RealClearEducation Articles
The Hidden Bureaucracy Radicalizing Your Children
It began at the kitchen table.
During the COVID-19 lockdowns, parents across America became accidental witnesses to their children's education. Peering over shoulders at Zoom screens, they saw history lessons that framed American values as inherently evil and a worldview obsessed with political activism rather than academic excellence.
It is easy to pin the blame on a single outlier. Was it the teacher, the rogue activist giving the lesson? In many cases, those teachers aren't going rogue; they are following a script.
A new white paper from the North American Values Institute, When the...
Grade Inflation Is Concealing Poor Student Performance
Most parents assume that if their children are earning A’s and B’s, they must be meeting grade-level standards. After all, A is the highest grade possible. Getting a B is the next best thing. If students weren’t meeting the school’s expectations—if they were academically behind and at risk of falling further—they wouldn’t bring home such good grades.
Right?
Wrong. In fact, in communities all across the nation, misleading report cards are coming home. A 2023 study published by Gallup and Learning Heroes found that 79 percent of parents say their child...
We Need Real Education Equality. Family Structure Must Be Central to Reform.
After 25 years working in education—as a teacher, researcher, consultant, and policy adviser—I’ve reached a conclusion that reformers too often avoid: family structure matters more than nearly everything else we debate. More than funding. More than curriculum. More than class size. And often, more than systems alone.
This is not ideology. It is evidence. And it is lived experience. Across urban districts, rural schools, charter networks, and elite universities, I have seen the same pattern repeat itself. Children raised in stable two-parent homes—across race and...
Two Colleges, Two Different Responses to the Heckler’s Veto
Numerous colleges and universities are being investigated by Congress for antisemitism, not because presidents have failed to condemn misconduct, but because too many have learned how to do something easier: issue statements without enforcing rules. The modern university is fluent in the language of “deeply disturbing incidents” and “community values,” while increasingly reluctant to do the one thing that makes those values real: draw boundaries and uphold them.
That tension was on display in just the last week at two colleges now facing federal scrutiny: Haverford...
What Universities Say They Can’t Afford – and What They Rarely Cut
Universities across the country are announcing budget cuts, program eliminations, and hiring freezes. The language is familiar: scarcity, constraint, difficult choices. But look closer at where the cuts fall, and where they don’t, and a pattern emerges. Austerity, it turns out, is not evenly applied.
I saw this firsthand at Sarah Lawrence College, where I teach. Earlier this year, the College hosted Ezra Klein – a nationally prominent public intellectual whose campus appearances command substantial speaking fees – as part of a presidentially sponsored speaker series, while...
The College Accreditation Makeover
The typically sedate college accreditation process is a battleground in America’s higher education culture war. That’s because accreditation isn’t just a gold seal on a college website. It’s the switch that turns federal student aid on and off.
Lose it, and the spigot of Pell Grants and federal student loans can close. For many institutions, especially those serving high-need students, that’s an existential problem. So in practice, accreditation functions as one of the most powerful levers in American higher education.
That’s why a process Americans rarely...
School Choice: Beyond Left and Right
The debate around school choice and education freedom often focuses on politics. But the evidence tells a different story. States with the strongest school choice laws include both conservative Florida and Arizona, and progressive-leaning Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Likewise, some of the weakest performers are reliably red. The lesson is clear: when it comes to giving families more options, political labels don’t tell the whole story.
Families, educators, students, and communities nationwide are currently participating in National School Choice Week, a time to recognize and celebrate...
The 'Ban' on Plato at Texas A&M Was a Set Up
Texas A&M philosophy professor Martin Peterson recently drew national attention when his Contemporary Moral Issues syllabus was flagged by Texas A&M for including racial and gender ideology. Syllabus review was mandated in November 2025 when the Texas A&M Board of Regents voted to revise university policy and require professors teaching about racial and gender ideology to get pre-approval. Peterson, in an act of malicious compliance, tweaked an earlier version of his syllabus to portray himself as an offender of this policy. When his stunt managed to get his syllabus flagged and...
This School Choice Week Is a Consequential Moment
Every January, parents, students, schools, and elected officials mark School Choice Week with rallies, proclamations, and speeches. The ceremonial traditions are familiar. But for most families, what does School Choice Week actually mean for their children?
In 2026, the answer takes on new meaning.
For the first time, school choice is more than just where students enroll. A landmark federal scholarship tax credit, growing state adoption of new pro-education choice policies, sustained post-pandemic parent dissatisfaction, and rapid technological advancements have converged to form...
A Philanthropic Path to Educational Freedom
In the nearly six years since the onset of the COVID lockdowns, which brought to light mass dissatisfaction with the school system, so much progress has been made on school choice. As both National School Choice Week and tax season are upon us, it’s worth noting one of the biggest advances in school choice that has occurred in this timeframe, while having gone mostly unnoticed: the federal tax credit scholarship program, as established by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act of 2025 (OBBB).
This is a dollar-for-dollar nonrefundable tax credit for up to $1700 for donations to qualified...
