The Education Gadfly Weekly

Political scientist Charles Murray paints a stark picture of America in 2050: a small but thriving “cognitive elite”—married, working, earning, raising children, pursuing fulfilling careers—alongside a large working class and an underclass languishing on the margins, with men out of work, single-parent households multiplying, and countless people retreating into immersive virtual worlds to escape lives lacking opportunity and meaning. He shared this vision in a recent interview with former Indiana governor Mitch Daniels on The Future of Liberty podcast. If Murray’s dystopia comes to pass, we should look no further than what’s happening today in education to see how the seeds of inequality are already being sown.

Murray’s thesis, first laid out more than a decade ago in Coming Apart, is that American society is splitting into two cultures. On one side stands a well-educated, economically secure elite, anchored by stable marriages, robust family life, and active civic institutions. On the other side is an increasingly marginalized population, marked by economic precarity, fractured households, and eroding community networks. The gap between these groups is not merely economic but cultural, reinforcing patterns of advantage and despair. If his 2050 vision sounds familiar, it is because we can already see its outlines today.

Even before AI became ubiquitous, the dystopian retreat Murray describes was already unfolding in classrooms. Like characters in a digital world out of Ready Player One, many students—especially those on the margins—find it easier to escape into screens than to engage with challenging schoolwork. Cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham notes that digital technologies make sustained attention feel unrewarding, not because students lack the capacity to focus, but because the immediate rewards of online content outshine traditional classroom tasks. This dynamic points to a deeper problem: Schools rarely create learning environments that consistently engage students in meaningful, effortful thinking. Coupled with a workforce where nearly every teacher is considered above average, along with weak accountability and incentives that reward mediocrity, too many students move through school without mastering foundational skills—leaving them unprepared for the academic and civic challenges that will define the decades ahead.

The consequences are evident in national assessment data. The latest 12th-grade NAEP results were sobering but not surprising. Overall achievement has plummeted, and students at the bottom are falling fastest. Reading and math scores show persistent gaps, with many students failing to reach basic-level literacy even as high-performing peers tread water. This “floor problem” echoes the kind of bifurcation Murray described. Without effective intervention, the most vulnerable students risk lagging further. If schools are already waving the white flag on smartphones, what chance do they have of ensuring the next generation is prepared academically, economically, and civically?

Despite these troubling trends, parents often see things differently. Surveys consistently show that most parents rate their child’s school positively, even when objective measures suggest serious problems. Tellingly, 90 percent of American parents believe their child is at grade level, when an accurate assessment suggests only about a third actually are. This paradox of perception and reality creates a kind of complacency: When parents believe schools are performing well, there is less pressure for systemic change. At the same time, mounting frustration with K–12 performance suggests that patience may be wearing thin.

Beyond test scores and academic performance, we are also seeing the implications of a “post-literate” society. Declining habits of sustained reading and critical thinking are reshaping the way people process information, participate civically, and engage culturally. Americans are increasingly unable to distinguish fact from opinion, struggle to evaluate claims critically, and show declining participation in civic life. States have been working in earnest to counter these societal shifts by embracing the science of reading in the early grades, but the effort feels Sisyphean. Along with NAEP, reading rates among both children and adults continue to drop, while online consumption—particularly short-form video—continues to explode, with no end in sight.

Looking ahead, two broad scenarios emerge. In one, schools turn the corner. Through coordinated policy changes and renewed societal commitment, schools ensure every student attains mastery in reading, writing, and mathematics. In this future, students from all walks of life have a real chance at upward mobility, while digital experiences enrich rather than replace real-world learning. In the other scenario, persistent problems—uneven teaching, lax accountability, and disengaged students—remain unchecked. Literacy erodes and technology is deployed as an ersatz form of education. In this world, civic life frays as too many Americans lack the skills to participate fully in the economy or democracy.

