Teachers & School Leaders

Displaying 1381-1410 of 1450 results
Commentary
9.18.2019
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Advanced Education, Personalized Learning, Teachers & School Leaders

Why has AP succeeded when so many other reforms have failed?

Chester E. Finn, Jr., Andrew Scanlan

American K–12 education is awash in reforms, nostrums, interventions, silver bullets, pilot programs, snake oil peddlers, advocates, and crusaders, not to mention innumerable private foundations that occasionally emerge from their endless cycles of strategic planning to unload their latest brainstorms upon the land. Yet when subjected to close scrutiny, not much actually “works.” The six-decade old Advanced Placement program is a rare and welcome exception.

Commentary
9.18.2019
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Advanced Education, Personalized Learning, Teachers & School Leaders

Low public support for ability grouping is an opportunity for personalized pacing

Brandon L. Wright

The latest Education Next poll asked respondents whether they support ability grouping, whereby students take classes with peers at similar academic achievement levels, and for middle school the majority’s answer was no.

Commentary
9.18.2019
Evidence-Based Learning, Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Advanced Education, Personalized Learning, Teachers & School Leaders

How two personalized learning models accelerate the progress of their high-achieving students

Michael J. Petrilli

Editor’s note: This is the third in a series of posts looking at how two school networks—Rocketship Public Schools and Wildflower Schools—enable their students to meet standards at their own pace.

Commentary
9.18.2019
Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

How charter school attendance affects students’ special-needs status

Amber M. Northern, Ph.D.

Charters schools are often criticized for not enrolling enough or not adequately serving special student populations, particularly students with special needs. A new study by Tufts University’s Elizabeth Setren evaluates this claim with a unique dataset in Boston.

Commentary
9.18.2019
Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

Teachers’ views on learning strategies and research

Tran Le

A new report by Ulrich Boser and The Learning Agency investigates what K–12 educators know—or mistakenly believe—about effective learning strategies and where they obtain information about learning research.

Commentary
9.11.2019
Accountability & Testing, Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Advanced Education, Standards, Teachers & School Leaders

The GAS Factor: Lessons learned at Success Academy

Robert Pondiscio

Much of the initial response to Robert’s new book, "How The Other Half Learns," has focused on the winnowing effects of Success Academy’s enrollment process, which ensures that the children of only the most committed parents enroll and persist. But that’s just the start of the story. You have to look at what parent buy-in actually buys: a school culture that drives student achievement, and which can only be achieved when parents are active participants, not unwilling conscripts.

Commentary
9.11.2019
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Standards, Teachers & School Leaders

The scourge of education malpractice

Dale Chu

What if you were told that elementary schools in the United States are teaching children to be poor readers?

Commentary
9.11.2019
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Personalized Learning, Teachers & School Leaders

How personalized learning enthusiasts can ensure they aren’t lowering the bar for the kids who are behind

Michael J. Petrilli

Editor’s note: This is the second in a series of posts looking at how two school networks—Rocketship Public Schools and Wildflower Schools—enable their students to master standards at their own pace. See the first post here.

Podcast
9.11.2019
Accountability & Testing, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

The Education Gadfly Show: Parents’ role in school improvement

On this week’s podcast, Patrick Corvington, executive director of DC School Reform Now, joins Mike Petrilli and David Griffith to offer advice on how parents can play a role in improving their kids’ schools. On the Research Minute, Amber Northern examines the academic effects of early interventions for children born at a low birth-weight.

Commentary
9.4.2019
Evidence-Based Learning, Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Personalized Learning, Teachers & School Leaders

In most elementary classrooms, kids are all over the map academically. Here’s how two schools cope.

Michael J. Petrilli

Almost a decade ago, I wrote that “the greatest challenge facing America’s schools today [is] the enormous variation in the academic level of students coming into any given classroom.” Unlike plenty of what I’ve said over the years, this one has stood the test of time.

Commentary
9.4.2019
Advanced Education, Teachers & School Leaders

How teachers encourage students to take AP classes

Tran Le

A recent report by Eugene Judson, Nicole Bowers, and Kristi Glassmeyer investigates what classroom mechanisms compel students to enroll in Advanced Placement (AP) science and math courses and to complete their associated exams—and how that differs between low- and high-income schools.

Commentary
9.4.2019
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Personalized Learning, Teachers & School Leaders

Effective social studies interventions for students with emotional and behavioral disorders

Pedro Enamorado

Teaching students to engage with history and civics is important in a democratic society. The critical thinking and communication skills taught in social studies classes are all the more essential to students with Emotional and Behavioral Disorders (EBD) because they equip them to overcome difficulties interacting with and relating to peers.

