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January 24, 2025

Testing Theories of Why: Four Keys to Interpreting US Student Achievement Trends

Key Points Average US student assessment scores appear to tell a simple story: Performance rose through the 2000s, plateaued during the 2010s, and then declined sharply during the pandemic. But…

January 24, 2025

Testing Theories of Why: Four Keys to Interpreting US Student Achievement Trends

Key Points Average US student assessment scores appear to tell a simple story: Performance rose through the 2000s, plateaued during the 2010s, and then declined sharply during the pandemic. But…

December 11, 2024

US Students Best Other Nations—in Achievement Gap Growth

US scores on the 2023 Trends in Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) are another sign not only that American students are losing ground in math and science, but that the…

December 9, 2024

TIMSS Shows the Bottom Is Falling Out for US Test Scores

Last week’s release of 2023 scores from the Trends in Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS)—an international assessment measuring fourth and eighth graders in math and science—offers a fresh look at…

September 6, 2024

The Latest Chronic Absenteeism Numbers

A new school year is beginning, and students are returning to school, but the question this year is how many will return to attending consistently. Chronic absenteeism, the percentage of…

May 23, 2024

Biden’s Unending Student Loan Forgiveness Run

On Tuesday, the Biden administration announced $7.7 billion in student debt cancellation for about 161,000 borrowers, equating to about $48,000 per borrower. Compared to what has already been spent on loan forgiveness…

May 6, 2024

How Much Are You Willing to Spend on Student Loan Forgiveness?

Last Wednesday, the Biden administration announced $6.1 billion in student debt cancellation for over 300,000 borrowers who attended the Art Institutes, a defunct network of for-profit colleges that, according to…

February 22, 2024

Chronic Absenteeism Could Be the Biggest Problem Facing Schools Right Now

Chronic absenteeism has become a grim reality across the nation. Nationwide, chronic absenteeism nearly doubled from 15 percent in 2018 to 26 percent in 2023. How bad are these numbers,…

January 24, 2024

It’s National School Choice Week. Democrats: What Do You Think?

This week is National School Choice Week, which makes it a good time to ponder the state of the school choice coalition. During the Clinton–Bush school reform era, broad swaths…

November 28, 2022

Public School Instructional Offerings and Enrollment Changes: Evidence from Two Years After the Pandemic

Key Points Enrollment numbers in the first two pandemic school years demonstrate that district instructional offerings influence families’ enrollment decisions and that these effects were more pronounced in the second…