Editor’s note: This is part two of a three-part series. Part one examined possible causes. This was first published on the author’s Substack, The Education Daly.
You may already know that back-to-school time means that nominations and applications are being accepted to join the National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB) a year from now. Here’s why you—and topnotch colleagues and friends—should take this seriously.
America’s recent achievement declines are far from unique. Consider, for example, Chile, whose academic progress, as measured by international assessments, also stalled out in the early to mid-2010s, just like ours did. And which is also facing a teenage mental health crisis, much like we are, as well as rising violence and disorder in and around their campuses. Are these worldwide phenomena?
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.
Many Americans believe that the foremost mission of public education is to provide a pathway to success for every student, even in the face of considerable life obstacles. Yet persistent achievement gaps along dimensions of race, income, family education level, and other factors call this earnest expectation into question.
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.
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Linda Jacobson, a senior writer at The 74, joins Mike to discuss why more students
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.
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, William McKenzie, a senior editorial advisor at the George W.
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,
Accurate property assessments are a basic requirement for many school funding systems to function properly.
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Daniel Buck, Fordham’s editorial and policy associate, joins Mike and David to discuss the be
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.
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Rachel Canter, the executive director of Mississippi First, joins Mike to debu
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.
School closure is among the most heavy-handed interventions for turning around chronically underperforming schools.
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.
