Will artificial intelligence, operating via “bots” and other non-human intermediaries, replace English composition and the need to teach and learn it? My colleague Robert Pondiscio has written thoughtfully about this, and his answer is no.
Economic connectedness is among the strongest predictors of upward income mobility—stronger than measures like school quality, job availability, family structure, or a community’s racial makeup.
The internet is abuzz about “ChatGPT,” an artificial intelligence program that can generate remarkably solid pieces of prose in response to prompts both serious and whimsical, instantly, and in any imaginable style. Some find this thrilling. Others, mostly writers and teachers, are filled with existential dread. But let’s dispense with the idea that artificial intelligence will make writing instruction obsolete.
In the wake of pandemic-related learning loss, there’s widespread agreement that we must find more time for learning and a number of schools and districts have added afterschool tutoring and summer school to their calendars.
Every year, I ask my students to memorize a poem, but I intentionally avoid using the word “memorize.” Rather, they must learn Robert Frost’s Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, Langston Hughes’s A Dream Deferred, or some other famous verse by heart. When memorized, poems become something we hold dear in our hearts and minds, growing almost into a mental keepsake.
It’s poignant to read the mainstream media fanfare and reviews that greeted William J.
In a new NEPC policy memo, Duke public policy professor Helen Ladd argues that charter schools “disrupt” what she claims are the four core goals of American education policy: “establishing coherent systems of schools,” “appropriate accountability for the use of public funds,” “limiting racial segregation and isolation,” and “attending to child poverty and disadvantage.” Griffith disputes all four counts.
The “soft bigotry of low expectations” is back in the news, due to the recent passing of the great Mike Gerson, the speechwriter who is
Editor’s note: This essay is an entry in Fordham’s 2022 Wonkathon, which asked contributors to address a fundamental and challenging question: “How can states remove policies barriers that are keeping educators from reinventing high schools?”
Editor’s note: This essay is an entry in Fordham’s 2022 Wonkathon, which asked contributors to address a fundamental and challenging question: “How can states remove policies barriers that are keeping educators from reinventing high schools?”
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.
Early in my career, I taught high school in North Carolina. One of the coolest things we did was partner annually with the local Habitat for Humanity team. Each year, students in my school’s construction-trades classes built a modular home from the ground up, doing the masonry, carpentry, electrical work, plumbing—all of it.
There was a remarkable moment near the end of last week’s ExcelinEd conference in Salt Lake City—one that I never would have thought possible and might have scoffed had someone predicted it, even a few short years ago.
Editor’s note: This essay is an entry in Fordham’s 2022 Wonkathon, which asked contributors to address a fundamental and challenging question: “How can states remove policies barriers that are keeping educators from reinventing high schools?”
Editor’s note: This essay is an entry in Fordham’s 2022 Wonkathon, which asked contributors to address a fundamental and challenging question: “How can states remove policies barriers that are keeping educators from reinventing high schools?”
Schools don’t typically begin the process of formally identifying students to receive gifted and talented (GT) services until third grade. What if educators started developing in earnest a child’s innate abilities before then?
With rising college costs and sky-high college dropout rates—almost one-third of American undergraduates quit before completing their degree—young people are lookin
America’s high-achieving students in our elementary and secondary schools are more racially diverse today than two decades ago. But Black high achievers in particular have made only incremental gains. Given affirmative action's original purpose, such trends are more than a little disappointing.
Editor’s note: Last week, the Jack Miller Center convened a National Summit on Civic Education at Mount Vernon, the Virginia home of George Washington. Robert Pondiscio delivered the keynote address. This is adapted from his remarks.
Homework is the perennial bogeyman of K–12 education. In any given year, you’ll find people arguing that students, especially in elementary school, should have far less homework—or none at all. Eva Moskowitz, the founder and CEO of Success Academy charter schools, has the opposite opinion. She’s been running schools for sixteen years, and she’s only become more convinced that homework is not only necessary, but also a linchpin to effective K–12 education.
Teaching young children to read fluently by the end of third grade is fast becoming a national priorit
What parents are looking for in an ideal school choice scenario is often very different from what they settle for in the real world. Cost, distance, academic quality, safety, extracurricular options, and a host of other factors are all at play, meaning trade-offs are unavoidable. Recently-published research findings try to capture the matrix of compromises being made.
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Bart Epstein, the president and CEO of
Editor’s note: This essay was part of an edition of “Advance,” a newsletter from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute that is 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.
For any teacher, administrator, or policymaker who wants to make strong choices that are likely to benefit their students’ outcomes, Seth Gershenson’s recently-published Fordham Institute report on “the power of expectations in district and
Fordham’s new study, “The Power of Expectations in District and Charter Schools,” seeks to examine the role that high expectations should play in our nation’s academic recovery and supply deeper understanding of whether and how such expectations operate in the traditional public, charter, and private school sectors. It finds, among other things, that teacher expectations have a positive impact on long-run outcomes and that expectations tend to be higher in charter schools.
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Mike Petrilli and David Griffith are joined by Seth Gers
This week’s news of sharp declines on the National Assessment of Educational Progress gave partisans yet another chance to relitigate the debate over keeping schools closed for in-person learning for much or all of the 2020–21 school year. We conservatives are eager to identify the teachers unions as the primary culprits, and we’re not wrong. But there is one complication we should acknowledge: the curious case of urban charter schools.
Monday was insane, with everyone and his grandmother (and her pet dog) attempting to make insightful, quotable comments on the avalanche of new data from the Nation’s Report Card. Some of it was indeed insightful, but much was simply self-promoting, as were many attempts to position oneself in advance as an expert to be taken seriously.
Ability grouping—arranging students in a classroom into smaller learning groups based on their aptitude in a given subject—is a common practice among teachers as early as kindergarten.
