Curriculum & Instruction

Displaying 211-240 of 1594 results
High school football practice
Commentary
8.29.2025
Accountability & Testing, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

Coaches and teachers both understand: Effort is king

Michael J. Petrilli

My son came home from football practice the other night and showed me the “key performance indicators” from his position coach. This season, a missed tackle results in a “fine” of twenty burpees; a dropped interception is followed by twenty push-ups; and a missed assignment will be punished with fifty squat jumps.

High school football practice
Teacher grading a school assignment
Commentary
8.21.2025
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

Teachers don’t like “equitable” grading practices

Michael J. Petrilli

Teachers hate it when the powers that be take a sledgehammer to their few sources of leverage over student motivation and effort. Nor do they like giving students grades they don’t deserve. How did we get here?

Teacher grading a school assignment
Teacher in an unruly classroom
Commentary
8.21.2025
Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

How administrators can support classroom discipline

Daniel Buck

When still a teacher, I considered my building principal a consequence vending machine. When all else failed, press H5 for an in-school suspension. Having been on both sides now, I realize that the role of the administrator in maintaining school order is far more consequential.

Teacher in an unruly classroom
Slow road sign
Commentary
8.21.2025
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

The limit on classical education’s growth

Robert Pondiscio, Annika Hernandez

Classical education has become one of the brightest spots in the K–12 landscape. Once a niche movement, it now encompasses more than 1,500 public, private, and charter schools serving nearly 700,000 students.

Slow road sign
Student reading in class
Commentary
8.14.2025
Accountability & Testing, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance

The U.S. ignores home-grown ed ideas that are accelerating progress overseas

Nick Gibb

One could argue that the University of Virginia cognitive psychologist Daniel Willingham is one of the most influential Americans of the 21st century. Willingham has observed that we have learned more about how people learn in the last 25 years than in the previous 2,500 combined.

Student reading in class
Teachers in a school
Commentary
8.14.2025
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

How states can address instructional incoherence

Emily Freitag

States can play a powerful role in improving student learning by improving instruction. I know this from my experience working at a state agency and from observing how the districts and schools that partner with my organization, Instruction Partners, orient to the expectations and initiatives of their state agencies.

Teachers in a school
Empty classroom
Commentary
8.12.2025
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

How to improve alternative teacher certification programs

Robert Chung

Alternative certification programs can help schools to fill vacant teaching roles with eager and promising teaching candidates.

Empty classroom
Person reading a book in a hammock
Commentary
8.12.2025
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

High schools should require more summer reading

Liz Cohen

On the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress, just 30 percent of eighth-graders were proficient in read

Person reading a book in a hammock
Mother and son reading
Commentary
8.7.2025
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction

Picture books lay the groundwork for reading success and cultural literacy

Robert Pondiscio

If reading truly makes us smarter, then picture books are where smart begins. They give children access to sophisticated language, teach them how stories work, and lay the groundwork for background knowledge and cultural literacy.

Mother and son reading
"Dear Diary Boy" book cover
Commentary
8.6.2025
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Advanced Education

A book that shows how much America underestimates its students

Alina Adams

In her memoir, Dear Diary Boy: An Exacting Mother, Her Free-Spirited Son, and Their Bittersweet Adventures in an Elite Japanese School, author Kumiko Makihara recounts her son Taro’s experience attending first through sixth grade in her home country of Japan.

"Dear Diary Boy" book cover
Teenager working in a grocery store
Commentary
7.31.2025
Career & Technical Education, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Why high schools should help students land summer jobs

Michael J. Petrilli

Much of the education world is obsessed these days (and rightly so) with preparing students for the world of work.

Teenager working in a grocery store
Student thinking about math concepts
Commentary
7.24.2025
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

Math needs knowledge building, too

Holly Korbey

Over the last few years, schools and teachers have begun to realize the importance of building students’ background knowledge when it comes to new learning.

Student thinking about math concepts
Math teacher with students
Commentary
7.24.2025
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

States must rethink how they license math teachers

Ali Schalop

The future of the U.S. economy and workforce relies on effective STEM education, and that education begins with the basics.

Math teacher with students
Paper with red ink
Commentary
7.10.2025
Accountability & Testing, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Standards, Teachers & School Leaders

No one actually likes high expectations

Daniel Buck

Rigorous education is far less popular on the ground than many policy wonks believe. Of course, everyone pays lip service to high academic and behavioral expectations in general. But when it comes to the particulars, many people—parents, teachers, and administrators alike, most kids, too—bristle at what rigorous education means in practice.

Paper with red ink
student and tutor
Commentary
7.10.2025
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Personalized Learning

Attend and achieve: Can high-impact tutoring boost student attendance?

Robert Chung

Five years after the onset of the pandemic, schools continue to combat pandemic-era learning loss and chronic absenteeism. One evidence-based method to expedite learning recovery is high-impact tutoring.

student and tutor
Students raising their hands in a school classroom
Commentary
6.24.2025
Curriculum & Instruction, Advanced Education, Teachers & School Leaders

We grouped students by reading ability instead of grade. Here’s what happened.

Jessica Berg

If you had walked into the classrooms at my Rockford, Illinois, elementary school a few years ago, you would have seen something very different from what happens there today. Back then, like many schools, students stayed in their grade-level classrooms throughout the day, and we delivered reading instruction accordingly.

Students raising their hands in a school classroom
Student standing outside school
Commentary
6.19.2025
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Whose school is it anyway?

Robert Pondiscio

The tension between public education as a civic institution and education as a vehicle for social justice is difficult to resolve. It doesn’t arrive as a policy change. It enters quietly, through teacher training programs, professional development, and curricular “recommendations.”

Student standing outside school
Student reading a book in a library
Commentary
6.19.2025
Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

How schools can get teens to read more full-length books

Meredith Coffey, Ph.D.

In an earlier post, I explained why high school teachers need more support to increase reading assignment length. So how might district and school leaders provide this support? Here are four suggestions.

Student reading a book in a library
Graduation cap and money
Commentary
6.19.2025
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Historical trends of the college wage premium

Jeff Murray

The “college wage premium” is typically defined as the difference between average wages earned by workers with a four-year degree versus those earned by workers with a high school diploma. For decades, the premium for degree completers has been substantial, and remains so today.

Graduation cap and money
Bill Gates
Commentary
5.29.2025
Evidence-Based Learning, School Finance, Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction

An open letter to Bill Gates

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

The Gates Foundation’s support for education reform has done much good. As the Foundation expends vast sums during its final twenty years, Finn urges Bill Gates to use his resources—financial, yes, but also influence—to press for fundamental changes in K–12 policies and practices.

Bill Gates