RealClearEducation Articles

If school choice doesn’t help children with disabilities, someone forgot to tell the 137,000-plus special needs kids who are participating in private school choice programs right now. Of the 80 private school choice programs currently operating in the United States, 20 publicly report the number of special needs students participating or are designed exclusively for those students. Totaling the most recent available counts across these programs, we find 137,074 special needs students are using school choice programs.  In reality, this number probably understates the true...

As March Madness kicks into high gear, it’s a terrific time to think about youth sports. The athletes we’re watching under the bright lights of March are truly the best of the best—only a tiny fraction of even varsity high school basketball players ever get to play college hoops. But sports have a crucial role to play in rearing healthy, happy, and grounded kids, whether or not they’re ever going to develop a decent jump shot. This has never been truer than in our post-pandemic era in which children have been isolated, exhibit fragile social and emotional health, and...

No venue of American life is more fraught with the tension between safety and censorship than the American college campus. Since the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, that tension has peaked as campuses across the country erupted with pro-Hamas demonstrations and, in many cases, hostile speech and actions against Jewish students and faculty. Currently, the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights is conducting more than three dozen investigations related to antisemitism complaints on college campuses, according to a source with direct knowledge of many of the current...

Parents are looking for a different kind of education for their children. A 2024 poll of parents reveals that 72% are considering, 63% are searching for, and 44% have selected a new K-12 school option for their children over the past few years. So, what type of education are they seeking? Additional polling data reveals that 49% of parents would prefer their child learn from home at least one day a week. While 10% want full-time homeschooling, the remaining 39% of parents desire their child to learn at home one to four days a week, with the remaining days attending school on-campus. Another...

Recent news that firebrand political writer and commentator Ann Coulter has accepted an invitation to speak in April at her alma mater, Cornell University, where she was shouted down in 2022 by protesters, is made much more interesting (and potentially precedent-setting) by the following twist. The invitation came not from the same student groups who invited her last time, but from Cornell Provost Michael Kotlikoff, who took a huge risk to send a clear signal that Cornell intends to right past wrongs and get the school on the right side of the free speech issue. Provost Kotlikoff, in a...

Protesters were breaking glass and shouting “Intifada! Intifada!” at Berkeley just a few weeks ago. Following the October 7 terror attack on Israel, antisemites at many American colleges and universities have threatened and terrorized their Jewish classmates. In addition to mobilizing mob-like rallies in the three-dimensional world, campus antisemites have also been hard at work in the two-dimensional domain where they’re weaponizing quieter tools to advance their campaign: anonymous localized whisper apps such as Sidechat, Yik Yak, and...

Over the past couple of decades, Singapore has consistently outranked international competition in mathematics. As recently as 2022, the country achieved the world’s best math results in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests, which are conducted every three years by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). For 2022, PISA comprised 37 OECD countries and 44 partner countries. Singapore achieved a mean score of 575, substantially higher than the OECD average of 472.  Meanwhile, the United States dragged in with a sub-average mean score...

Civics philanthropist Jack Miller has announced he is stepping down as chairman of the board of the Jack Miller Center, a Philadelphia-based institution he founded in 2004 to revive the teaching of civics in classrooms across America. In a letter to donors and supporters, Miller writes, “I step down confident that well into the future The Jack Miller Center, now in its 20th year, will be my legacy to our great country.” Miller, the Chicago-based entrepreneur who will soon celebrate his 95th birthday, will take up the role of chairman emeritus. He writes that JMC “is in very...

In the quest for educational excellence, the determinants of trust within school communities often go unnoticed, yet they wield significant influence over student outcomes. Our recent working paper explores the fabric of trust among teachers in high-performing elementary schools across the socio-economic spectrum and sheds light on a pivotal factor that we call the parent trust gap, referring to the trust that teachers have in the effectiveness of the parents within their school community. This gap highlights the vast educational disparities, but it also offers a roadmap for fostering...

Americans do not know history and this ignorance poses an extreme threat to the safety and future of the Jewish community. The October 7th massacre by Hamas in Israel showed the world the dangers of ignorant communities who were raised on hate. But 10/7 revealed that this level of witlessness is not limited to Gaza – it is on full display in the United States, too. When nations fail to understand and respect legitimate differences and are taught to divide the world into simplistic tropes, pluralism fails and things can get dangerous. Only weeks ago, there was a photo of a young woman,...

