In the study, , two unnamed school districts carved out dedicated time for hundreds of elementary school students to work with a well-known AI reading tutor, either during class time or after school. Researchers followed about 350 students across two randomized controlled trials. All of the students were expected to log on for at least two 30-minute sessions a week.

They found that of the students assigned to work independently with the AI, just over 60% in the first district and 53% in the second ever logged on to the platform 鈥� at all.

Among all students, average weekly usage came to just over two minutes in District A and just over five minutes in District B.

Those who did log on averaged 13.2 minutes a week in District A and 25.8 minutes in District B, using the tutoring for just four to five weeks on average in an 鈥渋ntervention window鈥� that ran from 14 to 31 weeks.

For Carly Robinson, the paper鈥檚 lead author and research director for the , the gap between access and use isn鈥檛 a shock. “As we’re talking about bringing AI tools into the classroom, the challenge isn’t just building good AI tools,鈥� she said. 鈥淚t’s getting students to use them and engage with them effectively.鈥� 

That’s going to take 鈥渋ntentional design鈥� that appeals to both students and their teachers, who must choose whether to offer access.

鈥淗aving these tools available, even if they’re really good, doesn’t necessarily mean they’re going to get used if they’re not being embedded into kids’ learning experiences,鈥� Robinson said in an interview.

But she was careful to note that the study didn鈥檛 draw conclusions about AI鈥檚 effectiveness, or the degree to which students were interested or uninterested in the bot, saying many factors could be at play. 鈥淭his is not necessarily the students not engaging,鈥� she said. In the two districts, the AI platform 鈥渨as likely one of many tools available to teachers.鈥�

For the study, researchers randomly assigned a group of students to work on the platform alongside a few classmates and a human tutor whose job was to support their engagement and motivation and to troubleshoot any problems students might encounter. In District B, the tutors were actually middle-school students who 鈥渉ad a free intervention block in their school day.鈥� A typical session included a short check-in, 15 minutes on the platform and a few minutes of reflection.

Pairing students with a tutor worked, Robinson said 鈥� to a point. Usage increased by roughly one minute a week in District A and 4.4 minutes in District B. The number of stories students completed each week jumped 71% in District A and 80% in District B. 

What the human pairing didn’t do was move the needle on reading scores: Neither district saw a statistically significant improvement in end-of-year reading achievement. But Robinson said the study wasn鈥檛 primarily focused on that. Rather it was looking at the overall impact of adding a human into the equation, someone who provides 鈥渁ccountability, motivation and relationship building.鈥�

Wednesday鈥檚 findings mirror recent ones from Khan Academy founder Sal Khan, who that the rollout of his in 2023 was 鈥渁 non-event鈥� for many students. 鈥淭hey just didn鈥檛 use it much.鈥�

Khan said AI tutoring doesn鈥檛 necessarily make students motivated to learn, or to fill in gaps in their knowledge needed to ask questions.

The new data also raise an uncomfortable question for educators: Among students who used the platform on their own, those who logged on tended to be higher-achieving and less likely to receive special education services. So the students who stood to benefit most from extra reading practice were among the least likely to get it. 

Robinson said she sees that as a red flag for anyone considering AI tutoring as a quick fix for underserved students: 鈥淚 think it should give us pause about treating AI tutoring as an equity solution.”

Alex Sarlin, founder of the newsletter and a veteran industry watcher, said the new study 鈥渟hines a light on several of the most persistent challenges in ed tech implementation: low usage rates that don鈥檛 meet dosage recommendations, differential technology usage based on prior student achievement, leading to lower usage among the neediest students, and a faulty assumption that students will jump into new tools without structured guidance.鈥澛�

The researchers鈥� approach showcases a promising direction, he said, 鈥渁s it is increasingly clear that providing access to tooling is not nearly enough to drive usage, let alone outcomes.鈥�

Amanda Bickerstaff, co-founder and CEO of , which provides AI literacy training to teachers, said results like these aren鈥檛 all that surprising, given what we know about these tools.

All GenAI chatbots, she said, can make mistakes, lack important context about students and how they learn best, and can provide biased outputs. Her group has recommended keeping these tools out of the hands of students through second grade, 鈥渁nd only with significant human oversight and AI literacy training鈥� for students in grades three through five.

鈥淎t this stage, there has been little evidence that GenAI chatbot tutors meaningfully impact learning outcomes for students,鈥� she said, 鈥渙r that they are developmentally appropriate for students in elementary schools.鈥�

Robinson, the study鈥檚 lead author, said she sees the usage findings as part of a larger pattern playing out as schools adopt AI tools more broadly. Schools, she said, should consider offering students 鈥渄ifferent iterations of these things based on what they actually need 鈥� and that’s probably a more likely pathway to scale than just saying, ‘Let’s give everyone an AI tutor.’ 鈥�  

Historically, personalized instruction has depended almost entirely on human teachers, with the teacher-student relationship central to the experience. But advances in technology 鈥� most recently in AI 鈥� have changed this dynamic, Robinson and her colleagues write. Now, personalized instruction exists on what they term 鈥渁 spectrum of relational intensity,鈥� from a consistent one-on-one human tutor to a computer platform that students navigate alone. 

AI tutors may approximate human interactions, Robinson said, but students may still benefit from the care and companionship that humans provide. Logging on and sticking with something that might prove to be difficult, she said, is easier with a human in the mix. 鈥淭here is just this component of accountability that a human can provide, where it’s so easy to look away or check out of something when it gets hard when you’re dealing with a screen.鈥�

But when TV writer Ernie Bustamante read Manzano鈥檚 2015 memoir, Becoming Maria: Love and Chaos in the South Bronx, his mind went to an entirely different neighborhood: He thought her life story would make a great sitcom. 

He envisioned a coming-of-age series, with Manzano as 鈥渢he ultimate protagonist鈥� who pushes through all of her struggles. 鈥淪he conquers. She overcomes.鈥�

Manzano liked the idea, and the pair got to know one another as they worked to sell it to studios. But after years of trying with little success, they pivoted to a new enterprise.

The result is , a new feature-length documentary that explores Manzano鈥檚 life and career as the first Latina to appear regularly in an American TV series. The film is making the rounds at this spring as Bustamante searches for a distribution deal. In the meantime, he鈥檚 seeking out schools and universities to arrange 鈥渋mpact screenings鈥� for aspiring filmmakers, actors, educators and anyone wanting to know more about the iconic actor 鈥� and the groundbreaking series that both offered her a platform and revolutionized children鈥檚 television.

鈥淎ll young people want to change the world to some degree,鈥� Manzano said in an interview. 鈥淚 was lucky enough to fall into a group that wanted to do the same thing.鈥�

In the film, she likens the show鈥檚 key creators 鈥� puppeteer Jim Henson, producer and composer , among others 鈥� to another seminal 鈥�60s group: 鈥淭he Beatles are great 鈥� separately they鈥檙e all good. But together they made some magic.鈥�

鈥業 had to be myself on purpose鈥�

Manzano grew up in the South Bronx in the 1950s, before the notorious city planner Robert Moses 鈥渄estroyed鈥� it, in her words, with a tangle of expressways cutting through mostly Black and Latino neighborhoods. Her parents were both Puerto Rican 鈥� her father was a roofer, her mother a seamstress, and the everyday talk in the neighborhood revolved around la lucha, the struggle to survive.

Raised in a home where her father drank and her parents often fought, Manzano quips in the film, 鈥淢ostly they struggled with each other.鈥�

She found solace in TV, movie musicals in particular, and imagined herself in starring roles. When a teacher took her to see the movie West Side Story, she was 鈥渁bsolutely overwhelmed鈥� by the spectacle and awed by how it transformed the gritty streets of New York into art. At the end of the film, she burst into tears.

鈥淚 think it touched me so much because it was the first time I saw things in my neighborhood exalted and made beautiful,鈥� she says in the film.

Manzano鈥檚 first big break came when a teacher encouraged her to apply to New York鈥檚 High School for the Performing Arts. She鈥檇 eventually make her way to Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, studying with, among others, the renowned mime , who introduced her to the physical comedy of Charlie Chaplin 鈥� she鈥檇 later bring her own to Sesame Street. 

By 1971, Manzano had fallen in with a group of Carnegie Mellon drama students helping classmate John-Michael Tebelak produce his senior thesis, an improvisational drama based on the Gospel of Saint Matthew. It was a hit at school and the group took it to on Manhattan鈥檚 Lower East Side, where, with the help of composer Stephen Schwartz 鈥� only two years older than Manzano and the rest of the cast 鈥� it morphed into the surprise hit musical .

Sesame Street, another surprise hit, had debuted on TV in 1969, and by 1971, Mexican American activists on the West Coast were demanding more Latino representation on the show. Manzano got a call for an audition and impressed producer Stone, who offered her a part.

Manzano had actually glimpsed the show at Carnegie Mellon, wandering into the student union one day as a very young James Earl Jones slowly and deliberately onscreen. The scene cut to , married characters who also happened to be Black. 鈥淚 really flipped because in those days you never saw people of color on television 鈥� and if you did, it wasn鈥檛 these charming couples.鈥�

Coming on the heels of the Civil Rights movement, the show鈥檚 representations made sense. None of it happened in a vacuum, she said. 鈥淎merica was ripe for it.鈥�

Manzano鈥檚 first moment of reckoning as a Latina on the show happened before she even appeared on camera: A makeup artist was at work heavily tinting her face when Stone walked in and insisted that she appear onscreen as natural-looking as possible. The makeup 鈥� at least most of it 鈥� had to go.

鈥淚t made me understand that these people at Sesame Street, they really meant what they said 鈥� they really were interested in having a real Puerto Rican on television that was not slick or glib. They wanted real humans.鈥�

Recalling the moment more than 50 years later, she said, 鈥淚t freed me, because I realized I didn’t have to play any part. I could just be myself.鈥� Whenever she tells the story, she likes to cite her favorite line from : 鈥淚 had to be myself on purpose.鈥�

With her improv and musical theater background, Manzano soon became a reliable player who could do nearly anything.

Puppeteer , who performed on the show for 26 years, said her abilities shone through despite the show鈥檚 demands: In early seasons, cast and crew were expected to shoot as many as 130 episodes.

鈥淓verybody is great, but when you had a scene with Maria, it was just guaranteed to be awesome, because she was such comedy gold,鈥� he said in an interview. 

All the same, Mazzarino said, Manzano and her co-stars felt like real people. By the late 1980s, Maria would fall in love with and marry Luis, played by , another longtime player. Her scenes with Delgado rang true, he said, bringing a truly loving couple to the screen.

鈥淓ven though Sonia can do great comedy, she always felt grounded,鈥� Mazzarino said. 

Manzano herself has a fondness for the show鈥檚 loose, improvisational feel, especially in the early days: It was, she recalled, a party-like atmosphere in which everyone was trying to crack up everyone else. That allowed her to both try out her comedy chops and search for a way to let the Muppets鈥� madcap humor shine. 

鈥淭hey were completely zany,鈥� she recalled. 鈥淭hey ate tables. You could throw them against the wall and nothing would happen to them.鈥�

She recalled an early episode in which a scene began taping before puppeteer , who played The Count, could make it to the set. As his colleagues proceeded with the scene, Nelson swept in. 鈥淎nd there was no interruption,鈥� Manzano recalled. 鈥淚t’s a remarkable moment.鈥�

Over time, she became renowned for the knowing gaze she鈥檇 offer to the camera, breaking through the fourth wall in exasperation each time a Muppet co-star 鈥� most notably Oscar the Grouch 鈥� did or said something ridiculous. 

鈥淭hat was a real breakthrough 鈥� no pun intended 鈥� when I understood what my job was,鈥� she said, 鈥渢hat I could have this relationship with the camera separate from my conversation with the puppet right next to me. I could look at the camera and say, ‘Do you get this? I mean, do you see what’s going on?鈥欌��

Over the years, Sesame Street scripts became more research-based and deliberate, and life on the set tightened up. Manzano left the show in 2015 and gets nostalgic about the 鈥渓ooser kind of environment鈥� it had at the beginning. 鈥淎s they became more tame, they kind of lost a little bit of that craziness.鈥�

鈥楽he never talked down to children鈥�

Michael Davis met Manzano in 2005, when TV Guide sent him to write a piece marking the show鈥檚 35th anniversary. By then, Manzano was also a writer for the show 鈥� she鈥檇 eventually earn 15 Emmy awards for her writing. She was the first cast member he met.

鈥淚 remember coming home to my wife and saying, 鈥榊ou know, I met the actress who plays Maria on Sesame Street today,鈥欌�� Davis said in an interview. 鈥溾�業 had a long conversation with her, and she’s the realest deal I think I’ve ever encountered. She is exactly as her character and her TV persona projects 鈥� open, funny, candid, intelligent, capable of making great sense about preschool children and their needs.鈥欌��

He filled a notebook with her thoughts that day.

Davis, who would go on to write the 2008 book , said that for all of her comedic instincts, Manzano understood her job as a trusted adult in kids鈥� lives. 鈥淪he never talked down to children,鈥� he said. 鈥淎nd I think this is true of the Muppet performers and other cast members: They never talked the cutesy voice or talked baby talk, even to 2-year-olds. They addressed children with great respect and interest and really listened to what they had to say. And yeah, it was just a beautiful thing to watch.鈥�

It鈥檚 difficult to imagine another actor whose entire adult life has been captured by the camera, he said. Manzano grew up on the show, first appearing at age 21. She fell in love and , had a baby and changed careers several times, at one point working construction. In one renowned episode, she led the cast as they took viewers through the grieving process when old . 

In the documentary, Manzano quips, 鈥淲e were the first reality show 鈥� without the whining.鈥�

Davis, whose second book on the show, , is due out this fall, said Manzano herself underwent a remarkable transformation from her Godspell days. 鈥淪he started out as an ing茅nue 鈥� basically a character who was in her teens, just this perky Latina who is new to the street.鈥� She grew, he said, 鈥渋nto one of the most influential characters in the history of Sesame Street and a trailblazer in many, many ways.鈥�

Manzano stuck around the show until age 65 before stepping aside to make way for a new generation of actors 鈥� and to write books and produce . At 75, she shows few signs of slowing down, working more recently with another Sonia from the South Bronx, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, to help found the .

Through it all, Davis said, 鈥渟he has the most level head, and she is almost painfully normal, and I love her for that.鈥�

He added, 鈥淪he knows who she is 鈥� she absolutely knows who she is, and why she’s here.鈥�

More significantly, after Florida鈥檚 2023 ban went into effect, student performance on reading and math tests improved modestly, at least in one large district studied, with scores up by about 3.5 percentage points in its second year. Schools with the highest pre-ban cellphone use saw the largest positive impacts.

But a pair of researchers studying the state鈥檚 first-in-the-nation statewide cellphone ban also tracked a 25% spike in suspension rates in the first year, with the biggest impacts on Black students. At schools with high levels of pre-ban cellphone use, the rate of in-school suspensions for Black students rose by 30%, while rates for white and Hispanic students remained steady. 

In the second year of the ban, disciplinary rates returned to pre-ban levels. Those findings are similar to those of a national study on cellphone bans published last week.

Researchers David Figlio and Umut 脰zek also found 鈥渟ignificant reductions鈥� in the number of unexcused absences in both the first and second years after the ban, especially among middle and high school students. That drop in absences could also help explain, in part, the better test scores, they said.

The Florida ban, adopted in May 2023, made cellphones off-limits to students during instructional time, but allowed local districts to impose additional restrictions according to their needs. 

Figlio, an economist at the University of Rochester, noted that Florida is an unusual place to study the topic, since it was one of the first states 鈥渢o really get back to normal in schooling鈥� after the shock of the COVID pandemic and widespread school closures. 

鈥淪chooling was business as usual in the 2020-2021 academic year in Florida,鈥� he said in an interview. 鈥淚t was not business-as-usual in almost any other part of the country.鈥� That could have delayed potential academic improvements around cellphone bans in other states, he theorized. 

Figlio said the discipline data is concerning, since phone-related suspensions were, at least at first, 鈥渄isproportionately borne by male students and especially by Black students.鈥� 

While it鈥檚 possible that Black students were simply violating the rules more often, it鈥檚 also possible that the rules 鈥渨ere being more heavily enforced鈥� for these students. 鈥淲henever I see any evidence of disproportionality in terms of any policy, that’s always a cause for concern for me. And so that’s what I’ll call the dark lining in what I think is a silver cloud.鈥�

When Figlio and 脰zek鈥檚 findings appeared last fall as a in the journal of the National Bureau of Economic Research, they were the first to look at a universal school cellphone ban policy. A newer paper, also published by the bureau, studied nationwide data on cellphone bans compiled by Yondr, a California startup that makes lockable pouches for schools, businesses and entertainment venues. 

That paper, released May 4 by a team led by the Stanford researcher and Duke University鈥檚 , found that school cellphone bans don鈥檛 typically bring improved academic achievement or better behavior, as many advocates have hoped.

Figlio suggested that the broader look at cellphone restrictions could have been subject to a kind of 鈥減ost-COVID transition period鈥� that showed slower academic improvement. 

In their study, Allcott, Baron and colleagues called the Yondr restrictions 鈥減articularly stringent and physically binding,鈥� suggesting that they provide a way to measure cellphone restrictions more accurately than 鈥渘o-see鈥� policies that simply ask students to keep phones powered off and hidden. They also said the national scope of their study 鈥減rovides substantial statistical power鈥� to examine the policy across different schools. 

In an interview, Stanford economist , one of the researchers working with Alcott and Baron, said no-see policies are inconsistently and unevenly enforced. 鈥淲e wanted to leverage the data from Yondr because it gives us much more confidence that in-school use of phones is actually being restricted,鈥� he said.

The new paper by Figlio and 脰zek, appearing Tuesday in the journal , updates data on cellphone restrictions nationwide to include policies newly in effect this spring.

It looks at an unnamed Florida district which is one of the nation鈥檚 largest 鈥� the list of the 10 largest U.S. district includes 鈥� where local leaders imposed a 鈥渂ell-to-bell鈥� ban that prohibits using phones, earbuds and smartwatches throughout the entire school day, including noninstructional time. 

The new rules went into effect at the start of the 2023鈥�24 school year. After Labor Day, if a student violated the rules, their device was confiscated and returned at the end of the day, with the option for suspension. 

The district carried out the state ban as a 鈥渘o-see鈥� or 鈥渙ff-and-away鈥� policy, Figlio said, so the expectation was that students had their phones off and out of sight. A few schools used the lockable pouches, he said 鈥� schools in all five of the state鈥檚 biggest districts had Yondr accounts 鈥� but pouches were 鈥渘ot the dominant form of enforcement.鈥�

Figlio sees the two studies as complementary, comprising 鈥渢wo different ways you can really study this topic credibly,鈥� especially as some places implement 鈥渘o-see鈥� policies and others rely on pouches. He noted that both studies, in effect, find 鈥渮ero-to-small positive test score improvements鈥� initially, but more positive results after that. 

A 2024 found that about one in three teachers consider students distracted by cellphones 鈥渁 major problem.鈥� Among high school teachers, that figure rises sharply, to 72%. More recently, Pew researchers in July 2025 74% of U.S. adults say they would support banning cellphones during class for middle and high school students, up from 68% late 2024. 

Figlio said a future version of the Florida study will also track evidence that student reports of classroom climate, school climate and teacher-student interactions improve under cellphone bans. After a short negative period, students also report improved well-being.

鈥淲henever we introduce new policies and they really take off like wildfire, I think a lot of people are hoping that they’re going to find that this is ‘The Solution,’鈥� Figlio said.

In the end, what both studies find is that cellphone bans 鈥渁re not a panacea,鈥� he said.

鈥淭he biggest thing that these cellphone bans did was dramatically reduce student use of cellphones in the school,鈥� Figlio said. 鈥淔or people who think that’s a good thing for any number of reasons, that’s a good thing 鈥� that’s a sign that cellphone bans worked. For people who were expecting this to lead to a major turnaround in the 鈥榓chievement recession,鈥� where achievement had been dipping even before COVID and continued to dip following COVID, I think they’re going to be disappointed.鈥�

, by scholars at Stanford University, Duke University, The University of Michigan and the University of Pennsylvania, compiled data from , a California startup that makes lockable pouches for schools, businesses and entertainment venues. Published Monday by the National Bureau of Economic Research, it looks at data from about 4,600 schools and is the first nationally representative look at cell phone bans.

It鈥檚 also the first to rely on actual data tracking locked-up phones, not just school 鈥渘o-show鈥� policies that ask students to keep phones hidden in backpacks or pockets, said Thomas Dee, a Stanford economist who co-led the study. No-show policies, he said, are inconsistently and unevenly enforced and not a good basis for research. 鈥淲e wanted to leverage the data from Yondr because it gives us much more confidence that in-school use of phones is actually being restricted,鈥� he said in an interview.

A 2024 found that about one in three teachers consider students distracted by cell phones 鈥渁 major problem.鈥� Among high school teachers, that figure rises sharply, to 72%. More recently, Pew researchers 74% of U.S. adults say they would support banning cellphones during class for middle and high school students, up from 68% last fall. 

Much of that momentum grows from years of efforts by the psychologist Jonathan Haidt, who has pushed for schools to . Haidt, author of the mega-bestseller , has said there鈥檚 growing evidence of an 鈥渋nternational epidemic鈥� of mental illness that started around 2012, caused in part by social media and teens鈥� uptake of smartphones in the early 2010s. 

As of this spring, at least 37 states and the District of Columbia require school districts to students鈥� phone use in schools. Teachers and parents typically support the bans, while students, on the whole, oppose them. Students also say schools shouldn鈥檛 expect big results. 

Here are five key findings from the NBER study:

1. Phone bans work. Teacher surveys in schools that banned phones bell-to-bell found that the share of students reporting using phones in class for personal reasons fell from 61% to 13%. And GPS data suggest phone usage dropped dramatically 鈥� a 鈥渓arge and persistent decline鈥� on campuses with bans, researchers noted. These schools saw a roughly 30% drop in total device pings during school hours by the third year after pouch adoption. This change, however, can鈥檛 necessarily be read as a direct measure of the change in student phone use, researchers say, since the data also includes use by adults. And pings are often recorded when phones are on but not in use. But the data still suggest that the sheer impact on student use is substantial and that it can be read as a 鈥渃onservative lower bound鈥� on the magnitude of cell phone policies.
2. Discipline worsened, then improved. In the first year of adoption, schools that banned phones saw about a 16% increase in suspension rates 鈥� both in- and out-of-school 鈥� but this effect faded in subsequent years, researchers found. The uptick likely reflects the fact that many schools took enforcement seriously 鈥� and that students turned to other disruptive behaviors.
3. Student well-being dipped, then bounced back. Subjective well-being declined in the first year of adoption, then rebounded, researchers found. It turned positive by the second year.
4. Academic achievement gains were minimal. Average effects on standardized test scores were 鈥渃onsistently close to zero鈥� across the first three years after adoption, with similar findings across subjects. 
5. Attendance, attention and bullying were largely unaffected. Effects on attendance were 鈥渃lose to zero鈥� 鈥� researchers also found no measurable improvements in perceived online bullying or self-reported classroom attention.  

