Commentary
Standards
How much should we rely on student test achievement as a measure of success?
By Dan Goldhaber and Umut Özek
Event
Accountability & Testing, Advanced Education
Education 20/20: Ian Rowe and Michael Barone
The Education 20/20 speaker series resumes on December 11th with another all-star double-header. Ian Rowe will lead off by arguing for the inclusion of family structure in measures of student achievement. Then Michael Barone will explore the educational travails—past, present, and future—of gifted students and what might be done to ease the pain.
Podcast
The Education Gadfly Show: The sad state of credit recovery
On this week’s podcast, Samantha Viano, Assistant Professor of Education at George Mason University, joins Mike Petrilli and David Griffith to discuss Fordham’s new study of credit recovery programs, and her own work on the subject. On the Research Minute, Adam Tyner examines how high school start times affect student outcomes.
Commentary
To improve educational practice, let researchers peek into the black box of the classroom
I’m in the middle of a series of posts looking at how we might usher in a “Golden Age of Educational Practice” now that big new policy initiatives appear to be on ice.
Commentary
Credit recovery: Good intentions, poor execution
Last May, Slate ran an eight-part series exploring the rise in online learning for high school students who had failed a course.
Commentary
What is the value of earning college credit from AP?
College-level courses taken while in high school have never been more popular. Chief among these sources is Advanced Placement (AP), whose five million exams were taken by almost three million students in 2018.
Commentary
Per-pupil funding in charter and traditional public schools
Journalists are told to “follow the money,” and it seems only fair the same adage be applied to education.
Event
Career & Technical Education
Education 20/20: Kay Hymowitz and Nicholas Eberstadt
For part two of our Education 20/20 speaker series on the purpose of K-12 education, we’re joined by Kay Hymowitz and Nicholas Eberstadt as they discuss parenting, soft skills, the decline of male labor participation, and what schools can (and can’t) do about it.
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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