Yet technological fluency and solid academics are necessary but, by themselves, insufficient. As recent events, including the shocking assassination of Charlie Kirk, remind us, civil society is fragile. And human character—self-restraint, empathy, humility, honesty, and civic responsibility—remains vital, and its cultivation extends across families, schools, and communities. Schools have historically shaped values through relationships, norms, and shared experiences, but this work is easily overshadowed by competing priorities. AI and digital worlds may feel uncannily real, but they cannot instill judgment, ethics, or the ability to navigate conflict peacefully. Without deliberate attention to character formation and development, schools will continue to graduate students unprepared for the moral, social, and intellectual demands of adulthood.

Whether schools will be better or worse in 2050 depends on choices made today. The data are clear: Gaps in achievement, literacy, and opportunity persist. This challenge is compounded by the reality that education rarely commands center stage politically. Only 2 percent of Americans cite it as the nation’s most pressing issue. While the broad policy goals—great teachers and principals, robust accountability, and strong instructional materials—remain familiar, reformers may need to adapt strategies for a rapidly evolving environment. AI, digital immersion, and shifting social norms create pressures that did not exist a generation ago. The stakes are high. Without urgent and thoughtful action, America’s future may be written not in innovation and opportunity, but in widening divides and squandered potential.

I’m no fan of many so-called “equitable” grading reforms. Having seen firsthand their impact on my students and read the relevant research, I just can’t get behind policies like “no zeros,” no late penalties, or unlimited retakes. A new study by my colleagues David Griffith and Adam Tyner confirms that many educators share my concerns. Over three-quarters of the teachers they surveyed rated “no zeros,” for example, as either “harmful” or “very harmful” to academic engagement.

Yet I take no issue with standards-based grading, a system popular among grading reformers. In fact, at one high school where I taught, I witnessed firsthand how standards-based grading can increase transparency, motivate students, and support academic rigor—when done right. And in my experience, doing it right depends on school-level adaptations of grading practices, and not uniform districtwide mandates.

For the uninitiated: In “standards-based grading,” students earn grades based on course-specific “standards” for content knowledge and skill proficiency. (These standards are not necessarily linked to statewide learning standards.) Instead of accumulating points across a certain number of assignments, as is “traditional,” students demonstrate competency within a certain number of standards. The number of assignments is relevant only insofar as students have sufficient opportunity to prove their knowledge and skills. Students don’t receive grade penalties for anything that’s not part of the standards (e.g., handwriting quality), and revisions are encouraged to support additional learning.

How standards-based grading worked in my setting

At the standards-based grading school where I worked, every course was centered on ten learning standards. My English classes had standards such as using evidence to support an argument, analyzing literary devices, and organizing a paragraph. A global history class might reinforce interdisciplinary skills by including some overlapping standards, like using evidence to support an argument. Other history standards focused on course content, such as key events (e.g., the Haitian Revolution) or concepts (e.g., imperialism). An algebra class would have standards like writing algebraic expressions and graphing linear equations.

Every assignment was aligned with one or more standards. For each standard, clear criteria informed whether a student would earn a score of “incomplete,” “not meeting standards,” “meeting standards,” or rarely, “exceeding standards.” Say I tasked students with writing a paragraph about symbolism in August Wilson’s Fences, with grades to be based on two standards: their analysis of the literary device and the organization of the paragraph. A student might earn different grades for each standard if, for instance, her paragraph was well-organized but missed the fact that Troy was building more fences than just the literal one around his yard.

Per schoolwide policy, students’ performance on each standard determined their final grades. No one could pass a course without meeting expectations on at least three tasks for each of seven standards. The final grade was therefore not based on the number of assignments completed, yet without completing a certain number of assignments, students could not adequately demonstrate that they had met standards.

Why standards-based grading worked in my setting

Setting the bar high: A common criticism of standards-based grading is that it’s not rigorous. Like any grading system, however, that depends entirely on where the school sets the bar. After all, the traditional 0–100 system can also fail to challenge students and lead to grade inflation, if assessments are too easy. At my school, because our criteria for “meeting expectations” were appropriately rigorous, students were challenged to try to meet that threshold.

Students couldn’t earn any points without a genuine attempt, and they had to make a reasonably high number of genuine attempts in order to pass. In other words, they weren’t being de facto rewarded for submitting nothing, as is the case with the “50 percent rule.”

Grading participation: One place where we deviated significantly from the “equity grading” party line involved class participation. Many reformers contend that grades for participation are inherently problematic.

