As of last month, more than 2,400 claims were pending in the overseen by a judge in California. More than 10,000 individual cases and nearly 800 school district claims were pending across . And more than 40 have filed or joined lawsuits against the companies.

The lawsuits allege that the platforms were deliberately engineered to maximize addictive use among children and teenagers, and that the companies knowingly designed them to drive young people鈥檚 prolonged engagement, despite mounting evidence that they can be harmful.

Their recommendation algorithms amplify harmful material, the lawsuits allege. And weak age-verification systems have allowed underaged users broad access. The companies that run the platforms knew about these risks, they say, but failed to warn users and families about the mental health risks, often revealed by their own research. 

The companies have disputed these claims, maintaining that their platforms include safety tools. But one of them, Meta, which runs Facebook, acknowledged that the lawsuits could be costly, this year with the Securities and Exchange Commission warning investors that the lawsuits and mass arbitration demands could 鈥渟ignificantly impact鈥� its finances.

That could happen soon. In late March, two landmark verdicts came down within 24 hours of each other: On March 25, a Los Angeles jury found Meta and YouTube liable for designing that harmed a 20-year-old woman who started using them as a child. The jury awarded her $6 million. The companies that run Snapchat and TikTok were also named as defendants, but reached undisclosed settlements before trial.

A day earlier, a New Mexico jury for failing to protect kids from child exploitation and ordered it to pay $375 million for consumer-protection violations. 鈥淵ou add it all up and it could be hundreds of billions of dollars,鈥� social psychologist Jonathan Haidt recently.

As with the tobacco and opioid lawsuits, one major question is emerging: Where will the money go? Will the proceeds benefit children, or will they end up simply padding states鈥� and school districts鈥� budgetary bottom lines?

To answer this, 社区黑料 turned to Elizabeth Gaines, founder and CEO of the , a nonprofit focused on helping governments and communities figure out how to pay for programs and services that support children and youth. The organization doesn鈥檛 run the actual programs, but helps leaders and policymakers build sustainable funding systems to establish and keep these programs going, such as early childhood education, afterschool programs and mental health services.

It specializes in so-called 鈥渟trategic public financing,鈥� which pushes communities to examine how much they spend on children, how much they actually need and where they can find or generate more funding for, in Gaines鈥檚 words, 鈥渄eeper investments鈥� for kids. 

A lifelong child advocate, Gaines has worked in the field for 30 years, from think tanks to state-level advocacy. She founded the funding project eight years ago. 鈥淚 looked around and realized that no one at the national level was really focusing on the public financing of child and youth development and programs and services writ large,鈥� she said.

The project now tracks more than 300 federal, state and local funding streams that support children and youth from cradle to career.

Gaines began her career in her home state of Missouri, where she worked on ensuring one key goal: that proceeds from the 1998 benefited children. 

Spoiler alert: They didn鈥檛. A budget shortfall prompted lawmakers to redirect millions from the settlement into the state鈥檚 general fund. Gaines now admits, 鈥淲e did not get involved early enough in that process to really be able to shape the outcome of those dollars.鈥�

Nearly 30 years later, with thousands of cases focused squarely on the harms of social media, she is working to build a coalition of groups that can persuade governors, lawmakers, educators and attorneys general to keep the focus on uplifting kids, not filling budget holes. The coming legal settlements, she said, are payback for that harm. 鈥淎nd [when] they pay back in, it needs to go back into the public good.鈥�

社区黑料鈥檚 Greg Toppo recently sat down with Gaines for a wide-ranging conversation on her work and the 鈥済ame-chaning鈥� potential of the social media payouts.

The conversation has been edited for length and clarity. 

First let’s talk about the tobacco payouts. You were in Missouri at the time. As you look back on that now, what were the mistakes?

The tobacco settlement was the Wild West. I remember we had $20 million that the governor and the legislature had committed, and they were like, “Yes, we’re going to put that towards positive youth development 鈥� and it’s going to be huge!” Back then, that was big dollars for Missouri. And then there was a little budget crisis, and the governor withheld those dollars. It was like, “Oh, sorry.” But that was happening all over the country at that time. There are some states that did a good job of setting tobacco settlement dollars aside and having a real method to how they dispersed them, but for the most part, those dollars went into the general fund and never really tracked in any significant way. 

What about the opioid settlements?

They’ve gotten better, and I think we’ve been really guided by in the opioid settlement, which was like, 鈥淗ere are the 10 things that these dollars are intended to be used for.鈥� And so states have taken that, some of them more seriously than others, as the funds roll out. 

So let’s assign a number, a score of one through 10 to the tobacco settlements in terms of where the money went. 

Writ large, that’s so hard. I mean, anecdotally, because I haven’t done a full research study, my sense is probably three out of 10. States weren’t putting funds towards something that was prevention-oriented or reinvesting in the community. 

I want to make sure I understand what the Children’s Funding Project does. I know what your objective is. I wonder: Do you have any leverage, or is this all just advisory? Are you on the outside looking in, saying, “Hey, governors, you should do this”? Or do you have power to make these things happen?

We have no real hard power in this. What we are attempting to do is go around and get regulations in place. And what we really need is to then replace that with deep investments in young people. We’re narrowing in on the attorneys general who are going to be at the table, because they’re leads among the states in the suits, making sure that they understand that it’s not just a settlement to punish the companies and then wherever those dollars go, so be it. There’s a safety aspect that they’re working on: Protect young people, change the platforms, make sure we’re not having faulty products like we’ve had. 

But then there’s a youth justice component to this too.  And people just haven’t gotten there yet. So I think we’re just ahead, honestly, of where zeitgeist is on this, and when we do get it in front of people, they’re like, “Yes, that’s where the money needs to go.” We’ve got a former attorney general who’s advising us on how the A.G. world works because it’s new to our field.

So no, we are not involved in the suits directly, and that’s intentional. That’s somebody else’s job. Our job, as the people who care about funding for kids, is to focus on making sure that money goes to the right place.

So let’s talk about that. What are the things we should be buying with it?

Spokane, Washington, has this thing that they started out of their schools called . Basically what this buys is some joy and some curiosity and some investment in things for a group of young people that have kind of had a rough decade. It’s not been awesome to be a young person. And so this is to say, “You want to learn to play the trumpet? You want to learn to code? You want to learn to build trails out in the woods? Whatever it is that’s speaking to you as a young person, we want to put an infrastructure in place that actually allows you to go and explore that.鈥� And so they’re doing it in Spokane, which is great. 

You talk about a “rough decade” for young people. It sounds like you want to offer them opportunities that maybe even their predecessors, their parents, didn’t have. 

I will just say this: There are special cases where young people have gotten to do it. I ran youth programs 30 years ago. The program that I ran became one of the very first . And there are people who I hired that work there to this day who are incredibly talented youth workers, who now for generations have been saving young people and really helping them find their calling. And to have young people in relationships with talented adults who know how to do that 鈥� and other talented young people, what we call “near peers,” who can provide that kind of guidance 鈥� is something we’ve never had.

21st Century Community Learning Centers have basically been since years ago. It’s kind of crazy to think that we’ve never invested more than a billion dollars in that as a country.

If you went to an attorney general, and they said, “Just lay it all out for me,” what are the possibilities? Obviously there is a constituency that will say, “Just give the schools more money.” Just make classes smaller, improve buildings, put in HVAC, and on and on and on. Pump money into the system. Do you find yourselves in opposition to that?

They should, just as a matter of course, pay for HVAC systems for our schools, and so using this special pot of money to do that is not going to have the intended impact that we want to have. And given the direct link between the harms related to youth mental health and what we know about investing in prevention and upstream opportunities,  this is a chance to really make a significant investment in those kinds of things. So the coalition that we’re building is really trying to bring together the people not only that are in the comprehensive afterschool funding community, but into sports and play, outdoor education, arts, civic engagement leadership, youth in service types of activities. There’s a bunch of stuff that’s always been underfunded. This is a chance to quadruple down on it.

Quadruple down? 

Well, I’ll just go ahead and admit it’s going to be more than that. 

You’re talking about the harms of social media, and obviously thinking of ways to to remedy that. Who are the people you would work with to make some of these things happen?  

Let me be clear: We are really trying to coalesce any organization. Largely they’re community based organizations. There’s the names that people know: the Boys and Girls Clubs and the Y’s, but there’s also really organically grown, community based organizations that, in many cases, are the most effective at reaching young people that are hard to reach in the places where they are. And those folks have always just done that work and found ways to do it, but have been deeply underfunded. And so if I was the boss of social media litigation, I would say investing in those homegrown, local organizations would be a really powerful thing to do. We’re trying to bring all of those folks to one table, and then there’s going to have to be state-by-state approaches. 

Could you envision a landscape where offering funding to public schools is in opposition to the Girl Scouts or the Campfire Girls or Boys and Girls Clubs?  

Certainly that could happen. But our intent is to make this like what they’ve done in Spokane. That’s superintendent-led. I think the schools are going to have to get that this is an opportunity to really do some things that they get pressured to focus on, when really they have a job to do already and they can’t seem to layer the social-emotional well-being of young people on top of what they’re trying to do. 

I was talking to somebody today about something totally unrelated, and they used the term “human flourishing.” That sounds kind of like what you’re talking about.

Yeah. I mean, listen: With the onset of AI and the way that the world is shifting, I think there’s going to be a huge need that becomes so clear for folks about just the value of being human and how we raise good humans. It’s going to become increasingly important.

You talked about attorneys general. Are there any who you feel are leading the way?

You probably saw [New Mexico Attorney General] , the New Mexico case, which is not actually part of the larger case, . [A jury in March found that Meta had failed to protect young users from child predators on Instagram and Facebook.] It was the first one at the state level out of the gate that has gotten an early verdict. And it was pretty powerful. He was only looking at one set of harms related to child exploitation. So just on that one harm alone, they said was owed. And then if you extrapolate that to all the other harms, it’s significant. Certainly Kentucky’s, A.G., Colorado鈥檚, California鈥檚. But it’s a truly bipartisan group of A.G.s that are leading on this. 

These strike me as not just life-changing numbers but just system-changing numbers. I mean this has a potential to really just change how we even consider what’s possible. 

That’s the point, and that’s, I think, why people get very excited about this as a solution, as a chance to really dream and to get young people excited and engaged. 鈥淕ame-changing鈥� is how we’ve been describing it to the field. And we’ve got to stop thinking about just like, “Let’s fight for those little afterschool dollars that we’ve had all this time.” No, this is about a bigger play.

In February, the telehealth company , including clinicians who worked directly with students and families, leaving about 500 employees. 

The company lost one of its biggest customers, the Los Angeles County Office of Education, last year. It shortened its contract with the Chicago Public Schools because of “challenges securing funding,” a spokeswoman said. And several districts across the country have also either ended their business with Hazel or have contracts that expire later this year. 

they are 鈥渞estructuring鈥� the company to put it in a better position as it pursues more stable sources of funding, like billing Medicaid and private insurance, now that the federal relief funds some districts used have expired. Company spokeswoman Emilie Fetterley said no additional layoffs are expected 鈥渁t this time鈥� and that many states and districts plan to renew their contracts. 

But according to internal memos, by a news outlet covering mental health, CEO Iyah Romm said the company was losing 鈥渢oo much money鈥� to meet its goals. Since the expiration of the Los Angeles contract, the company has even, at times, absorbed the cost of services, Fetterley said. 

Some say the company faces a difficult road ahead.

There is a 鈥渕assive need鈥� to address student mental health and behavior issues, said Adam Newman, co-founder of Tyton Partners, a consulting firm focused on the education sector. Until the relief funds ran out, 鈥渢here were enough dollars in the system for schools and districts to find ways to underwrite these types of programs. But the risk has always been: What’s the durable funding model?鈥�

In Missouri, the Ferguson-Florissant district, outside St. Louis, ended its business with Hazel last year.

鈥淭hey were great to work with,鈥� said spokeswoman Onye Hollomon. Hazel served about 2,000 students in the district, which used COVID relief funds to pay for the program. 鈥淥nce that phased out, we had to make that cut.鈥�

Los Angeles spent more than $28 million in one year to make Hazel available to the county鈥檚 80 districts, according to GovSpend, a data company tracking payments to government agencies. It funded its deal with the company by tapping a $389 million . Between March 2022 and May 2024, 804 schools in the county referred 9,337 students for services, according to data Hazel provided to the county. Of those, 4,162 students received at least one visit, with students participating in an average of six visits. Fetterley said once a student is referred to Hazel, parents don鈥檛 always follow through with a visit or may seek help elsewhere.

In addition to taking a loss on services for some students since last year, Hazel has relied on billing insurance, including Medi-Cal, the state鈥檚 Medicaid program, and contracts with individual districts. Leaders are currently negotiating contracts with districts for next school year. 

Hazel is also one of eight providers approved for a new program that allows 700 districts throughout California to be reimbursed for services by Medi-Cal or private insurers. It participates in a similar in Iowa, and in Nevada, the Clark County School District uses Medicaid funds to pay for Hazel services, but that ends in June. A spokesperson said the board has not yet decided whether to renew it.

鈥楳ade their mark鈥�

Telehealth programs, delivered through schools, were expanding long before the pandemic. They offer families convenient access to a remote doctor or therapist while preventing students from missing school for appointments that often turn into full-day absences. Hazel Health, founded in 2015 by health care executive Josh Golomb, was part of that growth. 

鈥淭elehealth providers have made their mark in school-based health care,鈥� said Nirmita Panchal, a senior policy manager at KFF, a nonprofit focusing on health policy. 鈥淭hey eliminate transportation barriers, where students may not be able to physically get to a provider.鈥�

During the pandemic, when learning and work suddenly went virtual, telehealth programs for schools . of school-based health centers showed that during the 2020-21 school year, more than 80% of respondents offered telehealth services, up from 19% in 2016-17. 

The financial landscape has since changed. A lot of districts are now cutting budgets to close deficits. GovSpend, which doesn鈥檛 capture all district spending, shows a decline in payments to , a similar company, since 2023, while , another virtual mental health provider, saw a more stable influx of funds from 2024 to 2025. 

Among providers, however, Hazel Health stands out. The company, which serves 6,000 schools in 21 states, initially focused on primary health care, with physicians prescribing over-the-counter medications for routine symptoms like stomach pain or headaches. In 2021, the company broadened its model to provide mental health services and respond to 鈥渞ising unmet student needs and limited access to care,鈥� Fetterley said. 

In Florida鈥檚 Duval County schools, Brittany Beimourtusting reached out to Hazel last school year when she was going through a divorce. Her middle child, she said, was having trouble adjusting.

鈥淚t was a single-parent household all of a sudden, and I thought, 鈥楬ow am I supposed to get him to get help because I think he could use therapy,鈥� 鈥� she said. The provider, she said, met with him about five times and helped him open up about what he was feeling. 鈥淚t was definitely worth it.鈥�

But when Superintendent Christopher Bernier looked for ways to save the district some money last year, a $1.4 million payment to Hazel was on the list.

鈥楢 connected system鈥� 

Four years ago, the startup鈥檚 future looked bright.

It attracted over $50 million from investors, including Fiore Ventures, founded by Walton family heiress Carrie Walton Penner. As recently as last year, Hazel was still eyeing growth. It made two acquisitions, including , which offers family therapy, to further expand mental health services. 

鈥淭ogether, we are building a connected system that supports children from their classrooms to their kitchen tables,鈥� wrote Andrew Post, then 贬补锄别濒鈥檚 president, in October. But he has since resigned, writing this month that it was time to turn to the 鈥渘ext chapter鈥� in his career.

贬补锄别濒鈥檚 was supposed to run through the end of 2027. Now it will end on June 30. Still, district officials said the layoffs have had no impact on the services students receive. In a pilot program that began in March 2025, the district made mental health services available to 84 high schools. As of January, 420 students had taken advantage of the program, the district said.

In December, Destiny Singleton, the honorary student member of the Chicago Board of Education, told members that students don鈥檛 always feel comfortable talking to school counselors about personal issues because those staff members are often focused on academic performance and preparing for college. That鈥檚 why talking to an outsider can be helpful. But she added that students at the district鈥檚 larger high schools are often unaware that Hazel is even an option.

Some Chicago parents, however, are wary of Hazel and say families don鈥檛 always know what they鈥檝e agreed to when they consent to allowing their child to meet with a Hazel provider. In to Chicago district leaders last year, student privacy advocates said they were concerned about whether Hazel properly secures students鈥� private information. 

The company鈥檚 acquisition of Little Otter, , raises red flags because Rebecca Egger, its CEO, formerly worked for Palantir, a federal contractor known for using AI to assist the Department of Homeland Security in its . 

In a response to Chicago officials, Romm, the CEO, wrote that Hazel does not 鈥渟ell, share, or use student data for any commercial purpose,鈥� and that it 鈥渄oes not have any relationship with Palantir, commercial or strategic.鈥�

Fetterley, the company spokeswoman, also said Hazel is in the early stages of rolling out chatbots to 鈥渟implify administrative tasks like scheduling for parents and clinicians,鈥� but that AI will never be a 鈥渟ubstitute for our human providers.鈥�

Even so, some districts see a much higher demand for in-person rather than virtual clinicians. In Broward County, Florida, where Hazel provides medical services, but not mental health support, 179 students completed a telehealth visit between August and December last year, according to district data. Over that same time period, more than 134,000 students visited a school clinic.

鈥淧arents want nurses,鈥� Cynthia Dominique, chair of the District Advisory Council and a parent in the district, told the school board in March. As a nurse practitioner, she questioned how a provider working remotely can diagnose and treat most common symptoms, like congestion or a sore throat.

鈥淚 can’t ask the registrar from the front desk, 鈥楥an you look in the kid鈥檚 mouth and tell me what you see?鈥� 鈥� she told 社区黑料. 鈥淭hey don’t know what they’re looking for.鈥�

For district leaders, however, 贬补锄别濒鈥檚 ability to keep kids from missing school provided an effective selling point.

During a 2023 meeting, Duval County School Board Member Darryl Willie said the program had saved the district 4,000 鈥渃lassroom hours鈥� during the 2021-22 school year.

鈥淲e’re talking about making sure we’re focused on reading, writing and math,鈥� he said. 鈥淭he only way we can do that is if students are in school, in classrooms, sitting in seats.鈥�

Disclosure: Walton Family Foundation provides financial support to 社区黑料.

Over the past few decades, that has generated a growing tension among parents and educators, who have begun questioning the .

But a new kind of funding scheme may turn that dynamic on its head: A finds that a different approach to buying classroom technology may not only be workable but, in many cases, produces results that traditional contracts don鈥檛. Called outcomes based contracting, the model ties what companies get paid, at least in part, to whether students actually learn.

The findings, from the nonprofit groups and the , also come as school budgets are tightening after COVID relief funds dried up and district leaders find themselves under growing pressure to justify spending. 

The report examined a group of school districts piloting an outcomes based model. It finds that the arrangement offers a new way to determine whether tech is actually working for kids, since it dictates that a portion of vendors鈥� payments depends on meeting a set of agreed-upon student benchmarks. If students don’t reach them, vendors don鈥檛 collect the full contract amount. 

But the model also builds in a layer of shared accountability: Districts must commit to making sure students use the tools at the levels, or “dosage,” necessary to produce results.

Brittany Miller, the center鈥檚 executive director, said that forces everyone to take implementation seriously.

鈥淲hat this model does is it tells everybody across the ecosystem: 鈥楶rioritize this,鈥欌�� she said. 鈥淵ou have to get to this level of implementation integrity, which translates into dosage, in order to actually have a meaningful experience for a student.鈥�

Kids 鈥榥ot getting the dosage they need鈥�

Before looking at whether a tech product improves student outcomes, Miller said, there’s a more basic question that districts rarely ask: Are students using these tools at all?

The answer is often, 鈥淣o.鈥� 

The report found that more than 65% of purchased ed tech licenses typically go unused, with school districts paying full price for products that sit idle. But districts participating in the outcomes based pilot met dosage requirements for as many as 95% of students. Overall usage rates were typically 10 times higher than under traditional contracts.

鈥淲e talk a lot about dosage, and kids not getting the dosage that they need,鈥� Miller said. 鈥淎nd that, to me, is a proxy for being a responsible consumer of tech: Are our kids actually using it in a way that will drive outcomes?鈥�

Miller said part of what drives the usage shift is that both districts and vendors share a direct financial stake in students actually using the products. Under the model, if a student falls behind on usage, the district must find out why and get that student back on track. If they don鈥檛, there鈥檚 a record of that and the district is on the hook for payments, even if the student鈥檚 achievement didn鈥檛 improve. 

It鈥檚 only fair in cases like these, she said. 鈥淭he provider wasn’t able to prove that their product worked because kids didn’t actually use it.鈥�

Beyond usage statistics, the report found that districts in the pilot reported greater instructional coherence. Technology was being used with more intention tied to specific learning goals rather than as a general add-on to existing lessons. And teachers were more deliberate about how they integrated tech into their instruction.

Miller, who formerly led large-scale tutoring implementation in Denver Public Schools, said she has sat in classrooms and watched students working with these products, typically supplemental literacy and math tools. She said many of them can make a difference, but only if used properly. 

鈥淲e’re talking about technology that has the ability to help students pronounce words correctly, support their fluency and break down words for them,鈥� she said. 鈥淚n mathematics, we’re talking about students using technology to really try different ways of solving problems and getting them exactly what they need in the moment.鈥�

The report also found that tech companies benefited from the model in unexpected ways: Because outcomes based contracts require detailed, real-time data on how students are using a product, companies got access to information about their tools鈥� effectiveness that most standard contracts never generate.

Fewer tools, better results

Perhaps most counterintuitively, the report found, districts that rely on outcomes based contracting actually end up buying fewer tech products.

That鈥檚 because the process of building such a contract requires district leaders to clearly define what problem they鈥檙e trying to solve, what success looks like and whether a given product is actually the right tool for the job. That level of scrutiny, said Miller, produces a kind of natural audit.

鈥淲e’ve seen in a lot of districts as they’ve taken this on, the number of ed tech tools they’re purchasing just [goes] way down at the district level,鈥� she said.

In one district, Miller said, officials found they鈥檇 purchased licenses for more than 1,000 tools. As they examined the list they said, 鈥淚f there is not a clear reason and purpose that we’re using this in the classroom that’s actually driving student learning, then we’re not going to pay for that tool anymore.鈥�

She added, 鈥淚t just shifts the mindset of the system to really say, 鈥楲et鈥檚 look at what we鈥檙e purchasing more carefully, figure out what is and isn’t working, and start to cut down on the noise.鈥�

The center, based at the , grew out of research conducted at Harvard University’s under economist Tom Kane, who in 2021 a small group of tutoring providers and school districts to examine whether outcomes based contracting 鈥� already used in healthcare and workforce development 鈥� could be adapted for K-12 education. 

The project eventually moved to the foundation, with Denver among the early participants. Miller was a district leader at the time and got involved in the work that Denver was piloting on tutoring. 

As of February, Miller鈥檚 center had worked with 87 education institutions ranging from school districts to state education agencies and tracked results for more than 63,000 students.

In addition, six states 鈥� California, Texas, Florida, Arkansas, Indiana and Louisiana 鈥� have launched initiatives around the model. Together they represent more than 28% of total U.S. K-12 education spending, constituting a potentially fundamental shift in how schools spend money. That shift, Miller said, could have a huge impact on children鈥檚 achievement if educators are asking the right questions. 

