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107 Education Reform Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

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Education reform is a critical topic in today's society, as we strive to improve the quality of education for all students. Whether you are a student, teacher, parent, or policymaker, education reform affects us all. If you are looking for inspiration for your education reform essay, look no further. Here are 107 education reform essay topic ideas and examples to get you started:

• The importance of early childhood education in education reform
• Examining the impact of standardized testing on education reform
• How technology can revolutionize education reform
• The role of teachers in education reform
• Exploring the benefits of project-based learning in education reform
• Addressing the achievement gap in education reform
• The impact of poverty on education reform
• Promoting diversity and inclusion in education reform
• Implementing social-emotional learning in education reform
• The role of parents in education reform
• Examining the impact of school funding on education reform
• Addressing the mental health crisis in education reform
• The benefits of personalized learning in education reform
• Exploring the impact of school choice on education reform
• The importance of teacher training and professional development in education reform
• Addressing the issue of teacher burnout in education reform
• The impact of school discipline policies on education reform
• Promoting cultural competence in education reform
• Implementing restorative justice practices in education reform
• Addressing the digital divide in education reform
• The role of technology in special education reform
• Examining the impact of school closures on education reform
• Promoting student voice and agency in education reform
• The benefits of arts education in education reform
• Exploring the impact of trauma-informed care in education reform
• Addressing the issue of school segregation in education reform
• The impact of bilingual education on education reform
• Promoting environmental education in education reform
• Implementing inclusive education practices in education reform
• Addressing the issue of teacher retention in education reform
• The impact of school vouchers on education reform
• Exploring the benefits of community schools in education reform
• Promoting career and technical education in education reform
• Implementing social justice education in education reform
• Addressing the issue of school violence in education reform
• The impact of standardized curriculum on education reform
• Promoting civic education in education reform
• Implementing competency-based education in education reform
• Addressing the issue of school suspensions in education reform
• The impact of school funding formulas on education reform
• Exploring the benefits of outdoor education in education reform
• Promoting global education in education reform
• Implementing trauma-sensitive schools in education reform
• Addressing the issue of school overcrowding in education reform
• The impact of school choice policies on education reform
• Promoting teacher collaboration in education reform
• Implementing social-emotional learning programs in education reform
• The impact of arts education on education reform
• Promoting digital literacy in education reform
• Addressing the issue of school discipline policies in education reform
• The impact of school closures on education reform
• Promoting student-centered learning in education reform
• Implementing personalized learning in education reform
• The impact of school choice on education reform
• Exploring the benefits of competency-based education in education reform
• The impact of standardized testing on education reform
• Implementing environmental education in education reform
• The impact of trauma-informed care in education reform
• Promoting bilingual education in education reform

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A new path to education reform: The next chapter on 21st century skills

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Wednesday, January 13, 2021

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The “factory model” of education dominates the majority of American classrooms. Teachers are pressured to improve students’ reading and math scores on standardized tests, but assessments show that scores have remained mostly unchanged since the early 2000s. This model emerged in the early 20th century to mold students for the industrial economy but is not preparing students to thrive in the 21st century or addressing systemic inequalities. The narrow focus on content outcomes—rather than on the ability to critically think through a problem and apply new knowledge systemically—is insufficient, raising a critical question: What can replace it to provide all students with quality education in the 21st century?

Schools can capitalize on the growing consensus in the scientific community around how children learn and what children learn as a pathway to modern transformational reform. Evidence from the interdisciplinary science of learning shows that children learn best through the principles of guided play: adult-facilitated active and engaged learning that is meaningful, socially interactive, iterative, and joyful. Importantly, these principles apply both inside and outside the classroom.

In today’s globalized, rapidly changing world, children need to develop a breadth of skills beyond numeracy and literacy that allow them to engage in independent lifelong learning. The 6 Cs—collaboration, communication, content, critical thinking, creative innovation, and confidence—are a suite of skills that are rooted in the science of learning and build on each other.

With the abrupt disruption to the education status quo wrought overnight by COVID-19, now is the time to rethink the classroom. On January 13, the Center for Universal Education (CUE) hosted a webinar to discuss a path to educational reform. Following a brief overview of the recent Policy 2020 report “ A new path to education reform: Playful learning promotes 21st-century skills in schools and beyond ” by Brookings Fellow Helen Hadani, a panel of experts shared their various perspectives on how to remake education, foster educational equity, and prepare students for a better future.

Viewers submitted questions via email to [email protected] or via Twitter at #21CSReform.

Opening remarks

Panel discussion.