鈥淚 think it’s reasonable to view these results as sobering,鈥� said Stanford鈥檚 Dee, who added that not seeing better results at this early stage 鈥渋s somewhat disappointing.鈥�

But he noted that as schools keep their bans in place, indicators like student well-being and suspension rates improve. In the first year of the phone bans, students鈥� self-reported well-being dropped substantially, as disciplinary rates rise, Dee said. 鈥淏ut within three years, students鈥� well-being is actually above what it was at baseline.鈥�

Likewise, he said, the rise in so-called 鈥渆xclusionary discipline鈥� such as suspension, 鈥渞eally only occurs in the first year of the phone bans. By the third year, exclusionary discipline rates have returned to their baseline levels.鈥�

The study tracked three cohorts of schools, which adopted phone bans in 2022, 2023 and 2024 respectively. Dee noted that the newest cohorts have actually seen test scores rise in a short time. He isn鈥檛 exactly certain why, but theorizes that 鈥渢he entire social context around which we understand phone bans may be changing 鈥� I think people are much more likely to see phone bans in a beneficent light now, as something that’s meant to help us rather than constrain us, even relative to several years ago.鈥� 

Dee cautioned that the findings are just a glimpse into the early days of phone bans. In the end, phone bans do what they advertise: They drive down student phone use. That in itself has a clear effect, even if other indicators don鈥檛 shift right away.

鈥淚 firmly believe that getting student phone use down, recapturing their attention in classrooms within schools, is a critical antecedent to realizing their academic potential,鈥� he said, suggesting we need to give them a couple of years to see results. 

鈥淲e need to not succumb to the usual faddishness that permeates education reform,鈥� he said, 鈥渁nd persist with a robust learning agenda that will allow us to figure out how to manage digital devices and support child development.鈥�

Teacher Jake Baskin remembers exactly where he was when he first watched the that introduced to the world, inviting kids to learn how to code. 

鈥淚 was sitting in my high school classroom in Chicago,鈥� he said. 鈥淚 got a link to that first video and thought, 鈥業鈥檓 so excited. Someone else is saying the things I’ve been saying to my students.鈥� 鈥�

A longtime educator who now leads the , he watched as the nearly-six-minute video showcased Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey and a constellation of tech celebrities recalling their first experiences with a computer: creating games, drawings, quizzes and more. 鈥淚 was 13 when I first got access to a computer,鈥� says Gates, a wistful smile crossing his face. 

It didn鈥檛 hurt that he and a few others onscreen were by then among the wealthiest people on the planet.

The video soon helped spark what would become arguably the most successful education reform campaign of the past few decades.

By 2021, offered computer science, known widely as 鈥淐S.鈥� persuaded legislators in 12 states to add it to their high school graduation requirements. And every U.S. president since 2013 has made computer science a pillar of their education agenda.

Baskin liked the video so much he鈥檇 go on to spend four years at Code.org, helping the nonprofit write its first curricula and building district partnerships nationwide.

But fast-forward to 2026, and the landscape looks more fraught. So-called Silicon Valley 鈥溾�� have spent the past few years secretly building and while of software engineers. And the organization that made 鈥渓earn to code鈥� a national rallying cry must confront an existential question: In an era when generative AI tools can create functional code from plain-language prompts 鈥� and where kids are making millions 鈥渧ibe coding鈥� professional-looking apps 鈥� where exactly does a nonprofit called Code.org fit in?

New CEO Karim Meghji admitted that he and his colleagues must reframe their offerings and message without abandoning their core ideals. 鈥淥ur foundational principle is not, 鈥楳ore kids need to learn how to be software engineers,鈥欌�� he said in an interview. 鈥淲hat we’ve been promoting is that a world that is very digital, and has technical products all around us is a world where students deserve to understand how these things function, how they work.鈥�

That reframing comes at a key time for the nonprofit, whose gift-fueled funding has in recent years, from $42.8 million in 2023 to $25.2 million in 2025. It reflects both shifting philanthropic priorities and the existential questions now swirling around the field of computer science. 

Is computer science collapsing?

The shift Meghji describes is happening not just in K-12 education, but in the higher ed landscape and in the broader job market.Student enrollment in computer science at four-year colleges last fall, the biggest single-year drop of any major discipline since at least 2020. In one year, computer science fell from the nation鈥檚 fourth-largest undergraduate major to its sixth, even as the fortunes of Silicon Valley . 

At the University of California, computer science graduates are expected to number about 350 next year, from 2025. Across the entire UC system, computer science enrollment declined last year for the first time since the early 2000s.

The job market for young coders has softened, too. A recent study by, using payroll data from millions of workers, found that by September 2025, employment for software developers aged 22 to 25 had declined nearly 20% compared to its peak in late 2022 鈥� even as employment for more experienced developers held steady or grew. The study’s authors described entry-level engineers as 鈥渃anaries in the coal mine,鈥� early casualties of AI tools that can easily replicate their work.

Other data paint a less clear picture. A by the finance analysis firm Citadel Securities found that in the long term, software developers鈥� jobs may be relatively safe because replacing them en masse with AI would require 鈥渙rders of magnitude more compute intensity鈥� than the industry has. Alex Kotran, CEO of the , noted that job postings for software engineers are actually up 11%.

鈥淪omething that I just want to shout from the rooftops, is, 鈥榃e really don’t know what is about to happen,鈥� 鈥� he said.

That uncertainty, it turns out, is what Meghji is emphasizing as Code.org shifts direction. 

Yes, AI seems miraculous and it鈥檚 improving quickly. But it also fumbles on occasion, , and generally threatening to on the world. Meghji invoked the notion of AI鈥檚 鈥�,鈥� which describes its strange, counterintuitive competence in complex processes 鈥� but that can also fumble . 

For Meghji, a veteran consultant and technologist who most recently was Code.org鈥檚 chief product officer, that jaggedness is exactly why teaching computer science matters now: 鈥淭he further we move away from how these systems work 鈥� the further we abstract away from what’s happening under the hood 鈥� the more important it is that students learn foundational CS and computational thinking concepts,鈥� he said.

When AI shows its fallibility, he suggested, educators should view it as a teachable moment.

As it rebuilds, his organization plans to keep coding at its center while weaving AI into instruction, Meghji said. It has replaced its well-known 鈥溾�� with an Hour of AI, and it鈥檚 developing an 鈥淎I Foundations鈥� course for high school students, due this fall, in which students use AI to help build and lay out interactive websites, then use a combination of their own written code and AI-generated code to improve the sites. A middle school curriculum is also planned.

鈥淲e don’t start with AI,鈥� Meghji said. 鈥淲e start with the foundation, teach the principles. Then we introduce AI coding, have students read code that AI is generating, find the issues, and hopefully have a higher ceiling 鈥� both in terms of their creative output, their agency, and what they鈥檙e producing.鈥� He estimates that where previously perhaps five out of every 100 students built something genuinely impressive, AI tools could raise that to 30 or 40.

He鈥檚 also tweaking the organization’s business model. With philanthropic funding down sharply, Meghji said, he鈥檚 exploring whether Code.org can generate earned income through curriculum offerings tied to dual-credit and career and technical education pathways, models where public funding could help students earn technical credentials. He wants its curriculum to remain free for students but is exploring state and federal funding to underwrite it.

鈥楢 fool’s errand in any field鈥�

Meghji is also eager to correct a misconception that he believes was never really Code.org’s message: the idea that learning to code was to a six-figure salary. 

鈥淥ur message was not, 鈥楬ey, come to Code.org, take computer science, and you’re going to write your ticket,鈥欌�� he said. 鈥淲e’ve always been of the mindset that every student deserves the right to learn the foundations of how technology works.鈥�

Baskin, the former computer science teacher, said he wishes that distinction had been drawn more sharply from the beginning.聽

鈥淚f I could go back in time, I would try to keep the movement from explicitly linking computer science to short-term career outcomes, because that’s a fool’s errand in any field,鈥� he said. 鈥淣o one knows what the jobs of the future will be like, and if they did, they’d be very, very rich. It’s about preparing students for the things we don’t know that are coming and giving them the broadest opportunity to engage in what is meaningful to them.鈥�

aiEDU鈥檚 Kotran made a similar case, arguing that computer science should sit 鈥渁longside reading and writing and math and science,鈥� not as vocational training but as the place where students practice so-called 鈥渄urable skills鈥� such as collaboration, design thinking, productive struggle and iteration. 

He worries about the consequences if schools abandon the field entirely. 鈥淚f we turn our backs to computer science, you’re going to have this deviation where kids who have access to those learning experiences are just going to be on a separate track,鈥� he said, with access to knowledge that others don鈥檛 have. That鈥檒l worsen inequality.

The strongest case an organization like Code.org can make, Kotran said, is actually a counterintuitive one: That AI, the very technology threatening to upend coding careers, might actually help recruit the next generation of computer scientists.

Despite the appealing creation myths embedded in Code.org鈥檚 famous intro video, he said most young people who study computer science must put in upwards of two years before they get to a place 鈥渨here you could build something that’s actually cool.鈥� But many students never made it that far. With AI, the time horizon shrinks: 鈥淵our first class is like, 鈥極K, let’s vibe-code something. Think of a problem you want to solve that’s relevant to you 鈥� finding the right makeup, predicting fashion trends, sports data analytics, whatever,鈥欌�� he said. 

Students build something, but to further develop it, they need to go deeper and understand the code behind the vibe. Code.org and groups like it could open that experience up to students for the first time. 鈥淚 don’t think we ever had something that powerful before,鈥� he said. 鈥淎nd if we wield it right, we can actually start to reach kids who don’t think of themselves as CS kids.鈥�

Updated: This story has been updated to reflect the most recently released funding figures for Code.org.

Applications are expected to open in 2027 for the Khan TED Institute, a joint project of Khan Academy, TED 鈥� the purveyors of the popular TED Talks 鈥� and the Educational Testing Service.

鈥淚 think there’s always been, frankly, some need for a program like this,鈥� said Khan Academy founder Sal Khan. Many people, he said, can鈥檛 afford a college degree or can鈥檛 take the time out of their work lives to attend four years of classes. 鈥淚t could be that they have pursued a degree, but it’s not giving the signal that would give them the opportunities that they would want.鈥�

Another founder, Amit Sevak, who leads ETS, acknowledged that they are still working out many of the details, but that the new institution could someday enroll 鈥渢ens of thousands鈥� of students, rivaling flagship state universities. Sevak said he鈥檚 鈥�100%鈥� anticipating that its instructors will be humans, most likely a large network of adjuncts.

鈥淲e still believe in the value of a human teacher,鈥� he said. 鈥淲e think that there’s so much socialization and collaboration that takes place [in the classroom]. There’s also the classic need for classroom management and some pedagogical oversight over the assessments.鈥�

Here are five things you need to know about the new enterprise:

1. It鈥檒l offer a bachelor’s degree in applied AI in various fields such as business, marketing, human resources, healthcare and more.聽

The college will offer a full undergraduate bachelor’s degree organized around three pillars: core academic knowledge 鈥� math, statistics, economics, computer science, science, history and writing 鈥� applied AI skills and 鈥渄urable鈥� human skills such as communication, leadership, collaboration, peer tutoring and public speaking. 

Early employer partners include Microsoft, Google and , an AI app development site.

2. It鈥檚 expected to be competency-based, cost less than $10,000 and take as little as half the time of a traditional bachelor鈥檚 degree.

The college鈥檚 founding partners say its total cost will likely be under $10,000, a fraction of the of a four-year degree.

Rather than requiring four years of seat time, Sevak said, the institute is built around a competency-based model, offering students the opportunity to advance when they demonstrate mastery. That means students could potentially complete the degree in two to three years, he said, depending on how quickly they demonstrate required competencies.

That opens it up to many different kinds of students, he said, including motivated high schoolers who want to earn undergraduate credits quickly before graduation, working adults seeking advancement in their jobs and students already enrolled in traditional colleges who want to stack an AI credential on top of their existing undergraduate credits.

Khan said the new college 鈥渋s something I鈥檝e thought about doing in some way, shape or form, for many years, and the changes within the job market, because of AI, only accelerated that.鈥�

He said the idea came out of conversations with TED chairman about a year and a half ago. 鈥淲e started saying, 鈥業t feels like there’s something powerful between Khan Academy and TED. We’re both learning organizations. Khan Academy is known for academic learning from K-through-14. TED is known as [embodying] lifelong learning. And it’s about human connection. And it feels like we both have fairly unique brands in the not-for-profit space and the education space.鈥欌��

Khan later spoke at an ETS trustees dinner and got to know Sevak.

鈥淭hey’ve been looking at the same things,鈥� he said, 鈥渁nd they’ve also come up with a framework on durable skills and thinking about ways to assess them. And we realized, 鈥楲ook, the world needs this. And if the three of us come together, this will be very credible and hopefully has a high chance of helping a lot of people.鈥欌��

3. It鈥檚 an 鈥淎I-first鈥� institution, weaving artificial intelligence into how courses are designed, taught and assessed.

Sivak said courses will be shaped by AI and teaching will be supported by AI agents, software systems that can tutor students, answer questions and provide feedback. And students will be prepared for work in 鈥淎I-native鈥� environments.

Instruction will likely be 100% online at the college鈥檚 launch, with an emphasis on asynchronous coursework to accommodate students in different time zones and life circumstances. Over time, Sevak said, they鈥檒l likely explore a hybrid format.

4. Khan Academy will provide the college鈥檚 learning platform and pedagogical infrastructure, despite its founder鈥檚 tempered enthusiasm about AI and learning.

TED, the conference organization best known for its short, , will incorporate its content into the curriculum, giving students access to live talks, Q&A sessions and community-based learning with TED speakers.

And ETS, the testing and measurement organization that produces the GRE and TOEFL tests, will contribute its assessment expertise, said Sevak.

Khan Academy, the popular free tutoring website, which has about and operates its own , will offer its technology to deliver the college鈥檚 coursework, organizers said. Khan, who founded it in 2008, will hold the title of 鈥淭ED Vision Steward鈥� in the new partnership.

The announcement comes just a few days after Khan told Chalkbeat that the learning revolution he predicted in 2023, upon Khanmigo鈥檚 release, .

In September 2022, Khan and Kristen DiCerbo, the organization鈥檚 chief learning officer, were among the first people outside of Open AI to get access to GPT-4, the large language model that at the time powered ChatGPT. Their experiments gave rise to a revolution in Khan鈥檚 thinking: In 2023, he delivered a TED Talk in which he predicted 鈥渢he biggest positive transformation that education has ever seen,鈥� saying we鈥檇 soon be able to give 鈥渆very student on the planet an artificially intelligent but amazing personal tutor.鈥�

In 2024, Khan鈥檚 book, , bore the subtitle 鈥淗ow AI Will Revolutionize Education.鈥� 

But more than three years after Khanmigo鈥檚 launch, Khan admitted, 鈥淔or a lot of students, it was a non-event. They just didn鈥檛 use it much.鈥�

A few students, he said, have used the AI chatbot readily, while others haven鈥檛. AI tutoring, he concluded, doesn鈥檛 necessarily motivate students to learn or fill in knowledge gaps they need to learn more. He鈥檚 still optimistic about AI in education, but also sees its limits. 鈥滻 just view it as part of the solution,鈥� he said. 鈥淚 don鈥檛 view it as the end-all and be-all.鈥�

On Monday, Khan told 社区黑料 that AI is 鈥渏ust going to be part of our arsenal to help make more engaging tools. Maybe we鈥檒l be able to give more rich assessment practice. Instead of having multiple-choice questions, you can start to have 鈥榚xplain your thinking鈥� [questions]. So it starts to open up the aperture.鈥�

5. It鈥檚 very much a work in progress.

Speaking four days before the launch, Sevak admitted that nearly everything about the venture 鈥渋s still evolving,鈥� and that the team is 鈥渨orkshopping the pedagogical design鈥� of the new college.

Sevak said the institute is in talks with regional and national organizations that can offer 鈥渢he highest form of accreditation,” a step that would set it apart from a growing number of online certificates, micro-credentials and boot camps. 

鈥淲e’re really in the early days, and it’s just going to take some time for us to adapt,鈥� he said. 

The college鈥檚 curriculum isn鈥檛 yet finalized and applications are 12 to 18 months away. Likewise, the specific structure of its hybrid and asynchronous models, its faculty roster and the full range of majors are all still in development.

鈥淥ur intention is, over time, to have a whole range of specializations,鈥� said Sevak. But the program鈥檚 core is designed to prepare students 鈥渢o be really AI-centric鈥� for a new reality. 鈥淲e’re seeing [AI] as ripping through the economy,鈥� creating a lot of uncertainty for young people. 

More to the point, said Khan, 鈥淲ork is changing very fast. AI is changing everything.鈥�

In , Whorton, president of the Texas nonprofit , argues that the traditional framework of principal, assistant principal and teacher no longer works, as educators are forced to handle increasing demands and responsibilities. Instead, she proposes a four-level leadership model: a school leader who sets the school鈥檚 vision, long-term priorities and strategies for continuous improvement instead of “coaching teachers and constantly fighting fires”; bridge leaders 鈥� 鈥渢he glue of the school鈥� 鈥� who coach and mentor team leaders, communicate with the school leader and manage building initiatives; team leaders, who are directly responsible for developing and supporting team members, and the team members themselves, who include teachers, librarians, custodians and paraprofessionals. 

Many districts, Whorton says, run into problems when school leaders take on tasks that should be performed by people lower down on the organizational chart. Her proposed structure creates a clear hierarchy and, she says, cuts down on inefficiency and mismanagement. The book explains how districts can implement the four leadership levels effectively and provides examples of schools that have successfully done so, including Lockhart Independent School District near Austin, Texas. She spoke recently with 社区黑料鈥檚 Lauren Wagner.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

When did you begin working on this book, and what inspired you to write it?

I have been working on this book for over three years. I had this realization that, in many ways, we’ve just added more and more to a lot of the jobs that exist in school. That’s true for the principal, it’s true for teachers, and [we鈥檙e] sending this message that if you just work harder and are more skilled, that alone will be enough to meet the challenge that exists in this role. In addition to helping people build the skills that they need, we need to make sure that these jobs are designed in a way that sets them up to succeed. 

Your book presents four levels of leadership. Why is it important to have all four?

The basic idea of the four-level model is that you need enough leadership capacity to do two basic tasks: How do you build the capacity of people, and then how do you deliver results? If you look just at building capacity, the challenge is, you’ve got a principal who thinks that they’re responsible for the development of 40 teachers, and that is a really big task. 

You need a lot more leadership capacity to give teachers the support they need. That is what we call the team leader level, and those are people whose job is primarily to build the capacity of classroom teachers and the staff who work with students. But in a really big school, you [might] have 10 or 12 or 14 team leaders and the principal still has a lot of responsibilities leading the school. And so that argues that you need another layer, which is what we call a bridge leader level, who’s responsible for developing those team leaders. One of the bridge leaders鈥� key responsibilities is coaching and developing those team leaders and making sure that you’ve got a consistent instructional vision. You’re checking to say, “Do we hold a similarly high bar for the students in all of our grades and all of our subjects?” When you don’t have team leaders and bridge leaders, what you have are principals and assistant principals who are stretched way too thin trying to get to every teacher and are not able to do the work of being future-focused and leading the school. And you have a bunch of teachers who are not getting the coaching, the support, the development that they need. And I think we see that showing up in teacher turnover across the country.

Have school districts always lacked an efficient leadership structure like the one you describe in your book?

The structure of school leadership overall has changed very little in the last 50 years. But the expectations and the demands on leadership have changed dramatically. Prior to No Child Left Behind in 2001, the role of the principal was building manager. It was less focused on being in teachers’ classrooms and driving instructional practice. There was a big shift post-2001 to make principals more responsible for the work of instructional leadership. To be clear, the idea that a principal should be an expert in instruction and should be responsible for the outcomes of a school is a great thing, but as we made that shift, we’ve added a lot more expectations to what school leaders and administrators should be doing, without creating more leadership capacity or taking anything off their plate. 

You could tell the same story at the teacher level. The shift that we’re seeing with the teaching profession has been playing out since COVID, but if you go back to the recession in 2009, that鈥檚 when you started seeing a change in young people’s interest in getting education degrees. I think [it鈥檚] the new wave of pressure that’s going to hit school leadership structures, because we need to get back to a place where people want to be teachers. But in the meantime, we have a teaching profession that’s pretty inexperienced and didn’t get the kind of training and support before they entered the classroom that we might have wanted. And we have to make sure school leadership structures are built to give those folks the support that they need to become great and to stay in the profession.

Much of your book is centered around how to help districts implement the four-level leadership framework. How would a district dealing with a severe staff shortage move forward?

I’ve been feeling kind of anxious about how challenging financial conditions are for many schools and districts, and whether that would feel like a big barrier to trying to do work like this. When we talk about staffing shortages, we sometimes mean one of two different things. One is a lot of districts that may not have the funds to sustain all the positions that they’ve had in the past. And that’s where a lot of districts and schools are already trying to think creatively about, “How do we better utilize the positions that we have?” I do think this framework, this book, can be a resource for them. The other form of staffing shortages are folks who are struggling to find enough teachers to fill all the classrooms that they have. And I would argue this is where class sizes do come into play. Slightly bigger class sizes do reduce the number of teachers you need in order to have the strongest teachers that you can have, because you reduce that demand and are able to invest in things like time for those teachers to develop coaching and support.

How long might it take the average district to transform its leadership structure?

The answer will depend a little bit on the size of the district. But to get things right and for them to stick, people need to be a part of the change. So spending time on the front end 鈥� getting clear on what you’re trying to achieve, allowing a broad group of people to be a part of shaping that vision 鈥� we think that is really important. I continue to admire the tenacity, the creativity, the courage and the resilience of our educators. My greatest hope is that this book will be an encouragement to them and there will be something in it that they can use to improve their practice, feel more effective, find more sustainability in their roles, and that these ideas may unlock new visions for them of how they could utilize the people in their system. 

Cinco de Mayo commemorates a Mexican victory over French invaders, but May 5, 1862, is also an important day for the United States.

On this day, our country was in the throes of the Civil War. Battles raged in Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky. If Napoleon III鈥檚 French army had been successful in Mexico, it might have spelled doom for the Union and their efforts to abolish slavery. The Confederates were actively seeking a European ally on their southern border, and some historians believe that Napoleon III would have advanced to the United States after taking Mexico. So when the Mexicans defeated the French at the Battle of Puebla (what we now call Cinco de Mayo), the Union celebrated.

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This related history is rarely taught in schools, but as a children鈥檚 author and historian, I knew I had to bring this moment alive for today鈥檚 students. Through a trio of time-traveling children and their intrepid quest to find a magic sword, my latest book tells the story of Cinco de Mayo as it needs to be told: as a triumph for freedom in all the Americas.

