Like many people, when I entered the world of education policy, I encountered a trove of education research that was new to me but that largely tracked with my prior experiences as a teacher.
It was a big January for my Hoosier family. I grew up in Bobby Knight’s Indiana, so IU’s incredible football National Championship win is a big deal in my home state.
There’s plenty of evidence that average grades,
Students with disabilities make up almost 15 percent of K–12 students in the U.S. These students have long been underrepresented in charter schools, which may offer different (or fewer) special education services than traditional public schools.
Texas is once again at the center of a familiar but unresolved debate about literacy, culture, and the proper role of schools.
A steady stream of recent research has reported on the pandemic’s disparate effects on education. Unsurprisingly, lost learning time hurt children, particularly those who needed the most support.
Screens have fundamentally shifted how young minds process information, form connections, and understand the world around them. This presents schools with a stark choice: Do we struggle against the current and try to restore traditional expectations? Or do we acknowledge that those ships have sailed and adapt our systems to meet students where they are? The tempting middle path where schools try to do both may be the worst option of all.
Dear governor, Do you want to be remembered for your leadership on education? Your state may be spending nearly half its budget on schools, and yet test scores continue to fall, especially for the students who need the most help.
A recent study offers a new look at charter schools’ special education performance. The Michigan findings show that special education students performed better in charter schools than in traditional public schools.
Traditional school districts have increasingly embraced giving students more options within their systems in recent decades, in response to growing charter and private school competition and the desire of district parents for more specialized programs and services for their children.
It is no secret that the Covid-19 pandemic disrupted K–12 education in the United States.
Editor’s note: This was first published in SCHOOLED, Mike Petrilli’s Substack, which hosts weekly education-reform conversations around K–12’s biggest topics.
Editor’s note: This was first published in SCHOOLED, Mike Petrilli’s Substack, which hosts weekly education-reform conversations around K–12’s biggest topics.
Today is one of the most hopeful times for Catholic education since the early 1960s, when tuitions started to rise and enrollments started their long decline. Today’s private-school choice programs solve that problem.
The grownups are fighting harder and louder than they have in years, both in words and deeds, about education, as well as everything else. Across the political spectrum, schools are treated not as civic institutions but as battlegrounds in a broader struggle over identity, power, and national belonging.
Across the country, student attendance post-pandemic remains a crisis. For the thousands of school principals who added “reduce chronic absenteeism” to their 2026 New Year’s resolutions, please know that you are not alone.
Editor’s note: This was first published in SCHOOLED, Mike Petrilli’s Substack, which hosts weekly education-reform conversations around K–12’s biggest topics.
Editor’s note: This was first published in SCHOOLED, Mike Petrilli’s Substack, which hosts weekly education-reform conversations around K–12’s biggest topics.
With more than 40 states having passed science-of-reading legislation, what comes next? What will make such laws succeed? Last month, we gathered a team of literacy and implementation experts to get their take. Here’s some of what we learned.
As 2025 drew to a close, the nation lost two leaders whose careers spanned very different worlds—but whose legacies converged around a shared conviction.
Last month, pundits debated the validity of Mississippi’s remarkable gains in student achievement.
Economist Joel Mokyr, who won the Nobel Prize in 2025, asks why some societies generate sustained economic growth while others, with seemingly similar resources and institutions, do not. At a time of great uncertainty about our social and economic progress, his question feels urgent.
Another tall education-reform tree fell the other day when Lou Gerstner passed away. The super-chief of IBM and overall business savant also spearheaded a memorable era when corporate tycoons, governors, leading educators—and U.S. presidents—joined together to get stuff done in the K–12 realm.
2025 will be remembered for a lot of bad news outside of education, but inside our little sandbox of ed-reform, there’s plenty to be grateful for—and more light than darkness
Our society is failing its most important task: fostering human flourishing. And schools aren’t helping. Far too many students graduate unprepared to think critically, navigate community, or develop the resilience needed to face life’s challenges.
Like the other elections that took place last month, the one that decided who would serve on the Albuquerque Public Schools Board was characterized by record turnout.
Rod Paige passed away this week. A former United States Secretary of Education, he was also a visionary, a leader, a passionate and compassionate educator, and so much more. We miss you, Rod. We will continue to miss you. We thank you for your service—to us and to the children and educators of America—and for your friendship. May you rest in peace.
The Trump administration recently proposed shifting Department of Education programs to other agencies, mostly the Labor Department. A few of the ideas makes sense. But overall, the proposal is nuts—and betrays conservative values, says a longtime GOP staffer.
Editor’s note: To read more about this topic from Mike Goldstein and Sean Geraghty, co-founders of the Center For Teen Flourishing, see “What are students doing between 6 p
Across the country, tens of thousands of high-achieving children are sitting at their desks, waiting for the challenge they deserve. But for many—and above all for those from low-income families—that wait won’t end.
