Teacher evaluation systems and their reforms were built, in part, on the idea that rubric-based classroom observations, paired with feedback, would improve teacher performance and raise student achievement. Not every reform delivered on this promise, but there were bright spots.
As the nation approaches its 250th anniversary, civics education and American citizenship are receiving much attention. Yet recent surveys reveal widening generational and partisan divides over patriotism, the nation’s founding, and what schools should teach about American history. The findings are troubling even as the growing effort to strengthen civic knowledge and commitment offers some grounds for hope.
As Americans are discovering during this summer’s World Cup, soccer often produces an outcome that is unsatisfying to our domestic sports sensibilities: a tie. One team controls possession while the other creates better scoring chances. Both leave the pitch claiming vindication, but neither gets to declare victory.
When the Supreme Court bases a decision on policy considerations, the downstream consequences can be significant. A compelling example is 1982’s Plyler v.
Editor’s note: The following piece is written by Kelly Sia, chief executive officer of Curriculum Associates, the company behind i-Ready, a widely used online assessment and instructional program for reading and math. In recent months, i-Ready has faced a wave of criticism concerning screen time, implementation, and the strength of the evidence supporting its effectiveness.
For several decades, K–12 ed-reformers and policy leaders have pushed to expand public school options and pathways.
Editor’s note: This is the final post in a three-part series written by Elainah Elkins and Jill Hoppe, born in 1999 and 2000, respectively. There is growing discourse surrounding Gen Z, but the voices of Gen Zers themselves are often missing from the conversation. This is their response.
The Education Freedom Tax Credit could be an utter disaster, argues Buck. The greatest risk is that, in time, the program will become a stick that the federal government can wield to thwack private schools into submission. But that’s not the only problem.
Lately there has been a lot of discussion about whether states should opt in to the federal “Education Freedom Tax Credit”—a dollar-for-dollar federal tax credit for individual contributions to nonprofit s
While we are now several years removed from the pandemic, work continues to remediate its inadequate substitutes for in-person teaching and learning. Tutoring emerged as a favored response from schools.
More than a decade ago, I reviewed the The Science of Learning, a slim report published by the then-new advocacy group Deans for Impact. At the time, it felt like an intervention, nearly an epiphany.
Mike Petrilli flies solo to discuss the latest Long-Term Trend NAEP results and why the bounce-back amo
More than 9.5 million students attend rural schools in the United States, a population that’s larger than the enrollment of the 100 biggest school districts combined.
More than a dozen states are designing, piloting, or implementing some form of through-year assessment as a replacement for the traditional end-of-year test used for federal accountability. But their enthusiasm rests on a shaky assumption: that a single assessment can simultaneously satisfy accountability requirements, improve instruction, provide timely feedback, reduce testing burden, preserve local flexibility, and produce valid statewide comparisons.
Editor’s note: This discussion between members of the Fordham research team and Kari Kurto, The Reading League’s National Director of Policy and Partnerships, comes in the wake of Fordham’s recent survey, From the Teacher’s Desk: A Science of Reading Progress Report.
OpenAI, Anthropic, and SpaceX are all planning to go public in coming months, which will create a new crop of billionaires and centi-millionaires—and likely Earth’s first trillionaire. Here’s how Nan Ransohoff put it in a Substack post that’s been making the rounds:
Choosing a college major requires young people to balance their interests, academic ability, future job prospects, and expected financial return. Some majors pay off right away with solid employment outcomes and high earnings, while others take years to fully realize returns—if indeed they ever do.
Patrick McAlister, principal of PM Str
Recent weeks have brought a few encouraging signs that the decades-long effort to kill academic standards in the name of equity has wreaked enough havoc and that something of a counter-movement can be glimpsed.
For the last several years, as more than 40 states have invested in evidence-based literacy instruction, national attention has understandably focused on the K–12 implementation efforts that have the most direct impacts on students, including widely discussed change efforts like that in Mississippi
It’s much disputed in England whether grouping students by achievement level or mixing them together is a more effective strategy for teaching in secondary schools. This practice resembles achievement grouping in the U.S., particularly when done in specific subjects like math.
