The clearest evidence is teen employment, which alone has been for nearly 50 years. 

The , “A Digital Divide in American Adolescence,” by Daniel Cox of the American Enterprise Institute’s Survey Center on American Life, was published in mid-August. It draws on the results of the , whose interviews were conducted in January and February with teens aged 13 to 17.听

The study’s first key finding is that the bottom rung of the career ladder is disappearing. A generation ago, a summer job or an afterschool shift was a routine rite of passage. It was a place where teenagers learned to show up on time, take direction from someone who wasn’t a parent or teacher and get paid for reliability rather than talent. But today, only 15% of teens in the survey reported having a part-time job, and just 28% even among 16- and 17-year-olds 鈥� the group most likely to work. Bureau of Labor Statistics show teen labor force participation peaked at nearly 58% in the late 1970s and has been falling ever since. 

The survey also shows that even within adolescence itself, opportunities for growth become rarer as students age. Travel sports participation among boys falls from 52% in early adolescence to 35% by age 16 or 17; choir and band participation among girls falls from 30% to 17%; and only 7% of teens are in student government or debate.

None of these activities is glamorous. But they鈥檙e the low-stakes, repeatable settings where teenagers practice commitment, teamwork and how to lose gracefully. They鈥檙e the soft infrastructure that makes a first real job, internship or semester of college survivable rather than disorienting.

When that infrastructure thins out, an shows up later. Employers often young workers lack basic job skills. The real problem is many never had the chance to practice them.

The AEI survey’s second finding is that this erosion isn’t evenly distributed. Teens with college-educated parents participate in extracurriculars at roughly double the rate of peers whose parents didn’t attend college. Nearly 1 in 4 are in an academic club, compared with 13% of teens whose parents didn’t attend college. And they’re three times as likely to be in student government or debate.

Screen time follows the same pattern in reverse. Teens spend, on average, close to three hours a day on social media. But neither is that time evenly distributed. Girls raised in households without a college-educated parent spend more time on more apps and are less likely to have tried cutting back than girls of parents with a degree. Boys in the same households log substantially more hours gaming.

Third, teens’ plans for what happens after high school are shifting, and shifting unevenly. Only 48% now plan to attend a four-year college, far short of being the near-default path for high school graduates. A separate the share of teens planning on any college 鈥� two- or four-year 鈥� fell from 73% in 2018 to 45% by 2024. The AEI survey reports 17% plan on a two-year or vocational program, 10% a full-time job and nearly 1 in 5 aren’t sure what’s next.

Those plans split sharply by gender and socioeconomic class, with 74% of girls with college-educated parents planning to attend a four-year school, versus 46% whose parents didn’t. 

A separate released in late August 2026, Gallup and the Walton Family Foundation’s fourth annual “Voices of Gen Z” poll, makes essentially the same point from inside the school building. Its sample of 14- to 18-year-olds is close to the age range AEI surveyed, and its findings closely track AEI’s.

No more than 20% of students feel “very prepared” for any specific path after high school, college, trade school, an apprenticeship or the job they want. Even among students planning to attend college, only 19% feel very prepared to do so.

When adults talk with students about their futures, those conversations are overwhelmingly about one path, with 52% of students saying adults have talked to them a lot about going to college. That鈥檚 compared with 17% discussing apprenticeships and 14% talking about jobs that don’t require a degree. This gap holds even among students who’ve already said they don’t plan to go to college.

Put together, the two surveys describe the same experience gap from two directions. AEI shows that fewer informal, out-of-school experiences that build real-world readiness are happening. Gallup/Walton shows that inside school, the guidance students receive is aimed almost entirely at one route, regardless of which one they’re headed toward.

Neither survey is describing a generation that’s lost interest in a good future. But both paint a picture of a generation that’s been given a narrower set of tools to reach it than it needs.

Here’s what school leaders and policymakers can do.

• Treat work-based learning as core infrastructure, not as an elective add-on. States and districts should expand youth and paid internship pipelines that give students structured work experience during the school year.
• Protect and expand school-based extracurriculars. This is especially important for teenagers whose families can’t supply the equivalent privately. The disparity in sports and club participation is a resource gap schools can partly close by keeping programs funded and accessible.
• Focus on transportation and scheduling. The problem isn鈥檛 only motivation; much of the falloff in extracurricular participation among lower-income teens is logistical. Afterschool jobs and activities require rides and flexible hours many working families can’t provide.
• Use state Workforce Pell and career-navigation funding to reach younger teens. Don鈥檛 just focus on juniors and seniors, and extend information beyond college advising. Guidance concentrated almost entirely on college leaves the majority of teens who won’t take it with less support.

None of this calls for panic, but it does call for attention. The teenagers in these surveys aren’t disengaged or unhappy in any dramatic sense. Most report being satisfied with their lives, their friendships, even their relationships with their parents. What they’re missing is practice and preparation for adulthood.

The back-to-school season is usually treated as a fresh start for academics. This survey data suggests it’s worth treating it as a fresh start for something schools have quietly let slide: the ordinary, unglamorous work of learning how to show up, and helping every teenager, not just those who are college-bound, see a clear path toward what comes next.

But unlike most 10-year-olds, a year ago this child left her family and her home, walking for days with little to eat. To protect her from the violence against women that is pervasive in rural Guatemala, and with the hope that she could have a better life, her mother sent her to the United States. Abiding by our immigration policy at the time, the young girl crossed the border and presented herself to immigration authorities to request asylum here. Yet now, due to policy changes, she is considered to be undocumented, part of a group that is being targeted politically. 

As a bilingual social worker, I have spent the past six years working closely with immigrants in southeast Tennessee. I鈥檝e heard many variations of this story. I鈥檓 not using names in this story to protect the immigrants I know. So many children and families have endured trauma in their country of origin and come here abiding by our rules; they work hard and contribute by supporting our schools, boosting local economies, and paying taxes to fund our government. 

And yet, common misconceptions persist and drive our immigration policy. Misconceptions like being undocumented means that an immigrant broke the law when they arrived, or that somehow simultaneously new arrivals are coming here to live off the government while also stealing American jobs. As someone who works daily with immigrants, I can assure you that those I know give much more to our country and to our communities than they could ever take. Their contributions are enormous 鈥� cultural, educational, economic and more.

For instance, a father immigrated from Venezuela through legal pathways years ago. When his children began attending school, he was shocked to see school staff members volunteering their free time to maintain and improve the campus. In the father鈥檚 home country, this was something parents did. He organized a parent committee to take the burden off of teachers, a contribution that has increased family engagement and improved teacher morale. And yet this father鈥� who has given so much to his community 鈥� is now considered undocumented due to policy reversals and is at risk of being targeted by immigration enforcement. 

Anti-immigrant politicians often portray immigrants as criminals who drain public resources and weaken American communities. And yet, the experiences of families I encounter tell a different story. The truth is that many undocumented immigrants have not violated the law, that immigrants contribute more to our economy than they receive in public benefits, and that they strengthen the communities they join through service, hard work and civic engagement. 

As an undocumented immigrant, the 10-year-old girl is not eligible for any public assistance: not food stamps, nor Medicaid, and she does not qualify for any type of subsidized housing. If she wants to attend college some day, to fulfill her dream of becoming a police officer and keeping others safe, she would not be eligible for any type of government grants or student loans. The only government support she receives is a free, public school education, a benefit she takes full advantage of every morning when she wakes herself up, makes her breakfast, dresses and eagerly waits for the school bus to arrive. 

However, even this benefit has been threatened. In both the 2025 and 2026 legislative sessions, Tennessee lawmakers sponsored bills that would deny undocumented students the right to a free public education. This legislation, a direct challenge to the United States Supreme Court鈥檚 1982 decision in Plyler v. Doe, could make it harder, or impossible, for many immigrant students to go to public school. Although the young girl followed our immigration policy and continues to attend her check-ins and court dates, she remains among those who many lawmakers believe are undeserving of the basic right to education. 

When attempting to deny a free public education to undocumented students, Tennessee state legislators have pointed to the high cost of educating undocumented children. While the economic burden of immigrants is often cited by those opposing immigration, a 30-year published by the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, found that immigrants pay more in taxes than they consume in public services. Over the course of the study, there was a net positive contribution of more than $14.5 trillion. These are tax dollars that help reduce our national deficit. 

Immigrants also contribute by sustaining our population growth amid declining birth rates. Recent Congressional revealed that the Social Security program is now projected to be depleted in 2032, a year earlier than the estimate given in 2025, due in part to declining immigration. 

Many immigrants have not broken any laws, yet remain undocumented and legally vulnerable. They are portrayed as a drain on society, yet they help sustain programs like Social Security through their tax contributions, even though many will never receive those benefits. 

As we watch our neighbors being detained and deported, we see that we are not losing the “worst of the worst,” but people who embody some of the best American ideals: hard work, selfless contribution, and a desire to build a better future for their families and communities. 

Adults design policies for her future 鈥� the classes she takes, the programs available in her neighborhood, the career training offered at her school 鈥� but very few of us have ever asked her what she actually needs.

In New Orleans, we asked. And what we heard changed the way we design support for young people. Your city should, too.

For the past seven years, the Education Research Alliance for New Orleans at Tulane University has led the 鈥� a collaborative effort with a steering committee of community organizations, government agencies and school leaders to ask students directly about their lives inside and outside of school. Our , conducted with about 2,000 sixth through 11th graders across 16 public schools last spring, added new questions about mental health. The findings are hard to sit with.

About one in three New Orleans youth is struggling with their mental health. About 41% report feeling sad or hopeless almost every day. These are not just New Orleans numbers. show similar rates of adolescent depression and anxiety. 

What is distinctive about New Orleans is that we asked why they are not getting needed help. Twenty-six percent of students said they needed counseling at some point in the past year but didn鈥檛 get it. And more than half 鈥� 55% 鈥� have avoided seeking mental health help at some point because of what others might think. Among Black youth, the numbers are starker: Nearly twice as many reported needing counseling and not receiving it compared to white youth.

Perhaps most telling is whom young people turn to when they鈥檙e struggling. The majority said they鈥檇 reach out to a friend. Fewer than one in 10 would go to a school counselor. Almost one in five said they wouldn鈥檛 reach out to anyone. New Orleans youth told us why they are struggling. And knowing changes things.

When we released earlier surveys showing that students were leaving home before dawn to catch school buses, the district changed its busing policy. When a charter management organization noticed that its students鈥� sense of belonging lagged that of similar schools, they redesigned their social-emotional learning approach. When community leaders learned that New Orleans middle schoolers had far fewer career-preparation opportunities than students nationwide, local workforce organizations began rethinking what support looks like before high school. 

None of those changes would have happened if adults had continued making decisions based on assumptions about what young people need.

The mental health findings from this year are already moving conversations. At our public release event, a high school student who helped design the survey described watching classmates struggle in silence 鈥� afraid to ask for help, unsure where to turn, not trusting that anyone would understand. She was describing data she had helped collect from students who looked like her. 

The superintendent of New Orleans Public Schools, Fateama Fulmore, said 鈥淭his report provides encouragement and a sober reminder of the responsibilities we carry as a school system and as a city for our children.鈥� Meshawn Siddiq, deputy director of the city鈥檚 Department of Health, echoed, 鈥淎s a system, I feel like in order for it all to work, every aspect of it needs to work together.鈥� That is the point of this work.

Other cities can do this. The model is not complicated, but it requires intentionality: a commitment to collaborating with local stakeholders to know what information they need, to asking young people real questions, to sharing what you hear even when it鈥檚 uncomfortable, and to letting their answers actually drive decisions.

Our students are not getting the mental health support they need. They told us that because we asked. The least we can do is listen.

Education finance could learn a thing or two.

Policymakers intent on providing high-quality schools for everyone typically face a familiar problem: Variability in property taxes allows wealthier communities to send much more money to their local schools than those in poorer communities. That extra investment translates into opportunities that lower-wealth schools simply cannot afford. Education leaders across the country have tried to fix this by filling holes with state dollars. But they are faced with a common challenge: If local spending on education in high-wealth communities keeps rising, the bar for state contributions to poorer communities moves with it.

Many professional sports leagues grappling with similar issues of inequality have found a solution in salary caps that curb wealth hoarding and reward competitiveness. In the National Basketball Association, the salary cap is a set dollar amount that all teams must stay under to avoid a financial penalty. If my beloved Atlanta Hawks spent $100,000 above the threshold, for instance, they would pay an additional $100,000 as a luxury tax. These extra dollars would then be distributed to teams that have not spent as much, helping to level the playing field.

What could this policy look like in education? Vermont already has one in place. 

