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4 weeks ago | 
lawliberty.org | Michael Q. McShane |Jodi Bruhn |John Berlau |George Hawley
The passing of time has a funny way of playing with our memories. The coronavirus pandemic particularly distorted our perception, as days of monotonous isolation ran into each other, flattening weeks or months (or even years depending on where one lived). But even absent such a disorienting event, we humans tend to look back with rose-colored glasses and conflate what we know now with what we knew then.
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Sep 3, 2024 | 
aei.org | Frederick M. Hess |Michael Q. McShane |James Patterson
with Frederick M. Hess & Michael Q. McShane, hosted by James M. PattersonAs students head back to classrooms, host James Patterson welcomes education experts Frederick Hess and Michael McShane to the podcast. We are still finding the “new normal” after Covid lockdown shook our education system—and public confidence in schools. Too often, our schools are guided by ideas developed by policymakers, intellectuals, and administrators who are separated from the needs of the classroom.
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Sep 2, 2024 | 
lawliberty.org | Frederick M. Hess |Michael Q. McShane |James Patterson
with Frederick M. Hess & Michael Q. McShane, hosted by James M. Patterson As students head back to classrooms, host James Patterson welcomes education experts Frederick Hess and Michael McShane to the podcast. We are still finding the “new normal” after Covid lockdown shook our education system—and public confidence in schools. Too often, our schools are guided by ideas developed by policymakers, intellectuals, and administrators who are separated from the needs of the classroom.
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Jun 20, 2024 | 
edchoice.org | Michael Q. McShane
Recently, my colleagues and I at EdChoice published The School Starter Checklist, a compendium of the regulations governing private schools in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Many of the regulations that we document are perfectly reasonable. Expectations, for example, that schools ensure that their facilities are not riddled with asbestos, or that their bus drivers have the appropriate licenses, or that their teachers pass background checks are all appropriate to keep children safe.
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Jun 12, 2024 | 
edchoice.org | Michael Q. McShane
There are a lot of misconceptions about private schools. A popular one is that private schools operate in a lawless, devil-may-care, world of no regulation. As our new resource, the School Starter Checklist, makes very clear, this is not at all the case. The dense thicket of regulations governing private schools can be quite a headache for educational entrepreneurs looking to launch new schools.
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May 19, 2024 | 
thehill.com | Frederick M. Hess |Michael Q. McShane
Occupied buildings. Smashed windows. Tent encampments. Antisemitic sloganeering. Masked mobs cheering terrorist organizations. The scenes at dozens of America’s best-known colleges look like a dystopian cinema. It’s an emotional tableau, and most of the commentary has reflected that. But the denunciations and deflections don’t offer much of a way forward. What should campus leaders do? Is there a better course than dithering, kowtowing and then issuing panicked calls to local police? There just might be.
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May 9, 2024 | 
aei.org | Frederick M. Hess |Michael Q. McShane
There may be no more familiar question in education than, “Why can’t we put politics aside and do what’s best for kids?” The answer, which is obvious to anyone who’s ever sat through a school board meeting, is because we don’t agree on “what’s best for kids.” It’s not even clear what it would mean to “put politics aside,” given that politics is how we resolve public disagreements—and that public education entails the use of public funds to hire public employees to educate the public’s kids.
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May 9, 2024 | 
educationnext.org | Frederick M. Hess |Michael Q. McShane
There may be no more familiar question in education than, “Why can’t we put politics aside and do what’s best for kids?” The answer, which is obvious to anyone who’s ever sat through a school board meeting, is because we don’t agree on “what’s best for kids.” It’s not even clear what it would mean to “put politics aside,” given that politics is how we resolve public disagreements—and that public education entails the use of public funds to hire public employees to educate the public’s kids.
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May 2, 2024 | 
aei.org | Frederick M. Hess |Michael Q. McShane
We just published a new book, Getting Education Right: A Conservative Vision for Improving Early Childhood, K–12, and College. As the title makes clear, we unabashedly make the case for a conservative approach to education. But we think it’s important to clarify the kind of “conservatism” we have in mind. We’re not talking about politics. We’re not politicos or social media impresarios. We’re educators and scholars.
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Apr 10, 2024 | 
educationnext.org | Michael Q. McShane |Michael Horn |Martin R. West |Eric Wearne
What should we call the growing number of learning environments that lie between traditional homeschooling and conventional, five-days-a-week, brick-and-mortar public and private schooling? So-called “microschools” and “hybrid schools” have gained enormous popularity in the past few years. The first Prenda microschool opened in Arizona in 2018, and Prenda has since served nearly 10,000 students.
