What was the educational impact of the civil rights movement?

Why do boys outperform girls in math, especially at the highest levels of math achievement? Two sets of economists released papers this summer examining the size of the gender gap in math achievement and investigating some possible contributing factors.

The academic book review is a lost art. In days gone by, one could count on fellow scholars to lay out the books’ argument, skewer it, then identify a laundry list of factual errors that demonstrate the author was careless or worse.

The campaign for universal preschool has gained great momentum, but a troubling contradiction casts...

Most educators probably aren't surprised that more than two-thirds of high school seniors don't recognize the value of what they have to learn.

One sleeper in the flurry of decisions at the end of the last U.S. Supreme Court term has to be the decision in Horne v. Flores, a long-running Arizona case about funding special programs for English Language Learners (ELL). In overturning lower court decisions calling for continued court-ordered school spending without regard to student outcomes, the Court may lead to a new era of more rational and effective court involvement in school funding policies.

In polls, the way you ask the question can sometimes determine the answer you get. If the public has no strong opinion, they can be swayed by the question itself.

In the Spring 2009 issue of Education Next, Robert Costrell and I presented data on the growing gap between employer pension costs for public school teachers and employer pension costs for private sector managers and professionals. This gap continues to widen.

On the road in America, it has become hard to distinguish a public school from a post-industrial factory.

According to the Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup poll, 64 percent of all Americans “favor the idea of charters.” But according to the Ednext poll, only 39 percent “support the formation of charter schools.”