Grade inflation is not a victimless crime
Editor’s note: This was first published by Forbes.
Editor’s note: This was first published by Forbes.
Editor’s note: This was first published on the author’s Substack, The Education Daly.
Getting advanced learners (a.k.a. “gifted” students) the education they need, and ensuring that this works equitably for youngsters from every sort of background, is substantially the responsibility of state leaders.
If you believe the media, it seems a dark lord has come to cut down the educational Eden that is the Houston Independent School District. He’s closing libraries to open detention centers.
Fordham’s latest study finds that fewer Black and Hispanic students from the highest-SES group are achieving at NAEP’s Advanced level than we would expect, given their socioeconomic status. That disparity clearly commands our attention. But so do the findings on Asian American high achievers—who deserve our attention for a different reason.
Enshrining into policy and practice ideological views on student gender to which a majority of Americans do not subscribe could easily be fatal to support for public education. Indeed, there are no words adequate to capture this level of hubris.
For at least a decade, schools have been using online credit-recovery (OCR) courses to award bogus credits that satisfy graduation requirements, and thus inflating graduation rates.
Ohio recently passed a historic state budget that includes, among other components, ambitious literacy reforms that require schools to follow the science of reading—an instructional approach that emphasizes phonics for building foundational lit
Future Forward began in Milwaukee in 2005 as SPARK—a small-scale, local effort to combine family engagement with intensive tutoring to help low-income elementary-age students improve their literacy skills. It has since expanded significantly, rebranded, and moved under the aegis of national nonprofit Education Analytics, Inc.
Many states now require high school students to learn coding before they can graduate, and a host of organizations encourage students to build coding skills. Is this all a waste of time and energy now that chatbots can code? In a word, no.
Can we stop with the learning stations already? My teacher prep endorsed them. My first instructional coach trained me in them. Every school that I’ve ever worked at has incorporated them. Look them up on Teachers Pay Teachers and you’ll find scores of activities for various literacy stations, each one promising that they are proven effective.
School systems have long been interested in supporting students’ mental health as a means to improve behavior, decrease absenteeism,
In the last three years, the families of 1.8 million children switched to homeschooling, bringing the nationwide total to 4.3 million in 2022. But glib calls for parents to join those ranks gloss over some persistent challenges inherent in homeschooling. Phillips discovered these challenges firsthand when her family moved to rural upstate New York and began homeschooling their kids.
I must admit, I’d become something of an education fatalist. I know the research about direct instruction. I know the power of a knowledge-rich, well-sequenced curriculum and the promise of school choice. I know that individual schools and even whole charter systems can achieve amazing results. But I always wonder: Is it all for naught?
After a millennium or so in the world of ed policy, I nearly always think of education as stuff schools do that produces results on various metrics that (one hopes) enables education leaders and policymakers to make better decisions about what schools should do tomorrow.
Early College High Schools are designed to be rigorous programs that partner with higher-education institutions to help teens earn college credit before graduation, with the aim of improving their chance of success after graduation.
The use of screens increased substantially during the Covid-19 pandemic. For the twice exceptional population—those identified as gifted with coexistent learning differences like ADHD, dyslexia, Autism, or processing disorders—this “epidemic within the pandemic” resulted in deeper isolation and greater parent frustration.
A remarkable increase in charter school funding across a number of states—and not just red—is finally addressing some of the deepest spending inequities in American education. But with Covid money drying up, declining student enrollment, and an aging population, tougher times lie ahead.
Not since former Governor Scott Walker bludgeoned the unions in my home state of Wisconsin has there been such national outrage over state-level education policies. Historically, state-scale education has been a secondary affair, rarely topping the list of people’s substantive or political priorities, and most decisions have been left to local decision-making.
Is Mississippi a cheater? Los Angeles Times business columnist Michael Hiltzik seems sure of it. Last month, the Pulitzer Prize–winning opinion writer published a column saying that Mississippi’s widely acclaimed reading improvement was just a mirage.
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.
One of the biggest shifts in education in recent years has been a gradual move away from the “college for all” mantra, and hard numbers show a concurrent decline in the proportion of high school students matriculating directly to college. Far from something to deplore, this trend is a positive development—but only so long as the right teenagers are choosing to enter the labor market rather than pursue college.
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
Imagine the course of history if some of the most brilliant minds were held back by learning disabilities. Albert Einstein was dyslexic and didn’t talk until he was six. His teachers said nothing good would come of him.
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
For folks who question the value of a traditional four-year college degree—whether they have done so for ages or have only recently lost faith—apprenticeships seem like a promising alternative for young people leaving
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.
How well do our public high schools prepare students—especially low-income students—for future success? A working paper from analysts at Brown and Harvard addresses that question, focusing on a number of consequential middle- and longer-term outcomes.