Education Next

Kim Feller founded Feller School in Madison, Wisconsin, in 2022 with the knowledge that students with dyslexia learn differently and require explicit instruction to help them see the patterns that make up our language. I need to tell you about Jermiah. He was a scrawny little boy with buzzed hair and more energy than three kids combined. He’d burst into my intervention room like a firecracker, all spunk and spirit, even though his name got called out in class more than anyone else

Members of the Chicago Teachers Union gather at Union Park in Chicago to participate in the “day of civic action” on May 1, 2026. The kid grabbed me by my shirt. “Mister, help me!” he pleaded. I was in Chicago to see the city’s big May Day protests. The holiday, also known by the Sanders-Mamdani set as International Workers’ Day, was born of Chicago’s 1886 Haymarket bombing. This year, the Chicago Teachers Union and Chicago Public Schools agreed to make May 1 an annual “day of civ

The Education Exchange · Ep. 443 – May 18, 2026 – School Districts with Declining Enrollments Have Higher Funding, More Staff Per Pupil Ben Scafidi, a Professor and Director of Education Economics Center at Kennesaw State University, joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss his paper, “Enrollment, Fiscal, and Resource Changes in American Public School Districts, 1998 to 2019,” which was presented at “School Choice: Impacts on Participants, Non-Participants, Educators, and Ent

A 9th grader at Delta High School in rural Utah places his cellphone into the pocket of a phone holder before entering class in early 2024. Utah is one of almost two dozen states that have legislated bell-to-bell bans on student cellphone use during the school day. The state’s policy becomes official on July 1 and goes into effect in the 2026–27 school year. Schoolwide cellphone limits are quickly becoming the norm across the United States. In the past few years, 22 states and the

I first encountered the challenges of school reform 35 years ago as a high school teacher in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. I was struck by the fact that bold-faced state and district initiatives had no obvious impact on what I saw happening in our acclaimed magnet school. When I headed off to pursue my PhD, I found myself wondering just why this might be. Five years later, I wrote Spinning Wheels to try to understand when and why districts pursued various reforms. But I ran into a serious problem: Eve

The Education Exchange · Ep. 442 – May 11, 2026 – Public School Enrollment Is Declining. Is Universal Choice to Blame? Patrick Graff, a Senior Fellow with the American Federation for Children, joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss Graff’s paper, “Declining Public School Enrollment and the Rise of Universal Private School Choice Programs,” which was presented at “School Choice: Impacts on Participants, Non-Participants, Educators, and Entrepreneurs,&

When someone is anxious, lonely, or depressed, the standard advice is to see a therapist. But therapists are scarce, waitlists are long, and many people—especially teenagers—never make it through the door. So what if your doctor could skip the waitlist and prescribe gardening, a walking group, a choir, cooking classes, or a soccer league instead? It’s called social prescribing, and it’s coming to the U.S. What is Social Prescribing? The idea is a primary care doctor refers a patie

Politicians of both parties have decided to do something about the $1.7 trillion in outstanding student loan debt. Democrats and the Biden administration saw mass forgiveness as the solution. By contrast, Republicans have asked whether—given that student debt has gotten so out of control—the federal government shouldn’t take steps to reduce how much gets lent out in the first place. After all, the first thing you do when your house starts to flood is turn off the tap. Hence the higher-education

I keep having the same conversation. A self-assured school leader or funder will tell me about a cutting-edge high school model that’s thriving in the “age of AI.” They’ll invariably describe schools rich with projects, “design thinking,” tech, and socially conscious activity. They’ll share tales of graduates accepted by prestigious colleges or offered summer gigs at tech firms. They’ll brag about students who win competitions, build robots, organize community protests, or launch successful podc

The Education Exchange · Ep. 441 – May 4, 2026 – AP Exams Have Shown a Measurable Decline in Rigor for Years John Moscatiello, founder of Marco Learning, joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss Advanced Placement exams and how they’ve transformed through the past three years. “The Great Recalibration of AP Exams” is available now at Marco Learning. Follow The Education Exchange on Soundcloud, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or here on Educa

