Education Policy Archive

Millions of children headed back to school this week, but the environment they’ve returned to is anything but familiar. Those in classrooms are facing radically different health and safety protocols, while many others are still confined to their homes, using remote tools to communicate with their teachers and classmates. This week on the Trend Lines podcast, WPR’s Elliot Waldman was joined by Rebecca Winthrop, senior fellow and co-director of the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution, to discuss how COVID-19 is changing the face of education. Winthrop and her colleagues have found that the pandemic is exposing new […]

Education has traditionally been viewed as humanity’s great equalizer, providing children from less privileged backgrounds with the tools they need to achieve greater degrees of financial security and success in their chosen fields. Unfortunately, education can serve to entrench socio-economic disparities just as much as it alleviates them. That has become all too clear in recent months, as the families and schools with the greatest resources, both financial and technological, look to be the ones best-prepared to weather the coronavirus pandemic. But according to Rebecca Winthrop, senior fellow and co-director of the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution, […]

Editor’s Note: Every Wednesday, WPR Newsletter and Engagement Editor Benjamin Wilhelm curates the week’s top news and expert analysis on China. Authorities have detained at least 23 people in China’s Inner Mongolia region following protests last week against new rules requiring classes in primary and secondary schools to be taught in Mandarin, rather than Mongolian. Activists are warning of a broader campaign to chip away at Mongolian cultural identity, and based on recent reports from the region, a strict crackdown on ethnic Mongol communities is already underway. The “bilingual education” program in Inner Mongolia, announced just days before it was […]