The Education Exchange

A new study investigates whether teaching practices differ in effectiveness depending on the students in the class. It finds that the impact of good classroom management and student-centered instruction vary depending on whether the students in the classroom are of high ability or of mixed ability. Jane Cooley Fruehwirth, Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Nort...

Evan Stone, the co-founder and CEO of Educators for Excellence, joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss his organization’s new survey, "Voices from the Classroom: A Survey of America’s Educators." https://e4e.org/sites/default/files/2018_voices_from_the_classroom_teacher_survey.pdf

Before schools in the southern U.S. were racially integrated, schools for African American students were staffed almost exclusively by African American teachers. After the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, southern schools began to be desegregated, and this had a big effect on black teacher employment. Economist Owen Thompsont talks with Paul E. Peterson about his paper, “School Desegregation...

Michael McConnell, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a former Circuit Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Students in Washington, D.C. have been making large gains on NAEP, and many credit the transformation of the teaching profession that has taken place in DCPS over the past decade. Thomas Toch of FutureEd joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss his report, A Policymaker’s Playbook: Transforming Public School Teaching in the Nation’s Capital, which takes a close look those changes. Read the full report he...

The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) faces a debt of between $11-15 billion. How did the school district get itself into such a financial hole and what might it do to get out of it? Lisa Snell of the Reason Foundation joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss the challenges faced by the district and its options. Snell is a co-author of A 2018 Evaluation of LAUSD’s Fiscal Outlook: Revisiting the...

On the last day of its 2017-2018 term, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Janus vs. AFSCME that public employee unions can no longer collect agency fees from non-members. Clint Bolick, an associate justice of the Arizona Supreme Court, joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss why the U.S. Supreme Court felt it was necessary to overrule a decision from the 1970s allowing agency fees.

Charter schools have been in the news lately, as supporters and opponents have debated whether they are expanding opportunities for students most in need or whether they are increasing segregation. Earlier this month, the House Committee on Education and the Workforce held a hearing on charter schools and EdNext's Marty West was invited to testify. Today, Marty West joins Paul E. Peterson to discu...

In San Diego, one in ten students attends a magnet school, and because admission is sometimes determined by lottery, researchers have been able to study the impact of attending a magnet school on long-term outcomes. In this episode, Julian Betts of the University of California, San Diego joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss his research on magnet schools in San Diego. Betts is the co-author of "The L...

Are graduates of private schools as active in the public sphere as graduates of public schools? David Sikkink, an associate professor of sociology at Notre Dame, finds that when it comes to volunteering and charitable giving, graduates of private religious schools are more likely to be engaged. He joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss his research. Read the full paper, co-written with Jonathan Schwart...

A new analysis by Education Next finds that the state that has raised its proficiency standards the most over the past 10 years is Tennessee. In this episode, Tennessee Commissioner of Education Candice McQueen joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss how her state has raised its standards and made other changes to advance student learning. Read the full report here: http://educationnext.org/have-states-...

Dan Hamlin, a postdoctoral fellow at the Program on Education Policy and Governance (PEPG) at the Harvard Kennedy School, joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss their new article, "Have States Maintained High Expectations for Student Performance? An analysis of 2017 state proficiency standards." http://educationnext.org/have-states-maintained-high-expectations-student-performance-analysis-2017-proficie...

Schools are paying increasing attention to the problem of truancy, and many states are including an indicator measuring chronic absenteeism in their accountability plans for the Every Student Succeeds Act. In this episode, Paul E. Peterson talks with Peter Bergman about the phenomenon of joint absences, when students have a peer with whom they systematically skip class. Peter Bergman, Assistant Pr...

The Trump administration may undo regulations that punish for-profit colleges if their graduates are unable to earn enough money to repay their student loans. In this episode, Paul Peterson is joined by the authors of a new study that examines the impact on student enrollment in for-profit colleges and community colleges when the federal government cracks down on for-profit colleges with high rate...

A little over a decade ago, a new government in the United Kingdom issued a report recommending that early reading instruction include phonics. What has been the impact of that change in approach to teaching reading? Martina Viarengo, the author of a study on this topic, joins Paul Peterson to discuss her research. The study, "'Teaching to Teach' Literacy," was co-written with Stephen J. Machin an...

After a devastating earthquake struck Haiti in January 2010, thousands of Haitians moved to the U.S. and enrolled their children in school here. David Figlio, Dean of the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University, joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss his research on the impact these Haitian refugee students had on the non-refugee students who were already attending those school...

New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss efforts to bring education savings accounts and full-day kindergarten to his state.

Instead of just looking at the effect teachers have on the test scores of their students, researchers have expanded their focus to include the impact of teachers on student attendance and the long run outcomes of their students. Seth Gershenson joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss the latest findings on the impact teachers have on their students.

In Colombia, a voucher program has awarded over 125,000 poor children scholarships to help them attend private high schools. Eric Bettinger of Stanford University talks with Paul Peterson about the program, which has been found to have positive long-term impacts on participating students, including better labor market outcomes.

Results from a survey released last week showed that support for charter schools has come back up after a sharp drop last year. In this week's episdode, Nina Rees of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools sits down with Paul E. Peterson to discuss what might have caused support for charters to dip and then rise and to consider the results of some recent studies on charter schools.

School choice researchers are finding that vouchers may impact student test scores and later attainment outcomes in different ways. In this episode, Patrick Wolf joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss why researchers should consider other outcomes besides test scores when evaluating school choice programs. Wolf is the co-author of a new report, "Do Impacts on Test Scores Even Matter? Lessons from Long-...

In this episode, David L. Leal, professor at the University of Texas, sits down with Paul E. Peterson to discuss how Latinos vote, what Latinos think of their kids’ schools, and whether the views of Latinos differ significantly from the views of other Americans.

Three new studies released by the Urban Institute look at how private school choice has affected nearly 13,000 students in three different states. Matt Chingos of the Urban Institute joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss what we're learning about how school choice participants do when it comes to college enrollment and graduation. Chingos wrote about these studies in "What Have We Learned From Three S...

Paul DiPerna, the vice president of research and innovation for EdChoice, joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss his report, "The ABC's of School Choice," which can be ordered here: https://www.edchoice.org/what-we-do/research/get-copy-2018-abcs-school-choice/

The number of states with school choice programs and the number of students who are able to take advantage of these programs have roughly doubled since 2010, and we now have a U.S. Secretary of Education who supports school choice. What will happen on the school choice front in 2018? In this episode, Paul E. Peterson talks with John Schilling of the American Federation for Children, which promotes...