鈥淭here’s a student at the end of the day that’s being served by this,鈥� she said. 鈥淗ow are you really humanizing their lived experience in the classroom and making sure that they’re achieving the outcomes that we know they’re able to?鈥�

鈥淭hese support systems are what students really rely on,鈥� one girl told the board. 鈥淎s someone who struggles a lot with being overwhelmed and anxious, sometimes I just need someone to talk to.鈥�

The layoffs will help reduce an $8.6 million budget deficit, due in part to the loss of 350 students. 

Sarah Neville, a board member in the Boston-area district, knows one reason enrollment is down. Under federal law, districts can鈥檛 ask whether students are U.S. citizens, but almost 90% of the 5,700-students are Latino and 47% are English learners. The state education agency estimates that the population of English learners in Massachusetts schools has since 2024. Officials from Chelsea and other metro-area districts say as Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents conducted raids in last fall.

鈥淲e’re low hanging fruit for ICE because so many of our folks are undocumented,鈥� Neville said. 鈥淲hen they say, 鈥榃e’re going to go target Boston,鈥� you find the vans actually hanging out in Chelsea.鈥�

The district is among several across the country now confronting the financial impact of the Trump administration鈥檚 immigration enforcement efforts. Whether students are absent from school, families have been detained, or they鈥檝e left the district or the country on their own, the empty desks add up.

Districts no longer have federal COVID relief funds to fall back on, and many already saw steep enrollment declines during the pandemic. The Chelsea board is one of asking the legislature for one-time grants to help address the shortfall. With fixed costs like payroll and contracts with vendors, a sharp drop in enrollment 鈥渃reates chaos,鈥� Neville said.

In Texas, officials from , and several districts in the are among those who say the immigration crackdown has contributed to further enrollment loss and, with it, potential drops in state funding. 

Districts鈥� heightened concerns over finances come as conservatives increasingly argue that American taxpayers shouldn鈥檛 be footing the bill to educate undocumented students in the first place. 

During a heated , members of a House judiciary subcommittee argued that the U.S. Supreme Court should overturn , a landmark 1982 ruling in a Texas case that guaranteed children a right to a public education, regardless of citizenship status.

鈥淭he financial costs of Plyler are undoubtedly staggering, clearly representing a significant burden on localities,鈥� said Texas Republican Rep. Chip Roy, who chaired the hearing. 鈥淏ut it isn’t just fiscal costs we should be worried about. Our nation’s classrooms routinely deal with illegal alien students, many of whom know little to no English and may struggle with other learning disabilities.鈥�

Pointing to Census Bureau figures, a from the subcommittee estimated that educating non-citizen students in U.S. schools costs about $68 billion a year. But during the hearing, Democrats highlighted of providing students access to education, like $633 billion paid in state and local income taxes and contributions to the U.S. economy worth more than $2.7 trillion.

The witnesses included James Rogers, senior counselor with the conservative America First Legal Foundation, who called the Plyler opinion 鈥漞gregiously wrong from the start鈥� and an example of judicial overreach. He predicted that the current conservative majority on the court would overturn it if given the opportunity. Republicans in like have proposed legislation to collect students鈥� immigration status. If one of those bills passes, opponents are expected to challenge it in court.

But Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon of Pennsylvania, the ranking Democrat on the subcommittee, said that excluding undocumented students from school or charging tuition would mean 鈥渙nly certain classes of children whose parents can afford to pay are entitled to the blessings of liberty and the hope of a better future.鈥� 

Thomas Saenz, president and general counsel for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, warned that at a time when chronic absenteeism remains above pre-pandemic levels, non-citizen children wouldn鈥檛 be the only ones out of school if the court overturned Plyler.

鈥淚t will extend beyond the families to peers and ultimately it will be impossible to enforce truancy laws,鈥� he said. 鈥淎ny child who doesn’t want to be in school will know to simply say 鈥業’m undocumented.鈥� 鈥�

The 鈥榖ottom line鈥�

For now, most Texas districts want to hang on to as many students as possible.

鈥淲hen you’re a rural school district, every kid has a big impact on your bottom line,鈥� said Kevin Brown, executive director of the Texas Association of School Administrators. 鈥淲hen you lose five or 10 kids, you have to cut programming. You can’t cut teachers, so you have to start looking for other ways to do it.鈥�

He expects to see a request during next year鈥檚 legislative session to allow for some 鈥渢ransition period鈥� before funding drops, but 鈥渨hether something passes is another question.鈥�

In California, where state funding is based on districts鈥� average daily attendance, Gov. Gavin Newsom last October that would have added immigration enforcement as one of the emergencies that triggers a waiver of the funding rule. The change was unnecessary, he said.

In Minnesota, districts are still hoping for some relief. On their behalf, a national nonprofit to temporarily suspend a state law that requires districts to drop students from the rolls if they鈥檝e been absent for 15 straight days. The legislation allows exemptions for emergencies.

, in which the Trump administration deployed roughly 4,000 ICE agents to the Minneapolis area, 鈥渘o doubt qualifies as a calamity that would trigger application of the exemption,鈥� leaders of the National Center for Youth Law wrote to state House and Senate leaders last month. 

Fridley Public Schools, outside Minneapolis, has lost 20 students because of the 15-day rule.听

鈥淪ome of our children have been in an apartment for 14 weeks and haven’t been able to leave,鈥� Superintendent Brenda Lewis said on a recent webinar. 

Roughly 100 more have left since the surge, possibly taking advantage of the state鈥檚 open enrollment policy to relocate to other districts. The loss means a $1 million hit to the district鈥檚 $51 million budget. The district also missed out on $131,000 in meal reimbursements from the federal government because low-income students weren鈥檛 in school to eat breakfast and lunch, Lewis said. 

Fridley鈥檚 enrollment would have been down another 400 students if the district hadn鈥檛 quickly implemented a virtual learning program, Lewis said. But federal agents used the device distribution process to apprehend those they suspected to be undocumented, she said. 

鈥淲e had ICE agents arresting people because they knew they were coming for the Chromebooks,鈥� said Lewis, whose district is part of against the Trump administration over its policy of allowing immigration enforcement near schools and other 鈥渟ensitive鈥� locations. 鈥淚CE agents will board your buses. They’ll board your vans. They’ll pull the vehicle over and start interviewing children about immigration status. By interviewing, I mean interrogating.鈥�

鈥業n-your-face presence鈥�

The Trump administration recently such actions in an effort to end a government shutdown affecting the Department of Homeland Security. Julie Sugarman, who studies immigration policy affecting K-12 schools at the Migration Policy Institute, said a 鈥渓ess-aggressive鈥� approach near school grounds would likely lead some missing students to return. 

鈥淭he in-your-face presence absolutely is causing people to stay home,鈥� she said.

The Chicago Public Schools last fall saw steep declines in attendance that coincided with , according to by Kids First Chicago, an advocacy group, and the Coalition for Authentic Community Engagement, representing multiple nonprofits. On Sept. 29, the Monday after enforcement activity began, nearly 14,000 students at schools serving high percentages of Latino students were absent, the report showed. 

The district uses enrollment counts from the early part of the school year to make budget and staffing decisions. If students missed school on those days, or if the district eventually dropped students out for extended periods, those absences could affect funding, explained Hal Woods, chief of policy at Kids First Chicago.

District leaders can only estimate how many undocumented students are entering, or leaving, their schools, and that鈥檚 a problem, Mandy Drogin, a senior fellow at the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation, said in testimony before the House subcommittee. She blamed that warned districts against asking for students鈥� or parents鈥� citizenship status for enrollment purposes. 

While many English learners are U.S. citizens, she called out districts under state takeover, like and nearby , which have English learner populations above 30%, according to the state. 鈥淚llegal students,鈥� she said, are impacting schools as a whole. 

鈥淭eachers are being forced to 鈥� do Google Translate on their phones,鈥� she said. 鈥淎ll of these things obviously impact the total education system, and the taxpayers are left holding the bag.鈥�

Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat, said immigration enforcement affects all students. He pointed to Willmar, Minnesota, about 150 miles west of the Twin Cities and the site of a Jennie-O turkey plant that employs many . It鈥檚 the town where ICE agents in a Mexican restaurant and then returned to detain the owners and a dishwasher. 

In December, as rumors of an ICE raid spread, hundreds of kids, including white students, stayed out of school, Superintendent Bill Adams . 

鈥淚 remember walking in the hallways going, 鈥楬oly God, where are all the kids?鈥欌�� said a district employee who declined to speak for attribution due to the sensitivity of the topic. 鈥淚t was eerie.鈥�

In October, Adams said enrollment in the 4,400-student district was down by over 170 students, amounting to a loss of more than $4 million. To make up for some of that gap, the district is it used to teach independent living skills, like cooking and doing the laundry, to older students with disabilities. 

鈥淚t’s just hit our community really bad,鈥� the employee said.  

Just over a year ago, IES 鈥� the research arm of the U.S. Department of Education, charged with deepening America鈥檚 understanding of how schools perform and what students learn 鈥� was rocked by a wave of layoffs as Education Secretary Linda McMahon her own agency. The education chapter of Project 2025, a policy wish-list assembled by the conservative Heritage Foundation, advised that the Institute鈥檚 statistical office be moved to the Census Bureau. 

The picture looks somewhat sunnier as winter turns to spring, with Republicans in Congress from significant cuts and . In a recent interview, Lindsey Burke 鈥� the author of the Project 2025 recommendations on schooling, now serving as deputy chief of staff for policy and programs at the Education Department 鈥� referred to IES as of the Education Department.

Most striking of all was the publication last month of by Amber Northern, a prominent education researcher and commentator appointed last year as a special advisor to McMahon. While critical of the Institute for its numerous areas of focus and the sometimes-plodding pace of its data releases, Northern鈥檚 overview represents a long-term vision for federal support of research that directly answers the needs of educators. McMahon and Acting IES Director Matthew Soldner , suggesting that its prescriptions would find a receptive audience in the administration.

But some insiders said that any attempt to improve the functions of the Institute would depend on a meaningful rebuilding of its capacity, including a move to restore agency staff to something approximating their numbers before last year鈥檚 DOGE cuts. What鈥檚 more, some tweaks to IES workings and grantmaking would require changes in law that would be impossible without bipartisan cooperation in Congress. That leaves open the question of whether there remains a constituency for the kind of large-scale, public-sector research endeavors that have long received the backing of both Democrats and Republicans.

Northern declined to comment for this story. But her recommendations 鈥� broadly, that IES limit its focus to a smaller number of national education challenges, reorient its work toward the practical concerns of schools, and foster cooperation among states to scale up their most promising policies 鈥� amplify some broadly shared views of where federal data collection needs to go. 

Sara Schapiro, executive director of the advocacy coalition , noted that her group鈥檚 recent made some of the same points, as did from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Not only are many of those ideas the subject of broad agreement, she added; they can also be implemented at the discretion of the Institute鈥檚 leadership, with no input from lawmakers necessary.

鈥淥ne of the recommendations was a smaller set of research priorities 鈥� IES can just do that,鈥� Schapiro said. 鈥淭hey can require better dissemination [of research] from grantees. They can do some of the rapid-cycle grants we鈥檝e called for and this report calls for. And they can also review and change some of the NCES data collections.鈥� 

Yet any statutory changes would face major headwinds in an era of intense polarization and divided political attention. In 2023, Democrat Sen. Bernie Sanders and Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy that would have reauthorized the Education Sciences Reform Act, the law that established IES in 2002. It never received a Senate vote, demonstrating to Schapiro that any legislative efforts would be 鈥渆xtraordinarily hard.鈥� 

鈥淲e weren’t able to get it over the finish line during the Biden administration, with an easier congressional landscape,” she acknowledged.

David Cleary, a former high-level Republican staffer who helped pass major education laws across more than two decades working in Congress, wrote in an email that the most promising potential revamp might lie in the of Trump administration official Jim O鈥橬eill to lead the National Science Foundation. An interagency agreement between NSF and IES could allow the two organizations to pool resources and expertise going forward. (Two such agreements between the Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services.)

Beyond such administrative wrangling, however, Cleary said the education policy community needed to 鈥渂uckle down and do hard things well instead of doing easy things poorly.鈥� He cited the recent momentum of state-led literacy initiatives, galvanized partly through their partnership with federally funded research labs, as an example for lawmakers to follow. 

鈥淭he challenge is getting staff and members to think a little more dispassionately about what needs to be researched and funded,鈥� Cleary wrote. 鈥淚nstead of letting every question be asked, every project funded, every idea pursued, we should model after the successful endeavors on the science of reading.鈥�

Veteran research administrator Cara Jackson, who worked at a private research organization that collaborated with IES until losing her job last year, said she agreed with portions of Northern鈥檚 critique, noting the long wait times that contractors anticipated when receiving feedback from the Institute鈥檚 various offices and stakeholders. She argued that greater transparency in the research process, including a dashboard allowing the public to track the time and money expended on each project, would foster more 鈥渕utual accountability鈥� on all sides.

Nevertheless, it was a 鈥渟trange sequence鈥� to call for reforms after largely dismantling the Institute鈥檚 workforce, Jackson continued. Well-intentioned proposals to award funding and release data on a faster timetable would likely falter if not enough employees existed to simply push money out the door to grantees and contractors. 

鈥淭here were people there who were already acting on these ideas and could have been doing that all this time,鈥� Jackson observed. 鈥淣ow you’re going to have to hire people to do it. It takes forever to hire government employees, and we haven’t made the job any more attractive by letting go of all these people.鈥�

Atlanta

In a once-thriving neighborhood in the southeast part of Atlanta, Lakewood Elementary served families who came to work at the General Motors assembly plant, a sprawling 100-acre landmark that became a path toward economic mobility for entry-level workers. At its height in the late 1970s, the plant employed as many as 5,700 people. 

But by the early 鈥�90s, when Gloria Hawkins-Wynn moved into the community, signs of decline were evident. The last Chevy Caprice rolled off the assembly line in 1990, and a popular antique market at the now-defunct Lakewood Fairgrounds shut down in 2006. The closure of the elementary school two years earlier further contributed to neighborhood blight, turning the abandoned structure into a hotspot for criminal activity.

鈥淲e get prostitution. We get drug dealing. We get drive-by shootings,鈥� Hawkins-Wynn told four years ago. A neighborhood representative, she urged city leaders to turn the eyesore over to a developer. 

Former students begged the city to save the school, home to some of their earliest : Dick and Jane books, dances in the auditorium, a principal named Mr. Hinkle. Still visible on the school鈥檚 deserted playground is a faded map of the United States.

鈥淧lease don鈥檛 demolish it,鈥� wrote one woman. Walking to Lakewood with her mother, who died when she was 7, is a cherished memory. 

Now the old school is one of several in Atlanta It鈥檚 a transformation that is increasingly taking place across the country as city leaders and developers look to give new life to vacant buildings once bustling with students and teachers.

In 2024, nearly 2,000 apartments were built in former schools across the U.S., a record high and four times the number a year earlier, according to from RentCafe, a property search website. School-to-apartment conversions are now the fastest growing segment of a niche industry devoted to makeovers of historic spaces. 

As student enrollment nationwide and more districts, including Atlanta, make the painful decision to close schools, the Lakewood project offers a glimpse of what鈥檚 to come: Seventy-four school conversion projects are already underway across the country, RentCafe鈥檚 data shows. With enrollment loss in traditional schools , districts will be left with even more surplus properties. 

Renovating existing structures 鈥渙ffers a way to help those buildings continue on as community assets,鈥� said Patrice Frey, president and CEO of RePurpose Capital, a subsidiary of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

For the first time since the Great Depression, renovation projects, including historic preservation, surpassed new construction in 2022, according to the . Supply chain gridlock and 鈥渢he rapid escalation of materials costs鈥� likely contributed to the shift, Frey said.

The pandemic also played a part as parents chose charter schools or uprooted to other districts and states to find in-person learning. The rapid expansion of private school choice has also contributed to enrollment declines, school consolidations and closures.

Data from the Brookings Institution showed that between the 2018-19 and 2021-22 school years, 12% of elementary schools and 9% of middle schools lost at least one-fifth of their students. Many districts delayed closures in response to parents and generations of former students who pleaded with leaders to keep the neighborhood institutions open. Some districts, , are still putting it off.

But maintaining underenrolled schools, especially those with just a couple hundred students, can be a financial drain. The , and districts are among those that have recently announced or discussed closures. That means they鈥檒l eventually have to decide what to do with the buildings.

An earlier Atlanta project, completed in 1999, offers a preview of what鈥檚 in store for Lakewood and many other former schools. was redeveloped into Bass Lofts, a three-story structure that sits in a bohemian neighborhood known for vintage clothing stores, dive bars and record shops. Mallory Brooks, a photographer, moved into one of the units 10 years ago after relocating from Florida.

鈥淚t was the first place I looked at, and I was definitely smitten,鈥� she said. Stepping through the main entrance, 鈥測ou are transported immediately to being in a school.鈥� 

Old lockers, welded shut, line the ground floor hallways, and a large Depression-era mural of women dancing sits above the stage in the auditorium. While rows of seats remain intact, some tenants also use the space to store their bikes. Brooks appreciates how sunlight pours through the 10-foot-high windows 鈥� 鈥淚’ve been able to basically create a greenhouse in my apartment,鈥� she said. But regulating the temperature is difficult, and she looks forward to HVAC upgrades. 

鈥楲egacy residents鈥�

Lakewood Elementary is one of eight sites that the Atlanta Public Schools is now repurposing through an agreement with the Atlanta Urban Development Corp., a nonprofit arm of the city鈥檚 housing authority that renovates historic properties into mixed-income residences. The plan, part of to increase affordable housing, includes giving teachers the first choice of apartments. That was important to Cynthia Briscoe Brown, a former Atlanta Board of Education member whose last vote in December was to . 

鈥淪eventy percent of APS employees do not live within the city limits of Atlanta,鈥� she said. 鈥淥ne of the board’s priorities in developing these properties is to make it possible for our employees to not have to drive so far before their work day.鈥� 

A lawyer with experience in real estate, she took an interest in the dilapidated properties when she was first elected in 2013. But she also has personal ties to the site where Peeples Street Elementary, one of the eight former schools, once stood. Her father, Woodson Briscoe, attended the school, which sat just down the street from the boarding house, run by an aunt, where the family lived. 

鈥淭his was the Depression. They were a young couple with a family, and they couldn’t afford their own house,鈥� she said. Today, as in the neighborhood climb, with some homes priced well over $500,000, families are facing the same problem. 鈥淭he West End is gentrifying to a point where a lot of legacy residents are having trouble staying.鈥� 

鈥楢 pall over neighborhoods鈥� 

Peeples Street closed in 1982. has been gone for 30 years, torn down after a fire left little worth saving.

But some shuttered schools can sit vacant for decades, attracting crime and casting 鈥渁 pall over neighborhoods,鈥� Alyn Turner, a sociologist with Research for Action, a Philadelphia-based nonprofit, told a group of Atlanta leaders in February. 

In a hotel east of downtown, they gathered in a dining room to discuss ways to lessen the negative impacts of the upcoming closures on both students and the neighborhoods where they live.

Turner cited a showing that between 2005 and 2013, 12 urban districts, including Atlanta, Chicago and Pittsburgh, sold, leased or repurposed 267 school properties, but still had more than 300 on the market. 

School closures 鈥渢end to concentrate in communities that have already experienced displacement and disinvestment,鈥� she said. 鈥淧eople can experience a closure as yet another signal of neighborhood decline.鈥�

In Gary, Indiana, a rising number of 911 calls near abandoned schools 鈥� an almost 600% increase between 2022 and 2024. They found fires, hundreds of requests for extra police patrols and 26 reports of 鈥渟hots fired.鈥澛� In 2015, a was found dead in Emerson High School, a Four years later, three teenagers fatally shot a woman and in an emptied-out elementary school.

Like any abandoned building, a boarded-up old school can 鈥減rovide cover鈥� for criminals, according to at Arizona State University. Run-down, vacant structures can even escalate criminal behavior, they write, sending a message that no one owns or cares about the property.

Maintaining former school buildings until they鈥檙e sold or repurposed can make the neighborhood feel safer, Turner told the Atlanta group. But like Briscoe Brown, some participants said they worry about the opposite effect 鈥� gentrification that leaves some lower-income families behind.

鈥淗ow can you help the people who are still there?鈥� asked Femi Johnson, a senior director at Achieve Atlanta, a nonprofit that focuses on college access. 鈥淐an it be a food bank? Can it be a community health center?鈥�

In her hometown of Philadelphia, she saw the former Edward Bok Vocational School, part of a wave of closures in 2013, transformed into an event space with , a destination she felt didn鈥檛 serve the community鈥檚 needs.

Developers are drawn to former schools because of their historic architectural features, like wide hallways and stairwells. The former Monsignor Coyle High School in Taunton, Massachusetts, now , boasts 鈥渟oaring ceilings鈥� and original windows. 

Tax credits for historic preservation can offset some of the costs of modernization, but come with restrictions on what developers can change and which 鈥渃haracter-defining features,鈥� like a gymnasium, must go untouched, said Pittsburgh developer Rick Belloli.

In 2022, his company, Q Development, Mt. Alvernia, a former Sisters of St. Francis convent and all-girls school north of Pittsburgh. He described the massive, 333-room main building, the Motherhouse, as 鈥渁 gloriously spectacular historic building鈥� with cast iron stairways and arched ceilings. But he鈥檚 still navigating the approval process, and some developers, he said, avoid former schools because of those hurdles. 

鈥楥hoice properties鈥�

Like Coyle and Mt. Alvernia, many of the school-to-apartment conversions are concentrated in the northeast and midwest. Columbus, Ohio, ranked first on of cities with the most school conversion projects. 

Next on the list is Cleveland, where the former Martin Luther King Jr. High School, in the predominantly Black , was among those affected by more recent enrollment loss. In 2020, the district , which had dropped to less than 350 students, and a Maryland-based developer for $880,000.

Exploring one of Cleveland鈥檚 abandoned high school鈥檚

Last fall, knowing the building might be demolished, former students gathered to reflect and grab what mementos they could. Some cut strings off the basketball hoops, said Ronald Crosby, who attended in the late 1980s. Others took old library cards and team jerseys. 

Ronald鈥檚 sister Johnetta Crosby has fond memories of the school. 鈥淲e had teachers that took their time to make sure you learned,鈥� she said. 鈥淚f you didn’t have anything to wear, they made sure you did. If you couldn’t afford to eat lunch, they fed you anyway.鈥�

D鈥橝ngelo Dixon, who graduated in 2018, felt more conflicted. 鈥淏lack stuff鈥� leaked from the ceiling, he remembered, and academically, he felt behind friends who attended other schools. 

鈥淥nce I went to college, I felt like I didn’t know anything,鈥� he said. But he credited the school鈥檚 career-tech program with inspiring him to work in health care. He鈥檚 now a nursing assistant. At the alumni gathering last year, he headed for the art room to grab a ceiling tile he painted with his nickname, Delo 鈥� part of a senior class assignment.

Some alumni hoped the developer, Kareem Abdus-Salaam, would save the building but that鈥檚 not part of his vision for the new residential community, a mix of apartments, townhomes and retail space.

鈥淚 really want to just level the whole site and bring it up, almost like a phoenix rising from the ashes,鈥� he said. He expects to break ground this spring. 鈥淭here are so many abandoned schools in this country that are sitting on choice properties.鈥�

He does, however, intend to make use of the large stones that still border one corner of the property by crushing them into gravel for a quarter-mile walking trail that will wind through the development. Along that pathway, he plans to erect signposts with historical photos of the school so former students 鈥渃an have some feeling of yesteryear.鈥� 

In Atlanta, the partnership between the school district and the city gives officials a say in what the developers preserve. They鈥檒l integrate the original Lakewood Elementary building into the overall design. 

