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Displaying 2431-2460 of 17507 results
Commentary
5.22.2020
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Seven steps to sending elementary kids back to school and parents back to work

Michael J. Petrilli

All over the country, states, districts, and task forces of every sort are wrestling with the question of how to safely reopen schools. This scenario planning is daunting, as schools must navigate a minefield of health, safety, legal, and instructional issues, and do so blindfolded by our ever-changing yet imperfect understanding of the virus itself.

Commentary
5.22.2020

Parents' demands for safe school reopenings

Keri Rodrigues

When the National Parents Union (NPU) met for the first time in New Orleans in January, things were just a little different. We knew we had a fight on our hands, but we never imagined what the next few months would bring.

Commentary
5.20.2020
Evidence-Based Learning, Career & Technical Education

What you make depends on where you live, not just whether you went to college

Amber M. Northern, Ph.D., Michael J. Petrilli

The COVID-19 pandemic and its economic fallout has yielded yet another cautionary tale about the perils of entering the workforce with nothing but a high school diploma. But that doesn’t mean that everyone needs a four-year college degree, or that we should build our high schools around that singular mission. In many American cities, workers with associate degrees earn middle-class wages.

Commentary
5.20.2020
Governance

The coronavirus campaign: How the VP contenders stack up on ed reform

Dale Chu

With everything going on in the world, one can be forgiven for forgetting that we’re in the midst of an election year. But in 167 days, Americans will decide whether to give President Trump four more years. Joe Biden has essentially locked up the Democratic nomination, so the next big question is whom he will tap to be his running mate.

Commentary
5.20.2020
Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

On distance learning, Success Academy once again leads the way

Robert Pondiscio

In the summer of 2013, After New York’s adoption of new, more rigorous testing benchmarks under the Common Core State Standards Initiative, student test scores plummeted around the state, wiping out years of paper gains.

Commentary
5.19.2020

NEW REPORT: What You Make Depends on Where You Live: College Earnings across States and Metropolitan Areas

The Education Gadfly

Yes, what you make depends on what you know and what credentials you carry. But it also depends on where you live. That's what we find in our new report by John V. Winters. The first-of-its-kind analysis compares mean earnings for full-time workers with different levels of education in all 50 states and D.C., over 100 metro areas, and rural America. Read it to learn more.

Commentary
5.18.2020
Evidence-Based Learning

School discipline reform: A deep dive into the research

Tran Le

In January, we had the pleasure of featuring Matthew Steinberg, associate professor of education policy at George Mason University, on the Education Gadfly Show podcast. This episode was the second installment of our Research Deep Dive series, and our big topic of the day was school discipline reform.

Commentary
5.13.2020
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

A conservative agenda for school board members

Michael J. Petrilli, Chester E. Finn, Jr.

Those best positioned to push back against much of the nonsense that courses through our schools are school board members. And those interested in effecting positive change should adopt a three-part agenda: let our schools refocus on preparing children for informed citizenship; restore character, virtue, and morality to the head of the education table; and build an education system that confers dignity, respect, and opportunity upon every youngster.

Commentary
5.13.2020
Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

Geography: The unloved stepchild of American education

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

Many urgent challenges await the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and its governing board (NAGB) in the coming months, including whether the scheduled biennial testing of reading and math in grades four and eight is feasible during the 2020–21 school year.

Commentary
5.13.2020
Teachers & School Leaders

It took a teacher to make a decent movie about a teacher

Robert Pondiscio

Few vocations have suffered more in the hands of Hollywood mythmakers than teaching. This is curious. Schools offer a familiar and fertile setting, and teaching is inspiring, aspirational work. There is rich potential for drama in student backstories or in a good teacher’s ability to change a child’s life trajectory.

Commentary
5.13.2020
Career & Technical Education, Curriculum & Instruction

The value proposition: On-the-job skills versus bachelor’s degrees

Amber M. Northern, Ph.D.

