As everyone involved in American schooling continued to claw their way back to some semblance of normal in 2024, the year in education was anything but. One need look no further than Education Next’s annual round-up of the 20 most-read articles to observe some themes in what most concerned our readers about education in this evolving post-pandemic period.
In an echo of the topics that factored highly among our companion Top 10 blog posts of 2024, readers were interested in what students are learning and how they’re learning it. With the precipitous drop in math scores since 2020, online math programs like Khanmigo and i-Ready hold promise to supplement instruction and potentially turn around lagging performance. But author Laurence Holt highlighted the “5 percent problem” of these programs, showing they are used most by a small percentage of highly motivated students who are already doing well in math. Holt’s essay garnered enough attention to earn him 2nd place this year.
Student performance on reading assessments has also taken a hit since 2020, and reader-favorite Doug Lemov pointed to the decline in the time students spend reading whole books in school as one culprit. The move away from studying literature comprehensively and toward deconstructing passages has produced a generation of college-bound students who don’t know how to read books, Lemov argued in an essay that secured 3rd place in our list. David Grissmer and colleagues lent another angle to that argument, showing how background knowledge is essential for building literacy (#4)—an idea based on the research of E. D. Hirsch Jr. and one that the eminent education theorist himself expounded upon in our pages with his concept of the “ratchet effect” of building shared knowledge through language (#11).
But what is to be done about sluggish student achievement in math and reading? Some say high-dosage tutoring is the answer, and two articles explored this intervention. One reported on how tutoring is growing as families seek to make up for lackluster school instruction (#17). The other gave context and a healthy dose of reality to the 40-year-old claim that intensive tutoring can improve learning by two standard deviations (#5).
Another potential intervention—one that is still very much in its infancy—is artificial intelligence. The technology is already being utilized for tutoring purposes, but AI has evolved so rapidly that schools are struggling with how to adapt to it well. Education Next executive editor Michael Horn noted the conundrum of having a promising digital solution with so little time for measured practical application in the classroom. His fellow executive editor, Thomas B. Fordham Institute president Michael J. Petrilli, offered one low-risk idea: using AI to assist with teacher observations and evaluations. The two Michaels’ essays ran neck-and-neck in in the 19 and 18 spots of our list, respectively.
The consternation over AI is not, however, the sole province of school leaders and educators. Horn also reported on the anxiety that students feel about the technology (#8). They harbor concerns about what artificial intelligence will mean for their job prospects and even the very concept of a career in the future. Even so, that uncertainty does not prevent students from using AI to their advantage. Fordham visiting fellow Daniel Buck’s essay on the epidemic of student cheating traced its long history from medieval China to the present-day iteration of academic dishonesty that AI enables (#16).
The article that rose above all others in 2024 returned to a constant concern of education: that the right teachers in the right numbers are in the right places to meet the needs of our students. Education writer Chad Aldeman’s fascinating look at the well-document shortage of special educators revealed that it is not a consequence of low supply but high demand. Schools have expanded their special-education services and created more specialized staffing roles, greatly outpacing the growth in students identified for those services. This nuanced problem told plainly by Aldeman made it by far the most-read Education Next article in 2024.
Despite all the uncertainty, there are many reasons to hope for happier returns in 2025: school choice programs are expanding, alternative schooling models are becoming more mainstream, and ESAs and vouchers are skyrocketing. Plus, more educators are returning to the tried-and-true teaching practices of direct instruction in math and the science of reading. In the year to come, readers will again be able to turn to Education Next as their guide through all of education’s peaks and valleys.
The full top 20 list is here:
