American students are far more diverse than their teachers. Some 79 percent of U.S. teachers are white compared to 44 percent of students. As a result, students of color are far less likely to have a same-race teacher than are white students, a phenomenon that has attracted the attention of philanthropists and policymakers alike. Foundations have…

Over the last decade, smartphones have become commonplace. Today, 95 percent of American teenagers have a supercomputer in their pocket. Jonathan Haidt, Jean Twenge, and others have brought necessary attention to the likelihood that smartphones and social media are partly to blame for the teenage mental health epidemic gripping the nation. It's…

Driving across tracts of new-home development in El Paso, Texas, one can't miss the signs of charter-school momentum. Charter-school enrollment has been growing in Texas for years, but in many localities and even at the state level, charter schools had until recently encountered harsher treatment from policymakers than what advocates have…

Many public charter schools in the state of Hawaii are explicitly religious. For more than two decades, students at Hawaiian-focused schools have offered chants and prayers to the pantheon of gods who rule over skies, seas, and earth, including to the volcanic god, Pelehonuamea ("she who shapes the sacred land"), popularly known as Madam…

As states have passed laws establishing charter schools, advocates have carefully tracked and analyzed state policies and enrollments to compare charter school growth, demand, and access across the United States. But to date, there have been no comparisons of charter school performance across states based on student achievement adjusting for…

In this article, the authors study family preferences in one of the most competitive school markets ever developed in the United States: New Orleans, where virtually all district students attend a charter school. The vast majority provide transportation from anywhere in the city, and none can charge tuition. Admission is based on parental…

Grade inflation is causing student's hard work to be undervalued. As high grades get easier and easier to achieve, the highest grades can only go up so far. The difference between excellent and decent is compressed. Everybody wins is a system that guides and shapes the mindset of most American students--except a small number of kids who lose out…

Among the 50 states, 44 use free and reduced-price lunch enrollment to identify low-income students. These data are also commonly used to allocate federal, state, and local funding to schools serving low-income children. School and district poverty rates, as determined by free and reduced-price lunch enrollment, additionally feature prominently in…

In June 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court held in "Carson v. Makin" that Maine violated the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment by excluding religious schools from a private-school-choice program--colloquially known as "town tuitioning"--for students in school districts without public high schools. Writing for the majority,…

School shootings are at an all-time high. That's according to the National Center for Education Statistics, which has been keeping track of the numbers for about 20 years. What are schools to do? Is there a "profile" of the typical school shooter that could help us identify those who might commit a shooting in the future? Is there some…

Since 2000, the Programme for International Student Assessment, or PISA, has tested 15-years-olds throughout the world in reading, math, and science. Developed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or OECD, and administered every three years, PISA is designed to yield evidence for governments on which education policies…

In September, President Biden declared that "the pandemic is over," but parents with school-age children will not soon forget the struggles of the prior two years. Starting in March 2020, nearly all school buildings nationwide closed and remained shuttered for the rest of that school year. These closures upended families' routines,…

After millions of American schoolchildren fell behind during the COVID-19 pandemic, some states and school districts are looking at year-round school calendars as a way to recoup lost learning. Typically, year-round calendars don't increase learning time but rather spread school days more equally across 12 months, with a shorter summer vacation…

Racial segregation and racial gaps in student achievement in U.S. public schools are well-documented trends. So too are race-based differences in student enrollment in general-education versus gifted and talented programs. But are gifted and talented programs drivers of racial segregation? If so, to what extent? To explore these questions, the…

Just as there's no one-size-fits-all way to educate students, perhaps there is no one-size-fits-all-way to get them to school either. That is the argument behind HopSkipDrive, a startup that is seeking to complement and redefine the traditional bus model of taking students to school. Instead of kids making their way to the pre-determined route of…