The Education Gadfly Weekly

In some circles today, it seems that following a teacher’s directions has become passé and cussing out teachers, tearing up furniture, and hallway brawls are all the rage. Worse, it seems that that’s OK with many policymakers and politicians. This year, California’s Senate Bill 274, which prohibits schools from administering suspensions for “willful defiance,” goes into effect. Since 2019, policies to limit the use of suspensions have passed in seventeen states.

Meanwhile, individual stories abound of classroom violence, disorder, and mayhem. Several representative surveys have found that such anecdotes are representative, not outliers. Rates of student misbehavior—including verbal harassment and physical aggression toward both teachers and fellow students—remain elevated compared to pre-pandemic levels.

Whether or not the deconstruction of behavior codes caused a spike in such behavior remains unknown. Pandemic-era disruptions, broader societal disorder and crime rates, and social media are also plausible explanations.

Whatever the cause, the response by numerous activists, journalists, and policy types is to posit discipline reform as the proper solution for the uptick in misbehavior. For present purposes, we’ll define such reform as any policy that pushes schools away from punitive discipline. Stop punishing children. Talk to them, pursue “restorative justice,” or ignore their behavior. But never impose a consequence. In this article, I take up some of the most common arguments in favor of discipline reform and show why they’re wrong.

“Suspensions don’t work.”

This claim is not hard to find. Suspend a student once or a hundred times—the argument goes—and they’ll continue misbehaving. There’s simply no evidence that punitive discipline improves the behavior of a student who is prone to acting out. What’s more, suspensions depress the academic achievement of the disciplined student.

Perhaps counterintuitively, this one isn’t wrong with respect to youthful perpetrators themselves. I’ve worked at schools with strict discipline policies and students who talk out of turn, fight, or disrespect teachers continue to do so no matter how many times they miss a recess, talk to the principal, or sit through an in-school suspension. And reading the research, I cannot contest this fact: Suspensions, in particular, do not lead to permanent behavior change.

Yet focusing on the behavior of one student overlooks something important: the hundreds of other students in a school and the culture of that school. After all, a misbehaving peer is one of the single most detrimental factors to a child’s education, over and above other policies such as class size, teacher pay, school choice, or uniforms. The presence of misbehaving peers causes other students to act out and drives down student achievement. Given that high-poverty schools struggle the most with disciplinary challenges, keeping disruptive students in classrooms only widens the achievement gap.

Clear rules fairly enforced establish a system wherein every student can expect safety. They allow pupils to focus on learning without distraction, engage in discussion without a cacophony of voices, and play without a descent into chaos. One child’s desire to verbally harass his teachers or physically threaten his peers prevents every other child from safety and academic learning.

Current discipline debates in the American education system focus almost exclusively on the perpetrator. But we cannot forget the twenty-nine other children in the classroom who deserve an education.

Suspending or otherwise punishing a misbehaving child sends an important message to the rest of the students in a school: Such actions will not be tolerated because your learning is essential. Other students receive this message and act accordingly. When considering whether they should scurry to math class or slip into the corridor for a brawl, the threat of punishment incentivizes positive behavior for the majority.

Case studies, from Philadelphia to the entire state of Illinois tell the same story: When schools and districts abolish suspensions and other punitive discipline, academics plummet, disorder abounds, and the rate of extreme behavior such as drug use or violence increases. On one survey, when Illinois curbed the use of suspensions, only 14 percent of teachers reported a positive impact with 49 percent reporting that worsened both student behavior and school climate.

Consequences create healthy school environments. They safeguard the learning of the majority of students. They send a clear signal that improves the behavior of every other student. In other words, suspensions work.

“Schools are too strict.”

Last Spring, the Hechinger Report ran a long piece bemoaning the inclusion of “vague” disciplinary language such as “insubordination” or “disrespect.” This after the authors spoke to activists, district administrators, and academics, but not a single teacher.

Their journalistic bona fides aside, their argument boils down to the contention that much of the punitive discipline in American schools is unnecessary. Punish a kid for violence or drugs, sure, but are detentions really needed for a uniform infraction or talking out of turn?

