Evidence-Based Learning

Displaying 661-690 of 837 results
Commentary
9.30.2021
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Advanced Education, Teachers & School Leaders

We are squandering the talents of too many low-income high achievers

Aaron Churchill , Michael J. Petrilli

Far too many high-achieving children are drifting through middle and high school. Despite their potential, they don’t end up taking AP exams, achieving high marks on their ACTs, or going to four-year colleges. This limits their ability to move up the social ladder, threatens U.S. economic competitiveness, and derails our aspirations for a more just society. We must stop buying into the false assumption that high-achieving kids will do fine on their own.

Commentary
9.30.2021
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Measuring the social, emotional, and academic toll of remote learning

Amber M. Northern, Ph.D.

After more than eighteen months of pandemic-induced commotion to education, data continue to roll in regarding various negative impacts on young people.

Commentary
9.16.2021
Evidence-Based Learning, Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Private School Choice, Teachers & School Leaders

School choice is a better instrument for racial justice than critical race theory

Daniel Buck

The outlook has gotten bleak for the anti-racist and CRT movements in U.S. classrooms, as Americans saw these ideas in action and largely recoiled from them. But there's another K–12 strategy for achieving racial justice: school choice.

Commentary
9.9.2021
Evidence-Based Learning, Teachers & School Leaders

The wide-ranging benefits of natural mentorships

William Rost

A recent Annenberg working paper explores the effects of “natural” mentorships, which researchers define as voluntary and informal relationships between school personnel and students. It finds many benefits, especially for teens from low-income households.

Commentary
9.2.2021
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

A downbeat assessment of students’ mental and social-emotional health in the Covid era

Jeff Murray

It is no exaggeration to say that very little good can likely come from a global pandemic, especially in the short term. And while the “term” of the current pandemic seems to lengthen every day, we are still firmly in the realm of the immediate when discussing impacts.

Commentary
8.30.2021
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Standards, Teachers & School Leaders

Using deeper learning to strengthen our democracy

Kent McGuire

The past eighteen months have been some of the most tumultuous in the history of our nation. The twin pandemics of Covid-19 and social injustice have highlighted how today’s students face very different expectations than students encountered in previous generations.

Commentary
8.19.2021
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

Does the medium matter? Academic outcomes for print versus digital reading.

Amber M. Northern, Ph.D.

Reading on a computer screen became a must for millions of youngsters at the onset of pandemic-induced school closures when they lost access to classrooms and library books in school buildings.

Commentary
8.12.2021
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Can changing our eduspeak help with post-pandemic schooling?

Dale Chu

The radio show Marketplace recently ran a piece asking, “Can changing home appraisal language help close the wealth gap?” The story examined structural racism in the housing market, specifically the wealth gap that persists as a result of Black and Hispanic families having t

Commentary
8.5.2021
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Groundhog Day for school discipline

David Griffith, Ph.D.

On June 4, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights asked for information that would help it “support schools in addressing disparities and eliminating discrimination in school discipline and fostering positive and inclusive school climates,” suggesting that something resembling the Obama-era discipline guidance may be reinstated in the near future.

Commentary
8.5.2021
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

Busting the belief gap via regular student assessment

Jeff Murray

At its simplest, the belief gap is the gulf between what students can accomplish and what others—particularly teachers—believe they can achieve. It is especially pernicious when beliefs around academic competency are fueled by extraneous information such as socioeconomic status, race, or gender.

Commentary
8.3.2021
Evidence-Based Learning, Charter Schools, Private School Choice, Teachers & School Leaders

Districts are failing special-needs students. School choice is helping.

Ginny Gentles

Public 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.

Commentary
8.3.2021
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Remote instruction is to blame for plummeting test scores

Nat Malkus

Texas recently became the first state to release state test score data since the pandemic hit.

Commentary
7.29.2021
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Governance

2.7 cheers for the NAEP Reading Framework

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

Gadfly habitues have seen me grump, criticize, lament and recently brighten over the protract

Commentary
7.29.2021
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

How do suspensions affect classroom learning?

Jeremy Smith

A recent study in the journal Education Finance and Policy uses quarterly achievement and discipline data on nearly 16,000 seventh through eleventh grade students in an inner-ring suburban California school district to estimate the effect of suspensions on the English language arts and math achievement of non-suspended classmates.

Commentary
7.8.2021
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Governance

An improved forecast for the NAEP reading assessment

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

The prolonged fracas within and far beyond the National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB) concerning a new “framework” for NAEP’s future assessment of reading has been ominous on several fronts—as I haven’t hesi

Commentary
7.8.2021
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

Texting parents helps improve student literacy. But how much is too much?

Jeremy Smith

Text-message nudges have been a viable tool in early-childhood literacy in recent years, with parents or guardians receiving occasional missives to encourage specific literacy activities with their children.

Commentary
7.8.2021
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

Are Virginia’s elementary schools worsening achievement gaps?

William Rost

A new working paper from researchers out of the University of Virginia uses data from the state’s kindergarten literacy assessment, the Phonological Awareness Literacy Screening (PALS), to examine how the subsequent achievement trajectories of kindergarteners who enter school with similar literacy levels differ by race and/or SES. The findings are worrying.

Commentary
7.1.2021
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Standards, Teachers & School Leaders

How to strengthen U.S. history and civics standards

Louise Dubé

For our constitutional democracy to survive, much rests on our ability to resolve “…differences even as we respect them,” which is The State of State Standards for Civics and History in 2021 report’s definition of the social purpose of civic education.

Commentary
7.1.2021
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

Dan Willingham’s "Why Don’t Students Like School" stands the test of time. That was the point.

Robert Pondiscio

My 2009 copy of Why Don’t Students Like School by Dan Willingham is among the most dog-eared and annotated books I own. Along with E.D. Hirsch’s The Knowledge Deficit (2006) and Doug Lemov’s Teach Like a Champion (2010), I’m hard-pressed to think of another book in the last twenty years that had a greater impact on my teaching, thinking, or writing about education.

Commentary
7.1.2021
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

How gender gaps in math and literacy change as students age

Amber M. Northern, Ph.D.

While women have largely erased, and in some areas even reversed, the historic gender gap in educational attainment, some career outcomes can still skew along gender lines.

Commentary
6.24.2021
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

Five pandemic-era education practices that deserve to be dumped in the dustbin

Michael J. Petrilli

A crisis like a pandemic can spark unpredictable changes in trends and behavior, like widespread mask wearing in the United States. But it also can accelerate changes that were already underway but otherwise would have taken root much more slowly.

Commentary
6.24.2021
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Governance

Evaluating state intervention in low-performing districts 2011–2016

Jeff Murray

Across America, states are constitutionally responsible for providing K–12 education, but in practice school districts are the primary structure by which education is delivered. The vast majority of such districts are run by locally elected school boards.

Commentary
6.22.2021
Evidence-Based Learning, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

This simple therapeutic technique would help schools support traumatized students

Sarah Broome

Over the past several years, schools have begun to reckon with the level of trauma students are dealing with and the effect that trauma has on students’ lives and their ability to learn. An increased focus on trauma-informed models has given leaders the beginnings of a road map to helping affected students be successful.

Commentary
6.4.2021
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

President Biden’s $220,000,000,000 “American Family Plan” should also pivot home

Miriam Kurtzig Freedman

Sitting on a Boston city bus, I watched a mother with a young child. For the twenty-five-minute ride, they didn’t speak a word. No “Look at that little girl on the bicycle” or “We’re having pizza for dinner!” When you’re with a young child for that long, do you talk to her?