AUTHOR

Arthur Chen

Former Professor of Education

Arthur Chen grew up in British Columbia and spent his academic career in university classrooms before turning his attention to K-12 education writing. He taught education theory and child development at the post-secondary level for nearly fifteen years, where his research focused on how early learning environments shape long-term academic outcomes. Born and raised in Canada, Arthur brings a cross-border perspective to the American K-12 conversation.

EXPERTISE

Child development and early learning
Cross-cultural education systems
Academic assessment

EDUCATION

B.Ed. University of British Columbia
M.A. Educational Psychology University of Toronto
Ph.D. Education and Human Development McGill University

Articles · 7

6/8/2026

The Surprising Relationship Between School Start Times and Teen Car Accidents

Most of the debate around school start times focuses on test scores and mental health. Those are legitimate concerns worth the attention they get. But there is a third consequence of early school start times that rarely makes it into school board presentations or parent meetings, even though it is arguably the most urgent argument for change: the relationship between early morning classes and teen car accidents...

6/6/2026

The US City With the Best Public Schools You've Never Heard Of

If someone asked you to name the city with one of the best public high schools in the United States, you would probably say Palo Alto, or Southlake, or maybe one of those small Connecticut towns where the median home costs $2 million and the parent association runs a bigger budget than most school districts. You would not say Evansville, Indiana...

5/15/2026

Do Magnet Schools Help or Hurt? The Case For, the Case Against, and What the Data Shows

Magnet schools were invented, in part, as a desegregation tool. In the 1970s, as courts ordered school districts to integrate and white families fled to suburban districts or private schools in response, magnet programs offered a different approach: create schools compelling enough that families would voluntarily cross district lines and attendance zone boundaries to attend them, producing integration through attraction rather than compulsion. The theory was elegant. Fifty years of implementation has produced a much messier reality...

5/5/2026

Who's Responsible for Teaching Kids About Money: Schools or Parents?

Ask most adults whether they received useful financial education growing up and the answer is almost always no. They learned about the American Revolution and the quadratic formula and how mitosis works, but nobody taught them how a mortgage amortizes, what a credit score actually measures, how compound interest works in both directions, or what the difference is between a Roth and a traditional IRA. They...

4/30/2026

How to Pick a College Major When You Have No Idea What You Want

Most high school seniors who say they know what they want to major in are guessing. They've picked something that sounds reasonable, or something a parent suggested, or something that matches the one class they liked in tenth grade. A meaningful number of them will change their major at least once. About a third will change it more than once. The student who arrives at college genuinely undecided is not behind. They're just being honest about something most of their classmates are also true of but haven't admitted yet...

4/24/2026

What's Changing About High School Graduation in 2026 and 2027

Graduation requirements don't change often, but when they do, families usually find out late. A counselor mentions something in junior year, or a student discovers a new required course that wasn't on anyone's radar when they started high school. Several states have made significant changes that take effect for graduating classes of 2026 and 2027...

4/19/2026

Should phones be banned in schools? Parents and teachers don't agree

Phone bans in schools have gone from a fringe idea to a genuine policy fight. Over the last two years, states including Florida, Indiana, and California have passed or proposed legislation restricting student phone use during the school day. Dozens of districts have moved ahead on their own without waiting for state mandates. The momentum is real. So is the disagreement about whether any of it is working...