Since the return to in-person learning, schools have seen a surge in student misbehavior of many kinds, ranging from minor
A recent study finding dramatic boosts in reading achievement from a knowledge-building curriculum has come in for criticism, some of it well-taken. But the study should be seen as just one more piece of evidence casting serious doubt on standard literacy instruction.
Note: On April 13, AEI’s Robert Pondiscio spoke at Harvard’s Program on Education Policy and Governance’s Colloquium Series, responding to Dr. Danielle S.
The National Commission on Excellence in Education’s release of a report titled “A Nation at Risk” in 1983 was a pivotal point in the history of American education.
There are many reasons to be skeptical of the universal ESA programs that are sweeping the nation, but they are worth rooting for anyway because they’ll likely lead traditional public schools to improve.
The movement to reconnect knowledge and virtue is not limited to classical schools that focus on primary and secondary education (K–12). Some institutions of higher education are also taking character education seriously, such as Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. In 2016, Wake Forest recruited Dr.
Providing students with tutoring in addition to in-class learning time is an oft-prescribed remedy for both catching up students who are behind and accelerating students who are capable of even higher performance. Two common sticking points to providing that remedy are finding additional time in the day, week, or year for the intervention and finding enough qualified personnel.
When my son entered kindergarten at our local public school last fall, I never expected I’d have to become an ambassador and advocate for giftedness and gifted education. He has always been an eager, rapid learner—intensely curious and a social butterfly—so we expected his first year of elementary school to be one of mostly excitement, fun and joy.
The Georgia Department of Education has released a new version of proposed English language arts standards for public comment, and they contain a big surprise. If you dig into the “Texts” section and go to grade eleven, you’ll find this requirement:
The two pillars of democracy—trust and truth—are now cracked. Many Americans believe the political system is corrupt (e.g., rigged, racist), and some don’t believe the results of elections, even certifiably fair ones. Related, we have lost a shared standard of truth and, with it, shared criteria for distinguishing fact from falsehood.
A new study demonstrates unusually robust and beneficial effects on reading achievement among students in schools that teach E.D. Hirsch’s Core Knowledge curriculum. The working paper offers compelling evidence to support what many of us have long believed: Hirsch has been right all along about what it takes to build reading comprehension.
When Tennessee House Republicans expelled, albeit briefly, two young, Black Democratic lawmakers late last week, it raised a number of unsettling questions—not only about the contours of our politics, but also about the future of educat
A little-noticed event in late 2022 destabilized a pillar of contemporary American K–12 education, namely that all schools considered part of the public system must be secular.
The ongoing debate over when students shoul
In his March 30 Flypaper piece, “Rewrite attendance laws to promote learning, not seat time,” Chester Finn makes the case for reorienting school around student achievement rather than time spent in class.
If we put all our education hopes in markets, self-interest, competition, and “invisible hands,” will that contribute to the other fissiparous forces that are weakening the valuable shared assets we inherited from earlier generations? Recent surveys certainly suggest that mounting public support for school choice is coinciding with diminishing confidence in shared institutions and public values of all kinds, including patriotism itself.
In 2022, seventeen states mandated that schools hold back students who aren’t meeting reading standards by the end of third grade, and eight others allowed it.
I read with interest Daniel Buck’s recent piece, “The agonizing individualism of progressive education.” In his view, progressive schools fail to uphold communitarian values by overemphasizing individualism.
Despite the expansion of computer-based testing in schools over the last decade—and ongoing concerns about negative impacts
Until my oldest child entered elementary school last fall, I was blissfully ignorant about giftedness and the extent to which it colors and affects a young child’s educational experience. My husband and I have always been amazed at our son’s busy brain and body, as well as exhausted by his limitless energy, boundless curiosity, and never-ending questions.
As someone who’s had firsthand experience in the ups and downs of the education reform movement, I agree with Matthew Yglesias calling it a “strange death.” Reformers did over-promise, and they did fail at scaling up once-promising ideas.
Two depressing developments of the past couple years have given birth to a radical idea: Let’s rethink state “compulsory attendance” laws so that they’re phrased in terms of kids learning rather than years in school. First is evidence that lots of students who need it don’t avail themselves of high-dose tutoring when available. Second is the growing number of districts and schools that are moving to four-day weeks.
Perhaps my favorite moment teaching this year came as my class finished reading Of Mice and Men. In the final moments of the story, one character executes his friend to save him from a far worse fate. It’s sudden and thus shocking. I set them to read this final scene silently. The faster readers finished first. I watched eyes widen and flit faster from word to word.
Much of my work as a kindergarten teacher was teaching young children how to be students. Even the routine for “circle time” on the carpet required days, if not weeks, of explicit practice. Making eye contact, waiting one’s turn to speak, and ignoring distractions are skills so basic that it’s easy to forget that they don’t come naturally to many kids.
Debates over how to teach math echo the conflicts over reading instruction, and some issues are similar. But unlike math, reading—in its full sense—draws on everything a person has been able to learn.
Districts that lose students to charter schools can and ultimately will adjust their behavior. And indeed, recent research implies that, while charters marginally reduce districts’ total revenues per pupil, they also make them more efficient. The challenge for policymakers is managing whatever transition costs may be associated with moving to a more choice-based system in a way that is fair to students and taxpayers.
Within a few years of their 2010 rollout, the Common Core State Standards for math and English became a popular scapegoat for a host of perceived ills in K–12 education.
Editor’s note: This is an edition of “Advance,” a newsletter from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute written by Brandon Wright, our Editorial Director, and published every other week. Its purpose is to monitor the progress of gifted education in America, including legal and legislative developments, policy and leadership changes, emerging research, grassroots efforts, and more.
When I started Instruction Partners and began working deeply and regularly with multiple school systems, I was surprised by some patterns. The same motivational quotes were in almost every school hallway. Many teachers' lounges had the same air freshener. There was a similar tension between certain departments in almost every district.
Student effort is the secret sauce at Success Academy charter schools, says their founder and CEO, and they teach and celebrate it religiously. Indeed, after seventeen years of educating tens of thousands of students, careful analysis of homework, classwork, and assessment data has taught the Success Academy team that a large proportion of errors, up to 70 percent, don’t result from not knowing or understanding the content, but from a lack of care and attention to detail.
