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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Alternative certification programs can help schools to fill vacant teaching roles with eager and promising teaching candidates.
On the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress, just 30 percent of eighth-graders were proficient in read
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.
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.
Much of the education world is obsessed these days (and rightly so) with preparing students for the world of work.
Since ChatGPT exploded onto the scene in November 2022, educators have grappled with how and whether to engage AI for student writing.
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.
The future of the U.S. economy and workforce relies on effective STEM education, and that education begins with the basics.
It’s often been noted, yet bears repeating: Americans are reading less than ever, and that includes kids.
In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, schools can’t seem to shake chronic absenteeism, behavioral challenges, and
Rigorous research shows that boys and girls exhibit similar core numerical skills during infancy
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.
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.
The Supreme Court’s decision last week in Mahmoud v. Taylor was cheered by conservatives and religious liberty advocates.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
The conservative education watchdog group Defending Education has done important and often brave work exposing ideological overreach in K–12 schools.
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.
A new wave of middle school math policies is poised to reshape who gets access to advanced math options, and when.
Pandemic school disruptions, frustrations with ineffective reading methods, and sinking test scores lit a fire under the nascent science of reading movement which has borne fruit
Over the past month, the Trump administration terminated $773 million in National Science Foundation (NSF) grants supporting STEM education research and innovation.
Editor’s note: This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news outlet focused on education.
On Tuesday, April 29, I gave the keynote presentation at an event titled “New Pathways for Teachers in the Age of School Choice,” hosted by the American Enterprise Institute and the University of Austin.
