Education Unpacked

We'll wrap up our School Choice mini-series with arguably the most controversial form of school choice: Private School vouchers. In this fraught political-educational moment with an emphasis on increased parental choice and decreased government oversight, vouchers are critical to understand. As always, we'll provide the current context, the historical background, and the pros/cons of the focus issue -- let's dive in!

Charter schools occupy tremendous oxygen in today's education discourse. But what actually are charter schools? And what are their merits and pitfalls? In this episode, we'll explore those questions in hopes of adding more nuance to the often noxious debates about charter schools specifically and school choice more generally.

Schools, school districts, school boards. We're so familiar with these terms that we may have never taken a moment to unpack them. In this episode, we'll dive into how America organizes schools into school districts that are overseen by school boards. I promise it'll be more fun than it sounds like :).

For an institution as central as education, we have stunningly little agreement about what it’s for. Because we all attended school, we have strong views about its purpose; rarely, though, do we step back and realize how discordant those views are. Why does that matter beyond what I shared above? Well, one reason we hear the refrain schools are failing is that we’re unclear about what schools should be doing. To achieve success, we must first define it. In education, we not only lack shared vision but also often have irreconcilable goals. This squishiness of purpose gives educators an unenviable and unviable mandate, and it leaves parents, policymakers, and others feeling frustrated about school performance. In this episode, we'll explore the multiple priorities schools face and the attendant challenges schools face in approaching such a vast set of responsibilities.