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Displaying 2491-2520 of 18422 results
Commentary
2.4.2021
Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Private School Choice, Teachers & School Leaders

How ya gonna keep ‘em back in that old school?

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

If the pandemic vanished tomorrow and all U.S. schools instantly reopened in exactly the same fashion as they were operating last February, how many parents would be satisfied to return their daughters and sons to the same old familiar classrooms, teachers, schedules and curricula? A lot fewer than the same old schools and those who run and teach in them are expecting back!

Commentary
2.4.2021
Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Opening schools can help heal our divided country

Dale Chu

Last month, I weighed in on the renewed calls for civics education after January 6’s disgraceful assault on the U.S. Capitol. While teaching civics would be a good start, schools are critical institutions of civil society regardless of whether they teach civics well or at all.

Commentary
2.4.2021

What we're reading this week: February 4, 2021

The Education Gadfly

“Cardona: Testing is important, but ‘I don’t think we need to be bringing students in just to test them.’” —Chalkbeat Though teacher unions want to deny the facts, children can return safely to classrooms—and for the sak

Commentary
2.3.2021
Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

Unexpected innovation: Charter schools and novice teacher development

Bill Waychunas

Let’s start with a little game. Trust me, it will be helpful if you play along… Grab a piece of paper and a writing utensil. Complete the following sentence: First-year or early-career teachers typically struggle most with… (Try to come up with a few answers.)

Commentary
1.28.2021
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

What to do about the Covid kindergarten cohort?

Michael J. Petrilli

Editor’s note: This is the third in a series of posts about envelope-pushing strategies that schools might embrace to address students’ learning loss in the wake of the pandemic.

Commentary
1.28.2021
Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Don’t let bad habits become the “new normal”

Robert Pondiscio, Julie Fitz

From the start of the pandemic, I’ve resisted talk of the “new normal” in education for two reasons. First and most importantly, there’s an unquenchable thirst for the old normal, and increasingly so as disruptions to traditional patterns of schooling approach the twelve-month mark.

Commentary
1.28.2021
Career & Technical Education, Charter Schools

Career and technical education and the soft bigotry of low expectations

Tamar Jacoby

Beware the “soft bigotry of low expectations.” President George W. Bush’s trenchant warning resonated across the political spectrum when he voiced it to the NAACP in 2000, and it has more or less driven federal education policy ever since. For many, educators and noneducators alike, it remains a touchstone of how to think about racial equity.

Commentary
1.28.2021
Evidence-Based Learning, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Merit aid and college outcomes

Amber M. Northern, Ph.D.

For many years, the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation (STBF) in Nebraska has provided full-ride college scholarships to eligible high school graduates in the state. This randomized study examines how such largesse affects higher education enrollment and degree completion.

Commentary
1.28.2021
Curriculum & Instruction

The unexamined cost of teachers’ time spent choosing instructional materials

Robert Pondiscio

Despite the burgeoning interest in “high-quality instructional materials” (HQIM) and energetic efforts in recent years to incentivize their use, “evidence is mixed on how much teachers actually use the materials that districts or schools adopt,” note the authors of a new research report from the RAND Corporation.

Commentary
1.28.2021

What we're reading this week: January 28

The Education Gadfly

“The covid-19 tragedy teaches this: Government is more apt to achieve adequacy when it does not try to achieve [regulatory] purity.” —Washington Post The CDC concludes that school transmission of

Commentary
1.26.2021
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Advice to the Biden administration on improving special education. More money isn’t enough—or most important.

Nathan Levenson

Among the many reasons equity advocates are celebrating new leadership in Washington is the hope that President Biden and Secretary of Education-designate Cardona will do more to help students with disabilities. These kids struggled mightily in school before the pandemic, and no group of students has suffered more from remote and hybrid learning.

Commentary
1.21.2021
Governance

Eight recommendations for the Biden administration

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

Besides pumping tons more recovery dollars into schools, getting more teachers vaccinated, and trying to get many more kids back into classrooms, what might the Biden-Cardona team do in K–12 education that would actually be worthwhile?

Commentary
1.21.2021
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

What the Capitol riot means for civics education

Dale Chu

Still reeling from the assault on the Capitol and the subsequent impeachment effort against Former President Trump, the education sphere’s attention has understandably returned to the need to resuscitate the teaching of civics and history. If schools did a better job of grounding our students in the principles of a free society and a basic understanding of U.S.

Commentary
1.21.2021
Advanced Education

How gifted students improve the outcomes of their classmates, regardless of their ability levels

Brandon L. Wright

Gifted education is usually thought of as comprising separate classrooms that participating students attend for part of the day, and that move faster through curricular material or examine it at greater depth than “regular education” classrooms. This, of course, is only possible because all of the students in gifted classrooms are up to the challenge of this enhanced instruction.

Commentary
1.21.2021

What we're reading this week: January 21, 2021

The Education Gadfly

In Newark, New Jersey, newly opened public schools dedicated to fashion, data science, and international studies are raising criticisms over their strict admission criteria.

Commentary
1.20.2021
Evidence-Based Learning, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

The pandemic dims a beacon of school improvement

Josh Boots

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.

Commentary
1.19.2021
Advanced Education

Cooke-ing excellence through research

Jennifer Glynn

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.

Event
1.19.2021
School Finance

Webinar: How should schools spend federal Covid-19 aid?

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?

Commentary
1.14.2021
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

The civics and history lesson our children need right now

Robert Pondiscio

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.