We know how to make schools effective. What’s lacking is leadership committed to doing so.
As families settle into back-to-school routines, parents should pause to consider the quality of the schools they trust with their children’s futures.
American students still haven’t recovered from the Covid pandemic, during which they lost decades of progress. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, math scores for 9-year-olds fell in 2022 to levels last seen in the 1990s. Reading scores stagnated. Black and Hispanic students slid even further behind, widening gaps that were already troubling.
This is personal to me: In Houston, a research project I led called Apollo 20 showed it was possible to erase the racial achievement gap in less than two years, by applying simple reform principles to the worst-performing schools. Today, the tools we used sit on the shelf—not because they failed, but because leaders failed to act. We are watching temporary setbacks calcify into permanent inequality, even though we know how to reverse them.
Continue reading the entire piece here at The Wall Street Journal (paywall)
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Roland G. Fryer, Jr., a John A. Paulson Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, is Professor of Economics at Harvard University, an entrepreneur, and co-founder of Equal Opportunity Ventures.
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