As we begin 2025, the pandemic disruption to K-12 public schools continues to haunt America’s young people. Some of its effects result from school closures, while others predate the pandemic but were made worse by these closures.

“We’re in the midst of an education depression. By depression, I mean an extended era of shrinking outcomes and opportunity. This goes far beyond the pandemic,” writes Tim Daly in The Education Daly.

So our young people, especially the most vulnerable, face a diminished future. Stanford University economist Eric Hanushek calculates that if learning loss is not reversed, the average student’s lifetime earnings will be 6% lower, the equivalent of a 6% income tax surcharge on students’ working lives. Nor will these losses be equally distributed as the most disadvantaged will suffer the worst consequences.

Keep reading in Forbes.

The cost of a college education continues to rise beyond the means of most Americans. Despite growing sources of federal financial assistance, more Americans carry excessive levels of student debt than ever before per statistics from Motley Fool.

Americans can reduce the cost of tuition in various ways, but among the most popular is earning course credit for work done before finishing high school. In some cases, high schools can engage in dual enrollment—namely by taking certain courses at a community college. In others they can take a college-level class in high school, and ear college credibly by earning a score of 3 or more on Advanced Placement subject tests or completing the International Baccalaureate curriculum.

Of course, those programs come at a cost to the colleges where those students matriculate—registrars can’t charge students for classes they’ve already taken. And over time, colleges and universities have erected new hurdles to receiving dual enrollment, AP, and IB credit.

Keep reading in Forbes.

“You don’t need a degree to succeed, but you do need a map,” says Matt Sigelman, President of Burning Glass Institute, a labor market analytics firm that studies the future of work and workers. Most Americans agree, saying they want to find pathways to good jobs and a career, according to the Career Optimism Index 2024.

This nationally representative survey of U.S. workers and employers, sponsored by the University of Phoenix Career Institute, reports that most current workers say they need support setting career goals (51%) and identifying job options that match their skills and interests (53%). It also found perception gaps of roughly 25 percentage points between workers and employers when asked whether five career development supports were available to help them set goals and develop skills. For example, 67% of employers say regular conversations with managers about career paths are available, but only 42% of workers agree.

The best way to meet this current workforce need is with career navigation systems, which help learners and workers create a road map to good jobs. These systems in turn must be built on accurate information on jobs that are genuine pathways to opportunity. Let’s examine the main elements of what makes a robust career navigation system and the ways organizations develop job and career information for an effective system.

Read more in Forbes.

Over the past few decades, most kids have grown up being told by their parents that getting a four-year college degree is the best way to get ahead in life. Today, however, as the cost of college has skyrocketed and employers have faced a shortage of skilled workers, people have started to look beyond traditional two and four-year colleges for their pathway to career success.

With so many employers in need of workers with qualifications in anything from IT services to healthcare to the culinary arts, short-term educational programs have been one of the fastest emerging career training opportunities for people looking to enter the workforce or change careers. These programs are typically highly accredited, providing workers with a quality education and the specific skills they need to thrive.

However, Washington lawmakers have created an unbalanced system that makes it harder for students to access these programs. Short-term training programs are popular, enjoy higher competition rates than two-year degrees, and tend to be dramatically cheaper than traditional colleges — but the cost can still be prohibitive, and very little financial aid in the form of grants or scholarships is available for them at the state, local, and federal levels. While some short-term programs are eligible for federal student loans, under current law, programs must span at least 600 hours over 15 weeks to qualify for Pell Grants.

Read more in RealClearEducation. 

Many states’ standardized test scores mislead the public about whether students have mastered the lessons taught at their grade level. In other words, scores some states label as ‘proficient’ doesn’t match the knowledge the nation’s top experts in student assessment say children should attain by their age.

Wisconsin now joins their ranks.

In June, with nary a public hearing, Jill Underly’s Department of Public Instruction (DPI) unilaterally watered down Wisconsin’s achievement standards. Without input from the governor, legislators, parents, or assessment experts, DPI lowered the “cut” scores for the state’s annual Forward exam.

Not surprisingly, Underly’s new performance standards manifested as a mirage on the Forward exam scores released earlier this fall:

• In 2023, 39% of Wisconsin students tested proficient in reading; in 2024, 51% did.
• In 2023, 41% were proficient in math; in 2024, DPI claims 53% are.

That’s a 12% jump in both subjects in one year – extremely unusual, even when students get intensive academic remediation.

Read more in The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. 

Democrats face two enormous challenges in light of their disastrous 2024 election showing. The first is to defend democracy as President-elect Donald Trump, the most authoritarian figure ever elected president, takes power with a much broader mandate than in his first term.  The second is to restore the faith of working-class voters in a party that has utterly lost touch with them.

Normally, these two priorities are viewed as contradictory. After all, working people by necessity focus on kitchen table economic concerns.

But Democrats can take one important step that would simultaneously move them to the center culturally and affirm democratic norms:  create a robust program of “liberal patriotic education” that would merge a love of country with a recognition that the U.S. still needs to do much more to widen opportunity to those left behind.

Read more in The Hill.  

Over the past few decades, donors have poured millions of dollars into improving K-12 schooling by creating a new sector of public charter schools of choice that are accountable for results. One analysis calculates that 11,827 foundations have provided financial support to nonprofits in the charter schools category—money given not just through traditional grants but through program-related investments and social impact funds.

These donors—and charter supporters in general—have often been derided for their efforts. So has it been worth all the hassle and wrath directed at them? In short, yes. (Last week, I summarized research studies that show the salutary effect charter schools have on closing the achievement gap, reducing inequality between richer and poor students, and lifting the performance of entire school districts.) As economists Douglas Harris and Feng Chen write, “Charter school laws have been arguably the most influential school reform efforts of the past several decades.”

Since the first law creating these schools was passed in 1991, we’ve learned much about their positive impact on students, the traditional K-12 system, and the communities where they exist. I would summarize the three most important lessons like this:

1. Charter schools reduce academic inequality by closing student achievement gaps.
2. Charter schools raise the overall quality of public schools.
3. Because they improve the quality of K-12 public schools, creating more charter schools reduces inequality in America.

These three lessons create what I call the virtuous improvement cycle of charter schools.

Read more in Philanthropy Daily.