Twenty Years of Testing: A Teacher Looks Back; New Reports Look Forward

New research on the effectiveness of federal K-12 policies is part of national effort to improve testing and accountability mandates In 2009, I was a third grade teacher. I remember preparing for my annual evaluation with my principal, which included an observation of my classroom, my weekly lesson plans, and my students’ end-of-year test scores. […]
Addressing Pandemic Fallout: New Call for Proposals

Test scores have plummeted and racial disparities are widening. Student misbehavior and adult political disputes are disrupting teaching. Mental health needs are soaring. And more graduates are opting out of immediate college enrollment, bypassing the traditional path into America’s professional workforce – potentially for good. To address such urgent developments, the Center on Reinventing Public […]
Pandemic Devastation Demands More Student-Centered Learning Practices

This article was originally published on Ed Post. After three disrupted school years, America’s K-12 learners collectively have significant unfinished learning and unmet mental health needs. While educators are working hard to help their students, our school systems simply aren’t designed to address gaps this large. The urgency to address the wildly disparate and varying needs of […]
Business as Usual Won’t Get Our Kids Reading

Lakisha Young explains how Oakland REACH is training parents to be literacy tutors.
Arizona Digs into Data to Help Students with Disabilities—Other States Should Follow Suit

This commentary is a response to the Center on Reinventing Public Education’s State of the American Student project, an effort launched in fall 2022 to track and report on pandemic recovery and school reimagining efforts over the next five years. With two years of year-end assessment data in our hands, state leaders know that the impact of […]
Parent Navigators Are Worth the Investment for School Choice Supporters

Senior writer and innovation fellow explains Florida’s proposed “choice navigator” program and why school choice advocates should support funding the position.
Lessons from School Leaders: Managing Debates on CRT and AP African American Studies

The debate over how schools should teach about race heightened this week when the College Board released a framework for a new Advanced Placement course in African-American studies that reduced some of the content from a pilot version — content supported by hundreds of Black scholars and progressives but criticized by prominent conservatives. The national fervor over the content of […]
Navigating Political Tensions over Schooling: Findings from the Fall 2022 American School District Panel Survey

Public schooling has always been politically fraught, but current disagreements over issues related to race, sexuality, gender, and Covid-19 have reached a tipping point. According to a new report from the Center on Reinventing Public Education and RAND, half of school system leaders say that these disagreements are disrupting schooling. Almost one in three district […]
Three Years of Studying Charters in Washington State: What We Learned

The pandemic prompted major shifts in public school enrollment and models for learning in the Pacific Northwest and across the nation. After three years, our study of these effects on Washington state’s charter schools has generated a number of important findings, which we invite you to explore now that our project has ended. We sought […]
Black Education Leaders say Leaving Public Schools Can Help Save Our Kids

For Black children, the public education system is like a dirty fish tank. They’re swimming in toxic conditions like discriminatory discipline and low expectations. But before the water can be treated, those students need to be moved to a clean bowl where they can live and breathe. Then, it’s time to clean out the tank. […]