October 6, 2023
The last few years have been historic ones for the school choice movement. Dozens of new programs have been adopted, existing programs have been expanded, education savings accounts (ESAs) have morphed from an oddity into a legislative reality, and new school models have flourished. But we’ve seen time and again that this kind of success…
September 19, 2023
Education savings accounts. Universal voucher programs. Charter schools. These are words guaranteed to inspire heated debates among policymakers, parents, and educators. Teachers’ union leaders denounce school choice as part of a malicious “war on public education.” School choice advocates rail against “failing government schools.” These debates manifest themselves as morality plays in which one is either for…
September 12, 2023
In schools, it can feel like there’s never enough time. Even though American students spend as much or more time in school as their peers around the globe (a fact that’s not widely known), valuable units, lessons, conversations, and projects are always running into time constraints. Teachers, for instance, articulate a clear set of priorities for which…
August 29, 2023
I wrote recently about the opportunity (and need) to rethink the parent-educator partnership. Inevitably, a bunch of practical questions arise about how to do that. After all, for every frustrated parent who feels unwelcome or out of the loop, there’s an equally frustrated teacher who has stories of parents not showing up for meetings or not responding…
August 28, 2023
As the new school year gets underway, there’s a lot of talk about programs, technology, and staffing challenges. But one opportunity for school improvement seems to consistently get overlooked: time. Three decades ago, the National Education Commission on Time and Learning observed, “Learning in America is a prisoner of time. For the past 150 years, American…
July 18, 2023
A few months back, I reflected on the 40th anniversary of “A Nation at Risk,” the landmark 1983 report. But there’s one important point that I didn’t really address: that the report was characterized by confidence in the DNA of Horace Mann’s familiar schoolhouse, whereas the momentum today is moving in a decidedly different direction. This struck…
June 15, 2023
Over the past year, eerily human artificial intelligence has crossed from the province of science fiction into daily reality. Displaying an astonishing ability to write poetry, code programs, summarize research, and ace the SAT, AI has profound implications for education. The early response has tended to take one of two forms: sky-is-falling panic or an…
June 8, 2023
The school choice landscape has been in flux of late. Earlier this week, Oklahoma approved the nation’s first religious charter school. In the past two years, seven states have adopted Education Savings Accounts or expansive school voucher programs, and the legal status of state “Blaine amendments” is very much in question. It seemed like a good time to check…
May 31, 2023
Discussions of school choice frequently fall into familiar morality plays: Either you’re for empowering parents or supporting public education. The resulting debate manages to miss much of what matters. It ignores that all kinds of choices are hard-wired into American public education. It skips past the fact that the affluent already choose schools when purchasing homes, so…
May 10, 2023
In education policy circles, there’s a lot of enthusiasm regarding the promise of AI-enabled tutoring. After all, a huge stumbling block for tutoring has been the limited number of affordable, reliable, and skilled tutors. That’s why ubiquitous AI could be such a game-changer. But there’s reason to fear that the excitement of AI-enabled tutoring will distract us…