What students learn from Cinco de Mayo is that our democracy depends on other countries. When they know that history, they know that isolating our nation doesn鈥檛 put America first 鈥� it leaves us behind. We are all connected, and history teaches that the U.S. does best when we work with, and not against, our neighbors.

By designating English as the official language and renaming the Gulf of Mexico, the current administration makes Latin America seem distant and unfamiliar. But Cinco de Mayo reminds us that we shared a common vision of freedom with this region.

My young protagonists have a time-traveling aunt, who after the Battle of Puebla tells them about the victory鈥檚 layered meaning: 鈥淎merica can be a land of republics,鈥� she says. 鈥淚t means Latinos can govern themselves. It means the underdog can win.鈥�

As my characters witness the strife unfolding in the United States and Mexico, one of them muses on her admiration for those who fought for a world 鈥渨here kings and queens live in fairy tales, not in government houses.鈥�

When we take a hemispheric approach to history 鈥� meaning when we study what was happening throughout the Americas and not just in one country 鈥� it makes sense why Cinco de Mayo is perennially popular. Early Cinco de Mayo parties in the United States displayed the flags of Mexico, the United States, Chile, and Peru, which were the leading republics at that time.

It is clear that we owe our freedom today to the soldiers and leaders who stood up to the threats of wealthy planters and a self-declared emperor from overseas. The Union army included many immigrants and children of immigrants as well as Black and Native American soldiers. And the Mexican army had soldiers of mixed heritage 鈥� mestizos 鈥� as well as Indigenous peoples. Those who fought for liberty were not a monolith, but they shared a democratic ideal.

The upper elementary and middle school years are the perfect time to learn about democracy. Kids this age generally feel restricted by grown-ups, so they intuitively understand the worth of independence. They get that monarchies are bad, and given how eager the students are to make their small voices heard, they understand that living in a democracy is precious.

In my recent trips to schools to read the book, I try to build on children鈥檚 instinctive sense of justice. When teaching them about France trying to recolonize Mexico, I remind them that the country had already become independent at the time of the incursion.

鈥淭hat鈥檚 not fair!鈥� at least one or two students in every school group shout. 鈥淓xactly,鈥� I say, reinforcing the importance of the rule of law.

We cannot expect children to care about democracy if we never teach them about it in more than just an abstract way. But through fiction, we can take young readers to the most critical moments in history and show them the turning points that shaped the United States and nations around us. They will learn that wherever we are in the Americas, we depend on one another for our freedom.

The focus of the executive order, though, was more troubling than its title: It directed the secretary of education to facilitate the closure of the U.S. Department of Education. Many have written, including here at 社区黑料, about concerns with the order鈥檚 implications for our education system, especially for the most vulnerable students. I share many of those concerns.

Eliminating expertise and capacity within the department will not magically enable states to do a better job to improve education, as those in states often count on federal support and guidance to enhance quality. 

The order鈥檚 explicit acknowledgement of parents and communities compelled me to write this commentary. Our work at the National Association for Family, School and Community Engagement advances policies, practices, and research to promote family-school partnerships that support student achievement. Family and community engagement is one of the strongest predictors of student success. 

Moreover, improving the degree to which education institutions partner with families and communities creates conditions that improve other factors like teacher recruitment and retention, family and community well-being, and overall school improvement. 

Despite its importance, high-quality family and community engagement is usually an afterthought in many policy conversations. In general, there are not enough resources to carry out this work. More is needed to bolster everything from teacher preparation for family engagement to training and services directly to families. 

Many of the most important programs that foster authentic family and community engagement come directly from the federal government. For example, Title 1 provides funding to low-income schools in both rural and urban communities and includes funds specifically dedicated to family engagement. Full-Service Community Schools grants support active family and community engagement as one of the four requirements. 

Federal grants fund Statewide Family Engagement Centers in 19 states and Parent Training and Information Centers in all states, programs that have been crucial in elevating statewide work that better links schools to families and their communities. These programs are prime examples of initiatives that should not only be sustained but expanded. Although I am relieved they have not yet been defunded, initiatives such as these now face a huge amount of uncertainty. 

There is a nonpartisan and common desire to better connect schools, families, and communities in authentic ways based on shared power, trust, and accountability. It is also widely agreed that schools, and the education system more broadly, can do a lot more to support these relationships. 

However, in some cases, exclusionary practices are draped in the cloak of family engagement or parents鈥� rights, which pit families against each other and against schools or otherwise inappropriately frame family engagement as a 鈥渨atchdog鈥� exercise resulting in censorship and fear of retribution. These narratives misrepresent family engagement. Instead, prioritizing deeply-rooted connections among the various stakeholders would go a long way to building a system where all students are better served. 

All this being said, I am not naive. As aptly identified by many others, threats to a department focused on ensuring quality education for all students leave me apprehensive.

The order鈥檚 proponents argue that these programs can be easily administered outside the Department of Education. However, it is doubtful that shifting administrative responsibility for education programs to other downsized departments will be smooth and more efficient. 

Worse still, there鈥檚 not yet a clearly articulated plan to develop the necessary knowledge or infrastructure to ensure these programs could continue to succeed outside of the Education Department, especially considering that resources, capacity and staff expertise have recently been substantially reduced. The lack of concrete details and the growing uncertainty around these changes leaves more questions than answers.It is my hope that the order鈥檚 title is not made up of hollow words and instead reflects an increased focus on family and community engagement in education, especially as it translates into funding, policies, and programs that support this work. While I acknowledge much of the responsibility for education lies with state and local governments, we have a collective responsibility as a country to guarantee that all students鈥攆rom urban Miami to rural Montana鈥攈ave access to a high-quality public education. That is what the Department of Education was founded on, and what we must ensure remains a priority moving forward.

The proximate cause of the political fracas is a in Chicago Public Schools鈥� annual budget, driven primarily by the drying up of federal pandemic relief dollars. But funding challenges in the Windy City are downstream of a concerning reality: Chicago is increasingly beholden to the wishes of its teachers union. This is especially the case under the leadership of Mayor Brandon Johnson, who spent a decade as an organizer for the CTU and ascended to the mayoralty with its backing. At the helm of the city, Johnson has been willing to bend over backward to put his union sympathies into policy. A since-retired reporter Chicago Magazine editor Edward McClelland that CTU President Stacy Davis Gates 鈥�made Brandon Johnson.鈥� Now, 鈥淪tacy Davis Gates owns Brandon Johnson.鈥� 

Former U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D) a similar sentiment: 鈥淲e have a new political machine [in Chicago], and it鈥檚 called the CTU, and its vassal is Mayor Johnson.鈥�

The previous board鈥檚 resignations marked the apex of the tensions that have been simmering between it and Johnson ever since the board a controversial $9.9 billion budget in July. In addition, the board has sided with CPS CEO Pedro Martinez in opposing a $300 million short-term, high-interest loan to pay for the expensive raises sought by the CTU, which is negotiating a new contract with the board. After Johnson鈥檚 hardball move, there鈥檚 little question that the union鈥檚 negotiators are breathing a sigh of relief. In the memorable words of Chicago Magazine鈥檚 McClelland, following the board鈥檚 resignations, 鈥淢ayor CTU will appoint a set of lackeys, brownnosers, and apple polishers who will carry out the Chicago Teachers Union鈥檚 program鈥� 鈥� fire Martinez, take out the loan, and use the money to hand out for teachers.

Indeed, it鈥檚 clear that Johnson鈥檚 recent school board moves align well with the CTU鈥檚 positions. The union, which is toward Martinez, wants him gone. But the school board, which was almost entirely hand-picked by Johnson himself, refused to play along because it recognized the irresponsibility of taking on a risky loan.

It鈥檚 worth dwelling a bit on the financial situation of CPS. It can be boiled down to two words: not good. The school board a $9.9 billion budget in July that money for the contract that the board is currently negotiating with the CTU, which typically $100 million to $120 million annually to the district鈥檚 operating costs, nor a non-teaching-staff pension payment that will cost the district $175 million. 

These two expenses culminated in the roughly $300 million gap mentioned above. Mayor Johnson has pushed the school board and Martinez to take out a loan to close this gap, but because CPS bonds are 鈥渏unk鈥� rated, the interest payments on the loan would likely be exorbitant. Indeed, CPS is already $9.3 billion in debt, and principal and interest payments on outstanding debt 鈥� the debt that exists before this potential new loan would take effect 鈥� will $817 million this year alone. When Johnson first floated the idea of taking out a loan in July, an internal CPS memo by Chalkbeat called it a 鈥渇ictional or phantom revenue source.鈥�

An apparent lack of adequate state funding may also be at play here. In 2017, Illinois changed its to better fund historically under-resourced districts. Under the reformed funding formula, CPS 79% of its required funding this year the district鈥檚 recent increase in English language learners and a decrease in local revenue, both of which increased the required funding per the state鈥檚 formula. 

Lurking in the background of this shortfall is the between Johnson and Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker, providing fertile ground for the conspiracy-minded to suspect that the governor is holding back funding from Chicago鈥檚 schools out of personal pettiness. But the reality is more prosaic: in Illinois are even worse off than Chicago, including the 49 of them that are funded below 70%of what the state formula says they need. This suggests that Chicago is not being squashed by gubernatorial caprices. In the words of one person close to CPS, 鈥淚 think that the union thought, once Brandon [Johnson] got elected, that they鈥檇 be able to walk into Springfield and get whatever they wanted. . . . But there鈥檚 no money, especially after ESSER funds have expired.鈥�

Still, Chicago spends a lot of money each year on education. Per-student operating expenses in FY 22 $24,132, roughly double the . Moreover, as Chad Aldeman wrote last month, CPS has added thousands of personnel at the same time that enrollment in the district has been declining. 鈥淏udgeting decisions like these would be anathema in any other industry,鈥� argues Aldeman, 鈥渨here leaders normally try to match up the number of employees with customer demand.鈥� But 鈥淐hicago Public Schools is doing the opposite.鈥� 

Indeed, Aldeman notes that the district 鈥渃hose to invest 92% of its one-time relief funds in full-time school employees,鈥� a decision that greatly benefited the CTU鈥檚 members 鈥� and, by extension, CTU鈥檚 coffers.

But 鈥淢ayor CTU鈥� refuses to countenance worries about the CPS鈥檚 dire financial straits. In the press conference during which Johnson announced the board鈥檚 new appointees 鈥� which local news outlets have described as 鈥溾�� and 鈥溾�� 鈥� he compared those raising concerns about fiscal responsibility to slaveholders. 鈥淭hey said it would be fiscally irresponsible for this country to liberate Black people,鈥� Johnson argued. 鈥淎nd now you have detractors making the same argument of the Confederacy when it comes to public education in this system.鈥�

One can hardly blame the CTU for its insistence that its members receive generous raises, financial considerations be damned. The first concern of a union, after all, is simple: to act in the best interests of its members. But Brandon Johnson deserves less sympathy. In a time of unprecedented financial chaos for the school district, Mayor Johnson is acting in the interests not of Chicago as a whole but of the CTU. This is not to suggest that Johnson is a stooge of the union. Johnson strikes this observer as a full-throated advocate for the cause on which he rose to power, which is why the CTU funded him so generously in the first place; the arrow of causality does not point in the opposite direction.

Still, Johnson should know better than to jeopardize the financial health of the city鈥檚 school system in order to push forward the interests of just one of his many constituencies. In contrast, Chicago voters delivered a strong anti-union verdict in last week鈥檚 elections, as just four of the 10 school-board candidates elected were backed by the CTU. 

Perhaps this is a sign that Chicagoans have recognized the peril of being beholden to the union.

Their calls have been mounting for decades, but the remarks marked a milestone: the first time a U.S. President ever acknowledged and apologized for the system where federal agents removed children from their parents, often at gunpoint, sending them to schools thousands of miles from home, stripping families of their language and culture.

The exact number of children who were forced into boarding schools in the U.S. for over 150 years is unknown, due to poor record keeping, but nearly 19,000 have been confirmed. Physical, sexual and psychological abuse was rampant at the schools often run by religious institutions. Some children were referred to only as numbers, pre-teen girls were raped and sent home pregnant. Thousands never returned home.

Addressing the public on the Gila River Reservation outside of Phoenix, Arizona on October 25, President Joe Biden fulfilled a long-delayed promise to visit Indian country and called the boarding school system a 鈥渟in on our soul,鈥� adding there was 鈥渘o excuse鈥� for how long-overdue the acknowledgement was and that 鈥渘o apology can or will make up for what was lost during the darkness of the federal boarding school policy. But today, we鈥檙e finally moving forward into the light.鈥�
The timing of the visit has also been noted as a to to cast votes for Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris. But many Native Americans are by government inaction to adequately protect lands, provide access to quality education and healthcare, and enact an .

Survivors and descendants both acknowledge how meaningful Biden鈥檚 speech was after centuries of fighting for recognition from the federal government, and call on the administration to act swiftly on the apology. 

鈥淚n his last two weeks in office, we demand that President Biden also pass S.1723/H.R.7227: The Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies Act,鈥� said the Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, a nonprofit that has worked with survivors and Tribal leaders for over a decade to educate about the system and facilitate repatriations.聽

The legislation would provide a path for investing in language and culture revitalization efforts, educating the American public on the system via museums or curricula, and establishing trauma-informed mental health resources. 

It would also enable subpoenas to be used to investigate the scale of the system: Catholic entities have been able to hold onto private records for decades, some of which contain the only known photographs or remnants of survivors鈥� ancestors. Reintroduced in both the Senate and House last year, the bill has yet to reach a vote. 

The mental and physical health concerns of survivors and lack of widespread reconciliation reached national spotlight earlier this year when the Interior Department released its final on the system, which revealed at least 1,000 Indigenous children died or were killed. The schools operated using over $23 billion federal dollars, adjusted for inflation. 

Thousands were subject to child labor to operate facilities and be 鈥渙uted,鈥� working without wage for white families near the schools.

Angelique Albert, a member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes and chief executive of the nation鈥檚 largest direct scholarship provider for Native students, Native Forward, referred to the boarding schools not as places of education but as places of 鈥渆xtermination.鈥澛�

Just as slavery was used as the tool to harm Black people across the Americas, 鈥渆ducation was the tool to harm us, to assimilate us. That鈥檚 the tool where we lost our children,鈥� Albert said, adding that the apology is a testament to the work done by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, the nation鈥檚 first Native American cabinet member and former recipient of their scholarships, to unearth survivor testimony and investigate the system. 

鈥淪he鈥檚 in the very position that implemented the boarding schools. Do you understand? It gives me chills,鈥� Albert said, emphasizing how critical it is for the federal government to maintain close relationships with Tribal nations and put more funding behind college access for Native youth so their voices can be heard in positions they鈥檝e been historically excluded from.聽

While the apology, however late, is a 鈥渃ritical first step in the truth and reconciliation process for Native and Indigenous communities,鈥� Albert stressed, 鈥淚ndian boarding school policies are not a horror of the past 鈥� these institutions operated through 1969, and many Native people who were subjected to these cruel policies are still living today.鈥�

The boarding school system, while the focus of President Biden鈥檚 remarks, was not the only widespread, forced removal of Native children. Throughout the 60s and 70s, over a third were removed from their families and overwhelmingly placed in non-Indian homes after discriminatory welfare investigations. 

In Washington, Native children were placed in foster care and adopted at rates 19 times greater than their peers. The practice was widespread until 1978鈥檚 Indian Child Welfare Act was passed by Congress, who stated 鈥渨holesale separation of Indian children from their families is perhaps the most tragic and destructive aspect of American Indian life today.鈥� 

Native populations now face , including the highest rates of substance abuse, suicidal ideation and chronic illnesses, which researchers have linked to centuries of genocide, disinvestment and generational trauma. 

Following Biden鈥檚 address, an Indigenous collective gathered to pray, mourn, sing and in South Dakota, on the lands of what will soon be the , a 鈥渃ulture-based school鈥� for Lakota, Dakota and Nakota children.

鈥�, we took to the land and reminded the world that we are the children of survivors 鈥� We will honor our ancestors by holding this country accountable for what it has done to our people,鈥� NDN Collective president Nick Tilsen said in a release. 鈥淭he U.S. government tried to exterminate and erase us. We will continue to remind them they have failed at doing so, and the warrior spirit of our ancestors lives in all of us.鈥� 

Historically, the majority of this funding was only available to students who were low income, had special needs or attended poorly performing public schools. 

Over the past three years, that鈥檚 shifted: Today, at least 33 states offer private school choice programs, and of those 12 are 鈥渦niversal,鈥� meaning any student, regardless of income or need, can apply for government funding to subsidize private, religious and 鈥� in some cases 鈥� home schools. 

Comprehensive analysis of the scale of these initiatives and their implications 鈥� both for students and state budgets 鈥� has been sparse. But a released earlier this month by , a research think tank based at Georgetown鈥檚 School of Public Policy, looks to change that. 

Policy Director Liz Cohen and analyst Bella DiMarco studied the evolution of established or emerging universal programs during the 2023-24 school year across eight states: Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Indiana, Ohio, Oklahoma, and West Virginia. 

Their research comes on the eve of an election where school choice measures are on the ballot in three additional states and when disagreement continues to spark over whether these programs give freedom and choice to families who have been historically locked out of private schooling or are part of a larger movement meant to undermine and defund public schools. 

FutureEd鈥檚 major finding about how universal choice has played out so far? 鈥淧olicy design really matters,鈥� Cohen said, in an interview with 社区黑料.

While all of the studied programs are universal in that anyone can apply, whether families end up actually receiving money, how much they receive and what accountability measures the participating schools are held to varies greatly state by state. 

They calculated that in total, 569,000 students received subsidies across these states, representing 55% of the students attending private schools with public funding and costing taxpayers an estimated $4 billion. About 40% of the nation鈥檚 50 million elementary and secondary students are now eligible.

Here are five key takeaways.

鈥淯niversal鈥� is not necessarily universal, and no two states鈥� policies look the same. 

鈥淲e talk about [universal programs] as such a monolithic thing,鈥� said DiMarco. 鈥淚 expected there to be more similarities between the programs and to see more similarities in the data. But that just wasn’t necessarily the case.鈥� 

In Ohio for example, families receive funding on a sliding scale based on need, private schools can鈥檛 charge low-income families more than what they receive from the state and participating private schools must use the same graduation requirements.

On the other end of the spectrum, in Florida and Arizona no student who applies for funding is turned down and participating private schools don鈥檛 need to be accredited. 

鈥淚f you listen to the sort of politically charged descriptions of these initiatives you get one fairly stilted perspective鈥� both from proponents and opponents of these,鈥� said Nat Malkus, the deputy director of education policy at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute. 鈥淎nd when you look at them piece by piece, there鈥檚 a good bit of daylight between the arrangements from one city to the next.鈥�

But there are a few overarching themes, some of which shouldn鈥檛 come as a surprise.

All states give participating families similar amounts of money, with the average award amount coming in at around $7,000, which is approximately 90% to 100% of state per-pupil funding. 

Most states require some sort of accountability testing 鈥� but not all. And most of the students who received the funding across all eight states were already attending private schools.

For example in Arkansas, 64% of students who received funds through the Education Freedom Act in its first year, the 2023-24 school year, were already enrolled in private schools. The majority were students with disabilities. 

鈥淪o much of the attention in general has been paid to the fact that the majority of kids are already in private school,鈥� said Cohen. 鈥淏ut that’s actually the expected outcome if you are giving money to kids to go to private school, and anyone can get it.鈥�

She said the bigger question moving forward is examining if that pattern will persist beyond the first wave of funding.

Josh Cowen, education policy expert and author of said he doesn鈥檛 anticipate the demographics of participating students to shift much over time, meaning he isn’t expecting an exodus of low-income students from struggling public schools to private school alternatives..

鈥淧ut me down for projecting that the next version of this [report] is going to find something very similar and even more stark鈥� [because] no policy that isn鈥檛 directly targeted toward at-risk children or families, will remain primarily benefiting at-risk children or families.鈥�

The income level of participating families is murkier than people think: Well-to-do families are signing up, but so are more modest ones.

While these programs continue to serve predominantly lower- and middle-income families, the researchers found that participation among higher-income families increased last year, in every state where eligibility expanded and data was available.

鈥淥ne of the big sort of headlines you keep seeing around these programs is that it’s all affluent families,鈥� said Cohen. 鈥淎nd I just think the nuance to that is that that’s not actually accurate.鈥�

While it鈥檚 true that there are many more affluent families than in previous means-tested programs, there are still significant numbers of lower-income families who are entering these programs. She pointed to Florida where 30% of families participating are low income. 

DiMarco said they saw a lot of middle-income families taking advantage of the funds who were 鈥渟ort of just above the line鈥� under previous, means-tested programs.

Impacts of funding on state budgets remain unclear.

Because the majority of families who took advantage of this funding were not coming from public schools 鈥� and therefore not bringing their per pupil public funding with them 鈥� these subsidies represent a new state-level cost.

鈥淭hey鈥檙e new expenses,鈥� said Cohen, 鈥渨hich could ultimately down the road 鈥� if state lawmakers don鈥檛 really think this through 鈥� end up [putting] states in a position where they have to say, 鈥榃e鈥檙e not going to build this highway 鈥� because we have to pay the bill on this private school choice thing.鈥欌��

Goals of the programs are rarely 鈥� if ever 鈥� clearly stated, making accountability tricky. 

Some states, like Arizona and Oklahoma, have no standardized testing requirements or other performance metrics, making it, 鈥渘early impossible to gauge how much learning is taking place under the state鈥檚 private school choice programs,鈥� according to the report.

Other states do have more stringent requirements, although Florida is the only state the researchers studied which has mandated funding to evaluate academic performance of participating students.

鈥淭he step it feels like a lot of these states skipped is identifying a clear goal for the program and then a clear metric of how you鈥檒l know if you achieved your goal,鈥� said Cohen. 鈥淎nd without stating those things up front, what are we even trying to measure?鈥�

Malkus sees more of an effort to track student outcomes, though he emphasized additional data would help parents make better-informed choices. 

鈥淚 don鈥檛 think the testing requirements are as strict as some people would like them,鈥� he said, 鈥渂ut the idea that there鈥檚 zero accountability for these isn鈥檛 true either. It鈥檚 somewhere in the messy middle.鈥�

In a signed letter attached to today鈥檚 鈥淥urs to Solve, Once 鈥� and For All鈥� report, the six-member council (Jean-Claude Brizard, Mitch Daniels, Chris Howard, Andrew Luck, Frances Messano and Condoleezza Rice) writes that it identified 鈥渇undamental barriers鈥� to student equity and success within the current school system. 鈥淒espite our national commitment to the issue, steep increases in funding, and decades of reform efforts, our current system has been unable to offset poor student outcomes 鈥� particularly for minority and low-income students,鈥� the introduction to the report says. 鈥淭his failure goes against who we profess to be as a nation.鈥�

Hoover Institution Director and Council Co-Chair Condoleezza Rice went a step further in a Tuesday statement, framing the issue through the lens of national stability: 鈥淓ducation excellence is critical to the societal contract supporting our democracy and is inextricably tied to the success 鈥� or failure 鈥� of our nation.鈥�

Today鈥檚 report is unique in its focus on broader, system-level reforms. The council criticizes the existing structure of the nation’s education landscape, noting that the local school boards and state and federal agencies that run today’s schools 鈥渁re not the product of coherent and thoughtful design. Rather, they evolved over decades to a point where they hinder more than help the cause of improved outcomes for all students.鈥�

The group also highlights the 鈥減erplexing contradiction鈥� of today鈥檚 public schools, where the current system boasts strong community support, superior research and dedicated teachers and staff, but students鈥� academic outcomes vary widely 鈥� and many of these results are underwhelming. 