The Power of Saying 'I Don't Know'
One of the most important intellectual skills a student can learn is also one of the first we train them out of: the ability to say, plainly and without embarrassment, I don't know.
In education today, "I don't know" is often treated as a failure - a sign of weakness, disengagement, or insufficient preparation. From a remarkably young age, students learn that uncertainty is penalized. We test four- and five-year-olds. We score confidence. We reward quick answers, fluent guesses, and verbal assertiveness. Hesitation is read as a deficiency. Silence is suspect. Studies of early...
Cuts to the Liberal Arts Will Backfire
Andrew Ollett, an associate professor at the University of Chicago, used to wear a t-shirt that read “Sanskrit or die (pāṇḍityaṁ śaraṇaṁ vā mē mr̥tyur vā).” Referring to an ancient language from South Asia, Dr. Ollett’s shirt captured the spirit of the institution. Students dub it the university “where fun goes to die” because of its heavy workload and commitment to serious study of the sciences, social sciences, and humanities, especially 57 modern and dead languages. Given this reputation, the university’s decision to pause admissions to...
Competition Coming for the SAT, ACT, AP, and International Baccalaureate
For far too long, K-12 education has been dominated by monopolies – the public education system, state standardized testing, the SAT and ACT college entrance exams, Advanced Placement, and the International Baccalaureate program. The result has been soaring educational costs, declining quality, and a lack of innovation, all to the detriment of students nationwide.
But one company, Classic Learning Test, is bent on bringing competitive alternatives to break up those monopolies, which have been watered down in quality and infused with woke ideologies. The Classic Learning Test (CLT)...
A New Look at Charter Schools’ Supposed Weakness
A recent study offers a new look at charter schools’ special education performance. The Michigan findings show that special education students performed better in charter schools than in traditional public schools. This finding is significant because teachers unions and Democrats have frequently insisted that special education performance is charter schools’ Achilles heel.
Education newsletter The 74 recently covered the Jan. 12 release of a study from the National Center for Research of Education Action and Choice. NC REACH examined the records of 1.7 million Michigan K-8...
Sixty Years After Coleman: Why School Choice Is the Most Honest Education Reform We Have
I have worked in K–12 education—as a classroom teacher, a principal, and later in higher education—across public and private schools. I taught students who arrived ready to learn and students who arrived already burdened by instability far beyond their control. Over time, one lesson became impossible to ignore: schools matter, but families and peer environments matter more.
That insight sits at the heart of the Coleman Report, released in 1966 as Equality of Educational Opportunity. After examining hundreds of thousands of students nationwide, James Coleman reached a...
Why Girls' Schools Are Right to Invest in Athletic Facilities
The Spence School's new Athletic & Ecology Center in Manhattan rises six stories on East 90th Street: an NCAA regulation gymnasium with seating for 500, nine squash courts across two levels, and a rooftop greenhouse. A few blocks north, the Nightingale-Bamford School has launched a capital campaign to build what it calls the largest athletics facility of its kind among independent schools in Manhattan, and it will be anchored by a 15,000-square-foot indoor turf field.
At first glance, this can look puzzling. Space in New York is scarce. Construction is expensive. And girls' schools are...
A Big Bet on Apprenticeships in a Frozen Labor Market
For the better part of a year, the Trump Administration said little about apprenticeships. Then, almost out of nowhere, it announced a $145 million funding forecast aimed at expanding Pay for Apprenticeship—one of the largest investments we’ve seen in years.
That move matters because it follows a long gap between rhetoric and reality. Early on, the President issued an Executive Order calling for one million apprentices and indicating apprenticeship as a central workforce strategy. But that ambition amounted to little more than lip service, as Biden-era...
Antisemitism Has a Campus Problem
University campuses have been at the forefront of the country’s ongoing discussions around antisemitism in the aftermath of the October 7th attacks and Israel’s war in Gaza.
Over the past few months, campuses across the United States have been replete with antisemitism. Earlier this month, a suspect was charged with attempting to set fire to San Francisco Hillel, which serves Jewish students at several nearby universities, including California State University. Meanwhile, towards the beginning of 2025, the U.S. Department of Justice officials visited 10 universities, including...
The Supreme Court Can Put Women’s Sports Back on Track
On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear two cases—one being argued by West Virginia Attorney General JB McCuskey and another by Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador, both with the assistance of Alliance Defending Freedom—asking if states can protect their female athletes by giving them a protected sports category. States should most certainly be permitted to do so.The Supreme Court has already recognized that the differences “between men and women…remain cause for celebration,” and that when we ignore “even...
The Job Reports Real Warning Is About Education and Workforce Policy, Not the Economy
When I read the jobs reports in recent months showing consistent labour shortages, I don’t react like an economist. I react like a former classroom teacher, K–12 principal, who most recently served as a professor of education. After 25 years of watching students move—or fail to move—from school into work, the signal is clear: this is not primarily an economic slowdown. It is the result of how we govern education and workforce preparation.
Employers still cannot find workers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics' Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey shows millions of...
