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Displaying 2941-2970 of 18422 results
Commentary
2.3.2020
Accountability & Testing

Lessons from New Hampshire’s innovative approach to assessment and accountability

Charles Barone

Although most states are only about a year and a half into implementation of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), we’re seeing an uptick in conversations about what the next generation of school assessment and accountability systems should look like. Those discussions should begin with what we’ve learned since the passage of ESSA in 2015.

Commentary
1.30.2020

Accountability without testing = trouble

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

An unhappy episode in Montgomery County, Maryland, (where I live) reminds us that the quest for accountability options other than standardized assessments can open the door to new forms of chicanery.

Commentary
1.29.2020
Evidence-Based Learning, Teachers & School Leaders

The endless, rocky path to reading science

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

The National Council on Teacher Quality just released its third review of America’s elementary teacher prep programs, seeking to determine, among other things, whether ed schools provide adequate instruction in scientifically-based reading instruction. The first investigation of this question, back in 2013, resulted in most programs receiving D’s and F’s, and just 35 percent earning A’s and B’s. But this year, slightly more than half of traditional prep programs received honors grades. That’s progress. But there are still miles to go.

Commentary
1.29.2020
Accountability & Testing, Advanced Education

Enduring math woes jeopardize America’s standing in the world

Brandon L. Wright

Considerable research suggests that “math skills better predict [individuals’] future earnings and other economic outcomes than other skills learned in high school,” report Eric A. Hanushek, Paul E. Peterson, and Ludger Woessmann.

Commentary
1.29.2020
Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Hiding in plain sight: Advancing SEL by tackling today’s urgent problems

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

Partisans of social-emotional learning are wont to make their case in utopian terms: Create better learning environments and good things will happen to kids, to academic achievement, to the society in which we live, etc. From the home page of the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL):

Commentary
1.29.2020
Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

The case for focusing SEL on social-network building

Tran Le

While education reform conversations about social and emotional learning (SEL) often include the value of interpersonal skills in creating and maintaining relationships, a new report from the American Enterprise Institute calls for increased emphasis on expanding student access to relationships and networks.

Podcast
1.29.2020
Charter Schools, Teachers & School Leaders

The Education Gadfly Show: School Choice Week 2020

On this week’s podcast, Mike Magee, CEO of Chiefs for Change, joins Mike Petrilli and David Griffith to discuss National School Choice Week. On the Research Minute, Amber Northern examines how teachers who specialize instead of teaching all subjects affect elementary school outcomes.

Commentary
1.22.2020
Evidence-Based Learning

What American education could buy with a larger investment in research and development

Michael J. Petrilli

For R & D to work in education, we must consistently secure funding from governments and philanthropies. That means presenting them with realistic, sensible ideas that can be adopted and implemented at a reasonable cost—both in money and teachers’ time. Fordham and CAP’s Moonshot for Kids competition yielded proposals for several such tools.

Commentary
1.22.2020

Rekindling confidence in key institutions, schools included

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

I haven’t yet got my hands on the much-discussed new book by Yuval Levin, one of the most thoughtful conservative public intellectuals and writers of our time (also editor of National Affairs and head of “social, cultural and constitutional studies” at the American Enterprise Institute).

Commentary
1.22.2020
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction

Reader’s workshop: The science denial curriculum

Robert Pondiscio

I owe my education career to reader’s workshop, the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project, and its founder Lucy Calkins. I started as a mid-career switcher with a two-year commitment to teach fifth grade in a South Bronx public school. Two things about my school are worth knowing: It was the lowest-performing school in New York City’s lowest-performing district.

Commentary
1.22.2020
Accountability & Testing, Teachers & School Leaders

D.C. continues to improve its teacher evaluation system

Amber M. Northern, Ph.D.

Amid all of the hullabaloo over teacher evaluations, fewer states are now using test scores to assess the quality of their teacher workforce.

Commentary
1.22.2020
Accountability & Testing, Governance

School Improvement Grants worked well—at least in these four locales

Jessica Poiner

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 marked a massive federal investment in our schools, with more than $100 billion to shore up school systems in the face of the Great Recession. Along with that largesse came two grant programs meant to encourage reform with all of those resources: Race to the Top and School Improvement Grants (SIGs).

Commentary
1.17.2020
Governance

The real history of school desegregation, from 1954 to the present

R. Shep Melnick

One of the oddest features of the 2019–20 Democratic primary season has been the return of the busing issue. Half a century ago, it nearly tore the party apart. Judicially mandated reassignment of students to achieve racial balance proved to be the most unpopular policy since Prohibition, opposed by overwhelming majorities of white voters.

Commentary
1.17.2020
Evidence-Based Learning, School Finance, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Personalized Learning

The top 10 EconTalk episodes on education

Adam Tyner, Ph.D.

A few years ago, as I was wrapping up grad school (where my dissertation was about migrant workers in China, of all things), I came across a bunch of fascinating podcast episodes about education policy and school reform.

Commentary
1.16.2020
Governance

Weak board governance weakens K–12 performance

Tom Coyne

After spending most of my forty-year career working on organizational performance improvement, I have learned that some of the most important causes of poor performance are often the least visible.

Commentary
1.15.2020

The top 19 Fordham posts of 2019

Pedro Enamorado

2019 was quite a year for education reform. We saw many conversations about what conclusions to draw from NAEP scores, how to help accelerated learners, the ineffectiveness of restorative justice practices, and what it would take to bring research-based literacy instruction into our classrooms.

Commentary
1.15.2020
Advanced Education

Students of color lack access to advanced coursework, but there are solutions

Brandon L. Wright

Gifted education in the U.S. is too scarce and lacks substance, and that’s especially true for high achieving black and Latino children. A new report by the Education Trust concludes that this gap has “everything to do with policies, adult decisions, and practices and little to do with students’ academic abilities.”

Commentary
1.15.2020
Charter Schools, Governance

Fresh fuel for the charter school debate

Robert Pondiscio

A mere 6 percent of students are enrolled in charter schools nationwide, but there are sixteen cities in which at least one-third of public school students attend charters. Newark, New Jersey, is one of them.

Commentary
1.14.2020
Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

Digging in the dirt for quality curriculum

Robert Pondiscio

A recent Fordham report finds that the quality of lessons that teachers get off the Internet is not very good. That’s no surprise but it obscures a bigger problem. If skilled practitioners in any profession feel compelled to scour the Internet for the basic tools of their trade that should concern us more than the quality of what they unearth. The very existence of a “vast curriculum bazaar” sends troubling signals about our general indifference to curriculum’s central role in learning, and our inattention to coherence and what gets taught.

Commentary
1.14.2020
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

Why don’t evidence-based practices take hold in schools?

Jeremy Noonan

Education Week’s recent report, Getting Reading Right, found that the most popular reading curricula in the country are not aligned with settled reading science.

Commentary
1.13.2020

In the Arena: A tribute to John White

David Coleman

It takes a lot of bravery to enter the arena; it takes even more to stay there. That’s what I admire so deeply about John White, Louisiana’s state superintendent of education.

Commentary
1.8.2020
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Where R & D and school improvement meet, good things happen

Michael J. Petrilli

Fordham’s recent Moonshot for Kids competition, a collaboration with the Center for American Progress, highlighted the distinction between research and development and “school improvement.” They’re very different concepts. R & D is inherently top-down and school improvement mostly bottom-up. Yet bringing them into productive contact with one another is vital and might be the key to getting student outcomes moving in the right direction once again.