Early in my education career, I held this view. Why pick a fight over hoodies or hats when kids are lighting up in the bathroom stalls? But the longer that I’ve taught in schools, the more I see that it’s imperative for teachers and administrators to hold the line on these smaller infractions—holding a student in the office until a parent can bring a pair of uniform-approved pants, for example—since doing so prevents larger transgressions.

It’s the theory of “broken windows policing” applied to schools. This theory, formulated in the late 1980s by social scientists George Kelling and James Q. Wilson, suggests that low-level disorder such as a broken store window or trash-covered streets communicates to everyone that this community is the kind of place where people throw rocks, litter streets, and more. There won’t be a consequence, so why not? And why not go on to theft, assault, maybe murder?

Conversely, focus on the little things and less criminality will emerge. Order in the small things dissuades would-be vandals and petty thieves. Moreover, if you apprehend the folks who jump turnstiles, for example, it may turn out that these are the very same people who are likely to snatch a purse or pick a fight.

In fact, student surveys find that most prefer stricter teachers. They may bristle when corrected, but they respect the order and learning that it facilitates in the long run. Furthermore, students appreciate when a teacher corrects their misbehaving peers. Walk into any rowdy classroom and the many students who just want to learn are often more frustrated than the teacher.

Indeed, the Hechinger Report piece entirely misunderstood the nature of school discipline. The infractions that they argue deserve no punishment—defiance, insubordination, direct refusal to comply with the orders of an adult—are really the root of the issue. Such behavior, however minor, undercuts a teacher’s authority. When administrators and teachers instead establish that rules must be followed, no matter how minor, fewer students will challenge injunctions against violence or drugs. Rarely are pupils suspended for “refusing to sit in their seat.” But imagine what it would mean if every student refused to do so.

“Punitive discipline is racist.”

If you’ve spent any time following education debates, you’ve likely read that exclusionary discipline maintains the school-to-prison pipeline. Students of different racial demographics are suspended, expelled, and given other punishments at different rates and so school discipline must therefore be racist. This reasoning underlies the Obama-era Dear Colleague Letter, which threatened schools with legal action if racial disparities turned up in their use of suspensions and expulsions.

While such disparities exist, these arguments ignore two basic realities: the behavioral differences that undergird these disparities and the unequal negative effects of discipline reform.

As to the first, AEI’s Max Eden has pointed out that Black students are substantially more likely than White students to report that they’ve been in fights at school, carried a gun, or skipped school. That’s not to suggest that White or Black students misbehave differently because of their race. But rather, as Mike Petrilli notes elsewhere, “kids growing up in poverty are more likely to experience all manner of challenges that make it more likely for them to misbehave,” such as growing up without a father, living in dangerous neighborhoods, or suffering abuse and neglect. When researchers control for class and underlying behavior, disparities in punishment largely (though not entirely) disappear.

Regarding the second reality, regardless of the cause, prohibiting schools from maintaining order tries to fix the problem at the wrong end of the pipeline.

When Philadelphia implemented its prohibition on the use of suspensions for low-level misbehavior, Black students actually spent more days out of school. They received fewer punishments but longer suspensions for more severe behaviors. When schools in Pittsburgh implemented an approach to discipline reform called restorative justice, the rate of classroom disruptions increased and academics fell for Black students in particular. Some studies find null effects on academics. Yet more have linked the use of suspensions to improved academics for non-suspended students.

It’s a particularly perverse approach to racial justice to try to close disparities in disciplinary measures by thrusting Black and Hispanic children into increasingly chaotic schools. It serves no student to be kept from a punishment only to attend classes that are full of vulgarity, threats of violence, and little learning.

“Alternatives to punitive discipline are more effective.”

Here’s the crux of the issue. No one argues that the current discipline structures in schools are perfect. But as with any call for reform, the burden of proof lies with those proposing change. Are their alternatives better? In this case, the two most popular discipline reforms are restorative justice and positive behavior intervention and supports (PBIS), neither of which has a strong grounding in research.

