Displaying 691-720 of 1405 results
Commentary
4.15.2021
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

An ode to elementary schools

Michael J. Petrilli

If I had to name the most important institution in American life, and the one with the most potential for changing the course of our country, it would be the humble elementary school. Especially the 20,000 or so high-poverty elementary schools in the nation’s cities and inner-ring suburbs, educating millions of kids growing up in poor or working-class families.

Commentary
4.15.2021
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Can teaching be improved by law?

Robert Pondiscio

If there’s one lesson education policymakers might have learned in the last twenty-five years, it’s that it’s not hard to make schools and districts do something, but it’s extremely hard to make them do it well.

Commentary
4.15.2021
Accountability & Testing, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Uncle Sam goes soft on state tests

Dale Chu

Things are getting messy in the world of assessment.

Commentary
4.8.2021
Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

High-quality curriculum doesn't teach itself

Robert Pondiscio

A new initiative is reviewing and rating major providers of teacher training with the ambition of becoming the EdReports of professional learning. Rivet Education’s “Professional Learning Partner Guide” is the product of two veterans of Louisiana’s celebrated effort to place high quality curriculum at the center of school improvement efforts.

Commentary
4.8.2021
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Children learn best when they feel safe and valued

CAO Central

Editor’s note: The Thomas B. Fordham Institute recently launched “The Acceleration Imperative,” an open-source, evidence-based resource designed to aid instructional leaders’ efforts to address the enormous challenges faced by their students, families, teachers, and staff over the past year.

Commentary
4.6.2021
Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

For maximum impact, align professional learning with high-quality instructional materials

CAO Central

Editor’s note: The Thomas B. Fordham Institute recently launched “The Acceleration Imperative,” an open-source, evidence-based resource designed to aid instructional leaders’ efforts to address the enormous challenges faced by their students, families, teachers, and staff over the past year.

Commentary
4.2.2021
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Lessons from Race to the Top

Emily Freitag

I have been thinking a lot about the early years of Race to the Top recently. I moved to Nashville in 2011 to work at the Tennessee Department of Education. Tennessee had won one of the first two Race to the Top grants with bipartisan legislation and an ambitious plan, and the state had $500 million to invest in innovative support to advance student learning.

Commentary
4.2.2021
Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

High expectations drive student success

CAO Central

Editor’s note: The Thomas B. Fordham Institute recently launched “The Acceleration Imperative,” an open-source, evidence-based resource designed to aid instructional leaders’ efforts to address the enormous challenges faced by their students, families, teachers, and staff over the past year.

Commentary
4.1.2021
Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

The sorry history of “what works” in school

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

My friend and colleague Mike Petrilli is understandably proud of Fordham’s spanking new Acceleration Imperative: A Plan to Address Elementary Students’ Unfinished Learning in the Wake of Covid-19.

Commentary
4.1.2021
Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

How to instill positive school culture

CAO Central

Editor’s note: The Thomas B. Fordham Institute recently launched “The Acceleration Imperative,” an open-source, evidence-based resource designed to aid instructional leaders’ efforts to address the enormous challenges faced by their students, families, teachers, and staff over the past year.

Commentary
3.26.2021
Curriculum & Instruction, Personalized Learning, Teachers & School Leaders

How any school can personalize learning, part II

Beth Rabbitt

In part I of this two-part series, I wrote about three of the most common practices teachers implement in elementary schools that successfully personalize learning: giving each child a learning plan, organizing instruction around class-level and individual mastery, and using grouping an

Commentary
3.25.2021
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

How districts and charter networks can best address unfinished learning

Michael J. Petrilli

Fordham’s new resource, “The Acceleration Imperative,” aims to give the nation’s chief academic officers a head start on planning for America’s educational recovery, with a focus on high-poverty elementary schools. It’s intentionally a work in progress, and already the product of thoughtful advice from more than three dozen experts. The intention is for it to continue evolving and improving with readers’ help, via a “crowdsourced” initiative on a new wiki site.

