Month: September 2025

The Pell Grant Proxy: A Ubiquitous But Flawed Measure of Low-income Student Enrollment – by Jason D. Delisle

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Executive Summary Policymakers and the media use the Pell Grant program to measure the share of low-income students enrolled at specific colleges and universities, but the reliability of this measure is rarely scrutinized. This paper discusses several key limitations of the “Pell proxy” that could affect its reliability, especially when used to draw conclusions about admission...

No Simple Answers for Kids and Screens

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Research on the effect of social media on kids’ mental health is mixed, with some saying it may increase empathy. Chances are, you’re reading this on a screen. Maybe it’s first thing in the morning after your phone alarm rings, in the moments before the hectic battle to get the kids ready for school. Or perhaps it’s when you’re trying to turn off your mi...

New Research Shows Killings by Police Hurt Grades, Graduation Rates of Nearby Black and Hispanic Schoolchildren – by Desmond Ang

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Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin (left) has been charged with the murder of George Floyd. How will the death of George Floyd affect Minneapolis schoolchildren? New research I conducted on the effects of police violence indicates that it will significantly hurt their educational and emotional well-being. Examining detailed data on more than 700,000 public high school stu...

Teacher Pension Plans and the Covid Recession – by Andrew G. Biggs

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Under Gov. Frank Murkowski, Alaska passed pension reform and moved to defined-contribution plans in 2005. The economic toll of the Covid pandemic bodes poorly for teacher pension plan finances, which were already in bad shape prior to this new, uncertain recession. School districts’ pension costs—which have been rising rapidly since the turn of the century—will continue to bear...

What If Social Science Is a Scam?

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What if a huge chunk of scholarly research is a pointless exercise pursued by hobbyists who like the perks? That’s decidedly not the argument made by Harvard Business School’s Max Bazerman in Inside an Academic Scandal (The MIT Press), but it was the thought that lingered for me after I set down his pithy, engaging new book. Bazerman has penned an insid...

Uncommon Sense for Education Reformers – by Jay P. Greene

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Commitment and Common Sense: Leading Education Reform in Massachusetts by David P. Driscoll Harvard Education Press, 2017, $30.00; 256 pages. As reviewed by Jay P. Greene David P. Driscoll’s new book Commitment and Common Sense offers a lot of what current education policy discussions lack—wisdom. Driscoll’s book is a memoir, recounting his journey from being the youngest of te...

EdNext Podcast: Why Some Schools Are Responding Well to the Pandemic – by Education Next

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The CEO of the Silicon Schools Fund, Brian Greenberg, joins Education Next Editor-in-chief Marty West to discuss how schools have transitioned well to distance learning during the Covid-19 pandemic, and others have struggled. Successful schools, Greenberg says, “had such deep relationships with these kids and such a moral purpose in what they were doing, it felt unconscio...