Abigail Shrier’s wildly popular new book, Bad Therapy, is one of the latest takes on the causes of the mental health crisis occurring among youth. Shrier’s diagnosis is that society’s obsession over kids’ feelings undermines their development, hindering their ability to manage the vicissitudes of life. This problem, she says, is largely due to contemporary approaches to psychotherapy, parenting, and schooling. One of the schooling practices she claims is particularly harmful is social and emotional learning, or SEL. SEL programs aim to teach students life skills like emotion and attention ..read more

A Most Tolerant Little Town: The Explosive Beginning of School Desegregation by Rachel Louise Martin Simon & Schuster, 2023, $30; 362 pages. As reviewed by Matthew Levey We know of the nine Black students who bravely enrolled at Little Rock Central High School in the fall of 1957, despite the Arkansas governor’s attempts to bar them. Many recall Norman Rockwell’s portrait of first-grader Ruby Bridges walking past a wall splattered with a tomato and a scribbled racial slur on her way to William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans in 1960. But the 1956 desegregation of Clinton H ..read more

Students occupy part of the campus at Columbia University on April 19, a day after the New York Police Department arrested over 100 pro-Palestine protesters. Columbia University canceled in-person classes yesterday after weekend protests that the Biden White House termed “unconscionable and dangerous.” The New York Police Department ultimately arrested more than a 100 protesters who’d been part of the unruly mob chanting “Hamas, we love you, we support your rockets too!” and had turned Columbia’s campus into something that looked like a makeshift homeless encampment. The chaos was striking bu ..read more

Patrick J. Wolf, a professor of Education Policy at the University of Arkansas, joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss Wolf’s new research, which investigates the impact of private education on civic knowledge, skills and participation. “The Public Purposes of Private Education: a Civic Outcomes Meta-Analysis,” co-written with M. Danish Shakeel, Alison Heap Johnson, Mattie A. Harris and Sarah R. Morris, is available now at Educational Psychology Review. Follow The Education Exchange on Soundcloud, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or here on Education Next. — Education Next The post The Educat ..read more

This is the final article in a series on doing educational equity right. See the introductory post, as well as ones on school finance, student discipline, advanced education,  school closures, homework, grading and effective teaching. For the past several months, I’ve been pumping out posts about “doing educational equity right.” Given that Eight is Enough, it’s time to wrap things up. Let’s conclude with a twist and look at three ways that schools are doing educational equity wrong: By engaging in the soft bigotry of low expectations. By tying teachers’ hands without good reason ..read more

The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) in the Department of Education has long been known for its tendency to overstep in its rulemaking. Many federal agencies are tempted to avoid the notice-and-comment requirements of the Administrative Procedures Act (APA) by fabricating administrative law in the form of “clarifications” and “guidance”—but no agency has succumbed to that temptation more than OCR. As Shep Melnick has pointed out (see “Rethinking Federal Regulation of Sexual Harassment,” features, Winter 2018), OCR has used “Dear Colleague” letters (DCLs) to rewrite Title IX and wade into hot-but ..read more

On Monday, I talked with departing Institute of Education Sciences Director Mark Schneider, who just wrapped up his six-year term. In our conversation, he argued for newer and better research centers at IES, along with a heightened commitment to producing timely and accessible reports. Well, as anyone who knows Mark well can attest, he almost always has more to say. I thought I’d reach back out and see if he had anything else he wanted to get off his mind. Here is Part Two of our conversation. —Rick Hess Rick Hess: On Monday, you mentioned that Marguerite Roza, Emily Oster, and Sean Reardon ..read more

Picture the scene: A new technology has been introduced that is unlike anything we’ve seen before. This technology creates a new means of sharing information that is both interesting and entertaining and promises to generate new forms of knowledge on a regular basis. Indeed, this new creation appears so transformative, it leads one of the world’s most prominent entrepreneurs to predict that the method of transmitting knowledge to students will be radically altered in just a few years. I’m referring, of course, to 1913 and the introduction of motion-picture technology—movies—which led Thoma ..read more

Vladimir Kogan, a Professor in the Department of Political Science at Ohio State University, joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss a new report from the New York State Education Department which argues that control of schools should move from mayors to school boards. The report, “Mayoral Control of New York City Public Schools,” is available here. Follow The Education Exchange on Soundcloud, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or here on Education Next. — Education Next The post The Education Exchange: Is Mayoral Control of School Boards Good for New York City? appeared first on Education Next ..read more

In 1924, Sidney Pressey, a professor from Ohio State University, invented a teaching machine. The mechanical device, about the size of a portable typewriter, allowed students to press one of four keys to answer questions curated by expert instructors. A later version dispensed candy for correct answers. Education optimists were fascinated, and Pressey promised the technology would accelerate student learning. But the machine was a commercial flop. Exactly a century later, similar programs spangle U.S. classrooms: i-Ready, DreamBox, Khan Academy, IXL, and many others. They are driven by cle ..read more