National Teachers & School Leaders

Displaying 121-150 of 1454 results

High schoolers in a classroom discussion

Commentary

2.25.2026

Curriculum & Instruction, Advanced Education, Teachers & School Leaders

International Baccalaureate deserves more attention

Brandon L. Wright

The International Baccalaureate’s longest-lived and most rigorous iteration, the Diploma Program, remains widely misunderstood and under-covered in the U.S., even among those of us who work in and around advanced education. That’s a problem for a program that exists in almost 1,000 high schools and educates nearly 100,000 teenagers.

Commentary

2.23.2026

Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

We need to prepare boys for school, not schools for boys

Elizabeth Grace Matthew

Are today’s schools anti-boy? Increasing numbers of people, with various political orientations, seem to believe that the answer is yes. Thanks in large part to Richard Reeves, boys’ educational and other deficits are finally getting deserved attention.

Commentary

2.19.2026

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

Studying successful schools matters. Studying enduring success matters more.

Robert Pondiscio

In this first entry in a three-part series, Pondiscio tackles American education’s failure to learn from its success stories. The problem is not that we’re incurious about successful schools—it’s which models we seek to learn from and the lessons we take from them.

Commentary

2.19.2026

Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

Stop conflating success with moral authority

Miriam Merin

“What if the valedictorians in America’s schools were the cool kids?” This is the question Nicholas Kristof posed in his recent column in The New York Times, imagining a culture in the U.S. where academic excellence carries the same social prestige as it does in some East Asian countries.

Commentary

2.19.2026

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

Yes, teachers keep improving with time

Meredith Coffey, Ph.D.

Like many people, when I entered the world of education policy, I encountered a trove of education research that was new to me but that largely tracked with my prior experiences as a teacher.

Commentary

2.12.2026

Evidence-Based Learning, Teachers & School Leaders

Why doesn’t the education system study the successful?

Holly Korbey

It was a big January for my Hoosier family. I grew up in Bobby Knight’s Indiana, so IU’s incredible football National Championship win is a big deal in my home state.

Commentary

2.12.2026

Evidence-Based Learning, Teachers & School Leaders

First, do no harm: The academic impacts of grade inflation on long-term outcomes

Jeff Murray

There’s plenty of evidence that average grades,

Commentary

2.12.2026

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

What happens when students with disabilities switch to charter schools?

Julia Hayes

Students with disabilities make up almost 15 percent of K–12 students in the U.S. These students have long been underrepresented in charter schools, which may offer different (or fewer) special education services than traditional public schools.

Commentary

2.5.2026

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

Why Texas is right to name the books students should read

Robert Pondiscio

Texas is once again at the center of a familiar but unresolved debate about literacy, culture, and the proper role of schools.

Commentary

2.5.2026

Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

Pandemic learning loss by grade

Alicia Anderson

A steady stream of recent research has reported on the pandemic’s disparate effects on education. Unsurprisingly, lost learning time hurt children, particularly those who needed the most support.

Commentary

1.29.2026

Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

The TikTok generation presents schools with a difficult choice

Brandon L. Wright

Screens have fundamentally shifted how young minds process information, form connections, and understand the world around them. This presents schools with a stark choice: Do we struggle against the current and try to restore traditional expectations? Or do we acknowledge that those ships have sailed and adapt our systems to meet students where they are? The tempting middle path where schools try to do both may be the worst option of all.

Commentary

1.29.2026

Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, School Finance, Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Private School Choice, Teachers & School Leaders

How to become an “education governor” in 2026

Chad Aldeman

Dear governor, Do you want to be remembered for your leadership on education? Your state may be spending nearly half its budget on schools, and yet test scores continue to fall, especially for the students who need the most help.

Commentary

1.29.2026

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

A new look at charter schools’ supposed weakness

J.T. Young

A recent study offers a new look at charter schools’ special education performance. The Michigan findings show that special education students performed better in charter schools than in traditional public schools.

Commentary

1.29.2026

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

How school choice affects racial and ethnic segregation patterns in traditional districts

Jeff Murray

Traditional school districts have increasingly embraced giving students more options within their systems in recent decades, in response to growing charter and private school competition and the desire of district parents for more specialized programs and services for their children.

Commentary

1.29.2026

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

Did charters or traditional public schools do better at boosting post-pandemic student engagement?

