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Zooming to Class Slows Student Learning
After years of steady growth and a pandemic-related explosion, online learning has become a common format for college courses. A decade ago, just 28 percent of all U.S. college students took at least one of their classes online. By the 2021–22 school year—after widespread pandemic-related lockdowns had ended—that had doubled to 54 percent, or 10.1 million students nationwide.
What Would Trump 2.0 Mean for Education?
I don’t know. You don’t either. This summer, musing on the Republican National Convention, I noted that the GOP has been fundamentally remade since 2016—a point deemed self-evident by right-leaning pundits (MAGA and Never-Trump alike) but that seems insufficiently appreciated by a whole lot of other observers.
The Education Exchange: Massachusetts Charter Schools Create a Wider Path to College
Both urban and nonurban charters boost enrollment and graduation rates. 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, which details how charter schools in Massachusetts helped increase college graduation.
Why Poetry Should Be Read Aloud in English Classes
Educators are conscious of the value of exposing students to great works of poetry, but the teaching of poetry often lacks a key ingredient: orality. The standard teaching in high school and university classes presents a poem as an abstract object on a page, encouraging students to see poems as riddles to be solved. But history shows that poems are best understood and taught as oral performances, using all the techniques of interpretation and communication of a great actor. When students encounter a virtuosic performance—especially a recitation—they can experience poems more immediately and in a way that resonates with their basic nature.
A Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy?
The machinations of a powerful syndicate behind the success of school choice makes for a juicy story. Too bad it isn’t true. Josh Cowen’s new book, The Privateers, declares that “there is a vast right-wing conspiracy” that explains how “voucher advocates have managed to spread privatization plans in states across the country despite a growing number of data-backed arguments against those schemes.” Cowen also provides a brief and incomplete description of those “data-backed arguments” that fails to bolster his claim that a conspiracy is responsible for foisting choice policies on unsuspecting Americans.
The Education Exchange: What Can Be Done to Prevent the Next School Shooting?
Students can provide valuable warning signals. Administrators need to listen. Daniel Hamlin, an assistant professor at the University of Oklahoma, joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss Hamlin’s research on school shooting prevention strategies and its relationship to shootings in America. Hamlin’s previous paper, “Are gun ownership rates and regulations...
We Need a “Freezing Cold Takes” for Education
It’s time for some professional accountability for the empty suits who flit from one edu-fad to the next. It’s football season, finally. One unhappy side effect, though, is the spike in dumb but self-assured pronouncements from analysts, pundits, and sports-radio yammerers. Fortunately for those exhausted by the jibber-jabber, there’s Freezing Cold Takes, a sports media site that shames these “experts” by surfacing their old hot takes when they’re proven spectacularly wrong. It brings some tiny bit of accountability to a whole profession of well-paid yappers who otherwise make a lot of coin from spewing consequence-free inanity.
Should Schools Hire More Staff or Pay Teachers More?
When districts use unanticipated revenue from their states sensibly, it helps student achievement. If school finances are tight, should salaries be allowed to lag inflation, or should the number of employees be gradually reduced through attrition? Which is more important: holding salaries intact or keeping class sizes small? As we approach what many fear is a fiscal cliff, what choices should school districts make with respect to the largest item in their budgets?
Can Great Teaching (Plus an App) Solve our Math Problem?
The path to more students loving the subject is anything but simple. Early on in Math Mind: The Simple Path to Loving Math, Shalinee Sharma experiences a moment of doubt. After 13 years at Bain Capital, she founds Zearn, an educational nonprofit. Zearn wants to offer great math teaching free to any child. But Sharma and her cofounders immediately encounter an obstacle––one that has frustrated many an educational newcomer: there is no agreement about what great math teaching looks like. “There was no manual for what I wanted to do,” she writes. “I had to go a different way.”
A High School Experience that Can Only Be Described as “Classical”
Former mayor of Providence reflects on his formative years as a student at Classical High School. Although my parents’ formal education extended only through fourth grade, they knew that a good education was the ticket to a better life. They made their way from Guatemala to the United States, and ever since, their message to my sister and me was the same: education, education, education!
The End of Education History?
It’s a Rick v. Rick debate about whether we’ve entered a new era of schooling. Education has gotten polarized and hotly political over the past few years. This has frustrated many who thought that we’d entered a new, more bipartisan era of schooling in the 1990s and early 2000s. The Clinton, Bush, and Obama years were rich with debates about accountability, teacher evaluation, and academic standards, but those wonky disputes are a far cry from today’s culture clashes.
