“Hold harmless” grading policies are anything but
Arguments for and against “no zeroes” and other types of “hold harmless” grading
Arguments for and against “no zeroes” and other types of “hold harmless” grading
“There is no such thing as a morally neutral education, in public schools or anywhere else.” —American Conservative Schools should be phone-free zones, as a growing body of research shows that they inhibit academic, cognitive, and social development.
In a 3-2 decision yesterday, an Oklahoma state board defied the attorney general and approved the nation’s first religious charter school. Those of us at Fordham have been following the debate closely. These blog posts and podcasts will help you get up to speed:
While most of the country debates restricting children’s access to books, at Liberty, a Core Knowledge school that emphasizes character education, the debate runs in the opposite direction: Which books should kids be reading?
In the summer of 2018, I was thrilled to learn that I would be teaching AP English Language and Composition starting that fall. As part of New York City’s AP for All initiative, I became one of the first two AP teachers at my small, alternative public high school.
Thomas Sowell famously quipped that “there are no solutions, only tradeoffs.” Even seemingly beneficial policies have repercussions. Reduce the prison population and crime increases. Close schools to prevent the spread of Covid and standardized test scores plummet. What’s more, even historic, society-altering changes come with side effects.
Quantifying learning loss experienced by students whose schools closed for extended periods during the coronavirus pandemic is vital.
An expert math instructor travels the country, reminding students of their humanity in the face of AI.
Every leader of a state or school system gets asked the question, “How do all of the things we are doing fit together?” It’s a question about “coherence”—the Holy Grail of education, says Freitag. And for the last two years, she has worked with leaders of four offices in one state with the goal of finding more of it. Here’s what she learned.
Last week, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed legislation that allowed high schoolers to use the Classic Learning Test (CLT)—a classical alternative to the SAT and ACT—to qualify for the state’s Bright Futures scholarship. Already accepted at over 200 colleges, this legislation is the CLT’s biggest boost yet.
Editor’s note: This was first published by The 74.
In recent years, the debate on the impact of financial resources in education has been petering out. Studies showing that more money for schools has had a discernable effect on student academic outcomes, particularly for students from lower-income families, keep accumulating.
As the school year winds down, and with the World Health Organization officially declaring the emergency phase of the Covid-19 pandemic over earlier this month, many students, parents, a
“Why teacher evaluation reforms flopped.” —Matthew Yglesias The Educational Testing Service and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching are collaborating on new tests they say will promote students’ learning at their own pace and decrease the need for traditional “seat time.” —
Editor’s note: This article was first published by The 74.
There’s a lot of buzz right now about the potential for the Institute of Education Sciences to finally get the resources and authority to support major breakthroughs in teaching and learning via an “ARPA-ED,” modeled after the Defense Department’s DARPA program. Petrilli wants something more fundamental: basic information about what the heck is going on in America’s classrooms. Enter his (admittedly far-fetched) “Mars rover for schools” idea.
Indiana’s Republican governor just signed into law a bill that mandates, among other
Since the release of Chat GPT last year, the professional classes have suffered an existential dilemma.
A few weeks ago, I finally sat down with Joe Feldman’s Grading for Equity (2018), expecting to nod my head along with every page. I loved teaching at an alternative school, considered myself flexible about deadlines, and frequently encouraged students to revise their writing.
New data show that rates of adolescent mental health emergencies are still high but falling compared to 2021. —Education Week Eric Hanushek’s previous four decades of research suggested that there was no clear link between school funding and performance.
It being National Charter Schools Week, I thought I would look at the progress that we have made since last year’s celebration.
The number of English learners in charter schools has increased markedly in recent years, but our knowledge of how well charters serve these students hasn’t kept pace with that growth. That’s why we conducted our new study, "Charter Schools and English Learners in the Lone Star State." It finds, among other things, that compared to their traditional public school peers, English learners in Texas charters are more likely to graduate high school and enroll in college. They also earn more money in the post-college years.
This year’s state legislative sessions, now coming to a close, have yielded a blizzard of high-profile victories on school choice, from the enactment of universal education savings accounts (ESA) programs, to the expansion of private school choice policies to serve many more families, to fairer funding for charter schools.
When it comes to K–12 education policy, the post-Covid period has become, more than almost anything else, the era of school choice. This success has opened new avenues for its growth and confronted choice supporters—particularly Catholic school supporters—with an important decision.
While life is more normal now than it was two years ago, pandemic lockdowns and school building closures that once kept young people inside and online have likely altered behavior for the foreseeable future.