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The Education Exchange: Recovering the Ideals of the University
James Hankins, a professor of history at Harvard University, joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss academic honesty and it’s importance in research institutions. Hankins’ commentary, “Claudine Gay and Why Academic Honesty Matters,” is available now at The Wall Street Journal. Follow The Education Exchange on Soundcloud,...
Don’t Abandon Common High School Graduation Exams
Ray Domanico’s recent blog post favoring an overhaul of New York State’s high school graduation requirements raises several important concerns about the current system, but the reforms it endorses would set back the cause of educational transparency, accountability, and improvement. Domanico argues that the state’s mandatory end-of-course Regents...
Education Exchange Replay: “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...
Education Exchange Replay: 2023 Is the Year of Universal Choice in Education Savings Accounts
Robert Enlow, the President and CEO of EdChoice, joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss the growing popularity of education savings accounts in the United States, and how best to implement this universal choice option. “Success of Educational Choice Laws Will Depend on Implementing Them with Excellence” by Enlow is available...
The Top 20 Education Next Articles of 2023
While in some respects, 2023 felt like the year when life finally returned to normal after the devastating Covid-19 pandemic, in reality the recovery has only just begun and will continue into the foreseeable future. This is especially true in education, where the effects of pandemic-era school closures, learning loss, mental health crises, and federal spending will impact an entire generation of students and educators. Scarcely an article published by Education Next this year didn’t contain some mention of the pandemic, the fallout, or the uncertain educational landscape we find ourselves in as a result.
The Top 10 Education Next Blog Posts of 2023
In the year since the technology company OpenAI launched its generative artificial-intelligence tool ChatGPT, nearly everyone from the technophobe to the tech-savvy has clamored to make sense of what it will mean for the future of the production and consumption of content. The education sector is particularly fraught with both excitement and concern over AI’s utility in the classroom.
Revising Graduation Requirements Could Improve Academic Rigor in New York
New York state has a long and proud history of administering rigorous subject-area examinations, allowing its most advanced students to demonstrate mastery of demanding academic content. For the last 20 years, the state has required all students to pass five of these exams—later reduced to four—to earn a high school diploma. The state’s Board of Regents is poised to eliminate that requirement. Critics argue that to do so would mean dumbing down standards.
The Education Exchange: Oklahoma Governor Explains State’s Top Rankings in Charter-School Equity Measures
Oklahoma Governor J. Kevin Stitt joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss Peterson’s latest research, which ranked states by their charter school performance and found that Oklahoma had one of the top-performing charter sectors in the United States. “The Nation’s Charter Report Card: First-ever state ranking of charter student performance...
The Rise of Learning Societies
A small experiment in rural Idaho holds big promise for student success. In the ever-shifting world of school choice, what began as a homegrown charter-school network’s small experiment in microschooling stands out as unique—and as a uniquely promising model for replication. Gem Prep, a network of seven brick-and-mortar...
Defending Harvard’s Ranking of State Charter School Performance
In November 2023 we, at Harvard’s Program on Education Policy and Governance, released a new state-by-state ranking of the performance of charter school students on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, often called the Nation’s Report Card. The ranking is based on charter students’ scores on 24 NAEP tests of math and reading administered between 2009 and 2019. Ours is the first ranking of charter student performance on the same set of tests administered to samples of all students throughout the United States.
What Would Another Trump Term Mean for Education?
Nothing about Donald Trump is predictable except unpredictability, so it may be folly to speculate on what his return to the Oval Office would mean for American education. It also needs to be said up front that, faced with all the challenges and risks of another Trump term, K–12 education policy will not likely be the top concern on many minds. But that’s the domain where I belong, so let’s parse the clues that have already been supplied as to what Trump II will likely undertake in this realm. Some come in the form of broad hints that his team will forcefully employ every means possible to reshape the government and its policies and practices to their liking. Some are more specific statements of what their education agenda will emphasize.
The Education Exchange: High Schools Matter a Lot!
Scott Carrell, a Professor of Economics at the University of Texas at Austin, joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss Carrell’s latest research, which looks at whether high schools have a significant effect in whether or not students go to college. “Do Schools Matter? Measuring the Impact of California HighSchools...
A Critical Time for Critical Thought
Yale University Press, 2023, $26 (cloth); 216 pages. Every year, at convocation, my university’s president tells the incoming freshmen that they can be anything they choose. But somehow, four years later, a huge fraction of them choose to enter one of three fields: tech, banking, or management consulting. As I often tell my students, there’s nothing wrong with working in these professions. But there is something wrong with an institution that advertises infinite opportunities, then socializes people into a narrow band of them.
The Education Exchange: Small but Mighty, New Hampshire Charters Demonstrate Strength on National Tests
Frank Edelblut, the Commissioner of the New Hampshire Department of Education, joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss Peterson’s latest research, which ranked states by their charter school performance and found that Alaska had the top-performing charter sector in the United States. “The Nation’s Charter Report Card: First-ever state ranking...
The Bad Lesson of Good Grades
When I’m working with school leaders, we usually wind up spending a lot of time on the fact that “talk is cheap.” A principal can tell teachers how much she values their time, but if she starts staff meetings late or swamps them with trivial tasks, they won’t believe a word of it. Similarly, most adults who work in and around schools say they believe in excellence, responsibility, and rigor. And yet we’re sending a very different signal to students.
A Noble, Flawed Effort
The Crucible of Desegregation: The Uncertain Search for Educational Equality. The University of Chicago Press, 2023, $35; 310 pages. In this thoughtful but sometimes fatalistic book, Boston College political scientist R. Shep Melnick chronicles the promise and pitfalls of the federal government’s efforts to desegregate American schools and, in so doing, upend a key component of Jim Crow.
The Charter-School Movement Just Keeps On Keepin’ On
Driving across tracts of new-home development in El Paso, Texas, one can’t miss the signs of charter-school momentum. New charter-school facility projects dot the landscape. Harmony Public Schools, which now operates 62 schools serving more than 40,000 students in Texas, is bullish on the area. Fatih Ay, CEO at Harmony, explains: “All five of Harmony’s current campuses in El Paso are excelling academically, and we have far more parents seeking our services than we can accommodate. So, we are opening our sixth campus this fall, and we see no end in sight for future impact in West Texas.”
The Education Exchange: How The Last Frontier is First in Charter-Student Performance
Deena M. Bishop, the Commissioner of Education for the state of Alaska, joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss Peterson’s latest research, which ranked states by their charter school performance and found that Alaska had the top-performing charter sector in the United States. “The Nation’s Charter Report Card: First-ever state...
The Education Exchange: Who Boasts the Best Charter Schools in the U.S.?
Jim Peyser, the former Massachusetts Secretary of Education, joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss Peterson’s latest research, which for the first time ranks states by their charter school performance, based on student performance in reading and math on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, between 2009 and 2019.
The Nation’s Charter Report Card
First-ever state ranking of charter student performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. When Minnesota passed the nation’s first charter-school law in 1991, its main purpose was to improve education by allowing for new, autonomous public schools where teachers would have more freedom to innovate and meet students’ needs. Freed from state regulations, district rules, and—in most cases—collective-bargaining constraints, charter schools could develop new models of school management and “serve as laboratories for new educational ideas,” as analyst Brian Hassel observed in an early study of the innovation. In the words of Joe Nathan, a longtime school-choice advocate and former Minnesota teacher, “well-designed public school choice plans provide the freedom educators want and the opportunities students need while encouraging the dynamism our public education system requires.”
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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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