Commentary
3.25.2021
Accountability & Testing, Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

CDC school guidelines, acceleration, stimulus, and other goings-on

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

The CDC’s revised guidelines for pupil spacing in school—three feet under most circumstances rather than six—opened a floodgate of gratitude from superintendents and parents.

Commentary
3.25.2021
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

The role of out-of-school supports in boosting academic outcomes

Amber M. Northern, Ph.D., Jeff Murray

Structured activities and services provided outside of the regular school day were increasingly the focus of public investment in the U.S. prior to the coronavirus pandemic.

Report
3.23.2021
Curriculum & Instruction, Standards, Teachers & School Leaders

The Acceleration Imperative: A Plan to Address Elementary Students’ Unfinished Learning in the Wake of Covid-19

In school districts and charter school networks nationwide, instructional leaders are developing plans to address the enormous challenges faced by their students, families, teachers, and staff over the past year. To help kick-start their planning process, we are proud to present The Acceleration Imperative, an open-source, evidence-based document created with input from dozens of current and former chief academic officers, scholars, and others with deep expertise and experience in high-performing, high-poverty elementary schools.

Commentary
3.19.2021
Curriculum & Instruction, Personalized Learning, Teachers & School Leaders

How any school can personalize learning, part I

Beth Rabbitt

In a previous Flypaper post, Mike Petrilli described the challenge of personalizing instruction for our youngest learners as the “Mount Everest” of education.

Commentary
3.18.2021
Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

School choice proves no match for wokeness

Robert Pondiscio

School choice proponents argue that when parents vote with their feet—and dollars—schools listen. But choice is no match for the pandemic of wokeness that has seized K–12 education. The most advantaged, privileged, and powerful parents in America have been cowed into submissive silence when elite schools of choice adopt neoracist practices masquerading as “anti-racism.”

Commentary
3.18.2021
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

Beware the calls for post-Covid innovation

Dale Chu

Now that Uncle Sam’s check is in the mail, one of the biggest hopes for schools is that they will be able to leverage the massive infusion of cash to be more creative, imaginative, and innovative.

Getty Images/Wavebreakmedia
Commentary
3.11.2021
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Personalized Learning, Teachers & School Leaders

How elementary schools can address unfinished learning through personalization

Michael J. Petrilli

Editor’s note: This is the fifth and final installment in a series of posts about envelope-pushing strategies that schools might embrace to address students’ learning loss in the wake of the pandemic.

Getty Images/Wavebreakmedia
Commentary
3.11.2021
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

Addressing learning loss in one easy lesson

Robert Pondiscio

One of the best-selling education books of the Covid era is one you’ve probably never read and maybe never even heard of. Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons was written nearly forty years ago by Siegfried Engelmann, who passed away in 2019.

Report
3.10.2021
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Personalized Learning

The narrow path to do it right: Lessons from vaccine making for high-dosage tutoring

Mike Goldstein, Bowen Paulle

High-dosage tutoring is receiving a lot of buzz as a promising tool to address learning loss in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. But unlike vaccines, successful tutoring programs are challenging to scale with fidelity. In this paper, long-time educators Michael Goldstein and Bowen Paulle explain how leaders can smartly scale promising tutoring programs that can boost student outcomes.

Commentary
3.4.2021
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Personalized learning for the wee ones in the wake of the pandemic, Part I

Michael J. Petrilli

Editor’s note: This is the fourth in a series of posts about envelope-pushing strategies that schools might embrace to address students’ learning loss in the wake of the pandemic.

Commentary
3.4.2021
Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Jay Mathews’s admirable optimism about American education

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

Yes, I blurbed it—and I like it. Yes, a visitor to our home, a worldly and skeptical sort, hefted it and looked at the title and asked me “Isn’t that awfully thick for a book about optimism regarding American public education?”

Commentary
2.25.2021
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Is hybrid learning killing teaching?

Robert Pondiscio

A lot of us have been confused, angry, and frustrated by the reluctance of some teachers, and particularly their unions, to resume in-person instruction.