K-12 Education

Global Economy and Development

Center for Universal Education

Brad Olsen, John McIntosh

April 3, 2024

Darcy Hutchins, Emily Markovich Morris, Laura Nora, Carolina Campos, Adelaida Gómez Vergara, Nancy G. Gordon, Esmeralda Macana, Karen Robertson

March 28, 2024

Jennifer B. Ayscue, Kfir Mordechay, David Mickey-Pabello

March 26, 2024

International Perspectives on Education Reform

Leading global education researchers from 15 countries across six continents discussed their visions for driving meaningful, positive educational change in this time-limited blog. Stemming from their essays in the recently published Leading Educational Change: Global Issues, Challenges, and Lessons on Whole-System Reform (Teachers College Press, 2013), the book’s editor Helen Janc Malone and her fellow contributors addressed improving practice, equity and educational justice, accountability and assessment, and whole-system change. This blog is no longer being updated, but you can continue to explore these issues on edweek.org by visiting our related topic pages: international and education reform .

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America has legislated itself into competing red, blue versions of education

American states passed a blizzard of education laws and policies over the past six years that aim to reshape how K-12 schools and colleges teach and present issues of race, sex and gender to the majority of the nation’s students — with instruction differing sharply by states’ political leanings, according to a Washington Post analysis .

See which states are restricting, requiring education on race and sex

Three-fourths of the nation’s school-aged students are now educated under state-level measures that either require more teaching on issues like race, racism, history, sex and gender, or which sharply limit or fully forbid such lessons, according to a sweeping Post review of thousands of state laws, gubernatorial directives and state school board policies. The restrictive laws alone affect almost half of all Americans aged 5 to 19.

How The Post is tracking education bills

Since 2017, 38 states have adopted 114 such laws, rules or orders, The Post found. The majority of policies are restrictive in nature: 66 percent circumscribe or ban lessons and discussions on some of society’s most sensitive topics, while 34 percent require or expand them. In one example, a 2023 Kentucky law forbids lessons on human sexuality before fifth grade and outlaws all instruction “exploring gender identity.” On the other hand, a 2021 Rhode Island law requires that all students learn “African Heritage and History” before high school graduation.

The Post included in its analysis only measures that could directly affect what students learn. Thus, 100 of the laws in The Post’s database apply only to K-12 campuses, where states have much greater power to shape curriculums. At public institutions of higher education — where courts have held that the First Amendment protects professors’ right to teach what they want — the laws instead target programs like student or faculty trainings or welcome sessions.

Tell The Post: How are education laws, restrictions affecting your school?

The divide is sharply partisan. The vast majority of restrictive laws and policies, close to 9o percent, were enacted in states that voted for Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election, The Post found. Meanwhile, almost 80 percent of expansive laws and policies were enacted in states that voted for Joe Biden in 2020.

The explosion of laws regulating school curriculums is unprecedented in U.S. history for its volume and scope, said Jonathan Zimmerman, a University of Pennsylvania professor who studies education history and policy. Controversy and debate over classroom lessons is nothing new, Zimmermann said, but states have never before stepped in so aggressively to set rules for local schools. School districts have traditionally had wide latitude to shape their lessons.

He said it remains an open question whether all laws will translate to curriculum changes, predicting some schools and teachers may refuse to alter their pedagogy. Still, a nationally representative study from the Rand Corp. released this year found that 65 percent of K-12 teachers report they are limiting instruction on “political and social issues.”

“What the laws show is that we have extremely significant differences over how we imagine America,” Zimmerman said. “State legislatures have now used the power of law to try to inscribe one view, and to prevent another. And so we’re deeply divided in America.”

In practice, these divisions mean that what a child learns about, say, the role slavery played in the nation’s founding — or the possibility of a person identifying as nonbinary — may come to depend on whether they live in a red or blue state.

Legislators advancing restrictive education laws argue they are offering a corrective to what they call a recent left-wing takeover of education. They contend that, in the past decade or so, teachers and professors alike began forcing students to adopt liberal viewpoints on topics ranging from police brutality to whether gender is a binary or a spectrum.

Tennessee state Rep. John Ragan (R), who sponsored or co-sponsored several laws in his state that limit or ban instruction and trainings dealing with race, bias, sexual orientation and gender identity on both K-12 and college campuses, said the legislation he helped pass does not restrict education.

“It is restricting indoctrination,” Ragan said. Under his state’s laws, he said, “the information presented is factually accurate and is in fact something worth knowing.”

Those advancing expansive legislation, by contrast, argue they are fostering conditions in which students from all backgrounds will see themselves reflected in lessons. This will make it easier for every student to learn and be successful, while teaching peers to be tolerant of one another’s differences, said Washington state Sen. Marko Liias (D).

Liias was the architect of a law his state passed last month that requires schools to adopt “inclusive curricula” featuring the histories, contributions and perspectives of the “historically marginalized,” including “people from various racial, ethnic, and religious backgrounds, people with differing learning needs, people with disabilities [and] LGBTQ people.” He was inspired to propose the bill after hearing from educators who wanted to create more welcoming classrooms and by memories of his own experiences as a queer student in the 1980s and 1990s, when, he said, there were no LGBTQ role models taught or accepted in schools.