鈥淎ccording to virtually every available metric, the overall quality of American schools has either declined or remained stagnant since the 1970s,鈥� the council writes.

On a per-student basis, the U.S. spends 40% more than the average spent by member countries of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the council notes. At the same time, the U.S ranks 34th in math globally on the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) evaluations.

鈥淐hanging the way these institutions are organized and function 鈥� what we call the 鈥榦perating system鈥� of public education 鈥� will raise trust, respect, agency, and empowerment for teachers and principals and will provide essential support from other education leaders,鈥� the group says in the report.

The council recommends four core commitments that they believe will help improve the educational 鈥渙perating system鈥�: Re-organizing the current system toward a new 鈥渢rue north鈥�  that focuses on student outcomes; minimizing regulations and mandates in favor of embracing incentives; cultivating and rewarding professional mastery in the education workforce; and flipping the system 鈥渇rom top-down to bottom-up.鈥�  

鈥淚n the flipped system hierarchy, schools are the apex organization,鈥� writes the council. 鈥淭hey need sufficient discretion to make decisions in situ to manage their own operations and to adapt their efforts to address the needs of their students.鈥�

A Hoover Institution spokesperson said that a dedicated website will accompany the report. Set to launch next month, the hub will offer readers and policymakers additional resources and details. 

A summit is also being scheduled for January at Stanford University, which will aim to bring experts together from across the country to discuss  and debate the findings of the report. 

鈥淲e hope this report builds motivation and commitment for change,鈥� the council members write in their introduction. 鈥淭ogether, we can launch a new approach to address the current state of public education in America, and provide every child the foundational opportunities they deserve.鈥� 

Disclosure: The Hoover Institution provides financial support to 社区黑料.

But in recent years, my home state of Indiana has shown that a better approach is possible by tracking and life-outcome metrics such as income and employment five years after high school graduation. 

Indiana Secretary of Education Dr. Katie Jenner should be commended for these efforts, and more states should emulate this approach. That would nudge schools to tailor their work towards helping students build the skills and mindsets to succeed in life, better meeting the interests of families and community. 

How can schools do this effectively at scale?

One model lies in Christel House International, which for years has been measuring success based on our ability to help students from under-resourced backgrounds achieve economic mobility. Our global network includes no-fee private schools in India, Jamaica, Mexico, and South Africa, and in the U.S., both public charters and schools operated in partnership with Indianapolis Public Schools.

A major component of the Christel House model is our College & Careers program. Every Christel House student is paired with a coach starting in high school to help provide mentorship, guidance, and personalized support in preparing for post-high school education and the workforce. Students also gain valuable career exposure and process those experiences with their coaches, helping them better understand their interests and strengths. 

Critically, the coaches remain with students for five years after graduation so they can help troubleshoot the challenges that come with navigating postsecondary education or the working world. And students are guaranteed access to financial support for five years post-graduation to help address unanticipated life events that can derail progress.

Data on our graduates鈥� outcomes affirms that our approach is working. In our home base of Indianapolis, for example, the Indiana Department of Education reported that across our first four graduating cohorts, Christel House Indianapolis alumni are the second highest income-earners on average among public school graduates in the city five years after high school graduation, and they鈥檙e the top income earners among Indianapolis public schools serving a high percentage of students from low-income backgrounds. Globally, 95% of recent Christel House graduates are employed or in school, and 72% of graduates demonstrate upward economic mobility at age 23. 

We arrived at this approach based on our longstanding mission 鈥� established by our founder, entrepreneur Christel DeHaan 鈥� that schools鈥� role should be elevating the life outcomes of students, especially those who are experiencing poverty. Decades ago, our inaugural high school graduates performed well academically, but some of them struggled to successfully transition to life beyond high school. We knew we needed to revise our approach to better support their success, and we have been refining our model ever since. 

We still have room to grow. For example, while our U.S. students鈥� average annual incomes of approximately $37,000 five years after graduation help them achieve livable wages relative to median income in Indiana, we aim to elevate that average so that students who graduate from our schools feel financially secure sooner. A 2023 survey revealed that 76% of Christel House Indianapolis graduates feel comfortable paying their bills each month, but only 43% have savings to cover a large, unexpected expense. 

In efforts to improve education, it鈥檚 critical not to lose sight of our original goal: helping students build a good, successful, and productive life. That鈥檚 why Christel House expanded its College & Careers program into four schools outside of our network for the first time this year, with $1.5 million in public and private funding. More states should put funding behind this outcomes-oriented approach, which would yield a great return on a modest public investment. 

The more we look at data that measures life outcomes, the more we can design interventions that put students鈥� long-term success at the center. That will produce an immense positive outcome for our education system 鈥� and the students who most need our support.

On a recent afternoon, Caroline Able, a first-grade teacher at North Frederick Elementary School in Frederick County, Maryland, sat in a small office with her principal, Tracy Poquette, carefully practicing the next day鈥檚 math lesson.

Able, who is in her third year teaching, walked through each step, demonstrating how she was going to present comparisons between two numbers, then what students would do. She sometimes stopped to focus on granular details: Should she go over math vocabulary words like sum and difference beforehand, or will her students remember what they mean? Should students write down problems and answers in notebooks, or on mini-whiteboards?

Poquette recommended the whiteboards. 鈥淵ou鈥檙e going to ask them to hold them up,鈥� Poquette coached Able, miming holding a whiteboard in the air. 鈥淭hen you can see their answers, and how they got to that. Every student is responding.鈥� 

Giving students multiple chances to 鈥渞espond,鈥� or provide answers, is a learning strategy , and part of why Able is here 鈥� to ensure that she鈥檚 incorporating evidence-based practices into her teaching. The sessions are meant to accelerate student learning and take some of the guesswork out of becoming an effective teacher, part of a larger district plan to incorporate research from the fields of neuroscience, educational psychology and cognitive science 鈥� often referred together broadly as the 鈥榮cience of learning.鈥�

Frederick County, situated about 50 miles north of Washington, D.C., and 50 miles west of Baltimore, is a diverse district , and one of only a handful to use learning science research to try to improve schools at scale. Launched in 2015, it鈥檚 the centerpiece of a school improvement plan, and leaders say the goal is to raise academic achievement overall, as well as shrink stubborn gaps between more advantaged students and their less advantaged peers. 

鈥淎s a district, we鈥檝e been talking about achievement gaps for a long time,鈥� said Margaret Lee, Frederick County鈥檚 director of organizational development who has led the charge toward the science of learning. 鈥淚鈥檝e seen it in every role that I鈥檝e had, always looking at what could make the difference. Like every district in America, every silver bullet that people thought up had been peddled to us. It started to frustrate me that none of these things were making a difference, and that was a catalyst that led us here.鈥� 

The district is seeing steady progress in a positive direction, even when accounting for pandemic-related learning loss. Third-grade , for example, on the Maryland Comprehensive Assessment Program test, rose from 49.5% proficient in 2018, to 60% proficient in 2023 鈥� 12 points above the state average. In math, students from disadvantaged groups have also seen steady gains. African-American third graders were 38% proficient in 2018, but rose to 43.8% by 2023; over five years, low-income Title I third graders slowly grew from 32% to 37.6% proficient. 

Amid a of learning science and a spotlight on curriculum reform, experts are beginning to look to districts like Frederick County to gauge whether it can be a model for academic improvement. Unlike more common state plans reforming how , or increasing support for struggling students, the Frederick County plan is tackling learning as a whole 鈥� across subjects and grades 鈥� to systematically alter the paradigm of how teaching and learning happens throughout its schools.

Training adults on how the brain learns

Frederick County鈥檚 plan turns on a single premise: who work with kids don鈥檛 know how the brain learns, and haven鈥檛 been exposed to the body of research on which teaching practices are more likely to support it. 

that applying cognitive science principles and strategies to classrooms are 鈥渟ignificant factors affecting rates of learning and its retention in many everyday classroom situations,鈥� with certain caveats regarding the limitations of what scientists currently know about when and where to implement them. But within universities, scientific research on learning has historically been separate from teacher training, and misunderstandings about how learning happens are common in the field of education. They鈥檝e led to such disproven ideas as children having 鈥�,鈥� like being a 鈥渧isual鈥� or 鈥渒inetic鈥� learner, or using the to teach reading, prompting students to try to guess at unfamiliar words using context clues like looking at pictures. 

The district has made educating faculty and staff on cognitive science a top priority. In 2017, Frederick County formed a partnership with and began training teachers, instructional coaches and leaders in the , including an understanding of how memory works and its pivotal role in academic learning; creating classroom environments that reduce obstacles and distractions while maximizing student memory; and creating effective ways to test whether students have learned the needed material.

The training homed in on how to translate findings from cognitive science and educational psychology into classroom practice, including in learning new material, meaning direct instruction heavily guided by the teacher, and why students need to understand what they read and form connections to new learning. Classroom changes also include specific learning strategies like retrieval practice and interleaving, in which teachers go back to learned material in multiple ways, spaced out over time, which has been students鈥� memory of what they learned. 

The training has changed the way the district is approaching content subjects like math. Stacy Sisler, a secondary math curriculum specialist for Frederick County, credits increased knowledge of learning research with steady gains middle schoolers have seen in math across the district. She first learned about the science of learning through the district training, and admits she was initially reluctant to adopt the changes. The more she learned, however, the more Sisler began to think the research made sense, and was applicable to every math classroom.

鈥淎s I started to learn more and gain a deeper understanding, then it became 鈥� how does instruction change because of this?鈥� Sisler said. 鈥淲e don鈥檛 just say it and it magically happens, so what does that actually look like?鈥� 

Under her leadership, curriculum and instructional practices were re-designed to better reflect the research. Middle school math teachers have been trained in practices like teaching math more directly using example problems, checking student work multiple times during class time to gauge student understanding and incorporating more math practice both into each lesson and across lessons. 

Lee said even when considering how hard it often is to pinpoint what caused learning gains, the instructional changes coincided with significant improvements for students in Frederick County. Over five years since implementing the changes, middle school math students鈥� benchmark assessments have grown, in some schools by as much as 20%, especially among students of color and English learners. Over the same five-year period across the state of Maryland, students of color and English learners鈥� math proficiency has declined. In 2023 for example, only 8.2% of Black middle school students were proficient in math, down 8 percentage points from 2018. 

鈥楿sing the time we do have differently鈥�

New teachers across the district are onboarded in a three-year science-of-learning coaching program, which includes lesson coaching like first-grade teacher Caroline Able鈥檚, but also group study. The aim is to give new teachers evidence-informed knowledge and tactics to decrease some of the trial-and-error that comes along with being a beginner. 

First-year eighth-grade math teacher Elizabeth Sypole鈥檚 monthly training is currently focused on evidence-based classroom routines that foster students鈥� attention.

Sypole has learned techniques like , a simple hand motion followed by a pause meant to help students get quiet quickly. Previously unaware of the technique, Sypole said it has been instrumental in her classroom management. 鈥淟iterally within two days of doing it, everybody is quiet. It鈥檚 so much less stressful than trying to get everybody to quiet down. They know exactly what to do now and it鈥檚 just the routine.鈥� 

Leaders get the training, too 鈥� principals, assistant principals and supervisors are focused on equity, and how schools can eliminate learning gaps between groups of students. Kent Wetzel, the district鈥檚 leadership development specialist, trains leaders in researcher , which include presenting new material in small, manageable steps and providing extra support for students if the task is especially difficult. The idea is to make learning as accessible as possible to everyone. 

The training, book studies and coaching sessions focused on the science of learning make up the heart of the district鈥檚 professional development, and therefore don鈥檛 require tons of extra funding or extra time for educators and leaders outside their contract hours, said Lee. In the past, professional learning brought in from outside vendors were 鈥渙ne-off鈥� learning experiences not tied to any bigger picture or goal. Now all professional learning must meet a set of district standards for being 鈥渆vidence-informed and equity-driven,鈥� ensuring the entire district is swimming in the same direction. 

鈥淲e haven鈥檛 made extra time, we are just using the time we do have differently,鈥� Lee said. 

While much of the district training is mandatory鈥攍ike district-wide professional development and leadership training鈥攐ther parts are optional or opt-in, like teacher book studies and principal coaching. The district is hoping that by making the science of learning training something gradual that takes hold naturally, it will win buy-in from the most experienced staffers over time because it was not a one-and-done push. 

Bernard Quesada, the veteran principal at Middletown High School, has embraced the science of learning approach to teaching. He said the organic approach and long-term picture has been key to its success at his school of mostly accomplished, veteran teachers. 

鈥淲hen these things become mandates, and schools have to comply, you get a lukewarm reception,鈥� Quesada said. 鈥淪chools get initiative fatigue.鈥� 

Middletown teachers have adopted the new learning, Quesada said, because administrators have been intentional to connect the research to what teachers are already doing well. Quesada quoted learning researcher and retired University College London professor 鈥� a speaker he heard at a recent science of learning conference. 

鈥淲iliam said, 鈥楾here鈥檚 no next new, big thing. It鈥檚 a lot of old, small things that work and are boring,鈥欌�� Quesada laughed. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 about as true a statement as I鈥檝e heard in my life.鈥�

鈥楪uilty of chasing the next greatest thing鈥� 

On the other side of the country, in rural Delta County, Colorado, teachers are working on asking students better questions to get them thinking stronger and deeper 鈥� moving beyond basic factual answers to more 鈥渉ow鈥� and 鈥渨hy鈥� questions that require students to think not just about the answer, but how they got there.  

Like Frederick County, the small southwestern Colorado district with one-quarter English language learners and 65% low-income students has been training all their teachers and school leaders in the science of learning. Also like Frederick County, the district has taken a 鈥渘o-silver-bullets鈥� approach and has revamped professional learning, putting learning research at the center, with deep dives for teachers and leaders into cognitive science principles like 鈥�,鈥� a technique where teachers design lessons that require students to evaluate, provide reasoning and detailed explanations for learned material. 

The district鈥檚 science of teaching and learning lead, Shawna Angelo, said she鈥檚 looking to help teachers 鈥渁lign how the brain learns with how we are delivering instruction.鈥� 

The focus on effortful thinking was supported by , an organization that has worked for nearly a decade to improve teaching by getting the scientific principles of learning into more classrooms.  

Executive Director Valerie Sakimura sees districts like Frederick County and Delta County as models for improving academic achievement in more school systems across the country. 鈥淭he priority for our work is helping teacher preparation programs and partnering districts trying to support teachers around the science of learning,鈥� she said. 鈥淥ur particular focus is aspiring and early-career teachers.鈥� 

Deans for Impact is also brokering partnerships between school districts and local universities, offering coursework and training on cognitive science principles for student teachers. Teacher training facilities as varied as the and are breaking down the longstanding barrier between teacher training and research science, teaching future educators about how learning happens long before they step into a classroom. 

Frederick County has partnered with Hood College, where many local teachers get their degrees, to design coursework and provide instruction based on the science of learning for student teachers. District instructional coaches and mentor teachers work with teachers in training as well, giving them a chance to watch evidence-informed techniques in action and practice them in their student teaching.

Michael Markoe, deputy superintendent for Frederick County, said through all this work, the district is trying to create a throughline, where all teachers, coaches, principals 鈥� everyone is moving in the same direction, speaking the same language, all based on the research. When school leaders recently inquired about personalized learning, for example, where students progress and master subjects at their own pace, Markoe reminded them that the district is, for the time being, focused on only one thing: evidence of effectiveness. 

鈥淚鈥檝e been in education almost 30 years. I鈥檝e been guilty of chasing the next greatest thing,鈥� he said. 鈥淚f we are going to advance personalized learning, we have to see the research behind it and ensure it鈥檚 the right thing for our children.鈥� 

Getting the entire district on board is long, slow work. Because there are no mandates, some schools haven鈥檛 embraced the science of learning, or have chosen to focus on other priorities, despite leadership鈥檚 wholesale commitment to the methodology. 

But Lee, the district鈥檚 organizational developmental director, isn鈥檛 deterred.  

鈥淚 compare it to moving an aircraft carrier. To move the ship, you are making lots of tiny moves in the same direction. If you spin a wheel in a school system, you will throw people off the ship,鈥� she said. 鈥淧ublic education isn鈥檛 patient. Everyone wants to fix it tomorrow, but those things don鈥檛 work.鈥� 

In 1983, the National Commission on Excellence in Education (NCEE) released A Nation at Risk (ANAR), which issued a wake-up call, named the state of US education a crisis, and presented thirty recommendations for action. It bears noting that the Commission鈥檚 recommendations were targeted in focus and scope, leaving the prevailing 鈥渙ne best鈥� district-based education model intact. We will never know whether larger-scaled interventions were considered or not. Whatever the genesis, the final recommendations left education policymakers with an organizational checklist, and as the essays in this series have demonstrated, they responded accordingly.

A Nation at Risk + 40 brought together twelve exceptional scholars and thought leaders to review the nation鈥檚 response to the Commission鈥檚 challenge. At the outset of this research collaboration, compiling the record of forty years of school improvement efforts and summarizing the available evidence of their respective impacts on student outcomes appeared straightforward, if even a bit tedious. It turned out to be anything but that.

Each of the twelve essays fulfilled its assignment. In each strand of investigation, the authors documented the evolution of improvement activity and 鈥攚here it exists 鈥� described the degree to which the efforts paid off. On its own, every one of the essays makes an important contribution to our ongoing national conversation about the critical state of the public K鈥�12 education sector. While we make no claim that the scope of inquiry was definitive, the separate reviews cover billions of dollars in major programs and initiatives pursued by districts, states, and philanthropy. Many of these initiatives were incentivized by Congress and span Republican and Democratic presidential administrations. Our authors offer their own recommendations that, if followed, hold promise to improve conditions in the spheres they examined.

The research collaborative delivered an even more valuable asset, as the result is far more than the sum of the parts. Until the essays were gathered into a collection, the aggregate record of attempts to improve the K鈥�12 education system in the United States was uncharted and unrecognized. We know of no other compilation that illuminates the sheer breadth of reform activity.

For the first time, we can compare the impacts across different areas of investment. Beyond this, taking the full collection as a whole augments the strand-specific recommendations with several crosscutting observations to inform future action.

What did we do?

There can be no dispute that, as a nation, we certainly tried hard to fix the problem. Practically speaking, we addressed every node that was mentioned by the Commission and several that weren鈥檛. It is remarkable how doggedly educators, policy leaders, advocates, and funders have augmented policy and practice with interventions. The sheer volume and spread of reform efforts are worth examining, as they begin to shed light on the situation we currently face in public K鈥�12 education.

Other scholars (Hattie 2023) have used evaluations and other research to rank the impact on student performance of various reforms. The impact estimates are drawn from a vast collection of meta analyses, yielding a super-meta-analysis that rank-orders reported results across different interventions. The rankings are widely interpreted as the definitive, adjudicated, and authoritative guide to improving student performance. In statehouses, state education agencies, and school districts, the rankings have taken on mythic proportions in guiding policy decisions about school improvement.

It is easy to see the appeal. The aim is noble, and the appetite is intense. Sadly, deeper inquiry into the rankings shows significant problems with the work: the desire to be expansive sits in tension with the need to apply stringent criteria about which meta-analyses are fed into the rankings. We learned that the underlying quality of the reform interventions themselves and the rigor of the research about their effects varied widely. To illustrate with a hypothetical: in the rankings, one thousand low-quality interventions with medium-strength evidence receive higher weight than one hundred high-quality interventions with a high-quality evaluation.

The concerns go beyond the problem of the quality of evidence. The implication for policymaking and educator practice is that the rankings encourage devotion to one or two marginal adjustments to schooling at the expense of lower-ranked options. The greatest risk lies in overlooking emerging successes for years until the next update to the rankings occurs.

Wishing to avoid a similar result, we chose a different approach to exploring the body of evidence. Beyond the notable volume of reform efforts attempted over the past forty years, it is useful to consider the points of the system that the various reforms were designed to change. This is important because many of the checklist items from ANAR鈥檚 recommendations aim at strengthening only one facet of the K鈥�12 system, and the Commission did not offer recommendations on mixing, matching, or stacking multiple reform efforts.

The stability of the basic model of US K鈥�12 public education over four decades is advantageous for our purposes because it supports a generalized theory of action, sometimes called a 鈥渓ogic model.鈥� Theories of action specify the types of capital, staffing, and other resources that are needed to provide K鈥�12 education. Theories of action also detail the policies and practices that are followed. Inputs and processes combine to produce a near-term result referred to as 鈥渙utputs.鈥� The eventual value of the results is identified as 鈥渙utcomes.鈥� With this lens, we classify the policies, programs, and initiatives discussed by the essay authors in order to learn about the targets and yields of reform activity. To be clear, some improvement efforts span our classification categories (e.g., some professional development includes input and process features); these are assigned by their most prevalent attributes.

Our authors are highly sensitive to the availability and caliber of research and evaluation. In many areas, such as public school choice and inclusion of master teachers in educator preparation programs, no evidence exists. In other areas, impact information is hindered by studies involving few examples, fuzzy specifications, or weak counterfactuals. Evaluative studies of school-based health centers and socio-emotional learning are examples where evidence of impact is lacking. The field of impact studies has evolved in constructive ways, but it still hinges critically on a weak commitment to objective assessment of impacts and the discipline to incorporate the insights into practice.

Inputs

A preponderance of the improvement efforts identified by the authors sought to adjust the inputs used by the education system. These include teacher-focused efforts such as alternative certification and incentive pay arrangements, adding school-based health centers, strengthening early childhood programs, and overhauling curriculum. System-focused input changes seek to expand the variety of inputs or the overall structure of the system, whereas marginal input reforms seek to improve the quality of the selective resources within the existing stock.

Taken together, these efforts aimed to enrich the ingredients in the 鈥渞ecipe鈥� for K鈥�12 education. Focusing reform attention on adjusting the quantity, quality, or intensity of a factor before it is used keeps the reform at arm鈥檚 length from the actual production of education. Think of upgrading tires on a race car 鈥� the improvement to the equipment takes place offline and then is brought online in the hopes of improved performance.

The evidence shows that the range of impacts for inputs-focused reforms run from zero to as much as three-quarters of a year of additional achievement for students. About half the input reforms have negligible or no effect on student academic achievement. The options that show no impact share the attribute of shallow or isolated treatment鈥攁 few hours of professional development or play-based preschool. For both system-focused and marginal input reforms, positive results point to interventions that have significant weight, scale, and duration to create and sustain the momentum for change. As examples, we see this in the small-schools movement (systems focused) and in laser-focused teacher professional development (marginal adjustments).

