Personalized Learning

Displaying 1-30 of 51 results
Multiple pathways
Commentary
8.19.2026
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Advanced Education, Personalized Learning, Teachers & School Leaders

Why it’s finally time to rethink age-based schooling

Jonathan Barazzutti

The past century has seen enormous developments in virtually all areas of life, from medicine to transportation to living standards and even to social and cultural attitudes. Yet our education system has not followed suit. One of the greatest illustrations of this is in the continued emphasis on age as the primary determinant of educational placement.

Multiple pathways
Student taking test
Commentary
4.30.2026
Accountability & Testing, Personalized Learning

When helping hurts: Rethinking special education accommodations

Daniel Buck

We need to talk about accommodations. Like puppies or grandma’s cookies, they are treated as unmitigated goods—at least in my experience. Should we not support all students? Should we not provide differentiated instruction? Who in their right mind could oppose offering accommodations, leveling the playing field, and helping students with special needs?

Student taking test
Feet with arrows in different directions
Commentary
7.10.2025
Charter Schools, Governance, Personalized Learning, Private School Choice

Seizing educational dynamism

Stéphane Lavertu, Tim Rosenberger

American education is experiencing an historic shift. After more than a century of consolidation and standardization, a wave of pluralism is sweeping the country.

Feet with arrows in different directions
student and tutor
Commentary
7.10.2025
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Personalized Learning

Attend and achieve: Can high-impact tutoring boost student attendance?

Robert Chung

Five years after the onset of the pandemic, schools continue to combat pandemic-era learning loss and chronic absenteeism. One evidence-based method to expedite learning recovery is high-impact tutoring.

student and tutor
Students around a table
Commentary
6.6.2024
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Advanced Education, Personalized Learning, Teachers & School Leaders

One new idea, and two old ones, for moving beyond age-based grouping of students

Michael J. Petrilli

A child’s age is only a crude proxy for their academic readiness, yet it’s the primary means by which we group children in school. More age variety in classrooms could allow for greater academic consistency; grade retention and grade acceleration could help us get there. So too could a new idea from Petrilli: transitional kindergarten–5.

Students around a table
Undefined
5.11.2022
Career & Technical Education, Curriculum & Instruction, Personalized Learning

Education Gadfly Show #819: The pod on (pandemic) pods

  On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Ashley Jochim, a principal at the Center on Reinventing Public Education, joins Mike

National Working Group on Advanced Education announcement image
Commentary
4.26.2022
Personalized Learning

Announcing the National Working Group on Advanced Education

The Education Gadfly

The Thomas B. Fordham Institute is pleased to announce the launch of the National Working Group on Advanced Education. The Working Group’s mission is to promote research, policies, and practices that will develop the full capacities of students with high academic potential, especially Black and Hispanic students and those coming from economically disadvantaged backgrounds.

National Working Group on Advanced Education announcement image
Commentary
6.17.2021
Personalized Learning

Does public preschool benefit students from Kindergarten to college?

Jeff Murray

A 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.

Commentary
5.25.2021
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Personalized Learning, Teachers & School Leaders

Lessons learned from 10 years of pioneering blended learning

Jeff Kerscher, Emily Gilbride

In 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.

Commentary
3.26.2021
Curriculum & Instruction, Personalized Learning, Teachers & School Leaders

How any school can personalize learning, part II

Beth Rabbitt

In 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

Commentary
3.19.2021
Curriculum & Instruction, Personalized Learning, Teachers & School Leaders

How any school can personalize learning, part I

Beth Rabbitt

In a previous Flypaper post, Mike Petrilli described the challenge of personalizing instruction for our youngest learners as the “Mount Everest” of education.

Getty Images/Wavebreakmedia
Commentary
3.11.2021
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Personalized Learning, Teachers & School Leaders

How elementary schools can address unfinished learning through personalization

Michael J. Petrilli

Editor’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.

Getty Images/Wavebreakmedia
Report
3.10.2021
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Personalized Learning

The narrow path to do it right: Lessons from vaccine making for high-dosage tutoring

Mike Goldstein, Bowen Paulle

High-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.

Commentary
12.22.2020
Personalized Learning

2020 Recap: New research from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute

Pedro Enamorado

As 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.

Commentary
7.13.2020
Curriculum & Instruction, Personalized Learning

Response to “Let’s rebuild special education when schools reopen”

Alice Parker, Christopher T. Cross

The 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.

Commentary
6.17.2020
Governance, Personalized Learning, Teachers & School Leaders

Let’s rebuild special education when schools reopen

Anne Delfosse, Miriam Kurtzig Freedman

This 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.

Finn at home learning resources
Commentary
3.19.2020
Curriculum & Instruction, Personalized Learning

Great YouTube channels for middle schoolers and high schoolers for learning from home during COVID-19 school closures

Emma Finn

Parents who will be homeschooling (temporarily) while schools are closed because of COVID-19 can only do so much to keep kids learning, so do your parents a solid and use this time to find subjects that get you excited! There’s only so much Netflix you can watch before you get a funny taste in the back of your mouth.

Finn at home learning resources