Editor’s note: What follows is a reprinting of the preface to an important new book, How to Educate an American: The Conservative Vision for Tomorrow’s Schools, edited by Fordham’s Michael J. Petrilli and Chester E.
Far be it from me to claim prescience, but perhaps more folks should have paid attention last year when Rick Hess and I raised a caution about the intensifying ardor among educators for schools to embrace “social-emotional learning” (SEL):
With so many quick-fixes proposed to raise student achievement, it’s hard to tell who school reform is really for. Is it for superintendents trying to appease their school board? Is it for politicians who need to make themselves look re-electable?
Featuring essays by twenty leading conservative thinkers, and anchored in tradition yet looking towards tomorrow, this book should be read by anyone concerned with teaching future generations to preserve the country’s heritage, embody its universal ethic, and pursue its founding ideals.
Kids hear all the time that working hard and earning A’s and B’s in school will open opportunities for them later in life. Families rely on those grades to tell them whether their kids are getting what they need out of school to become happy, successful adults.
As a center-right think tank, we whole-heartedly support turning prescriptive federal programs into block grants. Among other things, they reduce bureaucratic inefficiency and trust states to decide what’s best for their unique circumstances. But there are exceptions to our adoration, and one of them is the Trump Administration’s proposal to include the federal Charter Schools Program in a new mega-block-grant.
With Iowa and New Hampshire in the rearview mirror, the original field of nearly thirty Democratic presidential candidates has now been winnowed down to eight. Six of them will face off on the debate stage this evening in Las Vegas.
A new report published in the journal The Annals of the Unsurprising reports that a child’s performance relative to other students on their third grade state tests in reading and math predicts where he or she will rank in tenth grade.
The college admissions process comprises a number of moving parts that must be negotiated by high school students with varying degrees of assistance from parents, teachers, and guidance counselors. Gone are the days when the local “State U” was good enough for each generation of college-goers.
On March 18, 2008, then-presidential candidate Barack Obama began an oration that Andrew Sullivan at the Atlantic called a “searing, nuanced, gut-wrenching, loyal, and deeply, deeply Christian speech” and “the most honest speech on race in America in my adult lifetime.”
Over the weekend the New York Times published an article on the front page about the teaching of reading. A friend posted in on Facebook saying “I won't know what to think about this until Dan comments on it.” I thought some background for people like my friend might be useful.
The Trump administration’s proposed budget takes the Education Department’s $440 million program of financial assistance for charters and melds it with twenty-eight other programs into a big new K–12 block grant. Although there’s scant political likelihood that Congress will adopt the plan, the proposal itself will be interpreted and welcomed by charter foes as a sign that even Trump and his allies and supporters have lost their enthusiasm for these independent public schools of choice.
There’s been a lot of talk recently about the reading crisis in U.S. schools.
That K–12 education in the U.S. has long been plagued by “excellence gaps” is no secret, although the terminology may be just a decade old (and owes much to Jonathan Plucker and his colleagues).
A couple years ago, a high-profile dispute played out between the Texas Education Agency (TEA) and the federal Department of Education, with a January 2019 New York Times headline pronouncing,
As its name suggests, the middle-skills pathway sits between a high school diploma and a bachelor’s degree. There are a wide variety of credentials associated with this pathway, but certificate and associate degrees are the most popular. In general, associate degrees include a mix of general education courses and career preparation, while certificates are almost exclusively career oriented.
In The Gulag Archipelago, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn writes of a rally held for communist leader Josef Stalin. At the event’s end, a tribute to Stalin was called for. As Solzhenitsyn writes, “Of course, everyone stood up (just as everyone had leaped to his feet during the conference at every mention of his name)....
No sooner had Senator Lamar Alexander released his statement last Thursday on the impeachment witness vote than the handwringing began.
Fordham’s newest report, "Great Expectations," delves into high school grading practices and the impact they have on student outcomes. Turns out that higher standards benefit students of all types and in all kinds of schools. Whether black, Hispanic, white, male, or female, students learn more when taught by teachers with higher expectations. Unfortunately, American schools are gradually making it harder, not easier, for teachers to keep standards high.
Florida’s Tax Credit Scholarship program has provided more than 780,000 scholarships since its inception in 2001.
Achievement gaps between affluent and low-income students are caused by much more than what happens in the classroom. Poverty is associated with a litany of social consequences that make learning more difficult, such as unstable housing, poor healthcare, and greater exposure to violence and other traumas.
Civics-education aficionados (and worriers) are generally acquainted with the 2018 issue brief from the Center on American Progress titled The State of Civics Education.
Interesting question. Before I answer, let me ask one: What keeps Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, up at night? You know Amazon, the trillion-dollar corporation that delivers something like a five billion packages a year. I’m at a professional meeting. The chair asks what “levers” we have for improving reading achievement in the U.S.
One indicator of teachers’ expectations is whether they subject students to more or less rigorous grading practices. Unfortunately, “grade inflation” is pervasive in U.S. high schools, as evidenced by rising GPAs even as SAT scores and other measures of academic performance have held stable or fallen. A “good” grade is no longer a clear marker of knowledge and skills. This report examines how teachers’ grading standards affect student success.
Although most states are only about a year and a half into implementation of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), we’re seeing an uptick in conversations about what the next generation of school assessment and accountability systems should look like. Those discussions should begin with what we’ve learned since the passage of ESSA in 2015.
Last week, the Supreme Court heard arguments in Espinoza v.
An unhappy episode in Montgomery County, Maryland, (where I live) reminds us that the quest for accountability options other than standardized assessments can open the door to new forms of chicanery.
The National Council on Teacher Quality just released its third review of America’s elementary teacher prep programs, seeking to determine, among other things, whether ed schools provide adequate instruction in scientifically-based reading instruction. The first investigation of this question, back in 2013, resulted in most programs receiving D’s and F’s, and just 35 percent earning A’s and B’s. But this year, slightly more than half of traditional prep programs received honors grades. That’s progress. But there are still miles to go.
Considerable research suggests that “math skills better predict [individuals’] future earnings and other economic outcomes than other skills learned in high school,” report Eric A. Hanushek, Paul E. Peterson, and Ludger Woessmann.
Partisans of social-emotional learning are wont to make their case in utopian terms: Create better learning environments and good things will happen to kids, to academic achievement, to the society in which we live, etc. From the home page of the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL):