Input reforms assume that the rest of the system will respond organically to the change in the treated input. As the evidence shows, many efforts provided too little leverage to lift the rest of the operation. Worse, an exclusive input focus ignores the possible interactions with other components that may react in different ways than expected.

Processes

Process reforms aim to change the way education is created, delivered, and monitored by schools and their oversight bodies. To extend the recipe analogy, processes are the mixing and cooking instructions. Marginal process reforms attempt to mix inputs in new ways or interact inputs with new policies or protocols. Systemwide process changes try to ubiquitously reengineer old ways of doing things to produce better results, such as the experience of adopting the IMPACT teacher evaluation and compensation initiative in Washington, DC, or implementing a digital learning platform across all the middle schools in a district.

Given the challenges of designing and implementing new programs, it is little wonder that our authors found fewer process reform examples in their scans. Across the essays, the authors identified three general areas of process reforms.

Teacher professional development falls largely into the process category鈥攕elected areas of knowledge and skills are targeted to expand the capacity of teachers to perform their duties. This differs from input reforms, which are directed toward improving the number or quality of candidates at the point of hiring. The available evidence suggests that for much of the past forty years, there was little or no effect from a large proportion of professional development. Recent evidence, however, shows positive impacts when the programs are strictly focused, multifaceted, and sustained, producing between one and four months of extra achievement.

Incentive programs for higher teacher performance have strong impacts on student academic achievement for their duration, from about two months to an extra year of added achievement. However, these impacts are largely one sided; they did not induce low-performing teachers to move up or move out. Rather, they provided financial and work assignment flexibility incentives for teachers. Similar programs that trade extra compensation for teaching in the most challenging settings also produce strong student gains of similar magnitudes. Both types of reforms are highly vulnerable to political disruption at all points of the program, especially if teachers鈥� participation requires evaluation of their performance.

Technology adoptions can also be classified as process reforms. Once technology has been purchased and distributed, it serves a process function. The evidence of impact from the broad provision of education technologies has, for the most part, been disappointing, showing no impact and substantial stranding of investments. Despite that general trend, however, a number of significant and strongly positive examples of technology-supported education have emerged as promising proof points.

The third area of process reforms occurs at the governance level of the system. Since ANAR鈥檚 release, states have changed the way they fill key positions on their boards of education and within the Council of Chief State School Officers. The change in appointment mechanisms is a process change whose influence is systemwide. Likewise, changes in district school boards to a portfolio management model also flow across the district system. The evidence on these governance changes has been mixed.

It is clear that important differences exist between systemwide process changes and those that are marginal in nature. Some process reforms can work only if introduced systemwide, such as adoption of student safety protocols or school-based disciplinary programs; a 鈥渉alf a loaf鈥� approach won鈥檛 work. Alternatively, marginal process change can be narrow in scope, in terms of either the focus of the reform or the organizational level that is targeted. Pilot programs are a clear example. In marginal process reforms, the rest of the schooling equation remains untouched. The balance between systems and marginal processes can shift either way depending on the interplay of cost, the scope of the planned innovation, friction with adjacent policies or practices, and political resistance.

Moreover, estimating the effects of process changes is technically and practically more difficult than measuring the effects of input shifts. The interactions of new processes with other factors and their dynamic nature over time create complexity that is difficult to measure. The body of evidence is therefore smaller than exists for input-focused changes. New instructional models such as discovery or expeditionary learning are process changes. The evidence on these is thin, except for personalized learning modalities, which show strongly positive effects on learning gains and graduation rates.

Likewise, the expansion of technology 鈥� equipment, connectivity, and content鈥攊n schools is a process change that has altered the way curriculum and instruction are organized and deployed. The impacts are sobering: unused resources cannot advance learning, but where strong implementation occurs, we also see improved student academic achievement.

The final set of process changes can be grouped as 鈥渋nfusion鈥� efforts. Extended school years appear not to improve student results, but additional time in focused instruction helps; the extra time matters only if it is used well. Similarly, teacher and leader professional learning programs are seen as a mixed bag. As with extra time in school, the evidence shows that focused and targeted experience can produce positive impacts on student learning, but those conditions do not appear to be the norm.

Although they have a smaller evidence base, process reforms deal with larger segments of the education enterprise than inputs. Those that work share the attribute of internal design coherence, even if they do not fit well into the rest of the system. Finally, the larger the process reform, the more of a political target it offers to opponents.

Outputs

When we consider the near-term results of elementary and secondary education or the milestones on the way to reach these results, we are discussing outputs. These are the immediate products that reflect the end state that inputs and processes have created. In K鈥�12 education, common outputs include meeting learning benchmarks for grade promotion, satisfying graduation requirements, and implementing performance measures for teachers and leaders. It bears noting that outputs are agnostic to inputs and processes: many combinations are possible to create a particular output.

Systems-oriented improvement efforts have been judged by both outputs and outcomes. In Cami Anderson鈥檚 essay on the results of districtwide reform strategies in Newark, New Jersey (chapter 12), early childhood enrollment increases of 35 percentage points were one output. Another was the rise of 20 points in the percent of Black students enrolled in above-average schools, followed by significant early gains in reading achievement and eventual gains in math. Ironically, the impressive improvements in Newark were not tallied to be a successful outcome, largely because of friction in the community and with elected leaders. Similar efforts under the US Department of Education School Improvement Program did not create positive results.

There are other examples of reforms that aim to change outputs. Redirecting school board activity to prioritize academics and student learning has been shown to produce positive movement on outcome measures for schools and districts.

The largest efforts to move outputs of elementary and secondary schooling lie in the national adoption of accountability programs. The consequential approach to school-based accountability advanced by the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) improved learning by one half per year of student achievement and narrowed achievement gaps between groups of students. High school graduation rates increased by 15 percentage points with concomitant increases in college enrollments. These improvement trends persisted through 2015, but they have all but reversed over the past eight years, with student learning falling dramatically over the course of the COVID-19 global pandemic.

Other efforts to affect teacher preparation programs also looked at outputs, but to no avail: current teacher certification exams are unable to predict future variations in teachers鈥� performance once they are in the classroom. Other common indicators, such as academic credentials or years of experience (also inputs), are similarly disconnected from future teacher performance.

Finally, some reform activities deliberately circumvent mainstream institutions and channels in an attempt to create better outputs. Extra-system initiatives can take the form of inputs or processes, or they can combine the two. Some options that have shown positive impacts for student results include mayoral control (significant gains in achievement and better fiscal controls) and gubernatorial appointment of state board members (better performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress assessments).

As noted by other scholars, school choice can arise within, across, or outside of school systems (Lake 2020). Intradistrict school choice redistributes seats in schools by changing the way students are assigned to schools; it aims to improve the outputs for the students who access better classrooms. As a process reform, it is associated with stronger achievement in math for minority students. Interdistrict choice is rare, and its effects are not well studied. Charter schools operate in a separate policy stream and deliver stronger growth and achievement in reading and math, especially in urban charter school networks (CREDO 2023). For vouchers, the impact for students on balance has not been positive; the evidence on vouchers shows weaker achievement for enrolled students even as they create positive spillover impacts on public schools. Other efforts that move outside the usual institutional arrangements are less understood. Newer options such as education savings accounts (ESAs) and microschools have yet to be examined in depth.

Outcomes

In an education theory of action, outcomes are the final results of the entire enterprise. Outcomes differ from outputs because they apply external standards and criteria to the nominal outputs to make judgments about what is 鈥済ood enough.鈥� So, while outputs may be expressed as test scores, CTE credentials, or course completions, when we apply evaluation standards such as postsecondary readiness, we are making judgments about the performance that was produced.

Since ANAR was released, we have gained clarity, if not conviction, about what we intend our schools to produce. Performance frameworks that illustrate the results that stakeholders deem desirable have grown in number and complexity. Across the country, charter school authorizers and state and local school boards use performance frameworks as central elements of school and district oversight and accountability. Newer examples of our collective expectations are seen in the work in some states to define the profile of a graduate, setting explicit criteria for what a high school diploma should represent.

By law, every state reports publicly on how its students and schools are performing. State-issued 鈥渞eport cards鈥� for districts and schools generally include demographic information for teachers and students, operational and financial information, and student academic performance information. States set thresholds for student and school performance expectations, though these thresholds vary a lot. Whatever their aspirations, we are not in vastly different territory today than in 1983. Disappointing outcomes (e.g., high school math performance) have even prompted attempts to improve the optics by diluting some of the criteria (such as watering down the instructional frameworks or course requirements), but such maneuvers do nothing to alter the underlying reality.

Insights from the audience

As Walt Kelly鈥檚 cartoon character Pogo said, 鈥淲e have met the enemy and he is us.鈥� Indeed, the staggering array of treatments, interventions, redesigns, and innovations that our authors identified makes it a challenge to rationalize our collective experience into any semblance of order. If we had aimed for chaos at the outset, it is hard to imagine a better result.

Despite the cacophony, the catalog of activity amassed by the authors supports a few observations about our forty-year effort to reform that hold potential for illuminating future directions for elementary and secondary education in our country. After identification, we can characterize the record of reform efforts with six I鈥檚: impulsive, incremental, incoherent, impatient, intransigent, and ineffective, as discussed below.

Impulsive

Most of the reforms were adopted at full scale鈥攁cross an entire state or the nation. Many efforts to push programs across states or regions had roots in advocacy pressure to move reforms quickly. Many state leaders were game to bring new policies to their state if they were perceived as having been successful elsewhere, as it reduced the perception of risk and provided an existing model to copy.

Doing the 鈥渉ere, too鈥� dance hobbled the new adopters in two ways. It skipped over analysis of the 鈥渇it鈥� of the reform in the local context鈥攁nd the important variation in local contexts 鈥� on the receiving end. It is impossible in hindsight to determine how many of the 鈥渕ixed result鈥� outcomes stemmed from differences in the settings on the ground, but it seems safe to say local contours were likely overlooked as most of the programs or policies were advanced. It is also true that jurisdiction-wide adoption curtailed the ability to evaluate implementation and impacts in real time, so valuable learning was lost at the get-go.

Incremental

The most pervasive attribute is the incremental nature of the interventions. This stems in part from the original recommendations of the ANAR Commission, framed as commonsensical and achievable changes. The commitment to incrementalism continued even when earlier efforts proved ineffective. One might argue that it made sense to aim small to soften implementation friction. The record suggests otherwise. Because the interventions were mostly narrowly focused, not only did they lack the scope or initial scale necessary to drive needed system changes, but in their sheer volume鈥攕o many reforms in so many areas鈥攖hey led to a reform fatigue that lasts to this day.

It is important to note that the essays identified examples of successful reform that did not involve incremental adjustments. Systemwide efforts as described for Newark and new systems building as seen with charter schools have larger blueprints and therefore greater areas for change.

Incoherent

A third observation is that most of the changes undertaken over the past decades were launched with no consideration for how the reform would interact with the rest of the K鈥�12 system. Changes to piece parts were designed and adopted as autonomous endeavors. This partially explains why many innovations fail to scale effectively.

This does not mean that things were only tried one at a time. Many examples exist of multiple incremental reforms launched simultaneously without an understanding of the interplay between them or with the rest of the equation. Reforms were 鈥渂olted on,鈥� one after another, without regard for how they fit together. And each one that was added 鈥渄iluted鈥� the impact of the others. The resulting lack of coherence often led to unintended consequences that were never even considered, much less planned for.

One important implication of incoherence is a lost opportunity to ensure that stakeholders 鈥� especially the ground-level personnel鈥攆unction with an understanding of the way the system works and how they belong in it; a well-crafted plan of action can provide that. A second implication is that it is difficult to objectively learn from experience, especially from unsuccessful ventures. When the general model is unorganized, it is hard to assign causality, for example, between lack of implementation fidelity of a sound design and a design that does not fit the context it is meant to improve.

Impatient

A separate issue that permeates the essays is the (often unstated) expectation that improvement efforts produce large demonstrable results almost immediately and without regard to the time requirements of the change being made. Changes to organizational culture need to occur rapidly, but other changes take time. Shifts in instructional methods often require more than a single year to stabilize enough to know how well they work. Incorporating new systems such as new-teacher onboarding can take even longer to reveal their true value and impact.

The expectation of quick results creates multiple harms. It doesn鈥檛 give the good parts time to take root or provide the space to iterate toward success. Moreover, it seeds unrealistic expectations about the diligence needed to give new approaches their due. From a political vantage, it gives the doubters and pouters a head start on declaring new reforms a failure. It also contributes to the 鈥渃arousel,鈥� as one teacher described it: 鈥淚 don鈥檛 have to do anything but wait鈥攊n three years there will be something new.鈥�

Compounding the problem, the governance side of the equation needs strong and enduring leadership to be patient with complicated, multifaceted reform efforts and to plan and invest for the long term. Even if the enabling conditions are understood and a proven scaling strategy is in place鈥攕uch as with charter management organizations鈥攚hen the reform in question needs ten to twenty years to come to fruition, rapid turnover cycles of education leaders lose important institutional knowledge, and politicians are short on patience (or incentive) to see it through.

All too often, the time needed to see results is longer than the amount of time politicians have in their seats, and it does not line up with the cyclical campaign and election cycle. Shortrun wins are coveted by political actors seeking to establish a record of success on which to build advancement. The bias toward quick returns and the lack of political will or appetite to invest in long-run solutions have a serious trickle-down effect: (1) a constant churn of reform that does not give space or time to realize success and (2) systems that learn to wait out the current wave of reforms, as 鈥渢his, too, shall pass.鈥� When the need for improvement is glaring but the actors in legislatures and education agencies prioritize their own short-run interests, we face compound system failure.

Intransigent

The authors carefully identified examples of reforms that produced positive student learning impacts, but many were subject to political interference or failed to perform at scale. Still, the examples show what may be possible. What they do not show is the complementing picture of the myriad reforms that went nowhere and evaporated into history. There is no tally of their number.

But anecdotal reports have consistently told the story of reform churn. Charles Payne鈥檚 phrase, 鈥淪o much reform, so little change,鈥� seems to apply. Instead of forty years of sustained and coherent reform, we have forty short-run reforms that each last three years. School teams are introduced to new practices during the professional development days that accompany the start of school each fall, with short windows of time to prepare for deployment and little implementation support during the year. The school teams learn about impacts indirectly 鈥� and often too late to try modifications. Decisions about continuing or terminating the effort usually do not include input from those on the front line. More often than not, new initiatives are quietly abandoned, with the cycle left to repeat itself the following year.

It is notable that, despite this endless churn of reforms, the prevailing institutional structure of 鈥淪EA, LEA school board, district administration, school leadership, grade/class grouping, teacher鈥� remains largely unchanged, despite repeated pressures on it to adapt. The possibility exists that the summative effect of all the efforts over the years has fostered a resiliency to any improvement efforts鈥攁n adaptive state of resistance to change of its core activities. It may help to explain the tendency to shift focus to other facets of students, teachers, or teaching where ground may be more fertile for positive experience. There is no way to test this idea empirically, but it fits the pattern of the evidence and explains the abundant cynicism and burnout.

Ineffective

The strongest case for learning from our experience lies in our national trends on student performance. Given the authors鈥� reports, it is little wonder that, even before the blow to student learning of COVID-19 school closures, the long-run reports noted that US student performance was stagnant or in decline.

Two considerations help to explain our current state. Part of the problem is that, apart from formal pilots, most reforms launch without considering how to learn from them. We are seriously underresourced across the sector in measuring local conditions and reform effectiveness.

In addition, even after forty years, the system has significant internal inconsistency鈥攊t lacks a 鈥渦nified theory鈥� of how reform should be done. This essay collection recounts how many reforms were launched without a sufficient discussion of which level of the system (e.g., state, district, school) might be the most effective to lead the transformation efforts.

Conclusion

We face an even more daunting challenge today, which is that forty years of reform have exhausted everyone involved. The one thing we may have conclusively proven is that the system, as presently constituted, has been resilient to reforms at scale. A modern ANAR report might not fall on deaf ears鈥攖he need for school reform is real鈥攂ut it would fall on ears that are tired of hearing about it.

What is clear is that we have a thin collection of reforms that have been shown to work and that can scale. None of the proven reforms seek to integrate with other proven reforms to concentrate their success. The larger the scale of innovation/reform, the larger the political target it presents for opponents of change.

What we do have is an impressive record of what not to do. We can鈥檛 assume that ideas that have been proven effective in one setting will be effective in every setting. We can鈥檛 expect change at the margins (no matter how well they are done) to be able to leverage an entire school model. We can鈥檛 impose reforms that ignore how the change affects other parts of the enterprise. We should accept these lessons as a form of learning in itself and perhaps the best final message of this exercise. Drawing on the six I鈥� 鈥攊mpulsive, incremental, incoherent, impatient, intransigent, and ineffective鈥攎ay provide lodestars by which to assess new proposals toward more effective approaches to delivering strong education to our nation鈥檚 students.

See the full Hoover Institution initiative: . 

Nearly a decade ago, Cecil County Public Schools had some of the lowest-performing elementary schools in Maryland, and teachers used a variety of homegrown curriculum and curated resources to varying effect. Loud calls for change were coming from the teachers鈥� union and Central Office.

Today, our schools all use , a highly structured, open-source curriculum published by the University of Delaware. We adopted and implemented Bookworms districtwide at a rapid clip in 2016 and quickly saw in the share of students in grades 3鈥�5 scoring proficient on statewide tests. We have consistently fine-tuned our practices to maintain progress in the years since.

Most major changes don鈥檛 happen without a long lead time or thoroughly debated pilot. And many changes cannot be sustained over the long haul. Our experience with Bookworms is a counterexample to both. It is possible to move fast and build reforms that last. Here鈥檚 how.

Start with this: Standards are not curriculum

In part, our sustainable change may be rooted in the fundamentally unsustainable practices we sought to replace.

In the past culture of Cecil County schools, teachers were expected to 鈥渢each the standards.鈥� In day-to-day life, this meant unpacking state standards as they related to their particular students and designing curriculum, including by picking and choosing among far-flung resources and tried-and-true favorite texts. Too often, this approach didn鈥檛 work. Students鈥� educational trajectories were unpredictable and disjointed. Beloved books were not always at grade level. Meanwhile, teachers were overtaxed, and the local union was calling for public hearings to discuss curriculum and workload.

Around 2015, the district convened a committee to select a standard English language arts elementary school curriculum, one that would allow teachers to focus on instruction and more reliably connect students with rigorous, grade-level learning. The committee selected Journeys and Wonders, by heavyweight publishers Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and McGraw-Hill. Both were costly, comprehensive literacy programs with leveled readers and a suite of related activities and resources.

I was appointed Associate Superintendent of Education Services in 2016 and given a clear mandate from the superintendent: Raise reading scores, now. I reviewed the work of the curriculum committee, and then cast a wider net. 

The traditional curriculums that were being considered were bulky and based on teacher choice, which essentially tasked teachers with daily lesson design. It seemed likely that almost no real change would occur.

Ask for expertise and evidence

There had to be more options. I started by tapping trusted colleagues in my professional and personal networks. What districts were making literacy progress? What high-quality, evidence-based programs were they using? Through these queries, I heard about the Christina School District in Newark, Delaware. The Bookworms curriculum, published by the University of Delaware, was helping 鈥渕ove students in Newark,鈥� I was told.

My district is about six miles from the University of Delaware, where I am an alumnus. I made some calls, and with senior colleagues from Cecil County, soon visited a school principal and observed reading instruction in Newark.

Bookworms was a clear fit for our needs. Rather than using leveled readers, instruction is rooted in published grade-level books that students can find at the local library. The Lexile levels were far higher that what we had been using in our district, which was crucial. Just as important, Bookworms lessons are designed so all students can access challenging grade-level books, even if they cannot yet read them independently. We saw that this could help Cecil County students break out of their guided reading groups.

The curriculum is highly structured, standards-based, and taught in three 45-minute periods: an interactive read-aloud that engages all students, a writing and literacy instructional period, and a tiered support period. Teachers鈥� time and planning energies are reserved for practicing instruction and working to meet individual students鈥� needs, not designing curriculum on their own.

I also found that the Newark teachers were enthusiastic ambassadors for the curriculum, which as an open-source publication would cost us far less than the prepackaged traditional programs. In my experience, when a group of teachers raves about a resource, you should probably take a look and see why. And by spending less upfront, we could invest more resources in aligned, ongoing professional development to help teachers improve their instructional practice.

Support sustainable change

I recommended Bookworms to the superintendent, who agreed and opted to proceed full steam ahead: no pilot, no public comment period. We did plenty of salesmanship and relationship-building to support a smooth rollout. But the move to Bookworms happened quickly and was not up for debate. We wanted to make a move and keep things simple, and Bookworms was sufficiently streamlined and structured to allow us to do that.

It was important to protect morale and ensure teachers felt supported during the shift. One powerful strategy was to direct all school-based administrators not to base performance evaluations on observations of Bookworms lessons in the first year. Our teachers and administrators were learning the curriculum at the same time and with varying levels of prior expertise. Attaching stakes to classroom evaluations of those lessons was not fair. That took a lot of the pressure off, and both teachers and administrators became more comfortable with the curriculum and with one another. We also brought eight literacy coaches in from the University of Delaware to train and assist, which was helpful.

Another move that helped create a stable transition was allowing elementary level teachers to choose subject specialties. Cecil County also changed math curriculums at this time, and teachers in grades 3鈥�5 were given the opportunity to teach either reading and social studies or math and science. This allowed teachers to really focus on one curriculum and set of instructional strategies. 

We also built in out-of-classroom supports for the curriculum, such as an innovative relationship with the county library system. Our students can check a book on the Bookworms reading list out of the library and have it delivered to them in school.

Finally, we did not count on universal enthusiasm right away. I believe that there are times and places where leaders have to take a stand and ask that others come along with them. Then, people need time to experience and come to their own conclusion about whatever change is underway. That鈥檚 been my experience with teachers, who may first encounter a planned reform with skepticism but are almost always immediately won over when they see benefits for their students. Decide and act, and then wait.

Four months after we first implemented Bookworms, one of our early skeptics sent me a note that said, 鈥淚 just love the fact that we are building good little readers.鈥� That鈥檚 the sort of evidence that will keep enthusiasm high and maintain curriculum improvement over the long term.

First, for chronically low-performing systems, policymakers can disrupt the 鈥渄istrict as monopoly鈥� education provider by pursuing a portfolio management model (PMM) strategy that takes districts out of the business of running schools and instead has them provide performance-based oversight in a diverse ecosystem of regulated, but still autonomous, schools of choice. While charter, magnet, and traditional district-run public schools would all be free to pursue their own strategies, they would only be permitted to continue operating in the ecosystem if they meet agreed-upon performance objectives.

Finally, all districts can and should adopt a series of commonsense governance reforms that more tightly link political accountability to student-centered outcomes: (1) establishing on-cycle and nonstaggered school board elections; (2) providing more transparency about student outcomes timed to coincide with election cycles; and (3) creating mechanisms to change district leadership when students perpetually fail to improve.

