Failed State Update: Truancy

Dan Walters at CalMatters: California’s public schools have a numbers problem —and it’s not just that their students don’t score very highly in national tests of mathematics ability.   Their other numbers problem is the financial squeeze posed by declining...

Failed State Update: Education Data

John Fensterwald at EdSource: States’ websites that annually report the scores on standardized tests and other valuable data, like chronic absenteeism, could provide a reality check by clearly and easily displaying performance results over time. However,...

Good News on Civics

Adam Kinzinger: Today I’m updating my report on the civics problem. It’s still bad out there. According to a recent survey, just 22 percent of kids grasp basic civics and just 13 percent are proficient in history. However, there’s hope in a new program announced by...

Teaching Civics

Hans Zeiger at American Purpose: While we’re failing to teach civics and history to the next generation, we’re fully exposing our students to other aspects of political life that are filtered through social media and the saturated twenty-four-hour news cycle. Sadly,...