Displaying 211-240 of 2101 results
Commentary
2.1.2024
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance

Grading New York’s “back to basics” reading plan

Robert Pondiscio

Better late than never, New York State has stirred itself to change the way reading is taught in its 800-plus local school districts. Last month, Governor Kathy Hochul announced a plan to spend $10 million to train 20,000 teachers in the “science of reading,” including a “microcredentialing” program via the state’s public universities. Assuming the legislature grants the request, here’s how New York could maximize the program’s impact.

Commentary
2.1.2024
Accountability & Testing, Governance

Colorado’s accountability fiasco

Dale Chu

Last year, Colorado’s legislature established an “Accountability, Accreditation, Student Performance, and Resource Inequity Task Force”—a twenty-six-member behemoth charged with, among other things, making recommendations on the future of the state’s K–12 asses

Commentary
1.31.2024
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Advanced Education, Teachers & School Leaders

Gifted under-identification: How to improve diverse student access to gifted programming

Jonathan Klingeman, Ed.D.

As the population of English learners (ELs) in grades K–12 grows, so do the challenges school districts face in identifying gifted students and putting in place appropriate enrichment and acceleration opportunities for them.

Commentary
1.25.2024
Evidence-Based Learning, Charter Schools, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

The right to school choice is also about the right to stay put

David Griffith, Amber M. Northern, Ph.D.

Fordham’s latest report, "New Home, Same School," analyses the relationships among residential mobility, school mobility, and charter school enrollment. It finds, among other things, that changing schools is associated with a small decline in academic progress in math and a slight increase in suspensions—and that residentially mobile students in charter schools are less likely to change schools than their counterparts in traditional public schools.

Students working together
Commentary
1.25.2024
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Advanced Education, Teachers & School Leaders

Doing educational equity right: Advanced education

Michael J. Petrilli

This is the fourth in a series on doing educational equity right.

Students working together
Commentary
1.25.2024
Governance

If Trump returns...

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

Now that President Trump has soundly defeated Governor Haley in New Hampshire and thus appears to have sewn up the GOP nomination, it’s time to consider what a second Trump term may mean for education.

Commentary
1.19.2024
Facilities, School Finance, Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Advanced Education, Teachers & School Leaders

High schools where students routinely graduate with college degrees: An interview with Kevin Teasley, CEO of GEO Academies

Brandon L. Wright

Khaya Njumbe enrolled at GEO Academies’ 21st Century Charter School, in Gary, Indiana, when he was eleven years old. By age thirteen, he’d become the youngest student in state history to earn an associate degree.

Teacher speaking to a student
Commentary
1.18.2024
Evidence-Based Learning, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Doing educational equity right: School discipline

Michael J. Petrilli

If school funding is the issue around which it’s easiest to find common ground across left and right, school discipline might be the hardest. That shouldn’t be surprising, given how divisive our country’s debate has been on the related issue of criminal justice and law enforcement. But we can begin to bridge these ideological differences if we commit to “doing educational equity right.”

Teacher speaking to a student
Commentary
1.18.2024
Evidence-Based Learning, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Teachers are fed up with no-consequence discipline

Daniel Buck

I used to judge teachers who quit midyear. How could they abandon their students? Didn’t they sign a contract? Could they just really not cut it? Well, now I get it. Midyear quitting may be unseemly, but it’s understandable.

Commentary
1.16.2024
Career & Technical Education, Governance

Congress’s bipartisan progress on strengthening America’s workforce

Bruno V. Manno

The U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Education and the Workforce ended 2023 with some tidings of potential joy for America’s workforce by approving two proposed bills on a strong bipartisan basis. Committee approval in one chamber is just a start, of course, but bipartisanship in the current House is a good sign.

Commentary
1.12.2024
Evidence-Based Learning, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

The rise and fall of Finland mania

Tim Daly

Editor's note: This was first published on the author's Substack, The Education Daly.

