Podcast
Career & Technical Education
#922: Redesigning high school diplomas, with Dr. Katie Jenner
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Dr.
Commentary
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
What makes Britain’s most successful school tick: An interview with Headmistress Katharine Birbalsingh
In 2010, Katharine Birbalsingh gave a speech at Britain’s Conservative Party conference, after which the school where she was employed asked her not to return. She eventually established her own school, which now regularly boasts the highest growth scores of any K–12 educational institution in England. Buck recently spoke with her about her school's success.
Commentary
Charter Schools, Governance
Blaming charters for segregation is dumb
Editor’s note: This was first published on the author’s Substack, “citizen stewart,” which covers race, education, and democracy.
Commentary
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders
Recent teacher survey indicates morale crisis among educators
Editor’s note: This was first published by EdChoice.
Commentary
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What we're reading this week: May 23, 2024
Grades continue to rise even as attendance rates and test scores drop. —Wall Street Journal Some 300 “segregation academics,” private schools founded after Brown v. Board of Education to educate white children, still exist in the South today.
Podcast
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction
#921: Rethinking reading comprehension instruction, with Daniel Buck
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Daniel Buck, Fordham’s policy and editorial associate, joins Mike and David
Report
Think Again: Should Elementary Schools Teach Reading Comprehension?
Reading comprehension depends on the acquisition of decoding, vocabulary, and knowledge, not “comprehension skills” as such. Yet the instructional practices and curricula that are the foundation for many English classrooms assume otherwise.
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
Actually, teacher evaluation reform was good—when it happened.
Tim Daly, a friend with whom I usually and enthusiastically agree, recently published a three-part series autopsying the teacher-evaluation reforms of the 2010’s.
Commentary
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Advanced Education, Teachers & School Leaders
We need more automatic enrollment for advanced courses
According to national data, children from low-income families and students of color do not have the same access to advanced courses as their more advantaged peers.
Commentary
Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Private School Choice
How a parent movement could revolutionize education
In his new book, “The Parent Revolution,” school choice advocate Corey DeAngelis explains the notable plummet in the public’s trust of public education, especially in the past five years. By his telling, school choice is the answer to all that ails us. But he’s likely overselling its healing powers.
Commentary
Evidence-Based Learning, Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
Charter schools cultivate knowledge, nurture social capital, and build civil society
As we observe another National Charter School Week, one fact is clear: Families are voting with their feet for charter schools.
Commentary
Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
Taking curriculum implementation seriously
I’ve made no secret of my fervent belief that curriculum is the overlooked lever in education reform. Replacing the slapdash, incoherent, and under-nourishing mélange of materials to which the typical U.S.
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Governance
In search of “just right” school ratings: Goldilocks and the three metrics
In an effort to avoid prescriptive top-down mandates, the school accountability provisions in the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) allow states flexibility in determining what measures they’ll use to assess school quality, how much “weight” they carry, and over what time periods they’re calculated.
Commentary
Commentary
What we're reading this week: May 16, 2024
Demographic changes have left America with too many half-full schools for too few students, and closures could dominate debates for the next decade.
Podcast
Charter Schools, Private School Choice
#920: Integration and charter schools, with Brian Kisida
In a special National Charter Schools Week Education Gadfly Show podcast, B
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
Let’s talk about bad teachers
The issue of bad teachers is the proverbial Gordian Knot, and pulling on a single thread won’t untie it. If we want to get serious about ridding our schools of bad teachers, we must attack many difficult issues all at once—including low teacher pay, collective bargaining agreements, pension systems, and teacher evaluations. Alternatively, we might just focus on weeding out ineffective rookies.
Commentary
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
The evidence for phone bans mounts
It seems every day that yet another story hits the headlines about a school banning phones. Of course, the large majority of schools had nominal prohibitions previously, but they left enforcement up to teachers, which meant most students still slipped them out during class, at lunch, and in the halls.
Commentary
Governance
Will Trump choose an ed reformer as VP?
November’s all-but-settled presidential rematch bears many of the trappings of 2020, except that Donald Trump will pick a new running mate. Who will it be?
Commentary
Commentary
What we're reading this week: May 9, 2024
A columnist recommends a reading list for ambitious teenagers to counter group think. —Ross Douthat, New York Times The El Paso School District plans to close and consolidate several schools due to declining enrollment.
Podcast
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction
#919: Why we should teach the history of human progress, with Marian Tupy
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Marian Tupy, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and the founder and
Commentary
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
Where teacher evaluation went wrong
Editor’s note: This is the third and final part in a series on teacher evaluation reform.
Commentary
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Advanced Education
Schools are largely neglecting advanced learners before high school
Fordham is among a wee group of reformers that’s paid attention to advanced education over the last twenty-five years. This disregard has resulted, among other problems, in a lack of informative research for the field. Our latest report addresses one of many unknowns: whether districts across the nation have adopted policies and programs to identify, support, and cultivate the talents of all students capable of tackling advanced-level work.
Commentary
Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
A new lost generation: Disengaged, aimless, and adrift
More than a quarter of America’s school-aged children were absent from school 10 percent or more of the time last year. There’s no shortage of explanations on offer for this surge in “chronic absenteeism,” mostly blaming the Covid-19 pandemic and its aftermath: lockdowns; lowered expectation; health and hardship; bullying and school safety issues.
Commentary
Governance, Teachers & School Leaders
LIFO policies harm teacher diversity, teacher quality, and student learning
It may seem tone-deaf to focus on layoffs when the news is fraught with reports of teacher shortages, but much as pandemic recovery funds helped drive these shortages by opening new positions to staff, so too will the end of those funds bring about a painful wave of
Commentary
Evidence-Based Learning, Teachers & School Leaders
How some schools are changing staffing styles due to shortages
While it seems likely that the end of ESSER funding in September will engender a(nother) seismic shift in the school staffing conversation, education leaders are—for the moment—still talking about teacher shortages, long-term vacancies, hard-to-staff specialties, burnout, dissatisfaction, and attrition.
Commentary
Commentary
What we're reading this week: May 2, 2024
New York State’s budget law weakens mayoral control of the Big Apple’s schools and empowers the United Federation of Teachers. —Michael Bloomberg, Bloomberg Teachers unions are hopping onto the “ban phones” bandwagon.
