While occupational licensing is supposed to protect consumers, it ends up preventing new competition in the workforce.

“The biggest problem plaguing U.S. public schools [is] a lack of resources.” So claims Robert Pianta, dean of the University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education, in an op-ed published last week in The Washington Post. In fact, Pianta asserts, government spending on K-12 education actually has declined since the 1980s.

The Liberian Education Advancement Programme (LEAP) is a public-private partnership with eight non-state actors designed to improve school management in order to bring about improved learning outcomes for students across the government school system.

Our annual look back at the year’s most popular Education Next articles is itself a reader favorite. That’s so perhaps not only because of its status as a kind of “greatest hits” album, but because the list itself can offer some insights into the current state of the education policy conversation.