Reading books—ideally great ones, together as a class—should be common practice in American English and reading classrooms. Diverse research supports this assertion and helps explain why the experience of reading books, especially shared books, is critical to ensuring better outcomes in English and reading. The idea that one...

I really thought everyone would cheat. Halfway through the semester, I asked my students to tell me (through an anonymous survey) how they used ChatGPT in their other college courses. In my own class I had worked hard to show them how AI could be their TA: helping them brainstorm ideas, organize their writing, and focus and clarify their thinking around complex issues. That’s what a good cognitive apprenticeship is all about. But in my students’ other courses, well, all bets were off. Put simply, ChatGPT offers students the perfect shortcut to doing their work.

John Schilling, a senior advisor for the nonprofit Invest in Education, joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss the Educational Choice for Children Act that is currently being debated in Congress.

This is the eighth in a series on doing educational equity right. See the introductory post, as well as ones on school finance, student discipline, advanced education, school closures, homework and grading. One of the ironclad beliefs among education reformers back in the day was the certainty that the achievement...

Harvard Education Press, 2024, $35; 224 pages. Once upon a time, schools in America were plural in structure. Taxpayers funded Protestant, Catholic, and nonsectarian schools. Then along came the Big Bad Public School, which stamped out this glorious diversity. Fueled by waves of anti-Catholic nativism, educators like Horace Mann imposed a “unitary” system that restricted tax dollars to state-sponsored schools. And the rest, as they say, is history.

A few months back, I lamented the disconnect between academe and the nation’s educational leaders and policymakers. It has unfortunate consequences. I recently had a front-row seat for an illuminating display. Earlier this month, Paul T. von Hippel penned a terrific piece for Education Next explaining how exaggerated claims about the miraculous powers of tutoring can be traced to a dubious “two-sigma” effect postulated by psychologist Benjamin Bloom 40 years back.

In education you need to figure out how to engage governors. So said former Tennessee Governor, U.S. Secretary of Education, and U.S. Senator Lamar Alexander to the National Assessment Governing Board in February in advance of its quarterly meeting. Senator Alexander sat down for a conversation with board member and...

Beth Schueler, an Assistant Professor of Education and Public Policy at the University of Virginia, joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss how tutoring could be used to lessen learning losses in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic.

I recently had a conversation about absenteeism that I found exasperating. So did the superintendent I spoke with, I’m sure. You can judge who had more cause. The quotes here aren’t verbatim, as I jotted them down afterwards, but the gist is accurate. As Dave Barry would say, “I’m not making this up.”

In pursuit of political activism, institutions of higher education have compromised academic integrity. Education Next senior editor Paul E. Peterson recently spoke with James Hankins, professor of medieval and Renaissance history at Harvard University, about an editorial he wrote for The Wall Street Journal “Claudine Gay and Why Academic Honesty Matters.”

Steven Wilson, a Senior Fellow at Center on Reinventing Public Education, joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss urban charter schools, and how a focus on culture rather than rigor is changing their mission.

Off the Mark: How Grades, Ratings, and Rankings Undermine Learning (but Don’t Have To) In the years since the Covid-19 outbreak, the grades and test scores that anchor our education system have been relentlessly disrupted. As the pandemic swept the globe, American schools canceled annual standardized testing, college admissions went “test-optional,” and students were offered “hold harmless” policies that prevented their grades from dropping, regardless of whether they completed assignments or even attended virtual classes. Most end-of-year testing returned to K–12 schools in 2021, but much of the “assessment holiday” has endured. Most colleges continue not to require SAT or ACT scores, states are eliminating high school graduation tests, and grading standards have slipped to their lowest levels on record. States and districts are fueling grade inflation through policies that, in the name of equity, prohibit penalties for late work, recalibrate grading scales in ways that make passing easier, require teachers to assign credit for assignments that aren’t turned in, and even eliminate grading penalties for cheating.

This is the seventh in a series on doing educational equity right. See the introductory post, as well as ones on school finance, student discipline, advanced education, school closures and homework. Student grading is one of those issues that has an enormous impact on kids and schools, yet for years...

Educators and researchers have been fighting the reading wars for the last century, with battles see-sawing literacy instruction in American schools from phonics to whole language and, most recently, back to phonics again. Policymakers have entered the fray, after more than a quarter-century of stagnant reading scores in the United States. Over the last decade, 32 states and the District of Columbia have adopted new “science of reading” laws that require schools to use curricula and instructional techniques that are deemed “evidence-based.”

This winter, Tim Daly penned a terrific retrospective on the Finland edu-craze of the early 2000s, terming it the “greatest hype bubble in the history of international education.” He recounts how selling the Finnish miracle became a “cottage industry,” nudged along by savvy PR and junkets “organized and paid for by the Finnish government.” Journalists, advocates, policymakers, educators, and philanthropists dutifully trekked abroad to learn Finland’s secret.

Teacher shortages have been a chief concern of public school leaders since the Covid-19 pandemic began in 2020. According to an August 2023 survey by the National Center for Education Statistics, 79 percent of public schools with at least one vacant teaching position reported difficulty filling slots for the 2023–24 school year.

Donald Wittman, an emeritus professor in the Department of Economics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss Wittman’s latest report, which contends that the University of California erred when it ended the use of SAT and ACT scores in admissions. Wittman’s article, “The...