Like many states, Vermont calculates and guarantees a baseline amount of funding required to educate a standard student (which is adjusted by increasing funding for disadvantaged kids). But beginning in 1997, Vermont lawmakers adopted an additional process called the excess spending adjustment. If a town votes to spend more than the baseline per-pupil funding amount, it triggers the state’s version of the NBA鈥檚 luxury tax. Wealthy towns can still raise more money for their schools, but are then required to pay higher rates created in the funding formula. In Fiscal Year 2026, exceeded the $15,926 spending threshold.

The additional tax revenue raised by property-rich towns is distributed to property-poor, rural school districts to ensure their students get a more equitable education. Three years into implementation, that legislative provisions including the excess spending adjustment had significantly reduced the relationship among property wealth, student resources and taxpayer burden.听

What stops other states from following in Vermont鈥檚 footsteps? Policies like this do not come easily, and may require a shock to the status quo. The NBA salary cap and luxury tax were the result of difficult negotiations between the league and players. Vermont’s school funding mechanism was passed in response to a state Supreme Court ruling that the state’s previous education finance law was unconstitutional. Many wealthier residents expressed outrage at the new law 鈥� one going so far as to buy a car previously owned by one of the bill鈥檚 chief sponsors, bringing it to the state capitol and urging passers-by to to vent their frustration with the new law.

Interestingly, several of the financially affected by the excess spending threshold are not eligible to vote in Vermont: Many of its property-rich communities are ski resorts filled with second homes of out-of-state residents. This politically advantageous fact, paired with provisions that provided 229 of the state鈥檚 school districts with additional funding and only 23 districts with less, might help explain why the pushback was not strong enough to undo the law’s sweeping changes. Howard Dean, the incumbent governor, faced an opponent who tried to center the law as her chief campaign issue. Dean handily won reelection.

Vermont is not alone in structurally tackling this issue. Texas has , a state policy that requires wealthy school districts to send a portion of their local property tax revenue back to the state. In the 2024-25 school year, nearly was returned to the state under the program.

Policy advocates interested in finance equity policies should study these two states, and consider how private giving might circumvent any progress. 

In my work for , housed in the Southern Education Foundation, I regularly meet with education stakeholders across the country to imagine school funding and enrollment policies that undo the harm of intense segregation, specifically between districts. Income segregation leaves students in high-poverty schools with and few resources to meet them. Some state leaders treat the school district lines as impenetrable, for both students and dollars, leaving kids to the education provided by local property tax wealth. But every American has an affirmative right to public education, written into the state constitutions. Like the NBA power brokers of the 1980s and the Vermont lawmakers of the late 1990s, state legislators can work across lines of difference to devise a system where wealth hoarding is challenged. The ball is in their court.

Yet too many students lack the guidance they need to benefit from these growing opportunities. remain persistently severe, while career navigation is often a back-burner priority. High schools remain wedded to 鈥渃ollege for all,鈥� despite in alternative pathways. Consequently, too many young people are unaware of the careers they could pursue, the availability of jobs locally, and the skills required. A 2024 found that 66% of young adults ages 16 to 24 鈥渄o not know exactly what career they want to pursue.鈥�

This lack of guidance hinders students鈥� economic prospects and undermines employers鈥� efforts to get the workforce they need. But new approaches to career navigation could narrow this gap. 

As we found in researching a new FutureEd , innovations in curriculum design, service delivery and technology could broaden access to high-quality career guidance for students, and without massive staff hiring sprees few districts can afford.

One such emerging strategy is to integrate career navigation into curriculum. In California鈥檚 Cajon Valley Union School District, for instance, career exploration is part of the classwork, not shunted off to counselors. As part of the district鈥檚 鈥溾�� , students participate in 鈥渄eep career exposure鈥� with hands-on activities and real-life experiences. 

Students start learning about various careers as early as kindergarten, and by high school, they spend up to 40% of their time in job experiences or internships.

Enlisting teachers reduces the burden on counselors and encourages educators to develop academic content relevant to students鈥� postsecondary lives. Instead of learning about geometry in the abstract, for example, students apply geometric concepts to a construction project, making schoolwork more relevant and engaging.

Real-world career exposure especially benefits students without adequate guidance at home or in their communities. In Cajon Valley鈥檚 public schools, about 20 miles outside San Diego, nearly of students are economically disadvantaged. Research shows that low-income households and communities have less access than their wealthier counterparts to the professional networks and that enable upward mobility. 

A second emerging strategy leverages nonprofit intermediaries specializing in college and career navigation. A growing cohort of organizations 鈥� including Jobs for the Future鈥檚 and grantees of Strada Education鈥檚 initiative 鈥� are helping to expand schools鈥� counseling capacity by providing coaching, advising and access to work-based learning.

In Chicago Public Schools, for example, the nonprofit trains teachers as advisers to work with student 鈥渇ellows鈥� at 36 high-poverty high schools who receive college and career guidance for three years, including one year after graduation. Beyond job exploration, this includes social-emotional skills development, test prep, college admissions, financial aid applications and, in their final year, emergency financial aid, if needed. The University of Chicago鈥檚 Inclusive Economy Lab found that OneGoal fellows were more likely to graduate from high school than nonparticipants, and with higher GPAs. 

While administrators say Chicago public schools have made enormous progress in hiring more counselors, the average ratio still exceeds the recommended proportion of 250 to 1. Intermediaries like OneGoal compensate for that gap.

A third innovation broadening access to career navigation is the use of artificial intelligence-powered tools and platforms. Multiple platforms have recently come on the market, as ed tech entrepreneurs seek to address the demand for career navigation and credentialing. While some platforms offer little more than a chatbot, others provide useful, up-to-date information that could complement a human counselor鈥檚 guidance. 

One such promising platform is , developed by Diane Tavenner, former CEO of charter school provider Summit Public Schools. Its database features more than 800 careers that offer a living wage, half of which don鈥檛 require a four-year degree. The site also provides details about the day-to-day tasks involved in various jobs, along with data on expected pay and required credentials 鈥� information that counselors may not otherwise have readily available.

Of course, none of these new approaches is a cure for the overall crisis in postsecondary navigation. No career navigation curriculum, regardless of how well designed, can compensate for a lack of reliable data on credentials of value or on careers that can insulate young workers from the coming impacts of AI. Even with the aid of nonprofit intermediaries, many districts won’t have the resources to reach every student who could benefit from guidance. And while technological solutions can serve as powerful tools for career navigation, they cannot fully substitute for human counselors.

Nevertheless, the consequences of inadequate guidance are dire. Many high school graduates are toiling in jobs that do not lead to economic advancement, especially if they opt out of college. Less than of young employees without college degrees work in what one study called launchpad jobs, which have a clear trajectory for career growth. Meanwhile, nearly of recent college graduates are stuck in jobs that underutilize their credentials. Worse still, as many as young people ages 16 to 24 鈥� more than 1 in 10 鈥� are 鈥渄isconnected鈥� from both work and school.

Leaders of K-12 schools may prefer to focus on academics and college prep, even as they increase the availability of career and technical education and encourage early college access through strategies like dual enrollment. Yet the realities of today鈥檚 economy and the rising cost of college demand that quality postsecondary navigation become central to K-12鈥檚 mission. The stakes couldn鈥檛 be higher. 

To put these results in perspective, four years ago, the third grade ELA proficiency rate was 40% 鈥� nearly 30 points below its pre-pandemic highs. Moreover, according to a Universal Reading Screener, our kindergarten to second grade students were demonstrating mastery at levels far below prior cohorts. 

As executive director of the charter school, I recognized that the problem was not a lack of effort. When our staff observed classrooms, we saw teachers and leaders working incredibly hard. However, we also saw many ineffective practices, especially in our youngest grades: centers where students colored without purpose or attention, letter sounds introduced without sufficient practice, and Youtube videos replacing the joy of books read-aloud. It was no surprise so many third and fourth grade students struggled to read fluently, write complete sentences or access complex texts. 

Over the next four years, we changed almost everything about our K-5 literacy program. Today, our Title I school ranks in the state鈥檚 top 3% for 3rd Grade ELA achievement, outscoring every district in the state of Tennessee, including districts with far less diversity and far greater resources. While these results are extraordinary, the work we did was anything but. In fact, I am confident it can be replicated by any school or district. 

Here are six practices that moved the needle most. 

The Science of Reading is the tip of the iceberg. Starting in 2022, Tennessee began to implement training and curricula rooted in the Science of Reading, which we embraced and incorporated. Along the way, we learned that this evidence-based approach rests upon a broader foundation of cognitive and social science. This research has not reached most American teachers and school districts. Over the past two years 鈥� thanks to organizations like , , and 鈥� we explored the science of learning. 

Based on what we learned, we overhauled our approach to coaching and development. Today, every teacher at Nashville Classical is trained on basic concepts like the importance of securing and harnessing attention, the difference between working and long-term memory, the importance of background knowledge and the need to support encoding and retrieval. If you walk into a third grade classroom today, you might see students with a knowledge organizer on ancient Rome, quietly self-quizzing themselves on terms like patricians and plebeians. These simple daily practices are supported by science, but implementing them is not rocket science. Very few schools or districts have shared these practices with their teachers, which is a tragedy because anyone can learn them and every teacher deserves to know them. 

Don鈥檛 teach skills 鈥� build knowledge. features a listening comprehension strand, which we use to build background knowledge. In younger grades, we reinforce key terms, timelines and vocabulary through daily oral drills, content-focused songs and frequent opportunities to repeat ideas through 鈥渢urn and talks.鈥� As students move into tested grades, they practice reading short passages and answering multiple choice questions. But we avoid teaching test tricks like 鈥渃rossing out wrong answers鈥� or lessons on 鈥渉ow to find the main idea.鈥� Instead, our teachers ask themselves 鈥淲hat background knowledge or vocabulary might prevent students from understanding this passage?鈥� and 鈥淗ow can I build their knowledge to increase their comprehension?.鈥� By eliminating time spent trying to teach abstract 鈥渃ritical thinking,鈥� we have more time to build knowledge and vocabulary, which are the actual building blocks of comprehension.

Fluency 鈥� in all its forms 鈥� unlocks growth. Our benchmark assessment system measures fluency across grade levels, including for letter sounds, word reading, oral reading and silent reading. Our team took time to deeply understand the importance of each of these domains and unpacked what a fluent reader could think and do at each stage of their development, from kindergarten to middle school. Unfortunately, , prioritizing sound or word reading fluency at the expense of fluent reading in context. Our team worked to align vision of reading excellence across grades, which meant teachers were working toward a shared picture of what proficient young readers and successful adults readers can do down to the tiniest details of exactly how many words per minute a third grader should be able to read silently and what sorts of affixes, word roots, and phrases made passages appropriate for each grade. This level of granular detail meant teachers could identify students at risk early and clearly, intervening to provide the right support to the right students. 

Writing is thinking. We invested significant time in teaching students to write, starting in kindergarten. Our approach is rooted in with a focus on three areas. First, students write about complex topics directly connected to the knowledge and content they are reading about. So, our kindergarteners learn to speak in complete sentences while explaining what happens in nursery rhymes, our first graders learn to write sentences about Aesop鈥檚 Fables, and our second graders learn to write their first paragraphs about Greek myths. Next, our teaching focuses on sentence-level activities. By third grade, students have learned to expand, distill and express their ideas in complex and complete sentences. Finally, we teach students to revise. Teachers frequently display student work on document cameras, analyze it and then prompt students to apply concepts to their own work. 

Books belong in classrooms. Across the country, and many curricula emphasize short passages or excerpts. We believe books belong in classrooms and have selected curricula 鈥� Core Knowledge, Fishtank and Reading Reconsidered 鈥� built on this belief. Great books expose children to beautiful stories that have or will stand the test of time. When a classroom of second graders reaches the end of Charlotte鈥檚 Web, there is not a dry eye in sight and they are joining a cultural conversation that stretches across grades and generations. We鈥檝e found that the experience of reading great literature has grown our children鈥檚 attention and shaped their identity in the best way possible. There is a tradition of literacy and reading at our school, which we hope students carry with them long after they graduate. 

Play the long game. We are fortunate to have an incredible team of teachers and leaders who work with our elementary students. They deserve all of the credit for these achievements and many of them stayed at our schools through a period of significant change, where we implemented new curricula, changed schedules and raised expectations. We made many mistakes along the way, but always tried to balance the pain of changing too fast with the cost of changing too slowly. While we knew that we would not see gains happen overnight, we always believed positive habits would compound each day. For our curriculum and coaching to make a difference, we needed to stop implementation of any number of distracting, shiny objects: digital tutors, complex intervention programs, AI-everything, etc. We learned that investments in the practice and delivery of instruction may not pay off the fastest, but they take you the farthest. 