With a strip of commercial properties on the corner, including a popular restaurant and coffee shop, Hawkins-Wynn, who still lives a few blocks away, hopes the redevelopment will spur even more investment in the neighborhood.

On a recent afternoon, the transition was obvious, but so were the obstacles in its path. As she walked the perimeter of the property, a construction crew put up plywood on a new home across the street. A few lots down, trash and discarded mattresses piled up on the curb.

鈥淭his is why we need redevelopment,鈥� she said, pointing to the debris. 鈥淚t’s still shady around here, but it鈥檚 changing like you won’t believe.鈥� 

Black and Asian candidates both struggled to clear early hurdles, such as being classified as minimally eligible for a position by a district screening protocol. But Asians faced the biggest obstacles to hiring, ultimately receiving job offers at half the rate of their counterparts.

Study author Dan Goldhaber, an economist and director of the , said the disparities for Asian applicants were particularly striking once he and his coauthors accounted for factors that should have made them more competitive, including greater teaching experience and a higher likelihood of earning an advanced degree.

鈥淥nce you control for those differences, then it looks like they鈥檙e doing even worse because they look like better candidates on paper,鈥� Goldhaber said.

takes up the key question of how schools can achieve greater racial diversity within their teaching ranks. Education leaders have worked toward that goal for decades, citing a need for minority students to have access to role models of their own background. A series of from the last few decades shows that children see higher levels of academic achievement after being assigned to a same-race teacher.

School districts have rolled out designed to attract and retain more teachers of color, hoping that the result will be a teacher group that more closely resembles their student demographics. But these reforms to the teacher 鈥減ipeline,鈥� including sizable investments in alternative teaching pathways and 鈥済row-your-own鈥� programs, don鈥檛 address the individual hiring decisions of districts and schools. 

To put a spotlight on those choices, Goldhaber and his collaborators gathered data from Nimble Hiring, a to schools. The service supplies hiring teams with information on the gender, race, and ethnicity of their applicant pools, along with detailed work histories including applicants鈥� prior job titles and descriptions, highest academic degrees, and reasons for separating from their former jobs.   

In all, they assembled records for over 46,000 job aspirants between 2019 and 2024. Applications were drawn from 18 school districts and 24 charter school organizations across multiple states. Each application was tracked across four escalating steps, from an initial screening by a district central office to the final decision to make a job offer.

With each successive stage, the pool was narrowed further, but not all groups saw the same degree of winnowing. For example, Asian and African American candidates were somewhat less likely to make it through the primary screening (80 percent and 86 percent, respectively) than whites (92 percent). But the next step showed a huge divergence between groups: Black candidates had their applications passed to school-level hiring managers at a rate of 63 percent, measurably less than the 80 percent chance for whites; Asian candidates saw the lowest rate of all, just 46 percent. 

By the final phase, they were substantially under-represented relative to other job seekers. Between 15 and 18 percent of white, Hispanic, and African American applicants received job offers, compared with 7 percent of Asians. Even that proportion shrank to just 5 percent when controlling for professional qualifications that should have made Asians particularly attractive: Sixty-four percent reported holding an advanced degree, while just 38 percent of white applicants said the same. 

Evidence of bias?

Goldhaber warned that the paper鈥檚 findings should be interpreted with care. Such a large difference in hiring rates between racial categories certainly 鈥渓ends itself to concerns鈥� about bias, he acknowledged, especially given the research team鈥檚 efforts to directly compare candidates with similar credentials applying for similar roles.

Yet even the broad dataset they assembled differed from that used by school administrators. 

For instance, the authors knew more than hiring managers about the race of individual applicants; that information was not directly reported to district and school officials, though they could develop intuitions based on factors like candidates鈥� names. On the other hand, the researchers knew less about what facts came out in the course of the hiring process, such as applicants鈥� self-described teaching styles or the perceived quality of their colleges or graduate programs.

鈥溾�楧iscrimination,鈥� to me, is that if all else is equal, there are still differences in hiring rates by demographics,鈥� Goldhaber said. 鈥淲e did our best, given the data we had, to make all else equal, but we’re not looking at quite as much information as the school systems are looking at.鈥�

Still, he added, a hypothesis of either conscious or unconscious discrimination would be supported by evidence from other research examining racial hiring differences. Those 鈥渁udit studies鈥� have found that companies 鈥� including those to their job postings 鈥� are with evidently Asian surnames.

Chris Chun is a private school administrator in Berkeley, California, and the treasurer of the , a group aimed at expanding opportunities for educators of Asian descent. In an email, she argued that working in K鈥�12 schools may contribute to a 鈥渃hicken-and-egg鈥� problem.

鈥淧eople do not have Asian teachers growing up and don’t see Asians as teachers,鈥� Chun wrote, citing her own experience. 鈥淭hen, when it comes to hiring, Asians aren’t seen as teachers because the people doing the hiring haven’t had very many Asian teachers.鈥�

Making matters even more complicated, there is little reason to think that hiring decisions are the only, or even the primary, reason why comparatively few Asians take jobs as teachers. Melanie Rucinski, a lecturer in public policy at Harvard University, that Asian college students in Massachusetts were less likely than those of other racial extractions to pursue education at the undergraduate level. They were also less likely to gain a teaching license after passing their licensure test 鈥� and less likely to be hired at a school after receiving their license. 

Rucinski cautioned that her studies of teacher labor markets focused on applicants鈥� behavior rather than that of employers. Yet she added that it was possible that a dearth of Asian educators could be somewhat self-perpetuating, and that that theory 鈥渨ould track with what we know about discrimination in employment in other settings.”

鈥淎sian teachers are just less represented, even compared with African American or Hispanic teachers,鈥� Rucinski said in an interview. 鈥淪o it’s very easy for me to imagine, based on broader literature on discrimination in hiring, that that will generate feedback loops for who gets hired into teaching.”

After a , the department鈥檚 Office for Civil Rights said the district must create a new division focusing on students with disabilities, improve transportation services for those students, and take steps to better identify and accommodate their needs.

鈥淭he district must take immediate action to remedy their violations and protect the rights of current and future students to a free and appropriate public education,鈥� Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly Richey said in a statement. 

The proposed resolution agreement also requires the district to train staff, including bus drivers, on any updated policies. If officials don鈥檛 agree to the terms, OCR 鈥渕ay initiate enforcement,鈥� the announcement said. 

The district, which said from the outset that it would cooperate with the department, is 鈥渃arefully reviewing鈥� the findings, a spokesman said, adding that OCR makes important points about providing clear information to parents and getting their children to and from school. 

Neither the department nor the district, however, has made the full results of the investigation available.

With OCR largely focusing its resources on investigating districts that allow students to compete in sports or use bathrooms based on gender identity, the D.C. investigation is one of the few disability-related cases it has launched and completed since President Donald Trump returned to office. A from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, which sparked the probe, found that the district has one of highest rates of special education complaints in the nation. An advisory committee to the commission determined that young children in the district were under-identified for special education services or accommodations for disabilities and that parents were often encouraged to file lawsuits in order to get their children help. 

鈥淭hat obviously favors those who have means, can hire an attorney and know how to get through the system,鈥� said Craig Leen, former vice chair of the advisory committee. A civil rights attorney who served in the Labor Department during Trump鈥檚 first term, he also struggled to get services for his daughter. Now a senior at a charter school in the district, she has autism and an intellectual disability.

The bus was often late or didn鈥檛 arrive at all, creating disruptions to his daughter鈥檚 routine, Leen said. Since the investigation began, he said he鈥檚 seen improvements. The bus comes on time, and to keep parents updated, the Office of the State Superintendent of Education, which oversees transportation for students with disabilities in both DCPS and charter schools in the city, is developing a bus .

The district, according to the spokesman, is working with the state agency to 鈥渋mprove real鈥憈ime visibility into bus delays to make certain students do not lose instructional time or access to required services.鈥�

Leen said he鈥檚 not concerned about Education Secretary Linda McMahon鈥檚 plans to transfer OCR or the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services to another federal agency as she continues efforts to phase out the department. 

鈥淢y main concern is that they have a designated agency addressing special education,鈥� he said. 

Many of the advisory committee鈥檚 recommendations were based on testimony from Maria Blaeuer, director of programs and outreach with Advocates for Justice and Education, Inc., The organization trains parents and provides to families who haven鈥檛 been able to get services for their children.

The organization is 鈥渢hankful that OCR is paying attention to the many challenges that students with disabilities in the District of Columbia are facing,鈥� Blaeuer said. But she added that it would be premature to comment on the department鈥檚 announcement 鈥渨ithout access to the actual determination鈥� or until a resolution has been reached.

They include Tabitha Sue James, whose son has been following an online curriculum at home since 2020. 

鈥淚 applied the first day,鈥� she said. 鈥淚’ve paid thousands of dollars in property taxes to schools. Why shouldn’t we be able to have 鈥� homeschool choice?

While families won鈥檛 know until early April whether they have received funding, she could be among the nearly two-thirds of homeschooling families who say they use public dollars to educate their children, according to from the Rand Corp., shared exclusively with 社区黑料.  

Of those who live in a state without education savings accounts or tax credits for private education, more than 70% said they would use public funds to offset homeschooling costs if they could, the data show. 

RAND鈥檚 American Life Panel on homeschool ESA use of parents who homeschool at least one child:

The similarity between the two figures is significant, said Angela Watson, a researcher at Johns Hopkins University and director of the Homeschool Research Lab.

鈥淭hat gives some confidence that these responses are accurate,鈥� she said. 鈥淪ometimes people will say they might do something when in reality, they wouldn鈥檛 actually do it. But here we see that people say and do things at the same rates.鈥�

The lab commissioned Rand to ask the questions as part of its American Life Panel, a nationally representative sample of more than 2,400 parents with K-12 students. While homeschoolers only represented about 10% of the respondents, the data are among the first to independently measure their views on ESAs. The results follow from the 鈥嬧�婣rkansas Department of Education and the University of Arkansas showing that about a quarter of students who used that state鈥檚 ESA program last school year were homeschoolers. 

Most existing data come from advocates who private school choice, an issue that still sharply divides homeschoolers. Some remain strongly opposed to ESA programs and warn that they threaten parents鈥� rights to educate their children as they see fit. 鈥淕overnment cheese always comes in a trap,鈥� one parent posted in the Texans for Homeschool Freedom Facebook group. 

On the topic of ESAs 鈥渢here are not a lot of indifferent people,鈥� said Kevin Boden, director of legal and legislative advocacy for the Home School Legal Defense Association. 鈥淭hey either think it鈥檚 the greatest thing that’s ever happened in education, or they think that it’s the thing to be most feared.鈥�

James, for one, is grateful for the financial support. She wants to add music lessons and buy materials for STEM projects. The Texas program 鈥渕akes those opportunities possible for us.鈥�

Under the program, she鈥檚 eligible to receive $2,000 annually. But parents who choose an accredited private school will receive $10,474 or up to $30,000 for a child with a disability. 

While James prefers the 鈥渓ow-stress鈥� environment of homeschooling, that funding gap is enough of an incentive to make some homeschoolers rethink their educational model.

鈥淢aybe the family has always wanted to get into an accredited private school and now they can,鈥� said Jeremy Newman, vice president of policy and engagement with the Texas Homeschool Coalition, which supports the state鈥檚 new program. 鈥淭here are other families who say 鈥楬omeschooling is what would have been best for my child but we can’t afford what the child needs, so we’re going to have to go to this other option.鈥� 鈥� 

Erin Flynn, lead instructor at , an Austin-area microschool for seventh through 12th graders, said she鈥檚 received several calls over the past few months from homeschooling families inquiring whether she will be accepting Education Freedom Accounts for tuition. 

Operating out of a converted house with a large porch, she offers a twice-a-week option for $600 per month and a full-time program for $950. She described the curriculum, which focuses on humanities, STEM and art, as 鈥渟elf-directed.鈥� 

鈥淲e want to put the power back in students鈥� hands so that they aren’t just learning the canon; they’re learning how to identify what it is that they love,鈥� said Flynn, a former English teacher. She was the principal of a charter school until she founded Hedge during the pandemic.

Microschools, she said, can be 鈥渁 bridge鈥� between homeschooling and traditional private school because they often allow students to attend part time. 

鈥楽o many options鈥�

According to Travis Pillow, spokesman for the Texas comptroller鈥檚 office, which runs the program, there鈥檚 no 鈥渟eat time requirement.鈥� As long as students are enrolled in a on the state鈥檚 list and take an annual assessment, they qualify as a private school student. 

To Pillow, who previously worked for the nonprofit running Florida鈥檚 school choice program, the different funding levels in Texas have been an adjustment. Florida鈥檚 program doesn鈥檛 differentiate between homeschoolers and private school students.

鈥淚 saw a lot of virtue in that idea because there are just so many options that don’t necessarily fit in a traditional box anymore,鈥� he said. It鈥檚 hard in some cases, he said, to draw 鈥渁 bright line鈥� between schooling and homeschooling.

Some applicants educating their kids at home, he said, will likely enroll in approved online schools, which would qualify them for the larger award. But Newman, with the Coalition, also expects homeschoolers to pressure lawmakers to increase the amount for their children鈥檚 educational expenses. He thinks the proportion of homeschool applicants would be 鈥渄ramatically higher鈥� if the funds weren’t capped at $2,000.

鈥淢any families homeschool because they have special needs children,鈥� he said. Some types of therapy, 鈥渃an very quickly surpass $2,000.鈥� 

鈥極ut of necessity鈥�

Texas isn鈥檛 the only state that offers different amounts for private school students and homeschoolers. Alabama鈥檚 awards $7,000 per student toward private school tuition and $2,000 for a 鈥渉ome education program.鈥� Homeschooling families are capped at $4,000 even if they have more than two school-age children.

Texas and Alabama are 鈥渋ncentivizing people to go to private school and not to homeschool,鈥� said Watson, with Johns Hopkins. But that could be a challenge for families living in rural areas without a lot of private school options, she said.

Like Florida, Arizona took a different approach when it passed the nation鈥檚 first universal ESA program in 2022. The base funding amount, which typically ranges between $7,000 and $8,000, is the same whether parents choose homeschooling or private school. Arizona parent Kathy Visser, whose son has disabilities, said $2,000 wouldn鈥檛 cover a month of his tutoring costs. In total, he receives about $40,000. Her daughter, formerly homeschooled, is now in a private school and receives $9,000.

鈥淔or families who choose to homeschool out of personal preference, I am sure the $2,000 is welcome,鈥� she said. 鈥淔or families like mine who homeschool out of necessity, because we could not find any traditional school that came close to meeting either of our kids鈥� needs, it wouldn鈥檛 go far.鈥�

Arizona, however, is the state ESA critics most often point to for examples of a lack of guardrails on spending. A of expenditures turned up a number of 鈥渦nallowable鈥� items, like diamond jewelry, expensive gaming consoles and designer purses. State Superintendent Tom Horne of the program, but his methods for determining whether purchases violate the letter, or at least the spirit, of the law. 

Pillow said Texas limited homeschool awards to $2,000 because those families don鈥檛 have the 鈥渂ig ticket expense鈥� of tuition. But another reason was to avoid 鈥減olitically hard-to-explain purchases.鈥� Parents also have to shop for supplies and materials within a 鈥渃losed marketplace.鈥� 

鈥淟egos are legitimate educational items,鈥� he said, noting purchases that have in Arizona. 鈥淏ut are we going to curate that marketplace with the latest and greatest collectors鈥� item? The $500 Harry Potter set is not necessarily going to be available.鈥� 

Newman, with the Texas Homeschool Coalition, added that there鈥檚 much less 鈥渁dministrative weight鈥� on the program when parents primarily spend the money on tuition. But both he and Pillow agreed that the state is likely to revisit the issue.

Don Huffines, who won the Republican nomination for comptroller, and is expected to easily win the general election in November, has said he the program. 

But the staunch conservative is also a . Newman said he hopes that means Huffines鈥� will be open to addressing the 鈥渄isparities.鈥�

鈥淧eople have this idea of what they think homeschooling is,鈥� he said. 鈥淚t’s the people who have done it who really understand.鈥� 

In this one-hour webinar, hosted by AERA and 社区黑料, leading education researchers will explore how AI is being used in assessment today, what evidence we have about its effectiveness and what risks demand careful attention. The conversation will balance promise with caution, highlighting both cutting-edge research and the policy and ethical considerations shaping the future of student assessment.

RSVP to watch, or refresh after the webinar to stream.

Related coverage on 社区黑料: 

• Two New Reports Urge 鈥楬uman-Centered鈥� School AI Adoption
  
• AI Optimization鈥檚 Impact on Use of Time, Space and Resources in Schools
  
• 10 Useful Tech Tools for Educators in 2026: A Practical Guide 鈥� 社区黑料

Members unanimously approved the legislation, another sign that improving reading outcomes is a goal shared by both Republicans and Democrats. 

鈥淭his is how I learned how to read in the 1960s,鈥� said Democratic Rep. Lucy McBath of Georgia. 鈥淲hen implemented correctly, the science of reading has been proven to help children learn to read and to write more effectively.鈥�

The bill defines the science of reading as instruction that teaches phonics and phonemic awareness, and also builds vocabulary, fluency, comprehension and writing skills. The legislation would prohibit grantees from allowing , the practice of prompting students to identify words based on pictures or other clues in a sentence. The bill now moves to the full House.

鈥淲e should not be using federal literacy funds to promote discredited approaches to literacy,鈥� said Rep. Kevin Kiley of California, a former Republican now running for reelection as an independent. 

The committee鈥檚 passage of the bill follows a before House appropriators in which both Democrats and Republicans the growth in reading outcomes in southern states like Mississippi and Alabama and asked experts how to spread that progress more broadly. The House proposal, however, is not the only effort underway to revamp the long-running Comprehensive Literacy Development Grant program. Some advocates say updated legislation should also require schools receiving grant funds to screen children for reading difficulties, inform parents whether their children are reading below grade level and assign reading coaches to low-performing schools.

鈥淚f we鈥檙e going to update it, let鈥檚 do it right,鈥� said Ariel Taylor Smith, senior director of the National Parents Union鈥檚 Center for Policy and Action. She expects that a Senate plan would also ensure that teacher preparation programs follow the science of reading. 鈥淟et鈥檚 actually check in on whether teacher preparation programs are doing right by kids and using the most recent research.鈥�

The nonprofit will dig further into those issues next week at on Capitol Hill featuring leaders from Tennessee and the District of Columbia, both of which have implemented reading reforms, like pointing districts to and providing to teachers on how students learn to read. 

An 鈥榠mplementation war鈥�

Experts welcome Congress鈥� interest in the issue. But broad agreement that students need phonics-based instruction doesn鈥檛 mean the debate over the best way to teach reading is settled.

There鈥檚 still a reading war, but not between the phonics and whole language camps, said Karen Vaites, a literacy advocate who highlights lessons on reading reform from states that have seen growth on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. 

Now, she said, there鈥檚 an 鈥渋mplementation war.鈥�

鈥淓verybody agrees on phonics, but how much phonics? How much instructional time should it get?鈥� she asked. 鈥淒o you do teacher training first or do you do curriculum paired with teacher training?鈥�

Another proposal under consideration would require the U.S. Department of Education to reserve 10% of the grant awards for states whose fourth grade reading scores on NAEP rank in the lowest 25% for two consecutive administrations of the test. Vaites questioned whether such states would make the best use of the funds. 

鈥淚 worry a lot about throwing dollars toward the people that by demonstration have the least leadership capacity,鈥� she said.  

, part of a 2010 federal budget agreement, was the first iteration of the state literacy grant program. , tracking awards to 11 states in 2017, found that not all states directed funds toward the highest poverty schools or used the money to buy reading programs based on research. Overall, the study found no significant differences in reading performance between schools that received the funds and those that didn鈥檛, but there were small positive effects in Louisiana and Ohio. 

Striving Readers preceded the Comprehensive Literacy State Development grants, . But the program hasn鈥檛 been revised in a decade. Smith, with the National Parents Union, said the program should reflect the latest knowledge about what鈥檚 working in classrooms. 

鈥淲e鈥檝e learned a ton about the science of reading,鈥� she said.

Kari Kurto, national director of policy and partnerships for the Reading League, a national nonprofit promoting the science of reading, said the grant program is important because it鈥檚 one of the only ways state education agencies 鈥渃an truly influence鈥� what happens in classrooms. She said she appreciates that the bill includes her suggestion that instruction should also support students鈥� oral language skills. 

鈥淭his legislation will go a long way toward solidifying our nation’s commitment to evidence-based literacy instruction,鈥� she said. 鈥淎s a Democrat, I am so thrilled to see this movement finally receiving the bipartisan support we always dreamed of.鈥�

Concerns over local control

While every state has taken some action to improve reading instruction, recent examples in two states show that concerns remain over one-size-fits-all approaches.

California passed a reading reform bill last year, but not before lawmakers agreed to that kept the state from mandating teacher training and state-approved curricula. The California Teachers Association said an earlier version of the bill would have interfered with local control and worried the plan overemphasized phonics at the expense of other literacy skills.

In Massachusetts, and object to portions of 鈥渢hat attempt to legislate the specific curriculum that schools would be expected to purchase and implement.鈥� The is also opposed.

Any federal legislation won鈥檛 delve into specific reading programs. prohibits it, but Vaites said there are still ways to strengthen the grant program.

鈥淚 think we’re all trying to figure out the mechanism that is going to hold state leaders accountable in a way that isn鈥檛 just sprinkling dollars around,鈥� she said. 

The , circulated through Brown University鈥檚 Annenberg Institute in January, examines the learning of American students attending traditional public schools, charters, Catholic academies, and schools operated by the Department of Defense. While disparities between high-flyers and their lower-performing counterparts have widened across the board, they grew the fastest in public and Catholic schools. 

Education leaders have warned of the trend toward increasing educational inequality for much of the last decade. During that time, each release of data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress 鈥� a federally administered exam commonly referred to as the Nation鈥檚 Report Card 鈥� showed lower-scoring test takers falling further behind; typically, top-scoring participants were also pulling away from the pack. By the end of the COVID era, differences in outcomes that were large at the outset had ballooned even wider.

Patrick Wolf, an economist at the University of Arkansas and one of the paper鈥檚 co-authors, called his findings 鈥渄emoralizing,鈥� arguing that many American schools are clearly failing the students who most need their help.

“We expect and hope our public schools will be great equalizers and will reduce gaps between the top performers and the low performers, or the rich and the poor,鈥� he said. 鈥淏ut over the last 20 years, we don’t see that in the data, and the gap has grown by a lot.”

鈥榃e were not being heard鈥�*

Wolf and his collaborators set out to measure what he referred to as the 鈥�90/10 gap鈥� 鈥� the difference in NAEP scores between students who score at the 90th percentile (i.e., those scoring higher than 89 percent of their counterparts across the country) and those at the 10th percentile (those outscored by 90 percent of other test takers). To do so, they measured performance data from 2005, the first year that charter schools participated in the test, through 2024.

In all, the research team gathered scores from six million test takers through 10 iterations of the exam, controlling for factors like students鈥� race or socioeconomic status, as well as the educational background of their parents. Each NAEP administration generates data for both fourth and eighth graders in the core subjects of math and English.