A skills gap occurs when the demand for a skilled workforce increases faster than the supply of workers with those skills. As the U.S. economy recovered from the 2008 Great Recession, that gap was evident in many economic sectors.

Commentary
5.12.2020
Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

Forge emotional connections with students before pursuing lessons online

Elizabeth Mee

Editor’s note: This essay was first published by Ed Source. As Californians adjust to a restricted and socially distant life amid the coronavirus pandemic, each of us is forced to refocus on what is most important in our lives.

Commentary
5.12.2020

The impact of school closures: A deep dive into the research

Tran Le

A few weeks ago, the Fordham Institute had Deven Carlson, assistant professor of political science at the University of Oklahoma, as our special guest on the Education Gadfly Show podcast. We were curious about the impacts of school closures—the ones due to poor performance or under-enrollment, not COVID-19—both on students whose schools are shuttered and on their new schoolmates.

Commentary
5.11.2020
Curriculum & Instruction, Private School Choice, Teachers & School Leaders

A self-reflection tool for distance learners

Beth Blaufuss

Editor’s note: This blog post was first published by Partnership Schools.

Commentary
5.11.2020
Accountability & Testing

Denver’s ambitious reimagination of accountability

Derek Gottlieb

Denver Public Schools (DPS) has long prided itself on being ahead of the curve when it comes to education reform. It was one of the first major urban districts in the country to negotiate a pay-for-performance system for its teachers in 2005.

Commentary
5.8.2020
Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

Providing teachers with quality materials that they're trained to use is critical as schools prepare for the fall

Amy Cox

The last time I saw my third grade reading students was more than 40 days ago. Like most schools across the country, ours closed its doors as a safety measure to help slow the spread of COVID-19. And like most schools and districts, we faced the challenge of how to ensure our students continued to learn when they could no longer be inside a classroom.

Commentary
5.6.2020
Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

When it comes to catching kids up, let’s stop with the generalities

Michael J. Petrilli

The complicated matter of how to help students make up ground when they return to school has two main camps. One wants every student to master key skills before moving on, and the flexibility for teachers to go back and spend time filling in the gaps. The other camp wants teachers to spend most of their time remaining on pace with grade-level material. There’s a way to help catch kids up that takes both into consideration.

Commentary
5.6.2020
Accountability & Testing

Shooting the test-messenger to end accountability

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

This year’s holiday from federally-mandated end-of-year assessments in math and English language arts will undoubtedly embolden test haters to declare once again—and louder than ever—that we never needed those damned exams in the first place and that our schools and students are far better off without them.

Commentary
5.6.2020
Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Elementary school teachers should stay with their students this fall

Dale Chu

As thoughts start turning to reopening schools, there’s been no shortage of advice on what educators need to do to prepare and how they should go about doing it. One emerging piece of consensus is that schools may need to start the school year remotely as part of rolling closures triggered by new outbreaks.

Commentary
5.5.2020
Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

An orderly return to school in the fall is unlikely

Derrell Bradford

The education policy discussion during the COVID-19 crisis is as raucous as ever. Equity. Learning loss. Online education. These are all familiar fights, and the pandemic has not arrested them.

Commentary
5.4.2020
Accountability & Testing

COVID-19 cancelled state assessments for the spring. Should we push for permanent reductions in testing going forward?

Cory Koedel, Eric Parsons

With schools shuttered nationwide by the COVID-19 pandemic, states had no choice but to cancel standardized testing for the 2019–20 school year. Although certainly less pressing than many other COVID-related issues, the test stoppage is a long-run concern for states and school districts that monitor student performance using annual tests.

Commentary
4.29.2020
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

On IDEA, Betsy DeVos did the right thing. Some school districts missed an opportunity.

Nathan Levenson

Secretary DeVos has declined to press Congress to waive major provisions of IDEA, the primary federal law governing the education of students with disabilities. This was the right call, and leaves school districts who have been slow to act facing greater challenges and expenses when in-person schooling resumes.