• America鈥檚 one-size-fits-all school governance system is outdated and ineffective.

• School districts should provide oversight for schools using a variety of strategies to reach agreed-upon educational objectives.

• Electoral success should be linked to student-centered outcomes.

BACKGROUND AND MOTIVATION

Despite its bold rhetoric and urgent call for action, A Nation at Risk (ANAR) notably said nothing about reforming 鈥渆ducation governance鈥濃�攖he institutions and actors empowered to decide which education policies will (and will not) be put into practice. Nonetheless, shortly after the landmark report ignited a wave of reforms across the states, it became clear to many observers that the nation鈥檚 governance system鈥攌nown colloquially, if not derisively, as the one best system鈥攎akes it exceedingly difficult to enact reforms that improve student learning at scale.

For example, in their pathbreaking book Politics, Markets, and America鈥檚 Schools, John Chubb and Terry Moe presaged their indictment of public education at the end of the 1980s by noting: 鈥淸The one best system] is so thoroughly taken for granted that it virtually defines what Americans mean by democratic governance of the public schools. At its heart are the school district and its institutions of democratic control: the school board, the superintendent, and the district office.鈥� Thirty years later, America remains wedded to this same system, one in which the school district is a sacred cow that often serves the interests of adults more than students. Even the most committed and visionary reformer will make little headway when constrained by a political system that makes it easier for reform opponents to defeat bold ideas and uphold the status quo.

The simple truth is that the actors who occupy and benefit from our current political institutions have a vested interest in perpetuating the existence of those crusty institutions irrespective of their performance behind the wheel. 鈥淚t is tempting to think that the public schools must be different somehow,鈥� Moe explains. 鈥淭heir purpose, after all, is to educate children. So it might seem that everyone would want what is best for kids and would agree to change the system . . . [to] make sure it is performing effectively. But this is a Pollyannaish view that has little to do with reality.鈥�

Irrespective of their virtues in other contexts, federalism and localism in K鈥�12 education have evolved to produce a governance system that, due to special-interest capture, is neither responsive to consumers (families and students) nor accountable for producing results. As Chester Finn and Michael Petrilli argue, this one best system offers the 鈥渨orst of both worlds.鈥� 鈥淥n one hand, district-level power constrains individual schools; its standardizing, bureau- cratic, and political force ties the hands of principals, keeping them from doing what is best for their pupils with regard to budget, staffing, and curriculum. On the other, local control [as practiced in the united States] is not strong enough to clear the obstacles that state and federal governments place before reform-minded board members and superintendents in the relatively few situations where these can even be observed.鈥�

Why is the united States saddled with this patchwork quilt system of school governance? With some simplification, it all boils down to a historical accident followed by a combination of what political scientists call policy diffusion and path dependence (a fancy term for institutional stickiness). Most notably, the key developments that brought and then locked the current system into place had everything to do with adult concerns and very little (if anything) to do with designing a coherent education system to best serve kids. Political scientist Vladimir Kogan outlines the 鈥渂ottom-up鈥� origins of the first key development 鈥� US education鈥檚 commitment to governance that is local and diffuse rather than centralized and coherent:

In much of the developed world, schools are typically overseen by centralized national agencies. [The uS] model is largely a historical artifact, dating back to the first public- education law adopted in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the mid-1600s. As evident from the law鈥檚 title, the Old Deluder Satan Act [1647], it was the moral concerns of adults, rather than a desire to address the holistic educational needs of children, that mainly drove the public-school effort The Massachusetts law, which charged local government with the responsibility for funding and operating local schools so kids would become literate enough to read the Bible, was copied across the country in one of the earliest examples of what political scientists now call policy diffusion.

Later, in the early twentieth century (1890鈥�1930), the moral concerns that Kogan highlights here were superseded by more modern, secular ones: leaning on public schools to assimilate immi- grants and prepare workers for a second wave of industrialization. Governance experts Paul Hill and Ashley Jochim deftly summarize the most important changes that accompanied this latter development, the ones that ultimately gave us the one best system that we have today:

Progressive Era reformers sought to rationalize and centralize control of the system. . . . They hoped to create more capable schools鈥攂etter than the fragmented one-room schoolhouses that dotted the rural landscape and less political than the patronage-driven system that dominated urban centers. Thus emerged the local education agency (lEA). The core of an lEA was an elected school board with power to make most [education] decisions and a bureaucracy largely staffed by professional educators. The lEA was insulated from normal local politics by off-cycle nonpartisan elections. . . . [This] rationalized system . . . gave way to a larger and politically fragmented system in the second half of the 20th century. laws to encourage and broaden the scope of collective bargaining among public sector employees . . . greatly strengthened teachers鈥� unions.

One final development warrants a brief mention: the district consolidation movement. As Christopher Berry and Martin West document, between 1930 and 1970, the nation鈥檚 tiny one- room schoolhouses were steadily supplanted by the age-graded schools we know today. This shift, Kogan explains, 鈥渘ecessitated consolidation into larger school systems, moving the locus of political control from boards overseeing individual schools to districtwide bodies [lEAs].鈥� Ultimately, the nation eliminated one hundred thousand districts, and consolidated lEAs became larger bureaucracies. What did all this mean for students? Berry and West found that 鈥渁lthough larger districts were associated with modestly [better student outcomes], any gains from the consolidation of districts . . . were far outweighed by the harmful effects of larger schools.鈥�

The key point in all of this is that the forging of education governance in the united States was, as Kogan emphatically states, 鈥渘ot intentionally designed with student academic out- comes in mind and has become less local (and perhaps less democratic) over time.鈥� In other words, largely through historical happenstance, today we are saddled with the worst of both worlds: a system that is neither especially responsive to community (and especially parental) concerns nor efficient at ensuring that system leaders prioritize student learning outcomes.

The aim of this chapter is straightforward: to assess what the education community has learned since ANAR about the challenges to good governance and the most promising solu- tions for reform. The chapter proceeds in four parts. I first summarize the major political obstacles that have kept a lid on education reform in the united States. After laying out these challenges, I discuss some of the governance reforms that have been tried and what the scholarly evidence says about how those efforts have fared. The third section of the chapter condenses the research into some lessons for policymakers who are considering different governance changes. Since America鈥檚 students cannot afford to wait for politicians to con- struct the perfect governance system from scratch (an impossible task), the chapter con- cludes with two types of recommendations for how state and local policymakers can move toward more student-centered governance systems: (1) an ambitious alt-governance frame- work well suited to troubled districts that need immediate and dramatic turnaround, followed by (2) a more modest set of reforms that are likely to do no harm and some reasonable amount of good in most any district. The guiding ethos in both sets of recommendations is the belief that enough lessons have been learned about governance in the intervening years since ANAR to identify a set of best practices for adopting political structures that incentivize the adults in districts and buildings to put student outcomes at the center of policymaking and day-to-day decision-making.

Before proceeding, the reader should be aware of two scope conditions. First, because of their relative fiscal contribution (large) and their central role in implementing policy on the ground, governance issues related to state and (especially) the local school district (rather than the federal government) are the primary concern addressed in the chapter. Second, when discussing problems and solutions, the chapter starts with the point that improving student academic outcomes is the central purpose of public education and that other values and 鈥渃ommunity interests鈥� are of secondary importance. Focusing on how governance can enhance (or impede) reforms intended to bolster student learning outcomes is consistent with the spirit of the goals of ANAR (student achievement) and the public鈥檚 primary concern with their schools. With these two caveats out of the way, let us turn to discuss the many challenges of America鈥檚 traditional model of school governance, better known as the 鈥渙ne best system.鈥�

GOVERNANCE CHALLENGES

The excellence movement that arose out of ANAR had two primary objectives: to raise stu- dent achievement and to close performance gaps between poor and advantaged students. As is well illustrated by the other chapters in this series, while the federal report helped drive education reforms in several different areas (often with mixed results), all these efforts faced a common hurdle: overcoming political resistance and governance challenges.

While all reforms faced these challenges, two proposals garnered outsized political resistance: school choice and consequential accountability. This is hardly surprising. As Terry Moe explains, 鈥淭he two great education reform movements of the modern era, the movements for accountability and for school choice, are attempts to transform the traditional structure of the American education system鈥攁nd the changes they pursue are threatening to the [teachers鈥橾 unions鈥� vested interests.鈥� Since ANAR, the choice and accountability move- ments鈥� most significant political victories have been (1) the rapid expansion of charter schooling (1990鈥損resent) and (2) the consequential test-based federal accountability regime that endured during the Bush and Obama presidencies (2002鈥�2015).

A complete assessment of the impact of these policies on student learning is beyond the scope of this chapter. However, research has shown that both choice and accountability reforms can improve student achievement and promote education opportunity for under- served kids but that success has often been uneven and difficult to sustain, especially at a statewide (let alone national) scale. For example, the demise of consequential test-based accountability and the difficulty of increasing the number of high-quality school choice options (e.g., charter schools) can both be traced to major shortcomings in the policies and practices of our traditional system of K鈥�12 governance and politics. Three persistent challenges stand out.

ADULTS ARE NOT INCENTIVIZED TO PRIORITIZE STUDENT OUTCOMES

First, the current governance system does little to nothing to ensure that education profession- als are sufficiently incentivized to prioritize student learning above all else. In 2009, for example, just four in ten superintendents surveyed by the National School Boards Association (NSBA) said that student learning was an 鈥渆xtremely important鈥� factor in how they were evaluated by their school board employers. These results mirror a more recent analysis of North Carolina superintendent contracts that showed fewer than 5 percent of these agreements contain provisions to hold leaders 鈥渁ccountable for student achievement and attainment [outcomes].鈥�

The failure of too many school boards to prioritize and focus on student outcomes is a wide- spread problem with tangible consequences. For example, one analysis of the NSBA data uncovered a strong relationship between a school district鈥檚 academic performance and the extent to which board members prioritized student achievement outcomes in their board work. Alarmingly, though, while two-thirds of school boards agree that 鈥渢he current state of student achievement is unacceptable,鈥� nine out of ten boards said that 鈥渄efining success only in terms of student achievement is narrow and short-sighted . . . and one-third are ner- vous about placing 鈥榰nreasonable expectations for student achievement in our schools.鈥欌�� School districts send the wrong message (and the wrong incentives) to the education pro- fessionals they employ (e.g., teachers, superintendents) when they make student outcomes a secondary concern. Indeed, elected board governance may not work at all if boards aren鈥檛 held accountable by voters for learning outcomes or they don鈥檛 expect to be held account- able at the ballot box.

COORDINATING MULTILEVEL GOVERNANCE IS A CHALLENGE

Everyone seems to acknowledge that K鈥�12 governance has too many cooks in the kitchen such that 鈥渋f everybody is in charge then no one is.鈥� This 鈥渢angled web鈥� of school gov- ernance challenges the public to hold any single entity or public official accountable and encourages political buck-passing. Unfortunately, this problem is inherent in our federal political system. Political scientist Patrick McGuinn refers to it as the 50/15,000/100,000 problem, noting: 鈥淲e have fifty different state education systems which collectively contain approximately 15,000 school districts and almost 100,000 schools. While the uS now has clear national goals in education, it lacks a national system of education within which to pursue these goals, and the federal government can only indirectly attempt to drive reform through the grant-in-aid system.鈥�

Uncle Sam tried to step up to the plate in 2002 with the federal No Child left Behind (NClB) law. By requiring that student performance outcomes be made public, the law was intended to put pressure鈥攊ncluding electoral pressure鈥攐n school boards to either improve or face consequences. unfortunately, the devil was in the details, and federal accountability man- dates failed for two primary reasons. First, the law prioritized student academic proficiency over student learning gains (growth), leading many schools where students were improving to be classified as failing. Second, as political scientist Paul Manna has documented, NClB erred by taking the sound logic of public administration (management) theory and turning it on its head. For example, rather than have the principal (the federal government) set rigorous standards and free up the agents (states and local districts) to innovate and meet these stan- dards in creative ways, the law let states set their own standards while Washington dictated weak and specific consequences for failure.

Perhaps the problem is not so much too many cooks in the kitchen, but rather that the kitchen lacks thoughtful coordination, and we have not placed each cook at the station where they have a 鈥渃omparative advantage.鈥� For example, NClB was born out of a real problem whereby localities gave insufficient attention to (and often hid) poor academic outcomes and achieve- ment gaps, but the federal foray into accountability also served to remind us that localities are functionally needed to implement reform from afar. Yet, as previously noted, those localities are easily captured by vested interests, and they themselves have incentives to focus on maintaining their institutional existence rather than holding themselves to account. For example, under both NClB and Race to the Top (RttT), states and districts 鈥渢ook the easy way out,鈥� rarely opting to impose the toughest forms of restructuring on themselves.

VESTED INTERESTS DOMINATE EDUCATION POLITICS

The third major obstacle to effective governance is the fact that too many adults鈥攂e they union leaders, school employees, administrators, colleges of education, or vendors鈥攅ither benefit from existing K鈥�12 policies and procedures or are reluctant to consider any reforms that may bring about changes that leave them materially worse off. Such opposition ensues even if proposed reforms could be shown to benefit student learning. Because vested inter- ests pursue concentrated occupational benefits whose costs are widely distributed, these actors tend to be more politically organized and influential than groups like parents, whose own connection to their public schools is transitory in nature. What鈥檚 more, the widespread use of nonpartisan off-cycle school board elections often ensures low voter turnout and a lack of robust competition among competing interests. This anemic electoral environment enables teachers鈥� unions to win seven out of every ten school board elections when they make an endorsement. The consequence: rather than management (school boards) representing parents and taxpayers by serving as a 鈥渃heck鈥� on labor, the relationship becomes reversed, with management owing its very election and political survival to the employees it is supposed to hold accountable. This well-documented dynamic has been shown to lead directly to pro-union school boards that (1) agree to more restrictive collective bargaining agreements (CBAs), (2) authorize fewer charter schools, and (3) spend more on salaries with little to no improvement (and often worse outcomes) in student achievement gains.

Although they arguably face greater political competition in federal and state politics, teachers鈥� unions are still rated the top education lobby in most statehouses, limiting experimentation with choice and accountability, especially on issues related to teacher accountability and pay reform. Finally, teachers鈥� unions are not alone in opposing new approaches to public edu- cation outside of the traditional district delivery model. School board members (regardless of party) are far less enthusiastic about school choice and charter schooling than are parents and the public. yet many states still have charter school laws that either make boards the sole authorizer or limit growth through caps that unions and board associations lobby for in state law. All in all, the politics of education reform remain constrained by governing structures (formal and informal) that empower the producers of education (e.g., teachers鈥� unions, district central offices) at the expense of the consumers of it (parents and students).

ATTEMPTS TO REFORM THE ONE BEST SYSTEM

Looking back on the history of education in the united States, one can鈥檛 help but notice the governance pendulum swinging back and forth between decentralization and centralization. The hyper-localism that originated in the mid-1600s held sway until the turn of the twenti- eth century before yielding to the Progressives鈥� centralized and professionalized lEA. A few decades later, that bureaucratic one best system became a focal point of contention between teachers鈥� unions and minority communities in New york City who wanted more of a say in their kids鈥� schools鈥攚hat they called 鈥渃ommunity control.鈥� While the unions, led by then united Federation of Teachers (uFT) leader Albert Shanker, mostly won that battle and the primacy of the central office endured, by the 1980s advocates of a new strategy they called 鈥渟ite-based management鈥� (SBM) were pinning their hopes on giving schools, rather than dis- tricts, more autonomy. When student outcomes again failed to improve in any meaningful way, especially in large urban districts, reformers once again saw potential in recentralizing, pur- suing alternatives to school board control through mayoral control of the district or through state takeovers. At the federal level, after promising for decades to 鈥渆nd federal meddling in our schools,鈥� in the 2000s a Republican president embraced more centralized account- ability with NClB, ushering in a decade of bipartisan support for a test-based accountability regime overseen by Washington. After political and practical considerations rendered NClB unworkable, a new breed of school reformers focused on building 鈥減arallel鈥� school systems, abandoned trying to bring political reform to the one best system itself, and turned their attention to expanding local autonomy linked to greater school choice (charter schooling). In some cases, such efforts have even included trying to partner with or reconstitute districts under a 鈥減ortfolio鈥� management model (PMM) that combines district accountability/oversight with local school autonomy/choice. Have any of these governance reforms worked, and if so, where and under what conditions?

SITE-BASED MANAGEMENT

The earliest efforts to rethink K鈥�12 governance after ANAR were a series of 鈥渟ite-鈥� or 鈥渟chool- based鈥� management reforms that spread across several states (e.g., Kentucky) and cities (e.g., Chicago). It is difficult to provide a coherent definition of SBM because the specific changes implemented across states and districts that all claimed to be using 鈥淪BM prin- ciples鈥� varied significantly. However, some common SBM themes that emerged at various implementation sites included decision-making councils at the school level rather than the district level, formal representation for stakeholders like parents and educators, and direct involvement in hiring building leaders and instructional staff.

SBM鈥檚 鈥渢heory of action鈥� is that taking power away from central-office bureaucrats and giving more autonomy to school leaders (with input from educators and families) promotes innovative and customized solutions that result in more effective teaching and learning in buildings and classrooms. According to one estimate, as many as 30 percent of all US school districts tried some variation of SBM by 1990. However, little systematic evidence emerged to show that the SBM model鈥攁t least as it was put into practice鈥攚idely improved student learning outcomes across implementation sites at scale.43 To be clear, this is not because the idea of having local councils or providing greater autonomy to building leaders is wrongheaded. To the con- trary, a recent study from Chicago Public Schools (CPS) found that 鈥渟chools with high-quality principals and student populations requiring atypical policy decisions [benefit] from more autonomy.鈥� However, that analysis showed that leader quality is often the linchpin to making governance reforms work in practice. As the author of that CPS study concluded, 鈥淸school] autonomy should be granted to effective and motivated school leaders [but it may] lead to worse outcomes in settings with agency problems or low principal capacity.鈥� In other words, successful governance reforms cannot rely solely on building better institutions. Better people (human capital) is a prerequisite to reaping the rewards of well-designed institutions.

Finally, retrospective evaluations of SBM reform frequently mention another challenge that inhibited success: the lack of political will in following through on authentically devolving power and autonomy to building leaders. In practice, many state and district leaders talked a big game about handing over decision-making authority through SBM but were subsequently unwilling to yield on big-ticket items (e.g., budgeting, hiring) when push came to shove or vested interests resisted. As Paul Hill and Ashley Jochim explain:

School boards and state governments may promise to give schools a great deal of freedom, but over time they take it away This first became evident with SBM. In the early 1990s, many districts encouraged schools to use time and money in novel ways. . . . Superintendents encouraged principals and teachers to think big, but no rules were changed. Schools were encouraged to think of new ways to organize teaching, but they were still bound by the collective bargaining agreement. That meant school leaders had little control over who was assigned to teach in the school and the kinds of work they could do. Schools were encouraged to use time and materials differently, buttheydid not control their budgets or make purchasing decisions. And so on. In any clash between school autonomy and actual practice, school leaders soon learned that for every freedom they were promised [under SBM], a rule existed that effectively took it away.

ALT-GOVERNANCE (MAYORAL CONTROL, STATE TAKEOVERS)

Because they are keenly aware of the linkage between education and economic growth in their states and cities, political executives like governors and mayors were often in the van- guard of the excellence movement right from the outset of ANAR. Frustrated with the outright failure of their cities鈥� largest school systems to improve academically, in the 1990s several mayors sought more authority in especially long-troubled districts (e.g., Boston, Cleveland, Chicago, Detroit, New york). The two primary approaches to robust executive involvement became state takeovers and mayoral control/involvement. While these alternative or 鈥渁lt- governance鈥� arrangements often involve different mechanisms, they share the common feature of removing or demoting elected school boards, either replacing them with a mayor- appointed board or relegating the board itself to have mere 鈥渃onsultative鈥� status in lieu of policymaking authority. Importantly, in such cases, the district superintendent is chosen by and serves at the pleasure of the mayor鈥攐r in the case of takeover, the state education agency (SEA).

Mayoral control鈥檚 鈥渢heory of action鈥� arises from the belief that political executives are more likely to focus on their political legacies (what鈥檚 best for their city) than parochial-minded legislators (e.g., school board members) who are more prone to single-issue interest-group capture. 鈥淢ayors,鈥� Terry Moe explains, 鈥渁re constantly in the public eye; they have larger, more diverse constituencies than school board members do; they have far more resources for wielding power; and they may decide to make their mark by reforming the local schools.鈥� Additionally, one benefit to vesting education authority in a mayor or governor is that it can streamline political accountability under a single actor, making it easier for the public to know whom to hold accountable. Indeed, some research has shown a linkage between greater state-level centralization and student performance: gubernatorial authority to appoint state boards/chiefs has been connected to better outcomes on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and reduced achievement gaps.

Admittedly, efforts to evaluate the impact of mayoral control or state-led takeovers are ham- pered by small sample sizes and obvious selection biases: districts that turn to mayors for help or those that are taken over by SEAs are difficult to compare to districts that do not have these governance reforms imposed on them. Nonetheless, it is worth noting that the most comprehensive empirical assessment of mayoral control tends to show positive effects on both academic outcomes and fiscal efficiency. yet it is equally important to keep in mind that not all mayoral involvement is similar in nature. Mayoral involvement in education in cities like Cleveland and Boston operated very differently than it did in New york City and Washington, DC. In the latter two cases, the political executives of those cities were given complete autonomy to choose the district鈥檚 superintendent, and there was no policymaking school board with which the superintendent had to deal politically. Moreover, in the case of Washington, DC鈥攁rguably the most successful mayoral turnaround story鈥攖he mayor won additional governance changes that empowered the superintendent in hiring and evaluation, removing these policies from the collective bargaining process. Therefore, while research shows that mayoral control in Washington led to reforms that improved student achievement outcomes in the nation鈥檚 capital, it does not necessarily follow that more minor forms of mayoral involvement (e.g., appointing a few of a city school board鈥檚 members) will replicate this unique success story. Indeed, one factor stands out in helping to explain why mayoral control in Washington led actors to prioritize student, rather than adult, interests: centralized political accountability. One anecdote from that city is especially telling. years after depart- ing his post as president of the Washington, DC, teachers鈥� union, George Parker explained, in retrospect, why mayoral control forced his hand in accepting a student outcomes鈥揻ocused teacher evaluation system:

One of the most important things is that we went from board governance to mayoral control   Previously I was able to use politics to block a lot of reforms. But once mayoral control came into place, and there was only one person who had all the control, I no longer could prevent a lot of the reforms, so I had to decide: do I take a good look at these reforms and how do these reforms impact students, or do I try to continue to fight?

In my previous contract [negotiations] when the Superintendent put things on the table that I didn鈥檛 like all I had to do was go to several of the board members that we supported financially and just say, 鈥榃e helped get you elected鈥� And I come back to [the] negotiating table the next day and it鈥檚 off the table. When we had mayoral control there was only one person. And I tried it with Mayor Fenty. I remember I went down to his office, but he made it clear that he promised Michelle [Rhee] that he was going to support what it was she was going to do. So, for the first time, to be very honest, I had to take a different position for negotiations because I had no one to go to [to] block reform.