Their estimates show that the academic gaps grew fastest in public schools. In each of the two decades between 2005 and 2024, scores for fourth graders at the 90th percentile increased by about four points in math and three points in reading; 10th-percentile scores dropped by roughly three and five points, respectively, resulting in a net disparity that was seven points larger in both subjects. 

While those calculations are somewhat technical, the bottom line is much starker: The already-substantial gap between the most advanced and most challenged fourth graders expanded by 1.3 years鈥� worth of learning gains between the Bush administration and the Biden administration. For eighth graders, the gap grew by one-half year of learning in both subjects over the same time period.

Similar divergences, though of somewhat smaller magnitude, were found in Catholic schools, which enroll . During the period under study, the 90/10 gap grew by roughly 5 points per decade in fourth-grade math, six points in eighth-grade math, and four points in reading for both fourth and eighth graders.

Strikingly, the 90/10 gap for both sectors swelled even in the years preceding the pandemic. Those gaps, leading up to 2019, reflected both steady growth from children at the top of the heap, along with a lack of progress 鈥� and, in some cases, pre-COVID learning loss 鈥� from those at the bottom.

Peggy Carr is a former commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, the research entity responsible for administering NAEP and reporting its results. Until February, when she was fired by the Trump administration along with most of the NCES staff, she regularly communicated with both politicians and the public about the meaning of the exam 鈥� the growth of the 90/10 gap and the persistently disappointing performance of children scoring at the 10th percentile.

In an interview with 社区黑料, she said the discourse around NAEP was too focused on scores at the average, which tend to conceal wider swings among students far above or below that point.  

“We were not being heard as clearly as we wanted to be,” Carr said. 鈥淲e were trying to make it very clear that you need to look at the entire distribution for years, but it wasn’t the focus of policy makers.”

DoD schools, charters

Notably, both charters and DoD-administered schools saw a much slower drift between high- and low-achieving students, much of which appears to have been triggered directly by the pandemic. 

In charter schools, the 90/10 gap grew by less than one point between 2005 and 2019 for fourth graders; for eighth graders, the gap actually shrunk during that period because students at the 10th percentile improved in performance faster than those at the 90th. The same narrowing was seen in fourth-grade math scores at DoD schools, where students across the spectrum made huge gains before the onset of COVID.

Tom Loveless, a veteran observer of K鈥�12 schools and former director of the Brookings Institution鈥檚 , called those results impressive, but noted that the lessons that can be drawn from the charter and DoD sectors were limited. Collectively, they account for only about 8 percent of America鈥檚 K鈥�12 students, and parents enrolling their children in them can differ dramatically from the public at large.

鈥淚f you work for the Defense Department, your employer is running the school,鈥� he observed. 鈥淵our superior officer can call you up and say, ‘Your kid is acting up,鈥� and something’s going to be done about it quickly.鈥�

Perhaps the most dispiriting part of the trend is that America鈥檚 90/10 gap exploded so visibly at the same time that achievement gaps 鈥� whether along racial, socioeconomic, or other lines 鈥� transfixed the education world. Educators, office holders, policy wonks, and activists all put academic disparities at the heart of their work during the years between the late-1990s and the mid-2010s.

For a large portion of the 鈥渆ducation reform鈥� era kicked off by the 2002 passage of the No Child Left Behind law, underperforming students did see significant progress, Wolf said. But the years since 2013 have been marked by a pronounced reversal of those gains.

鈥淏y definition, there will always be a gap between the students performing at the 90th percentile and students performing at the 10th percentile,鈥� he acknowledged. 鈥淏ut we don’t want it to be wide, and we don’t want it to be getting wider.鈥� 

OKLAHOMA CITY 鈥� An Oklahoma Senate plan to has drawn mixed reactions in the week since Republican leaders unveiled it.

Groups representing active and retired educators, along with legislative Democrats, have opposed Senate Republicans鈥� idea to redirect $254 million that otherwise would supplement the Teachers鈥� Retirement System. GOP leaders said the pension system is in a strong position now that it鈥檚 80% funded, and those extra funds could benefit urgent needs in public schools.

The plan wouldn鈥檛 take any money out of the Teachers鈥� Retirement System, and no retirees鈥� benefits would be reduced. It would place a $200 million limit on a yearly pension subsidy, called an apportionment, that has helped build up the retirement system over the past 23 years on top of regular state and employee contributions.

Doing so would free up $254 million 鈥� in a tight budget year 鈥� for a $2,500 teacher pay raise, extra school funding, expanded private school tax credits and more, Senate leaders said.

The thought of repurposing retirement funds, though, has drawn scrutiny from the state鈥檚 largest teacher union and a group representing retired educators.

Oklahoma Education Association President Cari Elledge equated the plan to mortgaging a teacher鈥檚 future for a salary increase today.

鈥淲e shouldn鈥檛 be having to be the ones who are funding our own raises,鈥� she said.

Using money intended to benefit public school teachers to instead bolster private school tax credits also would be 鈥渧ery troubling,鈥� she said. The Senate plan would put $25 million of the pension apportionment funds into the state budget for the Parental Choice Tax Credit, which helps families pay for private schooling.

Retirement funds shouldn鈥檛 be used to finance other budget priorities, especially when retirees haven鈥檛 had a cost-of-living increase to their benefits in six years, the .

鈥淎n 80% funded ratio is meaningful progress 鈥� but it is not full funding,鈥� the organization wrote in a public statement. 鈥淩edirecting retirement dollars now risks reversing years of hard-earned stability.鈥�

Senate leaders didn鈥檛 rule out the possibility of a cost-of-living increase if their plan succeeds. They would need support from the House for the proposal to meaningfully advance.

House Speaker Kyle Hilbert, R-Bristow, stopped short of endorsing or rejecting the Senate idea. He said lawmakers, though, will have to someday decide what to do with the pension subsidy as the Teachers鈥� Retirement System inches closer to being 100% funded.

鈥淎t some point the subsidization of the pension systems, the TRS system, will need to go away,鈥� Hilbert told reporters Thursday. 鈥淚t鈥檚 just a question of is that (happening in) 2026, is that 2030, is that 2034? I think that鈥檚 the question we have to wrap our heads around as we make determinations on what is fully funded and when does that subsidy need to go away. It was never intended to be there forever.鈥�

Much of the criticism for the funding plan stems from a misunderstanding, said Senate President Pro Tem Lonnie Paxton, R-Tuttle. He said constituents who contacted Senate Republicans believed lawmakers planned to deduct from their pension paychecks.

鈥淢y wife is a retired teacher. I don鈥檛 get to go home at night if I鈥檓 trying to draw from her pension system. That鈥檚 not what we鈥檙e doing,鈥� Paxton said.

Senate Minority Leader Julia Kirt, D-Oklahoma City, said she heard similar fears from constituents. Her office has been 鈥渇looded with calls鈥� since the Republicans鈥� announcement.

Feedback on the proposal has been full of frustration, said House Minority Leader Cyndi Munson, D-Oklahoma City.

鈥淧itting retired teachers against active teachers is really not a good plan,鈥� Munson said. 鈥淚t鈥檚 not a popular idea.鈥�

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oklahoma Voice maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janelle Stecklein for questions: info@oklahomavoice.com.

For Rachael Garnick, a former first grade teacher, the results were a reminder of how tough it’s been for schools to recover from historic declines in learning since the pandemic. 

鈥淭he literacy scores are still abysmal and we should be displeased,鈥� said Garnick, who heads the Pennsylvania Literacy Coalition. Made up of over 70 organizations, the group has pushed and state officials to fund and implement reading reform.

But despite the discouraging statewide results, she also sees districts, like in northeastern Pennsylvania and the Mohawk Area district, northwest of Pittsburgh, 鈥渢rending in the right direction,鈥� and demonstrating urgency over reading scores. Their attitude, she said, was 鈥渢he opposite of 鈥業f it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.鈥� Instead, 鈥業t鈥檚 broke; we鈥檝e got to fix it.鈥� 鈥� 

on pandemic learning loss from NWEA, an assessment company, captured that combination of frustration and hope over the state of academic recovery. About a third of schools have reached pre-COVID performance levels in reading or math, and just 14% have recovered in both subjects. But even some that were hit the hardest, like high-poverty schools, have made impressive gains.

The report was just the latest collection of results pointing to a long road ahead for most schools. Last year鈥檚 National Assessment of Educational Progress scores showed students in the majority of states losing more ground, but included a few standouts with strong progress, like Louisiana in reading and Alabama in math. And state test scores tell a similar story: few have topped pre-COVID performance.

It鈥檚 not like experts didn鈥檛 predict a slow recovery. 

鈥淚f student performance improvement follows historical prepandemic trends, it could take decades for students to fully catch up,鈥� researchers with McKinsey and Company, a consulting firm, .

Even the nation鈥檚 education chief isn鈥檛 expecting good news soon. 

鈥淚 would like to say that NAEP scores, when they come out again in January 2027, are going to show marked improvement,鈥� Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a recent K-12 Dive . 鈥淚 don鈥檛 think they are.鈥�

But Dan Goldhaber, director of the Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research, said it鈥檚 important to put NWEA data, and all measures of kids鈥� learning, in context.

鈥淥ne of the reasons that we’re not seeing recovery and that the results aren’t better is because of what was happening in the decade ,鈥� he said. 鈥淭here was a slow degradation of academic achievement.鈥�

Resisters and rebounders

Schools that were able to resist further declines during the pandemic are those that are more likely to be back on track, according to NWEA鈥檚 data, which represents five million students who took the MAP Growth tests through fall 2024. Such schools make up nearly three quarters of the recovered schools.

The Los Angeles-area is one example. 

Before the pandemic, the high-poverty, majority Latino district was already seeing gains on state assessments. When testing resumed in 2022, reading scores held steady. Math scores caught up the following year, and the district has continued to post gains ever since. 

Superintendent Darin Brawley highlighted a mix of academic routines, like a math problem of the day, weekly quizzes and challenging writing assignments, that the district continued despite the disruption of school closures. Teachers were encouraged to dial back their use of smart boards in the classroom and require students to keep math and language arts journals to improve retention. 

鈥淓verything was being done on the smart board and kids weren’t notating anything,鈥� Brawley said. 鈥淐ertain things have to be worked out on paper.鈥�

NWEA data also pointed to what the researchers call 鈥渞ebounder鈥� schools, those that saw significant drops in achievement but have been able to climb their way back. High-poverty schools are among those with impressive gains, but even districts seeing higher-than-ever performance still struggle to close wide achievement gaps.

鈥淲e’ve never had scores this high in English language arts or math,鈥� said Buffy Roberts, associate superintendent of the Charleston County schools in South Carolina. 鈥淚t’s been quite phenomenal.鈥�

She was talking about , which, unlike NWEA and NAEP, aren鈥檛 comparable because states don鈥檛 all measure proficiency the same. But they can still reflect post-COVID trends if states haven鈥檛 changed their tests since 2019. 

South Carolina鈥檚 math test has remained constant. Results show that statewide, scores have nearly recovered. It鈥檚 a trend that NWEA noted as well, explaining that while schools 鈥渓ost significant ground,鈥� in math, many made 鈥渟ubstantial gains afterward.鈥�

In Charleston, 54% of students in grades three through eight met or exceeded expectations in math last year, up from 48% in 2019 and about 10 percentage points higher than the state average. The district also made the Harvard Center for Education Policy Research鈥檚 fully recovered districts in the nation last year.

Roberts pointed to a swift return to in-person instruction and high-dosage tutoring as some of the factors contributing to strong growth. But she said at the outset of the pandemic, leaders 鈥渒new there were some vulnerable groups鈥� that would need 鈥渟tructures and support to mitigate some of that learning loss.鈥�

The district鈥檚 , she explained, provided extra dollars to schools with high-poverty students even when the schools didn鈥檛 qualify for federal Title I funding. The schools used the funds for extra staff to reduce class sizes, incentives to increase attendance and mental health services.

But there鈥檚 still a lot of work to do. In fourth grade math, there鈥檚 a more than 50 percentage point gap between white and Black students, and students from wealthier families outscore students in poverty by 39 percentage points. 

鈥淲e agree that progress must be faster,鈥� the district on Facebook after a conservative community group to the disparities. 

In an analysis of scores, Education Data Center researchers, led by Brown University鈥檚 Emily Oster, were hopeful about continued math recovery in 2026. Of the 32 states that have kept the same math test since before COVID, seven met or exceeded 2019 proficiency rates: Colorado, Georgia, Iowa, Mississippi, Missouri, Rhode Island and Tennessee.

But even if they didn鈥檛, they all made some gains. Despite Pennsylvania鈥檚 decline in reading, for example, its performance in math is less than a percentage point from reaching the 2019 level. 

But the results in reading were less encouraging. Six out of 28 states have met or surpassed pre-pandemic performance. But several others, like Massachusetts, Minnesota and Oregon, remain well off that mark. 

Goldhaber, with CALDER, suggested that states haven鈥檛 seen improvement on tests because parents trust those scores less than the grades kids bring home on report cards and assignments. 

A recent reiterated that point. In a survey of over 2,000 parents, nearly three quarters said they believe grades more than tests when making decisions about their children鈥檚 learning. They鈥檙e also less likely to take action, like seeking out tutoring or other help for their child, when grades are good. 

The problem is that because of grade inflation, which was on the rise even before the pandemic, grades are a less accurate measure of how students are really doing. 

The results of that survey were no surprise to Bibb Hubbard, founder and CEO of Learning Heroes, a nonprofit that focuses on helping parents understand achievement data. She said she鈥檚 been 鈥渟creaming from the rooftops for 10 years鈥� that parents are about their kids鈥� performance. 

鈥淕ood grades do not equal grade level,鈥� she said. 鈥淧arents are deeply engaged, but we can鈥檛 afford to leave them on the sidelines relying on grades alone. The stakes are too high.鈥�

The private, AI-powered Alpha School had quickly generated attention in the education world and beyond. The school鈥檚 been featured in dozens of articles and dissected across countless podcasts for what leaders call their 鈥渢wo-hour learning鈥� model.

On this episode of Class Disrupted, MacKenzie Price, co-founder of the Alpha School, joins Michael Horn and Diane Tavenner not to explain Alpha School鈥檚 model, but instead to dive deep into how the school is leveraging artificial intelligence to radically rethink the school experience. Price focuses on how AI itself is being leveraged at Alpha 鈥� from the core academic blocks to afternoons spent on real-world projects and life skills development. What鈥檚 possible now in school design that wasn鈥檛 a decade earlier, thanks to AI? 

Listen to the episode below. A full transcript follows.

Chris Hein: So when the school shut down and went to remote learning, we were really fascinated by how quickly our kids adjusted to e-learning and how hard of a time the teachers seem to have with just the basic tools and systems and then how to translate their curriculum to a digital format. But the thing that really jumped at me was my wife and I were having conversations with our kids every day saying, hey, what are you doing?

Why are you guys playing video games? Or why do you, like, want to go outside and play? It’s midway through the day and they’re like, we’ve already done our work. And we were like, that can’t be right. And so we double checked their assignments and their tests and where they’re at. And it was like, no, they got all their work done in a couple hours. And then it really made Teresa and I question, why does it take them eight hours a day at school if the school is teaching them the same content and administering the same number of tests and they’re able to get through it in a few hours?

Michael Horn: That was June 2020, and Diane and I were broadcasting during the height of the pandemic, and we were hoping that parents would realize that schools could be rethought dramatically, including by helping people realize that what we tend to think of as, quote, the academics could be done in much, much less time than the six plus hours that kids spend in traditional schools. Five years later, and thanks to a startup school network, Alpha School, the two hour message finally seems to be spreading like wildfire. So with that as a prelude, Diane, first, it is great to see you as always.

Diane Tavenner: It’s good to see you too, Michael. I’m a little disoriented by us changing up our normal intro. But in a good way, change is always good. That take from season one is honestly priceless. It’s taken us a bit longer than we had hoped, but we do seem to be getting some momentum towards some of the big opportunities that we saw in education back then and still are hopeful for now.

Michael Horn: Yeah, no, I think that’s right. And I’m glad you’re accommodating my whims on changing the format up on you today. But I am particularly excited because we have on our show today MacKenzie Price. She’s of course one of the co-founders of Alpha School, and MacKenzie’s been on my Future of Education podcast and Substack before and we actually both have Substacks named the Future of Education. We independently named them, so we’re vibing already. But MacKenzie, it’s great to see you again, welcome.

Scaling Education with Technology

MacKenzie Price: Well, thanks for having me. And, you know, it’s so interesting that you tell that story about the way, you know, education was done during COVID And we were pretty lucky because we’d started Alpha school back in 2014. So when the pandemic hit, you know, it happened to be during spring break. So the kids who hadn’t brought their laptops home came and picked them up at school. And we really had a very smooth rest of the school year because the kids already were doing their learning on the computers. And then we just said, you know, afternoons, we’ll just, we’ll, we’ll call it, you know, do whatever you want at home. But what’s interesting is a couple years ago or in 2022, when we really launched our learning platform with the advent of generative AI, we realized, okay, we can actually scale this. We can go beyond just, you know, a local school that’s doing a reasonable job of educating kids, and we can, we can scale it bigger.

And we were originally talking about the idea of 2x learning. You know, you can learn twice as much, you can learn twice as much. And even our own families were like, we don’t, we don’t care. Like, why does my kid need to learn twice as much? It’s not a big deal. And we, we’d have like, parent conferences where we’d be saying, hey, if, if your son, you know, hits his, his goals, he can be learning twice as much. And they didn’t care. And then we had this unlock idea of let’s call it two hour learning and say, hey, if your son hits his goals, he can be out of here in two hours and freed up to go do the rest of the things, you know, that he wants to do during the day. And suddenly the parents are like, Johnny, come on, get with it.

Let’s hit our goals. And it was that mind shift of, you know, let’s get your academics done in two hours. And as a side note, you’ll learn twice as much, but let’s do that for two hours. And then one of the code names we actually had for our learning platform was 鈥淭ime Back.鈥� And we went through a whole process in the last year trying to make sure, what’s our new name going to be? What are we going to call this? And ultimately we landed back on exactly what it is that we’re giving kids, which is time back to go do all these other exciting, interesting things during the rest of the day. Because it doesn’t take all day to educate kids. You can not just do academics, but crush academics in a much shorter period of time when you’ve got this personalized mastery-based tutoring.

Transforming Education Models

Well, and I think you’re speaking to, like, there’s many reasons why Alpha has done what many education startups struggle with, which is jumping into the mainstream narrative. And that sense of giving kids back their most precious resource, time is clearly part of it. AI is another part of it. And that’s where we want to dig in with you today, just given the focus of the podcast that we’ve had here. But let me perhaps frame it this way. We now have two school founders on this show, you and Diane, who have each created models that at one level I think look awfully similar in certain respects. If you mix in, say, Rocketship Education or something like that, which was founded in 2006 and is an elementary school model.

Michael Horn: We can take that and Summit Public Schools that Diane founded and Rocketship and say, hey, a lot of the structures that Alpha Schools has at one level, like a relatively limited block of time on learning academics and content in ways that are personalized for the learners, large blocks of time for projects, a big focus on skill development and habits of success or life skills like growth, mindset, agency, and so forth, those are things that were present in models like that. But then we come to at least one big difference, which is, yes, Alpha was originally designed, as you said, right before the mainstream use of AI, just like Summit and Rocketship were. But Alpha is now aggressively developing AI powered dashboards, AI powered learning applications, AI powered knowledge interest, working memory graphs for students. And so, given our focus on the podcast in this particular season around AI, I just love to dive into the AI parts of the model with you. Even as we’ll say up front, like AI is clearly inextricably linked to the other elements of the overall Alpha model. Pulling them apart is not fair to you all. But just given that we’ve heard so many podcasts with you about Alpha, and we suspect most of our particular listeners have as well, I think digging into that AI question in particular, and this is maybe the framing we can bring to it, which is, what does AI allow us to do today? That was not possible in the best of the personalized models from a decade or two earlier.

MacKenzie Price: Yeah, I think that’s a great way to frame it, because artificial intelligence in the learning science world now is what I believe is like the microscope to biology. It is the tool that is finally enabling us to integrate all of these learning science principles that have been known for many, many years can result in kids learning 2, 5, 10 times faster. It just was never possible to incorporate in obviously in a teacher in front of the classroom model, but even more importantly, even in an individualized adaptive app type setting. And so to give context to that, you know, when we first started our school back in 2014, we knew that we could use apps. So we were using things like Dreambox and Khan Academy and Freckle and Grammarly and Egump, a lot of the apps that were kind of out there. The difference was it was still hard to manage the way that kids worked through the apps. And so one of the things we found is that there’s a lot of what we call anti-patterns that kids will do when they’re using apps. It could be things like topic shopping.

You know, they jump in and say, hey, I’m going to go to, you know, I’m a fourth grader, but I’m going to try some fifth grade material just because it’s kind of interesting. Oops, it got hard. I’m going to back out of that. I’m going to jump into some third grade material or I’m going to kind of mess around on this or even more just not engaging with the apps. You know, you could have everything from a kid not even sitting in front of his computer or picking his nose or, you know, just rushing through the explanation and not reading it. And that’s where a lot of the big difference is. One thing to kind of just be clear about, we do not use a chatbot in our education platform. Chatbots in education are cheat bots.

And it was interesting. I actually had a big event last week in Austin. The National Governors Association came and toured and we’re learning all about our schools. And I made that comment, you know, we do not use chatbots. They’re cheat bots. 90% of kids are going to use them to cheat. And a couple hours later, there was another vendor who’s basically built a chatbot for education that was like, well, you know, I put him in a, put him in a little bit of an uncomfortable situation. But I think that’s really important to know.

And one of the things I really don’t want to see in our education system is we slap a GPT on every kid’s computer and suddenly say we’re an AI first classroom. Right? And I was actually talking to a Stanford professor a few weeks ago who said, you know, here’s the problem that we’re seeing. Educators are using, you know, chat features, ChatGPT to create lesson plans, you know, and do these things. Kids are using ChatGPTs to write their stuff. Professors or teachers are using ChatGPTs to grade it. And so basically the AI is just talking to each other. Right. And we’ve taken the human out of it and that is totally not what we’re doing.

So there’s kind of two features that I can go into around how we’re using AI in our model.

Diane Tavenner: Yeah, let’s take this piece by piece. MacKenzie, that will be that context is super helpful. Let’s start in the morning block where you’ve already gone a little bit with some of the apps and whatnot. You all roughly have about three hours where students are doing sort of two hours of head down learning that quote academics my language for that is content knowledge. So forgive me if I slip up and use different lingo. And as I understand it, and as you were just sharing, you’re using these apps or adaptive learning products and you named several for us there. But there are some places where you are using apps that, as we understand it, you’ve built for yourself. And this tracks with my summit experience.

Our first choice was always to buy quality products. Second choice was to partner with startups or companies that wanted to work with power users. And last choice was to build our own when it didn’t exist. So I’d love to unpack. Where is it that you’ve determined there wasn’t something good enough and that you have literally built your own application and are using it right now? And are those AI native applications?

