Teachers & School Leaders

Displaying 1321-1350 of 1450 results
Commentary
1.14.2020
Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

Digging in the dirt for quality curriculum

Robert Pondiscio

A recent Fordham report finds that the quality of lessons that teachers get off the Internet is not very good. That’s no surprise but it obscures a bigger problem. If skilled practitioners in any profession feel compelled to scour the Internet for the basic tools of their trade that should concern us more than the quality of what they unearth. The very existence of a “vast curriculum bazaar” sends troubling signals about our general indifference to curriculum’s central role in learning, and our inattention to coherence and what gets taught.

Commentary
1.14.2020
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

Why don’t evidence-based practices take hold in schools?

Jeremy Noonan

Education Week’s recent report, Getting Reading Right, found that the most popular reading curricula in the country are not aligned with settled reading science.

Commentary
1.8.2020
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Where R & D and school improvement meet, good things happen

Michael J. Petrilli

Fordham’s recent Moonshot for Kids competition, a collaboration with the Center for American Progress, highlighted the distinction between research and development and “school improvement.” They’re very different concepts. R & D is inherently top-down and school improvement mostly bottom-up. Yet bringing them into productive contact with one another is vital and might be the key to getting student outcomes moving in the right direction once again.

Commentary
12.19.2019
Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

Lessons educators can heed from the grim findings of “The Supplemental Curriculum Bazaar”

Morgan Polikoff

Almost all American teachers supplement their core curriculum (if they even have one) with materials they gather from the internet. National surveys show that supplementation is a growing phenomenon, and that many teachers use supplementary materials in large proportions of their lessons.

Commentary
12.18.2019
Teachers & School Leaders

Teacher interactions make a difference in online courses

Pedro Enamorado

Online courses have produced mixed results. They can be good tools for motivated students. But many struggling students use online courses to gain course credit without realizing they aren’t preparing them for college.

Commentary
12.11.2019
Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

Dear teachers, most of the popular lessons you found online aren't worth using

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

Amazon unveiled a new online “storefront” called Amazon Ignite that will allow educators to earn money by publishing—online, of course—their original lesson plans, worksheets, games, and more. The entry into the curricular marketplace is obviously motivated by a perceived market opportunity—and that’s not wrong. The vast majority of teachers are supplementing their core curriculum or don’t have one to start with. Yet we know almost nothing about the quality of such supplementary materials. Our new study helps fill that void.

Commentary
12.11.2019
Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

Reading between the lines: What states can do about America’s literacy challenge

Joanne Weiss

In her compelling new book, The Knowledge Gap, Natalie Wexler relates a story about a young girl in an elementary school in Washington, D.C., who, for over ten minutes during reading class, is busy drawing a picture on her reading worksheet. When Wexler asks what she’s doing, the little girl replies that she’s drawing clowns. “Why are you drawing clowns?” Wexler asks.

Commentary
12.11.2019
Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

A heroic effort to right the civics ship

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

Civics education has been a problem forever, or so it seems, and if that problem feels more urgent today it’s because so many are dismayed by the erosion of civility and good citizenship in today’s America, as well as mounting evidence that younger generations are both woefully ignorant in this realm—check out

Report
12.10.2019
Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

The Supplemental Curriculum Bazaar: Is What's Online Any Good?

Morgan Polikoff, Jennifer Dean

Nearly all teachers today report using the Internet to obtain instructional materials, and many of them do so quite often. And while several organizations now offer impartial reviews of full curriculum products, very little is known about the content and quality of supplemental instructional materials.

Commentary
12.4.2019
Accountability & Testing, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

The Houston Federation of Teachers plays the Trump card

Dale Chu

In the latest episode of what promises to be a protracted saga in the Lone Star State, the Houston Federation of Teachers (HFT) recently filed a federal lawsuit to halt the state’s takeover of the Houston school district, one of the largest in the country.

Commentary
11.26.2019
Accountability & Testing, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Time to press “pause” on credit recovery

Adam Tyner, Ph.D.

“It’s like some bullsh-t way to get kids to pass.” That’s the cynical description of high school “credit recovery” programs an eleventh grader gave to the New York Post last year. But cynicism appears to be in order.

Commentary
11.26.2019
Teachers & School Leaders

A simple, low-cost way to improve the student teaching experience

Amber M. Northern, Ph.D.

The student teaching experience is a crash course in lesson planning, organization skills, and classroom management—and also in learning from and gelling with the teacher who is in charge of teaching you these things. That can be challenging, especially since cooperating teachers (CTs) are recruited in multiple ways, none of which is all that thoughtful or organized.

Commentary
11.13.2019
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

All 2019 Wonkathon submissions are in. Here’s what the wonks proposed.

Tran Le

The past decade’s shift to significantly higher academic standards and more rigorous assessments means that many more students are now far below grade-level expectations. In recent months and years, there’s been much debate about how best to help such students catch up.

Commentary
11.12.2019
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Driving learning for all students: A framework for Multi-Tiered Systems of Support

Bonnie Hain, Laura Slover

In our work with schools at CenterPoint, we often are asked to help design or support the implementation of research-based, high quality curriculum. Almost invariably, discussions with school leaders turn to the connections among and between the core curriculum and the tiered supports for students who are off grade level and struggling to advance.

Commentary
11.12.2019
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

The best way to help students who are several grade levels behind is to do a better job of following their progress, or lack of it, in the long term

Barbara Gottschalk

By the time struggling students reach middle school, it’s pretty obvious it took time for them to get several grade levels behind. It’s also obvious we have numerous ways to help these students. I’m guessing many other submissions to Wonkathon 2019 describe these strategies and approaches. What isn’t so obvious, however, is what’s causing some students to struggle.

Commentary
11.11.2019
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

2019 WONKATHON RUNNER-UP: Teachers and curricula aren’t enough for below-grade-level students. They also require scalable strategies tailored to their needs.

Jessica Varevice

Editor’s note: This was the second-place submission, out of nineteen, to Fordham’s 2019 Wonkathon, in which we asked participants to answer the question: “What’s the best way to help students who are several grade levels behind?”

Commentary
11.11.2019
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

Fostering teacher quality and expertise is the best way to help students who are several grade levels behind

Candice McQueen

Research and our personal experience tell us that the single most important factor affecting student achievement is the quality of the teacher in the classroom. No technology, tool, or other seemingly magic program can help students who are several grade levels behind get back on track and ultimately thrive.

Commentary
11.8.2019
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

To ensure success for all students, state assessment makers must be learners, too

In the last two decades, since states began implementing standardized testing under No Child Left Behind, there has been much debate about the value of those assessments. In Louisiana, where I serve as an Assistant Superintendent, we know measurement of student learning is critical, and tests hold the power to define the academic bar for all students.

Commentary
11.8.2019
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

If we want to accelerate student learning, we need to redesign the school day

David Liben, Meredith Liben

Historically, literacy instruction in the United States privileges the privileged. It starts in the earliest grades, when less systematic approaches favored in many early literacy curricula privilege students who arrive at school more comfortable with language and books.

Commentary
11.7.2019
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

Engaging families, early and often, is the best way to help students who are several grade levels behind

Vidya Sundaram, Elisabeth O’Bryon

During this past summer, Family Engagement Lab facilitated a gathering of parents to discuss parent-teacher partnerships at their elementary school. During the discussion, the group moderator pulled us aside to let us know that a parent was there because her child had been retained a grade and she did not know why.