CHEERS
“It’s often said that there are no silver bullet solutions in education, and after 34 years working in classrooms and schools, that certainly rings true. But I can also point to one clear starting point for our high-school students’ academic rise: the adoption and tireless implementation of knowledge-building reading and social studies curricula in all of our elementary and middle schools five years ago.” —Christie Olsen, The 74
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Jaden Edison shares updates on the rollout of Texas’s massive new ESA program: As of this week, about 96,000 Texas students received notice of their eligibility. Most of the vouchers will go to students with disabilities and their siblings, and to kids in families making less than $66,000 per year. —The Texas Tribune
JEERS
In a disturbing but must-read Wall Street Journal report, Shalini Ramachandran looks at how schools’ overreliance on Google, particularly YouTube, “has created a gateway for students to get sucked into an infinite scroll of videos on school-issued devices,” including algorithmically served, highly inappropriate content that has no connection to learning. —The Wall Street Journal
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“The federal government has been collecting and sharing basic facts about schools since 1870; the Digest of Education Statistics began in 1962. The Digest has marshaled a vast array of data to offer a comprehensive picture of the sprawling, decentralized American system of education,” writes Matt Barnum. After DOGE cut contracts last year, the Department of Education stopped updating key data tables that provide “easily accessible, relatively up-to-date information about the basic realities of American schools.”
“The role of the national government is to collect statistics on K-12 [education],” said Amber Northern, the Fordham Institute’s vice president for research who is on contract with the Education Department to suggest ways to improve its statistical work. “Absolutely the Digest is integral to that. And we need to get it restarted.”
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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Sharp analysis of the week’s biggest K–12 debates
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Curated commentary from across the ed-policy world
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Lively discussion—including reader reactions and pushback
