Jeff Murray
8.8.2025
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Changing young people’s paths for the better

Here’s a nice look at Canton’s Academy for Urban Scholars, a dropout recovery charter school getting ready to enter its third year of operation. About 150 students have graduated in that time, including the largest-ever senior class earlier this year. Executive director Samuel Muhammad tells The Repository that all of their graduates went on to college or the workforce—including Jaleel Horton, who will start at Central State University soon, studying advanced manufacturing and engineering. Horton believes he would be in jail today if it weren’t for the academy, but even so his success wasn’t a sure thing. “I didn’t grab Urban Scholars,” he says. “They grabbed me, in a good way.” Awesome!

Huge transportation news in Columbus

In this TV news piece from Columbus, we get an idea of what some charter school leaders are thinking and feeling in regard to student transportation as the start of the new school year approaches. Spokespeople for the Graham Family of Schools and the Arts and College Preparatory Academy express cautious optimism for a good year, citing improved communication with Columbus City Schools over the summer. But past experience has been rough for both schools and their families. Relatedly, the United School Schools Network, which operates four campuses across the city (and is sponsored by the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation), is taking matters into their own hands, announcing last week that they will take over transporting their own students this school year. Amazing and awesome news! Over 600 of their 900 students will likely use the service, with hope that it will become a model for charters (and maybe some districts too) across the state—a true gamechanger if successful. The service is projected to cost over $1 million dollars, with about half coming from the state and the rest from the network’s own budget. Congratulations to United and best wishes to everyone for a great school year!

More on transportation

School has already started for most K-12 students in Indianapolis, and this piece from Chalkbeat provides an interesting picture of transportation for district and charter school students in the city. This includes use of public transit passes, which seems to work pretty well for a small subset of Indy families. Most interesting is the experience of families who have students in different school types—with wide variation in transportation accuracy, predictability, and efficiency. This is important information in a city trying hard to build a unified education system around a variety of school governance models that used to be intractably siloed.

No charter schools allowed…?

Here’s a look at the three remaining states that do not currently allow charter schools within their borders—Nebraska, South Dakota, and Vermont—including an attempt at an explanation as to why this is the case despite charter school expansion continuing across the country. Unfortunately, the main explainer quoted here is a charter school opponent. So when she says it’s because these states love and “depend upon their rural public schools,” and that “these are not states that are going to be welcoming” to charters, you can imagine she’s providing more wishful thinking than hard fact. And kudos to EdWeek for bringing up North Dakota as a cogent rebuttal to her fantasy. It is, of course, very similar to the others in terms of rurality yet recently became the 47th state to allow charter schools. And while it will probably take some time before the first charter opens in North Dakota, as the regulatory and operational framework is currently being built at the state level, once the school choice genie is out of the bottle, all that our anti-charter campaigner can hope for is that there won’t be many of them established because “it’s rural, and it’s small.” Hilarious.

Round 2?

The American Enterprise Institute published a deep dive into the topic of religiously-affiliated charter schools this week. Authors Ilya Shapiro and Tim Rosenberger are certain that the issue will come before the courts again, since the recent tie decision by the U.S. Supreme Court on the Drummond case left the matter unsettled at a constitutional level. They also expect that putative future case to decide the issue definitively.

*****

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Policy Priority:
School Choice
Topics:
Charter Schools
Jeff Murray
8.8.2025
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  1. Only one short news item to discuss today, and even it requires some reading between the lines to make it worthy of our time. The point of the piece is to tell us “how schools have adapted” since Covid school closures turned everything in K-12 education upside down, from the perspective of one fifth grade teacher in a big suburban Columbus district and one higher ed rep from northwest Ohio. My interpretation of their perspectives: schools are using their take on “what kids need” after the pandemic to adapt their practice to what they have long wanted it to be. Despite what our teacher believes, Schoology was in wide use before 2020, although many districts, schools, and individual teachers were indeed late to that party until forced to attend. But if she speaks for all or even many of her peers, I perceive that teachers still don’t understand or appreciate most education-related technology—despite its demonstrated effectiveness—and wish it all gone for their own comfort. And they are using their own “kids hated learning on a computer” analysis to push this narrative. Learning loss is still being downplayed (“At this point, kids are missing bits and pieces of…academic development”), despite the data showing it to be persistent and pervasive, and remediating such losses is a minor concern (“We just meet them where they are and try to do our best to help them grow.”). Nothing we haven’t heard over the last four years, but as long as you’re trying your best, how can we complain? Mental health concerns persist unrelated to and out of all proportion to anything actually happening in the real world, per both of our representative commentators, and educators would still appreciate if everyone could just shut up about the learning and the test scores and focus on the social and emotional lives of their students (and, I suspect, themselves) as the main business of every day. To summarize: adaptation, yes; for the better, not so much. (Spectrum News 1, 8/6/25)

