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What we're reading this week: September 15, 2022
"The State of the American Student," —CRPE The twists and turns of the Choose Your Own Adventure series encouraged children to experience books—and the world—through exploration and curiosity.
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Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Advanced Education, Teachers & School Leaders
Rural gifted children are being neglected: An interview with Paula McGuire
Editor’s note: This is an edition of “Advance,” a newsletter from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute written by Brandon Wright, our Editorial Director, and published every other week. Its purpose is to monitor the progress of gifted education in America, including legal and legislative developments, policy and leadership changes, emerging research, grassroots efforts, and more.
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Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
Explaining NAEP math “haves”: Software and private tutoring?
Earlier this month, Michael Petrilli wrote about America’s top-quartile students making gains from 2009 to 2019 over their already high baseline—in math, reading, and science—and our lower-quartile kids declining from their already low baseline.
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Evidence-Based Learning, Career & Technical Education, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
The case for specialized career and technical education
About three-quarters of students in the U.S. take at least one credit in high school linked to career and technical education (CTE). When high school students take multiple CTE credits, they are often encouraged to focus in a specialized career pathway, like business, health sciences, or hospitality and tourism.
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Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
Beware of whiplash from clashing achievement results
The last month has brought both bleak new NAEP results and a deeply researched piece on “a half-century of student progress nationwide.” The former abounds with gloom about the dire and declining state of U.S. educational achievement and widening gaps between groups. The latter is an upbeat rejoinder to the doomsayers and a well-documented celebration of half a century of gains and gap-narrowings. What’s going on here?
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Accountability & Testing, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
It’s far too early to declare victory over Covid-era learning loss
New findings released last week from the NAEP long-term trend assessment (LTT) suggest an alarming downswing among U.S. nine-year-olds in both math and reading between 2020 and 2022.
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What we're reading this week: September 8, 2022
A new study suggests that there is no gap in access to effective teachers between high- and low-poverty schools. —Education Next Two decades of research have shown that private school voucher programs improve educational attainment but hurt academic achievement.
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Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders
Tennessee trains thousands of secondary teachers in reading science
For all the welcome attention being paid to the Science of Reading, and literacy in general, there has been little focus in public policy on how to address the learning needs of secondary students who, for whatever combination of reasons, have failed to learn to read in elementary school.
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National Working Group on Advanced Education: Summary of second meeting
On June 29, 2022, members of the National Working Group on Advanced Education held their second meeting. Here we summarize the discussions, with particular focus on social and emotional support for high-achieving students, especially those from especially those from underserved backgrounds; support for educators of advanced students; the importance of high-quality instructional materials; and how best to use ability (or “achievement”) grouping. Read more.
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Evidence-Based Learning, Career & Technical Education, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
What’s the purpose of industry-recognized credentials?
A new Fordham Institute publication by Dr.
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Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
Educating young Americans for citizenship is our schools’ top job
In the realm of elementary and secondary education, we so often focus on one or two trees instead of the forest. We go off and argue about the best way to teach reading, about which books belong in the school library, about whether everyone should take “college prep” courses, about how to teach race or evolution or climate change or even algebra.
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Accountability & Testing, School Finance, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
What happens when school leaders are allowed to abandon “step and lane” pay scales
In 2013, the British government ended the use of “annual progression” pay scales for teachers. These were similar to U.S.-style “step and lane” models but were set at the national level across the pond.
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What we're reading this week: September 1, 2022
To prevent Covid-era learning losses from becoming permanent, we need schools to retain and reward their most effective teachers while dismissing their least effective ones.
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Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Standards, Teachers & School Leaders
What national test scores tell us about American education before the pandemic
NAGB officials recently reported on U.S. student achievement trends from 2009–19, and what they found was eye-opening. Whereas America’s higher achieving students held steady or even gained ground, our lowest performing kids saw test scores fall, at least in fourth and eighth grades and in reading and math. What might be causing these diverging trends?
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Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Governance, Advanced Education
Pre-pandemic, more U.S. students were excelling in math
Editor’s note: This is an edition of “Advance,” a newsletter from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute written by Brandon Wright, our Editorial Director, and published every other week. Its purpose is to monitor the progress of gifted education in America, including legal and legislative developments, policy and leadership changes, emerging research, grassroots efforts, and more.
Commentary
Evidence-Based Learning, Career & Technical Education, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
Industry-recognized credentials are helpful but not transformative for high school students
Fordham’s newest study finds, among other things, that industry-recognized credentials earned in high school are a net positive for students who earn them but are not game-changers. This raises a lingering question: How else can we transform the high school experience for students so as to significantly boost their wages and career prospects once they are in the workforce? Here are four ideas.
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Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Career & Technical Education, Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Standards, Teachers & School Leaders
The evolving education reform agenda
Earlier this month, I argued that “education reform is alive and well, even if the Washington Consensus is dead for now.” What’s more, I wrote that we should stay the course on the current reform strategy:
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Evidence-Based Learning, Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
Is school choice good for America?
Does school choice work? That depends on who you talk to and what you mean by “work.” For education researchers and policy wonks, school choice works if it raises math and reading scores for students who take advantage of choice programs or, more broadly, if market competition improves measurable outcomes for all students.
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What we're reading this week: August 25, 2022
The Great Recession baby bust and the Covid-19 pandemic led federal statisticians to predict enrollment declines in almost every state by 2030.
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Evidence-Based Learning, Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
Instructional coherence isn’t a trendy reform. It’s necessary—and it works.
In a recent piece about the state of standards-based reform, Dale Chu weighs the benefits and challenges of a district “relinquishment” versus “instructional coherence” approach to improving student learning.
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Teachers & School Leaders
Teachers unions should stay in their lane
American children are suffering from unprecedented learning loss, and many are not even bothering to show up to school.
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Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
States revamp early reading policies. Is this time for real?
Since 2013, thirty states have passed legislation or implemented new policies related to the “science of reading.” Their collective effort to change how early reading is taught in America’s classrooms is the focus of an excellent new project by Education Week’s Sarah Schwartz. There are, however, questions about the sustainability of these massive efforts.
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Charter Schools, Teachers & School Leaders
Exit interview: “America’s authorizer,” Susie Miller Carello
Susie Miller Carello may not be a household name in education, but she’s a household name among those who are.
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Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders
Virtue and classic children’s literature
Parents are often given dubious advice about their children’s reading: Let them read whatever they enjoy, as we must encourage literacy. This is a strangely laissez-faire attitude to take towards such a fundamentally formative activity. No decent school counsels parents to let their children watch or listen to whatever they want, so why is reading different?
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Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Advanced Education, Teachers & School Leaders
The benefits of multiple screenings for student giftedness
Efforts to diversify the roster of students classified as gifted often focus on race and ethnicity.
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