Welcome to the first “real” edition of SCHOOLED. Read what I’m hoping to do with this newsletter here. (The TL;DR: Restart the ed reform conversation.) PLEASE respond to this email, comment on Substack, or email me at SCHOOLED@fordhaminstitute.org if anything you read here sparks a thought. I’ll include the most interesting reactions in Friday’s newsletter.
In today’s edition, a bumper crop of education opinions, including Jed Wallace on the lame Democrats, Tim Daly on how to make education a top-tier issue again, John White and Marc Porter Magee on the Katrina anniversary, and Colleen Hroncich on a choice-filled back-to-school season.
The big ed policy news this week is the latest NAEP results (to be covered by SCHOOLED on Friday), but the big ed policy news last week came from the Lone Star State, with Texas lawmakers voting to replace the “widely unpopular” STAAR exams:
Once Abbott signs House Bill 8, Texas will swap the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness for three shorter tests at the beginning, middle, and end of each school year. Students will begin to take the new tests in the 2027–28 school year.
“House Bill 8 ends the high stakes and high stress nature of one test, one day,” Rep. Brad Buckley, the bill’s author, said Wednesday evening before the Texas House voted to send the proposal to Abbott. “This is unprecedented oversight of the assessment and accountability system by this body.”
Legislators replaced STAAR amid frustration from families and teachers, who say the test puts too much pressure on students and that preparing for it takes up too much time in the classroom.
I’m not buying it, and not just the Texas version. I sincerely don’t understand why we think parents, teachers, and kids are going to like three high-stakes standardized tests a year instead of one. Isn’t it likely that the main reason people don’t mind frequent diagnostic tests, like MAP or i-Ready, is because they currently come with zero stakes? And won’t they sour on tests like those when they come with stakes attached? As Dan Goldhaber said on X on Thursday, “It's all about the stakes. It's always all about the stakes.”
Over a decade ago, when PARCC was planning a similar “through-year” design for its assessments, with three tests a year, Rick Hess pointed out that schools would feel pressure to align their curriculum, scope and sequence, etc. even more closely to the tests and their content. He was right (and PARCC ditched that plan).
As with everything in life, it’s about trade-offs. Yes, shorter, more frequent tests during the year can offer more useful information to teachers, parents, and kids. But shorter tests tend to focus on easier-to-measure skills, which are not necessarily the ones aligned to the most challenging standards. Attaching stakes to such tests risks going back to the “drill and kill” days of No Child Left Behind.
I know this is an unpopular position, but I continue to believe that the status quo in most states, including Texas, is better than the currently feasible alternatives. (Maybe AI will change that.) We should keep giving students high-quality (and relatively long) assessments at the end of the year to find out what they’ve learned and encourage high-quality teaching. And schools should continue to use interim or diagnostic tests throughout the academic year if they find those helpful. Trying to merge these two types of tests into one won’t give us “the best of both worlds.” We’ll just get more testing and worse instruction.
Do you disagree? Tell me I’m wrong!
Recent education opinions from around the Internet
In a post that Whitney Tilson called “outstanding,” Jed Wallace bemoans the collapse in achievement among America’s lowest-achieving students and the Democrats’ MIA response. Thanks to “teachers union recalcitrance,” he argues, “Dems’ calculation has been that their hold on power is so unquestioned in blue states that they don’t really need to pivot on education issues.”
Is it true that Democratic-run states aren’t doing anything to raise achievement, especially for the lowest performers? Weigh in!
Tim Daly reminisces about when K–12 education was a top-tier issue. (Margaret Spellings appeared on the Daily Show!) He offers three ideas for getting schools back into the spotlight, including calling for think tanks to offer more interesting ideas (ouch). What we really need, IMO, is for presidential candidates to run on education reform (Ed in ’28!).
It’s easy to remove 90 percent of the pollution from a river. It’s the last 10 percent that’s hard and that present the toughest trade-offs. So explains Mike McShane, channeling Stephen Breyer, and applying the lessons to school choice regulations.
Karen Vaites argues that “It's a lot more profitable to sell a curriculum that doesn’t include actual books.” Not good!
Tom Dee lays out his vision for improving the research-to-practice pipeline. Particularly helpful is his to-do list of three evidence-based policies: expanding access to Advanced Placement courses; automatically enrolling high-scoring students in advanced courses; and reducing chronic absenteeism through real-time attendance monitoring.
Chad Aldeman explains that “the returns to education are linear.” The more schooling kids get, the more they earn. This isn’t just a nice reminder that education matters. It also calls into question our obsession with “chronic absenteeism” versus absenteeism of any length of time. He also worries that students are the main ones using AI.
If you missed the great commentary on and reporting of the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, Marc Porter Magee has you covered with an excellent roundup as well as an important point: The progress in New Orleans is due to more than charter schools. And check out The 74’s interview on the topic with John White.
Joanne Jacobs picks up Emily Putnam-Hornstein’s and Naomi Schaefer Riley’s sobering but important plea for teachers to continue reporting signs of child abuse and neglect. While that seems like a no-brainer, the rebuttal was needed because some voices are saying otherwise, including the AFT and an opinion piece that The 74 inexplicably published over the summer.
In expensive private schools and traditional public schools, facts are out of fashion, argues teacher Dan Lerman in The Free Press.
Speaking of school choice, the Cato Institute’s Colleen Hroncich celebrates back-to-school season during an era of expanding educational freedom.
Tim DeRoche is not feeling so celebratory. “A Political & Societal Toxic Stew Makes This a Dangerous Time for K–12 Education,” reads the headline on his op-ed in The 74. With local journalism decimated and state policymakers distracted, education interest groups are running amok.
And Rick Hess is feeling glum also, thanks to everyone (including in education) acting like a hypocrite.
Did I miss something? Tell me at SCHOOLED@fordhaminstitute.org
Pass
Explaining why he’s not a liberal, David Brooks reflects on the power of culture and values—rather than money alone—to improve the lives of the poor. —The New York Times
Fail
With the governor’s support, Florida’s surgeon general intends to eliminate vaccine mandates for schoolchildren. Make Kindergarten Lethal Again? —The Washington Post
The College Board removed a race-neutral tool for colleges to identify high achieving students from low-income communities. —The New York Times
A high schooler reflects on what students lose when rampant AI use disrupts all aspects of learning. —The Atlantic
Required Reading
“Trump 2.0 has laid out many broad policy objectives in education… It has three and a half years to revise a civil rights regime that was over half a century in the making.” —R. Shep Melnick, Education Next
The Battle of the Economists: James J. Heckman and Sadegh Eshaghnia push back on Raj Chetty’s claim that a child’s neighborhood determines their adult outcomes. —The Wall Street Journal
A linguist describes what his daughters’ slang says about the evolution of language. —John McWhorter, The New York Times
See ya again on Friday!
Mike