Back when I didn’t know squat, but had energy and naivety to spare, I started a school for students whose learning challenges, depression or anxiety made attendance at a large, comprehensive public high school problematic. They were also students traditional private and parochial schools didn’t want. A combination of 1960s social activism and a Fortune 50 executive father who ...

In Los Angeles, voters will weigh in on Measure EE, a ballot measure to raise funds for public schools, on June 4. This takes place at a time when the Los Angeles Unified School district estimates that “more than half of its general fund will be needed to pay down pension and health benefit debt by 2031,” Jason Henry notes in the Los Angeles Daily News. Henry write...

The Student: A Short History by Michael Roth Yale University Press, 2023, $26 (cloth); 216 pages. As reviewed by Jonathan Zimmerman Every year, at convocation, my university’s president tells the incoming freshmen that they can be anything they choose. But somehow, four years later, a huge fraction of them choose to enter one of three fields: tech, banking, or manageme...

Many tech-based interventions have had disappointing results, but maybe these efforts haven’t capitalized on what computers do best. A new study looks at the impact of a blended learning program on students in India who were not making progress in their local public schools because they were starting out so far behind the other students. Alejandro Ganimian, Assistant Pro...

A report in this issue of Education Next confirms that K–12 schools can make a difference in students’ civic attitudes and behavior (see “A Life Lesson in Civics,” research, Summer 2019). The study finds that attending a charter school operated by Democracy Prep Public Schools nearly doubles students’ rates of civic participation as young adults. Education Next editor Martin W...

In an excerpt from his new memoir This African-American Life, former president of the National Urban League Hugh B. Price describes his elementary and secondary education in Washington, D.C. Price focused on his studies and dreamed of playing major-league baseball—all while he and his schoolmates made history in some of the city’s first integrated classrooms after the Sup...

Families in Milwaukee gained access to the nation’s first private school vouchers nearly three decades ago. Today the educational landscape in Milwaukee also includes charter schools and many other forms of public school choice. But standardized test scores are still low and the achievement gap between black and white students remains large. Alan Borsuk of the Milwaukee J...