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Policy Priority:
School Funding
Topics:
Governance
Robert Pondiscio
8.7.2025
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A few weeks ago, a staff editor for The Atlantic reached out asking me to recommend five picture books for very young children, up to second grade. While list-making is fun and will spark spirited debates about which titles belong in the picture book canon and I’m happy to contribute, I want to use the occasion to make a broader point: The real aim ought to be exposing children to the widest possible range of stories, subjects, and language as possible. Picture books aren’t just charming artifacts of early childhood or a bulwark against a screen-based life. They are the foundation of literacy, cultural knowledge, and cognitive growth.

E.D. Hirsch, Jr., whose work on cultural literacy has shaped my thinking for decades, has long argued that reading comprehension is not a transferable “skill” like riding a bike or throwing a ball, but depends heavily on what the reader already knows. The stories, vocabulary, and archetypes embedded in picture books provide the background knowledge children need to make sense of more complex texts later on. In this way, picture books are not just an entry point to literacy—they’re a child’s first curriculum.

The cognitive benefits of reading aloud

In her email seeking a five-best list, the Atlantic editor defined picture books as those that “teach children the habit of turning pages, following a story, and becoming enchanted by literature.” All worthy goals, but there’s more to reading with children than encouraging them to fall in love with books. Research by Anne Cunningham and Keith Stanovich in their landmark 1998 article What Reading Does for the Mind demonstrated that children’s books contain more rare and sophisticated vocabulary than the spoken language of even college graduates, and 50 percent more rare words per thousand than prime-time adult television. In fact, the only category of speech more sophisticated than the language in children’s books, they found, is expert testimony given at trials.

Teachers call these sophisticated words “tier two vocabulary” and it’s the sweet spot for language development: high-utility words that appear across many subjects and contexts (e.g., contrast, fortunate, investigate). Unlike “tier one” words, which are basic terms children usually learn in daily conversation before school (dog, happy, car), tier two words are often encountered in print but less common in everyday speech. They also differ from “tier three” words, which are specialized terms tied to a particular subject area (isotope, photosynthesis) and rarely used outside that domain.

This is why print exposure is so important and powerful. The more children read and are read to, the more vocabulary and complex syntax they acquire. Early advantages and disadvantages in reading ability lead to increasingly larger gaps over time. Children who start out strong in vocabulary and reading tend to read more, gain more knowledge, and get even stronger, while struggling readers fall further behind. Stanovich dubbed this the “Matthew Effect” after the biblical verse Matthew 25:29: “For to everyone who has, more will be given... but from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.” Simply put, the rich get richer; the poor get poorer. Those who get an early start in vocabulary and background knowledge tend to advance faster, while those who do not fall further behind. Picture books can start children off on the right side of the Matthew Effect.

Cultural literacy

Hirsch’s central insight is that reading comprehension is impossible without background knowledge. Picture books fill this gap by introducing children to the “world of the world,” as well as the “world of words.” There are countless examples: Miss Rumphius transports a child across time and continents; The Story of Ferdinand opens a window onto Spain and the idea of individuality; The Snowy Day captures a child’s-eye view of a winter cityscape. These books do not simply tell stories. They build familiarity with cultural references, settings, and concepts that will reappear in literature, history, and science classes for years to come.