To date, two randomized-controlled trials exist that have investigated restorative justice. As previously mentioned, the first (Pittsburgh) found that schools that implemented restorative justice saw an uptick in classroom disruptions, a decline in math achievement, and no difference in arrest rates. The second (Maine) found no effects on either behavior or academics, but it was particularly difficult for teachers to implement. In other words, it placed a significant strain on teachers without materially improving outcomes.

Positive behavior intervention and supports, as the name implies, emphasize rewarding positive behavior instead of punishing negative behaviors. Students can earn tickets or points, which they can use to purchase various rewards or trinkets. The research in support of PBIS is stronger than that for restorative justice, though so far it focuses only on elementary school. And even there, it must always be a supplement to and not a replacement of standard disciplinary structures.

In my own teaching and administrating, I use elements of both restorative justice and PBIS. I praise and reward students who act as they’re expected. Any time I must dole out a punishment, I make sure I speak with the student and visit them during their detention or in-school suspension. But just as gutters and insulation will only keep the elements out when paired with the rigid structure of walls and roofs, restorative justice and PBIS will do little to improve behavior without traditional discipline.

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We cannot “solve” student misbehavior. As Kant famously said, “out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made.” When applied to schools, this aphorism means that we cannot create a utopian system in which every child feels so fulfilled, accepted, and intrinsically motivated that they’ll never talk out of turn, throw a wadded paper ball, or talk back to their teacher. We will always need discipline in schools.

However, if we take a more expansive definition of discipline reform, there are certainly steps that we can take to improve upon the status quo.

For example, a recent meta-analysis examined the effects of “structure” in the classroom and concluded that “classroom management” has a strong relationship with student achievement (along with countless other factors). It’s a necessary condition for student success. Notably, the study found that proactive steps, such as establishing clear routines, were more important than imposing consequences or enforcement. Consequences are necessary but ineffective without other behavioral instruction.

Unfortunately, our teacher preparation programs spend more time reading critical theorists and debating policy than actually training teachers in these basic and essential classroom management strategies.

Other possibilities for worthwhile discipline reform could include experimentation with punishments other than suspensions, more thoughtful in-school suspension protocols, short-term “alternative placements” instead of outright expulsions, or the use of PBIS and follow-up conversations as supplements to consequences rather than replacements for them.

Such “discipline reform” could very well result in more orderly, safer, and more productive schools. But when “discipline reform” means a blanket reduction on the use of consequences, it is misguided at best and detrimental to schooling at worst.

A few years ago, I taught a high school seminar class in civics and democracy at a New York charter school. My goal for the course was for students to see that the U.S. Constitution isn’t an ancient, dusty document, but an enduring set of principles, deeply woven into their lives and the headlines they read every day. The classroom was transformed into a space where students debated contemporary issues in the news, including college speech codes, stop-and-frisk policing, same-sex marriage, and why their education was paid for by taxpayers at no cost to them or their families.

If I was teaching that class today, I’d be inclined to launch a unit on “Banned Books Week,” an annual event celebrating the freedom to read and highlighting the harms of censorship. Launched in 1982 by the American Library Association and other organizations in response to a surge in book challenges, it raises awareness about attempts to restrict access to books in libraries and schools, usually for one week in late September or early October.

I’ll confess that I like thumbing my nose at authority as much as anyone and take some measure of satisfaction in cultivating in students an appetite for independence and even a little healthy defiance. But I can’t resist a teachable moment: If books are truly banned, how is it that they’re right there on display in public? Walk into any bookstore or library during “Banned Book Week” and you’ll likely see a table prominently displaying these illicit wares. If those books have been banned, why don’t booksellers and librarians fear getting clamped in irons and hauled off to jail?

As my AEI colleague Max Eden and Jay Greene of the Heritage Foundation have pointed out, PEN America, whose data are the most common source of “book ban” hand-wringing, has a generous definition of the term. “If a book has been temporarily removed from shelves for review and then deemed acceptable and put back, it has been ‘banned,’” wrote Eden and Greene in Education Week. “If a book is moved from a school library to a guidance counselor’s office, it has been ‘banned.’ If parent permission is required, it has been ‘banned.’ If a book is moved from one section of a school library to a section for older students, it has been ‘banned.’”

