Education Next

In the early months of the second Trump administration, the Department of Government Efficiency pushed into the U.S. Department of Education and executed substantial cuts to staff and funding. Many of those reductions fell on ED’s research arm, the Institute of Education Sciences, which lost 88 percent of its staff and saw nearly every research contract canceled. In the wake of this intervention, Secretary of Education Linda McMahon recruited Amber M. Northern, senior vice president for research

A source in the Salem, Massachusetts, school system had reached out to me with a remarkable tip: The ghosts of John F. Kennedy and Dwight D. “Ike” Eisenhower would be appearing at the local high school shortly before Election Day to mark the nation’s 250th. So, there I was, poised in the back of an 11th-grade civics class, notepad in hand. The bell sounded to signal the start of the period and also seemed to summon the spirits of our 34th and 35th presidents, as JFK and Ike majestically material

The Education Exchange · Ep. 466 – Nov. 2, 2026 – Colorado Preschool Discrimination Case to Be Heard by Supreme Court Clint Bolick, the 44th Justice of the Arizona Supreme Court, joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss the St. Mary Catholic Parish v. Roy case, a religious education case that will be heard by the United States Supreme Court in their upcoming term. Follow The Education Exchange on Soundcloud, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or here on Educatio

The Federal Scholarship Tax Credit (FSTC) is a watershed piece of legislation poised to permanently reshape school funding across education sectors, including public schools. But the law is confusing and convoluted and carries new requirements for states, and governors are under a tight clock to opt in or out of participating. So what does the Treasury Department, the agency charged with writing the rules that will govern the tax credit, do? It swallows up 15 months before finalizing one set of

Looking back at your childhood times playing with friends, with no adult in sight, what do you remember? Did these unsupervised times provide a haven from adult expectations and demands, a chance to explore and take risks, or a time to design your own games and rules—to create your own world—to feel free and powerful? Or do you recall worrying about being demeaned or bullied, struggling to fit in, or butting heads senselessly with other kids? Or was it some complex combination of these experienc

Golfers play through as the National Park Services cuts down trees at the East Potomac Golf Course earlier this month. Perhaps because everything else is going so darn well, President Trump has moved to shutter D.C.’s public, $30-for-nine-holes East Potomac Golf Course so that it can be redesigned into an upscale “World Class Championship Golf Course” fit for the Ryder Cup or PGA Championship. Assuming this scheme works out (and isn’t another Kennedy Center/Reflecting Pool fiasco)

The Education Exchange · Ep. 465 – Oct. 26, 2026 – Arkansas’s ESA Program Has Tripled in Size Misty Gallo, Distinguished Doctoral Fellow at the University of Arkansas in the Department of Education Reform, joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss the 2025–26 Arkansas Education Freedom Accounts Program Annual Report. Follow The Education Exchange on Soundcloud, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or here on Education Next. — Education Next TranscriptFull tra

The science of reading boom has created a groundswell of interest in whether there’s an analog for math. One of the more interesting thinkers on this count is Daniel Ansari, a professor of psychology and education at Western University in Ontario, where he directs the Numerical Cognition Laboratory. Daniel’s research focuses on how children develop mathematical and numerical skills, and he thinks there’s a lot of popular confusion regarding the “science of math.” I reached out to hear what he th

Catholic schoolchildren play during recess across from their school in suburban Chicago in 2018. Greg Richmond recently stepped down as superintendent of schools for the Archdiocese of Chicago after five years in the role. Previously he had worked for a decade at Chicago Public Schools, where he launched the district’s Charter Schools Office. He also co-founded the National Association of Charter School Authorizers and served as its chief executive officer from 2005 to 2019. Educa

Whatever you think of AI’s potential upsides—and I believe they are significant—the most urgent questions around artificial intelligence in education have to do with minimizing harm. How do we keep students from using it to cheat on essays and assignments, even on in-class quizzes and tests, as a quarter of high schoolers copped to in a recent Fordham Institute survey? And how do we keep kids safe when they’re likely to be tempted to chat with bots about all kinds of personal issues? But the mos

