Commentary
Commentary
Addressing the ‘gifted gap’: Three strategies
As an educational community, we are constantly analyzing our strengths and weaknesses to determine how well we are meeting the needs of all students. Often, we measure our performance in terms of ‘growth’ and ‘gaps’.
Commentary
NEW REPORT: Gotta Give 'Em Credit: State and District Variation in Credit Recovery Participation Rates
Credit recovery, or the practice of enabling high school students to retrieve credits from courses that they either failed or failed to complete, is at the crossroads of two big trends in education: the desire to move toward “competency based” education and a push to dramatically boost graduation rates.
Report
Accountability & Testing, ESSA, Curriculum & Instruction, Standards
Gotta Give 'Em Credit: State and District Variation in Credit Recovery Participation Rates
Credit recovery, or the practice of enabling high school students to retrieve credits from courses that they either failed or failed to complete, is at the crossroads of two big trends in education: the desire to move toward “competency based” education and a push to dramatically boost graduation rates.
Podcast
The Education Gadfly Show: How to separate the wheat from the chaff on technical credentials
On this week’s podcast, Mary Alice McCarthy, a director of the Center on Education and Skills at New America, joins Mike Petrilli and David Griffith to discuss how leading states like Florida are vetting thousands of technical credentials to identify the ones worth pursuing. On the Research Minute, Amber Northern examines the relationship across the globe between testing policies and student achievement.
Commentary
Proposed solutions for revitalizing working-class communities
Out of the 2016 presidential election emerged a struggling and forgotten group eager to voice their needs: working-class Americans. In response to this outcry, Opportunity America, a D.C.
Commentary
Improving student motivation and engagement
There’s a terrific story about the late Frank McCourt, who became famous as the author of Angela’s Ashes and other books, but who was Mr. McCourt the English teacher to a generation of students at Stuyvesant High and other New York City schools. One day a student asked what possible use a particular work of literature he assigned would have in his life.
Commentary
Poor curriculums are disastrous, but schools can help teachers avoid them
Lately, I’ve seen a meme that keeps popping up on social media: “Telling a teacher to use a boxed curriculum is like forcing a chef to cook hamburger helper.”
Commentary
Civic engagement versus civics education
There’s much about Montgomery County, Maryland, that I appreciate—starting with the fact that it’s been a fine home for me and my family for forty-plus years.
Event
Curriculum & Instruction
Education 20/20: Naomi Schaefer Riley and Jonah Goldberg
Our Education 20/20 speaker series continues with a double-header event. First up, Naomi Schaefer Riley discusses the limits of school choice. Then Jonah Goldberg argues that civics education need to reclaim the ideals of American democracy.
Commentary
"Lord knows I love my kids": Poverty, family formation, and the future of education reform
“They already made up in their mind that they’re not going to give [my children] back. I feel as though they want me to say, ‘F**k it, let me just sign, take ’em.’ I get to that point. I get there. That’s why I’ve been late. I can be on time. But when I’m at home getting ready, I don’t see an end to this tunnel, I don’t see a light, it’s just pitch black.
Commentary
The school choice landscape following the 2018 election
After the recent mid-term election, we published our analysis of newly elected and re-elected governors and where they stand on the issue of private school choice. We also saw changes at the state legislative level that could have implications for educational choice.
Commentary
Hoorah for charter schools serving kids with disabilities
You might think the executive director of an organization called the National Center for Special Education in Charter Schools would place the interests of children seeking the best possible special ed that charter schools can provide for them ahead of the policy preferences of IDEA (the federal special-ed law).
Commentary
The specialized-charter-school trend threatens to undermine IDEA's inclusion goals
Some state charter school laws create the opportunity to open schools specifically for students with disabilities. Such schools may appeal to families who have not experienced success in their local public school and who simply cannot afford to wait for the reality of inclusion to catch up with the ideal.
Podcast
The Education Gadfly Show: The end of education policy?
