10.27.2022
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Charter schools complicate the narrative on Covid shutdowns and learning loss

Michael J. Petrilli

This week’s news of sharp declines on the National Assessment of Educational Progress gave partisans yet another chance to relitigate the debate over keeping schools closed for in-person learning for much or all of the 2020–21 school year. We conservatives are eager to identify the teachers unions as the primary culprits, and we’re not wrong. But there is one complication we should acknowledge: the curious case of urban charter schools.

Commentary
10.27.2022
Accountability & Testing, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Treating my NAEP hangover

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

Monday was insane, with everyone and his grandmother (and her pet dog) attempting to make insightful, quotable comments on the avalanche of new data from the Nation’s Report Card. Some of it was indeed insightful, but much was simply self-promoting, as were many attempts to position oneself in advance as an expert to be taken seriously.

Commentary
10.27.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Advanced Education, Teachers & School Leaders

Determining the factors that lead to kindergarten ability group placement

Amber M. Northern, Ph.D.

Ability grouping—arranging students in a classroom into smaller learning groups based on their aptitude in a given subject—is a common practice among teachers as early as kindergarten.

Commentary
10.25.2022
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Advanced Education, Teachers & School Leaders

High-achieving middle schoolers have suffered devastating math losses, finds NAEP

Brandon L. Wright

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
10.20.2022
Accountability & Testing, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Could NAEP affect midterm elections? And other questions about next week’s release.

Michael J. Petrilli

The 2022 results from the “main” National Assessment of Educational Progress will be released October 24. They’ll include fourth- and eighth-grade scores at the national level, as well as state by state and for two-dozen large urban districts. Especially after the Covid shut-downs, it’s a big freakin’ deal. Here are three major storylines to look forward to.

Commentary
10.20.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Must we battle over civics education?

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

In a way, the battles we’ve seen in recent years over what to teach schoolkids in civics class resemble the war in Ukraine: They’re wholly unnecessary—and may be entirely the work of aggressors.

Commentary
10.13.2022
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Jubilee for character education

Jennifer Frey

Even educators who recognize the value of character are often deeply skeptical that educators can teach virtue as a matter of practice because—apart from religious contexts--they have never seen it done successfully. For this reason, it is important that we draw attention to successful, non-partisan, secular models of exemplary character education. We find such a model in the UK’s Jubilee Center for Character and Virtues.

Commentary
10.13.2022
Curriculum & Instruction, Private School Choice, Teachers & School Leaders

Cultural sensitivity for me but not for thee

Robert Pondiscio, Elli Lucas

Imagine a close-knit community whose members take care of and look out for one another; enjoy strong, tight-knit families with many children, close social ties, and a deep sense of purpose and belonging; and seem mostly exempt from crime, suicide, substance abuse, and other such problems. Are the habits and institutions by which this community prepares its members for adult life successful?

Commentary
10.13.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

The impact of teacher recruiting efforts on student achievement

Jeff Murray

Everyone knows that teachers are the most important in-school factor affecting student achievement, so getting the best ones in front of the neediest students is critical.

Commentary
10.6.2022
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Advanced Education, Teachers & School Leaders

High-achieving middle and high schoolers gain from latest NYC ed reform

Chester E. Finn, Jr., Brandon L. Wright

Amid nonstop controversy, New York City, which runs the nation’s largest school system, is again moving in the right direction when it comes to advancing the education of able students and opening opportunities to more high achievers. This after much retrograde activity during the regime of former Mayor Bill de Blasio.

Commentary
10.6.2022
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Instructional time lost to Covid will likely mean persistent and widening gaps in literacy

Robert Pondiscio

An analysis in the New York Times last month cheerily assured readers that Covid-related learning losses “look real but sub-catastrophic.” The damage also appears “to not be permanent, with students recovering at least some ground already,” opined David Wallace-Wells, a columnist for the NYT Magazi