Two years after Arkansas passed universal education choice, the average achievement of participating students rose even as the program tripled in size, with homeschoolers leading the way. That’s the big news from a new University of Arkansas report that analyzed the results from the first year the state’s Education Freedom Account program was available to every K–12 student. The growth in program participation and improvement in student outcomes in the Natural State is another in a series of uni

Whole shelves of edu-books promise, “If you just DO THIS, students will learn!” From growth mindset to inquiry-based learning, methods claiming to be the secret ingredient of successful schools have been peddled by a slew of authors. Yet, while the strategies often impress on paper, the promised results rarely materialize in practice. Why is that? I’ve long thought that education volumes are most useful when they shed light on that question. On that count, Harvard’s Jal Mehta and five colleagues

The Education Exchange · Ep. 464 – Oct. 19, 2026 – Federal K–12 Scholarships Will Soon Be Available to American Families Jim Blew, advisor to the Federal Scholarship Tax Credit Coaltion, joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss the new Federal Scholarship Tax Credit law, scheduled to go into effect in January 2027. Follow The Education Exchange on Soundcloud, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or here on Education Next. — Educat

As we continue to honor 250 years of American independence, the most recent Nation’s Report Card shows we must renew our national commitment to our children’s U.S. history and civics education. Across the country, only one in five 8th graders demonstrated essential knowledge in civics, and just 13 percent did so in U.S. history. What’s more, achievement continues to fall in both subjects from prior years. As leaders of state education systems centered on improving student achievement, the

Academe is a good gig, especially if you’re keen to dress ideological screeds up in the trappings of learned expertise. A MAGA kook who posts long Substack articles insisting the 2020 election was stolen by Venezuelan ghostware is more likely to attract ridicule than research grants. But conspiracists with the proper politics can get tenured at taxpayer-supported universities and published by prestigious academic presses. Consider the handiwork of the four authors—Elena Aydarova, T. Jameson Brew

No, this post isn’t a commentary on THAT essay about New York City public schools. It’s on this one! On May 11 in the Wall Street Journal, Jeff Yass laid out a simple proposal for what New York City should do with the roughly $42,000 it spends per student per year on public education: Split it in half, give a mom $21,000 to spend on whatever school she chooses for her child, and put the other $21,000 into a savings account she controls. We think this would be a fascinating and important real-lif

In the 1990s and 2000s, school choice advocates pushed states to enact voucher, scholarship, and charter school programs to help more families access alternatives to their local public school. Then, in 2011, Arizona created the first Education Savings Account program, which let parents use public funds for an array of educational products and services beyond private-school tuition. More than a dozen states now offer ESAs for general-education students; three others offer them for special educati

The Education Exchange · Ep. 463 – Oct. 13, 2026 – Don’t Ban AI in Schools Dan Weisberg, Chief Program and Policy Officer at the Wallace Foundation and former deputy chancellor of New York City Public Schools, joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss how AI is being regulated in schools, and how technology could help teachers. Follow The Education Exchange on Soundcloud, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or here on Education Ne

Students enter Our Lady of Hungary Catholic School in South Bend, Indiana, for the first day of school in 2011. The new Federal Scholarship Tax Credit is expected to make private school choice possible for more families. Choice advocates are excited about the federal scholarship tax credit (FSTC) program, created as part of 2025’s “One Big Beautiful Bill.” And understandably so: As the first nationwide federal K–12 choice program, the FSTC could potentially enable hundreds of thou

Last week, I shared what I thought a blue wave in November might mean for education, addressing the questions I hear most frequently from journalists and education policy insiders. The column provoked a surprising torrent of reader mail that included several new questions to consider. With early voting already underway and the poll numbers steadily worsening for Republicans, the base case currently has Democrats taking the House, the Senate, and key gubernatorial races. That makes these queries