AI-Powered Personalized Learning Systems

MacKenzie Price: So we’ve definitely had a number of years to test out a lot of different apps, see what worked well, what didn’t work, where there are gaps. And what I would say is we’ve curated over this period of time which apps are best for which grade levels in which subjects. Not all apps are created equal, but to kind of start at the very beginning where we’re using AI, we are using AI to be able to assess what a student knows and what they don’t know. So any student who comes into our Alpha school to start takes an NWEA math assessment. We also do math assessments three times a year for all students and that’s how we’re measuring growth. But what we do is we take the information that comes through that assessment as well as some other initial assessments that we’re able to do with students. And from there we have AI tools that will basically build out the personalized lesson plans that say, all right, here’s where a kid needs to go, here’s how we whole fill, which of course is a very common issue. Even our students who come into us with, you know, A’s on their transcripts, you know, can be three years behind in academic content.

Right. Actually we found out students who came in to us this year from other schools, if they had a B on their transcript, they were between three years behind and seven years behind. Which actually shows, you know, grades mean nothing anymore in this day and age. So we take the assessment and we have an AI tool that basically builds that out. So what does that look like?

Diane Tavenner: And that’s a tool you all have built internally, is that Time Back?

MacKenzie Price: That’s a tool that we built out. We have built that tool out and that is using standardized third party assessments like Max.

Diane Tavenner: Yeah, the results. And you’re ingesting the results on that.

MacKenzie Price: Exactly. So they build that. So the experience for a student, a student sits down in the morning during their core block of academics and they will log into a dashboard. We have a time back dashboard that a student logs into and says, okay, it’s time to do math. Now in some of our classrooms, kids get a choice of what subject they want to take on first. Other of our classrooms, you know, we have a set thing. Okay, we’re doing math first, then we do reading, you know, then we do language.

Diane Tavenner: And is that based on age?

MacKenzie Price: Depends on the age. Yeah. And, and so it’s, it’s always interesting. You know, what we’re really working on creating is self driven learners who understand their skill of learning to learn. So like if you talk to some of our fourth and fifth graders, you’ll hear some of them say, hey, I usually will choose to take on my hardest subject first when I’m fresh and I’m ready. Right in our kindergarten and first grade classrooms, you know, that’s more, okay, it’s math time, it’s reading time, you know, and it’s kind of subscribed there. But basically what will happen is a student will go into the dashboard, click on the subject that they are going to take on. So that’s math as an example.

And then the dashboard takes them to the app that has been determined is the one that is right for them and what they’re doing. Now when I say right for them, we also as a school have kind of used certain things. For example, Math Academy is a third party app that we love. We think Math Academy is amazing. They’ve been fantastic partners to work with and it works really great for basically third through high school. We were Using another app for our younger students, earlier this fall, we were using Synthesis, which, you know, that’s a sexy app that, you know, parents kind of like, because kids are doing interesting things. We were seeing, though, like, I don’t know if we’re getting the results we want.

So we’ve made changes, you know, to that, but they’ll go to the level that they need. So you’ve got a fifth grader who maybe needs to go back and revisit concepts from third grade. You know, they have to hit this fast math, you know, concept, or they’re looking at these fractions or whatever it is. So it takes them to that lesson and they’re doing that. So that’s the first use of AI that we have. Now the second use that we use is the vision model. So what’s happening is we’re using an AI tool that we have built that tracks the screen and is actually watching to understand how is a student moving through this material.

So, for example, when they are doing reading comprehension, are they rushing through the article? Are they just scrolling to the bottom of the screen and randomly guessing, or are they taking the time? And of course, you can tell this is a reading article that normally would take, you know, 69 seconds to read. And this kid just answered it within 10 seconds. Okay, now we’re realizing we’re. We have an anti pattern, which is basically an improper use of engaging with the apps. So we’re looking at that in terms of the vision model to see how kids are learning. When they get a question wrong, are they watching the video? Are they, you know, taking time to read the explanation? And then our AI tutor creates coaching for that student.

So it’ll say, hey, buddy, we’re realizing that, you know, you’re not reading the explanation when you get a question wrong. If you take this time to go forward, here’s what it would do. And so we’re basically giving coaching. Now. The other thing is, in our schools, we also have our cameras turned on and they are recording the students. So they’re seeing if you know, the.

Monitoring and Progress Tracking

MacKenzie Price: If the computer has been, you know, quiet for a minute and a half, is it because the student’s not even in front of their computer, or is it because they’re goofing around with their buddy next to them, what is it that they’re doing? And so it’s able to do that. Now our families have the ability to turn that feature off at home if their students are using that feature at home or if they’re working at home, they can turn that off. But in our schools, we do require that that be turned on. And so we’re able to kind of look at the coaching. Now students will basically walk through each of their core subjects, generally in about 25 minute Pomodoro sessions, and then they’re done with their academics in that two hours. The other feature that we’re using with our AI tool is we can really well analyze and understand how a kid is progressing through the material. You know, what percentage completion are they on each of the different apps, you know, and grade level subjects, things like that.

How many minutes do we anticipate? How many weeks will it take before they’re finished with, you know, fifth-grade math? If they put an hour of homework in a night, here’s how much shorter that will take. And one of the things that people love about that, not only do our students get to really see and understand, they have a sense of ownership over their academic journey. But of course, parents can log in, you know, every day if they want to, to be able to see what is my kid working on. What, you know, did he hit his goals? And then what. What we’re also tracking in the way that goal setting works is students are getting experience points, XP, to borrow, you know, a term from video gaming. And so the goal is that they get 120 XPs per day, which is 120 minutes of focused work. That’s one XP is equal to one minute of focus work.

And so that’s what we’re working on. And then when you ask about the apps that we’re using, we have built Alpha Math, Alpha Read and Alpha Write are some of the apps that we’ve incorporated into our model. And then we’ve got some other things that, you know, that we’re continuing to roll out. One that’s actually available to the public for free is an app that we’ve built that helps encourage the love of reading, which of course is a difference between learning to read and learning to love to read. And that’s called teachtales.com and you can go to teachtales.com and basically it’s using AI to generate personalized reading material based on a student’s interests that then delivers at the appropriate Lexile level for them.

Diane Tavenner: Awesome. There was a lot in there. So let’s.

MacKenzie Price: There was a lot. I need to work on more short sound bites. Well, I hope that doesn’t get worse as I get older.

Diane Tavenner: We all have things we need to work on, right? Let’s stick with those three apps that you’ve developed. So Alpha math, read and write. Are you using those across all of your grade levels? And are they AI, are they adapt, are they AI native, are they adaptive? What’s going on with those apps?

MacKenzie Price: So the Alpha Write is something that we’ve been really excited about and we break this down just to have an idea of how the app works. We break this down with the idea of can you write a grammatically correct sentence, you know, then building onto paragraphs, then building on to essays and working through. And I will tell you, I mean, we had a lot of students, again, A students from their previous schools that come into Alpha. We had high school students who couldn’t write third grade level sentences, like, it’s just crazy how poorly this is going.

Diane Tavenner: Yeah, that’s one of the questions I think that comes up is where writing is situated in the model. So it sounds like you’ve got writing in the morning block as sort of a standalone kind of just expository approach to writing.

MacKenzie Price: We do have writing in the morning block now. Our students are also doing a lot of writing in the afternoon. So, you know, for example, they’re writing, you know, talks that they’re going to give for TED talks, they’re writing essays, they’re writing book reflections that are part of our afternoon block, which is our check chart time. So it is a common fallacy that people have of, oh, these students aren’t actually doing a lot of writing. They’re absolutely getting, they get a lot of writing in. But we’re really breaking this down into everything we’re kind of thinking about is what actually works when it comes to educating students. And where have we been doing it wrong? And that’s where I think it’s so exciting to see all these learning science principles that can come up. And you know, for example, here’s another thing that we do during these, the, the core block period.

Optimizing Learning

MacKenzie Price: We’re, we’re measuring what percentage accuracy students are at to understand are they in the zone of proximal development. Right. If they’re getting more than 85% of the questions right, you know, then that’s a sign that they’re, they’re in too easy material. If, you know, they’re under 70, it’s a sign this is too hard. How do you make sure that they’re staying in the right spot? And so that’s the other part that the AI tool will kind of say, whoa, hold on here. We’re noticing that there’s something changing or that a student’s not being hit at that right level. The other thing that’s going to come in to play is we’re also going to be able to really take a lot of things around cognitive load theory principles and understand, OK, if a student only needs 5 reps of a concept in order to master that concept, they shouldn’t have to sit around and do 10 reps. And if the student needs 15, they shouldn’t only get 10.

So that’s just some ideas of some of the things that are coming in the pipeline that generative AI is going to make really available.

Diane Tavenner: So two things I’m trying to understand and contrast to pre AI to now that we have AI because a lot of what you’re describing sounds very much like what Summit Learning was about. You know, we built thousands of playlists and young people, they actually had a lot of choices. So we were working on self direction in, you know, they would do a pre assessment, they would know what they know, they would prepare, you know, and study and learn. And then they would take a post assessment, we would assess all the things you’re talking about. So I guess I’m wondering in these apps, is that similar or is AI actually playing a new and different role here? And then I do want to get to the sort of time back coach as well because I realize it’s connected. But, are we using AI in these apps? Are these sort of still adaptive learning apps? Are they 鈥�?

MacKenzie Price: Yeah, the third party apps that we’re using are not using, you know, an AI feature and they’re not creating dynamic content. You know that, that is created. This is, you know, The K-8 Common Core curriculum is what’s, what’s being fed into these apps. Where we are getting to is we are going to be moving in, in 26 to dynamically created content. Obviously there’s been a problem. There’s still hallucination issues. In fact, we have a group of high school students, kind of our, our top honors students who we are testing out dynamic content and they’re able to say, hey, guess what? The AI is acting up here. Like this is totally a wrong question on that.

But right now what we’re doing is we’re going through and we’re analyzing every lesson before it’s out there. So this isn’t just like an LLM creating a fifth grade curriculum. We’re still using that. Where the AI tool is really being used is around that vision model. So that’s the biggest difference is that, and that’s part of the reason, you know, if you talk to families who went to Alpha, you know, six years ago, you’ll hear a much more varied experience. Right. We had a lot of families that my kid wasn’t learning.

They were goofing around. There wasn’t this connection. Now there were a lot of reasons for that. We didn’t have the motivation model locked in. We didn’t have the high standards, just expectation. But the other big part was it’s really easy to goof around when you’re learning on these, you know, in general on these apps. And so that’s the biggest thing right now is that our AI tutor is ensuring that kids are moving efficiently at the right level and then understanding what the pace is for that and creating basically new lessons that will fill academic holes, you know, and go at their pace, is what I would say. But yeah, if you’re looking at, you know, for example, a math academy, you know, type of thing, you know, that is static content that, that kids move through and kind of work on.

We used to use IXL, actually. IXL kicked us off of their platform. They don’t like us for some reason. They literally won’t even tell us, they won’t talk to us. They just say, you’re off. But we had used IXL a lot. And actually one of the things I always say for families that are wanting to recreate this at home, I actually think IXL does a really good job across a lot of dimensions. They were a pretty good app.

They don’t like Alpha for whatever reason, but, you know, that’s where we’ve kind of been able to figure out what this is. But I think the other question is, when you talk about things like reading, writing, it’s really helping break down our apps that we built. You know, they’re breaking down into small components. Let’s make sure a student is excellent at this and then build from there. I think in a traditional classroom, having students write a five paragraph essay is not necessarily helpful. Instead, are they really understanding the structure and mechanics of a sentence? Are they understanding what a paragraph should look like? Are they going. And we use really the idea of building blocks in all of the work that we do.

Diane Tavenner: So does that mean you’ve got under underlying at least the apps you’re building sort of a knowledge graph that you’re, that you’re working with in order? Yeah, I mean that again, fairly. Okay, fairly consistent. Let’s dig into that AI coach or tutor, like you said, because it sounds like this is not a traditional dashboard where young people are looking at Their own data and information. Maybe they are. But what it sounds like you’ve really got is this AI coach or tutor coming in to keep them motivated. I mean, the apps you’re talking about, lots of schools have them, as, you know, lots of schools, they just don’t get the number of minutes, they don’t get the progress. And so is you’re. It sounds like that’s the key.

So that is an AI tutor or. But it’s not a bot that you were referencing.

MacKenzie Price: Well, it is, but you’re not correct about. Yeah, you’re not correct about that. The AI tutor is not providing the motivation levers. There’s no motivation that’s happening through the apps. The motivation is all through our guides, our human teachers. They are focused on motivation. And just to be really clear, the reason we’re having the success that we’re having and the academic results we’re having is not because of our ed tech. Our ed tech is fine, it’s whatever.

But there is no magical edtech product that just immediately motivates and makes a guide or makes a student, you know, lock in and be able to learn well, We haven’t built it. We haven’t seen it yet. The key for us is that we have freed up the time of our human adults to be able to focus on motivation. And so that could be everything from, well, from the idea that students earn alpha bucks for hitting their XP goals to, I was just talking to one of our kindergarten guides the other day, and she said, you know, we have kids where when they hit, one of their goals, when they. When they unlock a goal that they.

They’ve done, they have a secret sniggle, they have a secret signal, they’ll, you know, scratch their nose. And that signals, oh, you hit a goal, let’s do a silent dance party. And It’ll be a 15 second, you know, the guide is doing the silent dance party, and then they move on to the next thing. It can be individual motivation, you know, models. We had a student who, as a result of hitting her academic goals over a period of six weeks, she earned time in a professional recording studio to record an original song that she had written and was singing. So that’s the whole key. And by the way, 90% of what creates a great learner is a motivated student.

10% is having the right level and pace, which is what our edtech tool does. What the AI tutor does, though, it actually does give kids the ability to go on their dashboard and each day and see, okay, I hit my rings, I filled my ring. It kind of looks almost think of an Apple watch, you know, with exercise rings. That’s what it is for each student is, did you fill your ring? Which means, did you get your XPs in that subject? And then they can go into their learning dashboard and they can see at any time, here’s how much I. Here’s how much I hit. We even have a waste meter in the corner that says, you know, you’ve wasted 20% of your time you were wasting by not engaging in the right way or not accurately doing that.

Diane Tavenner: So the student doesn’t actually, like, engage with the AI tutor. It literally is just powering this dashboard then.

MacKenzie Price: Well, it’s powering the dashboard, and then it will pop up and say, you know, it’ll write something like, hey, watch the video explanation. You know, sometimes it’s, you know, going.

Diane Tavenner: It was like a nudge or something.

MacKenzie Price: One of the things that, yeah, we’ll see is that, you know, we’ll often say to students, you know, often the fastest way forward is to slow down, slow down and read the explanation. So it does that. But here’s what it’s not doing. There’s not some little avatar Dashy, that pops up and is like, hey, Johnny, you’re doing such a great job. Two more questions, and then we’re doing that. It’s not that kind of thing. The AI really is kind of under cover.

And it’s again, building these lesson plans and then analyzing and understanding how a kid is moving through that.

Diane Tavenner: Building the lesson plans that are in the apps or in the …

MacKenzie Price: Yeah, taking them to the right spot. So it’s able to say, okay, we’re going to take you.

Diane Tavenner: Oh, by lesson plan, you’re saying directing them to specific.

MacKenzie Price: Directing directly to this math academy. And we put up these basically guardrails. That don’t allow a kid to pop out of Math Academy and say, hey, instead of doing this concept, I’m going to go play over here. I’m going to go do this. And I think that’s a problem in traditional classrooms when people are using apps. They’re given their iPad or their Chromebook, they’re put on Khan Academy, and then they’ve got the ability to kind of bounce around. There’s one other topic that I think is also important, and this is actually a lesson we learned very early on, is the idea of requiring students to do some work each day in each subject. Right.

And there’s a lot of alternative education systems that’ll say, hey, if a kid doesn’t really want to focus on math for a couple months, that’s okay. They want to pursue reading. We actually believe. And this was, I’ll never forget the very first year we had a first grade student who absolutely loved math. Loved math. He was at 8th grade level math. And the problem was he needed his guide to read the word problems to him because he couldn’t read and he hadn’t read in like months. And that was one of the early unlocks where we realized, okay, we have to require, you know, time in each subject each day that students are accomplishing, which some, again, some alternative schools don’t do that.

Diane Tavenner: Yeah. So it sounds like then, the motivation is highly related to this relationship that young people have, which we know is very powerful. And then just following the directives essentially of the guide and then the technology to do what you’re telling them to do and stay on track.

Confidence Unlocks Student Motivation

MacKenzie Price: Exactly. And then I think the next part of the motivation, kind of the deeper level of motivation is and you know, people often go, oh, is extrinsic motivation bad? And you guys know, there’s all the research that shows there’s not necessarily even that same, you know, intrinsic versus extrinsic. But what we are seeing is that as students become more and more capable, you know, and build up their knowledge, they become more confident and they do get more motivated. They suddenly realize like, wow, okay, I can be 99th percentile in, you know, math, in language, in science, I can do this, it’s not as hard. And so we find that kids, their identity really changes as they start to see that, wow, I’m capable of learning when I’m given the right level and the right pacing and I get motivated to do that. And that is what I think is the really cool unlock that we enjoy seeing when students finally realize this. Like, wow, I can do this.

Diane Tavenner: Yeah, definitely. You said that one of the benefits of this approach is you freeing up the guide time to really do the more important things. And as I understand it, one of those activities they do is one to one meetings with the young people in this morning block. This was one of them. Continues to be, I think the most highly rated element of the summit model is the mentoring model with the one to one check ins as a part of that. And over the years we started leveraging technology to enhance those check ins. I’m curious if you’re using AI in any way to support the one to one check ins and, and what that looks like.

MacKenzie Price: Yes, we are. So we actually mic up the guides during those one to one check ins and then they’re using, you know, we take those transcripts and we’re running them through for everything from what percentage of the time were you talking compared to the student? Right. If you’re talking too much, that’s a problem. How many questions were you asking, you know, versus stating what are some of the things that are happening there. We also actually use that technology for some of our students as well. So an example of that, one of our students in Arizona, he struggles with a growth mindset, you know and he’ll, when he’s struggling in his academic work, he’s quick to say I’m dumb or I can’t do this or whatever. And so we put an AI mic on him and then he and his guide go through daily and analyze how are you speaking to yourself? Were you being kind to yourself? And what we found amazingly is that just him knowing he has this lanyard around his neck that’s listening helps him remember, hey, speak kindly to myself. I can incorporate these growth mindset strategies.

So we’re able to do that. We have guides that wear these lanyards throughout the entire day so that they can understand and then get feedback on their coaching. And so, you know, that’s, that’s a great part of it. We’re using AI. We’re very much, our organization is very much on be AI first in everything we do. How can we always take everything to the next level and build that out? And then of course the other aspect of AI, you know, that comes across in our afternoon life skills workshops is kids are learning how to use these tools that are going to help them be successful. So you know, kids are starting to build out and develop these brainless and then build out an LLM. In fact, we actually just had a pretty exciting thing happen last week.

One of our students at our high school had built up an LLM around safe teen dating advice and she ran a research study with the University of Texas professor around basically how good was the LLM she built compared to a ChatGPT and suburban moms and they just submitted to Nature with that research information. So it’ll be really exciting in the next couple of months. We’ll hear if that gets accepted. And that should be a pretty cool thing. So that’s the other part of this is you’ve got to make sure kids are being equipped to learn how to take advantage of all these new tools that are constantly coming out.

Diane Tavenner: For sure, for sure. Let’s move to that afternoon block and unpack that a little because I think I hear far less about the afternoon time, which is familiar to me, because also in the Summit model, you know, the self directed learning time seemed to get all of the publicity in the play and whatnot. It was only two hours. It was only 30% of the young person’s grade, but it got like 90% of the attention. So let’s break the afternoon into the K8 and the high school because I think those two are different in your model. Talk about the K8. Yeah, talk about the K8 afternoon, where I understand it’s young people are learning life skills. Is this a project based approach? Who’s planning this? Is it a curriculum? I think, as you just said, students are encouraged to use AI from their side.

But what I’m really interested in is how are guides and educators using technology and specifically AI for this afternoon block, the dashboard here. What’s going on there?

MacKenzie Price: Yeah, this afternoon block is really when our guides are shining in terms of being able to plan and connect and mentor our students. And that’s done a few different ways. So when we think about In K through 8, our students are participating in these life skills workshops that are developing leadership and teamwork, financial literacy and entrepreneurship, relationship building and socialization, public speaking and storytelling and grit and hard work. And so every workshop that is created has to be able to pass two tests. One is, what is the life skill that is actually being taught and how are we going to assess at the end of the six week period whether that has happened? So, for example, you know, we’re in the week before the holiday break. We’ve got test to pass events happening at all of our schools around the country where parents and people from the public can come in and see something that’s being done that the kids have been working on and understanding. Did they learn this life skill? You know, an example that we often talk about because I think it really highlights the idea of how do you learn grit? How do you learn, you know, stick with something when it’s hard? So we have students who participate in grit triathlons. And that could be things like having to solve a Rubik’s Cube, juggling three items for 30 seconds and running a mile without stopping.

And when you can see that a kid has, you know, a third grade student has been able to understand, okay, there’s an algorithm and I keep practicing my Rubik’s Cube and I start by juggling scarves and eventually I’m juggling balls and I incorporate atomic habits to, you know, walk and run. At the end of six weeks when these students are able to accomplish that goal. And it shows grit. We also do a lot of physical workshops that build out things like grit, like facing fears. For example, we’ve got a rock climbing workshop and that actually for our kindergarteners, they’re climbing a 40 foot rock wall. And when you watch the difference between a student at the beginning of that six week period, you’ve got a five year old who’s like, I don’t even think I can hold on to one of these suddenly going 40ft up. The only one more amazed by that are their parents, right? Their parents are like, this is amazing. So a lot of physical workshops that are doing, doing things and then the guides will use AI tools as part of building out those workshops. Being able to measure one workshop that we do every year that’s very popular.

It’s a communication and basically uplifting others workshop. And the test to pass for that workshop is that kids go into an escape room, you know, one of these, one of these rooms where they have to, you know, solve a bunch of different puzzles and logic things and all that to go. And we mic the students up and we use AI to analyze what percentage of their language is considered uplifting and positive. You know, where are they doing that? We’ll do that in sports activities. Kids will get feedback on their public speaking. They’ll be using AI tools to build graphic novels, to build films, you know, all kinds of things that they’re working on that way. And so that’s a combination of group workshops. And then they also get individual time to pursue what we call kind of check chart independent projects.

Diane Tavenner: Ah, so it sounds like then your guides are using just AI, like an LLM to help them plan those workshops. And then are you rubric gradient or just checklist grading?

MacKenzie Price: We’re rubric grading as well. And so we have for each life skills workshop we’re grading, what is the quality of workshop. And that’s everything from, you know, the kids’ assessment of did they love the workshop. You know, we’re constantly surveying parents, kids to make sure that what we’re delivering is right. And how are these guys going? The thing that we’re calling it.

Diane Tavenner: And that feedback from the rubric, is that derived from the AI or is the guide doing that? And then is that also incorporated in their dashboard?

Iterating to Build Measurable Skills

MacKenzie Price: All a combination of both things. And I think in a lot of ways what we are constantly doing is iterating. How do we build upon a workshop, how do we make, are we doing each session that kind of comes together. In fact, you know, today again, it’s the last week before the holiday break. We’ve got staff days every evening, you know, after school as we kind of plan and go through what worked, what are we doing to kind of increase, you know, love of school, the learning 2x in 2 hours and then development of life skills. So we’re working through a lot of these types of activities of, you know, how can we make this alpha life core soft skills measurable? Right. How can we understand how to measure these skills versus just kind of saying oh, you know, sure, they’re learning leadership qualities, you know, from, from something. What are the things that we can do to, to kind of build that out?

