The Education Exchange

Some recent studies of the impact of school choice have found only a limited impact on academic achievement but larger positive effects on long-term outcomes like attainment and earnings. What could account for this? In this episode of the podcast, Paul talks with Marty West about his new working paper on the impact of school choice on non-cognitive skills.

Albert Cheng of the Harvard Kennedy School sits down with Paul E. Peterson to discuss his research that looks into whether students with a career and technical education diploma do better than students with a traditional diploma.

The state of New Jersey is returning to the city of Newark the power to run its school system. Chris Cerf, who served as state superintendent of New Jersey and then district superintendent of Newark, joins Paul Peterson to talk about the changes that have taken place in the Newark school district and what lies ahead.

Daniel Hamlin of Harvard's Program on Education Policy and Governance sits down with Paul E. Peterson to discuss his paper, "Are Charter Schools Safer in Deindustrialized Cities With High Rates of Crime? Testing Hypotheses in Detroit," which investigates whether there's any difference in student perception of safety between district and charter schools in Detroit. Read his full paper here: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3102/0002831217705060

Michael Podgursky, Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss the role of public sector unions in negotiating and sometimes even selling health care and other benefits to its members.

Josh Goodman of the Harvard Kennedy School sits down with Paul E. Peterson to discuss a new master's degree in computer science offered by Georgia Tech. The computer science department, one of the top 10 programs in the country, has set up a flexible, online program for working adults that charges only 1/6 of what an in-person master's degree costs. Read the full paper, co-written with Julia Melkers, and Amanda Pallais, here: https://research.hks.harvard.edu/publications/workingpapers/citation.aspx?PubId=11348&type=WPN

Martin Lueken of EdChoice and Benjamin Scafidi of Kennesaw State University sit down with Paul E. Peterson to discuss their reasearch on the effect of the Indiana Choice Scholarship Program on school district resources.

Demand for seats in charter schools remains high among families but public enthusiasm for continued growth of the charter sector seems to be slipping. Jason Riley, Wall Street Journal columnist and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, sits down with Paul E. Peterson to discuss where the opposition to charter schools is coming from.

The U.S. Department of Education is urging states and school districts to expand their school voucher programs. In this episode of the podcast, Paul talks with Dennis Epple, an economics professor at Carnegie Mellon and one of the co-authors of a paper that reviews the literature on voucher programs and comes up with recommendations for practitioners.

Steve Klinsky, founder and CEO of ModernStates.org, joins Paul Peterson to discuss his new charity, which offers students up to 40 transferrable college credits for free. Modern States presents a set of high-quality online courses, taught by real college professors, that students would typically take in their freshman year of college. Students access the courses and textbooks for free online and earn course credit by taking a College Board-certified exam upon completion—and Modern States will pay the testing fee for the first 10,000 students who take an end-of-course exam. Klinsky detailed the organization’s mission in a blog post here: http://educationnext.org/free-college-is-now-here-really-modern-states-education-alliance/