Three pieces today, one shared question: have we lost the thread on what education is supposed to do and on who gets to decide?

Start with higher ed. In The New Yorker, Jay Caspian Kang closes his six-week series on the future of college with eight predictions for the next nine years. The enrollment cliff hollows out small private and regional public schools. The share of high school graduates going to college keeps sliding — 70% in 2009, 61% today. AI partnerships stay awkward, the cheating problem goes unsolved, and community colleges come out ahead. None of it is Armageddon, he writes. The harder finding: after six weeks of asking, almost no one could tell him what a college education is actually for.

Kaya Henderson sees the same gap in K-12. In Stanford Social Innovation Review, the former DC schools chancellor argues we no longer agree on what to teach, but we still run schools on a century-old structure that puts every decision in adult hands. Her fix: hand students some of that power. When she gathered DCPS students for the district's first student budget hearing, their clearest ask was for more rigorous coursework — something that years of adult hearings had never surfaced. She expanded AP access, and participation and pass rates both rose.

Which makes the third piece a useful caution. In Chalkbeat, Matt Barnum asks whether states run schools better than local boards. More states are betting yes — Houston, Fort Worth, Indianapolis, Memphis. But a study of 45 takeovers between 2010 and 2018 found no academic improvement; if anything, scores dipped. Changing who's in charge isn't the same as knowing what to do.

— Thomas

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