The Top 20 Education Next Articles of 2017

Every December, Education Next releases a list of the most popular articles we published over the course of the year based on readership.

This year, the most popular article by far sought to provide evidence-based advice to parents who may be wondering if they should delay their child’s entry into kindergarten for a year, a practice known as academic redshirting.

The list includes some good news for education reformers, including an examination of how one state is already seeing positive results from its decision to put a high-quality curriculum at the heart of its reform efforts; a look at how the hottest show on Broadway is inspiring a generation of students to explore American history; and a deep dive into the world of higher education with an array of new experiments that are making college degrees more accessible, especially for at-risk students.

There are also articles about obstacles to greater progress: a study reveals that teacher expectations impact students’ likelihood of completing college and are often lower for black students than for their white counterparts, even after accounting for students’ academic and demographic backgrounds; and a look at how allowing laptop use in the classroom actually distracts from student learning.

Here’s the list of 2017’s Top Twenty Articles:

1.		Is Your Child Ready for Kindergarten? Redshirting may do more harm than good By Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach and Stephanie Howard Larson
2.		Louisiana Threads the Needle on Ed Reform Launching a coherent curriculum in a local-control state By Robert Pondiscio
3.		Betsy DeVos, the (Relatively Mainstream) Reformer A long record refutes the radical image of the education secretary By Michael Q. McShane
4.		The 2017 EdNext Poll on School Reform Public thinking on school choice, Common Core, higher ed, and more By Martin R. West, Michael B. Henderson, Paul E. Peterson and Samuel Barrows
5.		Competency-Based Education, Put to the Test An inside look at learning and assessment at Western Governors University By Jon Marcus
6.		Should Professors Ban Laptops? How classroom computer use affects student learning By Susan Payne Carter, Kyle Greenberg and Michael S. Walker
7.		The Power of Teacher Expectations How racial bias hinders student attainment By Seth Gershenson and Nicholas Papageorge
8.		Will the XQ “Super Schools” Live Up to Their Name? A new philanthropy’s competition to reinvent high school By Alexander Russo
9.		Hamilton Goes to High School How students are learning U.S. history from the hottest show on Broadway By Wayne D’Orio
10.		A Common Core Curriculum Quandary For Eureka Math, open-source leads to a revenue stream By Michael J. Petrilli
11.		The Teacher Evaluation Revamp, In Hindsight What the Obama administration’s signature reform got wrong By Chad Aldeman
12.		Competency-Based Learning for Teachers Can micro-credentials reboot professional development? By Michael B. Horn and Thomas Arnett
13.		Pacesetter in Personalized Learning Summit charter network shares its model nationwide By Joanne Jacobs
14.		Making Evidence Locally Rethinking education research under the Every Student Succeeds Act By Thomas J. Kane
15.		Measuring Up Assessing instructor effectiveness in higher education By Pieter De Vlieger, Brian A. Jacob and Kevin Stange
16.		Why Most Teachers Get a Bad Deal on Pensions State plans create more losers than winners, and many get nothing at all By Chad Aldeman and Kelly Robson
17.		What Do Parents Think of Their Children’s Schools? EdNext poll compares charter, district, and private schools nationwide By Samuel Barrows, Paul E. Peterson and Martin R. West
18.		A Lasting Impact High-stakes teacher evaluations drive student success in Washington, D.C By Thomas S. Dee and James Wyckoff
19.		Reforming Remediation College students mainstreamed into statistics are more likely to succeed By Alexandra W. Logue, Mari Watanabe-Rose and Daniel Douglas
20.		Is Test-Based Accountability Dead? Three experts weigh in, and look to the future By Morgan S. Polikoff, Jay P. Greene and Kevin Huffman