The Indianapolis branch of Teach For America (TFA Indy) was established in 2008, expanding the national organization’s mission—to build and deploy a corps of high-quality education leaders to support high-needs students—into the Hoosier State.
This month, Ohio joined a growing list of states and school systems that require schools to use high-quality instructional materials aligned to the science of reading, an approach to reading instruction that emphasizes
Rather than wait until kids are leaving high school to try to even the playing field, we must start in kindergarten to identify the most academically talented students of all races and backgrounds and give them the support they need to excel.
Nearly two years after federal data indicated that 99 percent of students had returned to in-person learning full-time, as many as one out of three students still haven’t really returned fu
Editor's note: Read more about this topic in Finn's essay in National Affairs, "The Accountability Challenge."
You may have heard that conservative parent groups are banning books. From the Pulitzer-prize winning graphic novel Maus, to seemingly anything that addresses LGBT themes, such groups are challenging their inclusion in libraries and on curricula.
With the liberal arts seemingly in a perpetual budgetary and identity
Recent policy innovations such as education savings accounts, microgrants, and tax credits address some of the financial barriers that prevent families from accessing flexible education opportunities.
In many schools, being identified as advanced or gifted doesn’t guarantee that students will receive “gifted services.” For low-income students, Black and Brown students, rural students, and many others, the odds of being identified as gifted and having access to advanced coursework are even lower than for their higher-income and White or Asian peers.
America’s school choice moment has finally arrived, but the vast majority of students nationwide still attend traditional public schools—and will for the foreseeable future. Conservatives would be wise to support policies that give families choices within the public education system. Cross-district open enrollment does precisely that, and it has strong bipartisan support.
Parents and policymakers inured to years of depressing headlines about learning disruptions in the wake of the pandemic might be tempted to shrug at the latest federal test data on the achievement of thirteen-year-olds as more of the same.
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Alia Wong of USA Today joins Mike and David to discuss what’s caus
Editor’s note: This is an edition of “Advance,” a newsletter from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute written by Brandon Wright, our Editorial Director, and published every other week. Its purpose is to monitor the progress of gifted education in America, including legal and legislative developments, policy and leadership changes, emerging research, grassroots efforts, and more.
This month, New York City students received their offers to the city’s eight specialized high schools. As has been the case in recent years, Asian students form over half of the admittees, followed by White, Hispanic, and Black students.
An academic trifle to most, literary theory is a deceptively consequential issue in American education. In English classrooms, students are supposed to encounter great works of literature, sharpening and honing their own view of the world. And so it matters not just what books we choose to read with students, but how we read them.
One of the most important efforts in America today is making sure we have as large and diverse a group of academic high achievers as possible in order to meet tomorrow’s challenges. A new report released this week—Building a Wider, More Diverse Pipeline of Advanced Learners—offers three-dozen recommendations to education leaders and policymakers at all levels on how to accomplish this.
Recent shifts in enrollment patterns across Texas school sectors have gone in one direction—out of traditional public schools. Within those shifts, a disproportionately large swath of students has left for classical charter schools. These trends reflect a wider renaissance of classical schooling across the United States.
Arguments for and against “no zeroes” and other types of “hold harmless” grading
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Paul DiPerna of EdChoice joins Mike Petrilli and David Griffith to di
While most of the country debates restricting children’s access to books, at Liberty, a Core Knowledge school that emphasizes character education, the debate runs in the opposite direction: Which books should kids be reading?
In the summer of 2018, I was thrilled to learn that I would be teaching AP English Language and Composition starting that fall. As part of New York City’s AP for All initiative, I became one of the first two AP teachers at my small, alternative public high school.
Every leader of a state or school system gets asked the question, “How do all of the things we are doing fit together?” It’s a question about “coherence”—the Holy Grail of education, says Freitag. And for the last two years, she has worked with leaders of four offices in one state with the goal of finding more of it. Here’s what she learned.
Editor’s note: This was first published by The 74.
In recent years, the debate on the impact of financial resources in education has been petering out. Studies showing that more money for schools has had a discernable effect on student academic outcomes, particularly for students from lower-income families, keep accumulating.
As the school year winds down, and with the World Health Organization officially declaring the emergency phase of the Covid-19 pandemic over earlier this month, many students, parents, a
Editor’s note: This article was first published by The 74.
There’s a lot of buzz right now about the potential for the Institute of Education Sciences to finally get the resources and authority to support major breakthroughs in teaching and learning via an “ARPA-ED,” modeled after the Defense Department’s DARPA program. Petrilli wants something more fundamental: basic information about what the heck is going on in America’s classrooms. Enter his (admittedly far-fetched) “Mars rover for schools” idea.
Since the release of Chat GPT last year, the professional classes have suffered an existential dilemma.
A few weeks ago, I finally sat down with Joe Feldman’s Grading for Equity (2018), expecting to nod my head along with every page. I loved teaching at an alternative school, considered myself flexible about deadlines, and frequently encouraged students to revise their writing.
This year’s state legislative sessions, now coming to a close, have yielded a blizzard of high-profile victories on school choice, from the enactment of universal education savings accounts (ESA) programs, to the expansion of private school choice policies to serve many more families, to fairer funding for charter schools.
