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The Thomas B. Fordham Institute - Latest News Tracking & Analysis

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The Thomas B. Fordham Institute

The Thomas B. Fordham Institute

Primary focus: Education

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Latest coverage from The Thomas B. Fordham Institute

{"a":{"_":"Gadfly Bites 7/8/26—So many moving parts","href":"/ohio/commentary/gadfly-bites-7826-so-many-moving-parts","hreflang":"en"}}

News stories featured in Gadfly Bites may require a paid subscription to read in full. You have been warned. Post-vacation edition covering 6/24 – 7/6/26. Let’s start our recap with a few follow-up items from our last regular news clips/snarking service. First up is another look at SB 19, signed into law by Gov. DeWine on June 24. Fordham’s own Chad Aldis is quoted extolling the virtues of the math instruction provisions of the bill. The final version included a number of other Read More

56 years ago•
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{"a":{"_":"Kids ready for advanced math should get it automatically","href":"/national/commentary/kids-ready-advanced-math-should-get-it-automatically","hreflang":"en"}}

In the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress Long Term Trends analysis, 23 percent of the 13-year-olds surveyed report that they are enrolled in Algebra I. For those seventh and eighth graders, that’s great news. According to the NAEP release, students who take Algebra I by the eighth grade score higher than their peers across all other courses. While the National Assessment Governing Board is careful to note this is not a causal relationship, it is a persistent trend over time. Read More

56 years ago

{"a":{"_":"Texas has a theory of education","href":"/national/commentary/texas-has-theory-education","hreflang":"en"}}

This June, the Texas State Board of Education adopted new social studies standards and a required literature reading list for its public schools. These changes follow Texas’s 2024 release of its “Bluebonnet” curriculum, a package of instructional resources for elementary school, which sparked controversy over the inclusion of Bible stories in the reading materials. Bible stories, canonical books, and “patriotic” social studies standards have each invited familiar charges of culture-war excess Read More

56 years ago•
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{"a":{"_":"State assessments can be useful for both instruction and accountability—if we design them that way","href":"/national/commentary/state-assessments-can-be-useful-both-instruction-and-accountability-if-we","hreflang":"en"}}

Dale Chu’s recent critique of through-year assessment revisits a familiar concern: that state assessments cannot serve both accountability and instruction without compromising one purpose or the other. It is a concern worth taking seriously. Accountability requires comparable, defensible claims about student performance; instruction requires timely, actionable evidence that helps teachers respond to student learning. If poorly designed, through-year assessment can blur those purposes and Read More

56 years ago•
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{"a":{"_":"Through-year assessments can improve a broken testing system","href":"/national/commentary/through-year-assessments-can-improve-broken-testing-system","hreflang":"en"}}

In a recent Flypaper post, Dale Chu argues that the promise of a single assessment system doing multiple things well is “too good to be true.” He says that through-year assessments (TYA)—tests administered periodically throughout the school year that culminate in a summative score—are trying to do too much. But his critique relies on theoretical exaggerations, ignores the glaring failures of our current testing landscape, and dismisses the very real potential of through-year assessments to Read More

56 years ago•
1

{"a":{"_":"Sixteen years later, what did NYC’s small schools accomplish?","href":"/national/commentary/sixteen-years-later-what-did-nycs-small-schools-accomplish","hreflang":"en"}}

New York City’s Small Schools of Choice (SSC) program was one of a panoply of education reforms enacted in the early 2000s under then-mayor Michael Bloomberg and schools chief Joel Klein. The idea was to redesign students’ high school experiences and to increase graduation rates for students from low-income backgrounds by leveraging smaller school models emphasizing personalized academic instruction. A recent report from MDRC gives us a longer-term look at how SSC students have fared over time Read More

56 years ago

{"a":{"_":"Do school closures save money? ","href":"/national/commentary/do-school-closures-save-money","hreflang":"en"}}

Throughout the first quarter of the 21st century, schools built up capacity to accommodate growing student populations, adding classroom space, teacher positions, and the many resources that go into educating a child. The Covid-19 pandemic accelerated the build-up through the injection of giant sums of federal money to supplement state and local budgets. In 2025, more students graduated from high school than in any other year in American history. Today, however, the population of young people Read More

56 years ago•
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{"a":{"_":"Ohio school transportation workgroup offers sensible recommendations","href":"/ohio/commentary/ohio-school-transportation-workgroup-offers-sensible-recommendations","hreflang":"en"}}

In 2025, the General Assembly created a workgroup tasked with reviewing pupil transportation and developing recommendations aimed at “better meet[ing] the transportation needs of Ohio students.” Consisting of four state lawmakers (two from each party) and 11 school officials (representing all education sectors), the workgroup was formed in response to persistent concerns about students being left without rides, particularly those attending public charter and private schools. The workgroup’s Read More

56 years ago

{"a":{"_":"Illinois’s Teacher Union Strength Profile ","href":"/illinoiss-teacher-union-strength-profile","hreflang":"en"}}

This profile is one of 51 state profiles accompanying Fordham’s report, A Crowded Table: Teacher Union Strength in 2026, which updates Fordham’s 2012 rankings of state teacher union strength. Drawing on the latest publicly available data and a new survey of K–12 stakeholders in all fifty states and the Illinois, researchers Melissa Arnold Lyon, Sandy Frost Waldron, and Rebecca Jacobsen find that the education policy landscape has become increasingly crowded and contested over the past fifteen Read More

56 years ago•
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{"a":{"_":"Georgia’s Teacher Union Strength Profile ","href":"/georgias-teacher-union-strength-profile","hreflang":"en"}}

This profile is one of 51 state profiles accompanying Fordham’s report, A Crowded Table: Teacher Union Strength in 2026, which updates Fordham’s 2012 rankings of state teacher union strength. Drawing on the latest publicly available data and a new survey of K–12 stakeholders in all fifty states and the Georgia, researchers Melissa Arnold Lyon, Sandy Frost Waldron, and Rebecca Jacobsen find that the education policy landscape has become increasingly crowded and contested over the past fifteen Read More

56 years ago•
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