Diane Tavenner: Interesting. One of the conversations, big conversations, is how AI can and should change the role of the educator. And you all have purposely and publicly redefined the role of the teacher to be a guide. And I’ve been tracking through this conversation. You know what I think some of the shifts are in how you think about teacher versus guide and educator and how AI is enabling that. So let me run this back past by you and see if I got it right. So the guide’s not planning any sort of lectures or traditional lessons and they’re not doing any assessment. They’re leaving that to the technology.

They are doing one to one check ins and they’re getting feedback from sort of AI inputs from their recordings and things like that about how they can improve. So that takes time. We know in a teacher’s day if you’re transcripting all of those things, they’re going to an educator’s day and then they are planning the afternoon workshops. It does sound like they’re doing some of the assessment there. And they’re certainly, you know, working closely with the students on the motivation piece and engaging directly with them. And it does sound like that’s supplemented by AI. Did I get that right? Sort of the role of the guide, if you will.

MacKenzie Price: Yeah, you did get that right. Now there’s one other aspect of the guide’s job, in the morning academic time, in the core time. You know, I think people have this, this misconception that oh, you know, you’ve got a kid, a group of kids that are just staring at computers with no adults in sight. Our guides are there and they’re engaged, but they’re not there to teach academics. So if a kid says, hey, I’m struggling with this, you’re not going to see one of our guides saying, okay, let me, let me show you how to work through this problem. You got to carry the one. Let’s do a tutoring session on this. Instead.

They’re going to be basically asking students questions to help them understand if they have used their resources. So, hey, were you able to watch the video? Did you go into the resource library to find another answer? Did you check these kinds of things out? And so that’s where they’re really providing coaching around how to go about learning to learn. Here’s one. I don’t know if you call it an exception, but one thing I will say for our younger students, our kindergarten, first and second, we have not found to this point a replacement for reading than that one to one reading time. So we have reading specialists at all of our schools for our younger learners who are working with students on reading. And our students get one to one pull out time, you know, to be practicing that reading. It’s something critical. We are seeing, you know, certainly some great progress and success around learning to read.

But you know, you have to have that time reading out loud with a human. And so that’s the one thing I would say is our guides in our younger levels, we do have certified like reading specialists who are at those schools. And it’s, it’s critical.

Diane Tavenner: We didn’t talk about the high school afternoon time. And as I think you alluded to, and as I understand it, this is where young people are picking one project to work on for four years. And again, I don’t know if that’s a headline or if that’s accurate. I must say this is an element of the model that gives me a little bit of pause and so I’d really love to underbutt a lot of buzz. So what’s actually happening for high school students for those four hours, four years?

MacKenzie Price: You know, so we have two tracks for our high school. We have what we call an honors track. And the idea of that honors track is basically kids who kind of, you know, want to be sort of Ivy League bound. They’ve got ambitions of going into a top 20 university. And so in that program we’re basically saying, okay, we’ll deliver 1550 SAT score scores, you know, fives on at least a few hard AP courses and what we call an Olympic level Alpha X project. This is a project that is as impressive as being an Olympian. You know, what is it? So an example of that, one of our students who just got accepted to Stanford this past week. She’s the student who’s also submitting her research to Nature.

If she’s accepted, she’ll be the youngest female ever and the only high school student in history. You know, to be able to do that, you know, they work on something big. Now during that time when they’re working on these Alpha X projects, there’s no question that you’ll have kids who might, they might decide to change their project 10 times during their four year experience. What they’re really developing is the skill of learning how to go deep into something and become an expert. And so we’ll do things like they’ll go into, you know, two week long sprints where it’s like, go learn everything you can learn about this subject. And at the end of that two weeks, you know, just as often as not, you’ll have kids come out and go, actually it turns out I’m not interested in that. I want to go into something else. And the other thing is these projects that kids work on aren’t necessarily what they say, oh, I’m going to do this for the rest of my life.

Right. I’m going to go build this out in college or something. But it’s a project that they’re kind of, you know, able to develop and go deep and become an expert on. Now we also have a non honors track at our school and that non honors track is for kids who say, you know, I really love the idea of getting time back to just go do things I’m interested in. So for example, you know, we’ve got a student who wants to get his pilot’s license and he loves the idea of flying planes. Now does having your pilot’s license at age 15 get you into Stanford? Yeah, you know, maybe not, but it gives you time to go develop these things. So a lot of our athletes who want to have time to pursue their sports or whatever. Now what all of our students do, and that non honors program basically is 1350 SAT, which is, you know, top 10%, fours and fives on APs, you know, and time to go and develop the interests that they have. Honors students are spending about three hours a day on their core learning.

The non honors track is about two hours of what they’re doing. Kids are still taking AP courses, they’re still doing all those kinds of things.

Diane Tavenner: Sorry, you lost me for a second. Where’s the AP course? Is that in the afternoon or in.

MacKenzie Price: No, that’s in the morning. That’s the core academic time is students are taking four years of English, four years of math language or, you know, foreign language, all that kind of stuff. So they’re doing that in the morning. Afternoons are for working on these Alpha X projects. And then we do a lot of workshops around life skills for all of our students. So that’s everything from rejection training to giving and receiving feedback, you know, leadership challenges. A lot of things that students are working to kind of build out those skills is what our high school program looks like.

Diane Tavenner: So in the high school afternoon, there is sort of still a framework curriculum. Maybe it’s not every day, all the days, but that you do have some of these skills that you’re doing in some workshop, being around with students.

Developing Projects with Real Impact

MacKenzie Price: Yeah, there’s absolutely a framework. And then for the kids who are working on their Alpha X projects, they basically go through different levels, right? So, you know, as an example of the kind of the highest level where basically these kids are getting out and they’re launching real businesses or activities. One of our students, who’s the senior this year, she’s working on getting a musical launched on Broadway. So she actually spends, you know, five, five to seven days a month in New York City, you know, working on recording with producers, meeting with potential investors, you know, doing those types of activities. So she’s kind of been released out into the wild, you know, in some ways to go work on these projects. But the other thing that we have in common is every day our students are spending an hour working on their brain lift. So this idea of whatever the interest they have, they’re staying current on research, what’s going on, and they’re using this brain lift to then build out whatever their LLM and GPT is based on this. They also work on things like creating a spiky point of view.

So an example of that, we have a student named Alex who is building a plushie doll that is basically a mental health coach. And his spiky point of view that he’s built is he believes AI can actually provide better counseling to a teenager than a human counselor. Now, that’s a very spiky point of view, right? Especially when you think of all of the dangers on this. But he’s built certain things in his system that he believes are making a successful AI mental health coach. And so the idea is building out these things and being able to learn how to become an expert on using AI to build this thing out. So we have another student who’s interested in creating. He’s a filmmaker and wants to create, you know, his ultimate goal is to create an Oscar winning, winning film.

And part of what he’s done is to create basically a spiky point of view around how filmmaking can be done. And he just got accepted. He reached out to a bunch of different podcasts. He got accepted and invited on three podcasts. Now a lot of rejection training going on in there as well, where there’s a lot of podcasts who say no answer, you know, or whatever it is they do. But they’re learning all of these skills during this time. Plus getting the traditional academics that, you know, students in a normal school are getting.

Diane Tavenner: Where would science labs fit into this model? Or, you know, projects that are in history where we know kids, you know, dates, facts, information is, is based, but you actually need to understand the big themes and trends. Where does that fit in your model?

MacKenzie Price: Well, if you take things like science labs. We don’t have science labs. Our students are taking AP Biology, AP Physics, AP Chemistry. But they are, you know, watching great YouTube videos that are exploring these topics instead. We haven’t found that there’s this critical piece of getting kids in a lab doing beaker experiments, you know, as part of what they’re doing. They can watch these things. Now. Kids who are really excited about something that they’re working on, you know, in science can go in and build something out.

So for example, we had a student who got really interested in cancer research and epigenetics, and she ended up going out and creating a documentary that’s been viewed over 5 million times around cancer and epigenetics. So we kind of think like everything we do at these schools is taking an interest or a passion that a kid has and figuring out how to get them out in kind of real world experience with things and how they can build. We had a student who loves physics, really interested in science, loves physics. He also went on to become a professional water skier, but he would take physics principles and then work on how he could improve his water skiing times and rope length, you know, incorporating physics principles. So there’s things they do there, things like history, for example. You know, students are taking AP World and AP European and AP US History. So they’re doing all those things. They’re getting a lot of experience on writing, obviously, as they’re, they’re learning on apps, they’re coming out with, you know, fives on their APs and doing very well, and they’re having some connected time with each other where they’re, they’re basically going through some checkpoints at the same time.

Where they’re interacting last year towards, you know, basically in April you heard a lot of singing because kids had basically used AI tools to help them remember a bunch of their facts for AP world history, you know, with basically in the, in the same vein as Hamilton lyrics, you know, and, and working through those things.

Diane Tavenner: Is that the College Board’s digital curriculum that they’re using for the AP courses? Yeah. And then, that like joint collaborative time would be in the afternoon. Is that how it connects?

MacKenzie Price: Yeah.

Diane Tavenner: Got it. Awesome.

Michael Horn: This season of Class Disrupted is sponsored by Learner Studio, a nonprofit motivated by one question. What will young people need to be inspired and prepared to flourish in the age of AI as individuals, in careers and for civil thriving? Learner Studio is sponsoring this season on AI in Education. Because in this critical moment, we need more than just hype. We need authentic conversations asking the right questions from a place of real curiosity and learning. You can learn more about Learners Studio’s mission and the innovators who inspire them at www.learnerstudio.org.

Michael Horn: This has been super helpful, MacKenzie. Huge thanks. But before we let you go, we have this segment where we, where we get away from the conversation around education generally, although not always. Just things we’ve been reading, watching, listening outside of work if you can. But if not, that’s cool too. So we’ll let you have the first say at it before Diane shares what’s been on her list.

MacKenzie Price: Well, I’m sure that I’m going to give you an answer that is not going to be impressive to any of your followers or listeners.

Michael Horn: I guarantee you most of my answers are unimpressive. So go ahead.

MacKenzie Price: My absolute favorite thing to do in the evening when I get time to relax is I love to take a bath and I have a huge television that is mounted in my bathroom in front of my bathtub that is non-negotiable. My husband and I just moved into an apartment a year ago and I was like where is the TV in front of the bathtub going to go? Like I will not move into an apartment that doesn’t have that option. And I got in the bath last night and I was so excited to watch the Taylor Swift Eras documentary. So I am halfway through the first episode. My girls and I, and actually my husband too, we totally bond over that. And then actually later in the evening my daughter’s home from college and we’re watching this show called All Her Fault. It’s like about a kidnapping and it’s the gal from Succession, you know, the redhead from Succession, she stars in it. And one of the guys from White Lotus season one.

So I do. We like those types of shows. We loved White Lotus. This All Her Fault. I just watched the Beast in Me. So I do, I sometimes can be known to binge some of these Netflix shows, but I do them in the format of about 35 minutes, which is how long my bathtub water stays hot for. And then I’m out of time.

Michael Horn: And then you’re out.

Diane Tavenner: There you go. Well, I’m totally, I’m totally cheating today. I’m gonna share a novel that I’m going to read over the holidays. My favorite living authors, Ian McEwan. And he has a newish novel out called What We Can Know. And I, I’m literally counting down the days to the holidays and to being able to crack this one open and savor it. I’ll give you two sentences from the New York Times review that make me excited. Quote, it’s a piece of late career showmanship.

McEwan is 77 from an old master. It gave me so much pleasure, I sometimes felt like laughing. I will report back.

Michael Horn: And you’ll have to report back because I was going to say you just quoted the New York Times, which is an item for later but yeah, so, all right, I’ll wrap with mine, which is MacKenzie, to your point. We binge watched Four Seasons with Tina Fey and Steve Carell. It’s a Netflix. I hadn’t heard of it. It’s like an eight episode first season. There will be a second season based on the cliffhanger at the end. And I would say it’s about three couples, sort of 50s age group is roughly where they are and through trials and tribulations that is hysterical.

A lot of predictability and yet still very funny as it went through. So we really enjoyed it and I think binge watched it in two nights. I think so.

MacKenzie Price: Oh, great. That might be our holiday activity too for some time.

Michael Horn: There you go adding to your.

MacKenzie Price: I love that. I love that.

Michael Horn: Awesome. Awesome. Well, MacKenzie, huge thanks and as always, huge thank you to you, all of you, for listening. Keep coming with your questions, comments and all the rest, and we’ll see you next time on Class Disrupted.

This episode is sponsored by LearnerStudio.

Keynote speakers this year include Monica J. Sutton, creator and host of the children’s education series Circle Time with Ms. Monica, Yale psychology professor and Happiness Lab podcast host Dr. Laurie Santos, appearing alongside Common Sense Media’s Bruce Reed, and bestselling author Jennifer B. Wallace, whose work centers on the human need to feel valued 鈥� and to add value. 

Also featured: former Presidential Science Advisor Arati Prabhakar, who will join a panel on 鈥渕oonshot鈥� thinking and the future of AI-driven learning. And a new documentary traces the career of longtime Sesame Street star Sonia Manzano.

Artificial intelligence this year plays a bigger role than ever. Dozens of sessions examine AI’s expanding role in classrooms, from adaptive tutoring and authentic assessment to teacher burnout, algorithmic bias and what it means to be literate in an age when machines can write, reason and create.

This year, the Austin Convention Center, which typically hosts the event, is under construction. So sessions will be held at four venues around downtown Austin. Organizers are also planning a 鈥淪XSW EDU Clubhouse鈥� at the historic , which will host daily performances, keynote livestreams and social events each night.

Because of the event鈥檚 multiple venues, space may be limited, so organizers recommend booking reservations for keynotes, featured sessions and workshops. They鈥檝e provided an with details. 

To help guide attendees, we鈥檝e scoured the 2026 to highlight 26 of the most significant presenters, topics and panels:

Monday, March 9:聽

9 a.m. 鈥� : Researchers, district leaders and family engagement specialists examine the chronic absenteeism epidemic that has left millions of American students disconnected from school since the COVID pandemic. This panel presents the latest data on what is actually driving absenteeism 鈥� from housing instability and health crises to school climate and whether students feel they matter. It鈥檒l explore which interventions are producing genuine, sustained improvement.

11 a.m. 鈥� : This panel presents evidence that score inflation on standardized tests, state-level proficiency standards and the federal retreat from accountability are making it harder than ever for families to get an accurate picture of their child’s true academic standing 鈥� and what policymakers can do about it.

1:30 p.m. 鈥� : This Opening Keynote features Monica J. Sutton, educator, entrepreneur and creator of Circle Time with Ms. Monica, who traces her journey from preschool classroom to digital learning spaces reaching millions of families worldwide. Sutton challenges educators to evaluate every innovation through a developmental lens, asking: Does this technology honor how young children learn, grow and thrive, while protecting curiosity and connection?

2 p.m. 鈥� : What do real students think about AI? How do they want to learn about it? This session, by MIT Media Lab鈥檚 Jaleesa Trapp and LEGO Education鈥檚 Jenny Nash, explores strategies for building AI literacy through hands-on computer science that fosters critical thinking and ensures safe, responsible AI use.

2 p.m. 鈥� : Civics teachers, researchers and policy advocates will examine how teachers are navigating the nearly impossible task of teaching democracy, elections and civic participation in classrooms where students and families often hold deeply opposed political views. The panel shares new findings from America鈥檚 Promise Alliance鈥檚 State of Young People research and explores strategies for creating classrooms where hard but evidence-based conversations happen productively 鈥� and where students develop the civic skills needed to participate in and repair a fractured democratic system.

4 p.m. 鈥� : Child development experts offer a science-backed framework for evaluating AI for young learners without compromising the play, exploration and human attachment that are foundational to healthy development. This session offers an 鈥渦rgent exploration鈥� of AI’s impact on brain architecture and what educators, parents and policymakers must know to protect young minds.

4 p.m. 鈥� : A panel of educators explores the causes of low student engagement, absenteeism and cheating, sharing classroom-tested solutions for creating assignments that are cheat-resistant by design. Rather than relying on cheat-detection software and pedagogy that punishes students for cheating, panelists will share how to foster a culture of academic integrity based on student agency, purpose and ownership of learning.

4 p.m. 鈥� : In this featured panel, Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), Chef Ann Foundation CEO Mara Fleishman, University of Pennsylvania student Maya Miller and Duke World Food Policy Center Director Norbert Wilson make an evidence-based case that school nutrition is an educational issue, not merely a logistical one. Panelists connect chronic hunger and poor nutrition directly to cognitive function, attendance, behavior and academic performance, and present district-level models that have transformed school meals into assets for learning.

Tuesday, March 10:

9 a.m. 鈥� : This featured session stars Roya Mahboob, CEO of the Digital Citizen Fund, who will draw on her experience growing up in Afghanistan to trace how exclusion compounds across the pipeline from K鈥�12 classrooms to corporate boardrooms. Mahboob offers evidence-based interventions that have demonstrated real impact on girls’ participation and persistence in tech, as well as a vision for education that is inclusive, practical and full of possibility.

9 a.m. 鈥� : A candid discussion on the science, ethical considerations and implementation challenges of using Voice AI for assessment in K鈥�12 classrooms. Learn what鈥檚 promising, what鈥檚 problematic and what鈥檚 on the horizon as experts explore how Voice AI differs from other AI tools such as large language models (LLMs), and how it can be integrated in ways that truly support students and educators.

12:30 p.m. 鈥� : In this keynote, Bruce Reed, Head of AI at Common Sense Media, and Dr. Laurie Santos, Yale psychology professor and host of The Happiness Lab podcast, examine how rapidly evolving AI technologies and social media are shaping young people’s mental health 鈥� and how families, educators and policymakers can respond. They explore the science of well-being, the risks of algorithm-driven systems and common-sense guardrails to protect young minds. 

2 p.m. 鈥� : This panel challenges the deficit framing that has long defined how schools, families and students themselves understand dyslexia. In an interactive session, a think tank-style panel will present a strength-based model of dyslexia support and examine how AI tools are beginning to unlock academic access for students whose abilities have been systematically undervalued.

3 p.m. 鈥� : Director Anna Toomey’s feature documentary tells the story of five mothers determined to establish the first public school in New York City for children with dyslexia. Toomey follows their battle to open the South Bronx Literacy Academy, addressing a learning disability that affects about 20% of the public. A post-screening discussion connects the film’s themes to national debates about reading instruction and equitable access.

4 p.m. 鈥� : As chronic absenteeism reaches historic highs, schools are doubling down on academics, interventions and incentives. But they may be missing underlying emotional and psychological factors driving absenteeism: stress, anxiety and lack of belonging. This session looks at how rest, youth voice/choice and emotionally safe environments can re-engage students.

5:30 p.m. 鈥� : Director Ernie Bustamante’s feature-length documentary offers a portrait of Sonia Manzano, the trailblazing actress who played Maria on Sesame Street for 44 years. A conversation with Manzano herself follows the screening, exploring how public media can reach children when formal schooling often fails, and what Sesame Street鈥檚 legacy means in the age of AI-generated children’s content.

Wednesday, March 11:聽

10 a.m. 鈥� : This performance offers an early look at a show in development that began as a teacher performance at a school meeting. In this Hamilton-meets-The Sound of Music-meets-Good Night and Good Luck story, set against today’s culture wars, three high school students and their teachers navigate questions of identity, purpose and what school can and cannot teach. A Q&A with Peter Nilsson, the show’s creator, follows the performance.

11 a.m. 鈥� : This solo session by Toby Fischer, an Ohio educator, offers a sweeping reimagination of literacy for the 21st century, arguing that reading and writing instruction must now encompass the ability to critically evaluate AI-generated text, recognize the hallmarks of synthetic content, prompt AI systems effectively and to understand the social and ethical contexts in which AI-generated language circulates.

12:30 p.m. 鈥� : This keynote by Adeel Khan, Founder & CEO of MagicSchool AI, makes the case that teacher expertise, relationships and professional judgment must guide technological change. Drawing on his experience building the popular platform, Khan will share unfiltered insights on what’s working and what’s not, offering a framework for evaluating AI tools through the lens of educator agency.  

2 p.m. 鈥� : This panel examines why so many school AI initiatives rely on tools that 鈥渏ust aren鈥檛 there yet.鈥� Panelists share case studies of implementations that stumbled, the lessons of those failures and the educator-driven, grassroots efforts that can move schools from dabbling with AI tools to using them for real instructional transformation. 

Thursday, March 12:

10 a.m. 鈥� : This featured panel convenes former Presidential Science Advisor Arati Prabhakar, Renaissance Philanthropy President Kumar Garg, Carnegie Learning VP of R&D Jamie Sterling and Bezos Family Foundation Chief of Staff Eden Xenakis to explore how bold learning goals can accelerate AI-driven innovation in education. They鈥檒l examine how 鈥渕oonshot-centered鈥� models can rally diverse innovators around a shared outcome and catalyze the funding needed to scale breakthroughs.

10 a.m. 鈥� : Dubbed the 鈥渢oolbelt generation,鈥� more than half of Gen Z respondents in a recent survey said they鈥檙e considering a skilled trade career. And schools are working to modernize career preparation, including by tapping immersive technology to expose students to in-demand skilled trades. This panel, moderated by The74鈥檚 Greg Toppo, will discuss how we can harness tech to engage students in learning while preparing them to successfully meet workforce demands.

11:30 a.m. 鈥� : This session offers a ground-level counternarrative to AI anxiety, presenting a community college and workforce development partnership in Cleveland that is using AI-powered tools and training to open new economic pathways for adults who were left behind by earlier rounds of technological change. Speakers will examine what equitable AI adoption looks like in a post-industrial city and what conditions made the initiative work.

11:30 a.m. 鈥� : Leaders from higher education, industry and workforce policy examine whether universities are structured to produce graduates who can thrive in a labor market being remade by AI. The panel will ask which degrees and credential pathways are producing AI-ready graduates, where institutions are falling behind, and what structural changes will move the needle most.

11:30 a.m. 鈥� : Directed by Scott Barnett, this feature-length documentary follows bestselling author James Patterson to the front lines of America’s reading crisis to examine how the Science of Reading 鈥� a vast body of evidence-based research 鈥� is changing how children are taught to read. A post-screening discussion with literacy researchers and classroom teachers will examine what the film gets right and what systemic change will actually require.

2 p.m. 鈥� : This workshop, conducted by two top officials with the Illinois-based Education Research and Development Institute, will offer practical AI tools that automate routine tasks, generate content, analyze data and simplify communication, freeing teachers to focus on students and strategy and reducing the risk of burnout.

2:30 p.m. 鈥� : This featured panel, with Martin McKay of Everway, Hello Sunshine CEO Maureen Polo and the Brookings Institution’s Rebecca Winthrop, draws on a landmark report spanning 50 countries to explore what it means to protect children’s cognitive, social and emotional development in an AI-saturated world. Speakers will move beyond the question of whether AI should be used in schools to ask how it can be designed to strengthen young people’s capacity to think, relate and thrive.

In total, 142 former staffers across six government agencies filed last month, arguing that the Trump administration appeared to target specific employees rather than carry out the reductions in an objective way.

