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Education Next
The Eight Career Arts
1. Go to college (yes, it’s a good idea) 4. If pursuing nondegree options, purposefully b uild education, skills, and networks. 5. Seek a both/and combination of broad and targeted skills. 6. Take advantage of employer-funded education benefits. 7. Find effective ways to build social capital. 8. Prepare for...
Teacher Looping and the Fine Balance of Pitching Education Reforms
Too many education reform efforts are expensive and ultimately ineffective. In Hidden Potential, I wrote about a practice that’s remarkably affordable and has rigorous evidence behind it. It’s looping—staying with the same teacher for multiple years. A few weeks ago, I saw an unusually thoughtful critique from...
Right Feelings, Right Time
The Emotional Lives of Teenagers: Raising Connected, Capable, and Compassionate Adolescents. Ballantine Books, 2023, $28; 256 pages. For latchkey kids like me growing up in the 1980s, teenage angst was a collective character trait. Popular songs like “Don’t You (Forget about Me)” by Simple Minds or “Should I Stay or Should I Go” by The Clash channeled our moodiness and insecurities. Movies like Footloose and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off explored teenagers’ rebellious instincts while their parents were off-screen and out of the loop. Growing up is hard, the entertainment industry told us, and our experiences confirmed that.
Privilege on the Playground
It was a Friday afternoon toward the end of the school year, and the 8th-grade English class I taught had finished their required coursework weeks earlier. So, I took them outside. What could go wrong? In this neighborhood, a lot could and did. My students spread out across the fenced-in...
Going-to-School Shopping
For more than a century, children in the United States have been enrolled in public schools based on where they live, and pressure to improve public education has been mainly channeled through school board elections, inter-district housing decisions, and test-based accountability. Over the past 30 years, however, charter schools, vouchers, and public-school choice programs have challenged this model. Rather than voting at the ballot box, market-based accountability allows families to vote with their feet and select the schools they prefer without moving households. In theory, this alternative also increases competition that promotes educational improvement systemwide.
Teach Like Socrates
Teaching hasn’t always been organized the way it currently is in American schools. Back when Socrates was doing his thing in ancient Greece, teaching was a simple proposition. Students sat and listened. Teachers talked and asked questions. That was it. It was pretty darn limited. It also meant that teachers had a chance to get very good at talking and asking questions.
The Education Exchange: Let a Thousand Charters Bloom
Nina Rees, the president and CEO of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss the continued growth of the charter school sector in 2023, led by state-level legislation.
Zoned In
Excluded: How Snob Zoning, NIMBYISM, and Class Bias Build the Walls We Don’t See. Public Affairs, 2023, $30; 352 pages. Richard Kahlenberg, a bespectacled, balding, Harvard-educated lawyer who grew up in a well-off suburb of Saint Paul, Minnesota, is a curious character to be called controversial. He has long advocated for progressive education policies, particularly school integration, doing so for the last 24 years from a perch at the left-leaning Century Foundation. Two former college presidents, William G. Bowen of Princeton University and Michael S. McPherson of Macalester College, wrote that Kahlenberg “deserves more credit than anyone else for arguing vigorously and relentlessly for stronger efforts to address disparities by socioeconomic status.”
Splitting the Baby Worked for Solomon, But It Won’t for Biden
Questions surrounding the application of Title IX to transgender students have been roiling education politics for nearly 10 years. In 2016, the Obama administration tried to settle one aspect of the issue without public input by declaring in a Dear Colleague Letter that transgender students must be able to use bathrooms matching their gender identity. That effort only generated more conflict and was quickly rescinded under President Trump. The Biden administration not only essentially reinstated the Obama administration’s rule, which is being challenged in court, but also is trying to expand its reach via proposed guidelines on transgender participation in athletics. While its approach on the latter is more cautious and more open to public input, it is unlikely to be any more successful.
Anxiety, Depression, Less Sleep … and Poor Academic Performance?
It’s understandable. The education world is awash in articles trying to figure out what artificial intelligence is going to mean for schools and students (see “AI in Education,” features, Fall 2023). But before we get too focused on the latest technological breakthrough, let’s not pretend that we have figured out how to cope with the previous one. Over the last decade, smartphones have become commonplace. Today, 95 percent of American teenagers have a supercomputer in their pocket.
The Education Exchange: The Dallas Teacher Performance Pay Experiment
Eric Hanushek, the Paul and Jean Hanna Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University, joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss the the Accelerating Campus Excellence program and efforts to attract and retain effective teachers. “ Attracting and Retaining Highly Effective Educators in Hard-to-Staff Schools,” co-written with Andrew J....
Education Reform Needs a Vision to Match the Moment
Last week, at the American Enterprise Institute, former Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and I sat down to talk about the future of school reform with The New York Times’ Erica Green (you can see the video here). Across town, at exactly the same time, Rep. Matt Gaetz and his gang of very online arsonists were toppling the House Speaker out of pique.
The Education Exchange: “Quality Virtual Education Does Not Put a Child in Front of a Screen All Day”
Julie Young, the Vice President of Education Outreach and Student Services for Arizona State University, joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss how concern over virtual schools can mirror similar concerns about artificial intelligence in education.
Harvard Economist and Education Next Contributor Claudia Goldin Awarded Nobel Prize
On Monday, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded its Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences to Harvard economist and Education Next contributor Claudia Goldin. The Henry Lee Professor of Economics in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Goldin was recognized for her research on the evolving contributions of women in the labor market and for tracking the gender wage gap in the United States.
The Education Exchange: Questionable Conclusions on School Spending Cast Doubt on Economist’s Research
Jay P. Greene, a Senior Research Fellow in the Center for Education Policy at The Heritage Foundation, joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss Greene’s testimony in the New Yorkers for Students’ Educational Rights, et al. v. The State of New York case. Greene’s report debunks the claim that increasing education spending generally leads to improved student outcomes.
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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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