It’s possible for schools to deploy participation grades in troubling ways. Grading for Equity author Joe Feldman has highlighted troubling practices like awarding points for not using the bathroom during class, bringing in classroom supplies, and over-rewarding naturally talkative students. No, schools shouldn’t do any of the above—and I never worked at one that did, with traditional grades or otherwise.

Yet discussion and collaboration are crucial skills to develop in school-aged children, for college, career, civic participation, and beyond. As a painfully shy kid myself, I got outside my comfort zone and tried to raise my hand at least once if I knew my contributions were going to be graded—and today I’m grateful. In an era when it’s so easy to hide behind screens, it’s more urgent than ever to foster in-person communication skills.

At the school where I worked, we prioritized students’ engagement with one another via structured lessons and clear expectations. When we had a graded class discussion, for instance, we established clear participation goals. To earn full credit, students might need to cite relevant evidence in at least one response and ask at least one substantive question of a peer. We also structured the lesson to support all students, giving them time to jot down notes beforehand, and sometimes designating one or two students to ensure that everyone would have the opportunity to speak (e.g., if Jayden hadn’t spoken yet, the designated student might ask, “Hey Jayden, did you want to add on?”).

In other words, grading participation doesn’t have to be arbitrary, reward certain personality types, or disproportionately benefit the kids with outside-of-school advantages. If done thoughtfully—as all grading should be done—it can help students build crucial skills and classroom community.

Conversely, if participation is not graded, what incentive do quiet kids have to push themselves to speak up? What incentive do chatty kids have to give someone else a turn? What incentive do any kids have to make sure they know the material well enough to discuss it? Internal motivation is not going to drive all kids all the time, and schools have an obligation to teach young people how to speak to one another.

Balancing guardrails with flexibility for students: Many “equity” grading reformers argue that teachers should accept late work and allow retakes without grade penalty. They reason that grades should reflect knowledge, not behavior, and that late work is no less a reflection of a student’s knowledge than timely work. My school supported some flexibility but within clear bounds.

We were an alternative school on a tight schedule: four sets of two-week “benchmark” periods within a trimester. Teachers had substantial discretion within this framework, but most of us required a certain number of assignments to be submitted before a student took the culminating “benchmark” assessment at the end of the two-week period, and students had to attempt either three or all four benchmarks to pass the course. As a result, although there were few formal deadlines and no point-based late penalties, students couldn’t let the work pile up or attempt endless retakes.

Balancing schoolwide—not districtwide—commitment with teacher discretion: Standards-based grading was baked into school culture and expectations. We had a system that worked well for us: a small, alternative, traditional public school with low teacher turnover.

None of this was mandated at the district level. If teachers and students don’t buy into standards-based grading, it’s not going to work. A school with longstanding teacher retention challenges may not be the best candidate either, since it’s hard to maintain buy-in when there’s little institutional familiarity or expertise. I’m also not convinced it would work at a much larger school; could teachers realistically keep up with, for example, a potential mass influx of slightly-late submissions every two weeks from 150 students? To argue that districtwide conformity is necessary for equity is to misapprehend the reality that every school is unique in its student population and school community.

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Despite Feldman’s claims to the contrary, grading reforms don’t all have to come together as a package deal. I saw standards-based grading work with participation grades included and without lengthy submission windows. At a recent webinar co-hosted by Fordham and TNTP, a Bronx school administrator shared that his school uses “no zeros” without any other “equity” grading practices, and that policy works well for his students. That’s great! Schools shouldn’t be pressured, by either the district or outside advocates, to accept or reject every “equity” grading policy under the sun. Instead, they should be encouraged to take what they feel will work best for their students and enact those policies in their unique context. Giving students what they need, rather than all the same thing—that’s true equity.

My last column on teacher standards focused on the how. How should we deliver professional development? How long? Which teachers? Who leads? They were recommendations for structural changes about the medium of delivery.

But there’s a more fundamental and important question: What is a quality teacher? We can tinker with the delivery of PD, but if the content itself advances poor conceptions of education or ineffective instructional practices, what’s the point? Who cares about the means if the end in question is bunk?

