Update: The tracker is live and can be accessed here.
My friend and colleague Nat Malkus, deputy director of Education Policy Studies at AEI, is about to launch the Return to Learn Tracker, a new resource for monitoring school reopenings and instructional plans across all U.S. districts with three or more schools. I spoke with Nat about what the tracker will be able to tell us about the state of school reopening and how he hopes it’ll be used, now and going forward. Here’s what he had to say.
— Rick
Rick: What is the Return to Learn Tracker?
Nat…
For many years, rural education has been a back-burner issue. For decades, education reformers have focused on urban school systems, which are big and highly visible. Meanwhile, even as businesses have departed rural communities, leaving them isolated and impoverished, their educational challenges have drawn scant notice.
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush launched ExcelinEd (formerly known as the Foundation for Excellence in Education) in 2008, shortly after ending a tenure as governor marked by a focus on education. ExcelinEd continues his work by developing education policy and conducting state-specific research. It has had a significant impact across the land, championing measures including school accountability, early literacy, and broad education choice opportunities for families. Recently, ExcelinEd released its key goals for the next five years. I chatted with CEO Patricia Levesque about their work and what’s ahead.
— Rick
Rick: What is ExcelinEd, and what’s your role in…
Last week, the field of education policy lost an icon. Richard Elmore, a longtime professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, played an outsized role in helping the profession better understand the realities of policy when it came to improving schools. He was also an influential mentor of mine, serving on my dissertation committee and helping me get launched in this profession.
And he was one hell of a teacher. I first met Elmore in 1992, when I was a wide-eyed doctoral student who enrolled in his class on education policy. He’d only been at Harvard for two years…
Outschool is an online learning platform that offers over 100,000 virtual classes taught live over video chat, ranging from core subjects like reading, science, and math to more niche, interest-based topics, such as a Harry Potter improv class and a class that uses Minecraft to teach architecture history. Outschool currently has over 500,000 students, with families and teachers across more than 200 countries. COVID-19 drove this growth: Outschool’s enrollment, which had previously encompassed about 100,000 families mainly in the U.S. and Canada, saw a significant rise once the pandemic hit. I recently talked with Amir Nathoo, CEO and co-founder of…
We’re now entering the 12th month of the pandemic, making it nearly a year since COVID-19 first shut down schools across the land. Amid all the ensuing disruption, the question of testing has continued to raise its vexing head. Last spring, Uncle Sam waived the annual testing required by the Every Student Succeeds Act. This year, the gold-standard National Assessment of Educational Progress has already been pushed back to 2022 due to COVID-19.
Now, as we near the annual testing season, there’s a rising debate about whether spring 2021 testing would provide an essential window into how schools are faring…
Brian Greenberg is the CEO of the Silicon Schools Fund, which has helped launch or transform over 50 traditional district, charter, and private schools across Northern California in many of the highest-need communities. In the wake of the spring shutdowns due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Brian was concerned about how distance learning would affect students and how it could be improved to better support students and families. Silicon Schools assessed the remote learning provided by the schools it supports in the Bay Area and found what they deemed a more successful picture than the national landscape. …
Last week, freshman House Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene was assigned to serve on the House Education and Labor Committee. It’s an awful decision that’s looking worse by the day. Committee Chairman Bobby Scott, D-Va., quickly denounced the move for failing to “reflect [a] commitment to serving students, parents, and educators.” The House Democratic leadership has deemed Greene unfit and made clear that, if the Republicans don’t reverse the decision, they will move to boot her from her committee assignments via a floor vote.
Now, in my experience, there’ve been times that Democrats on the education committee have unfairly denounced Republicans…
On his first day as president, within moments of taking the oath of office, President Biden signed an executive order abolishing the “President’s Advisory 1776 Commission.”
Now, I was no great fan of the 1776 Commission. I quite like its stated purpose, to “enable a rising generation to understand the history and principles of the founding of the United States in 1776 and to strive to form a more perfect Union.” But the fact that the commission was created by former President Trump, a man who exhibited a staggering lack of regard for our democratic institutions, makes it sound like…
Ian Rowe is a resident fellow at AEI. He previously spent a decade at the helm of Public Prep charter schools in the South Bronx, worked as deputy director of postsecondary success at the Gates Foundation, won two Public Service Emmy Awards as a senior VP at MTV, served as a director for USA Freedom Corps’ volunteerism effort in the aftermath of 9/11, and was the first Black editor-in-chief of the Harbus (the Harvard Business School newspaper). Ian is the author of the upcoming book Agency, out later this year through Templeton Press. He is a co-founder of Vertex Partnership…
Frederick M. Hess
Direct Ed Policy Studies at AEI. Teach a bit at Rice, UPenn, Harvard. Author of books like Cage-Busting Leadership and Spinning Wheels. Pen Ed Week's RHSU blog.
