Commentary
What we're reading this week: July 20, 2023
Contrary to many media narratives claiming that Asian Americans were stalking horses for whites, elite colleges really did discriminate against them.
Topics
Commentary
School Finance, Governance
Low- and high-income schools now receive equal funding
State-level school finance reforms and, to a lesser extent, increases in federal funding for schools have worked: America’s shamefully persistent inequities in school funding are finally a thing of the past. School funding is now generally progressive, meaning that students from poor families typically attend better-funded schools than students from wealthier families in the same state.
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
The accountability conundrum
Editor's note: Read more about this topic in Finn's essay in National Affairs, "The Accountability Challenge."
Commentary
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
Stop calling them book bans
You may have heard that conservative parent groups are banning books. From the Pulitzer-prize winning graphic novel Maus, to seemingly anything that addresses LGBT themes, such groups are challenging their inclusion in libraries and on curricula.
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction
Can great high schools really make a difference for low-income students?
How well do our public high schools prepare students—especially low-income students—for future success? A working paper from analysts at Brown and Harvard addresses that question, focusing on a number of consequential middle- and longer-term outcomes.
Commentary
Commentary
What we're reading this week: July 13, 2023
Ivy League colleges remain the domain of an elite, privileged few and so the strike-down of affirmative action will have little effect on the other 99.8 percent of the populace.
Report
School Finance
Think Again: Is education funding in America still unequal?
This brief challenges the notion that economically disadvantaged students receive less funding than other students, with implications for equalizing classroom resources and optimizing other social policies.
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Governance, Advanced Education
Who loses when we abolish entrance exams
In the wake of last week’s affirmative action decision, most analysts expect the recent enthusiasm for test-optional admissions policies to continue—if for no other reason than to make schools’ racial gerrymandering less transparent. Yet the students who will lose most in the process are the very students that these measures ostensibly seek to help: high performing, underprivileged students.
Commentary
Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders
Considering a new approach to classic literature isn’t “doing it wrong”
With the liberal arts seemingly in a perpetual budgetary and identity
Commentary
Evidence-Based Learning, Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Private School Choice, Teachers & School Leaders
Giving marginalized students better access to customized learning opportunities
Recent policy innovations such as education savings accounts, microgrants, and tax credits address some of the financial barriers that prevent families from accessing flexible education opportunities.
Commentary
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Advanced Education, Teachers & School Leaders
Piloting an advanced learning curriculum for typically underserved students
In many schools, being identified as advanced or gifted doesn’t guarantee that students will receive “gifted services.” For low-income students, Black and Brown students, rural students, and many others, the odds of being identified as gifted and having access to advanced coursework are even lower than for their higher-income and White or Asian peers.
Commentary
Commentary
What we're reading this week: July 6, 2023
How might the SCOTUS decision on affirmative action in higher education also affect K–12 policy? —Education Next A college professor reflects on “racial gamification,” the byproduct of affirmative action.
Commentary
Evidence-Based Learning, Charter Schools, Governance, Private School Choice, Teachers & School Leaders
Why conservatives should embrace open enrollment
America’s school choice moment has finally arrived, but the vast majority of students nationwide still attend traditional public schools—and will for the foreseeable future. Conservatives would be wise to support policies that give families choices within the public education system. Cross-district open enrollment does precisely that, and it has strong bipartisan support.
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
Three terrifying findings in the latest NAEP results
Parents and policymakers inured to years of depressing headlines about learning disruptions in the wake of the pandemic might be tempted to shrug at the latest federal test data on the achievement of thirteen-year-olds as more of the same.
Commentary
Commentary
What we're reading this week: June 29, 2023
On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a case about a North Carolina charter school’s dress code. In doing so, SCOTUS also declined the opportunity to declare charter schools public—or not.
Podcast
Accountability & Testing, Teachers & School Leaders
#876: The chronic absenteeism crisis, and what to do about it, with Alia Wong
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Alia Wong of USA Today joins Mike and David to discuss what’s caus
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Advanced Education, Teachers & School Leaders
More NAEP losses for high achievers—and how to reverse them
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
Richmond nixes year-round schools as NAEP scores plummet: “If everyone was out of school, and everyone had learning loss, then aren’t we all equal?”
You might think the latest headlines proclaiming
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Governance
Do tests predict later success?
Standardized tests and test-based accountability have come under serious criticism in recent years. One of the most important questions is whether improving student learning, as measured by test scores, helps improve students’ opportunities later in life. It’s a tough issue to study, but the weight of the evidence says: yes.
Commentary
Charter Schools, Governance, Private School Choice
School choice battles continue across the country
While national school-choice advocates crow about recent legislative victories in states like Iowa, Utah, South Carolina, and West Virginia, setbacks and struggles simmer in Illinois, Montana, and Idaho.
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Advanced Education, Teachers & School Leaders
New York City’s selective high schools work
This month, New York City students received their offers to the city’s eight specialized high schools. As has been the case in recent years, Asian students form over half of the admittees, followed by White, Hispanic, and Black students.
Commentary
Evidence-Based Learning, Charter Schools, Governance
More evidence that all charter schools shouldn’t be lumped together
It should be common knowledge by now that all charter schools—like all district schools and, for that matter, all private schools—are not created equal. Nor do they produce equal outcomes.
Commentary
Commentary
What we're reading this week: June 22, 2023
To sell their movement, education reformers overpromised in the 1990s and early 2000s. Now reformers need a more pragmatic narrative. —James Peyser To help students recover from pandemic learning losses, Richmond, Virginia, proposed a year-round school calendar.
Podcast
School Finance, Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Personalized Learning
#875: Charter schools that help students earn college credentials, with Kevin Teasley
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Kevin Teasley, of the Greater Educational Opportunities F
Commentary
Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders
How not to read a book with students: A rebuttal to NCTE
An academic trifle to most, literary theory is a deceptively consequential issue in American education. In English classrooms, students are supposed to encounter great works of literature, sharpening and honing their own view of the world. And so it matters not just what books we choose to read with students, but how we read them.
Commentary