“When schools are inclusive broadly of all the identities brought to the classroom, then everybody thrives and does better,” Liias said.

To construct its database of education laws, The Post analyzed more than 2,200 bills, policies, gubernatorial directives and state school board rules introduced since 2017. The Post identified regulations for review by examining state legislative databases, education law trackers maintained by national bipartisan nonprofits and the websites of various advocacy groups that monitor curriculum legislation.

How curriculum policies took hold

Some blue states began enacting expansive education laws in the late 2010s. From 2017 to 2020, 10 states passed legislation or rules that required schools to start teaching about the history of underrepresented groups such as Black Americans, Pacific Islanders or LGBTQ Americans, The Post found .

State and school leaders were drawing on more than a dozen studies published from the 1990s to 2017 that found student performance, attendance and graduate rates rise when children see people like them included in curriculum, said Jennifer Berkshire , a Yale lecturer on education studies.

“They were thinking, ‘You know, our curriculums aren’t representative enough,’” Berkshire said. “The argument was, if we’re going to realize the goal of full rights and civil participation for kids, we need to do things differently.”

Fourteen of these laws, or 36 percent, came in a rush in 2021, the year after the police killing of George Floyd sparked massive demonstrations and a national reckoning over racism. At the time, activists, teachers, parents and high school students across America were urging schools teach more Black history and feature more Black authors.

Of the expansive laws and policies The Post analyzed, the majority — 69 percent — require or expand education on race or racial issues, especially on Black history and ethnic studies. About a quarter add or enhance education on both LGBTQ and racial issues. Just 8 percent focus solely on LGBTQ lives and topics.

But the onslaught of restrictive legislation in red states began in 2021, too, also inspired in many cases by parent concerns over curriculums.

Anxiety first stirred due to coronavirus pandemic-era school shutdowns as some mothers and fathers — granted an unprecedented glimpse into lessons during the era of school-by-laptop — found they did not like or trust what their children were learning.

Soon, some parents were complaining that lessons were biased toward left-leaning views and too focused on what they saw as irrelevant discussions of race, gender and sexuality — laments taken up by conservative pundits and politicians. National groups like Moms for Liberty formed to call out and combat left-leaning teaching in public schools.

Their fears became legislation with speed: Mostly red states passed 26 restrictive education laws and policies in 2021; 19 such laws or policies the next year and 25 more the year after that.

“If you’ve got parents upset at what they’re seeing, they’re going to go to school board meetings and take it up with their legislators,” said Robert Pondiscio , a senior fellow studying education at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. “And legislators will do what they do: pass laws.”

How the restrictions and expansions work

The plurality of restrictive laws, 47 percent, target both education on race and sex. About a third solely affect education on gender identity and sexuality, while 21 percent solely affect education on race.

Almost 40 percent of these laws work by granting parents greater control of the curriculum — stipulating that they must be able to review, object to or remove lesson material, as well as opt out of instruction. Schools have long permitted parents to weigh in on education, often informally; but under many of the new laws, parental input has more weight and is mandatory.

Another almost 40 percent of the laws forbid schools from teaching a long list of often-vague concepts related to race, sex or gender.

These outlawed concepts usually include the notion that certain merits, values, beliefs, status or privileges are tied to race or sex; or the theory that students should feel ashamed or guilty due to their race, sex or racial past. One such law, passed in Georgia in 2022, forbids teaching that “an individual, solely by virtue of his or her race, bears individual responsibility for actions committed in the past by other individuals of the same race.”

At the college level, among the measures passed in recent years is a 2021 Oklahoma law that prohibits institutions of higher education from holding “mandatory gender or sexual diversity training or counseling,” as well as any “orientation or requirement that presents any form of race or sex stereotyping.”

By contrast, a 2023 California measure says state community college faculty must employ “teaching, learning and professional practices” that reflect “anti-racist principles.”

Some experts predicted the politically divergent instruction will lead to a more divided society.

“When children are being taught very different stories of what America is, that will lead to adults who have a harder time talking to each other,” said Rachel Rosenberg, a Hartwick College assistant professor of education.

But Pondiscio said there is always tension in American society between the public interest in education and parents’ interest in determining the values transmitted to their children. The conflict veers from acute to chronic, he said, and currently it’s in an acute phase. “But I don’t find it inappropriate. I think it is a natural part of democratic governance and oversight,” Pondiscio said.

He added, “One man’s ‘chilling effect’ is another man’s appropriate circumspections.”

Read our research on: Gun Policy | International Conflict | Election 2024

Regions & Countries

3. problems students are facing at public k-12 schools.

We asked teachers about how students are doing at their school. Overall, many teachers hold negative views about students’ academic performance and behavior.

