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Education Next
Don’t Stop Reading to Your Kids
I’ve always been a reader. When my kids were born, I looked forward to sharing books I’ve loved with them. Of course, what we read to little kids are mostly, well, little-kid books—not the books we love. And, by the time kids are in school and (hopefully) reading on their own, it’s easy for parents to be sidelined. This is all playing out against a precipitous plunge in the amount of time we spend reading for fun.
The Education Exchange: Charter Schools Better at Preparing Girls to Vote
Evidence from Boston charters elevates female—but not male—attendance, SAT taking, and civic participation. Sarah Cohodes, an Associate Professor of Public Policy at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan, joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss Cohodes’ recent research, showing how education can increase civic participation.
I Watched the Parenting on Young Sheldon . . . and Did the Exact Opposite
A New York mother of three took a cue from the sitcom for how not to parent a gifted child. The Big Bang Theory premiered September 2007. My husband has a nuclear engineering degree from MIT. Our younger son, then four, was a budding scientist. (Sample conversation: Him: Can’t come out of the bath. Working on surface tension and light refraction. Me: You mean splashing?)
Why Some Charters Care Less About Learning
Urban charter schools have shifted their mission from excellence to social justice. Education Next senior editor Paul E. Peterson recently spoke with Steven Wilson, senior fellow at the Center on Reinventing Public Education and a founder of the Ascend Learning charter-school network, about how some urban charters have changed their educational mission.
Modernizing Access to Education Data Could Improve Student Learning
For AI to maximize its benefit to education, it needs a diet of quality data that national statistics can provide. As the artificial intelligence revolution unfolds around us, many education researchers and practitioners believe that AI will soon lead to highly personalized interventions, such as intelligent tutors. In theory, these tools should more precisely respond to students’ needs and engage them with more relevant learning materials, leading to improved educational progress. But AI application development relies on large, high-quality data sets—a standard that too often is unmet, since generative AI models are mostly trained on publicly available data that are opaque, lack documentation, and are likely biased.
Resolved: Debate Programs Boost Literacy and College Enrollment
In a stereotypical image of a high-school debate tournament, straight-A students compete to see which renowned prep school team comes out on top. Increasingly, this is no longer the case: in recent decades, nonprofit organizations have been working to expand access to debate in public school systems that serve large concentrations of low-income students and students of color. More than 10,000 students from 20 cities participated in debate tournaments last year, according to the National Association for Urban Debate Leagues.
New U.S. Census Bureau Data Confirm Growth in Homeschooling Amid Pandemic
Survey shows growing interest in alternative education models that spans demographic categories. The United States Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey, an online survey designed to measure social and economic trends among U.S. households since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, offers new insight on educational trends across the country. In particular, recent data from the survey provide information on homeschool participation, its growth during the pandemic, and current homeschool estimates nationally and by state.
When Education Entrepreneurs Face-Plant
There’s a big difference between running a program and changing public policy. Over the years, I’ve had versions of the same conversation with lots of education CEOs, advocates, and entrepreneurs. They’ll explain that they’ve got a good product or program and are trying to go big (promote legislation, launch a national initiative, or what-have-you), but they’re frustrated to suddenly find themselves sucked into distracting “culture wars.”
The Education Exchange: Universal ESAs Elevated as Key Issue in Texas Primary Runoff
Governor Abbott orchestrates victory for pro-voucher GOP candidates. Cal Jillson, a Professor in the Department of Political Science at Southern Methodist University, joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s effort to oust Texas House Republicans in primary races who have opposed his statewide Education Savings Account initiative.
No Passing Grade for Fatally Flawed Brookings Report
Analysis of Arizona families participating in ESAs overlooks state’s extant and popular tax-credit scholarship. A recent report by the Brookings Institution claims that Arizona families participating in the state’s K–12 education savings accounts policy are disproportionately wealthy. However, the report suffers from a fatal flaw that renders their analysis meaningless.