Commentary
8.29.2019
Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Merit pay melts away

Dale Chu

Summer ’19 is showing its age: My daughter recently returned to school, bright yellow buses are canvassing my neighborhood again, and Pumpkin Spice Latte is back.

Commentary
8.28.2019
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Personalized Learning, Teachers & School Leaders

Can educational data mining predict student performance and enhance personalized learning?

Olivia Piontek

Artificial intelligence and machine learning are ubiquitous, playing a role in everything from Netflix and Instagram algorithms to transportation and healthcare delivery. But it’s also increasingly being used to improve educational pedagogy and delivery through a process called educational data mining (EDM).

Commentary
8.23.2019
Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

The meeting is dead, long live the meeting

Hollie Pettersson, Kerri Briggs

A few weeks back, New York City Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza said that principals would not be required to attend district meetings this coming September.

Commentary
8.21.2019
Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

Training teachers and principals to support the needs of diverse students

Tran Le

A new report by William Johnston and Christopher Young from the RAND Corporation examines the perspectives of teachers and principals about their pre-service training programs, with an emphasis on their preparation for work with non-white and low-income students.

Commentary
8.14.2019
Accountability & Testing, Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Personalized Learning, Teachers & School Leaders

The new PDK poll: Gems amid the gravel

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

For more than half a century now, back-to-school time has brought another Phi Delta Kappan survey of “the public’s attitudes toward the public schools.” They invariably recycle some familiar questions (e.g., the grades you would give your child’s schools and the nation’s schools). Other topics, however, come and go.

Commentary
8.14.2019
Accountability & Testing, Teachers & School Leaders

Teachers’ complicated attitudes about school discipline

Peter Greene

I have been there; every teacher has. The clock is ticking, you've got just fifteen minutes left to wrap up the lesson, and the time is being chipped away by a student who is disrupting the classroom. How you respond to that situation involves the balance of dozens of different factors. It's complicated, and some of that complexity is captured in a new report out this week.

Commentary
8.14.2019
Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

Should schools give children more time to play?

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

The education solar system is endlessly distorted by the extraordinary presence within it of two separate suns with gravitational fields that tug the policy planets in different directions.

Commentary
8.14.2019
Accountability & Testing, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

Promising state-led assessment innovations

Pedro Enamorado

In the last decade, states have experimented with many new assessment systems in math and reading. A new Bellwether brief by Bonnie O’Keefe and Brandon Lewis examines recent innovations used or proposed by states that could serve educators well.

Report
7.30.2019
Accountability & Testing, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Discipline Reform through the Eyes of Teachers

David Griffith, Ph.D., Adam Tyner, Ph.D.

The debate over school discipline reform is one of the most polarized in all of education. Advocates for reform believe that suspensions are racially biased and put students in a “school-to-prison pipeline.” Opponents worry that softer discipline approaches will make classrooms unruly, impeding efforts to help all students learn and narrow achievement gaps.

Podcast
6.5.2019
Charter Schools, Teachers & School Leaders

The Education Gadfly Show: The benefits of having a same-race teacher

On this week's podcast, Seth Gershenson, Associate Professor at American University and author of Fordham's latest study, Student-Teacher Race Match in Charter and Traditional Public Schools, joins Mike Petrilli and David Griffith to discuss that research. On the Research Minute, Amber Northern examines how the actions of turnaround schools affect teacher mobility.

Report
6.4.2019
Charter Schools, Teachers & School Leaders

Student-Teacher Race Match in Charter and Traditional Public Schools

There’s mounting evidence that, for children of color especially, having one or more teachers of the same race over the course of students’ educational careers seems to make a positive difference. But to what extent, if any, do the benefits of having a same-race teacher vary by type of school? Existing “race-match” studies fail to distinguish among the traditional district and charter school sectors. This study fills that gap and finds that the effects of having a same-race teacher appear stronger in charter schools than in the traditional district sector—and stronger still for nonwhite students.

Commentary
5.10.2019
Teachers & School Leaders

Teacher Appreciation Week: He pushed us hard and held on tight

Erika Sanzi

As we wrap up Teacher Appreciation Week, I’ve done some reflecting about my own years as a student. There are teachers who have a lasting impact on our lives and on April 2, I lost one of mine. Mr. Murphy wasn’t just special because of how much knowledge of history and politics was crammed into his brain and shared with all of us, but he pushed us in ways that every student deserves to be pushed. He challenged us to think and come to our own conclusions. He may not have agreed with where we all landed but he sure did love to wave his hands in the air and debate us when he didn’t.

Report
3.14.2019
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

Toward a Golden Age of Educational Practice

Michael J. Petrilli

In recent years, we have reached a homeostasis in education policy, characterized by clearer and fairer but lighter-touch accountability systems and the incremental growth of school choice options for families—but little appetite for big and bold new initiatives.