Curriculum & Instruction

The credit-recovery scam

Failure can’t be wished away

Next Generation Science Standards: Repairs needed

If at first you don't succeed...

GAO and George Miller don’t understand how special education works

No single public school is expected to serve students with every single type of disability. Except, apparently, public charter schools.

In defense of the F-word in K-16 education

Success requires failure

The dilemma of academic diversity

On integration and differentiation

Can schools rekindle the American work ethic?

Encouraging hard work in the nanny state.

The Mad, Mad World of Textbook Adoption

Statewide textbook adoption distorts the market, entices extremist groups to hijack the curriculum, enriches the textbook cartel, and papers the land with mediocre instructional materials that cannot fulfill their important education mission.

Why track on the sports field, but not in the classroom?

The performance of America's top students was a hot topic on Wisconsin's WSAU radio this morning, as Mike appeared to discuss the findings of Fordham's recent High Flyers study.?

Postcard from China: Constructivist Theory in Chinese Classrooms? Good Luck

Amber Winkler, Fordham's VP for Research, recently traveled China as a Senior Fellow with the Global Education Policy Fellowship Program (GEPFP).

NAEP 2011: The Reading First effect?

Last night was fun for the kids, but today is every education wonk's favorite holiday: NAEP release day! Kevin Carey is already out with some savvy analysis; let me add some thoughts on the trends in reading.

Wrapping up "The Other Achievement Gap"

[pullquote]"I got to tell you, the only viable political strategy for getting broad-based support of school reform on that premise is to get those middle-class parents drunk.? -AEI's Rick Hess[/pullquote]We wrap up coverage of Monday's panel discussion, ?The Other Achievement Gap,?

Responding (reluctantly) to the Think Tank Review Project

The left-leaning Think Tank Review Project reviews virtually every analytic report that Fordham publishes—and they have yet to find one that they like.

K5 Learning offers new findings from High Flyers data

In this guest blog post, the team at?

Learn about High Flyers on the radio, online, or in person

Listen live this evening at 5:35 p.m.

A progressive school finds some accountability religion

I was prepared for a rant against all things reform when I started reading the New York Times Q & A interview with Maria Velez-Clarke, the principal of the Children's Workshop School in Manhattan's East Village, about the school's C-grade from the City.?

Upon further review...Paul Gross' critique of the NRC Science Framework

Guest blogger Ze'ev Wurman, an executive with Monolithic 3D, a Silicon Valley startup, has participated in developing California's education standards and assessments in mathematics since the mid-1990s.

High Flyers in the news and on the air

Differentiation, tracking, and the needs of high-achievers are hot topics these days, thanks in part to Fordham's recent study Do High Flyers Maintain Their Altitude? Performance Trends of Top Students.

Computers in the classroom: the disconnect between K-12 and higher education

The dark side of censorhip: bad books

As a journalist for the better part of 30 years (not counting the samizdat paper I wrote and published (on my dad's mimeograph machine) in my high school seminary), I worship our first amendment.?

Wrap-up: Major findings from Do High Flyers Maintain Their Altitude?

Last week, Fordham released a groundbreaking new study on high-achieving students, titled Do High Flyers Maintain Their Altitude? Performance Trends of Top Students.

Learn early, learn often: School counts

You can read Sam Wang and Sandra Aaamodt's ?Delay Kindergarten at Your Child's Peril? essay in today's New York Times for what the two neuroscientists have to say about the development of young brains ?

Academic growth of high achievers

Fordham's new report released on Tuesday, Do High Flyers Maintain Their Altitude?

The unilateral repeal of NCLB and the 2012 election

The Obama administration's new waiver plan (officially here, and covered extensively here,

Fallen high flyers don't fall far

Yesterday, we looked at the first finding of Fordham's new groundbreaking study, Do High Flyers Maintain Their Altitude?

A majority of high-flying students remain that way

Yesterday, Fordham released a groundbreaking study examining the achievement of individual high-performing students?or ?high flyers??over time.

Distressing but not surprising

We asked a few experts to weigh in on our new study, "Do High Flyers Maintain Their Performance: Performance Trends of Top Students," as part of an online forum we'll be hosting on Flypaper over the next couple days.

Do high flyers maintain their altitude?

If America is to remain internationally competitive, we need to maximize the potential of our top students. Over the last decade, however, federal and state education-accountability systems?particularly in the wake of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001?have placed primary emphasis on moving low-performing students toward proficiency.

Teachers Breaking Out of the Box

I gave up bashing teachers years ago, when I realized that, as with soldiers in the trenches, they had their hands full just staying alive.

Teaching about 9/11 in 2011

This week, teachers across the land are greeting students, assigning seats, issuing textbooks, struggling to remember everyone's name?and doing their best to teach one of the most challenging lessons of the year: the events of September 11, 2001, why they happened, why they matter, and why we are commemorating them.