Curriculum & Instruction

Displaying 691-720 of 1594 results
Commentary
5.19.2022
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

The excellence gap and underrepresentation at America’s most selective universities

Michael J. Petrilli

America’s education system suffers from a variety of “excellence gaps”—sharp disparities in performance by race and class at the highest levels of academic achievement. These gaps explain why college administrators turn to various forms of affirmative action in order to create freshmen classes that more closely represent the nation’s diversity—actions that may soon be declared unconstitutional. But when do these gaps start?

Commentary
5.19.2022
Accountability & Testing, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Standards, Teachers & School Leaders

Evidence, struggling math students, and California’s 2022 math framework

Tom Loveless

The proposed California Mathematics Framework generated a storm of controversy when the first draft was released in early 2021. Critics objected to the document’s condemnation of tracking and negative portrayal of acceleration for high-achieving students.

Commentary
5.19.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

What does teacher certification contribute to outcomes for students with disabilities?

Jeff Murray

Reams of research have reported contradictory outcomes for students with disabilities (SWDs) who are taught in general education classrooms alongside their non-disabled peers versus learning in settings with only SWDs. A new report focuses on teacher certification as a possible mechanism to explain the variations in outcomes.

Commentary
5.19.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

More data on the impact of remote and hybrid learning during the pandemic

Julia Wolf

Throughout the pandemic, we encountered much speculation about the impact that remote learning would have on student performance. The expected learning loss was a concern not just of American parents and educators, but of citizens all around the world.

Commentary
5.12.2022
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Assessing the Nation’s Report Card: Challenges and choices for NAEP

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

NAEP is by far the country’s most important source of information on student achievement, achievement gaps and so much more, even though it’s invisible to most Americans. Yet NAEP is far from perfect—and could do so much more than it does. It’s time to wrestle with its challenges, shortcomings, and possible future scenarios.

Undefined
5.11.2022
Career & Technical Education, Curriculum & Instruction, Personalized Learning

Education Gadfly Show #819: The pod on (pandemic) pods

  On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Ashley Jochim, a principal at the Center on Reinventing Public Education, joins Mike

Commentary
5.11.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

The case for charter schools is stronger than ever

The Education Gadfly

Just over thirty years ago, the first public charter school law was passed in Minnesota. One year later, City Academy Charter School opened its doors in St. Paul. The charter sector now boasts more than 7,700 schools serving over 3.4 million students nationwide.

Commentary
5.5.2022
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

No, social and emotional learning is not a “Trojan horse” for CRT

Robert Pondiscio

Last week came news that more than 40 percent of math textbooks submitted for review in Florida were deemed incompatible with state standards or contained “prohibited topics” including reference

Jennifer Frey editorial 4-28-22 image
Commentary
4.28.2022
Curriculum & Instruction

Literature and virtue

Jennifer Frey

Classical education is a holistic approach that is geared toward the cultivation of students’ minds, imagination, perception, and emotions so that they can be equipped with character traits that will help them to flourish and thrive both inside the school community and well beyond.

Jennifer Frey editorial 4-28-22 image
Amber NCTE craziness blog image
Commentary
4.22.2022
Curriculum & Instruction

“Decenter” book reading and essay writing? NCTE loses its way

Amber M. Northern, Ph.D.

I spent most of my twenties in northeast North Carolina teaching English in a windowless, leak-prone trailer behind an overcrowded high school. Once I got through my first year as a rookie—what fun that was!—subsequent memories are fond (smell of mildew aside).

Amber NCTE craziness blog image
VM SR 4-14-22 image
Commentary
4.14.2022
Curriculum & Instruction

Does all play and no work make Jack a smart boy?

Victoria McDougald

As beloved TV personality Fred Rogers once quipped, “Play gives children a chance to practice what they are learning. . . . It’s the things we play with and the people who help us play that make a great difference in our lives.”

VM SR 4-14-22 image
Checker SR 4-14-22 image
Commentary
4.14.2022
Curriculum & Instruction

National Academies miss the mark on IES research

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

This whopping new report from a special committee of the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) is a whopping disappointment.

Checker SR 4-14-22 image
Commentary
4.7.2022
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Polish schools in plague and war: A dispatch from the education front lines

Terry Ryan

Covid-19 and the miseries it caused families, children, and educators around the world over the last two years seems finally to be ebbing. But in Poland where I am writing this, the plague has been followed by a brutal and senseless war in neighboring Ukraine.

Commentary
4.7.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Biden goes all in on the teachers unions’ agenda

Dale Chu

With Democrats facing trouble in the midterm elections, the Biden administration has inexplicably decided to try to stave off disaster by doubling down on the teachers unions’ hoary anti-reform agenda. One example is its not-so-sneak attack on charter schools in the form of execrable regulations that could bring charter growth to a standstill. But it’s not the only one.

Commentary
4.7.2022
Accountability & Testing, Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

More reform lessons from Denver

Susan Miller, Tom Coyne

After living through the transformation of K–12 education in Alberta, Canada, we moved from Calgary to Colorado in 2010. Since then, we have watched the Denver Public Schools story unfold from next door in Jefferson County.

Commentary
4.7.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Career & Technical Education, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

How a summer job may help improve school outcomes

Amber M. Northern, Ph.D.

The influence of out-of-school activities such as sports and clubs on school outcomes has been an enduring

Commentary
3.31.2022
Career & Technical Education, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

The college readiness battle is won or lost in elementary school

Michael J. Petrilli

Earlier this year, I took to the pages of Education Next to make the case for NAEP to test starting in kindergarten, stating that, “The rationale for testing academic skills in the early elementary grades is powerful.” Therefore, “Starting NAEP in 4th grade is much too late.” I was wrong, and I’m sorry. Kindergarten is much too late. We must begin a program of NAEP testing for newborns.

Commentary
3.31.2022
Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Denver’s cautionary tale for the “charter-lite” strategy

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

It’s no secret that Denver’s latest school board is wreaking havoc on the suite of bold education reforms that the Mile High City was known for over the past two decades.

Commentary
3.31.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

Evaluating how well ELA curricula deliver content knowledge

Nathaniel Grossman

What makes an effective English language arts curriculum? Is it the books and other readings that it includes? The skills that it imparts to students? Something else?

Commentary
3.24.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Why we should follow the science—to school

Michael J. Petrilli

A new edited volume, “Follow the Science to School,” aims to identify what science tells us about evidence-based practices in elementary schools, and describes what they look like in the real world of classrooms. Following the science into its application in this way—and sharing how it works on the ground—enables us to suggest workable answers to key questions rather than challenging every teacher, school, or district, to figure out those answers on their own.

Commentary
3.24.2022
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Curriculum wars are inevitable and necessary

Daniel Buck

There is much to love in George Packer’s essay on the culture wars and education in The Atlantic. He castigates both sides of the partisan aisle for their follies: the left’s support for school closures “far longer than either the science or welfare of children justified” and the