Commentary
What we're reading this week: April 8, 2021
Districts and educators define curriculum quality differently than experts—and that’s OK. —Michael B.
Commentary
Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders
For maximum impact, align professional learning with high-quality instructional materials
Editor’s note: The Thomas B. Fordham Institute recently launched “The Acceleration Imperative,” an open-source, evidence-based resource designed to aid instructional leaders’ efforts to address the enormous challenges faced by their students, families, teachers, and staff over the past year.
Commentary
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
Lessons from Race to the Top
I have been thinking a lot about the early years of Race to the Top recently. I moved to Nashville in 2011 to work at the Tennessee Department of Education. Tennessee had won one of the first two Race to the Top grants with bipartisan legislation and an ambitious plan, and the state had $500 million to invest in innovative support to advance student learning.
Commentary
Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders
High expectations drive student success
Editor’s note: The Thomas B. Fordham Institute recently launched “The Acceleration Imperative,” an open-source, evidence-based resource designed to aid instructional leaders’ efforts to address the enormous challenges faced by their students, families, teachers, and staff over the past year.
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
Drawing a line in the sand on state testing
The Biden team has issued its first responses to state requests to waive federal testing requirements because of the pandemic. Dale Chu reads the tea leaves, and concludes that the new Administration is trying to eat its cake and have it too.
Commentary
Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders
The sorry history of “what works” in school
My friend and colleague Mike Petrilli is understandably proud of Fordham’s spanking new Acceleration Imperative: A Plan to Address Elementary Students’ Unfinished Learning in the Wake of Covid-19.
Commentary
Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders
How to instill positive school culture
Editor’s note: The Thomas B. Fordham Institute recently launched “The Acceleration Imperative,” an open-source, evidence-based resource designed to aid instructional leaders’ efforts to address the enormous challenges faced by their students, families, teachers, and staff over the past year.
Commentary
Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders
More wheat, less chaff: The availability and use of high-quality instructional materials today
The past grim, difficult year challenged our nation and schools like few others, so it’s important to take the time to appreciate good news when we hear it. New research from EdReports provides just such an opportunity.
Podcast
Commentary
Accountability & Testing
What we're reading this week: April 1, 2021
How can we do more to prevent teen suicides? —New York Times Pandemic pods are less sustainable and are harder to run than many parents thought.
Commentary
Commentary
Curriculum & Instruction, Personalized Learning, Teachers & School Leaders
How any school can personalize learning, part II
In part I of this two-part series, I wrote about three of the most common practices teachers implement in elementary schools that successfully personalize learning: giving each child a learning plan, organizing instruction around class-level and individual mastery, and using grouping an
Commentary
School Finance, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
Best- and worst-case scenarios for how school stimulus dollars will be spent
In the last year, Congress has now invested nearly $200 billion to support K–12 education. It’s an unprecedented federal infusion of money, but will it lead to an unprecedented recovery effort? It’s worth taking a moment to pause and consider the range of possibilities. Best case
Commentary
School Finance, Charter Schools
Our full rebuttal to a flawed critique of “Robbers or Victims? Charter Schools and District Finances”
Earlier this month on her “Answer Sheet” blog in the Washington Post, Valerie Strauss ran a lengthy rebuttal written by Carol Burris about a study that we recently published. Robbers or Victims?
Commentary
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
How districts and charter networks can best address unfinished learning
Fordham’s new resource, “The Acceleration Imperative,” aims to give the nation’s chief academic officers a head start on planning for America’s educational recovery, with a focus on high-poverty elementary schools. It’s intentionally a work in progress, and already the product of thoughtful advice from more than three dozen experts. The intention is for it to continue evolving and improving with readers’ help, via a “crowdsourced” initiative on a new wiki site.
Commentary
School Finance, Governance
The stimulus package won’t fix schools’ employee-benefit problem
Editor’s note: This is the second post in a series that puts the themes of 2020’s Getting the Most Bang for the Education Buck into today’s context, with particular attention to the effects of the pandemic and federal relief dollars.
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
CDC school guidelines, acceleration, stimulus, and other goings-on
The CDC’s revised guidelines for pupil spacing in school—three feet under most circumstances rather than six—opened a floodgate of gratitude from superintendents and parents.
Commentary
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders
The role of out-of-school supports in boosting academic outcomes
Structured activities and services provided outside of the regular school day were increasingly the focus of public investment in the U.S. prior to the coronavirus pandemic.
Podcast
Commentary
What we're reading this week: March 25, 2021
Remote learning has taken a toll, but increased flexibility and family time should be preserved as we move into a post-pandemic era. —The Atlantic While hard to define, “character education” is always happening in schools.
Report
Curriculum & Instruction, Standards, Teachers & School Leaders
The Acceleration Imperative: A Plan to Address Elementary Students’ Unfinished Learning in the Wake of Covid-19
In school districts and charter school networks nationwide, instructional leaders are developing plans to address the enormous challenges faced by their students, families, teachers, and staff over the past year. To help kick-start their planning process, we are proud to present The Acceleration Imperative, an open-source, evidence-based document created with input from dozens of current and former chief academic officers, scholars, and others with deep expertise and experience in high-performing, high-poverty elementary schools.
Commentary
Curriculum & Instruction, Personalized Learning, Teachers & School Leaders
How any school can personalize learning, part I
In a previous Flypaper post, Mike Petrilli described the challenge of personalizing instruction for our youngest learners as the “Mount Everest” of education.
Commentary
Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders
School choice proves no match for wokeness
School choice proponents argue that when parents vote with their feet—and dollars—schools listen. But choice is no match for the pandemic of wokeness that has seized K–12 education. The most advantaged, privileged, and powerful parents in America have been cowed into submissive silence when elite schools of choice adopt neoracist practices masquerading as “anti-racism.”
Commentary
School Finance, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
A challenging funding future for schools—made worse by the pandemic
Editor’s note: This is the first post in a series that puts the themes of 2020’s Getting the Most Bang for the Education Buck into today’s context, with particular attention to the effects of the pandemic and federal relief dollars.
Commentary
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders
Beware the calls for post-Covid innovation
Now that Uncle Sam’s check is in the mail, one of the biggest hopes for schools is that they will be able to leverage the massive infusion of cash to be more creative, imaginative, and innovative.
Commentary
Teachers & School Leaders
What will draw more teachers to low-performing schools?
A substantial research literature supports what many of us know intuitively: Teachers matter, perhaps more than any
Podcast
Commentary
What we're reading this week: March 18, 2021
High-dosage tutoring can do more than help recover learning loss. It can build human connections.
Commentary
Charter Schools, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
Power to the people: Further reflections
The Fordham Institute has published a two-part piece by Checker Finn on giving “power to the people,” as well as
Commentary
Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
What “building back better” might mean for education and job training in the United States
Two Americas are emerging from the pandemic. One features well-paid, highly educated, technically adept workers who can do much of their work sitting at a computer at home. The virus forced these people out of their offices and into their homes, but they went right on working and collecting their paychecks.
