Month: January 2022

ESSA Accountability: Don’t Forget the High-Achievers by Michael J. Petrilli

Way back in the early days of the accountability movement, Jeb Bush’s Florida developed an innovative approach to evaluating school quality. First, the state looked at individual student progress over time—making it one of the first to do so. Then it put special emphasis on the gains (or lack thereof) of the lowest-performing kids in the state. Many of us were fans of this appr...

EdStat: This Spring, the Acceptance Rate at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology was 15 Percent – by Education Next

The acceptance rate this spring at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, a selective magnet school outside Washington, D.C., was just 15 percent—a touch lower than at nearby Georgetown University. Thomas Jefferson, or TJ, was designed to provide an elite, high-tech education for the most academically gifted students in Northern Virginia. To learn more, read ...

A Stubborn Excellence Gap – by Hilde Kahn

TJ student Prathik Naidu (right) was a finalist in last year’s Regeneron Science Talent Search, the nation’s oldest and most prestigious science and math competition for high school seniors. Dr. Brian Kennedy (left), director of TJ’s Chemical Analysis and Nanochemistry Research Laboratory, is the school’s coordinator for Regeneron. There are 1,800 studen...

Four Things I Wish Incredibles 2 Had Asked About Gifted Kids – by Frederick Hess

So, I saw Incredibles 2 the other day. It was fine—sweet, watchable, and amusing. I mean, what else would you expect? But, given how terrific the original was, I’d kind of hoped that—with 14 years to noodle on it—the talented Brad Bird would come up with something phenomenal. And he didn’t. This was especially obvious because the first film was so spot-on when it c...

The NAEP Proficiency Myth – by Tom Loveless

On May 16, I got into a Twitter argument with Campbell Brown of The 74, an education website. She released a video on Slate giving advice to the next president. The video begins: “Without question, to me, the issue is education. Two out of three eighth graders in this country cannot read or do math at grade level.” I study student achievement and was curious. I know of no valid...