K-12 enrollment is on the decline between a combination of dropping birth rates and more school choice options, putting schools in a tight bind. The public school system is expected to see a drop of millions of students over the next five years, a hit that will affect schools financially and potentially lead to the closure of more districts. Ways to combat this phenomenon are limited, as experts say schools will have to look at scaling down operations or competing with other educational institutions. From fall 2019 to fall 2023, a 2.5 percent drop in enrollment occurred, taking more than a million kids out of the K-12 system. The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) projects … [Read more...]
Opinion: ‘It may be time for McCleary 2.0’
Dick Rylander provides an analysis of the Battle Ground School District’s November 2026 EP&O Levy Dick Rylander for Clark County Today This article is my analysis based on my research and interpretations. It contains a significant amount of detail and numbers. As such, if you need clarifications please reach out to someone whose opinion you trust and ask for their assistance. Every attempt has been made to be accurate and, in the case of projections or estimates, to incorporate information gleaned from conversations. If there are factual errors please notify me. On Thursday July 16, 2026 the BGSD Superintendent (Shelly Whitten) presented a levy proposal to the School Board … [Read more...]
‘A painful reality’: School closures follow shrinking enrollment across the country
This article comes from https://www.idahoednews.org/top-news/a-painful-reality-school-closures-follow-shrinking-enrollment-across-the-country/?brid=YWdncwE40l_v_VDBnKWzuqunWOFp BALTIMORE – School districts around the country are facing a painful reality as enrollments decline. For many districts, there are too many schools for the number of kids they’ll serve in a few years, according to Marguerite Roza, director of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University. It’s not a matter of if schools will close but when, as lower birth rates have led to smaller incoming kindergarten classes. “We have this misalignment and it’s making it really painful for districts,” Roza … [Read more...]
Screen time
From the Facts They Don't Teach You The world spent years pushing screens into classrooms. Tablets replaced textbooks. Digital assignments replaced handwritten notes. Schools were told that the future of education was sitting behind a screen. Now some European countries are starting to reverse course. Sweden, Finland, Norway, France, Italy, and Denmark are all moving away from heavy classroom digitalization and bringing back something many schools thought was disappearing: printed books, handwriting, and traditional reading. And this shift is not happening because of nostalgia. It is happening because researchers have found that writing by hand and reading … [Read more...]
Students can’t read
The crisis of students being unable to read is a measurable, generational collapse in literacy that extends from elementary students lacking phonics to high schoolers who cannot comprehend complex texts. 40% of fourth graders cannot read proficiently, and 32% of twelfth graders scored below Basic on the 2024 NAEP reading assessment, the lowest level since the test began in 1992. Key factors contributing to this decline include: Neurological Impact of Technology: The mere presence of smartphones reduces working memory and fluid intelligence, while reading on screens suppresses comprehension-related neural activity compared to paper reading. Reliance on AI: Early use of … [Read more...]
Some old-school ideas that worked
From an article at https://1819news.com/culture/jeff-minick-some-old-school-ideas-that-worked Recently I bumbled into the 1962 Spotlight, the yearbook for Boonville High School in Piedmont, N.C. I was in fifth grade that year, and the elementary school, which was on the same property and ran from first through eighth grade, was included in the album. My perusal left me a bit thunderstruck thanks to the differences between then and now. Integration and Consolidation Schools in the South were still segregated that year. Boonville’s black school was no more than a mile or two from ours. Desegregation would begin within three years. Schools in Yadkin County were not yet … [Read more...]
When Free Pre-K Is Worse Than No Pre-K
Today’s article from Intellectual Takeout Dale Farran spent a decade studying over 1,000 kids who went to a state-run pre-kindergarten—and a control group of kids that wanted to, but didn’t get in. She is shocked and dismayed by what she discovered: By 6th grade the pre-K kids were doing worse all around: worse reading, math and science scores; more learning disorders; and more discipline problems, including serious ones that got them suspended. “It really has required a lot of soul-searching,” Farran told Anya Kamenetz on NPR. Now she’s pondering “what were plausible reasons that may account for this.” One theory she has is that the free pre-K doesn’t look like pricey … [Read more...]
15 Failures of U.S. Public Education in 2025
This article claims there are 15 definable reasons why public education is in decline in the USA. Do you agree (we don't believe this is an accurate list but it's a place to start. Here's a link to the original article: 15 Failures of U.S. Public Education in 2025 Introduction American public education is at a crossroads. Once hailed as a global standard, the system today faces deep, structural problems that undermine its ability to deliver on its promise of equity and opportunity. From worsening academic performance to chronic underfunding, the failures of the American public education system are not isolated issues but interconnected challenges. In 2025, the stakes have never been … [Read more...]
The scary truth about how far behind American kids have fallen
From Harvard University: https://cepr.harvard.edu/news/scary-truth-about-how-far-behind-american-kids-have-fallen Students of all ages still haven’t made up the ground they lost during the pandemic. Sometimes, panics are overblown. Sometimes, older generations are just freaking out about the youngins, as they have since time immemorial. That’s not the case, unfortunately, with kids’ learning right now, more than four years after the pandemic shuttered classrooms and disrupted the lives of millions of children. The effects were seen almost immediately, as students’ performance in reading and math began to dip far below pre-pandemic norms, worrying educators and families around … [Read more...]
Fed up With Screens, Parents Are Demanding a Return To Pen and Paper in the Classroom
Not so very long ago, school districts and education leaders told us that technology in the classroom was essential to the success of our students. “An iPad on every desk” became the new “chicken in every pot” slogan, as experts tried to convince us that technology could be a panacea for the nation’s test scores. Well, they convinced us. And now some parents are working to extract their children from this technological bill of goods that we were sold. According to NBC News, parents like Julie Frumin and Emily Cherkin strongly believe that the heavy presence of technology in the classroom – particularly through Chromebooks and iPads – is harming their children, so much so that they took … [Read more...]
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