Reading comprehension strategies such as “making predictions” or “finding the main idea” are often overemphasized in classrooms as all-purpose reading comprehension “skills” to be explicitly taught, perhaps to compensate for a lack of background knowledge. But these skills emerge almost organically when children are immersed in classic stories with familiar archetypes and structures. When a child has heard dozens of trickster tales like Anansi the Spider, they begin to recognize story patterns and anticipate outcomes. The repetitive structure of The Little Red Hen or The Little Engine That Could teaches story grammar—characters, conflict, resolution—long before formal instruction. This familiarity helps children approach new texts. A child who knows how fairy tales unfold or who has met Sendak’s Wild Things will more easily make sense of new narratives, simply because they have a mental model for prediction and comprehension.

Children who grow up immersed in nursery rhymes, Aesop’s fables, and classic fairy tales develop what might be called archetypal fluency—a familiarity with timeless story structures, character types, and moral dilemmas that serve as the scaffolding for countless contemporary stories. It’s a childhood version of how adults recognize West Side Story as a modern retelling of Romeo and Juliet, or how a literate adult sees The Lion King not just as an animated classic, but as an accessible riff on Hamlet—a princely exile haunted by a dead father and betrayed by an ambitious uncle.

Children who know the story of The Tortoise and the Hare will grasp the moral arc of Lightning McQueen in Pixar’s Cars more intuitively. Those familiar with The Ugly Duckling are primed to appreciate the underdog triumph of Kung Fu Panda or Ratatouille. A child who has heard The Boy Who Cried Wolf multiple times knows, when watching Chicken Little, that a lesson about trust and truth-telling is coming. Familiarity with Little Red Riding Hood prepares a child to recognize narrative cues in films like Into the Woods or Hoodwinked!—the stranger with the big smile, the danger that lurks beneath. Just as adults find meaning in modern adaptations of classical works, children find coherence and delight in contemporary stories when they are fluent in the source material that undergirds them.

While the focus of this exercise is on picture books, a final and crucial point is that reading aloud should continue long after children can read independently. Studies show that a child’s reading comprehension ability usually doesn’t catch up to listening comprehension until middle school. This means children can understand complex language and ideas much more easily when they hear them read aloud than when they read it themselves. Stopping read-aloud sessions at home or at school when a child “graduates” from picture books leaves a gap during the very years when vocabulary and knowledge acquisition could accelerate the fastest.

A canon of many, not few

The Atlantic asked me to name five picture books for very young children. I’ll freely admit I’m cheating with my recommendations by choosing anthologies. I make no apologies. The world is too rich, varied, and enticing to confine ourselves to five individual stories—no matter how extraordinary they are. If the aim is not only to grow a reader but to cultivate curiosity, wonder, and excitement, then breadth matters. Think of these five collections as capacious “first libraries” in a single binding, giving children dozens of entry points into language, culture, and knowledge:

  1. Aesop’s Fables, illustrated by Charles Santore (2018). A beautifully rendered edition of timeless moral tales—The Tortoise and the Hare, The Boy Who Cried Wolf, and more. Compact plots and clear morals build ethical reasoning and archetypal story structures that echo across literature and media.
  2. The Real Mother Goose, illustrated by Blanche Fisher Wright (original 1916 edition; various reprints). The definitive collection many modern versions draw from. Wright’s iconic vintage art pairs with rhythmic rhymes—Jack and Jill, Humpty Dumpty, Little Miss Muffet—to cement memory, cadence, and shared cultural references.
  3. A Year Full of Stories: 52 Folk Tales and Legends from Around the World,by Angela McAllister, illustrated by Christopher Corr. One short, vibrant tale per week, tied to seasons and festivals. Folk‑art illustrations and global settings sustain attention while widening children’s cultural map.
  4. Over the Hills and Far Away: A Treasury of Nursery Rhymes from Around the World, edited by Elizabeth Hammill. A global anthology of nursery rhymes, each spread interpreted by a different acclaimed illustrator. Terrific for rhythm, memory, pronunciation, and cross‑cultural connections.
  5. An Anthology of Intriguing Animals, by Ben Hoare (DK). Choosing a single science picture book was the hardest part of this exercise and candidly, somewhat arbitrary. This one boasts large, sumptuous spreads with short “micro‑essays” perfect for three to five minute read-alouds. Rich vocabulary and factual sidebars invite questions and comparisons—the raw materials of scientific curiosity.

These five volumes are launchpads, not limits. Read them widely and repeatedly. Let children linger, question, and wander. The goal is a childhood saturated with stories, words, images, and knowledge—so that love of reading is fueled by the even more durable habit of wonder.

If reading truly “makes us smarter,” as Cunningham and Stanovich argued, then picture books are where it begins. They give children access to sophisticated language, teach them how stories work, and lay the groundwork for background knowledge and cultural literacy. For Hirsch, literacy was always more than decoding letters. It was the ability to understand references, context, and ideas that knit a society together. Picture books begin this work at the earliest stage, building the knowledge and vocabulary they will draw upon for a lifetime.

Happy reading.

Policy Priority:
High Expectations
Topics:
Evidence-Based Learning
Curriculum & Instruction
Stéphane Lavertu
8.6.2025
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Schools are heavily segregated by income, primarily because higher-income families choose to live in more affluent districts. Economic segregation matters because social connections between higher and lower income kids—particularly connections forged in schools and churches—improve educational outcomes and economic mobility for poor kids. The research is clear: Policies that promote economic connectedness in schools help drive the American dream.

Yet many Ohio districts—particularly high-income suburban districts near major cities—are those most intent on keeping low-income kids out. They signal this intent loud and clear by refusing to participate in Ohio’s open enrollment program, which allows students from nearby districts to attend their schools when space is available. Figure 1 presents a map we’ve seen before: Ohio’s largest urban districts (labeled and shaded gray) surrounded by districts with policies that bar open enrollment (shaded red). Beyond those fortified suburban districts is a sea of districts that participate in (and families who make use of) Ohio’s open enrollment program, but those districts are generally too distant for city dwellers.

Figure 1. Ohio’s urban centers and districts that disallow open enrollment

Open enrollment and low income students blog figure 1
Note. The figure above maps Ohio’s eight largest city school districts (shaded gray) and districts that do not participate in the state’s open enrollment program (shaded red). Open enrollment policies are those listed for the 2025-26 school year on the Ohio Department of Education & Workforce’s website.

The kids kept out of the nearby suburban districts (in red) are disproportionately low income. Table 1 presents federal poverty estimates for school-age children in Ohio’s 216 city and suburban districts, comparing the 90 districts that disallow open enrollment (the red districts in Figure 1) and the 126 districts that allow it. Among the latter districts, which include Ohio’s eight large urban districts, 23.7 percent of children live in households below the poverty line (2024 household income of $32,255 for a family of four). The poverty rate is a much lower 9.8 percent in districts that forbid open enrollment.

Table 1. Poverty in city and suburban districts that do and do not allow open enrollment

Open enrollment and low income students blog table 1
Note. School-age population and poverty estimates are based on federal Census data (SAIPE) and correspond to the 2023-24 school year. Data on 2025-26 interdistrict open enrollment policies are from the DEW website.  The poverty rates on the left are weighted by districts’ school-age population, such that the totals capture aggregate poverty rates across the districts.

Note that districts that don’t participate in Ohio’s open enrollment program may accept students from lower income districts, provided their families pay tuition or the district has an exemption, such as when a district employee resides in a different district (see ORC 3313.64(F)(8)). In other words, these fortified districts lower their drawbridges for relatively high-income, tuition-paying families who reside in surrounding low-income districts—or for the children of their own employees—but generally not for poor families. And the wealthier a district is, the more it charges. For example, Orange City Schools, a wealthy suburb outside Cleveland that forbids open enrollment, charged open enrollees a whopping $25,610 for the 2024-25 school year. Avon Local—a less wealthy Cleveland suburb that also does not participate in the open enrollment program—charged $10,032.

Unfortunately, there are no public data indicating how many parents pay these tuitions. But there are data on how many school-age district residents attend schools in other districts without the aid of open enrollment. One might characterize a district as “blocked” if its residents participate in interdistrict choice at higher rates without the aid of Ohio’s open enrollment program than they do with the aid of the program, as this roughly indicates family demand for schools in another district but a relative inability to access them for free. Table 2 lists the fifteen blocked districts in Ohio that have the highest share of school-age residents who attend schools in other districts without the aid of open enrollment (“Non-OE Interdistrict Enrollment”).

