School boards—an elected group of community members that sets policy, approves the yearly budget, and establishes a vision for a school district—haven’t been around forever.
Discredited ideas don’t return to most professions.
Fordham’s latest study, "Who’s on Board? School Boards and Political Representation in an Age of Conflict," offers an unvarnished look at the nation’s school board members. The findings confirm that local school boards function less like independent oversight bodies and more like glorified parent-teacher associations.
For decades, high-achieving high school students have been told the surest way to impress selective colleges is to take calculus. In a recent national survey of 133 admissions officers, 74 percent said the College Board’s Advanced Placement calculus course is among the math classes that “carry the most weight” in admissions decisions.
During my second tour as a U.S. Navy officer, I served as a navigator aboard a test warship in San Diego. In port, navigators often have little to do other than prepare for the next deployment. But not every military job is created equal.
The types, amounts, and modes of testing done in our schools are subject to debate and analysis, with “too much,” “too often,” “too complex,” and “not helpful” among the many complaints.
Although teacher quality policies involving salaries, working conditions,
Editor’s note: This was first published on the author’s Substack, The Bell Ringer. Last week, Eric Hirsch, the Chief Executive Officer of curriculum review nonprofit EdReports, announced he is stepping down in June of 2026.
Editor’s note: This was first published on Mike Petrilli’s Substack, SCHOOLED.
The science of reading (SOR) has been one of education’s hottest topics in recent years, with 40 states and the District of Columbia
Democratic Socialist mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani has proposed phasing out the successful and popular Gifted and Talented (G&T) progr
Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic Party’s nominee for mayor of New York City, has announced his intention to end kindergarten entry into the city’s Gifted & Talented (G&T) programming by September 2027.
While local school board members’ partisanship and ideology largely mirror the American public’s, that’s not the case when it comes to their views on charter schools and teachers unions. And in terms of how they see their own districts’ schools, they might as well being wearing rose-colored glasses. Those are some of the findings in our latest study, which sheds light on the surprising ways that representation does and doesn’t work in one of the country’s most important democratic institutions.
In the 2020 presidential election, barely half of 18- to 24-year-olds voted, compared to 76 percent of those in the 65–74 age group.
I’m no fan of many so-called “equitable” grading reforms.
My last column on teacher standards focused on the how. How should we deliver professional development? How long? Which teachers? Who leads? They were recommendations for structural changes about the medium of delivery.
The age-old debate over whether principals or district offices should hold the reins in schools has gotten a fresh empirical test, courtesy of a new NBER working paper from Northwestern University economist Kirabo Jackson.
Editor’s note: This was first published on Mike Petrilli’s Substack, SCHOOLED.
The first time I encountered “no-zeros” grading, I was still a teacher. To demonstrate how to use a new data entry system, our technology coordinator plugged a zero into the software, and to everyone’s surprise, the online gradebook rounded up to 49.9 percent. He’d accidentally exposed a yet-to-be-announced grading policy (the “50 percent” rule).
We face a gnarly problem in reading instruction.
Critics contend that the National Assessment Governing Board, which sets policies for the Nation’s Report Card, sets the bar too high—that the definition of “proficient” is too challenging. This aligns with moves to lower the bar in parts of the country, including efforts in some states to make it easier for kids to pass end-of-year assessments or to eliminate those tests completely. This line of thinking and these polices are deeply misguided.
As a Los Angeles Unified School District parent during the pandemic, I had a front row seat as my fellow Democrats and their teachers union allies lit the match that turned a global health crisis into an education inferno.
The teacher pipeline concerns currently being debated in the media are not new. They’re merely the most recent iteration of a slow-burning problem that has become more acute since Covid school closures upended K–12 education. One suggestion for boosting the number and diversity of new teachers is to relax licensing requirements.
Nothing elicits a groan from teachers quite like the word “professional development” or “PD.” It conjures images of peppy consultants who spent less than a year in the classroom, state-mandated training videos with all the excitement of a dental waiting room, or a waste of five precious hours just days before the school year begins.
In K–12, we’ve often treated student experience data as a “nice to have.” As we confront another disappointing set of NAEP scores, a growing evidence base suggests that understanding how students experience school
From my experiences supporting districts to choose and use high-quality instructional materials (HQIM), I’ve seen that curriculum selection often breaks down where it matters the most: in classrooms.
There’s been a lot of smart analysis of the dismal NAEP results released last week. But here’s an alarming fact that you probably haven’t seen before: The cohort of students who scored at record-low levels in twelfth grade reading were part of the same generation of kids who scored at record-high levels in fourth grade. So what happened?
Scary NAEP results again. Harvard Graduate School of Education Academic Dean Marty West writes: “We must search for new explanations and solutions.” But how?
Editor's note: This was first published in the “Civic-Ready” issue of NASBE’s State Education Standard.
The latest twelfth-grade results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress are awful, as