What a school, district, or state defines as a quality teacher can be found in teacher evaluation rubrics. They are the policy that defines quality instruction and signals to all personnel in the system what teachers ought to be doing.

Rubrics for teacher evaluation became a hot topic during the early aughts. Race to the Top carrots and No Child Left Behind federal waivers incentivized states to adopt intensive teacher evaluation systems. Unfortunately, too often, these rubrics and evaluation incentivize all the wrong things.

Of all the frameworks that gained popularity, perhaps none are more famous (or infamous) than the Danielson Framework. New York uses it. My own state of Wisconsin uses it. There are no data that I can find proving that it’s the most popular one, but I’d bet the naming rights to my third child that it is. On this framework, what kind of instruction earns top marks?

Skim through it, and a clear vision of the ideal teacher stands out. In a “distinguished” teacher’s classroom, students “critique and write” their own curricular materials. They design “their own rubrics.” Teachers invite students to teach each other the content. Rooms are organized to facilitate “centers and groups.” Student direction, not teacher-lead instruction, is the gold standard towards which we are supposed to strive.

Collectively, “distinguished” teachers are those who shun explicit instruction to instead facilitate activities, run centers, and otherwise build their classroom on a constructivist understanding of human knowledge and learning. As a corollary, “unsatisfactory” teachers are thus those who rely on anachronistic lectures, rote practice, or (God save us) desks in rows. The horror, the horror!

I’ll pause here because I can already sense readers typing me an email in protest. Surely, Daniel, you don’t mean to imply that direct instruction is better than student-directed learning. While a column in a newsletter is no place to cover all research on effective instruction, I’d recommend reading up on the shortcomings of constructivist models such as project-based learning and inquiry learning and the research supporting direct instruction, spaced and interleaved practice, worked examples, and other traditional, structured instructional techniques.

That these rubrics reward high marks for happy-clappy pedagogy and assigns low marks for more traditional (and more effective) pedagogy is significant. As I’ve argued before regarding students, everything that a school does communicates a message. What behavior is rewarded or punished, which books are read, who are the heroes of history, what posters hang on the wall—each inculcates a worldview in students even beyond what is explicitly taught.

The same is true for teachers. These rubrics incept the idea that the best teachers have turned their classrooms over to the students, avoid anything that whiffs of traditional instruction, and incentivizes them to seek out opportunities for development grounded in progressivist, constructivist pedagogy.

Principals, too, as they consider professional development regimes for the year, are more likely to choose for a yearlong focus something like running learning stations, which has little evidentiary base, instead of knowledge building, which has much evidence bolstering its implementation. When teachers set their own improvement goals, they may focus on workshop models instead of direct instruction.

And on the flip side, these rubrics tie the hands of teachers who want to pursue more traditional models of instruction. Such teachers risk poor marks, professional consequences, or the reputation of being one of the buildings “bad teachers” if they put desks in rows (research finds this is the optimal arrangement for most instruction). When an assistant principal at a classical school, I had to grade my teachers using a rubric that ran in direct contradiction to our own stated belief in teacher-led instruction.

For those who have already drank the traditional instruction Kool-Aid, a central difficulty is convincing others. Learning styles have been debunked more times than years I’ve been alive, and yet their myth persists. Teacher rubrics are a policy lever that would both incentivize more teachers to adopt such instructional techniques and also begin to shift the view of the profession towards more effective instruction. If they’re reading every year that “distinguished teachers” make effective use of interleaved practice, they’ll begin to hold that view themselves.

If we want to make better teachers, it begins with how we define that.

The age-old debate over whether principals or district offices should hold the reins in schools has gotten a fresh empirical test, courtesy of a new NBER working paper from Northwestern University economist Kirabo Jackson. The question seems simple: Should principals be empowered as the CEOs of their schools, or should they mainly implement directives crafted by their districts?

How that question is answered could have implications for school cultures, teacher morale, resource allocation, and ultimately, how much students learn in school.