Today, I鈥檓 not just the leader of our school:  I鈥檓 a parent. And something else happened around the same time our third graders took their state test 鈥� my son, a kindergartener, learned to read. This summer, while I spent a late night hunched over a laptop to analyze results, he was upstairs reading Dog Man under his covers. 

Every kid deserves the type of teaching my son got in kindergarten and will get in the years to come. The only way to make that happen is for more schools to implement the ordinary practices that create extraordinary classrooms and outcomes. 

Youth mental health is no exception. As parents and former elected officials, we know there is no silver bullet to solve the mental health challenges young people experience today. What they鈥檙e facing is complex and shaped by a range of influences, including family dynamics, school environments, economic security, social isolation, overuse of devices and so much more.

Many Americans understand that the complexity of this challenge requires balanced solutions that meet families and children where they are. New polling from the , where we both serve on the board of directors, found that roughly three-quarters of voters and parents favor comprehensive approaches to youth mental health over narrow ones, such as technology bans.听

Seven-in-10 voters and three-quarters of parents also believe sweeping restrictions on phones and social media can create unintended negative consequences while failing to address the underlying drivers of mental health challenges.

Take a look at how restrictions are currently unfolding in Australia. Its nationwide social media ban was intended to help young people navigate the online world more safely. Instead, early evidence suggests that these restrictions may be producing outcomes very different from those policymakers intended. 

Research conducted in April 2026 by the found that many teenagers simply shifted their online activity elsewhere. Forty-three percent reported spending more time on gaming platforms, while 39% increased their use of messaging applications that fell outside the ban’s scope. One in five said they turned more frequently to unregulated social media platforms. Rather than disappearing, online activity became harder for parents to see and guide.

Encouragingly, Americans are pointing toward a more constructive path. In our survey, parents and voters overwhelmingly support equipping young people with the skills to navigate today’s digital world instead of isolating them from it. The vast majority of voters and parents believe young people should be taught digital literacy skills, including how to use artificial intelligence safely, and that parents also need those same tools. They also strongly support media literacy education in classrooms, digital wellness resources for families and professional training that equips educators to teach responsible technology use.

Examples of this work are already emerging across the country. In Washington state鈥檚 , each school has a full-time teacher librarian who provides media literacy lessons and helps students develop the skills to assess information and navigate online spaces responsibly.听

In Miami-Dade County, The Children鈥檚 Trust, a nonprofit dedicated to improving the lives of children and families in the county, launched a 鈥溾�� offering free, countywide workshops that give families practical support on issues affecting their children, including strategies for building healthy digital habits. 

The goal should not be to raise a generation sheltered from technology until adulthood. Technology is woven into nearly every aspect of modern life, and young people will need the skills and judgment to navigate it successfully. Our focus should be on helping them use technology wisely, critically and responsibly while addressing the broader factors that shape their mental health and wellbeing.

New research from the shows scientists agree. Noting that social media is a piece of a larger interconnected societal system, researchers warn 鈥渞estrictions may not simply remove harms; they may also shift, reshape or redistribute them.鈥� Specifically, they warn against young people moving to harder-to-monitor spaces that bring new risks of 鈥渆motional dependence, manipulation, commercial exploitation or reduced adult oversight,鈥� just as early Australian evidence suggests.听

Solutions work best when they prepare people for the world as it is, not the world we wish existed. The United States can learn from Australia鈥檚 well-intentioned but misguided efforts and the concerns of leading scientists. The lesson is not that we should stop searching for solutions, but that we should be wary of solutions that promise more than they can deliver.听

A more promising path lies in comprehensive approaches that bring together parents, educators, healthcare providers and communities while expanding digital literacy, mentoring, family support and access to mental health care.听

For example, the American Academy of Pediatrics鈥� 鈥溾�� gives pediatricians and parents a practical framework for discussing screens and healthy habits in the context of a child鈥檚 development and overall wellbeing. , a member of the Coalition to Empower our Future, is also helping K-12 health educators access evidence-based, classroom-ready resources on digital wellness, online safety, self-regulation and media literacy.听

These strategies are already being put in place and help build resilience, address underlying challenges and better equip young people to thrive in both the digital and offline worlds. If we truly want to improve outcomes for the next generation, we must focus less on policies that simply signal action and more on those that prepare young people and their parents with the support they need and are asking for.

As a result, today鈥檚 parents understandably seek to maintain a constant connection with their children. With FaceTime and Life360 at their fingertips, there is a real temptation to hover 鈥� even after college drop-off. But despite the best of intentions, this level of engagement can have detrimental effects on a new freshman鈥檚 adjustment to college and to navigating the world as an adult.

In my work in student affairs, I have watched thousands of young people make the leap from nervous first-years to confident graduates. I serve as a point of contact for families as well, which has taught me a lot about which parent behaviors set students up for success and which might unwittingly hold them back. While it can be challenging for parents to learn to let go, empowering children to discover their own community and thrive on their own will pay dividends down the line. 

Here are some steps to take for helping your child thrive in college and beyond: 

Start early. Preparing children to live independently goes much more smoothly if they have gradually taken on more responsibility before college. Too often, I鈥檝e encountered first-years who have never cooked a meal or done their own laundry. Practicing independent-living skills while still at home ensures that kids arrive at school ready to manage their own affairs. Let them book their own doctor鈥檚 appointments and complete school forms 鈥� you can help them problem-solve, if needed. My 8th- and 11th-graders have managed their morning routines since they were old enough to stay home alone, as my husband and I left for work before they left for school. They got themselves ready: packing lunch, walking the dog and getting themselves off to class. If you鈥檝e watched your children figure out how to perform these kinds of tasks in the past, you can drop them off on campus confident that they鈥檒l be able to do them again. 

Be a good listener. By the time a child is in college, the parent鈥檚 role shifts to the back seat.听 The child becomes the driver, and the parent is there to help them make decisions and find solutions to life鈥檚 problems. When children share a challenge or struggle, let them find their own answers by asking them questions to help them consider options and alternatives, without offering a solution of your own. The inclination to step in is understandable, given today’s academic pressures, social challenges and competitive job market. But young adults have always had to navigate these minefields. Making mistakes early, in a supportive environment like college, helps young adults find their own motivations. With emotional support instead of direction, students can make mistakes and forge a path forward, honing the critical life skill of resilience.听聽

Your role is changing, not ending. Maybe your child is struggling with a difficult courseload or did poorly on an exam. Some parents wonder if they should contact a professor directly. The answer is no. Parents should never reach out to faculty on behalf of their child. Instead, they can provide support; consider helping your child practice a conversation with the professor. Encourage your child to seek extra help if needed, to take advantage of available academic resources and, of course, to talk to professors to manage their workload and opportunities for extra credit. Then let your student handle it.

Give them space. There鈥檚 a reason parents鈥� weekends aren鈥檛 scheduled until several weeks into the semester. The first few weeks after orientation provide the biggest social opportunities of the year, as new students explore the campus and local community together and make connections with their peers. Offering to visit or 鈥� worse 鈥� bringing students home during those first critical weeks will disrupt this important chance for bonding with classmates and creating a support network. Some homesickness is to be expected. The best way for students to stop feeling homesick is to get engaged at school 鈥� with clubs, sports and other activities. 

Trust the process. College administrators and faculty want nothing more than to see graduates succeed. We don鈥檛 and can鈥檛 offer special treatment the way a parent might, but it is important for families to realize that our only agenda is to see young people thrive. Even in challenging moments, when students are being held accountable or told “no,” the overarching strategy is to set them up for success. My college, Stevens Institute of Technology, has a required First-Year Experience course to help new students navigate the transition to campus life. They are taught to manage their time, start planning for a career and to overcome traditional obstacles of early adulthood. The goal is to equip them with the skills they need to live a fulfilling life 鈥� just as a parent does.听

Most missteps on the path to adulthood aren鈥檛 emergencies. Parents do the hard work of helping their children make it to college, where they can begin the work of preparing for adult life. The relationship they build doesn鈥檛 disappear at the campus gates; it evolves. Allowing for some emotional and physical distance between you and your college-aged child may seem harsh, but it can be the most thoughtful and supportive approach to parenting a young adult.听聽聽

The intention is good. But it鈥檚 not good enough.

A strong state policy can create urgency, define expectations and keep attention on what matters. But policies typically don鈥檛 recommend new schedules, establish guidelines for community partnerships, incentivize effective teacher training or help organize limited resources to achieve results.

That work happens in districts and in schools. And if we ignore that work, even the strongest policy will produce uneven results.

from Louisiana shows that states can improve outcomes at scale when they provide clear direction, aligned incentives and sustained attention over time. In other words, states can鈥檛 simply pass better rules and wait for results. States must also provide districts with the nuts and bolts that translate policy into day-to-day practice.

If districts would just 鈥渄o the thing,鈥� so the logic goes, results would follow. My decades of experience helping districts implement ambitious change suggest a different reality: District leaders want more meaningful pathways to college and career. But they lack a workable blueprint to make these changes feasible.

Consider literacy. A state can adopt strong standards aligned with the science of reading, a high-quality curriculum and early screening. But a district still has hard questions to answer: Where will uninterrupted literacy time fit in the day? How will schools know which students need extra help, and when will they get it? Who provides intervention and how will reading specialists, tutors and classroom teachers work together instead of operating in isolation? What professional learning is essential? And 鈥� perhaps most challenging 鈥� what current work has to stop so that teachers aren鈥檛 buried under one more add-on initiative?

Those questions may sound mundane. But they are the difference between a reading policy that changes lives and one that produces new paperwork.

The same challenge is even more visible in high school, where states are increasingly promoting stronger college and career pathways. They鈥檙e asking for industry credentials, work-based learning and dual enrollment. These ideas have real promise. But they鈥檙e as complicated as literacy programs 鈥� maybe even more complicated 鈥� to design well.

In one district my nonprofit organization worked with, scheduling logistics meant that some students couldn鈥檛 participate in a pathway without sacrificing graduation requirements. In another district, the schools were simply too small and too remote to offer the range of pathways their students wanted. In another, it turned out that students鈥� lack of proficiency in reading, writing and math was preventing them from succeeding in career pathways. And in many districts, students must choose between a focus on academics and technical learning.

If states want these reforms to reach more students, especially students who have historically been furthest from opportunity, they need to treat implementation as a design challenge, not a compliance exercise. They must go beyond setting direction to enabling transformation.

That means doing a few things differently.

• State guidance should include frameworks that explicitly address the district-level choices that matter the most. For literacy, there are tough decisions around scheduling, staffing, curriculum, teacher training and progress monitoring. For career pathways, district leaders have to consider course sequences, scheduling, partnerships, transportation, staffing, labor market alignment and an equal focus on strengthening foundational skills.

• States should collect and share work being done in districts that are making progress. Leaders need to see the schedules, staffing models, course sequences, funding strategies and partnership agreements that prove it鈥檚 possible and that can be adapted to each leader鈥檚 unique context.

• States should invest real dollars to support districts in redesigning existing systems 鈥� rather than layering a new initiative on top of old structures. They should provide technical assistance, tools or incentives that reward coherence rather than mere adoption.

• States and districts need a clearer division of labor. States should focus on coherence and establishing guardrails. Districts should take the lead on making it work for their students, their teachers, and their local context.

Researchers have made progress in identifying what works. They know that when high school connects academic learning to life after graduation. They know that a focus on reading, writing and math proficiency in ninth grade . They know that simple credentialing requirements . And we know there鈥檚 still more to learn.

But the next challenge is not just discovering what works. It鈥檚 making what works feasible at scale.

If states and districts want career-pathway investments to change students鈥� lives, they have to pay as much attention to the machinery of implementation as they do to the promise of policy. That machinery may not make for a flashy press conference. But that鈥檚 where reform either becomes real for students鈥攐r doesn鈥檛.

It鈥檚 time to start talking about what we鈥檙e prepared to give them instead, especially as courts begin holding tech companies accountable. 

With news of Meta鈥檚 $17.1 billion settlement with 47 states and Washington, D.C., communities are beginning to see the scale of initial payouts. They now have the opportunity to move the conversation from accountability to repairs. 

This and other lawsuits moving through the legal system 鈥� brought by state attorneys general, school districts and families 鈥� focus on how much the social media company executives knew, whether they created a public nuisance and whether the companies should be held liable for rising rates of anxiety, depression and other mental health challenges among young people. 

The settlement agreement explicitly mentions funding for solutions, from youth programs to sports and dance, but not at the scale or scope of the harm that social media platforms have done. The work moving forward is to pay close attention to where the money actually goes, and .

So where should the funds go?