All of this is a recipe for a great civics lesson. So let librarians and booksellers have Banned Books Week. I propose that civics and history teachers deepen student thinking and engagement with a parallel “First Amendment Week.” Learning objectives would include understanding the Constitutional protection of free speech and how that squares with book bans and other forms of expression, and analyzing and evaluating arguments for and against restricting certain books in schools.

There’s no end to the rich and fruitful discussions for teachers to lead: Were there any books or types of content you were not allowed to read or consume when you were younger? Do you think those restrictions were fair or arbitrary? Does removing a book from a school library or requiring parental permission qualify as banning? Should parents have a say in what books are available in schools? Why or why not? Can age-appropriate guidelines for reading ever be compatible with freedom of speech? The most engaging civics lessons involve topics and settings that students are most familiar with, thus there is civic education gold to be mined in asking how schools should decide what is appropriate for different age groups. What are some reasons a school or library might restrict access to a book? Are any of these reasons justifiable?

They can also analyze landmark Supreme Court cases like Tinker v. Des Moines and Island Trees School District v. Pico, using these examples to better understand the role of free speech in schools and the limits of their own free speech rights in school. First Amendment Week might culminate with a structured debate in which students draw on their discussions and readings to argue whether any books should be restricted in schools.

Throughout the week, teachers can guide students to think critically about the nature of censorship, the balance between protecting young readers and safeguarding free expression, and the responsibilities of schools in promoting a diverse range of ideas. By considering questions such as “Should books ever be restricted?” and “How do we balance individual rights with community standards?” students should be encouraged to form well-reasoned opinions, appreciate the complexities of free speech, and recognize the First Amendment’s relevance in their own lives.

Unlike the ostensible celebration of freedom and (frankly) the booksellers’ marketing opportunity associated with promoting “banned” books, First Amendment Week would invite students to think actively, critically, and deeply. Banned Books Week already gets people talking about censorship, but the problem is that the conversations can often be overly simplistic or observably misleading. Civics teachers have an opportunity to raise the bar and develop a more nuanced understanding of what “book banning” really means—and what it doesn’t.

A 6,000 student Midwestern district recently adopted a budget that would result—if all goes according to plan—in a $13.2 million deficit, or more than $2,000 per student. This follows $10 million shortfalls in each of the previous two years. Cash is dwindling. The district’s own financial consultant told its board that the “status quo will lead the district into either financial or academic bankruptcy.” Insolvency, he warned, would result in a state takeover. The district has lost 20 percent of its enrollment since 2018.

Sounds like an economically depressed community that can’t catch a break. Perhaps good jobs have moved away, leading to outmigration and a shrinking tax base. Familiar story.

Nope. This is Evanston, Illinois, an iconic, leafy suburb on the shores of Lake Michigan. Home to Northwestern University and a local population of almost 80,000 that has nudged up—not down - in recent decades. Almost 70 percent of local adults have a college degree. (The national average for college degrees is 34 percent. You can find the full list of census comparison stats for Evanston here.) It regularly appears on lists of the top places to live in the U.S.

Does this community look downtrodden?

What about funding? By any measure, Evanston’s schools are well-resourced. According to the adequacy formula adopted by Illinois, it has 117 percent of the fiscal capacity required to educate its students properly. Chicago, which borders Evanston to the south, has just 75 percent.

And yet, Evanston’s schools are nearly broke. Something feels off, right?

It’s not an isolated case. In college towns and tony suburbs, we’re seeing bad-news headlines typically associated with high-poverty urban districts.

• Ann Arbor (MI) is cutting foreign language, art, and music programs to close a $25 million budget gap. At the same time, 38 percent of students are chronically absent, up from 13 percent prior to the pandemic.


• Princeton (NJ) parted ways with its superintendent after just two stormy years on the job, paying her almost $250,000 in severance.


• A number of prestigious districts around Boston—including Cambridge, Brookline, and Newton—have lost enrollment to private schools in recent years. Adding insult to injury, Newton also endured a divisive eleven-day teacher strike.