In a similar vein, advocates of state takeover can point to impressive turnarounds like New Orleans, where the bold post鈥揌urricane Katrina choice and accountability reforms overseen by that state鈥檚 鈥淩ecovery School District鈥� (RSD) led to dramatic improvements in student outcomes in both achievement (test score gains) and attainment. To be sure, New Orleans does not represent the typical state takeover. As Terry Moe explains, the all-charter system that emerged in the aftermath of the storm was an extreme outlier that was made possible by the sudden elimination of vested interest opposition (united Teachers of New Orleans and the Orleans Parish School Board). In fact, the most comprehensive empirical study of state take- overs to date found little systematic evidence that abolishing local control (elected boards) leads to higher student achievement at scale. Moreover, critics can and do point to a clear downside of state takeover: disempowering communities from having a direct hand in running their local public schools, with communities of color being disproportionately targeted for takeover.

On the other hand, the average effect of state takeover may not be the right quantity of interest to focus on given the theory of action for granting states temporary control. As with may- oral control, state takeover advocates rightly note that democratic accountability can become so broken in some school districts that boards can no longer be trusted to do right by their kids and that dramatic leadership change is needed. Of course, not all state takeovers are created equal; for example, some are driven by fiscal concerns and others are provoked by chronic student achievement failure. What seems to matter most is what policymakers (state leaders) do with their newfound authority when takeover occurs. For example, research shows that when states can use takeovers to close a district鈥檚 lowest-performing schools and replace them with higher-performing schools, student outcomes can and do improve substantially. But the key to an SEA succeeding in this endeavor is ensuring that students will, in fact, move to a higher-performing school. If students are instead relegated to another low-performing school (or even a middling school), then the instability associated with moving schools can be a net negative for student learning. It is not altogether surprising, then, that state takeovers have been a mixed bag. Takeovers in Camden (NJ), Newark (NJ), and especially New Orleans鈥攚here the close and replace strategy was pursued鈥攕tand out as successful. In contrast, both Michigan鈥檚 and Tennessee鈥檚 efforts to replicate Louisiana鈥檚 success in New Orleans fell short.

PORTFOLIO FRAMEWORK OR PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT MODEL

Frustrated by the lack of progress in turning around chronically low-performing schools in the late 1990s, political scientist Paul Hill began to advocate for a new governance framework for large city school districts: the portfolio management model. In one sense, PMM was partly an effort to fix a core failure of SBM鈥攖he unwillingness of states and districts to hand over the car keys of autonomy on key issues like budgeting and hiring to school leaders. But PMM pro- posed even more.

PMM reimagines the district鈥檚 role as the monopoly education provider (e.g., 鈥渄istrict schools鈥�) and instead sees its role as a chief incubation officer that simply oversees 鈥渟chools.鈥� In other words, PMM envisions getting districts (e.g., school boards, central offices) out of the business of running school buildings and into the business of gently overseeing an ecosystem of autonomous schools of choice. But PMM is not an unfettered school choice program. To the contrary, the framework melds autonomy and choice with a centralized accountability system for all schools (irrespective of type) and (often) a single districtwide application process. While charter schools, magnets, and traditional district-run schools are all free to innovate at the school building level under the PMM framework, all schools, irrespective of type, are only permitted to continue operating if they meet agreed-upon performance objectives. In part, the allure of the PMM approach is that it helps soften the unhelpful charter versus traditional public school debate because the district and charter sectors are incentivized to collaborate with all schools in the portfolio, as every school is seen as an equal member of the same citywide ecosystem.

Where has it been tried and how well has it worked? Standouts include New Orleans, Denver, Indianapolis, Washington, DC, and New York City. Notably, several of these cities pursued alt-governance models first or along the way, which helped provide (at least temporary) political cover for this choice ecosystem to blossom and gain constituents (families) whose favorable experience in this new system could create a new constituency that would protect the model from being undone by vested interest opposition. However, alt-governance clearly is not a prerequisite to embracing PMM, and there is no single definition of the approach in practice, perhaps other than sector agnosticism (charters and district-run schools are equal in the eyes of the system). In fact, in some cases, because traditional district-run schools have seen firsthand some of the advantages of site-based autonomy in personnel and school calendar/time use, for example, PMM has led to state legislation that spawned charter-like district schools, called 鈥渋nnovation schools,鈥� in Indianapolis and Denver. On the other hand, progress has been uneven in many of the other systems that have incorporated PMM principles. In 2022, Hill and Jochim reported that 鈥渙f the 52 districts that participated in CRPE鈥檚 portfolio network and nominally adopted the strategy at some time or another, few sustained it for more than a few years.鈥� Moreover, the charter-district d茅tente that PMM imagines has been far less successful in systems with strong teachers鈥� unions, such as Los Angeles.

One aspect of the theory of action behind PMM is that offering more options whets the appe- tites of and expectations among families for the district to provide them with a variety of learning models from which to choose. One of the most powerful levers of policy reform is the ability to create new constituencies who have a vested interest of their own in new school models and delivery systems. Creating value for education consumers (parents) and potential consumers will give more voters reason to defend the entire fleet of options in a district鈥檚 portfolio, and future board members who wish to go back to 鈥渢he way things were鈥� (with the district as sole provider) may find themselves facing political resistance that rivals the power of locking in a formal governance change in law or regulation. This matches the well-known (successful) mobilization effort among charter school parents to prevent New york City鈥檚 then incoming mayor, Bill de Blasio, from diminishing the charter sector that they had a personal stake in continuing to use. In that way, PMM helps reshape the politics of education more generally.

LESSONS AND RECURRENT TENSIONS IN GOVERNANCE REFORM DEBATES

What broader lessons can policymakers, reform advocates, and educators take away from past and present efforts to use governance changes to spur school improvement? Relatedly, what are the key tensions in our governance reform debates that are likely to persist moving forward?

1: DEMOCRATIC PROCEDURES ARE LESS IMPORTANT THAN DEMOCRATIC OUTCOMES

鈥淔undamentally, democracy is really about representing the interests of adults,鈥� Vladimir Kogan explains. 鈥淲hether school board elections are democratic tells us absolutely noth- ing about whether public schools are doing a good job delivering on their core mission [of educating kids].鈥� In other words, when policymakers sit down to evaluate K鈥�12 governance models, they should recognize the difference between democratic procedures (important) and the substantive outcomes that public education is trying to achieve: creating an educated populace that is equipped to participate in self-governance (most important). Consider, for example, the tension between the right for students to go to school and learn without inter- ruption and the right of school employees to pursue their occupational self-interests through a labor action. This is not a hypothetical. Teachers鈥� unions often claim that the right to strike fundamentally promotes democracy for workers (their members), yet we know that keeping

children out of school for prolonged periods of time is not in their best interest. How should policymakers wrestle with these tensions, ones where democratic procedures collide with democratic outcomes? Consider the following thought experiment (again) from Kogan:

In many communities drinking water is delivered by public agencies. yet very few people ask if these agencies are democratic. They ask whether they deliver clean and safe water. I think few would be okay with these agencies delivering cholera contaminated water just because they were satisfied with voter turnout and other metrics of democratic process or procedure. In many parts of the uS, we also have publicly run hospitals. Again, when we鈥檙e evaluating their performance, I think most people care about how all these hospitals are serving patients, not about whether their board meetings follow Robert鈥檚 Rules and allow opportunity for community engagement.

As agencies of government (subject to the demands of interest groups and voters), public schools will always be in the political arena. And to be sure, many adults will have a vested interest in upholding school board governance and in maintaining the traditional district/lEA as the sole provider of public education. These actors have obvious incentives to oppose alt-governance arrangements or portfolio management approaches. Policymakers should expect nothing less. However, at the end of the day, policymakers will need to prioritize, while remembering, most of all, that public education systems exist to serve students, not adults.

2: THERE鈥橲 NO 鈥淔OOLPROOFING鈥� A GOVERNANCE SYSTEM IN THE ABSENCE OF POLITICAL WILL AND BOLD, CAGE-BUSTING LEADERSHIP

Well-defined governance arrangements with clear lines of accountability are typically neces- sary to deliver improved outcomes for kids, but they are almost always insufficient to the task at hand. Well-designed governance systems are only as good as the leaders who make use of them. As the author of a recent book on the delivery of government services in our digital age put it, 鈥渃ulture eats policy鈥檚 lunch.鈥�69 In the case of education reform moving the needle for kids, this means that governance reform can create new possibilities and provide political cover, but it takes bold leaders to step up to the plate and make use of those new institutional levers. For all their faults (noted below), the architects of the turnaround in Washington, DC鈥� then chancellor Michelle Rhee and then mayor Adrian Fenty鈥攚ere each willing to put it all on the line and make tough decisions to change the culture of the city鈥檚 school system (and its future trajectory) even when those decisions cost them their jobs. In a similar vein, recall the key finding about the importance of leadership from economist Kirabo Jackson鈥檚 study of school autonomy in Chicago that was discussed earlier in this chapter. Jackson found that providing more school-level autonomy to principals improved student learning outcomes in schools with high-quality leaders. In places where leaders had a poor or middling track record, providing greater autonomy predictably did not lead to better decision-making and did not improve student outcomes; it led to worse performance. In sum, strong district and school leadership both matter immensely.

3: LOCK IN GOVERNANCE AND POLITICAL REFORMS TO INCENTIVIZE STUDENT-CENTERED DECISION-MAKING WHENEVER POSSIBLE, BUT REMEMBER THAT ETERNAL VIGILANCE WILL REMAIN ESSENTIAL

As we鈥檝e seen with the history of both the SBM and PMM governance reform models, politics always has a way of undoing progress, and a reform-minded majority today is no assurance of one tomorrow. When in power, reformers should try to lock in governance reforms that will maximize the chances that future district leaders will remain student centered in their decision-making. For example, in New Orleans, state lawmakers ensured that even after RSD transferred authority back to the local Orleans Parish School Board, the superintendent would retain authority to hold schools accountable without meddling from individual board members. This was crucial, because the entire PMM framework functions only when school renewals are based on transparent and objective student performance criteria, not political criteria such as whether a school is in a board member鈥檚 electoral district. Similarly, as we saw in Washington, DC, the fact that some key decisions (around teacher evaluation) were taken out of collective bargaining enabled the system leader to make more efficient student- centered decisions when it came to managing human capital. This would not have been possible without changes in the governance protocols centralizing authority in the mayor鈥檚 office. In Indianapolis, empowering the mayor to authorize charters has helped ensure that the PMM framework can remain in place even if there is board turnover, as has happened in Denver in recent years, putting reforms that helped improve district performance in jeopardy.

4: IN EDUCATION REFORM, A MANTRA OF 鈥淢OVE FAST AND BREAK THINGS鈥� OFTEN BACKFIRES

Bedside manner matters in education reform. On the one hand, Americans appear comfort- able with their state, rather than local government, addressing chronically failing schools. However, when it comes to formal takeover proposals, issues related to race and the loss of political power become salient in city school systems that were often important sites where racial minorities gained a foothold in politics or found a pathway to the middle class in a teaching career. For example, a survey commissioned by journalist Richard Whitmire found that while many Black Washingtonians believed Michelle Rhee鈥檚 tenure improved their schools, they also believed her reform methods (e.g., school closures, firings) were overly dra- conian and unnecessary. Irrespective of whether the critics are right or wrong on the merits, reformers will come up on the short end of the stick if they refuse to consider the timing, tem- perament, and input of local actors in an authentic manner. Rhee鈥檚 own tenure as chancellor was cut short because voters soured on her and Fenty鈥檚 鈥渕ove fast and break things鈥� ethos. In contrast, by being more intentionally 鈥渃ollaborative and accessible,鈥� Rhee鈥檚 successor managed to maintain the very same reforms that put the city鈥檚 children first while keeping her post for three times as long. This isn鈥檛 a criticism of Rhee per se, but a warning to other reformers who have been turned out of power swiftly because community perception and a lack of engagement did them in (e.g., in Memphis and Detroit).

To avoid alienating potential allies in the local community, reformers should consider the timing and sequence of their actions. School closures are invariably controversial. When nec- essary, they should be done using a consistent and transparent set of metrics so that critics cannot claim bias in sites chosen. Additionally, some reformers have been able to put clo- sures off until goodwill has been established in the community, and, especially in the context of takeovers/alt-governance, local actors believe that reform efforts are well intended. This won鈥檛 please everyone, and opposition will surely remain, but acting capriciously and without any attention to bedside manner is both counterproductive and an unforced, self-inflicted error. In places like New Orleans, Memphis, and Detroit, where takeovers led to complaints about outsiders imposing closures without community input, it is essential for reformers to ensure demographic representation on charter boards and other bodies, for example, so that alt-governance is not interpreted as an effort to disempower local communities.

CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Given the immense size and scale of public education in the united States, it would be foolish and impractical to conclude this retrospective by recommending that a single governance model be applied everywhere. Instead, the broader lessons that have been outlined here rec- ommend two paths forward on governance reform, with careful attention to context.

In the first case, large school districts with poor academic outcomes that have remained unchanged under the constraints of the traditional 鈥渄istrict as monopoly鈥� education provider should give serious consideration to an alt-governance model that would allow for a portfolio framework to blossom. While formal governance changes are not a prerequisite to incorporating the portfolio framework, the author of that reform approach notes that in the absence of 鈥渁 galvanizing event鈥� or 鈥渢he entrance of new [often nontraditional] leadership,鈥� the 鈥渁doption of [the portfolio] strategy [is] often precipitated by a major shift in education governance via state takeover or mayoral control.鈥� The reason is simple: 鈥渢hese events [help] to restructure local education politics such that traditional actors . . . [are] sidelined, creating a window of opportunity for new reform ideas to take root.鈥�

Since these districts can and will rarely initiate alt-governance on their own (Washington, DC, being a rare exception), leaders who wish to pursue a portfolio framework may do well to begin their effort by working with their counterparts in state government. To avoid the nega- tive perceptions that invariably arise from 鈥渙utsiders鈥� ignoring local context and concerns, advocates could benefit by framing their effort to leverage state support as an exercise in 鈥渇reeing鈥� local schools to enjoy more autonomy or 鈥渋nnovation鈥� opportunities even if they remain under traditional district governance. Alternative governance arrangements need not mean the formal elimination of an elected school board en route to a portfolio frame- work. As Indianapolis has shown, having an executive (mayor) with charter-authorizing power opens new possibilities. likewise, Denver Public Schools also remained under elected board control, but innovation schools there nevertheless provided autonomy and choice consistent with the portfolio framework.

The second path forward is probably more appropriate for the nation鈥檚 (smaller) suburban and rural school districts that maintain the traditional elected board-appointed superinten- dent structure. Although these districts (which are more numerous but enroll far fewer students) may not need to abandon traditional governance structures, states should nonetheless require (or at least encourage) them to adopt a series of more modest reforms aimed at promoting a political structure that creates stronger incentives for aligning democratic accountability with improved student academic achievement outcomes.

First, state governments should move to on-cycle school board elections. A political system that allows one special interest group to dominate low-turnout, low-information elections isn鈥檛 a model of robust democracy. A large research literature shows that off-cycle elections unfairly advantage unions over other stakeholders and decrease the representation of parents, the poor, and racial minorities in school board elections. Most importantly, shifting to on- cycle elections increases the likelihood that voters will reward/punish incumbent school board members based on student achievement growth in their district during their tenure. In sum, this is a small but important policy change that comes with few downsides and a big upside.

Relatedly, states might consider (or at least investigate) the benefits of using non-staggered school board elections. Currently, with staggered board elections, the ability for the public to make a wholesale change in district leadership is deferred across election cycles. If voters are constitutionally empowered to 鈥渢hrow the bums out鈥� of Congress every two years, per- haps they should have that same opportunity in local school politics. This reform would, in theory, also simplify participation in school politics, encourage slate running, and make it easier for the public to identify whom to hold accountable at a given point in time (since all incumbents would run at the same time, there would be a de facto referendum on their performance).

Second, as A. J. Crabill has argued, state governments should require school board training or coaching that focuses specifically on student outcomes. Ideally, states could find ways to make this more than a compliance exercise. In fact, Crabill makes a good case that states could add to this the incentive for board candidates to get certified before running for office. One benefit might be dissuading candidates who do not want to do the serious work and who are running for reasons other than raising district achievement.

Third, states must ensure that their accountability systems provide useful and easy-to-understand information about the performance of each district鈥檚 public schools. Those metrics should include and emphasize information on student growth, not simply proficiency. letter grades, though imperfect, often make it easier on the public. Importantly, SEAs need to be prepared (and required under state law) to release report card data earlier on and preferably in the month prior to when school board elections are held, to maximize the likelihood that voters will prioritize student learning outcomes during board elections.

States should consider electoral reforms that provide information about student performance on the ballot, identifying any incumbents seeking reelection so that voters know how their board members have fared in raising achievement when they decide whether to rehire them for the job. As a gentler form of 鈥渢akeover,鈥� states could first have a policy whereby an automatic board recall election is held when a district鈥檚 academic improvement stagnates for a period under the same leadership. Relatedly, similar legislation could call for a superintendent鈥檚 replacement in the event of severe achievement failure or stagnation.

FINAL THOUGHTS

A total governance failure is typically observed only in an ad hoc fashion. Examples might include a district embezzlement scheme or a school cheating scandal. This leads to the mistaken belief that K鈥�12 governance problems are rare and isolated to specific districts or leaders. yet in 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic laid bare the broader dysfunction beneath the surface of America鈥檚 traditional system of K鈥�12 board-based governance. While more centralized education systems in other parts of the world reopened far more quickly, in our highly decentralized system partisanship and the lack of political will to negotiate reopening agreements with teachers鈥� unions played no small role in keeping half of all students out of school for a full year. In fact, numerous studies revealed that in the absence of thoughtful state polit- ical leadership, too many local school boards made decisions to keep schools closed more because of adult politics than in response to thoughtful reflection about neutral public health criteria, including the cost-benefit calculation regarding what was best for students.

As the second epigraph of this chapter noted, the root of the K鈥�12 governance problem, Paul Hill and Ashley Jochim explain, is that ever since the turn of the twentieth century, 鈥淸school] reformers have been busy trying to take politics out of schools rather than considering how politics鈥攐f which governance is a part鈥攃an be managed, constrained, and transformed to serve public purposes.鈥� This failure of imagination is a key reason that our public schools are encumbered by bureaucratic structures and work routines that too readily prioritize the interests of adults rather than the students they serve. Ironically, then, one hundred years after progressive reformers dismantled the nation鈥檚 large and unwieldy urban school boards, America鈥檚 fourth-largest school district, CPS, is returning to this relic of the past. Despite making real strides under mayoral control, at the behest of the city鈥檚 powerful teachers鈥� union, CPS will soon be governed by a large (twenty-one members!) elected board begin- ning in 2024.87 Meanwhile, the SEA in Texas has decided to pursue takeover of the nation鈥檚 third-largest district, Houston Independent School District (ISD). The Texas Education Agency recently tapped former Dallas ISD superintendent Mike Miles to bring to Houston the muscu- lar human capital reform strategy previously pursued in Dallas. Miles has announced that he will use his authority to introduce pay incentives that induce top teachers to work in struggling schools, an approach that some research shows can make a positive impact on student learning. Despite the obvious similarities they share in size and demographic challenges, Chicago and Houston suddenly appear to be two ships passing in the night. They remind us once more that the decentralized nature of K鈥�12 politics and governance too often influences a child鈥檚 chances of receiving a high-quality education and obtaining a shot at upward mobility in this patchwork quilt we call public education in the United States.

See the full Hoover Institution initiative: . 

The results come from a that polled 1,518 parents of K-12 public school students conducted by the National Parents Union between May 7-11. 

鈥淲e can point to the fact that parents still feel good about schools,鈥� said founding president and 社区黑料 contributor Keri Rodrigues 鈥淸and] still feel good about teachers 鈥� There鈥檚 a lot of bright spots around the fact that parents are still fully invested in public education and that 鈥� contrary to what we might be hearing from the voucher folks 鈥� that there鈥檚 no fear of parents completely walking away from America鈥檚 public education system and moving towards 鈥榙o-it-yourself鈥� methods.鈥� 

Vouchers, which let parents use taxpayer money to send their kids to private schools, have in the last several years. At the same time, more parents are experimenting with alternative schooling methods, including homeschooling and microschools. 

The majority of parents (72%) also expressed confidence in their kids鈥� principals and schools for meeting overall expectations. 

But, according to the survey 鈥� dubbed 鈥淭he Parent Report Card鈥� 鈥� as parents considered the outer echelons of the education system, their confidence began to wane. Just over half rated their superintendents and school boards favorably, a figure that continued to drop for state governors (45%), U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona (32%) and President Joe Biden (33%). That last number is lower than the president’s overall 37% approval rating among respondents nationwide, according to a Reuters/Ipsos released June 28.

Rodrigues said this is evidence of the disconnect between families and those in power at the state and federal level. 

鈥淚 always encourage [elected officials] to go back and listen to the people who are experiencing what is going on in classrooms: our young people,鈥� Rodrigues said. 鈥淚f you have a problem with parent and family engagement, talk to the parents and families. They will tell you why they鈥檙e not engaged. [You] need to do the work, too.鈥�

There has been a significant gap 鈥� averaging 31 percentage points 鈥� between parents鈥� favorable views of their own child鈥檚 education and Americans鈥� more critical take on U.S. education at large since at least 1999, according to almost 25 years of The most recent data from last year鈥檚 survey saw the second-largest gap to date: 40 points, second only to the 42-point divide in 2000.  

Megan Brenan, senior researcher at Gallup, credits this almost-record setting number to underlying parisian divides, with Republicans expressing the lowest satisfaction with the public education system at large (25%) to date. This also marked the largest gap in history between Democrat and Republican satisfaction, with a 19 percentage point difference. 

鈥淲e鈥檙e seeing the biggest partisan gaps on a whole lot of measures right now,鈥� she said, reflecting America’s deep polarization. 

According to last year鈥檚 Gallup survey, only 36% of Americans are satisfied with K-12 education quality, matching a record low in 2000. Despite this, parents remain mostly pleased with the education their oldest child is receiving, with just over three-quarters reporting they are completely or somewhat satisfied, numbers that reflect historical averages. The vast majority of parents also support their children鈥檚 teachers, with the majority rating their performance as excellent (36%) or good (37%).

鈥淭his is kind of a pattern that we see over a number of measures where Americans are much more likely to rate national measures lower than their own,鈥� Brenan said. 鈥淪o we see this with crime: that people say, 鈥極h, crime in the U.S. is at a high, but my neighborhood is fine.鈥� We see it with their own congressmen. It鈥檚 very much like, 鈥業 hate Congress but my congressman deserves to be re-elected.鈥� And if you look at the trend in education, then you also see this is something which has held up throughout …. I think it鈥檚 just [that] they can relate more to their own personal situation than they can to the national picture.鈥�

One reason why may be that schools are often the centers of communities, said Joshua Cowen, an education policy professor at Michigan State University. 