On this week’s podcast Chester E. Finn, Jr., Chad Aldis, and David Griffith discuss whether we’ve reached the “end of education policy.” On the Research Minute, Amber Northern examines how same-race teachers affect students’ long-term educational outcomes.
Commentary
How to better inform parents about their school options
School choice can only thrive when families are well-informed about their options. Unfortunately, good information about different schools in a district can be hard to come by, and even when it is accessible, how it is presented and the level of detail provided can heavily influence the decisions parents make.
Commentary
Are college remedial courses effective?
Among postsecondary students who began their studies in 2003–04, 68 percent of those at public two-year colleges and 40 percent at public four-year colleges took at least one remedial course during their enrollment between 2003 and 2009. Of course, we’d prefer that students not need remediation in the first place.
Commentary
What to do about standardized tests
Critics of standardized testing say scores merely reflect family income and other factors beyond schools’ control—while also narrowing the curriculum and warping instruction. Still, the tests have value, and there’s much more that schools could do to address the inequities they reveal.
Commentary
Promoting educational excellence and closing excellence gaps
Last week, the Twin Cities was the epicenter of gifted education policy and practice as Minneapolis hosted the sixty-fifth NAGC Annual Convention. The convention provided a time for reflection about how Minnesota and the nation fare in supporting the needs of advanced students—and what we can do better.
Commentary
The way to improve educational practice at scale is to invest in R&D
Last week, I argued that the education-policy field has reached a state of homeostasis, “characterized by clearer and fairer but lighter touch accountability systems; the incremental growth of school choice options for families; but no appetite for big and bold new initiatives.” This “end of policy,” as I called it, won
Commentary
We need a more productive debate about school accountability, not tired arguments over testing
Last week, we at the Center on Reinventing Public Education celebrated our twenty-fifth anniversary by hosting a convening of practitioners, advocates, and researchers to take stock of where our education system stands, and how it must change to prepare every child for a future where change will be the one certain constant.
Commentary
Commentary
How out-of-school factors relate to student engagement and educational outcomes
A recent report published by the United States Census Bureau uses survey responses on parental interaction, school engagement, and extracurricular activities to give insight into the educational outcomes of America’s children. The report offers a sobering glimpse of how parental interactions with children dominate education outcomes.
Commentary
How the media covers education
When West Virginia teachers walked out on strike this February, education received a lot of attention in the national news media. Reports on strikes around the country over the next few months provided some unusually vivid insight into the way reporters think, talk, and write about education. Frederick M.
Commentary
Why was this teacher silent for the first three weeks of pre-calculus?
For the first three weeks of the year, Erin Woods did not say a word to her students during precalculus class, and they were furious. She was their tutor last year, and they knew she was great at Math, so why would she not help them? In fact, she was under strict orders from me to observe and observe only.
Commentary
Empowering teachers is necessary but not sufficient
You’ve seen plenty of comments and speculations on what last week’s election means
Commentary
The end of education policy
Almost thirty years ago, in February 1989, the political scientist Francis Fukuyama gave a talk that was later turned into an article that was later turned into a book, with the provocative title, “The End of History?” With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, western-style liberalism had triumphed over Communism, and had already fended off Fascism.
Podcast
The Education Gadfly Show: Equity and access in American high schools
On this week’s podcast, Erin Lockett, a senior policy analyst at the Foundation for Excellence in Education, joins Mike Petrilli and David Griffith to discuss her organization’s recent report on access to rigorous coursework in high school. On the Research Minute, Amber Northern examines the effects of a free-college initiative on graduation rates in New Mexico.
Commentary
Charter Schools Program funds are reaching schools in thirty-eight states
In September, the U.S. Department of Education (ED) awarded grants in four of the six Charter Schools Programs (CSP): State Entities, Developers, Credit Enhancement, and Dissemination.
Commentary
Expanding the important national conversation about reading
Recently I contributed a piece to Education Week, “Why Doesn't Every Teacher Know the Research on Reading Instruction?” My intention was to support and even broaden the important national conversation about reading instruction that was spawned by Emily Hanford’s “Hard Words
