Dems must stop defending status quo
To win parents’ support, Democrats must stop defending the educational status quo, argues Will Marshall, president and founder of the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), on The Hill. School reform and...
View Article‘Standards-based’ grading is a fraud
Progressive educators are pushing “standards-based” grading, also known as “mastery grading,” writes Auguste Meyrat, an English teacher in Texas, in Quillette. It’s a way to inflate grades, lower...
View ArticleCommon Core: High hopes, ‘minuscule’ results
Common Core standards, adopted by most states in the mid-2010s with a push from the Obama administration, didn’t improve (or ruin) our education system, writes Kevin Mahnken on The 74. A new study by...
View ArticleHow Core kids learn reading, writing
Fordham’s Reading and Writing Instruction in America’s Schools looks at how teaching has changed in the Common Core era. Middle and high school teachers report students are better at citing evidence...
View ArticleWhat’s proficient? It’s every state for itself
Once upon a time, 45 states adopted Common Core standards and exams — either the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) or Smarter Balanced — writes Tracy Dell’Angela...
View ArticleThe high cost of cheap diplomas
“Making graduation too easy” doesn’t just undermine “the motivations of students (and teachers),” writes Robert Slavin, who directs the Center for Research and Reform in Education at Johns Hopkins and...
View ArticleOrange is the new red
Orange is the new red for California schools, writes New America’s Conor Williams in The 74. Twice as many schools fell in the bottom (red) tier of the state’s Trivial Pursuit-inspired accountability...
View ArticleLove, struggle and failure
In Raising Kings: A Year of Love and Struggle at Ron Brown College Prep, a three-part series by NPR and Education Week, Cory Turner reports on the first year of Washington, D.C. high school designed...
View ArticleOhio may lower graduation requirements
Ohio raised its graduation requirements, promising graduates would be ready for college and careers. Now the state Board of Education is considering lowering requirements amid fears that one third of...
View ArticleCommon Core: Threat or menace?
“Six years after Common Core’s debut,” its critics “have produced enough books to collapse a sturdy bookshelf,” writes Fordham’s Robert Pondiscio. However, most “traffic in fear mongering and paranoid...
View ArticleCore math doesn’t add up in California
California’s Common Core math standards are less rigorous than the state’s old standards, writes Wayne Bishop, a Cal State LA math professor, in the San Gabriel Valley Tribune. The old standards,...
View ArticleTo save the Core, states dump Core tests
Most Common Core states are sticking with the controversial standards, but writing their own tests, report Ashley Jochim and Patrick McGuinn in Education Next. Since 2010, 38 states have dropped out of...
View ArticleWhat teachers think about Core math
Most elementary and middle-school teachers like Common Core math, according to a new Fordham survey. However, teachers “also say that pupils are ‘frustrated’ by having to learn multiple methods of...
View ArticleCore support erodes, right and left
Common Core support is eroding on the left and the right, according to two new polls, writes Rick Hess in National Review. Depending on how the questions are phrased, “it’s possible to argue that the...
View ArticleCore aligned? Not so much
In Checking In, Education Trust asks whether classroom assignments reflect higher Common Core standards. The answer is: “Not so much.” Analysts looked at more than 1,500 assignments given by 92...
View Article‘Thinking like a scientist’— without facts
Memorizing is out, thinking like a scientist is in, thanks to Michigan’s proposed new science standards, reports Lori Higgins in the Detroit Free Press. Instead of “memorizing the ins and outs of life...
View ArticleWhat doesn’t work
John Hattie’s What Doesn’t Work In Education, published by Pearson Education, attacks “popular and oft-prescribed remedies,” such as small classes, high standards and more money, reports NPR. A...
View ArticleSir Ken’s well-meant twaddle
Sir Ken Robinson, known for a 2006 TED talk, Do Schools Kill Creativity?, has a new book out called Creative Schools about “transforming” education. “Think of it as a jukebox cranking out all of the...
View ArticleInstead of the Core, ‘competitive federalism’
Common Core standards violate three laws barring federal direction, supervision or control over curricula or instruction, concludes Bill Evers in Federal Overreach and Common Core, a new Pioneer...
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