That question deserves as much public attention as the lawsuits themselves, because this isn鈥檛 simply about accountability. It鈥檚 about what comes next, and what to learn from past missteps.

The answer is simple: Fund real life.

When our nonprofit organization has done focus groups with young people, they鈥檝e told us exactly what they hope those investments will look like. More places to gather with friends and caring adults to talk to. More mentors, leadership opportunities and access to youth programs. In fact, an of more than 87,000 Crisis Text Line conversations found that, during moments of crisis, young people consistently pointed to sources of relief that had little to do with technology: relationships, sports, music, books, movement, nature, counseling and places where they felt connected.

In short, they want more real life experiences and opportunities. So, if we鈥檙e serious about helping young people thrive, then we have to do more than reduce screen time.

As social media companies are required to pay for the harm their platforms have caused to young people, communities can鈥檛 let those dollars disappear into state budgets or unrelated priorities. There are critical decisions to make now.

History tells us that large-scale lawsuit payouts can either create lasting change or get lost in the political and economic shuffle. Following tobacco settlements, many states diverted funds away from prevention and public health. More recently, opioid settlements have prompted ongoing debates over whether resources are reaching the communities most affected.

State attorneys general, the courts and state legislative bodies have an opportunity to write a different story and ensure these dollars do more than compensate for harm, but infuse new support and opportunities 鈥� offline 鈥� that young people are craving and calling for.

As we speak, the courts and Congress are deciding how to regulate social media: limiting harm, focusing on less screen time, better age verification, more parental controls and safer platform design. 

While those measures are crucial, they only answer one question: How does society reduce exposure to what hurts young people?

They leave an equally important question unanswered: What should young people experience instead? The answer is: funding real life.

That means investing in the afterschool programs where students discover new passions and community organizations where they find trusted adults. It means supporting the recreation centers where friendships are built and the arts programs where confidence grows. Opening doors to libraries that spark curiosity and summer learning programs that keep kids engaged. Helping youth explore employment and apprenticeship opportunities that give them purpose. 

It also means addressing limiting factors, from transportation to funding, that reduce access to parks, sports leagues, community organizations, employment and mentoring programs that create connections long before a social media feed ever can. And it means doing the important work of creating forums for safe digital engagement, as well as mental health services and support.

This isn鈥檛 wishful thinking. It is supported by decades of research showing that these experiences strengthen mental health, increase belonging, build resilience and help young people develop the confidence and relationships that protect them long after they put down their phones. Yet, these are often the investments communities struggle to sustain. With an estimated annual revenue of $422 billion across Meta, YouTube, TikTok and Snap, Inc., the irony couldn鈥檛 be more clear.

While leaders debate the effects of digital platforms on childhood, our communities continue to underinvest in the very experiences that bolster youth health and wellbeing.

That鈥檚 why the launched , bringing together a growing coalition of leading youth development, mental health and community organizations around a shared vision. We believe that if social media companies are required to compensate communities for the harms associated with their products, those resources should strengthen the very experiences that help young people flourish offline.

Lawsuits will determine whether social media companies bear legal responsibility for the harms alleged against them. State leaders will determine something equally important: whether these settlements become another missed opportunity 鈥� or a once-in-a-generation investment in childhood itself.

With the state of Michigan enacting a that restricts students from using their phones during instructional time, lawmakers have left it up to school districts to create their own policies on how to enforce this ban.

A team of University of Michigan researchers parsed through and compiled nearly 800 schools across the state, some of them already in place, to examine the different approaches they are taking to enforce this statewide ban. While many schools have enacted their own approaches to limiting cellphone use in recent years, the data reveals that schools believe there are a number of different ways to keep students off their phones after the bell rings.

In fact, U-M鈥檚 research collected on policies enacted as of the 2025-26 school year reveal an even 50-50 split on when these bans are put in place. Half of the state鈥檚 schools have implemented 鈥渂ell-to-bell鈥� restrictions that don鈥檛 allow students to use their phones at any point during the day, while the other half have 鈥渟chedule-based鈥� restrictions that allow them to use their phones at designated times, including during lunch and between class periods.

U-M Education Policy Professor Brian Jacob said the research is intended to provide guidance on the trade-offs of different approaches as the state law goes into place this fall.

鈥淲e want to make sure state leaders and district leaders were cognizant of this as they were imposing mandates on their individual schools because I have a feeling restricting cellphone use in schools is going to be a nuanced, challenging, multi-year process,鈥� Jacob said. 鈥淭his is one big genie that is out of the bottle, and figuring out the best way to get it back in the bottle and stay in the bottle, I think, is going to take a little practice and iteration on the part of schools.鈥�

Two years ago, Novi Community School District took a nuanced approach to putting its cellphone restrictions in place.听

In grades K-4, students aren鈥檛 allowed to have them in the building. In fifth through eighth grades, students can bring their phones to school, but they are locked up in at the beginning of the day and kept there until school lets out.  Phones are placed in pouches by staff and sealed shut, with a designated magnetic device used to unlock them when appropriate. While high school students also are issued their own pouches, the phones are locked up during instructional time, with students being able to unlock and access them between classes and during lunch.

Superintendent Ben Mainka said the different approaches are intended to give high school students more autonomy that mirrors how they might experience using a cellphone in the workplace.

鈥淎s students go through school, they’re learning and they’re maturing, and so we know that as they grow and mature, we want to be able to open up more freedom and responsibilities,鈥� he said. 鈥淭he other part is, as they get to high school, we’re really helping them understand what it is like in a workplace, and we know that they’re going to have their phones on them, but they also need to know how to manage that. So, basically, giving them the autonomy to know that there are certain times that the phone needs to be off limits and put away, and then there are times when you can check it.鈥�

U-M鈥檚 research found that just 2% of schools in the state have taken this approach. The most common type of enforcement of cellphone restriction is described as 鈥渘o-show,鈥� with 62% of schools requiring students to keep their phones in their backpacks or pockets.听

Another 17% of schools allow students to bring cellphones to school, but keep them in their lockers throughout the day, while 9% of schools collect students鈥� phones and keep them in a designated place. Some schools (8%) have taken the approach of keeping cellphones out of schools completely, while another 3% have a centralized collection of phones with an administrator when they enter the building.

The research also showed that the type of school and its location impacted the type of policy the school enacted, with charter (79%) and urban schools (76%) substantially more likely to require bell-to-bell policies than suburban (49%) and rural (41%). 

Jacob said charters and urban schools might be more attracted to having complete control over when students can have access to their phones with options like centralized collection or lockable pouches, he said, because they might believe phones are more 鈥減roblematic鈥� in schools than suburban or rural schools do.

鈥淣ow, whether they actually are, I think many suburban schools might be fooling themselves by thinking, 鈥極h, the phones aren’t really much of a problem,鈥欌�� Jacob said. 鈥淏ut I think there’s a perception in urban school districts where there might be more chaos and more distraction that there’s something attractive about these more restrictive policies.鈥�

While Pellston Public Schools in Northern Michigan only enrolls around 500 students, the district has taken a more restrictive approach to enforcing its cellphone policy, which was enacted at the suggestion of middle and high school Principal Chris Schlappi in 2024.

Superintendent Stephen Seelye had initial concerns that Schlappi鈥檚 suggestion to have students lock their cellphones in Yondr pouches would be met with opposition from parents who were concerned about being able to contact their children in the event of an emergency.听

With several other avenues for students to contact their parents, Seelye said it made sense for the school to spend $15,000 to purchase the pouches for students in grades 6 to 12, with a complete cellphone ban in place at the elementary level.

Students aren鈥檛 able to access their cellphones throughout the day after locking them in their pouches and leaving them with their home room teacher; Seelye said enforcement of the policy has gone better than he ever could have expected.

鈥淚 really think it’s one of the best decisions, if not the best decision I’ve made in education,鈥� Seelye said.

Rather than relying on teachers to keep an eye on whether students are taking phones out of their backpacks or pockets as 鈥渘o show鈥� policies do, locking cellphones into pouches has greatly reduced the burden on teachers to enforce the ban, he said, with the occasional 鈥渂ad actors鈥� quickly being discovered.

鈥淭eachers have got a lot of things to juggle and they’ve been given their time back,鈥� he said. 鈥淭hey no longer have to worry about if (a) kid has their cellphone and is seeking it. I would say I probably have 5% of my kids on a daily basis that are trying to hide their cellphones, and we catch most of them.

鈥淏efore, when every kid had a cellphone and there were seven of them out in class and one might buzz or beep, it was hard for my teachers to figure out where that came from, but now it’s not hard. Now everybody else has their phone locked up, and you know they can pinpoint who it was.鈥�

U-M鈥檚 research lays out three considerations for districts still working through enacting policies: Phone policies present difficult trade-offs for educators and policymakers; establishing and communicating a clear cellphone policy likely enhances adherence; and unintended consequences may occur in classrooms and broader school settings.

While no-show policies remain popular among Michigan schools, Jacob said teachers told him that the most effective approaches take them out of the role of being the 鈥渂ad guy.鈥�

鈥淚 think there’s a lot of pressure among teachers in that regard,鈥� he said. 鈥淭eachers that I’ve talked to really do like school-wide policies where some of the burden of enforcement is taken off of their shoulders.鈥�

The physical school environment is usually treated as an operational concern: square footage, maintenance, compliance, safety and cost. Those matters are real. But they are incomplete.

A school building is also an instructional system.

In my rural Midwestern school district, we drew on research in learning environments and early literacy development to create a new 108,000-square-foot elementary school that serves 900 pupils across 932 square miles.

We used the Framework, which connects physical design to instructional capacity, student experience, measurable outcomes, and equity impact.

Designed by CMBA Architects, our new campus serves many students facing poverty, geographic isolation and limited preschool access that has affected their readiness for school. 

Since opening our new campus in 2024, we have seen mixed results, but the strongest gains appeared among students most likely to benefit, especially those from low-socioeconomic households and groups affected by access gaps.

Architecture alone doesn鈥檛 drive these achievement gains. Instead, the findings suggest a stronger and more defensible claim: Intentional school design can improve the daily conditions that shape instruction, intervention, belonging, regulation, enrichment and student opportunity.

Students enter school with unequal early-learning access. In rural communities with limited or distant preschool options, many begin kindergarten without the vocabulary, routines, stamina, executive-function practice, and early-literacy exposure some peers already have. 

For low-income students, these gaps can be deeper. Poverty does not define potential, but it can limit enrichment, health care, transportation, routines, academic language, and early childhood access.

Schools designed for access, flexibility, belonging, movement, regulation and intervention can reduce barriers, save time, and make the building part of the learning infrastructure.

In our former four-story building, kindergarten transitions to recess, special events, services, and other activities required going up and down stairs multiple times a day. The daily minutes lost were small but cumulative. After the move, kindergarten teachers reported gaining two or more weeks of instructional time because students no longer navigated multiple stairways each day. 

This illustrates design as an instructional variable: Removing a physical barrier increased instructional time without changing curriculum or assessment. For early literacy, recovered minutes matter because repetition, oral language, small-group support, and predictable routines create opportunity.

Classrooms and shared spaces included mobile furniture, flexible seating, and layouts that let students sit, stand, move, collaborate, and reconfigure spaces with little disruption. The goal was not novelty, but access.

Because students learn differently across tasks and developmental stages, adaptable rooms allow instruction to shift quickly 鈥� from direct teaching to small groups, collaboration, independent practice or intervention 鈥� without the space becoming a barrier.

Flexible seating and movement-friendly spaces align with research linking classroom movement to attention and engagement. For students who need support with regulation, stamina, or focus, appropriate movement is not a luxury; it is part of access.

The facility includes murals that incorporate South Dakota history, geography, wildlife, agriculture, and phrases in the Dakota language. In a district serving a significant Native American student population, this decision matters.

Cultural representation in the physical environment signals that students are not merely accommodated, they are recognized.

When students see local language, landscapes, and identity embedded into the school, the building communicates belonging before a single lesson begins.

Murals and visual learning elements also expand background knowledge. They turn hallways into instructional spaces. A student walking past a mural of the Missouri River, the Black Hills, bison, prairie animals, crops, or Dakota vocabulary is repeatedly exposed to content, language, and place.

In that sense, the school becomes an environmental text. Students read the building long before they read the day鈥檚 lesson.

The results from the first two years in the new building include improved benchmark rates on the K鈥�2 Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills or DIBELS, a smaller gap for low-income students and fewer of them scoring Well Below Benchmark. The share At or Above Benchmark rose from 61.8% before the new facility to 67.9%. Scores for other students remained relatively stable, increasing from 70.7% to 71.2%.