• 48% say the academic performance of most students at their school is fair or poor; a third say it’s good and only 17% say it’s excellent or very good.
• 49% say students’ behavior at their school is fair or poor; 35% say it’s good and 13% rate it as excellent or very good.

Teachers in elementary, middle and high schools give similar answers when asked about students’ academic performance. But when it comes to students’ behavior, elementary and middle school teachers are more likely than high school teachers to say it’s fair or poor (51% and 54%, respectively, vs. 43%).

Teachers from high-poverty schools are more likely than those in medium- and low-poverty schools to say the academic performance and behavior of most students at their school are fair or poor.

The differences between high- and low-poverty schools are particularly striking. Most teachers from high-poverty schools say the academic performance (73%) and behavior (64%) of most students at their school are fair or poor. Much smaller shares of teachers from low-poverty schools say the same (27% for academic performance and 37% for behavior).

In turn, teachers from low-poverty schools are far more likely than those from high-poverty schools to say the academic performance and behavior of most students at their school are excellent or very good.

Lasting impact of the COVID-19 pandemic

Among those who have been teaching for at least a year, about eight-in-ten teachers say the lasting impact of the pandemic on students’ behavior, academic performance and emotional well-being has been very or somewhat negative. This includes about a third or more saying that the lasting impact has been very negative in each area.

Shares ranging from 11% to 15% of teachers say the pandemic has had no lasting impact on these aspects of students’ lives, or that the impact has been neither positive nor negative. Only about 5% say that the pandemic has had a positive lasting impact on these things.

A smaller majority of teachers (55%) say the pandemic has had a negative impact on the way parents interact with teachers, with 18% saying its lasting impact has been very negative.

These results are mostly consistent across teachers of different grade levels and school poverty levels.

Major problems at school

When we asked teachers about a range of problems that may affect students who attend their school, the following issues top the list:

• Poverty (53% say this is a major problem at their school)
• Chronic absenteeism – that is, students missing a substantial number of school days (49%)
• Anxiety and depression (48%)

One-in-five say bullying is a major problem among students at their school. Smaller shares of teachers point to drug use (14%), school fights (12%), alcohol use (4%) and gangs (3%).

Differences by school level

Similar shares of teachers across grade levels say poverty is a major problem at their school, but other problems are more common in middle or high schools:

• 61% of high school teachers say chronic absenteeism is a major problem at their school, compared with 43% of elementary school teachers and 46% of middle school teachers.
• 69% of high school teachers and 57% of middle school teachers say anxiety and depression are a major problem, compared with 29% of elementary school teachers.
• 34% of middle school teachers say bullying is a major problem, compared with 13% of elementary school teachers and 21% of high school teachers.

Not surprisingly, drug use, school fights, alcohol use and gangs are more likely to be viewed as major problems by secondary school teachers than by those teaching in elementary schools.

Differences by poverty level

Teachers’ views on problems students face at their school also vary by school poverty level.

Majorities of teachers in high- and medium-poverty schools say chronic absenteeism is a major problem where they teach (66% and 58%, respectively). A much smaller share of teachers in low-poverty schools say this (34%).

Bullying, school fights and gangs are viewed as major problems by larger shares of teachers in high-poverty schools than in medium- and low-poverty schools.

When it comes to anxiety and depression, a slightly larger share of teachers in low-poverty schools (51%) than in high-poverty schools (44%) say these are a major problem among students where they teach.  

Discipline practices

About two-thirds of teachers (66%) say that the current discipline practices at their school are very or somewhat mild – including 27% who say they’re very mild. Only 2% say the discipline practices at their school are very or somewhat harsh, while 31% say they are neither harsh nor mild.

We also asked teachers about the amount of influence different groups have when it comes to determining discipline practices at their school.

• 67% say teachers themselves don’t have enough influence. Very few (2%) say teachers have too much influence, and 29% say their influence is about right.

• 31% of teachers say school administrators don’t have enough influence, 22% say they have too much, and 45% say their influence is about right.
• On balance, teachers are more likely to say parents, their state government and the local school board have too much influence rather than not enough influence in determining discipline practices at their school. Still, substantial shares say these groups have about the right amount of influence.

Teachers from low- and medium-poverty schools (46% each) are more likely than those in high-poverty schools (36%) to say parents have too much influence over discipline practices.

In turn, teachers from high-poverty schools (34%) are more likely than those from low- and medium-poverty schools (17% and 18%, respectively) to say that parents don’t have enough influence.

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Table of contents, ‘back to school’ means anytime from late july to after labor day, depending on where in the u.s. you live, among many u.s. children, reading for fun has become less common, federal data shows, most european students learn english in school, for u.s. teens today, summer means more schooling and less leisure time than in the past, about one-in-six u.s. teachers work second jobs – and not just in the summer, most popular.

About Pew Research Center Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts .