The Common Core State Standards initiative (CCSS) seeks to "provide a consistent, clear understanding of what students are expected to learn" at various grade levels. For some education observers, CCSS will finally clarify for students, parents, and educators what students need to know and be able to do if they are to be prepared for…

Merit pay initiatives transparently alter the teaching profession and goings-on within classrooms, and thereby promise to stoke the self-interests of the two most prominent stakeholders in public education: teachers and parents. This memo summarizes the authors' ongoing efforts to empirically evaluate the extent to which public debates about merit…

Most people express strong opinions about public education. Only a few know the basic facts about the public schools: (1) how much they spend; (2) how well teachers are paid; and (3) what schools can and cannot do. What happens when the public learns the facts about schools and deliberates responsibly about public education? A series of…

This article presents the findings from the 2009 "Education Next" and Harvard's Program on Education Policy and Governance (PEPG) survey which asks if information changes minds about school reform. The authors fielded the survey in March of 2009, when newly elected president Barack Obama enjoyed public approval ratings above 60 percent.…

Americans clearly have had their fill of a sluggish economy and an unpopular war. Their frustration now may also extend to public education. This article presents the results of the second annual national survey of U.S. adults conducted under the auspices of "Education Next" and the Program on Education Policy and Governance (PEPG) at…

This paper examines the possibility that citizens' mediated and sporadic exposure to education research influences their policy attitudes. It reflects upon how citizens--who are not direct consumers of education research and who lack basic training in the modes of social scientific inquiry--use the paucity of information made available to them in…

Americans both care about their schools and want them to improve. Though adults give the nation's public schools only mediocre grades, they are willing to invest more money in public education and they are reasonably confident that doing so will improve student learning. They are also open to a host of school reforms ranging from high-stakes…