Grades 3鈥�5 Smarter Balanced results showed similar equity-aligned gains, particularly for students eligible for free and reduced price meals and American Indian/Alaskan Native students in English language arts.

In other words, the largest movement occurred among students from low-socioeconomic households.

The district鈥檚 K-2 DIBELS data adds an important early-literacy lens to the Opportunity-by-Design Framework, since it provides multiple checkpoints within the year. The Smarter Balanced Assessment measures achievement at the end of the school year.

The data alone does not prove that a building, by itself, caused the achievement to rise. It does not show that every grade, every subject and every student group improved. The data does not erase the importance of the curriculum, teachers, intervention systems, leadership, attendance, family engagement, or student mobility. But it does suggest that intentional school design can positively impact students and educators and, in turn, produce better educational outcomes.

Yet one of the most consequential variables receives far less attention: what parents expect from their children and what happens when those expectations weaken.

The issue is not whether parents attend every school function or sit beside their children for every homework assignment. The research suggests that a more powerful form of involvement is often less visible: communicating that school matters, establishing expectations for effort and achievement, monitoring whether those expectations are being met and connecting present academic work to future goals.

That distinction matters because schools do not operate apart from families. When parents consistently reinforce academic and behavioral standards, schools have an ally in maintaining them. When families increasingly expect schools to accommodate failure rather than correct it, the pressure can gradually shift from helping students meet a standard to changing the standard students are required to meet.

Research on parental involvement is remarkably consistent on this point. A found that parental aspirations and expectations showed the strongest relationship with student achievement among the forms of involvement they examined. A of middle-school students similarly found that 鈥渁cademic socialization鈥� 鈥� communicating expectations, discussing goals, and linking schoolwork to future plans 鈥� was especially strongly associated with achievement, while direct homework help was not consistently beneficial. 

A 2024 has likewise found positive relationships between parental involvement, expectations, and academic outcomes across racial, socioeconomic and other demographic groups.

The conclusion should not be overstated. Parental expectations do not erase poverty, disability, family instability or differences in school quality. But the research does show that expectations remain consequential across those differences. Risk is not destiny, and disadvantage does not make standards irrelevant.

A single parent working long hours may have fewer opportunities to volunteer at school than an affluent parent with a flexible schedule. Yet  both parents can still communicate that homework must be completed, that a poor grade requires a response, that effort is expected, that teachers deserve respect and that education is connected to the child鈥檚 future. Those messages cost little financially, but they create a powerful psychological framework for how a child understands school.

Children learn what adults consider normal. They learn whether a C is a signal to improve or something simply accepted. They learn whether unfinished work has consequences. They learn whether a teacher鈥檚 criticism should first provoke self-examination or an angry call from a parent. 

A family that responds to a poor grade by asking, 鈥淲hat went wrong, and how are we going to fix it?鈥� communicates something fundamentally different from one whose first response is, 鈥淲hat did the teacher do wrong?鈥� One response reinforces accountability; the other can unintentionally teach that standards are negotiable whenever they create discomfort.

The consequences do not remain inside the home. They eventually shape schools. Teachers operate in an environment influenced by families as well as administrators. When failing a student routinely produces complaints, demands for extra credit, repeated retesting, deadline extensions, or pressure to change grades, the cost of enforcing a standard rises. When discipline is treated primarily as evidence that the school mishandled the child rather than as a response to the child鈥檚 conduct, behavioral expectations become harder to sustain.

None of these practices is inherently wrong. Retesting can be educationally useful. Extensions may be appropriate. Accommodations are essential for some students. The problem begins when individualized supports become the default response to ordinary failure. Institutions respond to incentives. 

Teachers learn that failing grades create conflict. Administrators learn that retention and low graduation rates attract scrutiny. Students learn that deadlines and standards are flexible. Over time, the system can become more concerned with preventing the appearance of failure than with correcting the learning deficit that produced it.

The national achievement data make this harder to ignore. In 2024, 45% of American 12th graders performed below NAEP Basic in mathematics and 32% fell below Basic in reading 鈥� sobering evidence that large numbers of students are reaching the end of high school without demonstrating even basic levels of academic mastery.

Those results cannot be attributed to parental involvement alone, but they should sharpen the discussion about expectations. One of the most damaging mistakes in education is confusing an explanation for poor performance with a justification for lower standards. Poverty creates real obstacles. Students with disabilities need appropriate accommodations. Children dealing with family instability may require flexibility and support. But support and standards are not opposites.

The distinction is simple. Compassion says: 鈥淵ou are struggling, so we are going to give you more help.鈥� Lowered expectations say: 鈥淵ou are struggling, so we are going to require less.鈥� The first approach treats the student as capable of growth. The second can quietly turn a temporary disadvantage into a permanent ceiling.

Parents therefore have a role that schools cannot replace. They need not become teachers or supervise every assignment. Their more important responsibility is cultural: to establish what is expected, to reinforce effort, to support reasonable academic and behavioral standards and to resist the impulse to remove every consequence when a child falls short.

Parents should also demand honesty from schools. If grades indicate success while objective measures show serious weakness, parents should ask why. If a student is being promoted without prerequisite skills, parents should insist on remediation. Accountability should run in both directions.

America will continue debating curriculum, funding, testing, technology, school choice and federal policy. Those debates matter. But decades of research on parental involvement point toward a more basic truth: Children tend to do better when the adults raising them communicate that education matters and expect them to meet a meaningful standard.

Schools cannot indefinitely substitute for standards that are no longer reinforced at home. Restoring academic achievement therefore requires more than asking what schools should do differently. It also requires asking what parents should once again expect.

Before I understood federal funding, program performance standards or the complicated systems that make Head Start possible, I understood what it meant to be a Head Start child.

Years later, I returned, first as a center director and later as a regional director of a Head Start program in Fort Worth, Texas. I have experienced Head Start from both sides: as a child who benefited from the program and as a leader responsible for ensuring other children and families received the same opportunity.

So, when the current administration says its proposed reforms will strengthen Head Start鈥檚 core mission by giving local communities greater flexibility, I have a perspective that is both deeply personal and professional. Let me tell you why I know I鈥檓 opposed to the changes outlined .

Head Start鈥檚 core mission has never simply been about putting more children in classrooms. The program was built on the understanding that a child鈥檚 ability to learn is connected to everything happening in that child鈥檚 life. That is why Head Start has always been more than early education.

Head Start recognizes that supporting a child often means supporting the entire family so the program offers a number of wraparound services to support families in helping their children thrive. From connecting parents with healthcare, dental care and mental health resources when needed, to providing nutritious meals for children, it鈥檚 about working alongside parents in partnership. 

The would dramatically reduce the federal standards that have helped define what families can expect from a Head Start program. 

For decades, Head Start has operated with clear expectations around the comprehensive needs of children. Under this proposal, many of those expectations would no longer be spelled out in the performance standards. Programs would have significantly fewer federal requirements governing how they address healthcare and developmental needs. 

As someone who attended Head Start, I have some of my earliest memories of being cared for in a safe environment by trusted educators and receiving healthy meals each day. For some families with limited resources, knowing their children would receive two nutritious meals and a snack helps ease the burden of choosing between keeping the lights on and providing healthy meals. Head Start also gives parents the opportunity to work while knowing their children are safe, cared for and learning. For my family, Head Start was not simply a place for me to go during the day. It was a support for our entire family.

As someone who has led a Head Start program, I know what these actions look like in practice. It looks like a teacher noticing something about a child and knowing there is a system for responding to the issue. It looks like a family services worker helping a parent navigate resources they may not have known existed. It looks like identifying a concern early enough to intervene. It looks like following up instead of simply handing a parent a referral and hoping for the best. 

Sometimes, Head Start is the first system that truly sees a family. That visibility and acknowledgment can change the trajectory of a child or a family’s life.

The proposed rule would also move away from many of Head Start鈥檚 existing expectations for curriculum, teacher development, coaching, classroom size and teacher-child ratios, to rely more heavily on state childcare requirements. 

I have managed Head Start centers and also worked as a preschool teacher. I know what happens when you increase the number of children in a classroom without increasing the number of adults responsible for their care. Someone pays the price. It may be a decrease in the individual attention a child receives, a delay in the teacher鈥檚 recognition of a developmental concern or less time available to build relationships with families. Removing any of these standards will have a domino effect. 

I struggle to understand how we can say we are giving communities more power while simultaneously weakening one of the clearest structures through which quality early education exists. 

Children growing up in low-income families do not deserve a lesser standard of early childhood education because it is cheaper to administer. They deserve high-quality classrooms. They deserve teachers who have the capacity to see them. They deserve safe environments. They deserve access to support when they need it. Their parents deserve a voice, and their families deserve to be treated as partners. That is what makes Head Start so successful. That is what contributed to my success. 

For generations, Head Start has represented creating opportunity by investing in the whole child and strengthening the entire family, and we cannot strengthen that mission by stripping away the very things that made it powerful.

I am a product of Head Start, and Head Start did not change my life by doing less.

The urgency could not be greater. According to the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), only 31% of fourth graders performed at or above the proficient level in reading, while 40% scored below the basic level, the highest percentage since 2002.

The Science of Reading has transformed what educators know about teaching children to read. The challenge now is no longer one of knowledge. It is .

That implementation gap has given rise to what we call the dyslexia industrial complex. This is not a criticism of dyslexia advocates, researchers, or the many organizations improving outcomes for students. Rather, it is the rapidly expanding ecosystem of evaluations, tutoring, advocacy organizations, curriculum publishers, professional development, certification programs, legislation and private intervention that has emerged to address reading difficulties. 

At its best, this ecosystem has transformed lives. At its worst, it reveals an uncomfortable truth: Public education has become increasingly dependent on external systems to provide what should be coherent, evidence-based literacy instruction within schools.

Families experience this fragmentation every day. When a child struggles to read, parents are often encouraged to seek private neuropsychological evaluations costing thousands of dollars. Although a diagnosis can unlock services and accommodations, obtaining one through public schools is often slow and inconsistent. States such as New York have responded by expanding insurance coverage for private dyslexia evaluations, expanding access for families. 

Yet these policies also reveal a larger problem. Rather than building schools’ capacity to identify and support struggling readers, they increasingly rely on outside providers to fill the gaps. The same pattern extends into instruction.

Districts now face an overwhelming marketplace of literacy programs, intervention products, tutoring services and professional development offerings. Not all evidence claims are created equal. Too often, districts assume that materials labeled standards aligned are also aligned with the Science of Reading. They are not. 

Standards define what students should learn, but they say little about how reading should be taught. Schools can adopt programs that satisfy accountability requirements while failing to reflect decades of cognitive science and reading research.

Even within schools, fragmentation persists. Multi-tiered systems of support are intended to provide increasingly intensive instruction, but core curricula, intervention programs and supplemental resources often come from different publishers, each with different instructional routines, terminology, assessments, scope and sequence.

Instead of reinforcing one another, these programs operate in parallel. Students move between disconnected instructional experiences rather than progressing through a coherent continuum of learning. Teachers must navigate multiple systems instead of developing expertise within one aligned framework.

The irony is striking. The Science of Reading has never been better understood, yet implementation has rarely been more fragmented.

When classroom instruction fails to operate as an integrated system, families naturally seek support through tutoring, private evaluations, enrichment programs and outside intervention. This is true for all students, not just those with dyslexia. The marketplace grows not because schools lack dedicated educators, but because they lack coherent systems that consistently translate research into classroom practice.

Awareness was the first step. Implementation is the next.

The next phase of literacy reform is not about discovering new science. It is about implementing the science we already have.

We’ve long described this challenge as a three-legged stool.

The first leg is research. Decades of cognitive science have shown how children learn to read. We know the importance of explicit instruction in phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, morphology, fluency, language comprehension and knowledge building.

The second leg is professional learning. States and districts have invested millions of dollars training educators in the Science of Reading. Teachers are learning the instructional practices proven most effective. For students with dyslexia, this means greater access to explicit, systematic, and cumulative instruction in phonology, phonics, word recognition, fluency and language comprehension.

But the third leg is often missing: High-quality, aligned instructional materials allow teachers to consistently implement the research they have been trained to use.

Too often, educators leave excellent professional learning only to return to classrooms equipped with instructional materials grounded in different instructional philosophies. They are expected to bridge the gap by rewriting lessons, creating supplemental resources, adapting intervention materials and reconciling conflicting instructional approaches.

Imagine asking a surgeon to attend training on a new procedure but then requiring her to use outdated instruments in the operating room. No one would expect successful implementation. Yet this is exactly what happens when educators receive Science of Reading training but return to classrooms without materials designed to support what they have learned.

