Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice: Real Schools Need Books, Not Laptops or Cell Phones (James Traub) (Guest Post by James Traub) “James Traub is a journalist and scholar specializing in international affairs. He is a columnist and contributor to the website foreignpolicy.com. He worked as a staff writer for The New Yorker from 1993 to 1998 and as a contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine from 1998 to 2011. He has also written extensively about national politics, urban affairs, and education. His books include What Was Liberalism? The Past, Present and Pr ..read more

Janresseger: State Support for Pre-Kindergarten Is Another Victim As Vouchers Drain State Tax Dollars Yesterday, the Ohio Capital Journal‘s Susan Tebben reported some troubling numbers about Ohio children’s access to early childhood education: “The National Institute for Early Education Research’s annual ‘state of preschool’ report showed nationwide disparities in access, quality, and funding for preschool, with Ohio sitting at 43rd in total reported spending on early education… Ohio has a total of 18,000 children enrolled in pre-K education, with 35% of the school districts of ..read more

Shanker Blog: How Do Vouchers Defund Public Schools? Four Warnings and One Big Takeaway Our guest author is Josh Cowen, Professor of Education Policy at Michigan State University. His new book, The Privateers: How Billionaires Created a Culture War and Sold School Vouchers is forthcoming at Harvard Education Press. Over the past two years, school voucher systems and other related schemes that divert taxpayer revenue toward private K-12 tuition have passed state legislatures at unprecedented rates. Although these recent bills became law only, for the most part, in red states, th ..read more

Curmudgucation: A Voucher By Any Other Name Voucher supporters have one major problem: school vouchers are unpopular. The tern doesn't test well. Measure of public support is iffy-- if you ask people if they would like every student to have the chance to ride to a great school on their own pony, people say yes, but if you ask a more reality-based framing ("should we spend education dollars on public schools or subsidies for some private schools") the results look a bit different.  But one clear measure of public support for vouchers is this; despite all the insistence that the publi ..read more

Gary Rubinstein's Blog: Should the Success Academy SPRINT Program Be Investigated? About four months ago I received an unusual DM in my Twitter account. Though over the years several different Success Academy parents have reached out to me, this was from someone who claimed to be either a current employee or a former employee. They used an anonymous name and to this day, I have no idea who this person is. But they reached out to me because they had a story to tell and felt, I guess, that I was the best person to tell it to. Over the months they have provided various internal Success Academy d ..read more

Code Acts in Education: Edtech Has an Evidence Problem Schools spend a lot of money on edtech, and most of the time it’s a waste of their limited funds. According to the Edtech Evidence Exchange, educators estimate that “85% of edtech tools are poor fits or poorly implemented”, indicating very weak returns for the $25 billion or more annually spent on edtech in the US alone. The problem is that school procurement of edtech is rarely based on rigorous or independent evidence. The Edtech Evidence Exchange is one example of a new type of organization in education that is aiming to ..read more

Nancy Bailey's Education Website: Where’s the “Evidence” in State-Mandated Science of Reading Programs? Last I looked, thirty-seven states and the District of Columbia have signed reading laws (Schwartz 2024). Parents, educators, school administrators, and state and local policymakers hear the Science of Reading is critical for children to read, and “evidence-based” and “research-based” are words tagged to make believers. But finding the evidence takes work. Scholars are raising serious questions about the Science of Reading and its existence, including equity claims. This raises more concern ..read more

Teacher in a Strange Land: Woke/Not Woke A few years back, in 2016, I read a blog post from a national teachers’ union leader, a white woman, proclaiming that she was now woke. I’ve met this woman a few times and have no doubt that she is sincere and well-meaning and totally on the right side of social justice issues, but the blog, about her aha moment, struck me as tone-deaf. Most of the time, white educators who care about justice are working on opening their minds, at being better humans. Maybe the best white people can do is increase their understanding and awareness of all the injustices ..read more

Curmudgucation: Curriculum as the Next Reformy Frontier Just stay with me for a minute. The right-tilted Hoover Institute has a publication out for the fortieth anniversary of A Nation At Risk, the Reagan-era hit job on public education, a collection of essays by various members of the reformster world. Some of these are not very enticing (Eric Hanushek on Fixing Schools Through Finance, or Cami Anderson on Lessons from Newark), but there's at least one that's worth a look.  Robert Pondiscio's contribution is The Case For Curriculum (reprinted in slightly more r ..read more

Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice: Get Tech Out of Classrooms - Some Parents Say (Jessica Grose) (Guest Post by Jessica Grose) Jessica Grose is an Opinion writer for The New York Times. She covers family, religion, education, and culture. Jaime Lewis noticed that her eighth-grade son’s grades were slipping several months ago. She suspected it was because he was watching YouTube during class on his school-issued laptop, and her suspicions were validated. “I heard this from two of his teachers and confirmed with my son: Yes, he watches YouTube during class, and no, h ..read more