Our annual look back at the year’s most popular Education Next articles is itself a popular article with readers. It’s useful as an indicator of what issues are at the top of the education policy conversation.
When we crafted the introduction to this list a year ago, for the top articles of 2020, we observed, “This year, as our list indicates, race and the Covid-19 pandemic dominated the discussion.” Since then, a new president has been inaugurated, but our list signals that the public hasn’t entirely turned the page: both the pandemic and race-related issues attracted high reader interest in 2021, just as they did the year before.
Several articles directly or indirectly related to the pandemic and its effect made the top-20 list. The no. 1 article, “Pandemic Parent Survey Finds Perverse Pattern: Students Are More Likely to Be Attending School in Person Where Covid Is Spreading More Rapidly,” by Michael B. Henderson, Paul E. Peterson, and Martin R. West, reported on what the article called “a troubling pattern: students are most likely to be attending school fully in person in school districts where the virus is spreading most rapidly.” The article “To be clear, this pattern does not constitute evidence that greater use of in-person instruction has contributed to the spread of the virus across the United States. It is equally plausible that counties where in-person schooling is most common are places where there are fewer measures and practices in the wider community designed to mitigate Covid spread.”
Other articles whose findings related to the pandemic or had implications for education amid or after the pandemic included “A Test for the Test-Makers,” “The Shrinking School Week,” “The Covid-19 Pandemic Is a Lousy Natural Experiment for Studying the Effects of Online Learning” “The Politics of Closing Schools,” “Addressing Significant Learning Loss in Mathematics During Covid-19 and Beyond,” and “Move To Trash: Five pandemic-era education practices that deserve to be dumped in the dustbin.”
Articles about race-related education issues also did well with readers. “Critical Race Theory Collides with the Law,” “Teaching About Slavery,” “Ethnic Studies in California,” and “Segregation and Racial Gaps in Special Education” all dealt with those topics.
Perhaps the conflicts over pandemic policies and Critical Race Theory helped provide a push for school choice. Choice—whether in the form of vouchers, scholarships, or charter schools—was the subject of several other articles that made the top 20 list, including “School Choice Advances in the States,” “School Choice and the ‘Truly Disadvantaged,’” “What’s Next in New Orleans,” and “Betsy DeVos and the Future of Education Reform.”
Who knows what 2022 will bring? We hope for our readers the year ahead is one of good health and of continued learning. We look forward to a time when pandemic-related articles no longer dominate our list.
The full Top 20 Education Next articles of 2020 list follows:
2. Critical Race Theory Collides with the Law
4. Ethnic Studies in California
5. Segregation and Racial Gaps in Special Education
6. Making Education Research Relevant
7. Proving the School-to-Prison Pipeline
8. What I Learned in 23 Years Ranking America’s Most Challenging High Schools
10. Addressing Significant Learning Loss in Mathematics During Covid-19 and Beyond
13. The Covid-19 Pandemic Is a Lousy Natural Experiment for Studying the Effects of Online Learning
14. School Choice Advances in the States
15. The Politics of Closing Schools
17. School Choice and “The Truly Disadvantaged”
18. The Orchid and the Dandelion
19. What’s Next in New Orleans
20. Betsy DeVos and the Future of Education Reform
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