We know what works. We train teachers to do it. Then we ask them to succeed with materials that don’t align with that training. Until that changes, implementation will continue to depend on extraordinary teachers overcoming ordinary systems.

Rather than introducing isolated programs that require students and teachers to learn new instructional routines, districts should prioritize interventions that complement their core literacy framework. Effective interventions reinforce, not compete with, the language, instructional routines, vocabulary and skill progressions students experience during Tier 1 instruction.

Some schools are already demonstrating what this looks like. At P.S. 125 Ralph Bunche School in Harlem, educators that support striving readers while complementing their broader literacy framework. The program aligns with their tiered interventions. It reinforces explicit decoding, morphology, vocabulary, background knowledge and comprehension through linguistically rich texts.

Publishers also have a responsibility to reduce fragmentation. Too often, instructional programs are marketed as stand-alone solutions, leaving districts to determine how they fit within existing literacy systems. Publishers should provide transparent alignment charts that show how their materials connect to widely adopted core curricula, intervention programs and assessments. These crosswalks should show how instructional routines, vocabulary, scope and sequence, and assessments reinforce one another so districts can build coherent literacy systems instead of disconnected collections of products.

Districts should not have to become curriculum engineers.

Now we must transform how schools put that knowledge into practice.

The dyslexia industrial complex did not emerge because educators failed or because families demanded too much. It emerged because public education left gaps that others stepped in to fill. Those organizations have played an essential role, and many will continue to do so. But the long-term goal should not be to make the marketplace bigger. It should be to make schools stronger.

Last summer, the state formally adopted its Portrait framework, committing to a new vision of what it means to earn a diploma in New York, one that goes beyond standardized tests to include skills like critical thinking, communication, and civic readiness.

For decades, we have relied on narrow measures of success that fail to capture the skills students need for college, careers, and civic life. Portrait of a Graduate frameworks represent a genuine effort to fix that. But across the country, early adopters have learned a painful lesson: creating the vision is the easy part. Most systems never make it real.

of more than 100 districts that had created Portraits found that too many completed their framework, “hung a poster on the wall, felt good about their effort, and promptly moved on to other initiatives.”

The result is predictable. Frameworks get layered on top of existing systems rather than woven into how students actually experience school. Without real changes to curriculum, assessment, and expectations for student work, a Portrait of a Graduate becomes exactly that: a poster on the wall.

On the second day, one of the teens was fed up. Gemini was broken, she told me. It kept asking her questions instead of answering them. She was adamant that ChatGPT was a better tool, and that we should use it instead. 

What she didn’t know was that I had told Gemini to behave that way, to question her about her daily reading instead of just handing her answers. Then she scrolled up and read the instructions I had written into the prompt, and her annoyance turned to understanding. She wasn’t fighting a broken tool; she was being forced to pause and think.

The next day, she scored 100% on a quiz covering the prior day’s reading. She started leaning into our daily lessons, taking the time to answer questions thoughtfully instead of rushing through them. During our final session, she was one of the last students to turn in her quiz, making her mom wait a few extra minutes while she finished. Unheard of, especially over summer break.

That moment showed what鈥檚 possible when AI tools are built to make students actively think rather than think for them.

Over the course of a week, I gave the students a series of short readings about how their own brains work, and each day they used AI in a different way to deepen their understanding. Some days, I had the tool summarize the reading and told them to simply use that summary to build their understanding of the material. Other days, the tool had them engage in a Socratic Q&A. And some days it made them write their own question first, letting their own curiosity lead the process.

Then I quizzed them on what they remembered, both after their study session that same day and again a day later.

The results were fascinating. On the same-day quiz, students performed about the same, regardless of whether the AI tool had summarized the reading or questioned them. But a day later, the students who had engaged in the Socratic Q&A remembered more, scoring, on average, 83% on a quiz about the material they had reasoned through, versus 67% on the material the AI had summarized for them. More than two-thirds of the students said the version of AI that questioned them helped them learn more than the one that just summarized their readings.

Throughout the week, the students鈥� perception of their own skill in using AI as a study partner rose sharply. But when I lined those ratings up against what they could actually remember, the two had almost nothing to do with each other. How much students鈥� confidence in using AI grew had almost nothing to do with how much they had retained. Feeling like you have learned is not the same as actually learning.

This should worry anyone who cares about education. AI is everywhere. Students carry these tools in their pockets. School districts are slated to spend in the coming years, without a clear idea of what they should be evaluating those contracts on. My week-long pilot program taught me that AI tools cannot be judged by student engagement or satisfaction alone. Success cannot be gauged by whether students finish a problem set, or whether they enjoy a particular lesson. It must be measured by what a student retains after the tool disappears.

My students told me one more thing worth highlighting. They want to learn to use AI as a thinking partner, but no one has taught them how. When they play around with AI to get answers, they often can鈥檛 obtain explanations at their own grade and language level. They told me it is sometimes harder to get what they need from these tools than to study on their own. The students who could benefit most from personalized learning get the least usable output, perpetuating the very inequity these tools are supposed to close. 

That is why AI literacy must be taught in schools. Kids with tech-savvy parents are already learning to use AI well; the rest are typing in prompts and hoping for the best. School is the one place that can close that gap.

My son Harry is twice exceptional, a term often used for children who are both gifted and learn differently. Like many kids who think intensely, he did not always fit neatly into the usual categories adults tend to understand. He was curious, capable and full of potential, but the places where children are often expected to find confidence did not always feel like the right fit.

Then chess entered the picture.

At first, it looked like a game. A board, some pieces, rules to learn, moves to remember. But the more I watched Harry play, the more I realized that chess was giving him something deeper than an activity. It was giving him an arena.

For children who think or learn differently, that word matters. An arena is not just a place to perform. It is a place to practice. It has structure, boundaries, feedback, challenge and room to improve. For some kids, the right arena can make the difference between feeling constantly measured and finally feeling capable.

Not every child finds confidence on a field, a stage or a basketball court. Not every child feels successful following the same classroom routines or social settings that seem to work for others. Some children need a different kind of place to discover that their mind is not a problem to solve, but a strength to develop.

Chess has a way of making thinking visible. A child makes a move and sees what happens. The feedback is immediate, but it does not have to be humiliating. A lost piece is not a ruined day. A mistake is not a permanent label. It is information.

That may sound simple, but for a child who struggles with frustration, impulsivity, perfectionism or self-doubt it can be powerful.

In school, mistakes can feel public and heavy. A wrong answer on a test, a confusing assignment, a social misstep,or a moment of lost focus can quickly become part of how a child sees himself. Chess gives kids a smaller and safer place to practice the same emotional muscles they need everywhere else.

Pausing before acting, noticing the whole board, considering what might happen next, making a choice, living with the result, learning from it and trying another move are not only chess skills. They are life skills. They are school skills. They are friendship skills. They are the skills children need when something is hard and they want to quit.

This is especially important for neurodivergent children, gifted children, ADHD kids, autistic kids, twice-exceptional kids and children who may be bright but easily overwhelmed.

In chess, a child who rushes may learn to pause. A child who hates losing may learn that losing a piece is not the end of the game. A child who struggles to plan ahead may begin to see that one choice can affect the next three. A child who feels clumsy or out of place in other activities may discover a world where patience, curiosity, pattern recognition and imagination matter.

The goal is not to turn every child into a tournament player, which is where adults can easily get it wrong. Chess loses much of its value when it becomes another pressure system that sorts children into winners and losers.

The gift of chess is not just competition. It is practice.

A child can benefit from chess without trophies, rankings, private coaching or long tournaments. Playing a short game, moving only a few pieces and talking through one decision can matter. The point is not perfect play. The point is giving a child a place to slow down, think and experience progress.

There is also something deeply encouraging about visible improvement. In chess, a child can look back and see growth. A move that seemed impossible last month suddenly makes sense. A mistake that used to happen every game starts to disappear. A child begins to notice, 鈥淚 am getting better at this.鈥�

For kids who think differently, that realization can be profound. Confidence is not built only by praise, it is built by evidence. Chess gives children evidence that effort can become skill.

This matters in education because schools not only teach content, they shape how children understand themselves as learners. A student who repeatedly feels unsuccessful may begin to believe that effort does not help. But a child who finds even one arena where effort leads to progress may carry that lesson back into the classroom.

That does not mean chess is a cure, a therapy or a universal answer. It is not right for every child. Some will love it and some will not. Some will need a gentle introduction, short sessions, simplified rules or a patient adult sitting nearby. That is okay.

But chess deserves a place in the conversation about how to support kids who do not fit the mold. It is inexpensive and portable. It can be played in classrooms, libraries, afterschool programs, community centers and homes. It can be social or quiet, competitive or casual, simple or endlessly complex.

In writing “Decoding Genius,” I became fascinated by the long history of chess and the extraordinary minds shaped by the game. But the most important lesson for me remains the one I first saw through my son: Chess can help a child feel capable.

For a child who thinks differently, that can be everything.

Solving this predicament is one rationale for the strong political support and attention shown to work-based learning and high school career and technical education programs. But leaders running these programs report a quandary of their own: They can’t find enough employers willing to host interested high school students in meaningful roles, or sometimes enough students to fill available spots.

The usual explanation, that one side or the other isn’t trying hard enough, misses what’s really going on. The problem isn’t effort. It’s infrastructure.

That’s the central finding of our new profiling six work-based learning programs: a network of CTE charter schools in South Bend, Indiana; an industry-themed school network in San Antonio; a multi-district rural collaborative in Colorado; a Purdue University-affiliated early college network in Indianapolis and South Bend; a rural alliance of districts in Randolph County, Indiana; and a Philadelphia earn-and-learn training program built around real wage progression.

Six different design choices. Six different communities. But all suggest that rather than treating work-based learning as another elective or an item on a 鈥渃ollege and career readiness鈥� menu, work-based learning requires intentionally designed infrastructure linking schools, employers, postsecondary institutions and community organizations.

After interviewing the leaders of these programs, we identified six conditions that enabled each program to move from a pilot to a permanent part of a redesigned high school experience.

First, school-based programs benefited when their state allowed work-based learning hours to count toward graduation requirements and higher scores for career and technical education on state school accountability ratings. Colorado and Indiana stood out by allowing students to satisfy graduation requirements or earn a distinction on their diploma by completing a capstone project or a career course pathway with relevant work hours. Program officials told us this recognition meant they no longer felt torn between what was best for students and what state policy required. Instead, they could spend the time and resources to create and sustain high-quality work experiences with employers.

Second, these programs relied on government funding as the core of their budgets, including state career-technical education money, state and local workforce development funds and school innovation dollars. For example, the Fremont Multidistrict Initiative, serving rural Colorado, turned a state P-Tech designation into federal P-Tech dollars 鈥� up to two additional years of per-pupil support after graduation. These were layered on top of a state Opportunity Now workforce grant as well as ordinary state and local school funding. By combining sources in this way, all the programs reduced their reliance on philanthropy, which also increased the sustainability of their work. Still, the leaders told us that none of these funding streams fully covered the true cost of their learn-and-earn programs, so philanthropy continued to fill important gaps.

Third, program leaders reported that flexibility in teacher licensure allowing industry-qualified professionals to teach relevant coursework in the classroom and supervise students in the workplace significantly eased staffing challenges. In many states, students can’t earn course credit for either unless the educator or supervisor holds a full license as a K-12 teacher, in addition to whatever certification their industry requires. Indiana’s 鈥渨orkplace specialist鈥� certification for qualified industry professionals eased some of this challenge for programs in that state. But programs across states pointed to licensure itself as an obstacle, and to allowing flexibility as a key action policymakers could take to support their work.

Fourth, fundamental to high-quality work-based learning is the ability to offer students meaningful experiences in their field of choice through employer partnerships. These must be structured to be mutually beneficial, which is best achieved through detailed partnership agreements. Program staff reported that the best partnerships were built on long-term relationships. Many had anchor partnerships with founding employers who helped design the pathway to a specific work experience. This ensured a core number of students could participate, while employers felt more confident that students would be prepared before their work placements.

Fifth, each program had dedicated full-time staffers for recruiting students and employers. The leaders consider these coordinators so essential that funding their positions is a budget line alongside teachers, supplies and transportation. To reach the scale needed to support one or more full-time coordinators, half the programs in our sample pooled school districts across rural counties or a metro area. Program leaders recommended that states earmark funding for these  coordinators and make it easier for school districts to formally collaborate and share resources.

Sixth, transportation plans helping students get to their jobs improved access, especially in low-income or rural areas. Programs solved this challenge in different ways. CAST Schools Network in San Antonio used its partner districts’ school buses. RAZ32 in rural Randolph County, Indiana, leveraged county workforce dollars for transportation. Launchpad Philly gave students tickets for riding public buses. But not all programs could afford to offer transportation, leaving students to find their own way.

