Commentary
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Commentary
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Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance
The science and culture of reading instruction
After decades of reading wars, policy stalemates, and children quietly falling behind, teachers across the country are embracing the science of reading. That finding comes from a new Fordham report, which also tells a harder story about what’s left to do.
Commentary
Governance
The red-blue flip on local control and what it tells us about education today
For much of the past three decades, education reform rested on a surprisingly durable bipartisan foundation, from the standards and accountability movement of the late 1990s and early 2000s through No Child Left Behind and into the Obama-era push for more
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Curriculum & Instruction, Governance
Pondiscio vs. Ryan on state-led curriculum reform
Last week, I participated in a meeting with other policy wonks, debating (among other topics) whether all states should follow the lead of the Southern Surge rs and embrace a top-down approach to curriculum reform.
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Evidence-Based Learning, Governance
Boosting student access to better schools via quality-based reforms
Wide-ranging education reforms in New York City Public Schools in the early 2000s under then-mayor Michael Bloomberg and schools chief Joel Klein ran the gamut from school closures and consolidations to revamping acad
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Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction
Can literacy instruction make students better at math?
Once you learn to drive a car, you’re better equipped to drive a truck. Knowing how to drive a car might also help you to develop better decision-making skills. That’s because of a phenomenon called “learning transfer”: the application of skills and concepts learned in one context to another.
Podcast
From schools to systems: Rethinking improvement | Episode 1016 of The Education Gadfly Show
Christy Wolfe, director of K–12 policy at the Bipartisan Policy C
Commentary
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders
The science of reading has won the argument. Has it won the classroom?
A few years ago, the “science of reading” was still treated in some quarters as a niche movement—something for literacy specialists, cranky traditionalists, and a handful of obsessives who spent too much time fighting the reading wars on the internet. No longer.
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Curriculum & Instruction
Parents need to know what schools teach to make better education choices
Our schools have a curriculum problem. As states move toward education systems driven by parent choice, our lack of curricular coherence and transparency is increasingly impossible to ignore. For parents to choose, they must know what schools are teaching, yet most schools make this frustratingly difficult for families to discern.
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School Finance, Teachers & School Leaders
Minimum pay, maximum impact: Arkansas’s teacher retention strategy
Teacher pay has become a big contender in the education reform space, with growing agreement that paying educators a
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Accountability & Testing, Personalized Learning
When helping hurts: Rethinking special education accommodations
We need to talk about accommodations. Like puppies or grandma’s cookies, they are treated as unmitigated goods—at least in my experience. Should we not support all students? Should we not provide differentiated instruction? Who in their right mind could oppose offering accommodations, leveling the playing field, and helping students with special needs?
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Accountability & Testing, Teachers & School Leaders
Accommodations are a concern, but don’t blame parents
When 20 percent of Harvard and Brown students and 38 percent of Stanford’s are eligible for accommodations even as just 3–4 percent of students in community colleges are, we have a crisis of trust in testing, fairness, and equity.
Commentary
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders
The “science of reading gap”
In recent years, states and districts have made a concerted effort to align early elementary school instruction with “the science of reading.” But how much progress has actually been made? To find out, Fordham researchers David Griffith and Brian Fitzpatrick analyzed results from a nationally representative survey of K–3 teachers that examined their knowledge of reading science and its relationship to the policies that shape instruction. One disturbing finding: Teachers in high-poverty schools appear less committed to the science of reading than their peers.
Podcast
A Science of Reading reality check: Not there yet | Episode 1015 of The Education Gadfly Show
On this week’s episode, Mike Petrilli is joined by David Gr
Report
From the Teacher’s Desk: A Science of Reading Progress Report
Reading instruction is shifting toward the science of reading, and teachers are making progress. But gaps in training, materials, and implementation remain—especially in high-poverty schools.
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Career & Technical Education, Governance
Workforce Pell and the path from high school to work: Marking National Apprenticeship Week 2026
For all the talk about preparing students for college and career, American education still struggles with one of its most important jobs: helping young people make a confident first move into adult life. We ask students to make big decisions about college, work, and training, but give them weak maps for what comes next.
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Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
Beware the unintended consequences of school screen time limits
With school phone bans of various sorts now underway in 41 states and counting, debates on classroom screen time have shifted focus to the devices ostensibly being used for educational purposes: Chromebooks, iPads, and the like. In response to all the tech backlash, state policymakers are taking swift action, some of which is warranted, but much of which bears signs of legislative haste.
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Governance
Tony Bennett and the lost playbook of education reform
Fifteen years have passed since Indiana took home the Fordham Institute’s “Education Reform Idol” crown, a recognition earned through a
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Accountability & Testing, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
Why is Gen Z so anxious?
Editor’s note: This is the first 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.
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Evidence-Based Learning
Longer-term impacts of remote learning during the height of Covid
It’s been six years since the Covid-19 pandemic began disrupting education, and a varying number of years
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Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction
Special education doesn’t just work—it reverses academic decline
Approximately 7.5 million U.S. students receive special education services in public schools—more than one in seven pupils nationwide.
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Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders
In defense of the humble novel
As novels disappear from language arts classrooms, their many distinctive benefits are disappearing, too. So argues Daughtery, a former teacher and lifelong lover of the artform. This is a civilization loss that schools should work to reverse.
