The Education Exchange

How do teachers feel about the changes taking place in American education? In this replay episode, Evan Stone, the co-founder and CEO of Educators for Excellence, joined Paul E. Peterson to discuss his organization's survey, “Voices from the Classroom: A Survey of America’s Educators.” https://e4e.org/sites/default/files/2018_voices_from_the_classroom_teacher_survey.pdf

The Florida Legislature created the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship Program in 2001. Last year, scholarships from the program were awarded to a total of 108,098 students to attend private schools in the state. Jason Bedrick, director of policy for EdChoice, joins Paul E. Peterson to explain how the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship program works and to discuss the results of a new survey of participating families. Bedrick and Lindsey Burke co-authored a report on the survey, "Surveying Florida Scholarship Families," and also a blog entry about it for EdNext. https://www.edchoice.org/research/surveying-florida-scholarship-families/ https://www.educationnext.org/survey-says-parents-want-school-choice/

Researchers and policymakers are often puzzled when a policy like high quality preschool or class size reduction is found to have no impact on student test scores but a positive impact on longer-term outcomes like college graduation or future earnings. A new paper by Eric Nielsen can help explain these different findings. It turns out that the way we calculate test scores may be disguising the true impact of these policies. Eric Nielsen joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss his paper, “Test Items, Outcomes, and Achievement Gaps.” http://papers.nber.org/conf_papers/f115410/f115410.pdf

Erica Suares, Senior Policy Advisor to the Senate Majority Leader, Senator Mitch McConnell, sits down with Paul E. Peterson to discuss some of the inner workings of legislation in the Senate, including how the tax reform bill came together and what's on the horizon for higher education and school choice.

Clint Bolick, an Associate Justice of the Arizona Supreme Court, talks with Paul E. Peterson about how the results of gubernatorial elections will affect the school choice climate in various states. They also discuss the proposed expansion of an education savings account program which was on the ballot in Arizona.

Are parents move likely to want to send their kids to college if they are given accurate information about the costs and benefits of attending college? A new study looks at what happens when parents are given customized information about the cost of going to college and the wage premium for earning a college degree. Albert Cheng, Assistant Professor at the University of Arkansas, joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss their paper, "Experimental Impacts of Customized Information on College Aspirations," available at: https://appam.confex.com/appam/2018/webprogram/Paper27508.html

Richard Barth, CEO of the KIPP Foundation, joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss how the KIPP network is adapting to changes in the charter sector.

In Boston, nearly 25% of public middle and high school students attend exam schools, but these schools are much less diverse than the school district as a whole. A new study looks closely at the entrance exam used to select students for these schools and at ways the admissions process could be changed to to make the schools more diverse without sacrificing academic selectivity. Joshua Goodman of the Harvard Kennedy School joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss the new study, "Increasing Diversity in Boston's Exam Schools," which he co-wrote with Melanie Rucinski. The study can be found at: https://www.hks.harvard.edu/centers/rappaport/research-and-publications/policy-briefs/increasing-diversity-in-Boston's-Exam-Schools

Hanna Skandera, Editor-in-chief of The Line and former Secretary of Education for New Mexico, sits down with Paul E. Peterson to discuss the four-day school week and Pathway 2 Tomorrow, a call for innovative proposals to broaden education.

There are plenty of college-level online courses available for free, but students who want college credit for an online course may have to pay up to $1,000 per credit, or $30,000 per year. Modern States Education Alliance has come up with a way to combine college-level online learning with free college credit. Students take specially designed courses aligned with tests offered by the College Board. These tests are accepted by over 2,900 U.S. colleges and universities for college credit. Steve Klinksy, founder and CEO of Modern States Education Alliance, sits down with Paul E. Peterson to explain how the organization is able to provide an on-ramp to college with its "Freshman Year for Free" program.