New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s offer to subsidize full-day pre-K programs came with a number of strings attached, and many religious organizations are refusing to play along. The city is tying funding to, among other things, regulations on after-meal prayer, displays of religious symbols, and references to religious texts. Many faith-based preschools would, of course, benefit from some extra cash. But perhaps mindful of a certain sacred text’s condemnation of money as the “root of all sorts of evil,” some are advising caution.
Driven by high rates of youth unemployment and the Internet, vocational education may finally be poised for a revolution. Two big changes are eliminating the biggest culprits of stagnation—low status and a lack of innovation. Nineteen-year-old auto mechanics, for example, can out-earn not only college-graduate peers but the median pay of all U.S. workers. And competency-based education MOOCs are allowing prospective laborers to learn skills at their convenience and in whatever order or manner works best for their careers.
Richard Kahlenberg and Halley Potter, in a New York Times op-ed over the weekend, argued that socioeconomic diversity should be one of the cornerstones on which charter schools are built. Unfortunately, they’re only half right. Sure, we ought to support and encourage socioeconomically diverse charter schools. But defining charter schools by one or two specific characteristics misses the point. Different families have different priorities—and the entire basis of school choice is to give families different choices. The version envisioned by Kahlenberg and Potter should be but one—but only one—among many.
RESEARCH ROUNDUP
A paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research shows solid improvement in academic outcomes for low-SES kids participating in "Pathways to Education,” a program that offers tutoring, mentoring, counseling, and other services to at-risk students entering high school. A second NBER paper reinforces previous research findings showing that cognitive gains from Head Start fade out once kids hit elementary school—but finds evidence that gains persist through first grade for some Spanish speakers. And an analysis of 2013 NAEP scores compiled by Attendance Works shows that eighth graders in Washington, D.C., who missed zero days of school in the month before testing scored higher than those who missed three or more days—fourteen points in reading; twelve in math. The differences were even bigger among fourth graders.
