A bright future for open enrollment
Matthew Ladner“Hi. Welcome to the future. San Dimas, California. 2688.” Rufus, played by George Carlin, thus opened the American film classic Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure by explaining that, in the distant future, everything is great. The water, air, and even the dirt is clean.
A third disrupted year can only strain Americans’ ties to traditional public schools
Robert PondiscioIn the early days of the pandemic, I was dismissive of “new normal” talk about Covid’s long-term impact on schooling. There was good reason for skepticism.
The Education Gadfly Show #784: Remote learning worked well for some students. What schools can learn from that.
The Education Gadfly Show #783: One teacher’s call for choice and content-rich curricula
“Public education sucks” is a weak argument for school choice
Robert PondiscioI’ve long believed the best argument for school choice is to turn up the lights on what is possible when there’s room for a wide variety of schools, curricula, and cultures. Call it the When Harry Met Sally model.
We’re moving toward a more student-focused, parent-directed, pluralistic K–12 system
Bruno V. Manno“Never in my lifetime have so many parents been so eager for so much education change.” So said longtime pollster Frank Luntz after surveying 1,000 public and private school parents on how the pandemic affected their view of schools.
Districts are failing special-needs students. School choice is helping.
Ginny GentlesPublic schools have long failed to serve adequately students with disabilities, but school closures, disastrous for the millions of children with special needs, may finally encourage a critical mass of parents to do something about it.
Biden’s anticompetitive moves on charters and choice
Dale ChuEarlier this month, President Biden issued a sweeping executive order encouraging federal agencies to undertake a series of initiatives aimed at increasing competition in the U.S. economy. But there’s a mismatch between his approach to competition in the private sector and his support for monopoly when it comes to public education.
Scaling up the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship program helped public schools improve
Jeff MurrayAs supporters of school choice celebrate a remarkable season of legislative wins across the country, they can also add some research-based evidence to their grounds for satisfaction.
The Education Gadfly Show #777: O-H-I-O: School reform victories in the Buckeye State
Does public preschool benefit students from Kindergarten to college?
Jeff MurrayA trio of researchers from the University of Chicago, MIT, and UC Berkeley recently released a working paper that indicates a multitude of positive long-term effects—very long term, in fact—associated with attendance at public preschool.
Lessons learned from 10 years of pioneering blended learning
Jeff Kerscher, Emily GilbrideIn 1908, the Ford Motor Company unveiled the Model T and introduced a reliable, affordable automobile for the middle class. While revolutionary, the Model T also took twelve hours and 7,882 tasks to assemble 1,481 parts, and increased production time meant increased costs. In 1913, Ford introduced an assembly line and cut production to ninety-three minutes.
How any school can personalize learning, part II
Beth RabbittIn part I of this two-part series, I wrote about three of the most common practices teachers implement in elementary schools that successfully personalize learning: giving each child a learning plan, organizing instruction around class-level and individual mastery, and using grouping an
How any school can personalize learning, part I
Beth RabbittIn a previous Flypaper post, Mike Petrilli described the challenge of personalizing instruction for our youngest learners as the “Mount Everest” of education.
How elementary schools can address unfinished learning through personalization
Michael J. PetrilliEditor’s note: This is the fifth and final installment in a series of posts about envelope-pushing strategies that schools might embrace to address students’ learning loss in the wake of the pandemic.
The narrow path to do it right: Lessons from vaccine making for high-dosage tutoring
Mike Goldstein, Bowen PaulleHigh-dosage tutoring is receiving a lot of buzz as a promising tool to address learning loss in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. But unlike vaccines, successful tutoring programs are challenging to scale with fidelity. In this paper, long-time educators Michael Goldstein and Bowen Paulle explain how leaders can smartly scale promising tutoring programs that can boost student outcomes.
How ya gonna keep ‘em back in that old school?
Chester E. Finn, Jr.If the pandemic vanished tomorrow and all U.S. schools instantly reopened in exactly the same fashion as they were operating last February, how many parents would be satisfied to return their daughters and sons to the same old familiar classrooms, teachers, schedules and curricula? A lot fewer than the same old schools and those who run and teach in them are expecting back!
How anger over Covid closures can fuel the school choice movement
Robert PondiscioThe father testifying before Virginia’s Loudon County school board
2020 Recap: New research from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute
Pedro EnamoradoAs with most years, 2020 has been a busy one for the Fordham research team. We published many groundbreaking studies, adding contributions to the evidence base on literacy, civic education, education funding, school choice, and gifted programs, among others.
For better or worse, religiously-affiliated charter schools are on their way
Michael J. PetrilliA U.S. Supreme Court decision is introducing a new type of charter school that’s likely to cheer conservatives but alarm many progressives: the religiously-affiliated charter. Those of us in the charter movement need to figure out how to keep them from splitting the charter coalition.
How states can meet the rising demand for school choice
Dale ChuSix months into the pandemic, the nation’s forced experiment in remote learning has resumed. But our education system’s design is ill-suited to the unique quandaries posed by Covid-19. District officials continue to ask parents for grace and patience, and many have continued to oblige, but if current conditions persist into next year and beyond, demand for choice will almost certainly increase as a large number of parents keep their children at home.
Teacher unions vs. private schools
Chester E. Finn, Jr.The private schools in Montgomery County, Maryland, where I live, are breathing a sigh of relief that, after much sturm und drang this past week, they’re back in charge of their own decisions about whether and how to re-open.
The Education Gadfly Show: Another reason for more school autonomy
On this week’s podcast, David Osborne, director of the Reinventing America’s Schools Project at the Progressive Policy Institute, joins Checker
Response to “Let’s rebuild special education when schools reopen”
Alice Parker, Christopher T. CrossThe Fordham Institute recently published an article called “Let’s rebuild special education when schools reopen,” by Anne Delfosse and Miriam Kurtzig Freedman. Reading it prompted both of us to offer our own thoughts, drawn from experience.
Let’s rebuild special education when schools reopen
Anne Delfosse, Miriam Kurtzig FreedmanThis spring’s school closures have challenged us to look at many things differently and to be open-minded, creative, and brave about moving toward necessary change. As we consider reopening schools in the fall, let’s hold on to that mindset and ask what should special education become? Does the forty-five-year-old federal law (IDEA) need a thorough redo? We believe it does.
The Education Gadfly Show: The crisis’s outsized impacts on Catholic schools
On this week’s podcast, Michael McShane, the director of national research at EdChoice, joins Mike Petrilli to discuss how Catholic
The Education Gadfly Show: The link between location and income
This week’s podcast guest is John V.
Keeping the teacher-student feedback loop intact during distance learning
Maggie JohnsonEditor’s note: This blog post was first published by Partnership Schools.
A self-reflection tool for distance learners
Beth BlaufussEditor’s note: This blog post was first published by Partnership Schools.