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Commentary
What we're reading this week: September 28, 2023
Harvard economist Roland Fryer and venture capitalist Bill Helman launched a firm to invest in profitable, socially conscious businesses.
Commentary
Evidence-Based Learning, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
Chronic absenteeism has become a crisis, part 3: Solutions
Part one of this series explored many possible explanations for the rise in absenteeism. They come in all shapes and sizes, some more plausible than others. Part two unpacks how this issue plays out in cities and suburbs—and what stands out most is how kids are missing school everywhere. This final post offers five solutions.
Commentary
Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
Public charter schools and the Chipotlification of education
Before Chipotle ushered in the phenomenon of being able to “have it your way,” the customization of a fast casual meal was relegated to condiments, not the entire entree.
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Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Teachers & School Leaders
In the wake of the pandemic, time is of the essence for high school students
A new report released last week by the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) explores the pandemic’s impact on America’s oldest students—those in high school and the 13.5 million who recently graduated.
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Commentary
What we're reading this week: September 21, 2023
The pandemic set Americans back not just in education, but in crime and mortality rates as well. —David Wallace Wells Schools spend billions of dollars on training on topics such as DEI and culturally-relevant pedagogy, but have no insight into whether or not it works.
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Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Advanced Education, Teachers & School Leaders
Excellence gaps: New resources and a personal history
The Fordham Institute’s new report, Excellence Gaps by Race and Socioeconomic Status, authored by Meredith Coffey and Adam Tyner, is a significant addition to our growing knowledge about excellence gaps.
Commentary
Governance
A bridge back to bipartisan education reform
The Building Bridges Initiative has released an important new Call to Action, "A Generation at Risk." The Initiative is a partnership of Democrats for Education Reform and the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. We launched it eighteen months ago with the hope of bringing reformers together across left, right, and center. Our top goal was essential if modest: to rebuild relationships that had been frayed by the polarization of recent years. Our second was come to an agreement on a new reform agenda. We accomplished both.
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Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
Create a more flexible work week for teachers
Last month, I met a newly certified kindergarten teacher. Twenty-two years old, she was thrilled to be starting her first full-time teaching job. Passionate about her budding career, she shared detailed, insightful responses to my questions about teaching young children. She was also happily enrolled in a part-time master’s degree program in education policy.
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Accountability & Testing, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
Back to the future: Houston takes a page from ed reform’s recent past
When Texas education commissioner Mike Morath named Mike Miles as the superintendent of Houston ISD back in June, it represented a throwback of sorts to a more muscular period of school and district accountability.
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Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Governance
Test-based retention, student achievement, and sibling spillover effects
Most public policy efforts are very specific about the individuals or groups intended to benefit from their implementation, and evaluations of such policies generally stick to impacts on the target population. However, education policies aimed at helping certain K–12 students can also have wider implications for other students.
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Commentary
What we're reading this week: September 14, 2023
Young men continue to benefit from affirmative action as the number of women at most colleges continues to surge. —New York Times Public trust in universities has plummeted in the last decade, and enrollment numbers have followed; rising costs and wokeness are to blame.
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Evidence-Based Learning, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
Chronic absenteeism has become a crisis, part 2: Cities and suburbs
Editor’s note: This is part two of a three-part series. Part one examined possible causes. This was first published on the author’s Substack, The Education Daly.
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Governance
Why serve on the National Assessment Governing Board?
You may already know that back-to-school time means that nominations and applications are being accepted to join the National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB) a year from now. Here’s why you—and topnotch colleagues and friends—should take this seriously.
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Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
America’s recent education declines in international context
America’s recent achievement declines are far from unique. Consider, for example, Chile, whose academic progress, as measured by international assessments, also stalled out in the early to mid-2010s, just like ours did. And which is also facing a teenage mental health crisis, much like we are, as well as rising violence and disorder in and around their campuses. Are these worldwide phenomena?
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Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
Grade inflation is not a victimless crime
Editor’s note: This was first published by Forbes.
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Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
Chronic absenteeism has become a crisis, part 1: Possible causes
Editor’s note: This was first published on the author’s Substack, The Education Daly.
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Commentary
What we're reading this week: September 7, 2023
Science of reading policies and curricula have spread across the country, but the science of proper implementation is less clear.
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Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Advanced Education
The essential state role in educating advanced learners
Getting advanced learners (a.k.a. “gifted” students) the education they need, and ensuring that this works equitably for youngsters from every sort of background, is substantially the responsibility of state leaders.
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Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
Texas’s controversial takeover of Houston’s schools
If you believe the media, it seems a dark lord has come to cut down the educational Eden that is the Houston Independent School District. He’s closing libraries to open detention centers.
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Evidence-Based Learning
Searching for mobility in K–12 achievement
Many Americans believe that the foremost mission of public education is to provide a pathway to success for every student, even in the face of considerable life obstacles. Yet persistent achievement gaps along dimensions of race, income, family education level, and other factors call this earnest expectation into question.
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What we're reading this week: August 31, 2023
Micro-schools, private institutions that serve five to twenty students, are rapidly growing in popularity across the U.S.
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Evidence-Based Learning, Advanced Education
America’s highest-achieving students are disproportionately Asian. Let’s not be afraid to investigate why.
Fordham’s latest study finds that fewer Black and Hispanic students from the highest-SES group are achieving at NAEP’s Advanced level than we would expect, given their socioeconomic status. That disparity clearly commands our attention. But so do the findings on Asian American high achievers—who deserve our attention for a different reason.
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Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
The hill that public education dies on: Transgender policies’ utter contempt for parents
Enshrining into policy and practice ideological views on student gender to which a majority of Americans do not subscribe could easily be fatal to support for public education. Indeed, there are no words adequate to capture this level of hubris.
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
How districts are gaming graduation rates by letting students cheat
For at least a decade, schools have been using online credit-recovery (OCR) courses to award bogus credits that satisfy graduation requirements, and thus inflating graduation rates.
Commentary
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
Seven ways state leaders can rigorously implement the science of reading
Ohio recently passed a historic state budget that includes, among other components, ambitious literacy reforms that require schools to follow the science of reading—an instructional approach that emphasizes phonics for building foundational lit
