Expectations and surprises at the ESEA waiver hearing
A rather typical group convened on Capitol Hill yesterday to discuss lessons learned from the first years of the Obama administration’s ESEA waiver plan. The Senate Health, Education, Labor, and...
View ArticleWhat does the State of the Union hold for education?
If past is prologue, President Obama’s previous State of the Union addresses can tell us something about what he will relay to Congress and the American people tomorrow night. All four addresses have...
View ArticleIs Obama’s universal pre-K plan too much, too soon?
Proponents of President Obama’s universal prekindergarten proposal make a strong case for the potential benefits of such a plan. Studies of about 100 low-income kids enrolled in two pricey and...
View ArticleDavid Brooks and Reihan Salam on universal pre-K
David Brooks likes what he hears so far from the Obama administration about its universal pre-K plan: Obama is trying to significantly increase the number of kids with access to early education. The...
View ArticleCharles Murray on universal prekindergarten
Charles Murray on the feasibility and potential benefits of President Obama’s call for universal prekindergarten (via Bloomberg): The take-away from the story of early childhood education is that the...
View ArticleA brief defense of school vouchers
AEI’s Michael McShane ably defends vouchers from ill-informed attacks by Ember Reichgott Junge, the Democrat-Farm-Labor representative in the Minnesota State Legislature who authored America’s first...
View ArticleWhen it comes to alternative accreditation, the ‘who’ matters just as much as...
As I discussed last week, the president left the intriguing higher education news to the SOTU fact sheet. He called on Congress to create a “new alternative system of accreditation that would provide...
View ArticleHow schools can produce more female economists and engineers
“The long-run gains of not mixing genders in high-school classes” by Massimo Anelli, Giovanni Peri: In a recent study (Anelli and Peri 2013) we ask if the gender composition of the high-school class...
View ArticleShould Washington become a venture capitalist for education?
Conservatives and libertarians have long been skeptical of the federal role in education. The Department of Education is frequently offered up as a candidate for closure. More recently, there’s been...
View ArticleCage-busting leadership in DC education
One of the best parts about doing education policy in a place like Washington, DC is the host of excellent schools within a short metro ride from our office, giving us a chance to leave the ivory tower...
View ArticleThe staffing surge (‘educratification’) in America’s public schools:...
State Public School Teachers, 2010 Non-Teaching Staff, 2010 Non-Teaching Staff per 100 Teachers, 2010 Virginia 70,947 130,100 183.4 Indiana 58,121 80,681 138.8 Kentucky 42,042 57,183 136.0 Wyoming...
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Chart of the day: Administrative bloat in US public schools
Originally posted in January, now re-posted….. From Benjamin Scafidi at The Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice: America’s public schools are bloated with bureaucracy and skinny on results....
View ArticleChart: The explosion in college debt
From the New York Fed: Higher education is crucial to improving the skill level of American workers, especially in the face of rising skill premiums and a relatively unfavorable labor market for less...
View ArticleUpgrading teacher evaluation
In a new AEI Education paper, the latest in our Teacher Quality 2.0 series, American Institutes for Research’s Mike Hansen looks into the future of teacher evaluation. He asks us to first imagine...
View ArticleGOP learns you can’t win elections with just debt doomsday preppers
When you have inflation at 2%, interest rates near 0%, but unemployment close to 8%, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that the national debt isn’t a top priority of voters. As this new survey from...
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The deflating higher education bubble: What next?
The folks at the Atlanta Fed are much impressed by Instapundit Glenn Reynold’s argument that the higher education “bubble” can’t go on forever. Two compelling facts, the intersection of which forms the...
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Increased graduation rate in Louisiana means big bucks
In a recent report that did not get the attention it deserved, the Louisiana Department of Education released graduation rate figures for school systems across the Pelican state. From 2005-2006 to...
View ArticleDeveloping standardized tests: What’s $330 million among friends?
As part of President Obama’s hallmark education program, the Race to the Top competitive grant competition, the Department of Education allocated four-year grants totaling $330 million to two consortia...
View ArticleThis Teacher Appreciation Week, honor the cage-busters
In honor of Teacher Appreciation Week, we’re highlighting cage-busting educators, those who work tirelessly to upend the pervasive “culture of can’t,” and devise outside-of-the-box solutions despite...
View ArticleThe $7,000 master’s degree
Tech exec gives a speech to a bunch of educators. “The good news” he says, “is that my online education business will pay teachers a million dollars a year.” The crowd cheers. “The bad new is that I’ll...
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