鈥淚t’s very clear that this wasn’t a dispassionate, neutral workplace reorganization,鈥� said Jill Siegelbaum, a partner with Sligo Law Group, which brought the lawsuit with Lawyers for Good Government and the D.C. Law Collective. 鈥淚ndividuals were called unpatriotic. They were called lazy. There were all sorts of disparaging statements made about these individuals.鈥�

In her letter to staff put on leave last year, McMahon said the terminations had nothing to do with . But to , she characterized the problem as 鈥渂ureaucratic bloat鈥� and said that under her leadership, the department had kept 鈥渁ll of the right people, the good people.鈥� President Donald Trump many of the employees cut at the department 鈥渄on鈥檛 work at all鈥� and 鈥渘ever showed up to work.鈥� 

The action adds to mounting lawsuits over the mass layoffs. brought by Democratic-led states and school districts last year, officials argued that the reductions have left the department without adequate staff to do the work mandated by Congress. Last week, advocates for victims of sexual assault in a letter that the Office for Civil Rights didn鈥檛 resolve any complaints of sexual harassment or violence in 2025. Department officials say that the layoffs were necessary to cut red tape and give more control to the states.

In this latest case, the former employees say the administration denied their due process rights. The Education Department did not respond to questions about the case.

Denise Joseph, who lost her position in the Office of Postsecondary Education, found herself at odds with the new administration because of her work on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

鈥淚 helped people get promotions. I helped protect the people from getting fired. I just mentored a lot of people,鈥� she said. 鈥淎nd I’m a Democrat, and so I don’t think they wanted someone like me.鈥�

She now runs a tutoring service and works part time for Kodely, a company that provides afterschool and summer programs. She also recently launched a campaign for a seat on the Charles County, Maryland, school board. 

Other Education Department plaintiffs include those who worked on special education, data collection, and career and technical education. Like Joseph, they have all filed an appeal to the government鈥檚 Merit Systems Protection Board, originally meant to be an independent body. The Trump administration has moved to weaken protections for career staff. According to the , the board has to adopt the government鈥檚 reasons for the employee鈥檚 dismissal and can no longer seek an outside review by a judge. 

The employees are 鈥渇aced with the potential harm of having their case heard by a completely captured administrative process,鈥� the complaint says. Plus, the attorneys argue, the board is so overwhelmed because of the layoffs that few appeals have progressed beyond initial steps.

When federal employees are fired 鈥渇or cause,鈥� the government is required to , like giving them advance notice and allowing them to respond to the reasons for their dismissal. 

Those steps protect the employees before they lose their benefits, Siegelbaum said. But the Education Department and the other agencies 鈥� Justice, State, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security and USAID 鈥� didn鈥檛 follow that process. According to the complaint, the agencies also relied on incorrect data when deciding who to cut. For example, Deborah Fisher, who worked for the State Department, had 39 years of federal service, but her layoff notice reflected only about 20 years.

Loyalty question

The administration holds that the president should have more say over the federal workforce and be able to replace staff with those more politically aligned. Those were the goals outlined in Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation document that Russell Vought spearheaded before he became director of the Office of Management and Budget.

He introduced a new hiring plan that included the question: 鈥淗ow would you help advance the President鈥檚 Executive Orders and policy priorities in this role?鈥� Unions representing federal employees in November, arguing that the 鈥渓oyalty question鈥� compels applicants to praise Trump鈥檚 policies or risk being punished for giving an honest answer.

In a separate move, the administration issued a that reclassified thousands of jobs across the government as 鈥減olicymaking positions鈥� without civil service protections. Democracy Forward, a nonprofit legal group that has challenged many of Trump鈥檚 policies, is over the regulation. 

Some experts say choosing federal employees based on partisanship is disruptive and can ultimately hurt the schools and students the department is meant to serve. Presidents already have to make 4,000 political appointments, and many don鈥檛 even stay for the full four years of an administration. The new rule potentially creates thousands more political positions, said Jenny Mattingley, a vice president at the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service. 

鈥淓very political administration would probably want to see responsiveness to their policies,鈥� she said. 鈥淏ut with all that swirl and chaos, the people who suffer are the Americans on the ground who need those services.鈥�

State test results released last fall in math and English scores since 2024, yet still lagged far behind the standard set before the COVID pandemic. Meanwhile, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a federal exam administered biannually to hundreds of thousands of students, recently placed Oregon in the country. Adjusted for student demographics and poverty levels, it ranked 50th among states in fourth-grade math and reading, 49th in eighth-grade math, and 47th in eighth-grade reading.

Now local observers are pointing to Oregon鈥檚 relatively brief school year, as well as high rates of absenteeism, as one explanation for the dismal results. In released by the nonprofit group Stand for Children, researchers show that sizable gaps in seat time between Oregon and other states 鈥� and even larger ones separating districts within Oregon 鈥� compound over years into massive disparities in opportunities to learn. Advocates argue that loose rules governing how states report attendance data also contribute to the problem.

Sarah Pope, the executive director of Stand for Children鈥檚 Oregon affiliate, said her state was 鈥渄efinitely on the low end鈥� in terms of instructional time made available to children. On average, their school year lasts 165 days (compared with 179 days in the U.S. as a whole), and students receive 9 percent fewer instructional hours than their counterparts around the country; over time, that adds up to well over one year of missed schooling.

鈥淲hen we tell people that we’re 9 percent short, their eyes glaze over because people can’t imagine what that means,鈥� Pope remarked. 鈥淏ut when we tell them it’s a year difference over the course of a K鈥�12 experience, which is like graduating as a junior, they’re like, ‘Oh gosh.’鈥�

The group鈥檚 report notes that Oregon is one of just 10 states that sets no minimum of total school days per year, allowing districts to set their own schedules so long as they hit an annual minimum of instructional hours (900 for students enrolled in kindergarten, elementary school, and middle school, and slightly more for high schoolers). In practice, the state鈥檚 average K鈥�8 student receives 1,111 hours of designated school time each year, considerably below the national average of 1,231 hours for K鈥�12 students. Only Maine, Nevada, and Hawaii provide less schooling.

Those figures are drawn from by Brown University economist Matthew Kraft, which also found that differences in instructional time between states can be dwarfed by those within states. By the end of elementary school, for example, Oregon students living in a district at the bottom of the state鈥檚 school time rankings receive a full 1.4 years less education than those in a district at the top. The gap explodes to nearly three years鈥� worth of instruction by the time those students graduate high school.

Aside from the length of the school year, the pandemic-era spike in chronic absenteeism (the percentage of students missing 10 percent or more of the school year) has further eroded the amount of time that kids spend learning. And while that trend has proven stubbornly persistent in nearly every jurisdiction, Oregon鈥檚 spike has been higher and longer-lasting than most. , a think tank based in Washington, D.C., Oregon鈥檚 rate of chronic absence reached a stunning peak of 38 percent in 2022鈥�23, only falling to 33.5 percent by 2024鈥�25 (compared with a national average of 22 percent the same year). 

Kraft, who on the subject before the education committee of the Oregon House of Representatives, said it was 鈥渨ildly inequitable鈥� for students in different parts of a state to enjoy vastly less time with teachers than those elsewhere. Both researchers and elected officials needed to examine the intersection of poor attendance and inadequate instructional time more closely, he continued.

鈥淭he outliers offering substantially less time have wound up with far less learning opportunities for students,鈥� Kraft observed in an interview with 社区黑料. 鈥淐urriculum is built around having x amount of minutes in a day to teach math or science, and when teachers and students don’t have that, the results illustrate the negative consequences.鈥�

鈥榃e should not be proud鈥�

Those consequences could be reversed with policy changes, according to Stand for Children鈥檚 analysis. 

Using existing estimates of the of and on student test scores, the authors calculated that Oregon would dramatically improve its NAEP performance by lifting statutory requirements for schooling time and cutting absenteeism to pre-COVID rates. If those conditions were both reached, they found, Oregon students enrolled in kindergarten today would move from 48th in the nation in reading to sixth-place by the beginning of high school. A somewhat smaller leap, from 49th place to 25th place, could be achieved in math scores.

As of yet, no such sweeping changes are in the offing. If anything, a combination of diminished enrollment figures 鈥� the product of both lower fertility and a COVID-era flight from public schools 鈥� has led at least some districts to consider paring the school year back further. Reynolds School District, which enrolls around 10,000 students in the suburbs east of Portland, from its school calendar in response.

During , the state was around the country where districts chose to compress learning time. It has also been one of the national leaders in popularizing the four-day school week, with operating on a truncated schedule. While sometimes popular with family and school staff, that shift often leads to a deterioration in learning and comparatively few benefits in faculty retention.

Given Oregon鈥檚 clear decline in academic achievement, Stand for Children鈥檚 Pope said that district leaders should refuse to shorten their school year at the very least. Her organization is backing the passage of , a bill that would require state authorities to report on absenteeism four times during the school year, rather than just once, as is now mandated. Such a law 鈥� scheduled for hearings before the state Senate鈥檚 education committee in the coming days 鈥� would allow for school systems to conduct earlier outreach to families when their students are at risk of becoming chronically absent.

She also supports the adoption of a more exacting definition of learning time. At the moment, she said, up to 60 of the required instructional hours can be filled through activities like professional development and parent-teacher conferences, which occur when children aren鈥檛 in school.

“Do we think it’s right that our definition of instructional time has an allowance for approximately 10 days when kids don’t have to be there? And it can count for instructional minutes?鈥� Pope asked.

Emielle Nischik, the executive director of the Oregon School Boards Association, said that the state鈥檚 students deserved 鈥渁s much time in school as students around the country. But she added that more instructional hours and better data reporting could only be gained through increases in education spending. 

鈥淥regon school funding adjusted for inflation has essentially been flat since the 1990s, even as Oregon and the federal government have added staffing and services requirements that cost money,鈥� Nischik wrote in an email. 鈥淲e are open to any discussion of increasing class time as long as it comes with the understanding that more days will cost more money.鈥�

Last summer, Gov. Tina Kotek of $11.3 billion to cover the K鈥�12 system through 2027. According to by the National Education Association, Oregon spent nearly $19,000 per pupil in daily attendance in the 2023鈥�24 school year, ranking 20th among all states. 

Kraft compared the resource of time to that of money. While lawsuits have been won to force states and districts to spend more money on schools, no such litigation has focused on learning time as a necessary educational input. 

鈥淭hat has not been the case around time, in large part because schools are following the law, and the minimums we set in many states 鈥� not all, but many 鈥� are very, very low. We should not be proud to have met these minimums.”

In the California case, , the conservative justices reinstated a December district court decision that temporarily blocked schools from keeping such information private or from changing names and pronouns when parents say it violates their religious beliefs. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit had granted Attorney General Rob Bonta鈥檚 request for an emergency stay while the district court hears the case, and Monday鈥檚 order overruled that stay.

The Supreme Court relied on last year鈥檚 ruling in in which the justices sided with religious parents who wanted to opt their elementary school children out of lessons related to LGBTQ-themed storybooks. 

鈥淐alifornia鈥檚 policies will likely not survive the strict scrutiny that Mahmoud demands,鈥� the order said, adding that 鈥減arents who seek religious exemptions are likely to succeed鈥� at the district court level. 

Referencing one of the families in the case, they wrote: 鈥淎t the beginning of their daughter鈥檚 eighth-grade year, she attempted suicide and was hospitalized. Only then did her parents learn from a doctor that she had gender dysphoria and had been presenting as a boy at school.鈥�

U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon praised the decision. 鈥淗uge win for parental rights in education!鈥� she on X. The administration agrees with many conservative groups that schools have kept parents in the dark about their children鈥檚 social transition and should proactively notify them when their child asks to use different pronouns or bathrooms. 

U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez鈥檚 temporary injunction said that California schools can鈥檛 mislead parents about their children鈥檚 gender identity and must prominently display wording that says parents 鈥渉ave a federal constitutional right to be informed if their public school student child expresses gender incongruence.鈥� 

Bonta has argued that the state鈥檚 policies, including a 2024 law barring districts from forcing teachers to 鈥渙ut鈥� students, don鈥檛 prevent schools from sharing information with parents. But he said Benitez鈥檚 blanket ruling 鈥� and the Supreme Court鈥檚 decision to keep it in place 鈥� puts students at risk if they鈥檙e not ready to disclose their gender identity. Advocates for LGBTQ students agree.

鈥淚n its rush to expand religious influence in public schools, the Supreme Court prioritized religious exemptions over children鈥檚 success and well-being and trampled on the rights and futures of transgender students without considering the full facts of the case,鈥� Gaylynn Burroughs, vice president for education and workplace justice at the National Women鈥檚 Law Center, said in . 

鈥楾he court is impatient鈥�

That鈥檚 the same point that Justice Elena Kagan, one of the three liberals on the court, made in her dissent, which Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson joined. Kagan agreed that 鈥減arents have rights鈥� when it comes to their children鈥檚 鈥渓ife choices,鈥� but that the court should wait until the case plays out before the Ninth Circuit. 

鈥淭he court is impatient: It already knows what it thinks, and insists on getting everything over quickly,鈥� she wrote. 

If the conservatives wanted to consider the 鈥渢horny legal issues鈥� involved, she added, they should agree to hear a Massachusetts case, Foote v. Ludlow School Committee, that makes similar arguments for parental rights.

鈥淏y recent count, almost 40 cases raising due process and/or free exercise objections to similar school policies are currently in the judicial system,鈥� she wrote. 鈥淏y granting certiorari on one (or more) of those cases, the court could ensure that the issues raised by such policies receive the careful, disciplined consideration they merit.鈥�

The court has repeatedly delayed its decision whether to grant or deny a hearing in the Foote case and another one from . Both are scheduled for consideration again this Friday.

In a separate statement concurring with the majority, which Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined, Justice Amy Coney Barrett disagreed that the court was hasty in overruling the Ninth Circuit. 

鈥淯nder California鈥檚 policy, parents will be excluded 鈥� perhaps for years 鈥� from participating in consequential decisions about their child鈥檚 mental health and wellbeing,鈥� she wrote. 

Teachers from the Escondido Union School District, near San Diego, originally filed the case in 2023, saying the state鈥檚 guidance violates their Christian faith. Parents later joined the case. Without giving a reason, the court denied the teachers鈥� request to set aside the Ninth Circuit鈥檚 stay, but Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito said they would have sided with the teachers as well. Justice Sonia Sotomayor said she would have denied the relief for all of the plaintiffs.

David Mishook, an attorney with F3 Law, which represents California school districts, said that given the Supreme Court鈥檚 鈥渟trong language,鈥� he wouldn鈥檛 be surprised if Bonta drops any challenge to Judge Benitez鈥檚 injunction.

While neither Benitez nor the Supreme Court come right out and say that teachers must proactively disclose a child鈥檚 gender identity to parents, the order 鈥渟uggests that teachers, and by extension their employers, now stand at great risk if they do not discuss gender expression with parents.鈥�

The court鈥檚 ruling follows a late January decision in which the Education Department that California鈥檚 policies violate the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, which gives parents the right to inspect their children鈥檚 educational records. She pointed to instances in which schools used trans students鈥� preferred names and pronouns in school databases, but parents would see legal names when they logged in. 

The state risks losing over $5 billion in federal funds if it doesn鈥檛 comply with the department鈥檚 demands, including allowing districts to pass parental notification policies.

Bonta promptly the department, saying the penalty would cause 鈥渋mminent and irreparable injury to California.鈥� 

A second-round education deregulation effort advanced to the governor鈥檚 desk Friday despite concerns from Democrats that the measure weakens educator protections and professional standards at a moment when Indiana schools are struggling with teacher recruitment and retention.

The House voted to concur with Senate changes to , capping a multi-year effort to strip unused, outdated and conflicting language from Indiana鈥檚 education code. The Senate approved the bill Wednesday in a vote.

Authored by Rep. Bob Behning, R-Indianapolis, the bill is part of the House GOP鈥檚 broader push to reduce regulatory requirements across state agencies and education systems. Behning has framed the effort as ongoing cleanup, .

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for 社区黑料 Newsletter

Behning said Friday that concerns raised earlier by school administrators over contract language had been addressed in the final version of the bill.

鈥淭here was collaboration between the principals association [and] school boards,鈥� he said.

Behning also pointed to changes affecting school referendums and partnerships with outside providers.

鈥淭here was some language taken out dealing with first class mailing specifically on referendums,鈥� Behning said, adding that the bill allows schools to contract with private, for-profit or nonprofit providers for after-school care or preschool services.

But Rep. Vernon Smith, D-Gary, held that the deregulation package goes too far.

鈥淔or several years, educators have been coming to us 鈥� asking for deregulation, and I supported deregulation. However, this bill went way too far,鈥� Smith said.

He zeroed in on provisions eliminating contract language specifying teacher work hours.

鈥淲hen you take this provision out, what you鈥檙e doing is you鈥檙e allowing somebody who wants to be a dictator 鈥� to force people to stay as long as they want them to stay,鈥� Smith said.

鈥淲e鈥檙e having a problem already trying to attract people into the 鈥� career of being a teacher. Teachers all over the state have responded saying that they are concerned about this provision,鈥� he continued. 鈥淲e鈥檙e going to look back and we鈥檙e going to regret what we did to public education, because every session we destroy a valuable portion of it.鈥�

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Indiana Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Niki Kelly for questions: info@indianacapitalchronicle.com.

The reports, both the results of small, intensive gatherings of educators, policymakers, researchers, tech officials and students last year, share a common warning: AI in schools must serve human-centered learning that doesn鈥檛 simply push for more efficiency. To do anything else risks creating a generation of young people ill-equipped for the future.

The findings come as young people say they鈥檙e turning to generative AI more than ever: A Pew Research Center survey released last week found that more than half of teens ages 13 to 17 use chatbots to search for information or get help with schoolwork. About four in ten report using AI to summarize articles, books or videos or create or edit images or videos. And about one-in-five say they use chatbots to get news.

For the first report, a group of 18 people met in July in Phoenix. Brought together by , a training and policy organization, and , a digital curriculum company, the treats the question of how schools should view AI as a literal 鈥淐hoose-Your-Own-Adventure鈥� story: The authors lay out three possible scenarios in which educators in an imaginary school district make radically different decisions about the technology.

In the first scenario, the district retreats from AI altogether after a data breach, abandoning a previously created 鈥淚nnovation Lab,鈥� while teachers return to traditional instruction and testing.

The restrictions soon backfire. Students continue using AI at home, but without guidance, take shortcuts on homework, developing a kind of survival mechanism they privately call 鈥渟chool brain.鈥� Seeing how irrelevant most lessons are, they do just enough to get by, offloading thinking to AI tools. When tested, they show shallow understanding and poor foundational skills.

Test scores plummet, college acceptances drop and 40% of graduates land on academic probation. Employers report that graduates can neither work independently nor collaborate effectively with AI. Teachers begin departing in waves.

Retreating from AI, the authors find, creates 鈥渢he worst of both worlds鈥� 鈥� students who can neither think independently nor use AI effectively.

In the second scenario, the district, facing competition from AI-driven private schools, goes all-in, adopting a comprehensive, district-wide AI platform for automated instruction. The platform promises greater efficiency via AI tutors, automated grading and behavioral monitoring. And while it initially lowers costs and produces higher test scores, teachers find that students are soon gaming the algorithms rather than learning. The auto-grader penalizes valid but unconventional answers, while multilingual learners are unfairly penalized for non-standard answers on tests.

Teachers find themselves defending grades they didn’t assign and can’t fully explain, while families that challenge grades are stopped by “proprietary algorithms” that even administrators can鈥檛 review. The system delivers 鈥渁 black box鈥� that removes human judgment: 鈥淪tudents could feel the difference between being evaluated by an algorithm and being understood by a teacher.鈥�

Before long, graduates struggle with collaboration, creativity and adaptability 鈥� skills employers and colleges increasingly value.

In the report鈥檚 third choice, the district, via its Innovation Lab, redesigns its offerings to prepare students for an AI-driven future while keeping a focus on 鈥渉uman-centered鈥� education. Rather than focusing solely on technology, it develops a 鈥済raduate profile鈥� that emphasizes critical thinking, ethical reasoning and human-AI collaboration, among other indicators.

The lab shifts to flexible, project-based learning, and students soon learn to use AI as a tool that supports but doesn鈥檛 replace their thinking. While the district continues to satisfy state accountability through testing, it also pursues federal innovation grants to fund portfolio-based assessment systems based on the graduate profile.

All is not rosy, though. The redesign is expensive and hard on teachers. Enrollment suffers as political resistance builds steam. But graduates soon demonstrate an ability to critically evaluate AI tools, adapt quickly to workplace changes and develop a 鈥渓earn how to learn鈥� mindset that serves them in the long term. 

Alumni soon report that their 鈥渞obust鈥� portfolios of work are a huge advantage in competitive job markets, and employers say they are the only new hires who critically evaluate AI鈥檚 recommendations, spotting hallucinations and biases.

Amanda Bickerstaff, AI for Education鈥檚 co-founder and CEO, said the first two scenarios are what educators at the July convening said they were seeing most often in schools.

鈥淭here was a strong recognition from everyone, including the students, the two high schoolers, that the traditional methods have not worked 鈥� for decades,鈥� she said. 鈥淏ut it feels safer.鈥�

As for going 鈥渁ll in鈥� on AI, she said, that point of view is inevitable in many places, given current aggressive efforts of tech giants like Google who are 鈥減ushing into schools,鈥� going direct to students.

鈥淭here’s this real pressure from both ed tech and AI itself, because it’s such a big market that’s never really been figured out,鈥� she said.

What makes it worse is that few tech firms employ enough teachers to ensure that their products work well for students. 鈥淭hey don’t have hundreds of education people,鈥� Bickerstaff said. Their education teams are 鈥渇ractions of their headcount, working on tools that are instantly in students鈥� hands.鈥�

The third path, in which the district redesigns its offerings, is 鈥渢he most human鈥� of the three, she said, and the most intentional. 鈥淭he third path is the one that trusts humans and educators and students and families,鈥� Bickerstaff said.

鈥楨xplicitly ambidextrous鈥� schooling

by the , a think tank at Arizona State University, also calls for a new approach to schools鈥� decisions about AI, saying the technology 鈥渟hould be a catalyst for human-centered learning, not a replacement.鈥�

The CRPE report, the result of another gathering in November, asserts that schools are at a pivotal moment. Their AI policies could go one of two ways: They can either entrench outdated educational models or help bring about a fundamental transformation of schooling.

鈥淥ne of the big things that came out of those discussions was a strong feeling among the group that AI is currently being thought of as a productivity tool for the education system that we have, rather than a tool to radically improve teaching and learning and outcomes for kids,鈥� said Robin Lake, CRPE鈥檚 executive director.

During its meeting, the group repeatedly discussed an 鈥渆fficiency paradox鈥� that could make schools faster and cheaper without addressing students鈥� actual needs. To protect against it, they call for a more coherent, human-centered approach that is 鈥渆xplicitly ambidextrous,鈥� improving current practices while intentionally building toward new learning models.

The problem with AI, the report alleges, is that it could simply improve the efficiency of outdated educational models. It notes that the , a time-saving testing technology, for decades reinforced low-level standardized assessments, often at the expense of improved learning.

Instead of using AI as a new kind of Scantron, it says, AI could make way for several innovations, including new assessments that capture real-time performance as students work. It could even measure key non-academic indicators such as belonging, confidence, curiosity and relationship quality.

Lake said the report鈥檚 idea of an 鈥渁mbidextrous鈥� approach to AI came from an acknowledgement by the group that 鈥渨e have to attend to the kids who are in our schools right now 鈥� and the teachers,鈥� she said. 鈥淲e have to use whatever technologies are available to make things better, but we also have to make investments in big, really different whole-school designs.鈥�

Those could include not just better assessments but ways to help teachers provide 鈥渞igorous personalization grounded in the science of learning.鈥�

Districts could create classrooms with multiple adults working in teams based on their expertise. And AI could enable schools to match students to internships and other experiences, handling administrative tasks so humans can focus on relationships.

