Jack Schneider
Dwight W. Allen Distinguished Professor of Education and Director of the Center for Education Policy University of Massachusetts Amherst
- Amherst MA
Jack Schneider studies educational policy and reform with a focus on K-12 public schools.
University of Massachusetts Amherst
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Expertise
Biography
He leads the Center for Education Policy at UMass Amherst, which seeks to strengthen PK-12 schooling and higher education through democratic decision-making and the use of evidence. He writes regularly for the public--in outlets like the Atlantic, the Nation, and the New York Times--and he is co-host of the popular education policy podcast "Have You Heard."
Video
Education
Stanford University
Ph.D.
Education
Stanford University
M.A.
History
Haverford College
B.A.
Political Science
Links
Select Recent Media Coverage
Why Hasn’t Trump Already Closed the Department of Education?
The Nation online
2025-02-21
Maybe because its support for students is popular with Republicans as well as Democrats. And because cutting that funding would blow a big hole in the budgets of red states.
“Education Reform” Has Undermined Public Schools’ Popularity
Jacobin online
2025-08-27
School privatization efforts are making dangerous advances in states like Florida and Arizona. Neoliberal education reforms that have degraded public schools, from high-stakes testing to corporatized visions of education, are in part to blame.
How the Department of Education came into existence
NPR radio
2025-02-05
Jack Schneider is interviewed about the history of the U.S. Department of Education. “I think that these roots of what is today the Department of Education help us understand what the department is really good for,” he says.
The MCAS doesn’t measure learning. We need to replace it.
Boston Globe
2024-10-11
While Massachusetts consistently ranks first on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, it also has some of the largest and most persistent test score gaps.
Moms for Liberty faces new challenges and growing pushback over its conservative education agenda
CNN online
2024-02-03
Jack Schneider, Dwight W. Allen Distinguished Professor in the College of Education at UMass Amherst, comments in an article about the conservative agenda focusing on public schools pushed by the right-wing group Moms for Liberty. “It’s one thing to smear teachers or to level outrageous claims about the curriculum. It’s another thing entirely to convince local voters – people who have a stake in the schools actually functioning – that you have the good sense and the practical skills to oversee school district operations,” Schneider says.
What experts say parents should know before using school rating websites like Niche, GreatSchools
San Diego Union Tribune online
2023-11-07
“All Niche is doing there is really reflecting demographic data in disguise,” said Jack Schneider, education professor at the University of Massachusetts and director of the university’s Beyond Test Scores Project. “They are ostensibly telling us about the quality of schools when they are really telling us about the privilege of neighborhoods.”
Should Mass. consider a ‘nuclear option’ for catching kids up in school? Here are 7 big ideas.
The Boston Globe online
2023-09-26
Education historian Jack Schneider disagrees with the focus on standardized test scores and said teachers are already overextended, and communities should do more to support students through, say, summer and after-school programming and weekend enrichment. ”For me,” Schneider said, “the question is what then can we do to make sure that the supports that some students have access to outside of school are more evenly experienced by all students?”
The End of Scantron Tests
The Atlantic online
2023-09-19
In 1900, roughly 10 percent of teens attended high school; by 1940, some 70 percent did. Colleges, too, were figuring out how to choose among much larger pools of applicants. It was no longer feasible for educators “to rely on their eyes and ears” to evaluate students, Jack Schneider, an education historian at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, told me. Schools and school districts needed data.
The big problem(s) with grades
The Washington Post online
2023-09-05
In the early 20th Century, K-12 schools began developing and implementing systems to grade students, with many of them adopting what was already in use in some colleges and universities — the A-F system. Students have been complaining about them ever since, and education historians have noted their virtues as well as their many deficiencies.
Why Is the Republican Party Suddenly Weakening Child Labor Laws?
The Nation online
2023-03-16
Rolling back restrictions on child labor and dismantling public education will make the country far more unequal. For today’s GOP, that’s a feature, not a bug.
Select Publications
Why Hasn’t Trump Already Closed the Department of Education?
The NationJack Schneider
2025-02-21
Jack Schneider writes, “Even in the midst of a raging culture war, Americans are still pragmatic people who maintain practical interests in their communities and the institutions that anchor them. So when the Trump administration lets loose a wrecking ball on the schools"
The MCAS doesn’t measure learning. We need to replace it.
The Boston GlobeJessica Tang and Jack Schneider
2024-10-11
In an op-ed, Jack Schneider calls to replace the MCAS standardized test. “[The test] does very little to identify school strengths and weaknesses, offering little guidance on how to improve educational processes, Mostly, it’s a tool for blaming and penalizing those it was intended to help," he says.
Why “Fund Students, Not Systems” Is a Recipe for Disaster
The NationJennifer C. Berkshire and Jack Schneider
2024-06-01
Jack Schneider is the co-author of a feature about the mentalities that threaten public education. “If we are to preserve our schools, it must be clear that public education is for all of us. If we fail at that, we will lose our schools. And if we lose them, they won’t come back,” he writes.
The Old College Try
SlateJennifer C. Berkshire and Jack Schneider
2024-03-11
Jack Schneider is co-author of an article explaining why the Democratic party should pivot its focus from higher education to unions. “Together, the declining confidence in higher education and rising support for organized labor point to a significant change in the way that young people view their economic futures,” he and his co-author write.
Off the Mark: How Grades, Ratings, and Rankings Undermine Learning (but Don’t Have To)
Harvard University Press (Book)Jack Schneider, Ethan L. Hutt
2023-08-08
Amid widespread concern that our approach to testing and grading undermines education, two experts explain how schools can use assessment to support, rather than compromise, learning.
Anyone who has ever crammed for a test, capitulated to a grade-grubbing student, or fretted over a child’s report card knows that the way we assess student learning in American schools is freighted with unintended consequences. But that’s not all. As experts agree, our primary assessment technologies—grading, rating, and ranking—don’t actually provide an accurate picture of how students are doing in school. Worse, they distort student and educator behavior in ways that undermine learning and exacerbate inequality. Yet despite widespread dissatisfaction, grades, test scores, and transcripts remain the currency of the realm.
The disturbing state of racial diversity in Massachusetts public schools
The Washington PostJack Schneider, Peter Piazza, Ashley Carey and Rachel White
2020-08-04
"Last month marked the 46th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Milliken v. Bradley decision, which marked the beginning of the end of school desegregation in the United States. In determining that school districts could not be compelled to integrate students across their borders, Milliken dramatically narrowed the promise of the 1954 Brown v. Board case. It made district boundaries the inviolable barriers that today do so much to separate young people from each other."
Beyond Test Scores: A Better Way to Measure School Quality
Harvard University Press (Book)Jack Schneider
2017-08-14
When it comes to sizing up America’s public schools, test scores are the go-to metric of state policy makers and anxious parents looking to place their children in the “best” schools. Yet ample research indicates that standardized tests are a poor way to measure a school’s performance. It is time—indeed past time—to rethink this system, Jack Schneider says.
