Displaying 811-840 of 1115 results
Commentary
11.9.2020
Accountability & Testing, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Create more autonomous, accountable district schools. Here's how.

Tressa Pankovits, David Osborne

Education wasn’t explicitly on the national ballot in 2020, but education is always on the ballot, even when you don’t see it. Now that the election is behind us, education reformers can focus again on states and communities, where most of the important decisions about K–12 education get made.   

Commentary
11.5.2020
Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Are schools essential or not?

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

Are schools essential or aren’t they? Are teachers essential workers or aren’t they? How would Americans respond if large numbers of doctors, nurses, policemen, firemen, and postal workers simply opted to stay home—and their unions defended them? If you’re essential, you go to work.

Commentary
10.29.2020
Accountability & Testing, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

About those 12th grade NAEP scores: The cake was (mostly) baked years ago

Michael J. Petrilli

As we previously saw at the 4th grade and 8th grade levels, the just-released 2019 12 grade NAEP results were mostly flat or down. But we already knew from the 2015 results that this cohort of students entered high school performing below their older peers.

Commentary
10.29.2020
Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

Educating patriots

Robert Pondiscio

Decades before “equity” became a buzzword in education, E. D. Hirsch, Jr. had his finger on what the word actually means: equal access for all children to the knowledge and verbal proficiency that makes full participation in American life possible.

Commentary
10.29.2020
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

Teacher improvement during the first ten years

David Griffith

A recent study from Brown University’s Matthew A. Kraft and John P. Papay and Harvard’s Olivia L. Chi uses nine years of administrative data from Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools in North Carolina to examine teacher improvement through the lens of principal evaluations.

Commentary
10.22.2020
School Finance, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Strategies to help schools navigate the Covid-19 cash crunch

Frederick M. Hess, Brandon L. Wright

In education, one of the more bizarre debates of the past quarter century has been over whether more money improves students’ outcomes. It’s tough to think of anywhere else in American life where we’d even have that discussion.

Commentary
10.22.2020
Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Creating autonomous schools in traditional districts

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

The Progressive Policy Institute’s indefatigable David Osborne, a long-time student of and advocate for quality charter schools, now joined by Tressa Pankovits, has penned a valu

Commentary
10.15.2020
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Partisanship and American education

Ashley Rogers Berner

What are we teaching the children about our country? The short answer: not much.

Commentary
10.14.2020
Accountability & Testing, Charter Schools, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

The case for urban charter schools

David Griffith, Michael J. Petrilli

Contrary to much public rhetoric, the evidence for expanding charter schools in urban areas is stronger than ever. To be sure, the research is less positive for charters operating outside of the nation’s urban centers. And multiple studies suggest that internet-based schools and charters that serve mostly middle-class students, perform worse than their district counterparts, at least on traditional test-score-based measures. But charters needn’t work everywhere to be of service to society.

Commentary
10.14.2020
Charter Schools, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Charter schooling on the ropes?

Dale Chu

The negative partisanship animating this year’s presidential contest notwithstanding, charter school advocates will have their hands full no matter who prevails.

Commentary
10.14.2020
Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Ohio’s charter school turnaround

Aaron Churchill

For a number of years, Ohio’s charter school sector has been more of a punchline than an exemplar in national debates about charters. The criticisms, though sometimes exaggerated, were not entirely unwarranted.

Commentary
10.14.2020
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

The vanishing pre-K advantage

Jeff Murray

Before the coming of the pandemic, pre-K was a hot topic.

Commentary
10.14.2020
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Denver school board champions Black excellence, except in charter schools

Alan Gottlieb

The Denver school board spent forty-five minutes Monday getting an update on its Black Excellence Resolution and worthy efforts being made at district and school levels to address systemic racism and implicit bias.

Commentary
10.14.2020
Teachers & School Leaders

Are we ready to close schools’ windows?

Susan Miller

For the past nine months, the battle against Covid-19 has required school districts to constantly adapt as conditions evolved. School indoor air quality is the next challenge districts must successfully meet if in-person instruction is to continue or resume. Let me begin with some points I think many people reading this agree on:

Commentary
10.7.2020
Accountability & Testing, Curriculum & Instruction, Advanced Education, Teachers & School Leaders

Equity and unintended consequences in the Washington suburbs

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

Two big public-school systems in the D.C. area are on the verge of letting their zeal for equity and racial justice lead to consequences they may end up regretting. Fairfax County, which operates one of America’s best known and most esteemed “exam schools,” is may use a lottery, rather than test scores and other quality measures, for admissions. And Loudoun County is considering revising its rules for “professional conduct” by school staff to punish employees—teachers included—in truly Orwellian ways.

Commentary
10.7.2020
Charter Schools, Teachers & School Leaders

The unwelcome success of charter schools

Ian Rowe

Of the nearly 2,000 public school students beginning high school in the South Bronx (District 8 of NYC public schools) in 2015, only 2 percent graduated ready for college four years later.

Commentary
9.30.2020
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

Elementary schools: To improve reading comprehension, teach more social studies

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

If America is serious about wanting kids to become better readers, our elementary schools need to spend more time teaching social studies rather than doubling-down on “reading comprehension.” This may seem counterintuitive, but it’s the key takeaway from our new study. It’s also especially important for girls and those from lower-income and/or non-English-speaking homes.

Commentary
9.30.2020
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

Do America’s elementary school students need more social studies?

Dale Chu

A new study published last week by Fordham, Social Studies Instruction and Reading Comprehension: Evidence from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, suggests that to become better readers, elementary students should spend more time on social studies.

Commentary
9.30.2020
Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Forecasting the long-run costs of coronavirus

Jeff Murray

Modeling the effects of a global pandemic while it’s ongoing seems like a prime example of “inexact science.” It’s also sure to depress. But it’s happening.

Commentary
9.24.2020
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Outdoor learning can help students during Covid-19 and beyond

Alan Gottlieb

When students at Anser Charter School in Garden City, Idaho, begin returning to in-person classes September 28, everything about school will look different than six months ago.

Commentary
9.24.2020
Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

NEW REPORT: Social Studies Instruction and Reading Comprehension: Evidence from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study

The Education Gadfly

Even as phonics battles rage in the realm of primary reading and with two-thirds of American fourth and eighth graders failing to read proficiently, another tussle has been with us for ages regarding how best to develop the vital elements of reading ability that go beyond decoding skills and phonemic awareness.

Commentary
9.23.2020
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

A commission on teaching American history might do some good

Michael J. Petrilli

American schoolchildren should not be taught to hate their country, or to view it as an “inherently racist” or “white supremacist” nation. But to move forward constructively on this point, instead of in a manner that further divides the country, it would be much better for a broad coalition of the center-right to the center-left to embrace a teaching of history that is clear-eyed, patriotic, and critical.

Commentary
9.23.2020
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Rocky road to better civics education

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

There’s much energy in the cosmos these days around civics education, history education, maybe even “patriotic” history and civics education.

Commentary
9.23.2020
Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

To protect students during the economic downturn, schools need to spend money wisely

Frederick M. Hess, Brandon L. Wright

This spring, the nation was slammed by a pandemic that has thus far killed nearly 200,000 Americans, thrown millions out of work, shuttered schools, and upended the rhythms of teaching and learning. Suddenly the kitchen table became a makeshift desk and “school” came to mean hours seated in front of a Chromebook.

Commentary
9.23.2020
Accountability & Testing, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

Reality check: Rating students’ math performance

Amber M. Northern, Ph.D.

There are two aspects of standardized testing to which opponents tend to object: The testing itself and how the results are used.