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Post-Convention Thoughts on Republicans and Education
Previews of a second Trump term underestimate the import of the GOP’s NatCon takeover. Coming out of the Republican National Convention, in its fixation on the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 and the GOP platform, the education commentariat seems to be getting some big things wrong as it contemplates a possible second Trump administration. This isn’t unusual, given education’s progressive bent and the field’s inclination to caricature Republicans. But it’s especially significant, given that (as I write) RealClearPolling reports that the aggregated betting markets give Trump a 60% chance to claim the White House this fall.
The Education Exchange: Los Angeles Says No More Cell Phones in Class
Imminent phone ban by nation’s second-largest school district could be first domino to fall. Nick Melvoin, member of the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education, joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss LAUSD’s decision to ban cell phone use during the school day, which will take effect in January 2025.
Are AP Exams Getting Easier?
There’s reason to suspect that the gold standard for academic achievement is losing its shine. Three decades ago, the College Board “recentered” the SAT. Now, it’s “recalibrating” Advanced Placement. Though both adjustments in these enormously influential testing programs can be justified by psychometricians, both are also probable examples of what the late Senator Daniel P. Moynihan famously termed “defining deviancy down.”
Comparing the GOP Platform and Project 2025 on K–12 Education
While distinct in their details, both documents share commitments to a reduced federal role and universal school choice. Textbooks tell us that political parties pursue power, interest groups protect their welfare, and think tanks conduct research on policy-relevant topics. These distinctions have never been absolute. Historically, parties adopted platforms designed to win elections; think tanks have always had a partisan coloration. But lines that differentiate these types of political organizations blur today as never before.
The Last Hurrah
High-profile education-reform efforts to turn around big-city school districts have failed to produce lasting gains. Will Houston be any different?. Houston is ed reform’s Bethlehem. Many of the most prominent efforts of the education reform movement, which for more than three decades has worked to reshape American public education, were born or nurtured there.
Grade Inflation Sends AP Test Scores Soaring
College Board appears to be bowing to pressure to reduce failure rates. A “recalibration” of scores on the AP tests taken by hundreds of thousands of high school students means that this year, the share of students receiving top scores on some of the most commonly taken tests has roughly doubled.
The Education Exchange: More U.S., European Students in Special Education
Nina Thorup Dalgaard, a senior researcher at VIVE, The Danish Center for Social Science Research, joins the Education Exchange to discuss the rise in students receiving special education, and how meeting the individual needs of all those children has become more challenging.
Late Admissions: Confessions of a Black Conservative
A Brown University economist reflects on his early education in a rollicking new memoir. In a photograph of the John Marshall Harlan High School chess team, I stand in the lower right corner, smiling in a striped collared shirt. I appear to be looking just to the side of the camera. Compared to my six classmates, I look like a mere child who has somehow found his way into the picture. But my presence there is authentic. Due to a combination of intellectual precociousness and a registration error that led me to skip a year and a half of elementary school, I entered high school at age twelve.
The Hidden Role of K–12 Open-Enrollment Policies in U.S. Public Schools
Detailed data from three states shed light on opportunities and barriers. Open enrollment in public schools is a form of school choice that allows students to attend schools other than the one assigned to them by their school district. Though often less visible than policies such as charter schools, vouchers, and education savings accounts, K–12 open enrollment is rising in popularity across the nation, and 73 percent of school parents support it. As of 2023, 43 states permit or mandate some degree of open enrollment, but only 16 states have strong open-enrollment laws. Since 2021, 10 states have significantly improved their open-enrollment laws. For example, Idaho’s new law requires all school districts to participate in open enrollment and also establishes better program transparency.
What If Boys Like the “Wrong” Kind of History?
An Amazon box was on the porch the other day. (I get sent a lot of books. It’s a cool perk.) I pulled out five colorful, oversized paperbacks. Great Battles for Boys: The Korean War. Great Battles for Boys: The American Revolution. Great Battles for Boys: WW2 in Europe. And two more. I found the titles delightfully countercultural.
The Education Exchange: Are Teachers Paid Enough?