• Montclair (NJ) has thirteen ongoing federal civil rights investigations on issues such as excessive use of student seclusion and restraint.


• Loudoun County (VA) has developed a “reputation problem” after its mishandling of student sexual assaults led to its superintendent being fired and criminally charged.


• Berkeley (CA) closed a middle school for two years after discovering widespread dry rot that had been long undetected. It’s also facing a federal anti-Semitism investigation.


• Journalists Laura Meckler and Mike Hixenbaugh have published compelling book-length accounts of battles over school integration and racial tension in Shaker Heights (OH) and Southlake (TX), respectively.

The list goes on. These are communities known for highly educated citizens, high taxes, and high student achievement. People move to these places for the schools. For the robust programming, the great teaching, the competent administration, the safe hallways.

Why are so many of them in turmoil?

Possible drivers

I spent some time talking to folks, trying to get a better understanding of this (possible) trend.

Are we seeing a post-Covid parent rebellion? According to this theory, parents were disappointed by the quality of instruction they saw during Zoom school and incensed by the lack of urgency to re-open buildings. Some listened to Emily Hanford’s “Sold a Story” series about deficits in literacy instruction that were ubiquitous in affluent communities. They no longer trust their school systems in the same way—nor do they feel acute social pressure to keep their children in public schools.

Perhaps demographic changes are at play. Some say that more privileged districts are only now confronting challenges that have long been common in urban communities. The suburbs are getting more diverse. Addressing a wider array of student needs—and focusing on equity—can increase administrative complexity and spark backlash from affluent families who are accustomed to being the district’s top priority. A variant on this argument is that districts have become excessively concerned with social justice, and some families are bristling because they want a bread-and-butter focus on academics and achievement.

It is possible that district governance is lacking. Some boards have increased spending—especially to hire more staff—on the assumption that the public would be willing to invest more (i.e., pay higher taxes) to maintain those staffing levels. Maybe they went too far. Evanston, for instance, decided to build a new school whose construction projections have ballooned wildly over budget. Now, with the loss of so much enrollment, the district is likely to close buildings and lay off staff.

I don’t know enough about the ground-level dynamics in each of these communities to say which arguments are valid. There are probably different factors from one district to another. The symptoms themselves are quite varied. However, there is a pattern of friction that feels new.

The prevailing education storyline for decades has centered on urban districts. They had crusading superintendents, cheating scandals, state sanctions, school closures, and labor battles. The suburbs had National Merit Scholars. Or so it seemed in the popular imagination.[1] Now, some of the most interesting debates in education—and some of the thorniest conflicts—are happening in communities that once floated above the fray.

Why does it matter?

There’s detectible schadenfreude among advocates for urban schools when privileged districts struggle. They are tired of being compared unfavorably to peers they see as having a much lighter lift.

I submit that we should pay close attention to the new suburban disruptions for a different reason. They may preview the future of education policy, posing critical questions such as:

• How should we define equity in public schools? Once upon a time, equity generally meant closing gaps related to test-based achievement and graduation rates. More recently, increased attention has been paid to differences in access to advanced coursework, severity of school discipline, availability of holistic supports, inclusiveness of curricula, and educator diversity. Districts—some of them in the suburbs—have adopted a number of new academic strategies to pursue this broader vision of equity. Examples would include limiting early access to algebra, de-tracking high school courses, and eliminating F grades. Meanwhile, progress against the old equity measures has stalled. Want an example? Evanston has just 11.7 percent of its Black students scoring proficient on state math tests—a discouraging result that is only marginally better than the figure for Chicago, 7.8 percent, even though Chicago has far fewer resources relative to student need. Neither well-funded nor under-funded schools are succeeding on core academic metrics the way they were ten years ago.


• What is the future of accountability and oversight? Federal laws, including NCLB, left affluent districts almost entirely alone for decades. They were held up as exemplars, not problems. From time to time, prestigious districts would fail to make sufficient progress among key subgroups and end up on a state list, but it rarely went further. Meanwhile, struggling schools in low-income communities were frequently placed into turnaround status, forced to change leadership and sometimes handed to outside operators. Going forward, it will get more difficult for public officials to remain hands-off when suburban districts post poor results in areas like fiscal management, student attendance, and safety—on top of achievement. A possible side effect could be too little attention for city districts, which still have their own challenges.