Despite their frequent expressions of support for diverse and economically underserved individuals, the actions of many in the media convey a completely different message.  It's regrettable that, rather than celebrating the positive impact of educational movements in high-crime, high-poverty neighborhoods, MSNBC chose to air criticism during National School Week, of all times. Investigative journalist Judd Legum recently published a substack piece criticizing my school, Ashley River Classical Academy in Charleston, South Carolina. And it is a prime example of the mixed...

Many concerned about the current state of higher education cheered the resignations of Claudine Gay of Harvard and Liz Magill of the University of Pennsylvania. To be sure, the leadership vacancies at numerous elite universities – not only Harvard and Penn, but also Stanford and Yale – present an exciting opportunity for reformers. Having launched its presidential search in late August, well before recent controversies elsewhere, Yale could be one of the first to find its new leader.  And yet, if the progress of Yale’s search is any indication, the higher education...

K-12 classical education has emerged as a quickly growing, sought-after educational option by parents for their children over the past four years. The COVID-19-induced school closures, with remote sessions, triggered a ‘great parent awakening’ around their children’s education. Parents began to desire an alternative to the traditional district public school. Some went a step further and sought a different educational option, some of which secured new schooling for their child. This trend of seeking educational freedom from the district-assigned public school is rapidly...

In January 2023, the University of North Carolina board of trustees voted unanimously to create a new School of Civic Life and Leadership (SCiLL). The mission was to offer students a rich liberal arts education taught by professors across the ideological spectrum. The creation of SCiLL was framed as a reaction to progressive conformity in the academy. UNC Board Chair David Boliek and Vice Chair John Preyer told the Wall Street Journal that their goal was to end “political constraints on what can be taught in university classes.” Some critics, including Belle Wheelan, president of...

Significantly more K-12 students today are receiving a classical education than just a few years ago, and this growing trend is accelerating nationwide. Classical education, while not easily defined, is typically structured as the Trivium, with students progressing from Grammar to Logic to Rhetoric. There is an emphasis on the Great Books, and the cultivation of virtuous character. Students are taught to recognize and appreciate ‘the True, the Good, and the Beautiful.’ According to a recently released market analysis by Arcadia Education, classical school enrollment for the...

New classical schools have been launching at an average annual growth rate of nearly 5% over each of the past four academic years, according to a recently released report by Arcadia Education. However, the report recognizes the boom of K-12 classical education extends far beyond the launch of new schools. Existing schools have experienced a waitlist due to enrollment demand. Classical microschools are popping up nationwide. Online, hybrid, and homeschool learners are utilizing classical education more. There is a buzz around classical education, and more Americans than in decades past view...

America is facing a literacy crisis. Our youngest students are falling behind, with only 47% of kindergarten students reading at grade level during the 2021-2022 school year. Pandemic school closures exacerbated the problem, but these challenges predate COVID-19. In the 2019-2020 school year, just 55% of kindergarteners were on track.  But a new model of intense online tutoring shows remarkable promise in helping kids meet literacy markers, especially in rural and low-income schools. This is good news for kids and our nation.  Literacy is critical to children's personal and social...

One “benefit” of the Covid-19 lockdowns was the public’s exposure to what is, or isn’t, going on in our schools. In just a few short years, the public has seen the outsized, and pernicious, influence of public-sector unions — nowhere more dramatically than in our schools. The damage is nearly incalculable, and the money unions spend on such injury is enormous. Unions take membership dues from hard-working teachers and use it to finance a slew of politically driven efforts that have nothing to do with educating the nation’s children. Many of those efforts...

Across the nation, school choice programs are regularly met with opposition based on the notion that they “steal money” from local public schools.  This refrain has been heard for more than thirty years in Wisconsin—home to the nation’s oldest school voucher program. Districts across the state have included the cost of vouchers on local property tax bills, regularly casting blame for increased taxes on the programs.  But a recent bill in Wisconsin designed to mitigate the effect of vouchers on public school budgets has faced strong opposition from...