Table 2. “Blocked” districts where residents are most likely to enroll in another district

Open enrollment and low income students blog table 2
Note. The table identifies the 15 “blocked” districts with the highest rates of interdistrict enrollment not involving the open enrollment program (“non-OE interdistrict choice”). Blocked districts are those where residents exercise non-OE interdistrict choice at greater rates than participation in open enrollment. School-age population and poverty estimates are based on federal Census data (SAIPE), interdistrict enrollment data are from the DEW website, and “locale” data are from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). All data are for the 2023-24 school year.

Six of Ohio’s eight large city districts are in the top fifteen, but so are several suburban districts. Notably, Middletown City (Vice President Vance’s childhood home, between Cincinnati and Dayton) and Northridge Local (adjacent to Dayton) come in first and second, respectively, with about 6 percent of their residents attending schools in another district without the aid of the open enrollment program. These districts adjoin some districts that participate in Ohio’s open enrollment program, but a greater share of their residents attend schools without the aid of the program. Not surprisingly, in all fifteen of the “blocked” districts, there are also high rates of participation in other school options (homeschooling, charters, and vouchers) as evidenced by the low share of school-age residents enrolling in district schools (see last column of Table 2). 

Another noteworthy finding in Table 2 is the presence of South-Western City, as it also refuses to participate in Ohio’s open enrollment program. As Figure 2 reveals, with respect to open enrollment, its residents are kept out of adjacent districts Hilliard City and Hamilton Local. Hamilton Local has a child poverty rate nearly identical to South-Western City’s (and ranks twentieth on the “blocked” list), but Hilliard City is a more affluent district. South-Western City illustrates how even districts with high poverty rates may seek to fortify themselves against pupils from districts with even higher rates (e.g., Columbus City Schools).

Figure 2. Fortified districts in and around Columbus

Open enrollment and low income students blog figure 2
Note. The figure above maps the Columbus City School district (shaded gray) and surrounding districts that do not participate in the state’s open enrollment program (shaded red). Open enrollment policies are those listed for the 2025-26 school year on the Ohio Department of Education & Workforce’s website.

***

District efforts to keep their schools exclusive and property values high mean they have strong incentives to keep out lower income kids. This is done by refusing to participate in Ohio’s open enrollment program and charging lofty tuitions to families from other districts. Policymakers could require districts with excess capacity to let in students from other districts, or they could create strong countervailing incentives to change these districts’ calculus. For example, if state funding per open enrollee were sufficiently high, then even wealthy districts might be willing to bring in low-income kids.

Unfortunately, as the Fordham Institute’s Aaron Churchill has explained, Ohio’s funding policy now provides minimal incentives for high-income districts to participate in the program. State payments per open enrollee are the same as state aid for the receiving district, which means wealthy districts get relatively little compensation. The incentives would be much stronger if, for example, per pupil aid from a student’s home district followed them when they open enrolled. Students from Ohio’s poorest districts could suddenly become coveted students to fill open seats. And my own research has demonstrated that this would likely improve their academic outcomes.

Policy Priority:
School Choice
Topics:
Governance
David Griffith, Ph.D. Meredith Coffey, Ph.D.
8.6.2025
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Education savings accounts in Texas. Open enrollment in Missouri. Each week seems to bring a new story and more education options for American students.

But to make the most of these new opportunities, families need the full picture.

So what information do they have currently? And what additional data would it make sense for them to have?

When it comes to public schools, whether neighborhood schools, magnets, or charters, the most common data points are academic achievement and year-to-year growth in math and reading, as measured on standardized tests.

Although this information is crucial—something is very wrong if the kids can’t pass the tests—critics from both sides of the aisle rightly note that it doesn’t capture everything that families should want to know about a school’s academics.

For example, what about subjects like history and science, which are tested less frequently than reading and math? What about foreign languages, the arts and other subjects that aren’t tested at all? And what about all the stuff that good schools impart that tests don’t capture, like critical thinking, teamwork, self-discipline, and respect for others?

