Commentary
Teachers & School Leaders
Putting the teacher’s touch on remote learning
Editor’s note: This blog post was first published by Partnership Schools.
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Commentary
The lessons that last in the time of pandemic
When children of the pandemic are old and gray, they won’t remember their remote learning lessons. They will reminisce about the time their teachers paraded past their house because the schools were closed. They don’t have the vocabulary today to describe it, but the lesson will stick and become clear in the retelling. It’s about social cohesion, love and loyalty, and how good people step up when we need them to
Commentary
Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
How the feds can help schools run at 80 percent capacity
With more states and districts foreclosing upon the possibility of in-person learning through the end of the school year, the next few months will tell us a lot about whether our sector can muster the will and skill to overcome the contractual, logistical, and budgetary hurdles required to sufficiently meet the current challenge.
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How Advanced Placement credit influences college course-taking behavior
More and more students are taking advantage of the opportunity to earn college credit while in high school, but we don’t know enough about how they use these credits to shape their postsecondary pursuits.
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Does remedial coursework in high school help prepare students for college?
Fervor for improving students’ post-secondary readiness has reached near deafening levels in the education community and beyond, as policymakers, advocates, and researchers grapple with the stark reality that less than half of high school seniors are graduating ac
Commentary
COVID-19 calls for break from K–12 traditions: What we can learn from GEO’s college immersion model
Most of the discussion about schools adjusting to the COVID-19 crisis has centered on innovations in e-learning and how we reach our most vulnerable students. Thousands of traditional brick-and-mortar school systems are being forced to learn new methods of reaching all students through software programs, Google hangouts, and Zoom meetings.
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The virus’s tragic toll on youth sports
“Our sight was on winning the whole thing this year. And now I will likely never coach some of these boys again.” —Steve Cardoso, Rhode Island teacher and baseball coach
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How we’re making remote learning easier and more engaging for our families—and why we’re making it all free for other educators nationwide
For many educators, we are in the process of navigating one of the biggest challenges anyone has ever asked of us. As a country, teachers, schools and districts are experimenting with how to keep students learning while they are forced to be at home during the COVID-19 public health crisis.
Commentary
Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
Reimagining school
The COVID-19 pandemic is first and foremost a healthcare crisis. But it also causes an identity crisis for schools. The next year and a half will require our education system to constantly reinvent itself in response to rapidly changing needs, and school system leaders will need grace, high expectations, and new mental models for what school can become to best serve students and families.
Commentary
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
A revolution in education, born of necessity
Given his track record of studying and analyzing the real world of classroom-based instruction, Doug Lemov may not be the person you’d expect to be paving the way forward on online learning. But if you view Lemov’s work through the lens of the entrepreneurial, “find a way” spirit that sparked the modern education reform movement, it makes a little more sense.
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What philanthropy can do now to promote education equity after the pandemic
Less than three weeks into nationwide school closures because of COVID-19, two narratives have emerged about the role of philanthropy in supporting students through the crisis. The first is the distance-learning narrative and the second is the basic-needs narrative. Most often, they exist as separate entities in our conversations and how we make sense of the world.
Commentary
Daddy School: Week 2
I’m succeeding in my goal of running a B-minus Daddy Home School. Specifically I wanted:
Commentary
Let’s get ready for stimulus 4.0
Before the ink was dry on the CARES Act, talk had already begun about the next stimulus package. The need for this is obvious. There are over 50 million kids not attending traditional K–12 schools today, many of them poor, homeless, not speaking English, or requiring special services. Should such a measure come to pass, it ought to, among other things, help school systems provide remote learning at scale and expand economic on-ramps for youth and adults.
Commentary
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance
Students with disabilities: The whipping boy of coronavirus closures
The debate on how schools will provide special education in the near term has generated its fair share of extreme arguments.
Commentary
The proper context: Adventures in college admissions
At about the same time last year that the College Board was letting go of its previously-announced plans to add an “adversity index score” to its test result reporting to colleges, the journal Educational Policy published a research paper describing the results of an experiment which simulated a
Commentary
Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
How to make more autonomous schools effective
The education reform world is beset by many constant refrains. “Give schools more money,” for example, “recruit more highly-trained teachers,” or “schools need more autonomy.” But what do these things actually mean when put into practice? If reform is as easy as that, then why hasn’t someone done it already?
Commentary
Every minute counts: Inside Success Academy’s virtual schools
New York City has been brought to a halt; only the sirens of ambulances pierce the fateful silence. But for Success Academy students, learning continues. One week after the network launched distance learning at all forty-five schools enrolling 18,000 New York City students, I embedded in two days of classes.
Commentary
Planning for ELA in an age of remote learning
Editor’s note: This blog post was first published by Partnership Schools.
Commentary
VIDEO: Fordham staffers’ new “coworkers”: A slideshow to brighten your day
We at Fordham, like so many around the world, are working at home. Our usual colleagues have been replaced by new “coworkers.” These are often of the younger variety, be they human children or beloved family pets. But not always. This is for them:
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What we’re learning about remote learning
Days after we shut down all twenty-four of our New York City schools, we opened back up as a remote learning organization serving nearly 10,000 students in their homes.
Commentary
Papa Academy
Ours isn’t nearly as sophisticated or elaborate as the “Grandparents’ Academy” that Jake Halpern described in the New York Times, but after ten days of experimenting with it, I’ve had fun, my grandchildren have taken it seriously and worked at it, and we’ve all learned a thing or two.
Commentary
In wake of COVID-19, teacher unions could learn from Rhode Island
If you had asked me a few weeks ago if I’d be publicly lauding the teachers unions in my state of Rhode Island, I would have probably shot back with a quick “sure, when hell freezes over.” I am a former union member in two states (NEA) and have gone on the record repeatedly to say that I don’t think unions—at least in their current form—should be anywhere near public education.
Commentary
Do-it-yourself educational lessons
Joy Hakim runs a storyteller's website intended for anyone who likes to learn—at home, in school, or wherever. It may take you places in the past you haven't been before. It deals with big ideas and true stories, many of which are about science. Its offerings may be helpful for families adjusting to home instruction during the COVID-19 crisis.
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Schooling without school buildings: Early lessons from Partnership Schools
Nearly every school building in the country has now closed to help stem the spread of coronavirus.
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Coronavirus has dealt a massive blow to Catholic schools
As the nation works to stem the spread of coronavirus, American schools are bearing an enormous part of the burden. With as many as nine in ten schools now closed, almost overnight they have retooled to navigate a new era of large-scale distance learning in an effort to meet the academic needs of the dispersed students they serve.
Commentary
School accountability in the time of virus
We can’t hold schools accountable for academic results over the next three months. Too much is out of their control. But there are steps that they—and their districts, networks and states—can and should take to ensure that kids learn and to encourage transparency. Once they deploy online assignments, for example, what about simple counts of how many kids actually complete them? What steps are schools and teachers taking to contact, nudge and help those who aren’t?
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Betsy DeVos deserves our thanks for removing a major barrier to remote learning
As a Never-Trumper who suggested to Secretary DeVos that she resign after the 2018 election, I haven’t exactly been this Administration’s biggest fan.
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Keep kids learning while school is out: Bring back “current events”
I’m a disciple of E.D. Hirsch, Jr.’s prodigious work on reading and language proficiency, and an unabashed fan of his Core Knowledge curriculum (full disclosure: I was recently invited to join the board of the Core Knowledge Foundation).
Commentary
Can schools avert the coronavirus cliff?
Last week, schools across the nation shuttered their doors en masse, prompted by an unprecedented public health scare, the ramifications of which are yet to be fully realized.