Governor Charlie Baker speaks at commencement exercises for the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2019. A large swath of the America public has lost faith in higher education. Worse, colleges and universities are facing new and growing challenges related to funding, enrollment, artificial intelligence, athletics, and more. Higher education needs a strategy, fast. Given their powers over public education, governors are uniquely positioned to take the lead. This is not a novel

Apprenticeship does something American education and workforce training policy too rarely gets right. It blends learning and earning instead of forcing people to choose between school and work. National Apprenticeship Week (this year from April 26 to May 2) celebrates this practical but still underused pathway to opportunity. But the occasion demands more than a celebration. We should put a hard question in front of policymakers: Will the new Workforce Pell program (part of President Trump’s One

Earlier this month, Yale University’s ten-member Committee on Trust in Higher Education issued a bracing, 58-page report on what’s driven plunging trust in higher ed. The committee was formed a year ago by Yale president Maurie McInnis amidst Trump 2.0’s early onslaught. McInnis charged the committee with determining why confidence in higher ed was at an all-time low and what to do about it. As McInnis wrote in her introduction to the report, “Universities nationwide are facing a historic wave o

The Education Exchange · Ep. 440 – April 27, 2026 – The Devaluing of College Professors Samuel Abrams, professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College, joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss Abrams recent op-ed in Real Clear Politics, “The Real Crisis in Higher Education Isn’t Just Ideology, It’s Faculty Decline.” Follow The Education Exchange on Soundcloud, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or here on Education Next. — Education Next

Paragons of the two most politically storied and opposed families once joined forces to create landmark legislation for American education. A quarter century later, even the nonpartisan research it wrought is in shambles. In the fall of 2017, over 50 education researchers gathered to discuss their projects authorized under the auspices of a Regional Education Lab (REL) funded by the Institute of Education Sciences (IES). The convener interrupted the proceedings by stating, “Congre

Are teens flourishing or floundering? A new assessment could provide the data we need to know for sure. The Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) did not just cut the Institute of Education Sciences (IES). It demolished it. Staff were laid off. Contracts were canceled. Core data collections were thrown into disarray. The execution was chaotic. But the disruption creates an opportunity. As Rick Hess has argued in Education Next, the first priority for re

At last week’s ASU+GSV conference in San Diego, I was asked to try to decipher the state of education politics alongside my friends Andy Rotherham and Penny Schwinn. Penny moderated, asking great questions. The responses to our conversation make me think it’s worth revisiting some of what we touched upon. In the spirit of the initial confab, let’s hit some of the key points Q&A-style. Q: Why is education so political today? A: Education has always been political. But at least

The Education Exchange · Ep. 439 – April 20, 2026 – Disability Diagnoses: The Latest Luxury Good at Elite Universities Jeremy B. Ney, Adjunct Professor of Business at Columbia Business School, joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss Ney’s recent Substack post, “How the Wealthy Game Disability Laws for Ivy League Gains.” Follow The Education Exchange on Soundcloud, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or here on Education Next. — Education Next

It would be fair to say that Will, a recent graduate from a rural high school in the Midwest, has school-to-work to thank for his current employment. However, Will himself describes his experience in the program as “complicated.” It is an apt description for many high school students who participate in school-to-work (STW), structured learning experiences that incorporate academic education with practical, on-site job training. Although students are given an opportunity to learn specific skills

In the small town of Walden, in a high mountain park in northcentral Colorado, Superintendent Amy Ward knows her families. She knows that 64 percent of children in Jackson County live below the poverty line. She knows which ones go home to trailers with no insulation and which parents work seasonal ranch jobs. She knows all of this because of her on-the-ground experience. But the Colorado Department of Education (CDE) requires her district, North Park, to use a GIS-based mapping tool to identify