The best and worst of education reform in 2024

Every week in the Education Gadfly, we flag a handful of news items for our “Cheers and Jeers” section. Here are the ten most praiseworthy (or dunk-worthy) developments of 2024, presented in chronological order.

Best

• Facing record-setting chronic absenteeism, some districts are getting serious again about enforcing truancy laws. —Alec MacGillis, ProPublica (January)
• From San Francisco to Boston, parents have successfully led the charge against policies that prevent eighth graders from taking algebra. —The Wall Street Journal (February)
• More universities are re-adopting the ACT and SAT for admissions, which will improve educational equity. —David Deming, The Atlantic (March)
• Discredited reading programs are losing both prestige and money. —Emily Hanford, APM Reports (April)
• Louisiana passed an education savings account bill that prioritizes low-income kids, uses a sliding scale, and has a testing requirement. —Marc Porter Magee, 50CAN (May)
• After years deconstructing their discipline structures, many “no excuses” schools are rediscovering the need for strict behavioral codes. —RealClearInvestigations (June)
• More and more schools are banning phones and seeing the benefit. —Kate Cohen, Washington Post (June)
• Rochester, Minnesota, schools to reintroduce F’s after lenient grading policies encouraged many students to slack off. —Star Tribune (July)
• Virginia’s board of education approved a new system that separates accreditation and performance metrics in their accountability system, allowing for more accurate reporting. —Washington Post (July)
• The number of failing Houston Independent School District (HISD) schools has decreased by 66 percent since the state’s 2023 takeover. —K–12 Dive (August)  

Worst

• Young students entered kindergarten with lower reading and math scores than before the pandemic. —Wall Street Journal (January)
• 9,700 students across Illinois are reacting to the possible loss of their private school scholarships after legislators chose not to renew the Invest in Kids tax-credit program.—Chicago Sun-Times (February)
• Chicago’s board of education voted unanimously to remove police officers from school buildings, whether local communities want them or not. —Chicago Sun Times (February)
• Equity grading grows in popularity, a part of a larger trend of education consultants selling dubious theories to schools at a high price. —RealClearInvestigations (April)
• “Responding to post-pandemic norms, more states are lowering test standards.” —The 74 (September)
• Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson’s plan to address the city school district’s debt by taking out a $284 million loan fails to solve any of the district’s actual budget problems: high salaries, overinflated staffing, declining enrollment, rising pension costs, and the end of pandemic funding. —Chad Aldeman, The 74 (October)
• Four-year college enrollment declined this year for the first time since the pandemic, possibly due to larger numbers of students choosing instead to enroll in lower-quality community colleges as a result of FAFSA delays and glitches earlier this year. —The Washington Post (October)
• Massachusetts’s graduation exam loses in referendum. This will cause high school diplomas to lose value—and result in colleges and hiring managers having less confidence in graduates. —Jessica Grose, New York Times (October)
• The U.S. saw a decline in its ranking on a 2023 international math exam, reflecting schools’ struggle to recover from pandemic-related disruptions. —Wall Street Journal (December)
• A recent international assessment reveals that U.S. adults are falling behind their peers in other industrialized countries in critical skills like problem-solving, numeracy, and literacy, with the gap widening since the pandemic. —The Wall Street Journal (December)