Lake said the group that met in November kept coming back to one idea: Keeping an eye on both the future of school and the reality of the schools we already have.

鈥淎 lot of times when we have these conversations about AI and the future of schooling, it feels very floaty and abstract,鈥� she said. 鈥淪o I really appreciated that the fellows had a vision to connect the here-and-now to what kids need to know and [should] be able to do in the future. That feels really important for us all right now.鈥�

Circulated in January through the National Bureau of Economic Research, used survey data from a nationally representative sample of thousands of teenagers to investigate one of the more controversial questions in American life: How much is young people鈥檚 engagement with the internet contributing to of their mental health?

With youth exposure to technology reaching saturation levels 鈥� a 2025 report showed that now have their own mobile device 鈥� prominent scholars have spent the last few years pointing to between kids鈥� use of screens and social media and their mounting rates of depression. Skeptics counter that the theory mistakes correlation for causation, and that troubled adolescents likely spend more time plugged in to escape the stress or loneliness they are already feeling.

Brandyn Churchill, the paper鈥檚 lead author and an economist at American University, said that he sought to overcome the 鈥渁mbiguity鈥� of cause and effect by exploiting the uneven pace of broadband鈥檚 expansion across the country.

鈥淭his avoids the correlation-versus-causation issue because it’s a natural experiment with a control group and a treatment group,鈥� Churchill said. 鈥淚n states where they gained greater access to broadband, mental health among kids got worse compared to states where they did not.鈥�

Complicating somewhat the broadly observed trend that girls experience worse consequences from time spent online, the study also shows that suicidal thoughts also intensify among male students in proportion to internet access. But its findings generally dovetail with other research from around the world that has tied high-speed internet with psychological problems.

Relying , Churchill and co-author Kathryn Johnson tracked the deployment of broadband across American counties between 2009 and 2019, a period during which the U.S. moved from just under 70 percent coverage to approximately 90 percent. Sizable variation existed between states, with broadband reaching less than 50 percent of Mississippi counties and almost 90 percent of Massachusetts counties as the 2010s began.

As each new community mothballed its dial-up internet, the adolescents living in them responded by logging on more frequently. Responses to the National Youth Risk Behavior Survey, a school-based poll administered by the Centers for Disease Control to thousands of high schoolers, showed that heightened access to high-speed connections predictably led to teenagers devoting more hours of each day to online activity. 

The switch 鈥渆nabled new types of technologies that we didn’t have when dial-up was more common,” Churchill said, including streaming and video-based social media. 鈥淵ou gained the ability to move to photo- and video-based social media like Instagram, Snapchat, and obviously TikTok nowadays.鈥�

But with the increased internet usage came a more disturbing increase in children鈥檚 attitudes. According to the CDC survey, those who spent more than five hours online each day were 68 percent more likely to have considered suicide in a given year than those spending at most one hour online. Heavy users were 64 percent more likely to have actually attempted suicide.

Growing body of evidence

By digging further into the survey responses, the authors discovered possible channels for the negative emotion, each familiar to many parents and educators working with young adults. 

For example, with each increase of broadband access by one standard deviation (a common statistical term measuring difference from a statistical average), adolescent girls were 9 percent more likely to complain that they were being cyberbullied. They were also 8 percent more likely to describe themselves as overweight, though broadband availability was not associated with changes to youth body-mass index during the time under study. Boys became almost 10 percent more likely to report that they were getting insufficient sleep each night.

While girls absorbed a larger impact than boys, each group saw significantly higher levels of suicidal thoughts as they took part in more high-speed internet.

Esther Arenas-Arroyo, an associate professor at the Vienna University of Economics who has conducted similar studies within Europe, said that there are some drawbacks to focusing on internet usage rather than the penetration of specific technologies, such as smartphones or social media apps. Still, she added, access to broadband represents 鈥渁 necessary condition for the types of online behaviors most plausibly linked to deteriorations in youth mental health.鈥�

鈥淓xisting evidence shows that adolescents are far more likely to engage with social media, entertainment, and video platforms when they are at home with high-quality connectivity,鈥� Arenas-Arroyo wrote in an email.

Last year, the economist published on youth mental health and its interactions with digital activity. Rather than simple access to broadband, that work examines the rollout of ultra-high-speed fiber optics that have increasingly replaced slower forms of broadband in her native Spain. Like Churchill, she and her collaborators concluded that the acceleration of internet connectivity led to more 鈥渁ddictive鈥� internet usage; additionally, however, she combined that data with hospital records, finding that fiber deployment contributed to a documented jump in mental health diagnoses and suicide attempts.

Arenas-Arroyo argued that the body of research around the topic has become too large for education leaders and the political class to ignore. 

鈥淎 growing body of causal evidence, including my findings, shows that as internet access becomes faster and more ubiquitous, its potential risks to adolescent mental health may intensify,鈥� she observed. 鈥淭his shifts the policy debate away from whether there is a problem and toward how to mitigate its negative effects.鈥� 

Policy changes across multiple countries have already begun to alter the way that students interact with the internet. A survey released last month by the University of Southern California found that 98 percent of America鈥檚 K鈥�12 students attend a school with some form of limitation on cell phone use, with over three-quarters of teenaged respondents saying they supported the restrictions.

Even blunter tools have been embraced internationally, with by banning all use of social media for children under 16. On Tuesday, Spain to do the same, with the country鈥檚 prime minister decrying social media as 鈥渁 failed state.鈥�

Churchill conceded that it would be impossible, and probably undesirable, for countries across the West to attempt to push back the adoption of broadband. But with the research consensus around the potential downsides of the technology growing louder, he added, governments will likely find themselves charged with the task of addressing them.

鈥淥ur work is built on national estimates of adolescents across the entire United States 鈥� and yes, our results line up with a lot of the other results that existed,鈥� he said. 鈥淭hat should increase our confidence in making policy recommendations based on these findings.”

At an event to promote , the California Democrat revealed that he 鈥渃annot read a speech鈥� and feels he hasn鈥檛 overcome dyslexia even after a decades-long struggle. His learning disability has in his home state, but Newsom鈥檚 phrasing would soon lead to a flurry of headlines.

鈥淚鈥檓 just trying to impress upon you, I鈥檓 like you,鈥� he told the Atlanta audience. 鈥淚鈥檓 no better than you. You know, I鈥檓 a 960 SAT guy.鈥�

A raft of conservative influencers and media figures seized on the remark to accuse Newsom, currently in the 2028 Democratic primary field, of insulting his African American supporters by association with his own reading challenges. (Black residents make up a plurality of Atlantans, though the crowd Newsom addresses was reportedly .) South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, an African American Republican and close ally of President Trump, for stereotyping their own voters as academically underachieving. 

The tempest soon passed, with the governor dismissing the criticism as 鈥淢AGA-manufactured outrage.鈥� Yet the episode stood out as a wobbly foray from a Democratic star into the evolving discussion around literacy education. 

Over the past few years, lawmakers in over a dozen states around what experts call the science of reading, a long-running corpus of research reflecting what is known about how people learn to recognize and use written language. Many of the early leaders in that movement have been Republican-controlled states like Mississippi and Louisiana, generating widespread plaudits for the so-called Southern Surge in standardized test scores. But the problems surrounding early literacy is one that voters around the U.S. recognize, with achievement in the subject still mired in a post-COVID slump.

With Democrats preparing for both a slew of gubernatorial campaigns this fall and a race for the presidential nomination next year, a question remains over how to address reading within the wider portfolio of K鈥�12 education priorities. Most blue states, including California, have taken action on the science of reading, but some voices on the left have also been skeptical of the academic progress made in the South and elsewhere. With his personal background and national profile, Newsom could make the issue his hallmark. Some political observers are waiting for him and others to step into the spotlight.  

John White, the former state superintendent of Louisiana and a longtime voice for reading reforms, said he was puzzled by the apparent reluctance of leaders in both parties to put their achievements in that area front and center. He struggled to name a politician who has built a brand predominantly around the science of reading.

鈥淟iteracy is a complicated issue, not like cutting taxes or landing a new corporate headquarters,鈥� White argued. 鈥淚f you don’t articulate what’s been accomplished, and you don’t place big political stakes on it, there’s no political gains to be reaped from it.鈥�

Linda Diamond, a former teacher and veteran advocate for evidence-based reading instruction in California, said she believed that lawmakers in most blue states have woken up to the need for improved reading legislation. The mission now, she added, was for presidential contenders like Newsom to preach that gospel from a national pulpit.

“I think the message to convey to Democrats is to take this up, make it a winning issue,鈥� she said, acknowledging what she called her governor鈥檚 鈥渦nfortunate turn of phrase.鈥� 

鈥淪ure, look at the Republican states that have done so well on reading. But don’t let the myopia of thinking that it’s only Republicans distract from the fact that the greatest harm [of literacy failures] is being done to children in poverty.鈥�

鈥榃e need to see action鈥�

Local Democrats鈥� legislative agenda on K鈥�12 schools has been fairly busy over the last few years. 

In 2023, Newsom signed a bill to mandate dyslexia screenings for children between kindergarten and second grade, making California the 40th state to adopt such legislation. The legislature last year, passing a law that will provide elementary school teachers training in the science of reading and mandate the use of teaching materials that reinforce that pedagogy.

But those steps were taken only after years of intra-Democratic battles in Sacramento. The state as a laggard when it comes to literacy reforms, and previous bills had been sunk by a coalition of advocacy groups for English learners and the California Teachers Association. That faction argued that universal dyslexia screening would over-identify students with the disability and that mandates for evidence-based teaching would threaten educators鈥� autonomy.

Megan Potente, head of the nonprofit group Decoding Dyslexia鈥檚 California branch, said she was heartened by the recent legislative activity and considered Newsom an inspiration to children diagnosed with the condition. Still, she added, the party needed to speak more loudly on the issue 鈥� both in California and elsewhere.

鈥淭he topic has been elevated, as it needs to be, but we need to see action,鈥� Potente said. 鈥淚 hope that the Democratic Party can uplift it and not ignore the successes of other states, as they’ve done so far, and really hone in on how they’ve achieved what they’ve achieved.”

At least one prominent Democrat has questioned whether blue states have anything to learn from those that have pursued strategies based explicitly on the science of reading. While running her winning campaign for governor of New Jersey, then-Democratic Rep. Mikkie Sherill seen in Louisiana and Mississippi, calling schools there 鈥渟ome of the worst in the entire nation.鈥� 

The bad feelings run both ways, with Republican Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves to send Newsom assistance from his state鈥檚 core of reading tutors after the book forum last week.

It鈥檚 possible that Newsom鈥檚 personal experience with dyslexia could give him credibility in speaking for the interests of the tens of millions of Americans who struggle to read. Reeves鈥檚 predecessor as governor, Phil Bryant, cited his own early setbacks in the subject as the reason he pursued a lengthy slate of new reading laws in 2013. But in the wave of partisan brickbats against Newsom, some have even whether he truly is dyslexic, pointing to alleged inconsistencies in previous recountings of when he was assessed. 

In his memoir, Young Man in a Hurry, Newsom describes grappling with the condition 鈥渙ne of the struggles of [his] life, writing that his difficulty spelling in childhood could cause him to 鈥渞un out of the room screaming that I didn鈥檛 know what was wrong with my brain.鈥�

White called Newsom鈥檚 frankness about his diagnosis a 鈥渄ouble-edged sword鈥� in the context of U.S. politics. Though he hoped it could lead to bipartisan cooperation with others who have focused on dyslexia awareness 鈥� including of Louisiana 鈥� he warned that the needs of dyslexic children could be 鈥渓ost in the partisan swirl.鈥�

鈥淲hile the issue will benefit from the attention, it is almost inevitable that it will be wrapped up in questions of veracity and identity politics and ugliness,鈥� he concluded.

But new studies bolster the evidence that done well, virtual models can be just as effective at moving students forward as face-to-face instruction.

In Massachusetts, first graders who spent 15 minutes a day online with a tutor from stayed on track a year later without additional tutoring, according to exclusively with 社区黑料. Students gained, on average, at least five additional months of learning over their expected growth. 

Another virtual program, , produced positive results for the lowest-performing students in the Kansas City, Missouri, schools. Students who received one-on-one tutoring from certified teachers made greater progress than those who didn鈥檛 receive the extra help, .听

鈥淰irtual models are getting stronger,鈥� said Amanda Neitzel, an associate professor at Johns Hopkins University and author of the Ignite Reading study. 鈥淚f you go back just a few years, we had no examples of evidence-proven models and now we are getting them.鈥�

In addition to following Ignite Reading for two years, she recently published a study showing that elementary school students in Texas and Louisiana who received virtual tutoring from , outperformed their peers and gained nearly three additional months of learning.

Results like those have broadened the conversation about how to bring students who are missing critical reading skills up to speed. 

鈥淭utoring can work in many ways and in different settings,鈥� Kevin Huffman, CEO of Accelerate, said earlier this month at the nonprofit鈥檚 annual conference. 

When the organization began funding tutoring research four years ago, there were doubts, he said, about whether virtual programs could compete with in-person models. There鈥檚 more confidence in online versions now, but as with tutoring in general, progress depends on whether providers feature the components of a high-dosage program 鈥� meaning they were offered for roughly 90 minutes a week, during the school day with a trained tutor. Ensuring kids get all the tutoring hours a program is designed to deliver is also key.

鈥淲e obsess over student attendance,鈥� said Jessica Reid Sliwerski, Ignite Reading’s founder. Now in 24 states, the program focuses on building phonics skills and reading fluency.

In the Johns Hopkins Ignite Reading study, which focused on 13 Massachusetts school districts, 85% of students who mastered foundational reading skills 鈥渄uring the crucial first grade window鈥� were still keeping up at the end of second grade, Neitzel wrote. But if students didn鈥檛 meet expectations on time, they couldn鈥檛 catch up. Some were just too far behind.

鈥淢any kids start our program still not knowing basic kindergarten skills, like letter names and sounds,鈥� Sliwerski said. That means tutors have two years of content to get through.

To Sliwerski, the findings demonstrate that third grade, when many states decide whether students are strong enough readers to advance, is too late to intervene. If kids struggle to decode unfamiliar words, they won鈥檛 be able to comprehend more complex reading assignments. 

鈥淲e are so caught up in 鈥榬eading by grade three鈥� that we aren鈥檛 honoring that kids are actually supposed to have fully cracked the code and be able to fluently read grade-level text at the end of first grade,鈥� she said. 鈥淲e act like kids have all the time in the world, when they don鈥檛.鈥� 

The 5,700-student Chelsea Public Schools was among the Massachusetts districts using Ignite Reading as part of a project funded by One8, a nonprofit that helped schools get high-dosage tutoring off the ground. The state the program.  

At first, 鈥渙ur teachers were a little skeptical,鈥� said Superintendent Almi Abeyta, a former kindergarten and first grade teacher. 鈥淭hey were like, 鈥榃e just got off of remote learning. Why are we going to put kids on a computer again?鈥� 鈥� 

Then they saw the data. Students made similar gains on DIBELS, a widely used early literacy assessment, whether they were Black, Hispanic, English learners or had a disability, the study found.

鈥楢 great opportunity鈥�

Results like those are why the Fallbrook Union Elementary School District, near San Diego, California, is now spreading the program to all of its elementary schools as part of its First Grade Promise initiative. 

In a pilot, Fallbrook STEM Academy, which serves a high-poverty population, enrolled 20 second graders in the program. Many of the students speak Spanish at home, didn鈥檛 attend preschool and lack access to books, flash cards and other early reading materials, said Principal Ana Arias. She called each parent to ask that they get their children to school a little early so they could meet with a tutor.

鈥淚 phrased it as an opportunity 鈥� a great opportunity 鈥� but I needed their commitment,鈥� Arias said. 鈥淲e have so many kids in the classroom and there’s so much need. It’s very rare to have a teacher meet one-on-one with a student every single day.鈥� 

At the beginning of this school year, the 20 students were reading at a kindergarten level. By November, 19 had advanced to a first grade level, and she鈥檚 hoping they鈥檒l be on par with their peers by the end of the school year. 

鈥楾ranscend time zones鈥� 

The latest findings build on those that Harvard University and City University of New York researchers published last year. Whether tutoring is remote or in-person, , matters less than whether the tutor is well qualified and students attend sessions regularly.

Virtual models even have some advantages over in-person programs, experts say. Schools have to pay an in-person tutor whether or not the student is present. But virtual programs 鈥渢ranscend time zones,鈥� Sliwerski said, and can redeploy a tutor to meet with another student.  

If the tutor is absent, 鈥渨e have a substitute ready to go,鈥� she said. 鈥淭he technology underpinning the program ensures the child receives the exact lesson they were supposed to get.鈥�

In Kansas City, consistency was key to the strong results. Students in first through fourth grade across 14 schools met with their tutors for 30-minute sessions at least three times a week for 20 weeks during the 2024-25 school year. The more sessions completed, the stronger the growth. Some students gained more than two months of additional learning and were less likely to be placed in special education. 

On average, the students who participated in the Hoot program and those in the comparison group began the school year two grade levels behind. While many are still struggling readers, their progress was significant, said Carly Robinson, a senior researcher at Stanford University and a co-author of the study.

鈥淭his wasn’t a boutique pilot,鈥� she said. 鈥淚t’s tutoring operating inside a district system that is messy, and it still proved to be effective.鈥�

The district had to contend with technical glitches and unexpected snow days that forced students to miss some sessions.

Not all virtual programs have been able to overcome disruptions. 

In a large suburban district in Texas, some students meeting with virtual tutors during the 2021-22 school year did worse in reading than their peers who didn鈥檛 receive the intervention. Scheduling conflicts, like school assemblies, and tutor turnover, contributed to the disappointing results.

鈥楢 higher bar鈥�

Those challenges grow even more complex in the middle grades with electives and block schedules where students don鈥檛 have the same classes every day. But Rahul Kalita, co-founder of Tutored by Teachers, said maintaining relationships between tutors and students is essential. 

He hopes to contribute to the research base on virtual tutoring by participating in a randomized controlled study, funded by Accelerate and focused on math in two large Indianapolis middle schools. 

鈥淚t felt like the right opportunity to test our model under a higher bar of rigor,鈥� he said.

On top of virtual programs refining their practices, districts, he said, 鈥渉ave also become more sophisticated buyers of tutoring.鈥� Multiple districts across the country pay providers higher rates if students make measurable progress or pass state tests. 

In addition, there鈥檚 growing agreement that literacy tutoring, whether virtual or not, is more effective if it’s part of a strong early reading program that includes a curriculum based on the science of reading and screening students for dyslexia or other learning difficulties. 

鈥淵ou can鈥檛 throw tutoring at the problem,鈥� Sliwerski said at the Accelerate conference. 鈥淚t has to be part of a very intentional system.鈥�

But they didn鈥檛 do anything to stop it. 

On Monday, Education Secretary Linda McMahon continued down that path, announcing that she鈥檒l hand over school safety and family engagement programs to the as part of her ongoing effort to 鈥渂reak up鈥� federal bureaucracy through interagency agreements.

鈥淏y leveraging HHS鈥檚 extensive emergency preparedness capabilities, we are creating a stronger foundation for supporting students and strengthening the safety of the school building,鈥� she said in a statement.

The move affects programs under the Office of Safe and Supportive Schools, including grants that help schools respond to traumatic events like school shootings and natural disasters. Full-Service Community Schools, Promise Neighborhoods, family engagement centers and Ready to Learn, which funds educational TV for preschoolers, are also part of that office.

Critics were quick to argue that the secretary is creating more complexity for schools and teachers. 鈥淣othing about this is better for kids,鈥� said Vito Borrello, executive director of the National Association for Family, School and Community Engagement. 鈥淚t’s inefficient. It’s chaotic.鈥� 

McMahon began transferring major education programs to other agencies last summer by moving career and technical education programs to the . She has told advocates for students with disabilities that 鈥渘othing shall remain鈥� at the department. The Labor Department will also assume responsibility for , including Title I, the department鈥檚 largest K-12 program. 

Democrats tried to insert binding language into the appropriations law that would stop McMahon from using these agreements to dismantle the agency. But Republicans balked. In a compromise, lawmakers attached a note calling for biweekly meetings with the department and saying they were worried that what McMahon is doing 鈥渨ill create inefficiencies, result in additional costs to the American taxpayer, and cause delays and administrative challenges.鈥�

At the time, Savannah Newhouse, a spokeswoman for the department, said officials aim to provide 鈥減roof of concept that interagency agreements provide the same protections, higher quality outcomes, and even more benefits for students, grantees and other education stakeholders.鈥� The next step, she added, is getting Congress to 鈥渃odify these partnerships.鈥�

Education advocates were relieved that Congress rejected drastic cuts to education programs proposed by President Donald Trump and House Republicans. But the question is 鈥渨hat happens to the funding and who is administering these programs,鈥� said Emily Merolli, a partner with the Sligo Law Group, and a former member of the department鈥檚 general counsel鈥檚 office.

A coalition of states and districts over mass layoffs at the department last year and amended their complaint to challenge the interagency agreements as well. But Merolli said the court may ultimately have to look at whether there have been any 鈥渄ownstream harms鈥� from offloading programs to different agencies.

Family advocates

The K-12 programs affected by this latest action have already seen disruption since President Donald Trump took office. 

Last May, the department grant, roughly $23 million that supported educational programming like Sesame Street and Reading Rainbow.  In September, the department canceled grants to five statewide family engagement centers serving six states. The centers each received $1 million annually to support districts in reaching underserved families. 

As with McMahon鈥檚 decision to cancel other grants and contracts, the centers were told their work was no longer a priority for this administration, which has aimed to eliminate programs promoting diversity, equity and inclusion.

Borrello decried the decision in his November newsletter, saying that schools can鈥檛 support families 鈥渨ithout a foundation of relational trust which is cultivated through honoring the diverse cultures and values of the families served. There is nothing controversial about this.鈥�

Then in December, McMahon canceled remaining Full-Service Community Schools grants, totaling $60 million, to 18 grantees. They included two grants, a combined $18.5 million, to ACT Now Illinois, a statewide afterschool provider network. The organization and has been in negotiations with the department over restoring the grants.

To respond to increases in students鈥� mental health needs, the 2,300-student Herrin school district in southern Illinois used the money to hire a social worker for each of its five schools. 

鈥淲e really need somebody to advocate not just for the students, but for the families as well,鈥� said Valerie Clodi, the district鈥檚 director of development. 

The district also on school supplies for students, free STEM-focused events for families and expanded career pathways programs. Schools saw drops in chronic absenteeism, Clodi said, and increases in performance among high schoolers on the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, an assessment that the state accepts as an indicator of readiness for college. But after next week, the team of five family advocates will be down to one. An assistant who helped families who need housing or other resources also left. 

Clodi said she could see an overlap between HHS and community schools when it comes to focusing on students鈥� mental health. But 鈥渢hat’s just one pillar鈥� of the model, she said. 

Borrello called the move to HHS 鈥渢he best worst-case scenario鈥� and better than moving the programs to the Labor Department. But he noted that putting family engagement programs and K-12 under two separate agencies could undermine efforts to get parents more involved in their children鈥檚 education.

鈥淭his couldn’t come at a worse time,鈥� he said. 鈥淪cores are beginning to improve and now we do this.鈥