A recent article in the Boston Globe dug into a controversy that is dogging Massachusetts’s highly-regarded system of regional career and technical education (CTE) high schools.
The specific connection between increased school funding and student outcomes remains unclear—regardless of whether the added dollars are blanket or targeted—and the
Despite the growing diversity of American students, the teaching workforce remains disproportionately White. A recent study uses twelve years of administrative data from Maryland to examine the factors contributing to the state's chronic shortage of Black teachers.
As regular readers know, I’m a parent of two children enrolled in Maryland’s Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS).
Everyone who cares about racial justice should be focused on doing what’s best for students and their learning—not on school buildings or the employment impact of closing some of them.
By now, we’re well familiar with critiques of standardized testing opponents: tests rob schools of critical instructional time, encourage teaching to the test, place undue pressure on students and educators to perform, are educationally irrelevant, only provide a snapshot of student achievement at a specific moment in time, and are largely driven by family income levels, parents’ education, and
According to a Goldman Sachs analysis of federal data, the college graduating class of 2024 is having a tough time finding attractive jobs.
School closures and remote learning led to widespread relaxation of student accountability at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. Lax requirements to turn in work, fewer graded assignments, and—most perniciously—policies mandating “no zeros” or “no failing grades” were adopted (or accelerated) to lighten the load of young people whose worlds had been turned upside down.
Read the winning entry in Fordham’s 2024 Wonkathon, which asked contributors to answer this question: “How can policymakers and practitioners radically reduce chronic absenteeism—at least below pre-pandemic levels and preferably much further?”
Editor’s note: This essay is an entry in Fordham’s 2024 Wonkathon, which asked contributors to answer this question: “How can policymakers and practitioners radically reduce chronic absenteeism—at least below pre-pandemic levels and preferably much further?”
Editor’s note: This essay is an entry in Fordham’s 2024 Wonkathon, which asked contributors to answer this question: “How can policymakers and practitioners radically reduce chronic absenteeism—at least below pre-pandemic levels and preferably much further?”
Editor’s note: This essay won second place in Fordham’s 2024 Wonkathon, which asked contributors to answer this question: “How can policymakers and practitioners radically reduce chronic absenteeism—at least below pre-pandemic levels and preferably much further
Three decades ago, the College Board “recentered” the SAT. Now it’s “recalibrating” Advanced Placement. Though both adjustments in these enormously influential testing programs can be justified by psychometricians, both are also probable examples of what the late Senator Daniel P.
Editor’s note: This essay is an entry in Fordham’s 2024 Wonkathon, which asked contributors to answer this question: “How can policymakers and practitioners radically reduce chronic absenteeism—at least below pre-pandemic levels and preferably much further?”
Editor’s note: This essay is an entry in Fordham’s 2024 Wonkathon, which asked contributors to answer this question: “How can policymakers and practitioners radically reduce chronic absenteeism—at least below pre-pandemic levels and preferably much further?”
About seven in ten (72 percent) high school teachers say that students being distracted by cellphones is a major problem in their classroom.
Everyone benefits from exemplars. We all need models to mimic and follow. In the policy realm that means states, legislatures and governors who pass policies and reforms that materially improve the lives of their residents.
For several years now, critics have been blaring klaxons about the questionable quality and increasing
Teacher voice is often missing from education policy discussions, leading to what can feel like an adversarial relationship between pundits and practitioners. Educators for Excellence (E4E) strives to reframe that relationship by amplifying the interests and concerns of teachers across the land.
Editor’s note: This essay is an entry in Fordham’s 2024 Wonkathon, which asked contributors to answer this question: “How can policymakers and practitioners radically reduce chronic absenteeism—at least below pre-pandemic levels and preferably much further?”
It may be true that Kamala Harris is, at heart, your typical progressive Democrat from California. But she has an unusual opportunity to shed some of that political baggage. Indicating that she will be open to education reform is one of the best ways to do so.
In a word, yes! It’s never enough, and there’s no resting on laurels, but we have solid evidence over thirty years in America and beyond that students learn more when they—and their schools—are held to account for what and how well they’re learning.
Academic advancement programs (especially those branded as “gifted and talented”) are often at the center of controversy about equity in education.
The conventional wisdom is that school closures are bad—not the temporary pandemic-era variety, but the permanent shuttering of underenrolled school facilities.
Perhaps no modern American education reform has enjoyed the success and staying power of charter schools. Three-plus decades after Minnesota passed the first charter law, 3.7 million students now attend charters, the majority of whom are children of color and come from low-income families.
Spend any length of time in education and you can’t help notice pendulum swings as ideas about what constitutes effective practice fall in and out of fashion. There’s no reason to expect the “science of reading” movement to be an exception.
As policymakers grapple with pandemic-induced learning loss across the country, intensive tutoring has emerged as a promising solution.
In my final college semester, I had the privilege of being a full-time student teacher at a Catholic middle school, teaching seventh and eigth grade history and theology. It was the highlight of my life. The students were curious, polite, and thoughtful, caring to one another and welcoming to me.
Between 1990 and 2013, the share of students nationally who enrolled in algebra or a similar advanced math course in eighth grade more than doubled to 46 percent. Since 2013, however, the trend has reversed, with just 36 percent of eighth graders enrolled in algebra as of 2022.
In the 2022–23 school year, an estimated 26 percent of public school students were chronically absent—a rate almost 10 percentage points higher than pre-pandemic.