• How much funding is sufficient? As more residents of prestigious suburbs choose private schools for their children, those communities may experience erosion of the local coalitions that defend robust public education—and the high taxes it requires. District leaders must build confidence among homeowners that resources are being invested properly. Otherwise, they can expect stiffer opposition to future referenda to raise more revenue. Voters may demand more fiscal discipline and operational efficiency in exchange for dollars. Much the same as happened with urban districts in the past. Evanston’s taxpayers want more than Chicago-level achievement for historically marginalized students.


• What choices should be provided to families? Educational savings accounts (ESAs) have quickly gained prominence, particularly in red states. We can all agree they have little chance of being adopted anytime soon in blue states like New Jersey, New York, Illinois, or Massachusetts. However, keep an eye on this issue. As Mike Goldstein is showing on his podcast series, there’s a new breed of homeschooling parent taking advantage of ESAs. They are not necessarily religious or conservative. They want a personalized, curated educational experience for their children—and money from an ESA makes it affordable. Mike’s first episode focuses on a parent who grows food in her own garden and teaches kids to cook with it. There are many well-heeled, professional families who could see appeal in that type of arrangement if their local district is mismanaged to the point of bankruptcy.

Welcome to the brave new world. If suburban districts are struggling, efforts to improve them won’t be far behind. And it’s anyone’s guess what’s behind that curtain.

Editor’s note: This was first published on the author’s Substack, The Education Daly.

We tend to think of schools as simply the place where kids go to learn, but they aren’t only about education. They provide many essential services to students and families, including nutrition, healthcare—and even if simply as a byproduct of mandatory attendance for educational purposes, giving parents a place to send their children while they’re at work. According to a recent working paper by three Indiana University researchers, the latter service is an important one for parents, whose mental health outcomes may actually depend on having access to schools as a source of childcare.

The researchers leveraged pandemic-era school closures to determine their effect on parental mental health. They measured school closures using data from SafeGraph, which uses cellphone mobility patterns to measure visits to various locations—including schools. They restricted the data to include only daily visits to schools between September 2017 and December 2021, and used these data to calculate a monthly school mobility measure that reflected how severe the pandemic’s disruption was to a given school. The SafeGraph sample covered nearly 87 percent of the 98,469 public schools identified by NCES in 2019–20.

To quantify parental mental health, the researchers focused on two (albeit, questionable) measures: prescription antidepressant use and alcohol purchases. Data on the former came from Optum’s Clinformatics Data Mart Database, which contains retail pharmacy claims data for 20 percent of the commercially insured U.S. population. Monthly alcohol purchase data was drawn from the Nielsen Retail Scanner Data, which covers over 50 percent of total U.S. grocery and drug store sales.

For an initial descriptive analysis, the researchers used their monthly school mobility measure to divide the zip codes of sample schools into quartiles based on the severity of their school closures, where Quartile 1 represented zip codes with the lowest level of closures and Quartile 4 represented those with the highest.

They found, first, that maternal antidepressant prescriptions increases were larger in zip codes where school closures were more severe; prescriptions increased by about 4.5 percent in zip codes that fell into Quartiles 3 or 4, indicating higher levels of closures, while the increases for first- and second-quartile zip codes were below 1 percent.

In subsequent regression analyses that controlled for factors such as unemployment rates and Covid-related deaths, the researchers found their school mobility measure to be associated with statistically significant increases in both maternal prescription antidepressant use and county-wide alcohol purchases during school closures, as compared to pre-pandemic levels. As might be expected, the largest increases occurred at the start of the pandemic (between March and August of 2020), when nearly all schools were closed, with new maternal prescription antidepressant use rising by 1.5 percent and alcohol purchases by 2 percent for the full sample.