The Education Exchange: How Have American Classrooms Changed Since Covid?
Survey of teachers reports greater dependence on technology, more student challenges post-pandemic. Brian A. Jacob, the Walter H. Annenberg Professor of Education Policy and professor of economics at the Ford School, University of Michigan, joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss Jacob’s latest research, which reports findings from a survey of K-12 teachers that examines potential long-term impacts from the Covid-19 pandemic.
Arne Duncan on the State of Education Today
“The landscape is mixed,” says former Obama Administration secretary. Arne Duncan served as U.S. secretary of education under President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2016, following a seven-year tenure as the superintendent of the Chicago public schools. During his time at the U.S. Department of Education, we often didn’t see eye to eye when it came to Race to the Top, NCLB waivers, the Common Core, college lending, and more. But these were debates over policy and principle. I understood that Duncan was doing what he thought best, and I like to think he took my critiques in that same spirit. With that kind of respectful disagreement in short supply, I thought it worth reaching out to Arne to get his thoughts on what’s changed in education and what’s needed now. Today, Duncan is a managing partner at the Emerson Collective; the founder of Chicago CRED, an anti-gun violence organization he co-founded in 2016; and the chair of the board of the Hunt Institute. Here’s what he had to say.
Families: Engines of Equal Opportunity
While multiple factors contribute to social mobility, the two-parent household wins the gold. As millions of families gather to wave goodbye to summer this Labor Day weekend, let’s take a moment to celebrate their contribution to next-generation social mobility. The prevalence of two-parent families in communities predicts their average...
A Better Measure of Teacher Shortages
News reports routinely describe the teacher labor market as “dire” and “in crisis.” In recent years, influential media outlets across the country have described “unprecedented hardships” and “critical shortages” because, they report, demand for qualified teachers far outpaces supply. But school leaders...
Against Potemkin Bipartisanship
The education community shouldn’t confuse tokenism with actual aisle crossing. I don’t like performative bipartisanship—those exercises where a foundation assembles a motley crew of “leaders” to craft a banality-stuffed joint proclamation. It’s the kind of self-congratulatory exercise that gives compromise a bad name. Now,...
The Education Exchange: The End is Nigh for ESSER Funds. What Comes Next?
With no guidance from above and uneven planning from within, school districts must reckon with an imminent fiscal cliff in September. Marguerite Roza, a research professor at Georgetown University and director of the Edunomics Lab, joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss how school districts have spent their federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funds, and what impact that has had on student achievement.
The World is Taller and Smarter Than Ever
Better global nutrition over the last century has contributed to rising height and intelligence. “How to Raise the World’s IQ” reads the promising cover of the July 13 issue of The Economist. Moms and babies need to eat more nutritious foods, which will help them resist contagious diseases. If they do, people will be taller and enjoy enhanced brain muscle.
The Dilemma of Selective Admissions to Technical Programs
How CTE high schools could be more open to students who would benefit from them, not just those who qualify. A recent article in the Boston Globe dug into a controversy that is dogging Massachusetts’s highly-regarded system of regional career and technical education (CTE) high schools. What makes the schools so unique is that they are highly selective. Only applicants with relatively high test scores and clean discipline records are admitted, but, as the article explains, that leaves out a lot of kids who might benefit from the kinds of programs that they offer.
Should the Wealthy Benefit from Private-School Choice Programs?
As more states offer vouchers and education savings accounts, debate roils over including all families, regardless of income level. For decades, most school choice advocates promoted vouchers as a means-tested program for families that would not otherwise be able to afford private schools. Targeted vouchers were deemed equitable, politically prudent, and fiscally responsible. Since 2020, however, a new wave of advocacy has prioritized the creation of universal programs that serve nearly all families irrespective of their household income—and such initiatives have been adopted in 11 states to date. To what extent do universal programs compromise the moral, political, and fiscal appeal of vouchers as they were first conceived? Is the rapid expansion of universal programs across the country worth that compromise? Derrell Bradford, president of the advocacy organization 50CAN, argues that it is. Michael Petrilli, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and an executive editor of Education Next, advocates for choice expansion that continues to prioritize need.
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