Claire Fiddian-Green is the President & CEO of the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation. Yesterday, the U.S. Department of Education released the latest scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), commonly referred to as “The Nation’s Report Card.” Indiana’s scores are disappointing and mirror the state’s recently released ILEARN results. In 2019, only 37 percent of Indiana 8th graders demonstrated proficiency in reading and math on NAEP. In 4th grade, 37 percent of students achieved proficiency in reading, while 47 percent were proficient in math. Average scores in reading declined and average scores in math held relatively steady since the test was last administered in 2017. While average scores in […]

Alex Cohen is the Director of Learning and Evaluation for the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation. High-performing school leaders have a substantial impact on student achievement. Studies that aim to isolate the impact of leaders on student test scores find that moving from a low- to a high-quality principal can mean several additional months of learning. And the impacts are larger for low-income students. But can schools do anything to boost the quality of their school leaders? Or are the traits that lead to better leaders too difficult to predict or develop and the best leaders too hard to retain? To help answer these questions, the Wallace Foundation funded and provided […]