education

THE 2020 NORTH STAR This March will mark ten years since President Obama gave his first major speech about education. In this speech, President Obama referenced the North Star goal for his education policy: that by the year 2020 the United States would once again lead the world in terms of the proportion of young […]

Egypt begins its Year of Education with an ambitious initiative in partnership with Japan that could shift Egypt away from its test-centric education model. Yet, critics worry about the emphasis on conformity and group cohesion in the new curriculum.

BY DENNIS FUNES “Students like YOU end up working rather than going to college.” As a young male of color at a middle school in the Los Angeles School District, a teacher had already predicted my future, or so he thought. Fortunately, I had positive role models, such as my father and my Algebra teacher, […]

BY CHRIS GEARY As a former traditional public middle school math teacher and charter high school history teacher, it is clear that the question “are charter schools good or bad?” cannot be answered as simply as anyone would like. Before diving into the implications, it is worth defining what charter schools actually are. Essentially, a […]

BY ABEL MCDANIELS Last month, teachers from Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation’s second largest school system, went on strike for nine days. Among their demands were community schools. A community school intentionally organizes school and community resources to support student success. These schools stay open well beyond 3pm, the typical end to a […]

BY STEVEN OLENDER Julian Castro championed an ambitious expansion of public education while announcing his 2020 presidential bid by advocating for universal Pre-K. His plan, “Pre-K for the USA,” is likely an extension of his Pre-K 4 SA program which works to make high-quality, full-day Pre-K available to all four-year-olds in San Antonio. Pre-K for […]

As the Syrian refugee crisis continues, reflecting on educational provision for refugee children in Jordan demands a move beyond the crisis approach.

Before 2015, charter schools[1] in Chile were able to select prospective students based on the socioeconomic status of their families, revealed through the ability to pay a copayment;[2] and on other requirements, such as personality tests, admissions tests, marriage certificates, baptism certificates and others[3], that allowed the schools to discriminate against children whose families could […]

Measuring impact of a long term systemic change project Isabel Opice Isabel Opice is a second year MPA/ID student at HKS. Prior to HKS, she worked as an Office Advisor in the Secretariat in the state of Sao Paulo, Brazil. In the everyday life in Brazil, I have seen stark social injustice: young homeless children on […]

BY BILAL CHAUDHARY Stimulating domestic innovation is crucial for developing countries. Innovation, creativity, and out-of-the-box thinking can accelerate the pace of poor countries’ development, reducing their reliance on aid and enhancing their capacity to participate in a rapidly changing global economy. For development to succeed, innovation cannot be solely the domain of the rich and […]

BY IVAN RAHMAN The cover of the most recent Nation magazine portrays a student about to cross a crosswalk, perhaps to a school in a different neighborhood than his own. The accompanying story examines the secession movement in education, a movement in white communities that effectively excludes black and Hispanic youth from majority-white schools. Against […]

BY LAURA WHITE Workforce development had been a frequent news topic in the months preceding my summer at the Governor’s Office in Pennsylvania—from announcements about an executive order on apprenticeships, to predictions about the automation of large swaths of the workforce. Yet I rarely saw in the media the one place where I would find […]