For years, education reformers who believe that data are critical to improving America’s schools but recognize the limitations of standardized tests have struggled to answer these questions. That’s why a recent analysis that explores a new and potentially powerful measure of school quality called high school readiness is so exciting.

As the name suggests, the basic idea is to capture how well a middle school prepares its students for the next stage of their education by quantifying its effects on high school grades—or to be more precise, ninth-grade grade-point averages.

The report finds that middle schools have a significant impact on students’ future grades. For example, in North Carolina and Maryland, attending a middle school with a strong high school readiness score boosted a student’s ninth-grade GPA by approximately one-tenth of a grade point.

Figure 1. Effect of attending a middle school with a higher high school readiness score on ninth-grade GPA

Figure ES-1: Attending a middle school with high GPA-based value-added has a sizable effect on a student's 9th grade GPA.

Note: This figure shows the estimated effect of attending a middle school with a GPA value-added score that is 1 standard deviation above the average middle school’s score on the average student’s ninth-grade GPA in North Carolina and Maryland.

One-tenth of a grade point may not sound like much, but it’s enough to keep a marginal student out of the University of California or Texas A&M. And that increase is fairly impressive when you consider the number of factors that can affect GPA, from the quality of a student’s elementary school to his or her socioeconomic circumstances and home life.

Importantly, schools’ influences on GPAs aren’t necessarily the same as their effects on test scores. In fact, the two are only weakly correlated.

Figure 2. Middle schools that boost students’ test scores don’t necessarily boost their high school GPAs

Figure ES-4: GPA-based growth is weakly correlated with test-based growth.

Note: This figure shows the correlation between value-added to ninth-grade GPA and value-added to ninth-grade math achievement for Maryland middle schools. Data come from the Maryland Department of Education.

In other words, analyzing middle schools’ effects on grades reveals something new and different about how schools serve students—which the many families who don’t care exclusively about test scores might want to consider when choosing a school.

While it may seem strange to suggest evaluating middle schools based on their students’ high school readiness, many states already do something similar at the high school level, where indicators of college and career readiness have long been an accepted part of school report cards.

And while there are technical challenges associated with isolating middle schools’ effects on high school grades, most states already provide publicly available school report cards, and most already collect data on students’ high school GPAs. So, with a bit of number-crunching and some clear messaging, a new high school readiness indicator could give families the information they’re looking for—and begin to move America’s education system away from its obsession with standardized tests and toward a broader concept of student success.

As educational options expand, so should the information available to families. Test scores alone will never paint a complete picture of school quality or student success. But in the age of big data, there is no shortage of paint.

Editor’s note: This was first published by The 74.

Policy Priority:
Quality Choices
Topics:
Evidence-Based Learning
Charter Schools
Governance
Private School Choice
Jeff Murray
8.6.2025
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News stories featured in Gadfly Bites may require a paid subscription to read in full. Just sayin’.

  1. Following on from Monday’s awesome bombshell news that United Schools Network will be providing transportation to its own students this school year, here’s a look at what some other charter school leaders here in central Ohio are thinking and feeling in terms of transportation as the start of the year looms closer. They say they are optimistic for a good year, with a tiny bit of evidence to back that up. But I mean, what else can you do but say you’re optimistic at this point? Maybe that optimism will be borne out at some point, despite years of experiencing the opposite. But here’s hoping that United Schools’ decision will help to make everyone else’s busing situation just that little bit easier. (NBC4 News, Columbus, 8/5/25)

  2. Speaking of the start of the new school year, here’s a look at how one school district in northwest Ohio is going to actuate the state’s new, stricter, cell phone rules. In describing those rules, the supe says, “The new policy definitely gives us more structure for our students to use their cell phones during the school day.” Say what?! Pretty sure that was meant to be the opposite. Later on, a student tells WTOL-TV that the district had a similar policy on the books last year but “it didn't really happen in any but one class.” She goes on to say that cellphone usage is “more of a respect thing” in their district. “Go on your phone when you want to and don’t do it when a teacher’s talking.” If after reading all this you suspect that I am discussing a bougie, big-dollar, high-performing suburban school district, then you get a gold star for using textual evidence and finding supporting details to determine the main point of a text. Good job. If not, then what rock have you been living under? (WTOL-TV, Toledo, 8/4/25)