Piggy bank and chalkboard
Commentary
1.11.2024
Evidence-Based Learning, School Finance, Governance

Doing educational equity right: School finance

Michael J. Petrilli

Last week, Petrilli identified three rules for “doing educational equity right” that will result in smart policy designs and make it likelier that the political right will get on board the equity train. Now let’s apply those rules to the topic of school finance.

Piggy bank and chalkboard
Commentary
1.11.2024
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

How to ban phones effectively

Daniel Buck

Shortly before schools—and Fordham—shuttered their doors for the holiday break, Tim Daly asked a simple question in these pages: Should schools ban smart phones?

Commentary
1.11.2024
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

Alternative classroom models don’t have to threaten “traditional” ones

Meredith Coffey, Ph.D., Jeanette Luna

As former teachers in a variety of settings—charter, traditional public, and “transfer” schools—we read with great interest our colleague Daniel Buck’s recent piece, “In defense of the traditional classroom

Commentary
1.5.2024
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Remembering Linda Brown

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

The education world lost a true reformer on Christmas Day—and the charter-school world lost one of its true heroes—when Linda Brown passed away at eighty-one at her home in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Group of students in a classroom
Commentary
1.4.2024
Governance, Advanced Education

3 rules for doing educational equity right

Michael J. Petrilli

“Suitcase words” have different meanings for different people. They’re everywhere in our political conversations and in K–12 education, and they include “social justice,” “parental rights,” and “accountability.” But the granddaddy of them all is surely “educational equity.” In coming weeks, this series will aim to unpack this phrase, and discuss what it would mean to do educational equity right.

Group of students in a classroom
Commentary
1.4.2024
Accountability & Testing, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

When school becomes optional

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

“Truancy” may no longer be the right word for it, maybe not even “absenteeism,” for both imply being missing from a place where one is supposed to be. “Truancy,” with its overtone of misbehavior and illegality, suggests willfulness, i.e., that one is intentionally missing, while “absenteeism” is a more neutral term with no suggestion of motive.

Commentary
1.4.2024
Evidence-Based Learning, Charter Schools, Governance

How centralized enrollment systems enhance school choice

Jeff Murray

A new report from the National Center for Research on Education Access and Choice adds to the robust literature on school choice in New Orleans, shedding light on the ways in which the centralized enrollment system in the Crescent City has grown and evolved, as well a

Commentary
1.4.2024
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

How pandemic-era emergency teaching licenses diversified the teaching profession

Kate Kerin

The Covid-19 pandemic created innumerable disruptions to the education system. Among them were challenges faced by teacher candidates trying to complete licensure requirements. In response, those requirements got waived in many places.

Commentary
12.14.2023
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction

What do parents need to know about the science of reading?

Robert Pondiscio

The welcome rise of the science of reading has been a sober reckoning for teachers and administrators. It also raises uncomfortable questions, seldom asked: How much faith should parents have that their child’s school and teachers understand good literacy instruction? And how much do parents need to know to advocate for their children and raise strong readers?

Commentary
12.14.2023
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

In defense of the traditional classroom

Daniel Buck

Many futuristic reformers love to hate the classroom.

Commentary
12.8.2023
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Advanced Education, Teachers & School Leaders

4 takeaways from the PISA results

Daniel Buck

The results from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) are in—an international standardized test of fifteen-year-olds and the first look at how countries compare post-pandemic—and the picture they paint of American education is disheartening. Here are four trends that you need to know: 1. U.S. math scores collapsed and reading stagnated.

Commentary
12.8.2023
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Should schools ban cellphones?

Tim Daly

Editor’s note: This was first published on the author’s Substack, The Education Daly. They’re coming for the kids’ phones. Who is “they”?

Commentary
12.7.2023
Evidence-Based Learning, Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance

Which large school districts provide fertile terrain for charter growth?

Amber M. Northern, Ph.D., Michael J. Petrilli

Despite the amount of attention that school choice receives in the media and among policy wonks, politicians, and adult interest groups, the extent of actual competition in major school districts is not well understood. We were curious: Which education markets in America are the most competitive? And which markets have education reformers and choice-encouragers neglected or failed to penetrate?