In Newark, New Jersey, newly opened public schools dedicated to fashion, data science, and international studies are raising criticisms over their strict admission criteria.
For the past decade, Washington, D.C., schools have shone as a success story, with achievement for all students rising steadily in elementary and middle schools and more quickly than the national average.
Last week, NY1 reported that the New York City Department of Education will end its elementary-level gifted and talented test after administering it in person this April.
I’ll miss the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation now that it has closed its research and evaluation department, where I served as director from 2011 to 2020. After almost a decade examining challenges faced by high-ability students, I’ve learned a lot. I want to share with you ten of the key takeaways.
With federal coronavirus relief, schools are wrestling with a host of thorny questions. Especially under the new Joe Biden administration, how much federal aid is coming? What rules will govern its use? Most importantly, how can schools spend the funds effectively when reopening schools, improving remote learning, and helping students get back on track?
History, well taught, equips students with the ability to see through current crises. Civics, well taught, fosters in every heart an investment in democratic processes and a respect bordering on reverence for the rule of law.
The Covid-19 pandemic has run roughshod over so much of our education system, closing schools, sending students home to try to learn remotely, and obliterating last year’s summative state tests.
This post is adapted from an email conversation between Marc Tucker and Fordham’s Michael J. Petrilli, in which Marc was responding to Mike’s recent article, “The case for urban charter schools.” It also appeared in Fordham’s Flypaper newsletter.
Reducing student absenteeism is a key goal in many schools’ efforts to improve academic outcomes. The reasons that students skip are myriad—indifference to school, illness, jobs, caring for siblings, and more—which means that there is no one solution.
Most young children are surrounded by cell phones, tablets, and computers, both for personal use and, in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, for school. Studies show that extensive technology use can have negative effects on children’s development and academic achievement, but little research exists to show which children are most likely to become frequent users of technology.
Black families have valid reasons to distrust authorities, and that may be one reason they are skeptical about sending their children back to school during the pandemic.
Rhode Islanders just saw their governor, Gina Raimondo, tapped to become President-elect Biden’s Secretary of Commerce.
When the Covid-19 pandemic hit the U.S. last spring, schools nationwide shut their doors and states cancelled annual standardized tests. Now federal and state policymakers are debating whether to cancel testing again in 2021. One factor they should consider is whether a two-year gap in testing will make it impossible to measure student-level achievement growth during this historic period.
As the world struggles through some of the darkest days of the pandemic, and more schools shift back to remote learning, we at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute are spending most of our time thinking about what comes next: educational recovery.
When the news broke last month that Dr. Miguel Cardona had been tapped to be the nation’s next education secretary, a friend of mine texted me asking, “Have you heard of him?” To be honest I hadn’t, but it wasn’t an entirely unreasonable question.
Nearly every day, social media plucks some poor, anonymous face in the crowd from obscurity and makes him famous. If you’re making New Year’s Resolutions this year, one should be never to be that guy.
“Charter schools deliver extraordinary results, but their political support among Democrats has collapsed.
It is becoming increasingly clear that pundits and well-meaning education advocates fail to fully grasp the deep distrust that some parents have long had for their children’s schools.
We have had a challenging year with news cycles filled with troubling news about the coronavirus, racial injustices, violent rioting, and polarizing elections. But through all this, we have seen people come together and care for one another, such as how teachers drove by in a motorcade to greet their students.
President-Elect Biden has confirmed that he will nominate Dr. Miguel A. Cardona to serve as the next U.S. Secretary of Education. He appears to be a prudent choice for Biden, earning support from teachers unions and education reform groups, including charter operators. Cardona is the current Connecticut Commissioner of Education.
As with most years, 2020 has been a busy one for the Fordham research team. We published many groundbreaking studies, adding contributions to the evidence base on literacy, civic education, education funding, school choice, and gifted programs, among others.
As with everything else in the world, American K–12 education was rocked back on its heels only three months into 2020. School closures, reopening, and recovery became the focus of teachers and state, district, and school leaders. Remote learning became the bane of students,’ parents’, and teachers’ existence.
What if we can’t change at scale the distribution of academic outcomes among disparate groups of students? What if our hope that public education can erase inequality is in vain? If these things were true, how would what we ask of schools—and how we measure their success—change?
Long before Covid-19 hit, far too many students were struggling to stay engaged, experiencing the effects of learning loss, and had inequitable access to high quality educational opportunities.
Despite a stampede of interest in students’ social-emotional development (SED), gathering data on—and measuring the success of—such initiatives remain
Like traditional public schools, charter schools are publicly funded according to student enrollment. But compared to their district counterparts, charters have long received far less per-pupil funding.
“In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.” —Albert Camus