  3. I think we’ll have to take the University of Akron’s word here that they have been “leading” in the move to make sure reading teachers are fully up to speed on the science of reading over the last two years. But I do have to quibble with the notion that their “new” way of teaching is going to revolutionize education for adult students who can’t read. Because I’m pretty sure whatever you were teaching with as late as two years ago is the reason those adults can’t read now. It’s the least you can probably do to try and fix what you broke. (Akron Beacon Journal, 8/5/25)

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Policy Priority:
School Funding
Topics:
Governance
Alina Adams
8.6.2025
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In her memoir, Dear Diary Boy: An Exacting Mother, Her Free-Spirited Son, and Their Bittersweet Adventures in an Elite Japanese School, author Kumiko Makihara recounts her son Taro’s experience attending first through sixth grade in her home country of Japan.

“Japan has a well-respected public education system that emphasizes a high-level standardized curriculum and a belief that all children have the same potential to learn,” she writes. But “[d]eclining academic levels, demoralized teachers, and sub-standard facilities [led to] about 7 percent of Japanese children now [attending] private secondary schools because their parents believe that they offer higher quality teaching and help pave the way for entry into prestigious high schools and universities.”

Like other countries, Japan has periodically attempted to alter its traditional education system:

Regurgitating facts has long been a prized skill in Japanese schools because of the country’s rigorous university entrance exams. But from around the 1980s, there was growing criticism that such one-dimensional learning, dubbed “cramming,” was producing people who couldn’t think out of the box. In response, the country cut back school hours and pared curricula under the slogan “leeway.” But then, the cherished high scores of Japanese students in global comparative testing of math and science began to fall, while independent thinking didn’t show much improvement. “Leeway” was blamed for the slide, and the pendulum swung back to increased classrooms and hours.

As a result, Makihara decided to apply Taro to the same prestigious private school her father once attended.

There, the admissions criteria consisted of:

  • An hour-long written test including listening comprehension, where children hear a recording of a story followed by questions. Many recorded stories run for about five minutes, and the children don’t take notes. They are also asked to discern and predict patterns, reverse mirror images, fill in gaps in three-dimensional shapes, and speculate about what happens to water volume once you put objects in it (akin to some tasks on American “gifted” exams).
  • A group-behavior exam featuring table settings, party manners, and points for cooperation on an assigned task.
  • Arts like origami and calligraphy.
  • Athletic feats ranging from hopping on a specified foot to jumping rope, bouncing a ball, skipping, completing an obstacle course, and using a hula hoop.
  • Household tasks like folding ironed pajamas, separating garbage for recycling, wringing out a wet washcloth, hanging laundry with clothespins, and tying a bow behind your back on an apron.

Makihara explains that, in Japan, “There are no gifted tracks in public primary schools that go from grade one through six.” But who needs a “gifted” track when all children are expected to master the above skill set? Think of all the American teenagers who’ve never been asked to do half the chores above!

In all seriousness, one of the keys to Japanese success in education seems to be the expectation “that all children have the same potential to learn.” This was confirmed by a study over forty years ago, with research based on different types of Japanese schools, not merely one private, elite institution.

My oldest son just turned twenty-six. When he was four years old, like many New York City children, he took the required tests for admission to public and private schools. On one, he scored around the 65th percentile. On another, somewhere in the low 80s. So no inherent “giftedness” to be found.

Nonetheless, my husband and I enrolled him in the most rigorous, academic private school that would accept him. We were warned that he’d struggle. That the other children actually were “gifted” and he’d be unable to keep up. We said we’d take our chances.

Did our son struggle? Sometimes. Was he at the top of the class? Rarely. Did he learn to work hard in order to achieve a goal? Absolutely!

In eighth grade, our son took the public Specialized High School Admissions Test (SHSAT). He got into Stuyvesant High School, which required the highest cut-off score. Suddenly, our 65th percentile child was in the top 2 percent of NYC test takers.

