The Top 20 Education Next Articles of 2019

Our annual look back at the year’s most popular Education Next articles is itself a reader favorite. That’s so perhaps not only because of its status as a kind of “greatest hits” album, but because the list itself can offer some insights into the current state of the education policy conversation.

This year, with structural overhauls at the national level largely stalled as a divided Congress focused on other issues, the attention of our readers was drawn to what is going on inside classrooms. Our most popular article of 2019 was “The Best Way to Help Children Remember Things? Not ‘Memorable Experiences’,” by a British educator, Clare Sealy. She discussed ways for teachers to plan math and science lessons so that students learn the material even if they don’t remember the individual classes. “Serving the Math Whiz Kids,” by Kathryn Baron, covered math education. “Put ‘Whole Language’ on Trial,” by Michael J. Petrilli, is about how best to teach reading.

Technology increasingly seems to affect education. Doug Lemov’s review of Maryanne Wolf’s book about “The Reading Brain in a Digital World” was one of our top articles, as was Kenneth R. Foster’s careful assessment of the health threats of technology in schools.

Not that the education reform agenda of choice and accountability has entirely lost steam. An article by Ron Matus about “Miami’s Choice Tsunami” is on the list of our top stories. Even higher up on the list, though, was “The Achievement Gap Fails to Close,” an article by Eric A. Hanushek, Paul E. Peterson, Laura M. Talpey, and Ludger Woessmann documenting, largely, a lack of progress over a half-century of testing. Perhaps next year, or next half-century, will bring better results. Or perhaps not. In the meantime, here is this year’s full list, the Top 20 Education Next articles of 2019:

1.		The Best Way to Help Children Remember Things? Not “Memorable Experiences” The difference between “Episodic Memory” and “Semantic Memory,” and what it means for teaching and learning By Clare Sealy
2.		The Achievement Gap Fails to Close Half century of testing shows persistent divide between haves and have-nots By Eric A. Hanushek, Paul E. Peterson, Laura M. Talpey and Ludger Woessmann
3.		Forgetting How to Read A neuroscientist examines reading in the age of screens By Doug Lemov
4.		Is Summer Learning Loss Real? How I lost faith in one of education research’s classic results By Paul T. von Hippel
5.		Do Smarter Teachers Make Smarter Students? International evidence on teacher cognitive skills and student performance By Eric A. Hanushek, Marc Piopiunik and Simon Wiederhold
6.		Rise and Shine How school start times affect academic performance By Jennifer Heissel and Samuel Norris
7.		Public Support Grows for Higher Teacher Pay and Expanded School Choice Results from the 2019 Education Next Poll By Michael B. Henderson, David Houston, Paul E. Peterson and Martin R. West
8.		The Education Opportunity in Opportunity Zones Can incentivized investment in distressed communities close the prosperity gap? By John Bailey
9.		The Lost Children of E.D. Hirsch Natalie Wexler’s ‘The Knowledge Gap’ is a first-rate argument for content-rich curriculum. Will it make a difference? By Robert Pondiscio
10.		Put “Whole Language” on Trial The case against reading instruction that leads to illiteracy By Michael J. Petrilli
11.		Serving the Math Whiz Kids Private enrichment programs step up to meet the need By Kathryn Baron
12.		New York State Cracks Down on Jewish Schools Senator Simcha Felder and Rabbi Chaim Dovid Zwiebel meet the long shadow of Joseph Hodges Choate By Menachem Wecker
13.		Has President Trump Scared Away All the Foreign Students? The facts behind fears of a higher-education revenue recession By Alex Usher
14.		How To Tackle Student Absenteeism Late winter is a peak period for school absenteeism. How can schools best combat that problem? By Todd Rogers and Carly Robinson
15.		The Right Way to Capture College “Opportunity” Popular Measures Can Paint the Wrong Picture of Low-Income Student Enrollment By Caroline Hoxby and Sarah Turner
16.		A Certificate, Then a Degree Certificate-first programs can help tackle America’s college-completion crisis By Clark G. Gilbert and Michael B. Horn
17.		Miami’s Choice Tsunami Carvalho, competition, and transformation in Miami-Dade By Ron Matus
18.		Is Wi-Fi a Health Threat in Schools? Sorting fact from fiction By Kenneth R. Foster
19.		How To Make School Start Later Early-morning high school clashes with teenage biology, but change is hard By Danielle Dreilinger
20.		How Teach for America Affects Beliefs about Education Connecting Classroom Experience to Opinions on Education Reform By Katharine M. Conn, Virginia S. Lovison and Cecilia Hyunjung Mo