All these programs had a final element in common: entrepreneurial leadership willing to work through challenges. But repeatedly, we saw how the underlying infrastructure enabled programs to create life-changing opportunities for students. Participants in Launchpad Philly‘s post-high-school LiftOff track, for example, averaged roughly $15,000 in annualized earnings six months after graduation, moving to nearly $30,000 by nine months and a $50,000 living-wage benchmark at the one-year mark. That’s against a baseline of about $12,500 a year for a young Philadelphian with only a high school diploma. For students planning to pursue a bachelor’s degree, the program shows them what jobs in a field are really like, which helps them choose the right educational path.

As long as work-based learning is filed under 鈥渋nitiative,鈥� it will depend on the allure of a particular principal or the persistence of a particular grant officer. But by filing work-based learning under 鈥渃ore experience,鈥� the integration that makes it work starts to look like something a state or a region is responsible for building, the way it’s responsible for roads or broadband.

Infrastructure and initiatives get treated very differently by the people who fund and govern them. Initiatives get pilot grants, three-year evaluation, and press releases. Infrastructure gets appropriations lines, dedicated staff positions and long-term institutional ownership.

The six programs in our report prove work-based learning can succeed in rural and urban settings alike, using very different designs. The remaining question is whether the country will treat the infrastructure behind them as seriously as it treats the problem itself.

Understandably so. When taxpayer money moves, people talk. 

But being on the frontlines for several years as a certified literacy specialist 鈥� working with families, taking the calls, doing the assessment, tutoring the kids 鈥擨 can tell you that the conversation we are having about ESA funds is missing the mark about what is driving families to use them. 

This is not a school choice conversation. This is a literacy crisis conversation. 

Almost every call I get starts the same way.

A parent tells me their child was in public school through first, second or third grade. Somewhere in there, they started to realize how far behind their child was falling. They tried to get help. They were told to wait. Wait for what? Wait for the multi-tiered support process, wait for the evaluation, wait for the individualized education program to be finalized. 

By the time any of that happened, it was too late. The foundational gap grew wider. Another school year was over. In some cases, time to move to middle school, where support services tend to decrease rather than increase.

Eventually, they made a decision knowing they had to do something different. They pulled their child out and started homeschooling. Not because they had a philosophical objection to public education. Because their kid couldn’t read and nobody was fixing it.”We’re not looking for homework help,” they would tell me. “We need someone to fill in the gaps that were never built in the first place.”

Let me be clear. This is not one family. This is almost every family. And my company has served hundreds of families nationwide. 

The data backs up what I’m hearing from parents. 

According to the 2024 Nation’s Report Card, only 31% of fourth-grade students nationwide are reading at or above the NAEP Proficient level. This is a four-point drop from 2019. Forty percent of fourth graders are now scoring below even NAEP鈥檚 Basic level, the highest percentage since 2002. The National Literacy Institute puts it another way, 64% of American fourth graders are not reading proficiently.

These are not numbers from a recovering system. These are numbers from a system that has not figured out how to reach the majority of its students. Specifically, the students who don’t learn to read through standard classroom instruction.

Traditional Schooling vs. ESA Option

The IEP process, which is supposed to protect those students, is moving too slow. The multi-tiered support system, while well-intentioned, has in many cases become a years-long waiting room. 

By the time a child’s eligibility is determined, the window for easiest intervention may have already closed. Research on neuroplasticity tells us that the brain is significantly more responsive to literacy intervention before second grade. Families who wait three years for a formal IEP are not getting what the system promised them.

ESA programs are not, for most of these families, an ideological statement. They represent a funding tool that finally lets them stop waiting and allows them to take fast action for their kids. 

By the time families reach me, they are looking for something very specific. A certified educator who can assess where the gaps actually are, build from there and move at the pace the child is ready for. Not a program. Not a curriculum. A person with the training to deliver genuine academic intervention.

What are they getting? Depending on which state they’re in and which vendor they find this varies greatly.

Here’s the part of the ESA debate that nobody is talking about. There are varying credentialing standards for tutoring vendors in most state programs. “Tutoring” is listed as an approved expense, but the definition of who can deliver it ranges from a certified literacy specialist to college students who believe they can teach based on their expertise and interests. 

Some states do better. For example, Tennessee and Georgia, require either a state-issued teaching certificate or an accredited tutoring company. But many states only require a bachelor’s degree, a threshold that is sufficient for homework help, not for delivering structured literacy intervention to a child with dyslexia.

In states with reimbursement models, the oversight is even thinner. A parent can pay anyone, submit the receipt, and receive reimbursement. 

This matters because the families using ESA funds for tutoring are not looking for a supplement to a strong educational experience. They are looking for intervention. Their children have real learning differences. They need real specialists.

The results are significant when families find the right match, when they get a proper assessment, an individualized plan and a certified educator who actually understands what’s happening in the child’s brain. These kids grow. Oftentimes dramatically.

That is not an argument for ESAs as a policy. It’s an observation about what happens when the right intervention meets the right student. Not only that, but the relief it provides for a family who has been attempting to get help for their student through their trusted local school district for years. 

The question I’d put to anyone designing or reforming these programs is this: if we’ve agreed that tutoring is a legitimate use of ESA funds, and we know that families using those funds are overwhelmingly seeking academic intervention for children with learning differences 鈥� shouldn’t we have a clearer standard for what intervention actually requires?

Homework help and academic intervention are not the same thing. A knowledgeable family member can help a child practice multiplication tables. But a child who is three years behind in reading because of unaddressed dyslexia needs a certified, trained specialist, not just someone who is willing to sit with them. This is not just 鈥渢utoring.鈥� 

The families calling me already know the difference. The programs paying for it haven’t caught up yet.

I鈥檝e been around long enough to know that when it comes to meeting the needs of children with disabilities, specifics matter. Head Start currently has a robust set of with numerous related to services for children with disabilities The require programs to follow federal law and promise added flexibility in how that鈥檚 done, but offer no guidance, stripping away detailed requirements.听

If the proposal is approved, programs would no longer be required to give developmental assessments to each child or accommodate all children so they can fully participate. 

It removes a specific directive that programs can鈥檛 turn children away because of a disability or chronic health condition. It removes the detailed guardrails on temporary suspensions and a prohibition on expulsion, which are important protections for children with disabilities. It also strikes requirements that programs support parents through the IEP process, which can be confusing and hard to navigate.

Head Start鈥檚 performance standards make sure children are given early support and opportunities that can shape their entire future. If those requirements disappear, children with disabilities lose the services, protections and pathways that make inclusion possible.

Since the 1960s, Head Start has provided early learning, health, nutrition, family support and developmental services to children whose families often face the greatest barriers to care. For children with disabilities, it has played an especially important role.

A decade before children with disabilities won the right to a free, appropriate public education, young children with disabilities were already being included in Head Start programs. Head Start helped establish a basic expectation that children with disabilities belong in early learning settings alongside their nondisabled peers.

Key to that progress are the standards built by Congress, advocates and the Office of Head Start, making room for children with all types of disabilities, including Down syndrome, cerebral palsy, and spina bifida, not just those with speech and language delays.

That鈥檚 important because children with disabilities are often turned away from other early childhood programs. Parents are told their child鈥檚 needs are too significant, that staff aren鈥檛 trained, that accommodations aren鈥檛 available or that another setting would be better. Families get the same message, again and again: Your child doesn鈥檛 belong here.

Head Start has been one of the few places where the answer is different: Yes, your child belongs, and yes, we know how to support them.

Federal law requires Head Start programs to include children with disabilities. The standards help make that requirement mean something in a child鈥檚 day. They catch delays in development early, oftentimes before it can affect learning. They shape whether a teacher knows who to call when a developmental concern comes up, whether a family gets help starting an evaluation, whether services continue while paperwork moves, and whether a child is supported in the classroom instead of sent home.

One of the central elements of a quality Head Start program is partnership. Partnerships with school districts, Medicaid agencies and parents. These partnerships work because the performance standards spell out the nature of the engagement. It鈥檚 not enough to tell a family that these services are available. Staff in all the partner agencies must understand fully their roles and responsibilities under multiple federal laws. When they don鈥檛, which will happen if the performance standards are abandoned, children miss out. 

Without these standards, a child鈥檚 experience could depend far too much on where that child lives, what resources a local program has, and whether a parent knows how to navigate a complicated system. Children鈥檚 disabilities will be diagnosed later, which will put them at greater risk once they enter elementary school. Families with money and time may be able to hire specialists, pay for private evaluations or find another preschool. Families with fewer resources may have no alternative.

Children with disabilities are still eligible for special education services through the public education system, but without detailed standards they may no have access to the full array of Head Start鈥檚 comprehensive services, including physical and mental health care and parent engagement. That doesn鈥檛 give children more opportunity. It gives families less to count on.

Serving preschool children well, including those with disabilities, isn鈥檛 easy. It takes skilled teachers, family partnership, coordination with health providers and school districts, and a deep respect for each child鈥檚 development. Head Start staff do this work every day, often with too little pay and too few resources. Without the guidance of required performance standards, these essential supports won鈥檛 be maintained.

Children don鈥檛 get a second chance at early childhood. The first years of life are when communication, relationships, confidence and learning begin to take shape. When a developmental delay is identified early, a child can get the support they need to thrive. When a child with a disability learns alongside nondisabled peers, all children learn that difference is part of life and that every child belongs in the classroom. 

I鈥檝e spent my career working with families, educators and advocates who know what happens when systems treat children with disabilities as someone else鈥檚 responsibility. Head Start鈥檚 standards help prevent that. They give programs clear responsibilities and families clear expectations. They help ensure that a child鈥檚 access doesn鈥檛 depend on how much a local program knows about disability or how hard a parent can fight.

The federal government should be strengthening that commitment.

Children with disabilities and children from families with low incomes already face too many barriers to early learning. Weakening Head Start鈥檚 standards would add another one.

This proposal should be judged by one question: Will it make it easier or harder for a child with a disability to be welcomed, supported and included? It鈥檚 very clear to me that this proposal eliminates and weakens the performance standards, that children with disabilities will be among the first to be harmed, and that harm could last a lifetime.

Head Start鈥檚 performance standards grew out of decades of experience with children and families. They must be maintained, enforced, and strengthened,  not dismantled.

The magic of Head Start is what happens once children and their families are enrolled, and for children with disabilities, that requires strong standards and a federal commitment to inclusion. That鈥檚 the Head Start worth protecting.

The is the primary federal grant that helps low and middle-income students pay for college. Students can use the funds for tuition, books and living costs like rent and food.听聽

Students who rely on Pell funding cannot make an accurate plan to pay for college if they are unable to rely on the program being adequately funded for the whole time they are enrolled.  

Congress wisely made to the Pell Grant program at the end of the first Trump administration as part of the . Those changes created a , based on family income and assets, that is used to determine how much financial aid a student is eligible for. The changes adjusted the eligibility threshold for Pell Grants, making eligible for the grants and about eligible for the maximum grant amount.听

These eligibility changes, along with an increase in college enrollment, mean more students are receiving the grants than anticipated. Because Pell is funded through , Congress has to estimate how much funding is needed. When the funding estimates are too low, there is a shortfall that requires additional appropriations. 

More students going to college 鈥� especially more low-income and first generation students 鈥� is the definition of a good problem to have. Students have been responding positively to the simpler FAFSA process and College applications rose by 5% for the coming academic year, according to , and just a few weeks ago, the high school class of 2026 set a .听

Taken together, these represent rare examples of policy changes rapidly achieving the hoped-for outcomes of increasing college access. But this progress will be undermined if Congress jeopardizes millions of students鈥� Pell Grants by failing to fully fund the program.  

There are positive signs that this administration and Congress are willing to fix the Pell shortfall. The President鈥檚 proposed funding to maintain the current maximum grant, but no additional funds to fill the shortfall. Congress is currently considering , along with a $50 increase to the maximum grant. But the House funding proposal approved in committee would come at the expense of subsidized federal student loans. This approach, which I urge the Senate not to adopt, would add to the loan balances of the lowest income student loan borrowers. Many of them are the same students who rely on Pell Grant funding.听

The maximum Pell Grant of $7,395 is already lower than it should be. Today, the max grant covers 30% of average tuition, housing and food costs at public colleges, down from 79% of those expenses in 1975. If the maximum grant had simply kept pace with inflation since 2022, the last time it was increased, . An extra $50 is a positive if insufficient step in the right direction. 

