CHEERS
Cheers (again!) to the Lone Star State, via Chad Aldeman (again!):
In 2023, the Texas Legislature passed its version of an automatic enrollment policy. Going forward, school districts would have to automatically enroll students who scored in the top 40 percent on the grade five state math test into advanced coursework in grade six, putting them on a pathway to complete Algebra I by eighth grade. The idea was simple: Too many capable students were being left out of advanced math pathways not because they couldn’t handle it, but because no one told them they could.
After two years, the latest STAAR results show double the number of students accelerating in math, with low-income students gaining access at the fastest rate. Plus:
When TEA analyzes math results by students’ enrolled grade level rather than the specific test they took, proficiency rates increased across every middle school grade in 2026.
JEERS
In The Hechinger Report, Kate Taylor reports on how Cambridge (MA) Public Schools placed all eighth graders in Algebra I—and how the majority of those students will have to repeat the course. Expanded access to advanced math is an important element in providing better opportunities to under-identified students, but it only works for students who are academically prepared to succeed. In other words: Not everyone.
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The Atlantic’s Kaitlyn Tiffany visits psychologist Peter Gray to learn about his work on the value of play, and what it means in a digital world. His views range from provocative (“Kids should be free to play without their parents’ supervision, Gray insists, even when they go online”) to outrageous. Gray, who sent his own son to a school with no formal coursework, blames Common Core for kids’ mental health struggles because a survey showed increasing stress between 2009 and 2013, before and after the standards’ adoption. What he didn’t know until Kaitlyn pointed it out was that the questions on the survey had changed, explaining the massive shifts in student responses. Plus, did he consider that the aftermath of the Great Recession—also happening back then—was awfully stressful? But whatever, #ThanksCommonCore.
Editor's note: This was first published on Mike Petrilli's Substack, SCHOOLED, a twice-weekly free Substack and email newsletter restarting the education-reform conversation.
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