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Education Next
Generation Lost: The Pandemic’s Lifetime Tax
Reports of drops in student achievement due to the pandemic are now treated as old news. Amid abstract reporting of test results, a sense of inevitability and complacency has developed. After all, could the fact that students’ math scores fell by “nine points” truly be important?. The...
What We’re Watching: A Way Forward for School Reform
A decade ago, for better or worse, education improvement was widely seen as a bipartisan cause. Today, fights over schooling are increasingly polarized. Are there opportunities for principled agreement on action regarding choice, teacher pay, parental involvement, the teaching of American history, or much else?. On Tuesday, October 3, at...
The Education Exchange: The College Power of KIPP Charter Schools
Ira Nichols-Barrer, a principal researcher at Mathematica, joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss Nichols-Barrer’s latest research, which looks at the long-term impacts of enrolling at a KIPP public school. “Long-Term Impacts of KIPP Middle and High Schools on College Enrollment, Persistence, and Attainment,” co-written with Alicia Demers and Elisa...
What We Know About Teacher Race and Student Outcomes
Across schools and communities, American students are far more diverse than their teachers. Some 79 percent of U.S. teachers are white compared to 44 percent of students. As a result, students of color are far less likely to have a same-race teacher than are white students, a phenomenon that has attracted the attention of philanthropists and policymakers alike.
Education’s “Long Covid”: A Five-Point Agenda for Supersizing Recovery Efforts
The nation’s Covid-19 health emergency is over, but the K–12 education emergency remains. If we do not supersize our education recovery efforts, our nation’s schoolchildren, especially its most vulnerable, face a diminished future. What researchers call “education’s long Covid” has three related culprits, beginning with student learning...
The Education Exchange: Ohio Students on the Rebound
Vladimir Kogan, a Professor in the Department of Political Science at Ohio State University, joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss how reading and math scores in Ohio had changed since the Covid-19 pandemic. Kogan’s report, “Student Achievement and Learning Acceleration in Ohio,” is available now.
There’s No Debate at All
Education savings accounts. Universal voucher programs. Charter schools. These are words guaranteed to inspire heated debates among policymakers, parents, and educators. Teachers’ union leaders denounce school choice as part of a malicious “war on public education.” School choice advocates rail against “failing government schools.”. These debates...
Comparing Online and AI-Assisted Learning: A Student’s View
Hi everyone, I’m Daphne, a 13-year-old going into 8th grade. I’m writing to compare “regular” Khan Academy (no AI) to Khanmigo (powered by GPT4), using three of my own made-up criteria. They are: efficiency, effectiveness, and enjoyability. Efficiency is how fast I am able to cover...
The Education Exchange: It Takes Two, Baby
Melissa S. Kearney, the Neil Moskowitz Professor of Economics at the University of Maryland, joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss Kearny’s new book, The Two-Parent Privilege: How Americans Stopped Getting Married and Started Falling Behind.
It’s About Time
In schools, it can feel like there’s never enough time. Even though American students spend as much or more time in school as their peers around the globe (a fact that’s not widely known), valuable units, lessons, conversations, and projects are always running into time constraints. Teachers, for...
Higher Education Could Help Heal America
Americans are fed up with politicians. Understandably so, given the climate: inflation, investigation, recrimination, deterioration, polarization. In 2016, voters rejected a former senator and secretary of state and instead chose Donald Trump, a reality television star/businessman who had never before served in government. Going into 2024, the impulse to turn to a non-politician-candidate is again strong. Hedge fund manager Bill Ackman has been pushing the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, Jamie Dimon. Another businessman, Vivek Ramaswamy, has entered the race and is getting some traction, outpolling senators and governors and even Vice President Pence. An environmental activist, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has been polling well, too; he has lots of politicians in his family, but the presidency would be his first elective government office.
The Education Exchange: Online? Brick-and-mortar? Why not a school with both?
Jason Bransford, the Chief Executive Officer for Gem Innovation Schools, joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss the learning societies microschools in Idaho, and the impact they’ve had on student achievement.
What It Would Mean to Abolish the U.S. Department of Education
In the first GOP presidential debate last month, four candidates called for eliminating the U.S. Department of Education. In doing so, they embraced the same position as front-runner Donald Trump. The pledges generated headlines like Education Week’s “Broad Calls to Ax Education Department and Take On Teachers’ Unions at 1st GOP Debate” as well as the predictable passel of calls from reporters and muckety-mucks wondering how this would work and what it might mean. Given the reaction, it seems worth taking a moment to ask what this proposal means and how likely it is to come to fruition if a Republican claims the White House in 2024.
Houston ISD, We Have a Problem
If you believe the media, it seems a dark lord has come to cut down the educational Eden that is the Houston Independent School District. He’s closing libraries to open detention centers. He’s “dismantling” public education in Texas. He’s a McCarthy-like demagogue bent on jailing educators. Protest signs outside the district headquarters compare his policies to prison and occupied territories. Next will come fire and brimstone.
Welcoming Parents Back into the Fold
I wrote recently about the opportunity (and need) to rethink the parent-educator partnership. Inevitably, a bunch of practical questions arise about how to do that. After all, for every frustrated parent who feels unwelcome or out of the loop, there’s an equally frustrated teacher who has stories of parents not showing up for meetings or not responding to phone calls.
The Education Exchange: A Catholic School Boom in Florida
Lauren May, the Director of Advocacy at Step Up for Students, joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss her latest report, which details the growth of Catholic school enrollment in Florida since 2013. “Why Catholic Schools in Florida Are Growing: 5 Things to Know,” co-written with Patrick Gibbons and Ron Matus,...
Innovation in the Heartland
Students are returning to school this year on the heels of another summer of sobering headlines about the nation’s lackluster academic recovery. With multiple indicators showing stalled learning recovery and education policy experts sounding alarm bells at Congressional hearings, we must finally treat lagging educational outcomes as a pressing national emergency.
What I Learned Editing Education Next
When I started as managing editor of Education Next in January 2019, the conventional wisdom was that education reform had run out of gas, or at least stalled out. Much of the Democratic Party, or at least many of its leading politicians, had backed away from previous cautious support for charter schools. Much of the Republican Party, or at least many of its leading politicians, opposed the Common Core State Standards. And neither the Democrats nor the Republicans seemed particularly interested in pushing for once-promising ideas like merit pay for teachers or standardized-test-based accountability.
To Fix Students’ Bad Behavior, Stop Punishing Them
Ten minutes after class starts, a student flings open the door, struts in, and yells, “What’s up, bitches?”. If this kind of conduct is familiar to you, you don’t need a primer on how behavior has become worse—much worse—since students returned to school post-pandemic. Chances are you’ve observed just what the data from the National Center for Education Statistics report: 84 percent of school leaders say student behavioral development has been negatively impacted. This is evident in a dramatic increase in classroom disruptions, ranging from student misconduct to acts of disrespect toward teachers and staff to the prohibited use of electronic devices.
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?
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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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