The new study uses data from Chicago Public Schools (CPS), where, in 2016, the Independent School Principals (ISP) program was launched. It gave select school leaders more authority over budgets, staffing, and instructional priorities. Only principals with strong past performance and favorable evaluations were invited and, even then, joining was voluntary. Once on board, these leaders received a salary supplement, agreed to stay at their schools for at least two years, and were empowered to tailor school policies to their students’ needs. For example, they might reassign specialist teachers into core classrooms, shrink class sizes, or redirect funds toward bilingual programs, counseling, or special education.

Jackson’s study leverages a decade of detailed CPS data (2009–2019) and compares the performance of ISP schools against carefully matched peer schools whose principals didn’t join the program. Sixty-eight elementary schools ended up in the treatment group, and the results they achieved are revealing when compared to control group schools. On average, student test scores rose by about 8 percent of a standard deviation, a modest but real effect. And in ISP schools, teachers and students also reported better school climates, class sizes fell by more than one student per class, and principals were less likely to bolt.

These improvements, however, weren’t evenly distributed. The strongest leaders, including the principals with the highest past ratings and results, drove the most impressive school gains. By contrast, principals with relatively weaker records sometimes presided over stagnation or even declines. This pattern underscores an uncomfortable truth: Autonomy amplifies both strengths and weaknesses. For skilled leaders, it can unleash a virtuous cycle of stability, morale, and achievement. For less capable ones, it risks compounding problems.

Another important finding of the study is how schools with atypical student populations benefited disproportionately from greater principal autonomy. Schools with many English learners, high concentrations of students with disabilities, or demographics far outside the district norm saw especially strong gains under ISP. That makes sense: Central-office policies are inherently one-size-fits-most. The more a school deviates from the “average,” the more useful it is to have a principal who can make adjustments. In such settings, local discretion can be transformative.

The study also looks at the mechanisms behind these effects. Principal stability was perhaps the most straightforward. Turnover plummeted after leaders joined ISP and remained lower even after the two-year commitments expired. This alone has educational value, since frequent leadership changes can destabilize schools. Jackson says that principals choosing to alter their schools’ allocation of resources is also probably part of the story. Class sizes dropped, schedules were reworked, and in schools with atypical student needs, funding flowed toward bilingual or special education services.

Most impressively, all this occurred without additional resources devoted to the ISP schools, apart from the small bonuses to the principals. These changes are a result of different management and resource allocation, not increased spending. That these positive effects were realized without new funds, splashy technology purchases, or costly retraining efforts implies that the return on investment from this program is off the charts, even if the effects are modest.

Still, caveats abound. This wasn’t a blanket district policy but a selective intervention aimed at proven leaders. The results, then, tell us what happens when already capable principals get more autonomy, not what happens when every leader does. The fact that, even within this selective group, weaker principals sometimes stumbled may suggest that the eligibility bar for the ISP was set too low. Expanding autonomy indiscriminately could backfire.

Still, Chicago’s experience shows that when schools have effective leaders and distinctive needs, giving them more latitude can yield real dividends for kids—all without draining the public purse. That’s a lesson worth heeding for reformers nationwide.

SOURCE: C. Kirabo Jackson, When Decentralization Works: Leadership, Local Needs, and Student Achievement, NBER Working Paper No. 34216, National Bureau of Economic Research, September 2025.

This week, Fordham’s president emeritus Checker Finn and Laura Hamilton of the Center for Assessment join us for a polite debate on whether school quality should be judged by more than test scores.

On the Research Minute, Adam Tyner unpacks a massive study of ten million students that tracks how gender gaps in math and reading develop from kindergarten through fifth grade—and what that means for the narrative about boys and school.

Recommended content

• The mixed blessing of new school measures —Chester E. Finn, Jr., Thomas B. Fordham

• Our assessment systems should reflect the purposes of public education —Laura Hamilton, Center for Assessment

• #971: A “Quality Check” on school accountability, with Tom Toch and Lynn Olson —The Education Gadfly Show

• Do we know how to measure school quality? —Van Schoales, Education Week

• Gender Gaps in the Early Grades: Questioning the Narrative that Schools are Poorly Suited to Young Boys — Megan Kuhfeld and Margaret Burchinal, Annenberg Institute at Brown University (2025)

• Redshirt the boys—Richard V. Reeves for The Atlantic

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