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April 3, 2024

School Absenteeism Has Become A Big Problem. But We Can Do Something About It.

Chronic absenteeism has become a pressing challenge for the nation’s schools. The stories are ubiquitous, featuring headlines like last week’s New York Times’s front-pager “Why School Absences Have ‘Exploded’ Almost Everywhere.” In…

April 3, 2024

Feds Should Take a Big Step Back on Student Loans

The federal student loan program has gone off the rails. What was first designed as a program to alleviate the liquidity problem students face when paying for college is now…

March 28, 2024

Finally, a Chance to Start Getting Higher Ed Right

“Finally.” It’s a word those who’ve spent years sounding the alarm about the plight of higher education have been saying a lot lately. Finally, the thought-policing and groupthink have become…

March 26, 2024

Reading Scores Have Plunged Since the Pandemic. What This Senator Wants to Do About That

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…

March 21, 2024

Three Principles for Conservative Early-Childhood Policy

Key Points Early-childhood education policy should provide relief for working families by subsidizing and stabilizing lower-cost early-childhood education options. It should also keep children connected to their families, even though…

March 19, 2024

Getting K–12 Right

Event Summary On March 19, Louisiana State Superintendent Cade Brumley, Nicole Neily of Parents Defending Education, and Derrell Bradford of 50CAN joined AEI’s Frederick M. Hess and Michael Q. McShane…

March 14, 2024

The “No Excuses” Model Is Due for a Renaissance

In a dispatch over the weekend, the New York Times took note of the rise of “super strict schools in England,” marked by “strict routines and detentions,” silent corridors, and “zero-tolerance” policies for even…

March 11, 2024

Taking On the College Cartel

The venerable economist Milton Friedman once said, “Only a crisis—actual or perceived—produces real change.” That’s the impulse behind Winston Churchill’s admonition (later famously echoed by Obama’s chief of staff Rahm…

March 11, 2024

Louisiana’s FAFSA U-Turn Signals That “College-for-All” Has Peaked

Fifteen years ago, AEI’s ever-prescient Charles Murray argued in Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing America’s Schools Back to Reality that too many students were going to college—that “college-for-all” loomed too…

March 11, 2024

Why Educators Often Have It Wrong About Right-Leaning Parents

Three decades ago, John Gray’s mega-hit book, Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, sold 15 million copies. The premise was simple: When we see the world in different ways, it’s…