Education Next
The Education Exchange: Your Children, My Choice
Corey DeAngelis, a senior fellow at the American Federation for Children, joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss the phenomenon of political leaders who publicly oppose school choice programs, while exercising choice options for their own children.
Lieberman Was a Leader for School Choice in the Democratic Party
Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, who died last week at age 82, was, for much of the 1990s, one of the most articulate and persistent legislative advocates for school choice. Lieberman’s death prompted admiring statements from political figures across the spectrum who noted his contributions across a wide range of...
What Cabrini Can Teach Us about the School Choice Movement
The movie Cabrini tells the inspiring tale of Mother Frances Cabrini’s heroic work to provide dignity to Italian immigrants in New York City in the late 1880s and early 1890s. Most Italian Americans lived in desperate poverty at that time and were confined to slums where disorder reigned supreme in the forms of malnutrition, child labor, prostitution, and disease. A constant theme in the movie is that Mother Cabrini and her Italian-American compatriots should “stay where they belong.” Where they don’t belong, the powerbrokers of New York declared, is in the nice parts of the city.
We’re From the Government, and We’re Here to Help
An Excerpt from Miguel Cardona’s best-selling memoir, Reign of Confusion: My Years of Making It Rain at the U.S. Department of Education (Berkshire House, 2028), pp. 143–144. Chapter 9: My Free College Plan Comes Together. While pouring money on K–12 schools was a lot of fun, I’m proudest...
To Address Pandemic Learning Loss, Evidence Points to Tutoring
In the aftermath of the pandemic, schools across the country face an urgent crisis of student achievement. Most students will require a minimum of three school years to recover the academic learning that was lost. The deleterious effects of the pandemic were even more pronounced among our nation’s most vulnerable students, including those from the most economically disadvantaged circumstances.
There are No Shortcuts to Thinking
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.
One Senator’s Plan to Improve Student Literacy
The ranking Republican on the U.S. Senate’s Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, Bill Cassidy has represented Louisiana in the upper chamber since 2015. Cassidy recently released a much-discussed report, “Preventing a Lost Generation: Facing a Critical Moment for Students’ Literacy.” As schools struggle to address learning loss, and at a time when “the nation’s report card” finds that just 33 percent of 4th graders are proficient in reading, it’s heartening to see leaders step up. Given that, I reached out to the senator to discuss his report and what he has in mind. Here’s what he had to say.
School, European Style
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.
Academics and the People Who Don’t Read Them
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.
The Alexander Doctrine: Governors are Agents of Change
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...
The Education Exchange: High-Dosage Tutoring – A Prescription for Learning Loss
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.
Should Schools Be Rewarded for Absenteeism?
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.”
The Education Exchange: Why Some Charters Care Less about Learning
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.
Doing Educational Equity Right: Grading
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...
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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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