Antidepressant use did not change among mothers who had a prior history of mental health conditions and prescription antidepressant usage. In addition, a model that separated schools by grade level showed that elementary school closures were significantly associated with increases in alcohol purchases, while middle and high school closures had no statistically significant link, suggesting that the mental health of parents with younger children was most strongly impacted by school closures. This is, of course, assuming the soundness of the outcome measures, which are somewhat questionable.

The researchers also ran “placebo tests” in an attempt to determine whether the increase in alcohol purchases truly indicated a form of “self-medication” or if it had another explanation, such as an increase in the demand for all household products during the pandemic. Estimating the demand for feminine hygiene products and baby care products, they found no evidence to suggest that demand increased specifically during school closure periods. Thus, the researchers concluded that the increase in alcohol purchases did indeed indicate increased “self-medication” by parents during pandemic-related school closures, as hypothesized.

While these findings may provide valuable insights into the role that school systems play in maintaining parental mental health, the study’s results should be interpreted with some caution. The pandemic caused mental and emotional stress for many people, regardless of whether they had children impacted by school closures. In addition, the measures that the researchers used to reflect parental mental health were somewhat flawed. While alcohol purchases may indicate self-medication in some cases, this cannot be confirmed without further information on the motivations of parents. Alcohol purchases likely spiked for a variety of reasons during the pandemic, including the fact that many adults had more time at home and fewer obligations during pandemic-related shutdowns. This measure is also limiting in some ways. For example, for parents who do not drink, alcohol purchases would not have increased during the study period—but this does not mean that these parents did not experience mental health-related challenges.

Nonetheless, the study does provide support for the idea that public schools play a crucial role in maintaining parental mental health by acting as a form of childcare, and may also have some interesting implications in the realm of school choice. In the wake of the pandemic, virtual schooling, homeschooling, and other school choice alternatives that keep children at home have grown in popularity, leading many to believe that the future of education may be characterized by much high levels of participation in such alternatives. However, the findings outlined here suggest that at-home alternatives to schooling may instead remain relatively niche because public schools (and, presumably, any of their in-person alternatives) provide much more than just education to students. They are essential in promoting the health and well-being of students, families, and communities.

SOURCE: Sumedha Gupta, Dario Salcedo, and Kosali I. Simon, “School Closures and Parental Mental Health,” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper (May 2024).

On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Devon Nir, a research assistant at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, joins Mike and David to discuss the complexities of ensuring accountability for education savings accounts. Then, on the Research Minute, Amber examines a study exploring the financial returns of various non-degree credentials and degree programs.

Recommended content:

• “The ‘à la carte education’ accountability conundrum”—Michael J. Petrilli and Devon Nir
• “Finding the sweet spot on accountability”—Dale Chu
• " When Only Some Kids Can Afford Summer Camp — Why We Must Close the ‘Enrichment Gap’” —Michael J. Petrilli
• Jason Jabbari, Yung Chun, Xueying Mei, Stephen Roll, More Money for Less Time? Examining the Relative and Heterogenous Financial Returns to Non-Degree Credentials and Degree Programs, Annenberg Institute at Brown University (2024)

Feedback Welcome: Have ideas for improving our podcast? Send them to Stephanie Distler at [email protected].

Cheers

• We need a supply-side strategy for career and technical education. —David Deming, The Atlantic
• Both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump want to expand access to apprenticeships and other alternatives to higher education. —USA Today
• “In the age of artificial intelligence and cell phones, cheating in high schools is rampant.” —Daniel Buck, Education Next

Jeers

• The Chicago Board of Education passed a resolution saying that it will not close schools until 2027. —Chalkbeat Chicago
• According to more than two dozen professors, many students are arriving at college—even highly selective, elite universities—unprepared to read full books. —Rose Horowitch, The Atlantic

• An “opportunity economy” would give every person the chance to achieve their potential—and there are three keys to creating one: promoting thriving childhood environments, focusing on community-level change, and building social capital. —Raj Chetty, The New York Times
• Small-scale research suggested that tutoring could have huge benefits for students recovering from pandemic learning loss, but a new study casts doubt on whether tutoring initiatives are equally beneficial on a larger scale. —The 74