Street Data Is Not About Data at All
Popular book bashes evidence and favors listening to students instead. Street Data: A Next-Generation Model for Equity, Pedagogy, and School Transformation. If you pick up Street Data hoping to learn how to make sense of education data, you will be disappointed. Despite its title, Street Data contains hardly any numbers at all. In fact, the book is a frontal assault on the use of quantitative data, especially test scores, and objective empirical inquiry to inform education decisions. Shane Safir and Jamila Dugan, who describe themselves as “diversity warriors,” urge teachers and leaders to stop accepting the use of numbers to measure learning and schooling and to start thinking instead like cultural anthropologists. They urge readers to listen to students and observe their behaviors, with grand ambitions in mind. “The purpose of this book,” they write, “is to offer a next-generation model of equity and deep learning, emerging from a simple concept: street data… Street data embodies both an ethos and a change methodology that will transform how we analyze, diagnose, and assess everything from student learning to district improvement to policy.”
Most Innovation Efforts Won’t Transform K–12 Education
Calls to transform U.S. K–12 schools grow more pressing each day. Yet the complex web of relationships and expectations that shape most schools—referred to in innovation theory as their value networks—create formidable barriers to change. These networks, which for public schools typically include families, unions, higher education, and state and federal agencies, dictate what schools must prioritize to keep seats filled, funds flowing, and doors open. But those priorities simultaneously make innovation a challenge. The schools of the future that our society needs won’t come from transforming our existing schools. They’ll have to come through launching new versions of schooling from new value networks.
Making the Case for Student Debate Leagues
Boston youths hone skills in public speaking, critical thinking, and communication. On a Friday in February, the ingredients for fluffernutters—peanut butter, marshmallow fluff, and sliced bread—are set out on a table during debate practice at Boston Green Academy. The teachers know that food is a draw for the high school students—as is a chance to learn from a college student with debate experience just before their weekend competition.
Black Achievement, White Flight, and Brown’s Legacy
We believe R. Shep Melnick’s The Crucible of Desegregation is the most comprehensive and evenhanded discussion of school desegregation research and policy issues in America. Yet some of the topics that make the book evenhanded were absent from his recent article in Education Next reflecting on the 70th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision. We would like to comment on these missing topics.
SEL Will Make Sportyball So Much Better
Massachusetts is poised to make school sports more sensitive, restorative, and stress-free. Go team!. Paul Banksley—the 22nd-century skills guru, founder of “Tomorrows Are for Tomorrow,” and former vacuum salesman—called with big news. “Next week, we’ll be announcing a partnership with Massachusetts to bring SEL and 22nd-century skills into sportyball.”
The Education Exchange: Biden Budget Cuts Would Block New Charters, Advocate Says
But bipartisan coalition in Congress expected to keep funding intact. Christy Wolfe, the senior vice president for policy, research, and planning for the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, joins the Education Exchange to discuss what the budget cuts proposed by the Biden Administration could spell for charter schools.
Fun Fact: Young Sheldon Provides Insight into Parenting Bright Children
Ending its run on CBS, the heartwarming family sitcom gave a window into gifted education. The best part about writing an essay on the TV series Young Sheldon was that it gave me the excuse to say “I’m working!” whenever anyone walked into the family room. It’s a dream assignment for an academic who is also a huge pop-culture junkie. “Bazinga” indeed!
My Uber Driver, the Book Banner
There’s no arguing with those who would meddle with school libraries. I was telling a reporter about book bans as I got into the Uber. “PEN America has reported exactly 3,362 book bans in public schools during the 2022–23 school year,” I said. “There were over a thousand in Florida alone. This is a crisis; we have to sound the alarm!”
Building Better Citizens Begins in the Classroom
For civics to matter again, students must actively engage with their own constitutional rights. Every December, in a practice that dates back decades, the chief justice of the United States releases a year-end report on the federal judiciary. Despite the New Year’s Eve timing of these reports, they typically elicit less celebration than somnolence. As one veteran journalist who covers the Supreme Court noted with considerable understatement, “The year-end report is usually devoid of anything controversial.”
The Education Exchange: Should Homeschooling Be Regulated?
Home education is expanding in multiple directions, but some want to rein it in. Daniel Hamlin, an associate professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at the University of Oklahoma, joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss efforts to regulate homeschooling rules in states, and the upcoming Emerging School Models: Maintaining the Momentum conference, which will be hosted by Harvard’s Program on Education Policy and Governance on Sept. 12 and 13, 2023.
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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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