Displaying 1-30 of 228 results
Commentary
3.24.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Why we should follow the science—to school

Michael J. Petrilli

A new edited volume, “Follow the Science to School,” aims to identify what science tells us about evidence-based practices in elementary schools, and describes what they look like in the real world of classrooms. Following the science into its application in this way—and sharing how it works on the ground—enables us to suggest workable answers to key questions rather than challenging every teacher, school, or district, to figure out those answers on their own.

Commentary
3.24.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Career & Technical Education

What hiring ads indicate about the skills that employers want in a college major

Amber M. Northern, Ph.D.

Not all college majors are created alike, but it turns out that employers want their new hires to exhibit many of same skills regardless of what they major in. A recent study examines online job ads as a proxy for what employers view as the skills inherent in various college majors.

Commentary
3.24.2022
Evidence-Based Learning

Impacts of a forced break before college enrollment

Jeff Murray

The typical timeline for college-bound high school seniors is to start a few months after graduation—the first available opportunity. But is that unbroken path into college the right move for everyone? New research suggests that academic breaks after high school have both short- and long-term impacts on postsecondary enrollment and labor market outcomes.

Commentary
3.18.2022
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

Should we be worried about rising inflation?

Seth Gershenson

Inflation is up, and no, I’m not talking about gas prices. I’m talking about some troubling trends observed among the 2019 graduating class of high school students in the recently released 2019 NAEP High School Transcript Study.

Commentary
3.17.2022
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, High Achievers

San Francisco’s detracking experiment

Tom Loveless

Editor's note: This post was originally published on tomloveless.com.

Commentary
3.10.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, High Achievers, Teachers & School Leaders

Keep fighting for selective high schools

Brandon L. Wright

In cities across the country, selective high schools are facing increasing pressure to change their admissions policies to make their incoming student populations more socioeconomically and racially diverse. Closing these gaps is a laudable and important goal. But the most common strategies for accomplishing it are racially discriminatory, misguided, and ineffective.

Commentary
3.10.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Career & Technical Education, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance

The casualties of “college for all”

Arthur Samuels

A couple of weeks ago, I shared some ideas about how schools and districts can move away from the well-intentioned but deeply flawed “college for all” mindset that has permeated the education reform world and has, in turn, harmed many of the disadvantaged students whom the approach is m

Commentary
3.10.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

About that Tennessee pre-K study

David Griffith

It’s rare that a piece of social science makes you question the nature of your reality, but such was my reaction to the latest, much-discussed update on the performance of Tennessee’s pre-k program—or more specifically, on the fate of the 2,990 children from low-income families who applied to oversubscribed pre-K program sites across

Commentary
3.3.2022
Evidence-Based Learning

Is attending college a good investment?

Nathaniel Grossman

Is college worth it? How we answer that question depends on how we measure the impact of attending college. Ranking 4,500 Colleges by ROI (2022), a new project from the Center for Education and the Workforce at Georgetown University, provides us with a novel tool of measurement: return on investment, or ROI.

Commentary
2.24.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Career & Technical Education, Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

A principal explains how to repair the harm of “college for all”

Arthur Samuels

As Michael Petrilli wrote in these pages a few weeks ago, the education reform movement has come to the realization that its belief in “college for all,” while well-intended, was misguided.

Commentary
2.24.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

“Doing science” boosts academic achievement

Jeff Murray

In 2017, a team of researchers from Finland and Michigan State University who were eager to improve science instruction for secondary students launched a field trial for Crafting Engaging Science Environments (CESE), a project-based curriculum they created and aligned with the Next Gener

Commentary
2.24.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

Online credit recovery and long-term earnings potential

Jeff Murray

The Covid slide has both expanded the need for students to take remedial classes and produced greater familiarity with remote learning. As a result, online credit recovery options have become more necessary and readily accessible at the same time.

Commentary
2.17.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

End school mask mandates

Daniel Buck

Thirteen states and D.C. still mandate face masks for students, as do myriad individual districts in places that defer to local leaders. In total, about half of American students have to wear a mask every day. But there’s little evidence that this mitigates the spread of Covid—a consideration that the Omicron variant has made less important anyway—and, more importantly, masking inflicts real educational and emotional harm on students.

