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June 12, 2025
Lingering Absence in Public Schools: Tracking Post-Pandemic Chronic Absenteeism into 2024
Key Points Chronic absenteeism spiked during the pandemic and remains a serious problem. In 2024, rates were 57 percent higher than they were pre-pandemic and only 2 percentage points lower…
June 5, 2025
Measuring the Value of Nondegree Credentials
…a conversation between BGI President Matt Sigelman and Dr. Schneider, in which they gave context to the discussion by introducing an upcoming report and website, complete with a web demo….
June 5, 2025
The One Thing Both Parties Agree On: More Deficits and Debt
…GOP bill. In the end, Republicans are making a political calculation that, as former Vice President Dick Cheney said, “deficits don’t matter.” This sentiment is bipartisan, history indicates, and Republicans…
May 23, 2025
How AI Will Harm Working-Class Families
…matters more for marriage than “her” work. One Harvard study, for instance, showed that a couple’s risk of divorce shot up 33 percent if the husband was unemployed, but rose not…
May 19, 2025
The Case for Shifting More Welfare Costs to States
…cover nearly all adults with incomes up to 138 percent of the federal poverty line—presently provide states “with an enhanced federal matching rate (FMAP) of 90% for their expansion populations.”…
May 15, 2025
The Pandemic Is Over. It’s Time for Schools to Get the Message.
More than five years after the covid-19 pandemic began, the havoc it wreaked on American students and schools is alarmingly clear by nearly every measure. But there is one glaring…
May 14, 2025
Libraries Are Doing the Work—Let’s Fund Them Accordingly
…matter. So does the intergenerational initiative I encountered at Kansas City Public Library. In 2023, they launched a gathering designed to foster connection across generations. College students helped develop the…
May 14, 2025
Graduation in the Time of COVID: The Weakened Relationship with Chronic Absenteeism
…and graduation rates weakened by half during the pandemic. That is, a district’s chronic absenteeism rate seems to matter less to its graduation rate than it did before the pandemic,…
May 12, 2025
To Improve Student Outcomes, Focus On Classroom Practice, Not Policy
…policy succeeds if it doesn’t improve classroom instruction. Look at Mississippi and Louisiana, which have posted historic gains in reading and math by focusing on classroom practice, investing in teacher…
May 6, 2025
What DOGE Flagged as Unemployment Fraud Is Just the Tip of the Iceberg—Most of Which Will Never Be Recovered
…their eligibility, and benefits should never be paid before a claimant’s identity has been verified. Matching against prisoner, deceased individual, and other databases should be required, or else federal benefits should not be paid. And states should be allowed…