As a parent, I worry about many things. Some are concerns I imagine to be universal and shared by parents from time immemorial: Are the children healthy, are the children safe? Yet there's also a suite of uniquely modern anxieties that can be summed up as "How is my kid stacking up?": Should they know their letters by now? If she switches extracurricular activities too often, will it look bad on a college application? These stresses about our children's development can be consuming, suffocating.
I’ve spent my career working in K-12 and early-childhood education. There’s precious little that researchers agree on when it comes to what works best for children — witness the raging debates over school choice, funding, curriculum, and much more.