If the maximum Pell Grant is suddenly and significantly cut, rather than increasing as it should, millions of students will struggle to cover tuition or even have to drop out of school. Further, students currently planning on going to college may decide they can鈥檛 afford to enroll.听

Financial challenges are already the that students have to stop attending college. There is also strong evidence that every increases graduation rates by 1.5 percentage points. Similar sized cuts are almost certain to reduce graduation rates by a similar percentage, reversing progress on college graduation rates that have been steadily increasing.听聽

Lower graduation rates are likely to disproportionally impact first-generation and low-income students. This would reverse the we are seeing for the students who have the most to gain from higher education. They know exactly how valuable college is, because they know exactly what it looks like when a lack of education limits your options.  

These are the students our members at the support, the ones furthest from opportunity. They deserve the chance to succeed in college. Ultimately, being able to choose whether to pursue higher education, regardless of family wealth, is the most American of ideas, reflecting that we should give everyone a fair chance and the freedom to choose their path in life.

In other sectors, opportunity is booming. Homes, roads, bridges, vehicles, energy grids, water systems and data centers all depend on skilled workers to build and maintain them. Yet demand far outstrips supply: McKinsey & Company that for every new hire in skilled trades like carpentry, electrical work and welding, roughly 20 positions remain unfilled.

This raises a simple question: If the economy urgently needs more skilled trades workers, why aren’t we making a greater investment in our public high schools to help prepare students for these in-demand, well-paying careers?

Unfortunately, the role high schools once played in preparing students for careers has diminished greatly. Traditional shop classes in auto repair, electrical, construction and other hands-on fields have disappeared from many public high schools over the past several decades. Though modern career and technical education programs , they don鈥檛 yet have the reach or capacity to meet demand. Too many high students still don鈥檛 have meaningful exposure to career pathways in the skilled trades.

New conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago and commissioned by Harbor Freight Tools for Schools shows overwhelming support for expanding skilled trades education in public high schools. Students want it. Parents want it. Voters across party lines want it.

The survey of more than 6,000 U.S. voters, parents and public high school students found that 95% of voters and 81% of parents believe more opportunities to study skilled trades in high school would better prepare students for careers; 84% of voters and 73% of parents support increased government funding.

That kind of agreement is rare in American politics, and the strong support among parents reflects their fears about the future labor market. Nearly half of parents surveyed said they are extremely or very concerned that AI will reduce job opportunities for their child.

The AI era only makes modern skilled trades education more urgent. This research shows broad consensus that high school should prepare students not only for college admission but also for careers with stability and purpose..

All high school students should have the opportunity to explore a skilled trade. Some will discover a lifelong career. Many will gain practical skills and confidence. And others will go on to college with a clearer sense of purpose.

The NORC survey found high school students who have taken skilled trades classes report stronger connections to school and greater confidence about their future, even if they don鈥檛 enter the trades. Those students felt more confident collaborating and problem-solving than their peers.

Voters see it clearly, too. They ranked skilled trades as the top elective funding priority for high schools, ahead of STEM, business, healthcare, arts and physical education. That does not mean those subjects are unimportant. It means the public sees a skilled trades gap that has been ignored for too long.

With students, parents and voters all wanting stronger pathways into the skilled trades, public policy should reflect that consensus.

That requires real investment in modern school facilities, up-to-date equipment, trained instructors, career counseling and schedules that allow students to take skilled trades classes that are aligned with core academics. It also requires expanding partnerships with employers and community organizations to provide apprenticeships and opportunities for students to earn industry credentials, accelerating their upon graduation.

Strengthening and expanding skilled trades pathways in public high schools is one of the most forward-looking steps we can take in an economy being reshaped by artificial intelligence, infrastructure needs, and uncertainty about the future of work.

The high school students who will build, repair, power, and maintain the country鈥檚 future are sitting in classrooms right now. They should not have to wait until after graduation to discover what they are capable of doing with their hands, their minds and their ambition.

This is the crux of the curriculum implementation gap. It’s not a teacher problem. It’s not a curriculum problem. It’s a leadership problem, and it’s one most districts don’t see until they鈥檝e already spent millions and fallen behind.

As a former middle school principal who has spent my career developing the leaders schools and districts need, I have seen how critical it is that principals are an integral part of instructional improvements. They are the connective tissue between curriculum intent and classroom reality. They as much influence, if not more, on student learning as teachers do. Without including them, districts navigating will never get their money鈥檚 worth out of new research-based literacy or math curriculums, or curriculum-focused professional learning for teachers.

There is much that can be done at the state and local , from improving principal preparation programs to increasing funding for school leader professional development. In the meantime, districts can make a few immediate changes to better position principals to lead their schools in getting the most out of their investment in high-quality curriculum.

First, meaningfully involve school leaders in choosing the right curriculum for their district. In most cases, district leaders drive the curriculum selection process, according to . Principals have a unique perspective on students鈥� learning needs and the kinds of professional development teachers have already received, making them an essential part of the conversations about which instructional materials are right for the school. They should be included in meetings with curriculum developers, so they can ask the hard questions about how those particular instructional materials will suit their teachers and their students, and given a say in deciding what will work for their schools. 

Second, give principals real time to learn the materials themselves. While teachers increasingly get learning opportunities grounded in their new curriculum, principals rarely have the chance to meaningfully grapple with the instructional materials, such as by studying and annotating complex texts and co-planning lessons. But they need to become experts in the materials so they can help their teachers get better at using and adapting the curriculum to meet the students’ needs. My organization has seen a real difference in schools when principals regularly participate in professional learning communities, coaching conversations and discussions with educators about what is and isn鈥檛 working, and why.

District leaders can ensure principals have dedicated time for this deep, hands-on work by reducing their administrative burdens, such as by having central office staff handle compliance tasks that don’t require the principal’s attention, and establishing predictable and consistent communications with school leaders, such as a weekly email. They should set clear expectations that principals spend significant time in classrooms working alongside teachers to strengthen instruction. And rather than holding district-led meetings where system leaders provide updates, they should use those times together to refine classroom observation and feedback practices and examine how principals are using data to monitor how changes to instruction affect student learning.

Third, shift the focus of classroom observation from compliance to quality. Teachers make real changes to their practice when they get meaningful, real time feedback. As principals develop a deep understanding of the instructional materials, they must also shift from using classroom observations as a compliance exercise 鈥� making the minimum required number of visits during the year with a checklist of basic expectations 鈥� to regularly stopping into classrooms to examine the quality of instruction. That means assessing how students are using the materials sitting on their desks and whether they are pushing real learning. How is the teacher tailoring the content to provide multiple ways for kids with different learning styles to engage? Are students discussing the material and challenging one anothers鈥� thinking? Whether through classroom walkthroughs and coaching with district instructional leaders or professional learning communities, principals must build the skills to truly understand surface level versus impactful use of curriculum. It鈥檚 one of the most important, and least expensive, investments a district can make.  

Fourth: make feedback specific and anchored to student learning. Classroom observations are only as useful as the feedback that follows. By knowing the curriculum intimately, principals can clearly and directly connect what they saw in the classroom 鈥� from the questions teachers asked students to the classwork they engaged in and their discussions 鈥� to the relevant pieces of the instructional materials. This kind of feedback can happen in one-on-one coaching conversations as well as in meetings to which teachers bring student work. The discussion should focus on where instruction broke down. What did and didn鈥檛 work? Where and how should the curriculum be adjusted? 

Fifth, get everyone speaking the same language. To ensure there is exceptional teaching in every classroom, everyone in the district and the school 鈥� from operations and instructional teams to schedule developers and recess aides 鈥� need to understand how student learning intersects with their work. How can business managers keep instructional goals top of mind when making budgetary decisions? Do schedulers understand instructional priorities well enough to use them to inform their efforts? The principal is central to ensuring that all the adults in the building knows how student learning goals can shape their work.

As districts prepare for the next school year with lingering questions about funding, it鈥檚 critical that they get their money鈥檚 worth from the investments they鈥檝e made. Putting principals at the center of efforts to adopt new and better curriculum is an essential step toward getting the most out of the millions already spent. Principals are key to marrying vision with reality on the ground. They should be treated as such.

As assistant secretary of elementary and secondary education under George W. Bush, I had the privilege of helping to translate that research into policy. It was an optimistic time. We believed that if we could align classroom practice with what decades of research had taught us about reading development, we could dramatically improve children’s lives. 

Looking back, we were right about the science. But we were strikingly na茂ve about its implementation. 

Last week, New York released its latest state reading assessment results. The were discouraging. Reading proficiency had declined, particularly in grades 3 through 5, leading many to question whether 鈥� the evidence-based literacy program introduced in 2023 鈥� was working at all.听

It鈥檚 a fair question. If all we have is a single set of state test scores, that conclusion is understandable. But state assessments capture only one moment in a much longer process of instructional change. To understand whether NYC Reads is making a difference, we have to look beyond a single test.

To answer that question, my team of researchers at New York University has spent the past three years in dozens of New York City classrooms, many in schools where reading achievement had remained stubbornly low for years. We weren’t looking for dramatic transformations. We wanted to understand whether the daily work of teaching and learning was beginning to change.  

At first, the changes revealed themselves in small ways. Children no longer looked immediately to the teacher when they came to an unfamiliar word. Instead, they looked back at the print. You could see them quietly sounding out the word, stretching the phonemes with their fingers, and trying again. During dictation, children held up their whiteboards proudly after spelling words they would not have attempted only months earlier. Teachers were no longer carrying the cognitive burden of every lesson; children were beginning to carry more of it themselves. 

The conversations had changed as well. Rather than asking children simply to recall a fact or identify a character, teachers pressed them to explain their thinking, justify an answer with evidence from the text, or connect a new idea to something they had learned the week before. Just as striking, children began asking their own questions 鈥� about insects, weather, communities or whatever topic they happened to be studying. 

Vocabulary was no longer treated as a list of words to memorize but as a way of making sense of increasingly complex ideas. Reading instruction felt less like a performance by the teacher and more like an intellectual partnership between teachers and children. 

But observations can be deceptive. Good researchers learn to distrust first impressions, no matter how encouraging they may seem. Were these classrooms simply more engaging? Were teachers becoming more skillful without children learning substantially more? Or were the changes we observed beginning to alter children’s reading trajectories in measurable ways?

We began looking beyond classroom observations to the children’s assessments. The first school we examined had struggled with reading achievement for years. Judging only by its reputation, few people would have expected dramatic progress. Yet the end-of-year assessments told a different story. Children who had entered kindergarten with little or no measurable word reading were now reading at levels that placed them well above national norms. One child finished the year at the 98th percentile in sight-word reading. Others reached the 90th and 86th percentiles. These were not isolated successes; they were signs that something within the school had begun to change. 

A second school served predominantly multilingual learners. Here the picture was equally revealing. Many children still required intensive support by the end of kindergarten, reminding us how much work remained. But alongside them were classmates reading comfortably within the core range, some reaching the mid-90th percentiles on foundational reading measures. The averages alone could never capture that story because they concealed what mattered most: the distribution itself was beginning to shift.  

The school-level findings were encouraging, but they raised an even larger question. Were these schools exceptional, or were they revealing a broader pattern? Three schools, no matter how compelling their stories, cannot answer that question. To find out, we widened the lens.

We analyzed districtwide reading data collected before the initiative began and compared it with data gathered during the first years of implementation, following the progress of nearly 4,000 students. Unlike an annual state assessment, which provides a snapshot of performance at a single point in time, these nationally normed screeners were designed to measure growth. They allowed us to ask a different question: Were children making meaningful progress as readers?

The results closely mirrored what we had been seeing in classrooms. Across successive cohorts, children continued to make steady gains in reading, with growth evident across grades and among most student groups. The progress was neither dramatic nor complete. Too many children were still struggling to read proficiently, and important differences remained among schools. But the pattern itself was remarkably consistent. 

Classroom observations, school-level assessments, and districtwide screening data were all pointing in the same direction. Independently, each offered only a partial picture. Together, they suggested that meaningful instructional change was beginning to take hold.

So, when I look at the state assessment, I don’t see a contradiction. I see a different measure answering a different question. It reminds us that New York still has a great deal of work to do, particularly in the upper elementary grades where reading becomes increasingly demanding. 

But I do not believe those results tell us we are on the wrong path. Rather, classroom observations, school-level assessments, districtwide growth data and state results lead me to a different conclusion: meaningful instructional change has begun.

Looking back, I think this is another lesson we failed to appreciate when the National Reading Panel was first released. We assumed that once the science was clear, progress would reveal itself quickly. We now know better. Educational change takes time. The important question is not whether the work is finished. The important question is whether it is moving in the right direction.

I believe that it is. Educational change appears first in classrooms, then in children, then in schools, and only later in statewide results. This is not the moment to abandon course. It is the moment not to blink.