Did education reform work?

Earlier this month, I wrote about efforts to revive the bipartisan school reform coalition that dominated Washington circa 1996 to 2015. It was this coalition that ushered in No Child Left Behind, test-based teacher evaluations, the growth of charter schools, and the Common Core standards.

According to education historian Diane Ravitch, these efforts decisively failed. “The reformers look back to their glory days with nostalgia. Parents and students don’t,” she wrote in response to my piece. Mike Petrilli, of the Fordham Institute, offers a different gloss on the same history: “Reform did work, until we stopped doing it.”

Interpretations of the past can shape how people proceed in the future. That’s why this mini-debate matters. So, who’s right?

Across a number of measures, student outcomes were generally improving in the decades before the 2010s. Test score gains were particularly robust in elementary and middle school math. More students were also graduating high school and attending college. Research has found that No Child Left Behind likely played some role in these improvements (though it also led to more focus on testing, which some parents and teachers objected to). Increases in school funding and perhaps declines in child poverty may have also contributed to improving scores. 

Test scores started stagnating as other reform-oriented policies, championed by the Obama administration, were put into place, though. Teacher evaluation and the Common Core standards appeared to produce limited or no effects. 

In other words, the story of reform is not a simple one of clear success or failure.

Can education research be trusted?

Probably not, argues a recent piece by Kelsey Piper in The Argument. Simply put, she writes,  many studies of schools are shoddy and unreliable

Having covered education research for years, I agree — to a point. I find a large number of studies replete with jargon but little novel insight. Other research does not do a good enough job separating causation from correlation.

But contrary to Piper’s sweeping condemnation, there’s also quite a lot of high-quality research about schools. In a given week, there are many interesting, compelling studies that come across my desk — far more than I have the time to write about. You can see for yourself: peruse some of the studies at EdWorkingPapers, a large repository of research, hosted by Brown University’s Annenberg Institute. And the standards of evidence in education have probably improved over time, notes researcher Morgan Polikoff. 

It’s also not clear that education is worse than other fields. Piper cites a paper showing many education studies are not easy for external researchers to confirm. But this analysis does not include some of the top empirically focused journals in education.

Sending kids books boosts reading scores

The number of books a student has in their home has long been correlated with success in school. What researchers haven’t known is whether the books directly contribute to learning or are simply related to factors that matter, like family education.

A new study tests this out. Researchers randomly assigned a group of 30 high-poverty elementary schools in Milwaukee to send every kid home with several free children’s books each year. Even though there weren’t any incentives or rewards for reading them, the program made a difference. Reading scores in those schools rose, compared to a similar group of schools where students didn’t get the free books. “Our findings point to a promising and easily scalable strategy for improving literacy outcomes in high-poverty schools,” the researchers write.

And the kids got books to read, which is a good thing regardless of the effect on test scores.

Dems and education, again 

The idea that Democrats have lost their political advantage on education has been a remarkably resilient talking point, barely fazed by the weight of data showing this hasn’t been true for years.

Former Education Secretary Arne Duncan even recently claimed that one reason Trump won in 2024 was Democrats’ weak message on education. Yet most polls showed the party had regained its advantage on the issue by then.

More plausibly, recent articles in Education Next and the Washington Monthly argued that while perhaps Democrats maintain some edge on education, it’s weaker than it used to be. Is that true?

Consider one long-running poll that has asked voters since 1999 which party they prefer on education. Before the pandemic, Democrats typically held an edge of 14 points. In late 2021, the party’s edge shrunk to single digits. But since July 2024 the advantage has been around 13 points — right around historical norms. The most recent poll, from last month, gives Democrats a 12-point advantage. Other surveys this year also find the party maintaining a lead on education, although the size varies.

The higher ed paradox

There’s been “an epidemic of college closures over the past two decades,” said the New York Times in a recent story about the plans to shutter Hampshire College in Massachusetts. Over 300 colleges and universities have shuttered since 2008, the Times said, citing an analysis by the Hechinger Report. With declining birth rates, more could follow. 

It’s worth noting: The majority of those recent closures have been for-profit colleges, many of which only offered associate degrees. It’s a reminder that while the backlash to higher education has been driven by elite colleges, the schools that are struggling are usually not the ones making headlines.

Across Chalkbeat

“Coherence” is not just a buzzword in education; it might be key to making remedial education stick. Such is the suggestion of a recent study, reported by Chalkbeat’s Erica Meltzer. When students received tutoring from materials aligned with classroom instruction, they made faster learning gains, compared to when the tutoring was with a curriculum separate from in-class learning.

More high schools are offering industry-recognized credentials, spurred both by new requirements and hope that this will give graduates a leg up in the job market. But Chalkbeat Philadelphia’s Rebecca Redelmeier’s reporting offers reason for caution. To meet graduation requirements, schools in the city are promoting credentials of questionable value, like ladder safety.

ICYMI from Ideas