Each year we publish a list of the most popular entries on the Education Next blog as determined by web traffic.
This year’s runaway hit was How We Make Teaching Too Hard for Mere Mortals by Robert Pondiscio.
Robert writes
In many districts and schools—maybe even most—the efficacy of the instructional materials put in front of children is an afterthought. For teachers, it makes an already hard job nearly impossible to do well.
Expecting teachers to be expert pedagogues and instructional designers is one of the ways in which we push the job far beyond the abilities of mere mortals. Add the expectation that teachers should differentiate every lesson to meet the needs of each individual student, and the job falls well outside the capacity of nearly all of America’s 3.7 million classroom teachers (myself included).
Four of the top 10 blog entries this year relate to the election of Donald Trump and involve efforts to understand what happened in the election and what the results will mean for education in the years ahead.
Here’s the complete list of Top 10 EdNext Blog Entries of 2016.
| 1. |  |
How We Make Teaching Too Hard for Mere Mortals By Robert Pondiscio 05/15/2016 |
| 2. |  |
Trump Happened By Frederick Hess 11/09/2016 |
| 3. |  |
The Effect of Charter Schools on Students in Traditional Public Schools: A Review of the Evidence By Brian P. Gill 11/02/2016 |
| 4. |  |
The False Dichotomy Between Memorization and Conceptual Understanding By Frederick Hess 11/02/2016 |
| 5. |  |
Teachers More Likely to Use Private Schools for their Own Kids By Paul E. Peterson and Samuel Barrows 01/11/2016 |
| 6. |  |
Now What? By Michael J. Petrilli 11/09/2016 |
| 7. |  |
Much Ado About Grit? Interview with a Leading Psych Researcher By Chad Aldeman 08/11/2016 |
| 8. |  |
How ED’s Proposed Supplement not Supplant Regulations Could Backfire on Equity By Nora Gordon 04/13/2016 |
| 9. |  |
Pence, Trump and the Ed Reform Agenda By Paul E. Peterson 11/10/2016 |
| 10. |  |
Education Is So Far Left, It Can’t Really See the Right By Frederick Hess 11/18/2016 |
Congratulations to all of our authors, especially Rick Hess, who wrote 3 of the top 10 entries!
— Education Next
P.S. You can find the Top 10 Education Next blog entries of 2015 here, 2014 here and 2013 here.
P.P.S. You can find the Top 20 Education Next articles of 2016 here.