Commentary
2.17.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Incentivize individual agency to achieve upward mobility

Ian Rowe

Editor’s note: This testimony was given by Fordham Institute trustee Ian Rowe on January 20, 2022, to the U.S.

Commentary
2.17.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

Dual language education seems to be a promising route to academic progress

Amber M. Northern, Ph.D.

Dual language instruction (DL) is a version of bilingual education that renders instruction in two languages in the same classroom. It differs from the more common English-only classroom with pullout/separate services for students learning English as a second language (ESL). It also differs from language immersion in which students receive all instruction in their non-native language.

Commentary
2.10.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Career & Technical Education, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Of course there’s tracking in high schools. Get over it.

Michael J. Petrilli

Tracking in our high schools is simply a fact, and we would do well to stop pretending otherwise or believing that it could be any other way. At the very least, we should allow for diverging paths after tenth grade, and we need to completely rethink our approach for our lowest-performing kids.

Commentary
2.10.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

We’re teaching mediocrity in literature classrooms

Daniel Buck

Since the beginning of the common school movement in the 1800s, we have valued our institutions of public education for their unifying nature, and the creation of a literate populace is an essential element of that goal. But much modern-day English instruction accomplishes neither. These middle school and high school classrooms barely resemble what you or I remember from our school years.

Commentary
2.10.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, School Finance, Governance, Private School Choice, Teachers & School Leaders

What factors predict states’ embrace of private school choice?

Nathaniel Grossman

School choice is on the rise. In the last few decades, families have benefited from an explosion of educational options.

Commentary
2.10.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

How did the pandemic affect school bullying?

Julia Wolf

When schools went online at the beginning of the pandemic, it was unclear how the sudden and disruptive shift would impact student behavior. Would cyberbullying, for example, increase with students spending more time on their devices? And would time away from other students increase bullying when students returned to buildings?

Commentary
1.27.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Career & Technical Education, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

We all agree that college isn’t for everyone. We should start acting like it.

Michael J. Petrilli

One of the biggest shifts in education reform in recent years has been widening acknowledgment that the “college for all” mantra was misguided. Yet so far our commitment to “multiple pathways” to opportunity is almost all talk accompanied by very little action. High school course requirements and accountability systems continue to push almost all students into the college-prep track.

Commentary
1.27.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Charter school expansion narrows achievement gaps

Amber M. Northern, Ph.D., Michael J. Petrilli

Fordham’s new study, based on data from 400 metropolitan statistical areas and 534 micropolitan statistical areas, finds that an increase in total charter school enrollment share is associated with a significant narrowing of a metro area’s racial and socioeconomic math achievement gaps. With the country reeling from a pandemic that’s caused widespread learning loss, especially for disadvantaged students, getting more children into charter schools could help reverse those dire trends.

Commentary
1.27.2022
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

A century of school reform, through the eyes of Larry Cuban

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

Confessions of a School Reformer, a new book by emeritus Stanford education professor Larry Cuban, still going strong at eighty-eight, combines personal memoir with a history and analysis of U.S.

Commentary
1.27.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Charter Schools, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Virtual schools should get more support and attention

Jeff Murray

A recent release from the Education Commission of the States reminds us that the term “virtual school” refers to several different types of educational options, and that the ecosystem—more important now than ever before—requires specific attention and support from policymakers.

Commentary
1.20.2022
Accountability & Testing, Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers & School Leaders

The case for starting NAEP in kindergarten

Michael J. Petrilli

Way back in the late 1960s, when federal officials and eminent psychologists were first designing the National Assessment of Educational Progress, they probably never contemplated testing students younger than nine. After all, the technology for mass testing at the time—bubble sheets and No.

Commentary
1.13.2022
Evidence-Based Learning, Curriculum & Instruction, Governance, Teachers & School Leaders

Stop focusing on class size

Daniel Buck

The Nation ran quite a headline last month: “To Reduce Inequality in Our Education System, Reduce Class Sizes.” Surely we might expect substantive evidence to follow such a pronouncement, especially in the midst of a staffing shortage.