An ambitious Chicago union proposal would make city’s educators among highest compensated in U.S. Chad Aldeman, the founder of Read Not Guess, joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss how teachers are paid, and how recent demands by the Chicago Teachers Union could impact the teacher salary landscape. Watch Aldeman’s...
Supreme Confusion in Oklahoma
Issues raised in state’s religious charter school case predestined to rise again. The Oklahoma Supreme Court on June 25 delivered its eagerly anticipated decision on whether the state could authorize an explicitly religious charter school. The court said no, resolving for now the issue in Oklahoma. But its inscrutable reasoning on the First Amendment’s establishment and free exercise clauses indicate that the U.S. Supreme Court will have to take up the issue—in either this case or one that will inevitably arise in another state.
The Education Exchange: Catholic Education at a Crossroads
Triumphant through the pandemic, Chicago’s Catholic schools face headwinds with the end of Illinois’s tax credit scholarship program. Greg Richmond, the superintendent of schools for the Archdiocese of Chicago, joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss the challenges Catholic schools have faced through the years, and how they are navigating the current school choice landscape.
Brookings Misleads Readers Again in Arizona ESA Rebuttal
Selective categorizing of participants clouds who benefits from distinct programs. Earlier this month I exposed the critical flaw in a recent Brookings Institution report that purported to show that Arizona families participating in the state’s K–12 education savings accounts (ESA) policy are disproportionately wealthy. The Brookings researchers had...
Next-Gen Classroom Observations, Powered by AI
Let’s go to the videotape to improve instruction and classroom practice. As is typical for edtech hype, the initial burst of enthusiasm for artificial intelligence in education focused on student-facing applications. Products like IXL, Zearn, and Khan Academy’s chatbot Khanmigo could take on the heavy lifting and personalize instruction for every kid! Who needs tutors, or even teachers, when kids can learn from machines?
Has a Glitchy Chatbot Taken Over a Major Education Research Organization?
An extensive preview of AERA’s 2025 national conference suggests so. Earlier this year, I shared my fear that a glitchy chatbot had seized control of a major education research journal. The editors’ torrent of inhuman gibberish made it hard to imagine that real people were still pulling the strings.
The Education Exchange: When Presidents Speak on Education, They Only Divide the Public Further
An analysis of polling since 2009 finds neither Obama, Trump, nor Biden have been able to change overall public opinion. David Houston, an Assistant Professor at George Mason University, joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss Houston’s latest research, which investgiates what happens to public opinion when prominent partisan officials intervene in education policy debates.
Campus Protests Don’t Undermine the College Mission
“Campus Thuggery Is No Way to Cultivate Citizens.” Hear, hear! We couldn’t agree more with this statement from Rick Hess in a recent Education Next blog post. So we were surprised to see Hess describe an essay we wrote in the Chronicle of Higher Education as a “defense” of “campus disorder.” In our essay—written in part in response to a prior Hess piece—what we actually defended was the right of students to participate in peaceful protests. We also argued that preparing students to be engaged citizens has been central to the mission of higher education for more than a century, and that political activism can help students develop important citizenship skills.
Career and Technical Education Clears New Pathways to Opportunity
Many Americans, including the last wave of Gen Z-ers now entering high schools, want schools to offer more education and training options for young people like career and technical education, or CTE. They broadly agree that the K–12 goal of “college for all” over the last several decades has not served all students well. It should be replaced with “opportunity pluralism,” or the recognition that a college degree is one of many pathways to post-secondary success.
Tackling “Our Worst Subject” Requires New Approaches—and Better Data
Chester Finn, president emeritus of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and a frequent Education Next contributor, likes to recount a story from his time working as a senior official at the U.S. Department of Education under education secretary William Bennett. In 1987, after telling a Chicago journalist that the city’s schools were the worst in the nation, Bennett summoned Finn to his office and asked if he was right. “Well, Chicago has some competition from Newark and St. Louis and Detroit,” Finn replied. “But you weren’t wrong.” Coming well before the advent of widespread statewide testing, much less state- and district-level participation in the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, Bennett’s claim seems to have survived contemporaneous efforts at fact-checking.
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Education Next aims to provide news and research to bring evidence to bear on current education policy. Bold change is needed in American education, but Education Next partakes of no program, campaign, or ideology. It goes where the evidence points.
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