It’s worth paying attention to what readers of the Education Next blog are drawn to each year. At a time when all manner of short-form articles and videos are competing for people’s attention, the blogs that manage to cut through the noise and command an audience deserve another look. They might just be a weathervane pointing in the direction where the winds of school reform are blowing.
One throughline in the EdNext blog in 2025 was curiosity about why some things work in education and others do not. Two edtech startup founders, Abdirahman Guleed and Kedaar Sridhar, posited one reason for American students’ lackluster math performance may be inscrutable language that impedes comprehension of math concepts. In matters of history, charter school founder and blogger Matthew Levey noted how the popularity of content producers like Joe Rogan and Ken Burns point to a hunger for knowledge about the American story that traditional classrooms just aren’t providing.
Education Next executive editor Rick Hess claimed several spots in our annual list again this year by virtue of his weekly opinion column “Old School with Rick Hess.” With a unique blend of insight, wisdom, and wit, OSRH (as we refer to it colloquially) has gained a faithful following in the two years since it debuted. Readers turned to the blog to make sense of the titanic changes in the federal government’s role in education, first as DOGE effected heavy cuts to personnel and research funding at the Department of Education, and later as ED announced agency partnerships to offload its bureaucratic commitments. Even as Hess remained doubtful that the changes would amount to much in the long run, he welcomed the agency’s renewed scrutiny on higher education.
Although the country continued to stumble through another lackluster showing in NAEP results, readers appreciated the attention Hess drew to one positive outcome: the so-called Southern Surge of impressive gains in scores from Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee. But in the absence of other bits of good news, OSRH resorted to satire, and readers responded enthusiastically. (A special point of pride at EdNext is that the top blog post of the year, which lampooned a speech by the president in an unlikely place, garnered the attention of the fact-checking site Snopes.)
From bad news to good, gravity to levity, readers can continue to count on the Education Next blog for thoughtful and engaging commentary about K–12 education.
The full top ten list is here:
1. Trump’s Big Middle School Commencement Address
Loser countries have better schools. Sad!
By Frederick Hess
2. Time to Pay Attention to Louisiana and the “Southern Surge”
Coherence? Professionalism? High academic achievement? Gee, seems worth studying.
By Frederick Hess
3. Education Secretary Rachel Maddow Embraces the Trump Doctrine
President Ocasio-Cortez’s ed chief leverages precedents of 2025 set in K–12, higher ed
By Frederick Hess
4. What AI Revealed About a Top Math Program
Hint: Students’ struggles may be about words, not numbers
By Abdirahman Guleed, Kedaar C. Sridhar
5. Can the “Doing What Works Library” Really Tell Us What Works in Education?
A new chatbot raises questions about the utility of education research
By Frederick Hess
6. No, the U.S. Department of Education Won’t Be Abolished
But plenty of changes are afoot. Here’s what’s likely to happen.
By Frederick Hess
EdNext in your inbox
Sign up for the EdNext Weekly newsletter, and stay up to date with the Daily Digest, delivered straight to your inbox.
7. Professors Should Actually Teach
Colleges do not prioritize or reward the instructional gifts of their faculty, to the detriment of student learning and campus culture
By Frederick Hess
8. What Joe Rogan and Ken Burns Can Teach Us About History Class
Large audiences flock to their content, suggesting a hunger for knowledge that schools need to be able to satisfy
By Matthew Levey
9. The Psychology of Voters Rejecting School Choice
Another slew of choice referendum defeats can be explained by an aversion to losing what’s in hand over gaining something new
By Patricia Levesque
10. John Arnold’s Instructive Retreat from Ed Reform
The big philanthropists have been leaving the K–12 shores. Why?
By Mike Goldstein
