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Getting Back to Basics
I must admit, I’d become something of an education fatalist. I know the research about direct instruction. I know the power of a knowledge-rich, well-sequenced curriculum and the promise of school choice. I know that individual schools and even whole charter systems can achieve amazing results. But I always wonder: Is it all for naught?
The Education Exchange: Harvard Conference to Explore if Alternative Models are Transforming School-Choice Landscape
Daniel Hamlin, an assistant professor at the University of Oklahoma, joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss the “Emerging School Models” conference, which will be hosted by Harvard’s Program on Education Policy and Governance on Sept. 28 and 29, 2023. Learn more about “Emerging School Models: Moving from...
Eliminate Department of Education, Four Republican Presidential Candidates Say
In the first Republican presidential debate of the 2024 election cycle, four of the candidates called for the elimination of the U.S. Department of Education, while three also vowed to crush teacher unions. Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, Vivek Ramaswamy, Governor Doug Burgum of North Dakota, and Vice President Mike...
Massachusetts Teachers Union Aims to Eliminate Standardized Test as High-School Graduation Requirement
Massachusetts appears headed for another high-profile, and expensive, education-related ballot initiative battle—this time, over standardized testing. The Massachusetts Teachers Association, a 115,000-member union that is a powerful political force in the state, is backing an initiative that would eliminate the use of the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment Test as a high-school graduation requirement. Education reform and business groups are already beginning to mobilize to preserve the testing requirement.
2023 Is the Year of Universal Choice in Education Savings Accounts
Education Next senior editor Paul E. Peterson recently spoke with Robert Enlow, president of EdChoice, about the rising popularity of Education Savings Accounts. Paul Peterson: What is an Education Savings Account?. Robert Enlow: It is money the government puts onto an online platform, or “digital wallet,” that parents can spend...
Enjoy the Game, but Turn Down the Sound
The Death of Public School: How Conservatives Won the War Over Education in America. Basic Books, 2023, $32; 384 pages. Cara Fitzpatrick’s new book does not deliver on the promise of its title, for it doesn’t describe the death of public schools or even show that they have a nasty cough. Instead, this volume by a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist recounts a history of the school-choice movement in which public education remains very much alive and well.
The Education Exchange: Why Students Should Work
Alicia Sasser Modestino, the research director for the Dukakis Center for Urban and Regional Policy at Northeastern University, joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss her latest research, which finds benefits for students selected into a program that matches them with summer jobs. “Year-Round Benefits from Summer Jobs: How work programs...
Biden Names Scholar and Education Next Contributor to Council of Economic Advisers
President Joe Biden appointed economist C. Kirabo Jackson to his three-member Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) last Friday, signaling a potential pivot by the administration toward a focus on education leading up to the 2024 election cycle. Jackson, the Abraham Harris Professor of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University,...
Year-Round Benefits from Summer Jobs
During the latter half of the 20th Century, the early blooms of spring were also a signal to the nation’s teenagers: it’s time to find a job. About half of all Americans between 16 and 19 years old spent part of their summer break bagging groceries or slinging ice cream until the early 2000s. Then, the youth employment rate fell sharply and stayed low for the next two decades and through the Covid-19 pandemic. Teenage employment has since rebounded, with about one in three young people employed in July 2023.
How to Bring Back Classroom Discussion
Last Week, Jake Fay of the Constructive Dialogue Institute wrote a letter on the state of dialogue in education. Today, he offers some suggestions for how we can go about solving the issue. —Rick Hess. In my last post, we covered how polarization is distracting us from educating young people....
The Education Exchange: “Like a Very Smart, Eager-to-Please Intern”
John Bailey, a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss artificial intelligence and what role it could have in the classroom. “AI in Education: The leap into a new era of machine intelligence carries risks and challenges, but also plenty of promise,” is...
“It’s just safer to avoid current events”
As regular readers know, I’ve a passionate interest in how educators model and teach the norms of healthy, civil disagreement. Heck, Pedro Noguera and I wrote a whole book on this and spent the better part of two years discussing this topic with leaders and groups around the nation. That’s why I’m such a fan of the Constructive Dialogue Institute (CDI), founded by Jonathan Haidt and Caroline Mehl in 2017 to develop tools, resources, and frameworks to support this work. Well, CDI has conducted a series of teacher interviews that offer some insight into how polarization impacts classrooms. I thought readers might be interested in the takeaways, and Jake Fay, CDI’s director of education, was kind enough to share some thoughts. Here’s what he had to say.
The Progressive Case for K–12 Open Enrollment
School choice victories made waves this year, with states like Arkansas, Utah, and Iowa adopting expansive choice programs that pay for private-school tuition and other educational expenses. But what flew under many people’s radar is another form of choice that also achieved impressive gains, with four states adopting open enrollment...
AI in Education
In Neal Stephenson’s 1995 science fiction novel, The Diamond Age, readers meet Nell, a young girl who comes into possession of a highly advanced book, The Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer. The book is not the usual static collection of texts and images but a deeply immersive tool that can converse with the reader, answer questions, and personalize its content, all in service of educating and motivating a young girl to be a strong, independent individual.
The Education Exchange: The Vanishing Gap in School Funding
Adam Tyner, the national research director at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss Tyner’s recent research, which questions whether economically disadvantaged students receive less funding than other students. Tyner’s research brief, “Think Again: Is education funding in America still unequal?,” is available now....
Absenteeism Mires Recovery from Pandemic Learning Losses
With the latest national test results showing a dispiriting lack of progress in catching students up academically in the wake of the pandemic, one potential explanation stands out: stubbornly high rates of student absenteeism. Vast numbers of students haven’t returned to class regularly since schools reopened. In California, Florida,...
An Unwavering Focus on Student Achievement
Penny Schwinn served as commissioner of the Tennessee education department from January 2019 to last month, when she stepped down. As she wrapped up her tenure as one of the nation’s more heralded and outspoken state chiefs, I thought it’d be a good time to ask her to reflect on her tenure and lessons learned leading through the pandemic. Penny started as a classroom teacher with Teach For America almost 20 years ago, served as an assistant supe in Sacramento, Calif., and served in senior roles in the Delaware education department and the Texas Education Agency before assuming her role in Tennessee. Here’s what she had to say.
As Many More States Enact Education Savings Accounts, Implementation Challenges Abound
The year was 2014, and Doug Tuthill remembers taking a call from a top state lawmaker just after the Florida legislature had authorized its first education savings accounts—the type of state-funded school-choice program that is now fast rising to prominence around the country. “The speaker called and said, ‘You...
The Education Exchange: Are Community Schools a Revolution in Education?
Jane Quinn, the former director of the National Center for Community Schools, joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss her new book, “The Community Schools Revolution.”. “The Community Schools Revolution,” co-written with Martin Blank, Ira Harkavy, Lisa Villarreal and David Goodman, is available now.
A More Perfect Way to Teach U.S. History
“We, the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
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