Anya Kamenetz looks back at the top education moments in 2017 and she includes in her list the big, bipartisan plunge in support for charter schools which was revealed by the 2017 Education Next poll. The poll found that support for charter schools dropped by 12 percentage points between 2016 and 2017. In an essay interpreting the results, the authors write One might expect tha...

The policy debate over time in school has focused on the four-day school week. It is an arrangement formally adopted in approximately 850 districts, where schools operate for four slightly longer days per week instead of the traditional five, providing regular three-day weekends to students and teachers. When a district makes the decision to shutter its...

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I’m old-fashioned about public spending. I think we should pay our bills, that deficits are bad, and those spending taxpayer funds are obligated to do so wisely and well. This is how I’ve always approached education spending, especially in Washington. After all, it’s our students who’re going to get stuck with the tab for our borrowing today that subsid...

The Education Exchange · Ep. 446 – June 8, 2026 – Why Cell Phone Bans Are Good for Students, Teachers David Figlio, the Gordon Fyfe Professor of Economics and Education at the University of Rochester, joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss Figlio’s recent article in Education Next, “Can Banning Cellphones Save Student Learning? Eviden...

Just a few weeks ago Rick Hess wrote a piece complaining that advocates for social emotional learning seem to be suppporting a wide range of things, to the point where it is unclear what the phrase even means. A widely-shared New York Times piece about sticking with New Years resolutions suggests that some in the social emotional learning camp who have been busying themselves w...

America’s devotion to local control of schools is dying, but it is also being reborn as a new faith in charter schools. These independently operated public schools—nearly 7,000 across the country, and counting—provide a much-needed option for almost three million youngsters in forty-two states and Washington, D.C. The prevailing arrangement in America’s 14,000 school systems st...

In the past half-decade, there’s been an intense focus on teacher evaluation, distinguishing “effective” from “ineffective” teachers, and systems for “human capital” management. There’s an irony, though. All of this has tended to overshadow some basic insights regarding efforts to attract and retain terrific teachers. It turns out that it’s easier to find teachers in some field...

On Top of the News In D.C., A Radical Shift in Parent Involvement The Boston Globe | 3/28/2016 Behind the Headline Teacher Home Visits Education Next | Summer 2016 Stanton Elementary School teacher Sheryl Garner (right) on a home visit with the Colbert family In the Boston Globe, Michael Levenson describes how schools in Washington, D.C. are trying to involve parents in their c...