At Stuyvesant, the work ethic he’d developed while struggling in elementary and middle school landed him at the top of the class. This was a kid who would meet whatever bar you’d set for him. By the time he took the SAT, he only missed one question. Now he was in the top 1 percent. He got into an Ivy League university. No one cared what he’d scored at four years old. The only thing that mattered was what he’d mastered since then. And what he’d mastered came about because he was in a school that expected him to do so.

Makihara also sent her son to a school where Taro struggled with a daily load of Japanese, social studies, math, science, integrated studies, music, art, physical education, and English. She worried that Taro was developing an inferiority complex. She felt “the other children progress much faster, and we are always desperately chasing after them, one step behind.”

Makihara admitted, however, that even though Taro was struggling, he “was mastering his academic subjects to at least an acceptable and, in some cases, an advanced level.” She said he was getting some A’s, some B’s, and once in a while, a C.

Which brings me to my eighteen-year-old daughter. She scored much higher than her eldest brother on those kindergarten tests of “giftedness,” in the 93rd percentile. We also sent her to an academically rigorous private school, where (as she has given me permission to describe) my daughter loved everything about school…except the school part. She sang in the choir, wrote for the newspaper, served on student council, and was invited to present at evenings for prospective parents. Teachers loved her. Fellow students loved her. The administration loved her.

She was also a mediocre student. My daughter did just the bare minimum so she wouldn’t be bothered. On dedicated private school assessments, she rarely scored above the 70th percentile, sometimes even in the 60th or 50th. Yet, on national public school norms, she was in the 99th. When she transferred to a public, screened high school, she was using her seventh grade chemistry notes to help the eleventh graders with their Regents exam prep. Even at the bottom of a rigorous academic private school, my disinterested daughter was still mastering advanced level skills compared to her public-school peers.

My husband and I were OK with our daughter not getting straight A’s, as long as she was actually learning. We know how many kids get all A’s and objectively learn nothing.

Makihara, meanwhile, concerned with Taro’s self-esteem, withdrew him from school in Japan and sent him to boarding school in the U.S. There, her son quickly learned such American rationalizations as “I don’t test well.”

Taro’s mom had concerns about the new educational approach:

Was Taro stocking up on enough fundamental knowledge needed for critical thinking further down the line? Taro’s American teachers patiently tailored his instruction to his level instead of leaving it up to him to try to catch up to the class average, as we were expected in Japan. In fact, the U.S. school’s motto was, “to meet boys where they are.” It sounds great, but I wondered, does that mean a boy might stay at that level? The U.S. teachers patiently tried to guide Taro into independent, analytical thinking. But should they also be pushing to memorize as many facts as possible to build up the foundation from where such thoughts would arise?

Ultimately, Makiharo decided that her son’s feelings about learning were more important than what he was actually learning. She had some reservations about his new American school such as indicated above but, in the end, determined that their academic move was for the best.

Her conclusion is on par with the American school system, which keeps lowering academic standards so no one has to struggle or feel bad about failing. (Also so the school system doesn’t have to take responsibility for not adequately educating students. But the first reason sounds a lot more noble, doesn’t it?)

My family took the opposite approach. We believed that our children’s grades were less important than what they were actually learning. A “C” in one school was more meaningful than an “A” in another. As for their self-esteem, research backs up my gut sense that children are more likely to feel good about themselves when they struggle and ultimately meet their goals.

My husband and I believed that being in the middle of the pack in a rigorous classroom was more valuable than being at the top of a weak one. Yes, even if it leads to a crying child. Senior year of high school, my daughter was sobbing practically every week over AP Calculus. But the score of 3 she ultimately earned on her AP test meant more to her than the 5 she received in AP English Literature and Composition, where she’d needed to put in less effort. And it taught her the lesson that, yes, she can get results if she applies herself—that she is hard-working and capable and resilient. That’s a skill beyond calculus. That’s a skill she can use for the rest of her life.

In the end, I am most enamored of a quote Makihara heard from her son’s cram school teacher: “Please remember that these children have only been in the world for a short five years. If they fail, please blame yourselves.”

Policy Priority:
High Expectations
Topics:
Curriculum & Instruction
Governance
Advanced Education