Jill Hoppe

It is no secret that the Covid-19 pandemic disrupted K–12 education in the United States.

Commentary

1.23.2026

Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Even amidst budget gaps, there is a way districts can pay for tutoring

Marguerite Roza

Editor’s note: This was first published in SCHOOLED, Mike Petrilli’s Substack, which hosts weekly education-reform conversations around K–12’s biggest topics.

Commentary

1.23.2026

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

Only great managers can do tutoring right

Bowen Paulle

Editor’s note: This was first published in SCHOOLED, Mike Petrilli’s Substack, which hosts weekly education-reform conversations around K–12’s biggest topics.

Sacred Heart Academy in Biloxi Mississippi

Commentary

1.22.2026

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

Educational choice is giving new hope to Catholic schools

Mike McShane

Today is one of the most hopeful times for Catholic education since the early 1960s, when tuitions started to rise and enrollments started their long decline. Today’s private-school choice programs solve that problem.

Commentary

1.22.2026

Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Classrooms aren’t battlegrounds

Dale Chu

The grownups are fighting harder and louder than they have in years, both in words and deeds, about education, as well as everything else. Across the political spectrum, schools are treated not as civic institutions but as battlegrounds in a broader struggle over identity, power, and national belonging.

Commentary

1.22.2026

Teachers & School Leaders

Showing up for success: How two high-poverty D.C. schools tackle chronic absenteeism

Josh Boots

Across the country, student attendance post-pandemic remains a crisis. For the thousands of school principals who added “reduce chronic absenteeism” to their 2026 New Year’s resolutions, please know that you are not alone.

Commentary

1.16.2026

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

Tutoring works when it’s done well. Period.

Kevin Huffman

Editor’s note: This was first published in SCHOOLED, Mike Petrilli’s Substack, which hosts weekly education-reform conversations around K–12’s biggest topics.

Commentary

1.16.2026

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

Three reasons to support tutoring

Liz Cohen

Editor’s note: This was first published in SCHOOLED, Mike Petrilli’s Substack, which hosts weekly education-reform conversations around K–12’s biggest topics.

Commentary

1.15.2026

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

For the science of reading, the “big work” is yet to come

Meredith Coffey, Ph.D.

With more than 40 states having passed science-of-reading legislation, what comes next? What will make such laws succeed? Last month, we gathered a team of literacy and implementation experts to get their take. Here’s some of what we learned.

Commentary

1.15.2026

Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

What two leaders from the 1990s can teach us about education and economic competitiveness today

Matt Gandal

As 2025 drew to a close, the nation lost two leaders whose careers spanned very different worlds—but whose legacies converged around a shared conviction.

Commentary

1.15.2026

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

The Mississippi Miracle wasn’t a retention-policy mirage

Alicia Anderson

Last month, pundits debated the validity of Mississippi’s remarkable gains in student achievement.

Commentary

1.13.2026

Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

The importance of useful knowledge and truth-seeking

Matthew Levey

Economist Joel Mokyr, who won the Nobel Prize in 2025, asks why some societies generate sustained economic growth while others, with seemingly similar resources and institutions, do not. At a time of great uncertainty about our social and economic progress, his question feels urgent.

Commentary

1.5.2026

Accountability & Testing, Standards, Teachers & School Leaders

Remembering Lou Gerstner

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

Another tall education-reform tree fell the other day when Lou Gerstner passed away. The super-chief of IBM and overall business savant also spearheaded a memorable era when corporate tycoons, governors, leading educators—and U.S. presidents—joined together to get stuff done in the K–12 realm.

Commentary

12.18.2025

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

Why 2025 was a good year for education reform

Michael J. Petrilli

2025 will be remembered for a lot of bad news outside of education, but inside our little sandbox of ed-reform, there’s plenty to be grateful for—and more light than darkness

Commentary

12.11.2025

Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

The decline of human flourishing and what schools can do about it

Dale Chu

Our society is failing its most important task: fostering human flourishing. And schools aren’t helping. Far too many students graduate unprepared to think critically, navigate community, or develop the resilience needed to face life’s challenges.

Commentary

12.11.2025

Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Better schools start with better school board elections

David Griffith, Ph.D., Jill Hoppe

Like the other elections that took place last month, the one that decided who would serve on the Albuquerque Public Schools Board was characterized by record turnout.