I occasionally take up reader queries. If you’d like to send one along, just send it to me, care of Caitlyn Aversman, at caitlyn.aversman@aei.org. Dear Rick, In following this winter’s fight over AP African American Studies, I’ve grown more and more frustrated. It seems like Republican politicians are either flat-out…

This winter, I’ve talked with a couple dozen reporters on the topic of K-12’s “culture wars.” In these conversations, they often make clear that they regard these fights as wholly unusual — even unprecedented. For better or worse, I think it’s more accurate to say that these clashes represent something…

Daniel Buck is a middle school English teacher in Wisconsin who’s recently published his first book, What Is Wrong With Our Schools: The Ideology Impoverishing Education in America and How We Can Do Better for Our Students (John Catt Educational, 2022). When he’s not working on lesson plans, Buck is…

Last month, we ran the 2023 RHSU Edu-Scholar Public Influence Rankings. The exercise involves identifying 200 of the nation’s most influential education scholars and provides a useful chance to take their temperature on some big questions relating to research, practice, and policy. In that spirit, we reached out to the…

Pedro Noguera, the dean of the University of Southern California’s Rossier School of Education, and I have a podcast (Common Ground: Conversations on Schooling) in which we dig into our disagreements and seek to identify common ground on some of education’s thorniest questions. I thought readers might be interested in…

Great Hearts Academy launched, in 2001, with 130 students. Today, it operates 33 classical K-12 schools serving more than 25,000 students in Arizona and Texas. At a time when there’s a lot of interest in classic liberal arts school models, and with Great Hearts seeking to expand its offerings via…

Dear readers, I’m delighted to introduce an occasional new feature, “Straight Talk with Rick and Jal,” which I’ll be penning with my friend, Harvard University’s inimitable Jal Mehta (author of books like The Allure of Order and In Search of Deeper Learning). The idea was sparked by our shared sense…

New Schools for Baton Rouge was started back in 2012 to launch and support new schools in Louisiana’s capital. To date, the organization has opened 21 schools, and their enrollment comprises 25% of all public school enrollment in Baton Rouge. Ken Campbell took over as CEO last year, after a…

When you’ve been around as long as I have, one gets all manner of intriguing questions. While I usually respond to such queries in private, some seem likely to be of broader interest. So, in “Ask Rick,” I occasionally take up reader queries. If you’d like to send one along…