鈥淭hat’s where you start to see this point of personal contact that matters to people in terms of what they want to protect,鈥� he continued. 鈥淲hen it’s framed as this large, bureaucratic, nebulous system, then that’s where I think you see these negative results. But [it鈥檚 different] when you’re talking about your community, your kids, your football team, maybe your employer or your spouse’s employer.鈥�

When thinking about the role these views on education might play in November鈥檚 presidential election, though, Brenan, the Gallup researcher, argued that there are a number of other issues eclipsing education in voters鈥� minds. 

鈥淭he fact that they鈥檙e personally satisfied with their own children鈥檚 education might have something to do with that,鈥� she said, adding, 鈥淚 think education is always there as an issue kind of in the background. And unless these other matters 鈥� like immigration and the economy 鈥� are solved before election day, I鈥檓 not sure this is the year that education is going to get its due.鈥�

Disclosure: Walton Family Foundation provides financial support to the National Parents Union and to 社区黑料.

The 鈥渟cience of reading鈥� is a trending topic in state legislatures and gubernatorial speeches 鈥� over the past decade, passed new laws or implemented new policies that require evidence-based literacy instruction. This past January, my home state of Maryland joined the list when the Board of Education required all schools and districts implement evidence-based literacy instruction . 

This is a major shift for many districts, where leveled readers and balanced literacy have long ruled the day. It鈥檚 also more complex than a simple mandate, since the 鈥渟cience of reading鈥� isn鈥檛 a single program or technique. To successfully bring research-backed reading instruction into the classroom, districts will need to identify and invest in high-quality materials and ensure teachers and communities are prepared to make sustainable, lasting change.

While advocates and educators have been engaged in about reading proficiency in Maryland for many years, relatively few communities have undertaken the specific work of changing curriculum and instruction to follow the science of reading. Washington County Public Schools, where I lead curriculum and instruction as an associate superintendent, has been focused on this work since 2020. Districtwide, preschool and K鈥�5 teachers are now using a new high-quality, knowledge-rich literacy curriculum: Amplify Core Knowledge Language Arts, or CKLA.

How did we do it? 

We have learned a lot over these past few years. Bringing the science of reading to the classroom requires careful research, strong collaboration and consensus-building, aligned professional learning, and robust ongoing support for school leaders.

Study the Evidence

Washington County started this work with a clear look at kindergarten-achievement data, which showed that just 39 percent of students met benchmark targets in reading in 2019. It was evident that although everyone worked hard, our students were not reading as well as they should. That helped us reflect on our beliefs and practices and ask big questions. Teachers, coaches, and administrators can ask similar questions by looking at their own data as they consider what students stand to gain from new evidence-based literacy instruction.

It鈥檚 important to understand the evidence before adopting sweeping change. We established partnerships to ensure that we thoroughly understood the research and create a vision for local success. Through our first partnership with the , we collaborated with Nell Duke to reflect on and elevate our approach to early literacy. 

Duke, who is a member of the , helped us look beyond leveled texts and shift toward instructional expectations aligned with the principles of the science of reading. For example, rather than encouraging students to read independently at their comfort level, our teachers could use a variety of strategies to engage students with appropriately rigorous texts that built on their knowledge of the world, such as read-alouds, partner reads, and activities to learn vocabulary specific to a theme or topic.

Co-Create Consensus

We also engaged to help facilitate our vision. A diverse group of participants, including elementary and secondary teachers, paraprofessionals, administrators, special-education teachers, and district leaders, worked together to identify our beliefs, priorities, and what would be needed to update reading instruction. We presented these ideas to school leaders, community stakeholders, and families, as well as our elected Board of Education. Through this transparent process, we created clear, shared beliefs and expectations for improved literacy instruction in Washington County.

That meant choosing a new curriculum, which would serve as the foundation and guide for our efforts. With the district鈥檚 English Language Arts leaders, Washington County teachers chose Amplify CKLA because it is both evidence-based and knowledge-rich. Through our research and work with Duke, we knew that content knowledge is essential for enhancing reading comprehension because it allows students to better connect with and understand text. Our vision-building community exercises were helpful in this step as well. Background knowledge helps students make meaningful inferences and draw on relevant prior knowledge, which is critical for deep comprehension and learning from reading 鈥� priorities for our students. Best of all, knowledge-building curriculums like Amplify CKLA are organized into units that explore a single topic, like farm animals or mythology, students can talk about what they are learning, since they are all reading about the same thing at the same time.

Prioritize Professional Learning

Washington County teachers had access to the new curriculum in the spring of 2023, nearly six months before implementation. Teachers participated in curriculum-based professional learning during the school day, as well as before and after school. Instructional leaders developed new protocols to practice and prepare units and individual lessons, and an instructional coach from Amplify offered support. Teachers have opportunities to study the curriculum, ask questions, and practice instructional techniques together. 

In addition, the district purchased a training course for educators on evidence-based reading instruction techniques created by TNTP. The course emphasizes foundational skills and guides teachers on how to apply these principles in the classroom. District leadership, teachers, administrators, and paraprofessionals all completed the training to build a shared understanding of the science of reading.

Offer Ongoing Support for School Leaders

The success of any school-based initiative depends on the principal, who works with teachers daily and knows their staff and students best. We meet with our principals for a full day once a month, with half of that time dedicated to instruction and coaching. In addition, elementary-school principals routinely visit other schools to watch instruction and share observations with peers and Central Office staff. Principals also participate in quarterly data meetings where district and school leadership work together to analyze student achievement data. These structures create an ongoing dialogue focused on instructional excellence among principals and between principals and district leaders.

At the heart of these efforts is collaboration and a shared set of beliefs. Transitioning to a high-quality, knowledge-building curriculum and instruction based in the science of reading isn鈥檛 easy, and I am grateful for the efforts of our teachers, administrators, and central office staff. With their hard work, and by establishing partnerships, fostering open dialogues about data, and providing structured professional development, Washington County has created an environment where change can and has happened鈥攑roof positive for districts across Maryland and the country facing similar challenges in the months and years ahead.

Gary Willow is Associate Superintendent for Curriculum and Instruction at Washington County Public Schools in Hagerstown, MD.

The United States has a math crisis鈥攁nd it鈥檚 not just the students. It extends to those choosing how to spend federal pandemic relief dollars. Even when they choose the best prescriptions to make up for the pandemic鈥檚 learning losses, they are using the wrong dosage. It鈥檚 a multiplication problem.

The average student in the U.S. lost the equivalent of half a year of math instruction and a quarter of a year in reading. Many urban school districts that were closed for much of 2020-21, such as St. Louis and New Haven, lost one and a half years, but for simplicity鈥檚 sake, let鈥檚 start with the national average of half a year.

Let鈥檚 complete a math exercise together, focusing on four interventions proven to help students catch up: high-dosage tutoring, an extra period of math instruction, six weeks of summer school, and an extended school year. Pre-pandemic research suggests that the first three types of interventions generate the equivalent of one year, half a year, and a quarter of the typical year鈥檚 growth in math, respectively. Let鈥檚 assume that students receive the same amount of instruction in each additional week of school as they do during the school year. As illustrated by the chart, if 10% of students in any given district received 鈥渉igh-impact鈥� tutoring, 30% received double periods of math, 75% attended summer school, and 100% went to school for two and a half weeks longer, they would recover half a year of learning.

Challenging? Yes. But doable.

Inadequate responses

Unfortunately, I know of no district coming close to this level of intervention. Nationally, only 2% of students are receiving high-impact tutoring, where they are receiving about three hours a week of tutoring for 36 weeks, or about 108 hours total. Most districts are providing only 15-20 hours and only for a small percentage of students, nowhere near the 10% in my catch-up assumption.

Summer school attendance has been 15% or 20% in many urban districts, light years behind my assumed 75%.

I don鈥檛 have national data on the percentage of students receiving double doses of math, but I鈥檓 confident it is nowhere near 30%.

Further, very few school districts have extended their school year. The struggle in Richmond, Virginia illustrates the challenge. According to the Education Recovery Scorecard, students in third through eighth grade lost the equivalent of one and a half years of math and reading achievement between 2019 and 2022, more than any other district in Virginia. Starting in the spring of 2021, while schools were still closed, Superintendent Jason Kamras proposed a year-round calendar to help students catch up. Students would have one month off in the summer and four two-week breaks during the school year. Most students would still have 180 school days a year, but the district would select 5,000 students to receive up to 40 days of extra instruction during the breaks. His school board turned him down. Instead, they allowed him to pilot a longer school year in just two of the city鈥檚 54 schools. The two schools started this summer, and student attendance has been strong.

Leadership counts

As illustrated in Richmond, part of the challenge has been the absence of political leadership. To undertake the major reforms that would be required to help students catch up, school district leaders need political air cover.

As a U.S. senator, Lamar Alexander helped push through the latest version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in 2015, which defined the federal role in K-12 education, returning significant power to the states. But states have largely declined the opportunity to lead, and the education reform effort in the U.S. has been rudderless. We鈥檙e a long way from the era when governors such as Bill Clinton (Arkansas), Jim Hunt (North Carolina), brothers George W. Bush (Texas) and Jeb Bush (Florida), as well as Alexander himself (who then led Tennessee) used a combination of the bully pulpit, funding, and policies to push an unprecedented wave of state-led reforms in the 1980s and 1990s.

Only recently have leaders such as Governor Jared Polis in Colorado and Governor Glenn Youngkin in Virginia begun to make improving students鈥� outcomes a centerpiece of their agendas, and not just a stage for culture wars.

There are some modest bright spots. Under Commissioner of Education Mike Morath鈥檚 leadership, Texas required districts to provide an additional 30 hours a week of small-group instruction to students in the lowest achievement category. It鈥檚 unlikely to be enough for many students, but it鈥檚 a lot more than what other states are providing.

Many states, such as Tennessee and Colorado, have launched tutoring initiatives鈥攁gain, a laudable move鈥攂ut none of these programs have the dosage levels that will produce a meaningful impact.

The federal government provided billions of additional dollars of pandemic-related support. When the American Rescue Plan passed in March of 2021, no one knew how large the achievement losses would be. And, wanting to preserve district flexibility, Congress only required districts to spend 20% of the money on academic catch-up (with a loose definition of what could count). The result was predictable. Much of the funding has gone to salary increases, HVAC systems, or additional school counselors. In the worst cases, states have allowed communities to use the federal funds to replace local tax revenues鈥攁 shell game that will help exactly zero children. In the end, only a small share of federal aid has been used to replace what students lost during the pandemic: instructional time.

Looking ahead

With a legal deadline to commit the funds by September 2024, school districts have one more year to spend their federal relief dollars. Given that budgets have been set and the 2023-24 school year is about to begin, it will be difficult for districts to scale up their plans for the coming school year. However, there is still time for districts to plan a major scale-up of summer learning for the summer of 2024. There鈥檚 even some hope of continuing the effort beyond next summer. Although the American Rescue Plan law requires districts to commit the funds by next September, the federal Department of Education has the authority to allow districts to spend down those funds over the following year (the legal term is 鈥渓iquidate鈥�), as long as the contracts are signed and the funds are obligated by the deadline. The Biden administration should prioritize extending the spending deadline for programs that increase students鈥� instructional time鈥攖utoring programs, summer learning, after-school programs, school vacation academies, and salary increases associated with an extended school year.

Although there鈥檚 still hope that districts will help younger students catch up, we cannot forget that four high school graduating classes鈥攔oughly 12 million students鈥攈ave already started their postsecondary careers. The data suggest it鈥檚 been a rough start. According to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, community college enrollment declined by a staggering 20% between spring 2019 and spring 2023. The number of students seeking bachelor鈥檚 degrees at public and private colleges declined by 6%.

We know remarkably little about what has driven the declines in postsecondary enrollment. Many have speculated that the hot labor market was to blame. However, there鈥檚 little concrete evidence to confirm this. It is also possible that the decline was connected to the learning losses in K-12. For instance, especially in areas that spent much of the 2020-21 school year in remote instruction, the high school graduating classes of 2020 and 2021 would have had a hard time meeting with their college counselors to explore their postsecondary options and get help with financial aid.

Moreover, students who fell behind in math or reading in eighth through 10th grades may not have had time to complete the advanced high school coursework expected of many science and engineering majors. According to the College Board, the number of students taking Advanced Placement exams in biology and calculus (both AB and BC) fell by 9% and 12%, respectively, while the number of students taking the chemistry exam declined by 21%. Even if college enrollment rates recover, such trends do not bode well for what may happen to the number of college students pursuing STEM degrees in the coming years.

State leadership need

To resolve this question, we need more research on the relationship between achievement losses, school closures, and changes in postsecondary enrollment by high school. The answer is of more than academic interest as the pace of recovery in the postsecondary sector may well depend on recovery in elementary and secondary schools.

Because many students will not have caught up by the time the federal relief dollars are spent, we must begin discussing additional policies to continue the recovery following September 2024. Anything requiring a school board vote or state legislative action will take time to enact.

For one, states and cities should set aside resources for reaching out to recent high school graduates who never enrolled in college and offer assistance in exploring postsecondary options and applying for federal financial aid. It would be foolish to allow them to fall through the cracks, as the nation鈥檚 future workforce needs will depend on their continued training and development.

In addition, states should ensure that future graduating classes have what they need before leaving high school. For instance, students who do not achieve proficiency on state tests at the end of eighth grade should receive additional help during ninth grade to ensure that they are on track for college and a career. States might consider offering students the option of a fifth year in high school or free tuition for their first year in community college, giving them a chance to fill in gaps in coursework they missed in high school as a result of pandemic achievement losses.

The academic recovery effort following the pandemic has been undersized from the beginning. Although the research community and federal and state regulators encouraged districts to focus on 鈥渆vidence-based鈥� solutions such as high-dosage tutoring and summer learning, districts were never given clear guidance on the dosages required or the share of students they should be serving. Moreover, the guidance that was provided鈥攕pecifically, the 20% minimum spending on 鈥渁cademic recovery鈥濃�攚as downright misleading.

The future consequence for students鈥攁nd for the nation鈥檚 economy鈥攊f students fail to catch up will be dire. A conservative estimate of the loss in future earnings for those enrolled in public K-12 education during the 2020-21 school year is聽$900 billion. As the federal relief dollars are spent down, state and local leaders must step up. Today, there are two or three candidates seeking the mantle of 鈥渆ducation governor.鈥� We need 50 of them.

July, 2024 Update: I wrote this essay late last summer, while the evidence was at its bleakest:聽districts were struggling to implement recovery efforts and researchers were reporting disappointing results for specific recovery efforts. Subsequently, the prospects of recovery brightened somewhat. In January 2024, our Harvard/Stanford team of researchers聽.聽In June 2024, we . We found that the federal relief did have an impact on the recovery. Even though the impact per dollar spent was much smaller than if the funding had been spent solely on tutoring or learning, the estimated impact was nevertheless in line with pre-pandemic research on the effect of general revenue increases. The projected earnings impact from the improvement was sufficient to justify the expenditure.

ESSER relief was like the first stage of a rocket:聽powerful, but unfocused and likely insufficient to get us all the way back to 2019 levels of achievement.聽After the 2024 NAEP is released in January 2025, we expect to update the Education Recovery Scorecard with district recovery through 2024. Soon after, we expect to write a second report on the impact of ESSER spending during 2023-24. We hope we are wrong, but our results thus far imply that many districts will remain behind 2019 levels when the federal money runs out.聽

It is alarming, then, that so many states have not even begun to discuss what they will do to continue the recovery after September 2024. Rather than provide additional general revenue as with ESSER, we hope states consider targeting aid at specific evidence-based solutions, such as tutoring or summer learning, especially in the districts which will remain behind. Otherwise, we will be forcing children to pay the price for the pandemic.

See more from the Center on Reinventing Public Education and its .

Milliken has been 鈥渙ne of the worst Supreme Court decisions鈥� in the Washington Post, which decried its 鈥渁wful legacy.鈥� According to the , in the view of those who had fought for the end of segregation, it 鈥渒illed any hope of integrating the public schools.鈥� And, in 2014, the Harvard Graduate School of Education published a of essays calling the decision 鈥渄readful鈥� because it 鈥渂etrayed the promise鈥� of Brown v. Board of Ed, the historic ruling that outlawed racial segregation in the public schools.

Our organization, Available to All, fights educational redlining, and we often make the case that assigning children to schools based on where they live (using exclusionary maps) is morally wrong. 

District boundaries are one of our primary targets, as they often keep low-income kids trapped in failing schools, even while coveted public schools in nearby districts are allowed to turn those kids away. So you might think that we would join in the chorus denouncing the Milliken decision for these same reasons.

But that鈥檚 not quite right. In our view, Milliken was an unexpected but important decision by the Supreme Court. It was right on the law. Just as importantly, it put the brakes on a potentially disastrous social experiment. Hundreds of thousands of children, living in an area of over 800 square miles, would have been put on buses taking them far from their families and their homes every day. While many in the establishment supported bussing, it鈥檚 easy to see that the cost would have been born by the children, who would spend hundreds of hours on buses every year, robbing them of precious time with their family and friends. Those who designed the plan ignored this very real cost.

What鈥檚 more, such a plan likely would have had deleterious effects on public education in the Detroit area. A parent 鈥� of any race 鈥� would have been very eager to avoid such a fate for their children. You can imagine that many families would have moved to places like Utica, Trenton, and Northville, cities just out of reach of the social engineers. Others would have put their kids into private schools. 

Of course, the poorest of the poor would have been unable to afford either of these options, leaving them to bear the brunt of the reassignment plan.

That鈥檚 the key word in this whole saga: reassignment. Everyone involved in the case 鈥� and most commentators today 鈥� just assume that the government needs to assign children to public schools. Governor Milliken and his allies argued that kids should be assigned to schools based on race, while their opponents argued that kids should be assigned to schools based on their address.

Here is the huge moral problem with both of those positions: Whenever the government takes on the role of assigning children to specific public schools, then it also takes on the role of enforcing their exclusion from other public schools. This is why parents, in the 21^st century, can be put in jail for using someone else鈥檚 address to get their kids into a high-quality school. This is why school districts hire private eyes to and to conduct residency checks.

The answer to this conundrum is so simple: We need to move away from school assignments. Parents, not bureaucrats, should be allowed to ignore the arbitrary school district lines that divide our communities. 

Public schools should be required to be open to the public.

In practice, this means we need more and better Open Enrollment policies. In many states, public schools are not required to consider applications from students who live outside the district boundary. We have also argued that every public school should be required to reserve 15% of its seats for children who live outside of the attendance zone or the school district. But no child should be forced to attend a school outside his or her neighborhood.

The creators of the Detroit plan were right about one thing: Educational boundaries have indeed been used to separate Americans, and they have indeed contributed to the racial divisions in our schools. But the way to fix the problem is not to give bureaucrats the ability to ignore the school district lines as they determine the fate of hundreds of thousands of children.

It is American families who ought to be allowed to cross the lines.

Disclosure: Stand Together Trust provides financial support to Available to All and 社区黑料.

In November 2022, voters in my corner of southeastern Maryland were facing a amid a nationwide surge in book bans at school libraries. Wicomico County Public Schools was among the first districts to review and remove , a coming-of-age memoir about being Black and gay. Candidates for the local school board were debating whether bans are a crucial defense against student indoctrination or a destructive form of censorship.

At that same moment, our school leaders and teachers were piloting three new, knowledge-building English language arts curricula. Such curricula use content-rich texts and intentionally build vocabulary and student understanding of core topics, which a divided public tends to view with a skeptical eye. Yet Wicomico County, where I serve as chief academic officer, successfully completed the pilot, adopted a new curriculum with school-board approval, and implemented districtwide the following school year.

How did we do it? Changing curriculum is never easy, and a charged political environment can make things even more complex. It involves strategic planning, transparent communication, and community engagement. 

By taking a comprehensive and collaborative approach, we successfully navigated the complexities of adopting this new curriculum.

Acknowledge the need for change

For many parents and teachers, the status quo is comfortable. However, the need to change curriculum and instruction was clear when we started this work in early 2022. 

were calling for wholesale change in literacy instruction, which is now codified in a state law requiring all Maryland districts to use curriculum aligned with the science of reading by the 2024-25 school year. Locally, too many of our students were not reading at grade level. 

In talking with department heads and teachers, three major issues emerged. First, teachers did not have materials that met state standards or adequate training in teaching phonics. Second, the texts our students read did not meet the needs or reflect the experiences of our increasingly diverse population. (Today, 13 percent of students are English learners compared to about 7 percent five years ago.)

Finally, elementary teachers were spending inordinate amounts of instructional time on reading and math skills, at the expense of science and social studies content. As a result, many of our students lacked content knowledge 鈥� particularly students whose families could not readily supplement their education at home. After our social studies and science supervisors brought me a copy of by Natalie Wexler, I was sold on the importance of adopting a knowledge-building curriculum.

Together with the Supervisor of Elementary Reading Dr. Renee Hall, I convened a team of school administrators, instructional coaches, teachers, and other experts to review and choose curriculums to pilot during the 2022-23 school year. 

Anticipate challenges in selecting target texts

Our team combed through the texts in the Fishtank Learning units we planned to pilot, which included long lists of aligned texts that teachers could choose for their students. 

We carefully chose materials that were less likely to spark public outcry, given the recent ban and controversy over potential bias in public school readings.

While we wanted to ensure the texts included as many 鈥渕irrors and windows鈥� as possible, to engage and reflect the experiences of all county students, we were also mindful of the needs and concerns of our community. Maryland state law requires local schools boards to approve curriculum, and the most recent election had focused on whether a single book should be available in a high-school library.

Engage multiple groups of stakeholders

We built in multiple opportunities for stakeholders to see the materials and share their feedback. We collected survey data from teachers, students, and parents about the curriculum and reported that to the public.

In addition, we presented the curriculum in multiple public forums. In the past, this step was not necessary. Administrators would simply present a chosen curriculum to the school board and invite members of the public to review materials at district offices by appointment鈥攚hich never happened. This time, we wanted to avoid any appearance of sneaking books by the public and face whatever controversy would emerge head-on.

We hosted school-based events where parents could review and ask questions about all of the materials. School-board and other community members also attended and discussed parents鈥� feedback, questions, and concerns. This established a forum for conversation and discussion, and gave our community time to carefully read and reflect on the curriculum. I believe this process, which occurred over an entire school year, can serve as a model when our district is facing a contentious decision in the future.

Lead without looking back

While teacher, student, and parent feedback from the pilot overwhelmingly supported Fishtank Learning, there were community members who opposed the move. Some of our teachers were not pleased that we were changing materials. And no other school district in Maryland used Fishtank.

Ultimately, with school board approval, we adopted Fishtank and implemented it districtwide in 2023-24. It took a thicker skin than I would have guessed, since none of our curriculum resources in the past had ever attracted such attention and concern. But when something is in the best interests of students, you have to move forward 鈥� even if that means taking .

In the past 18 months, we鈥檝e implemented Fishtank and a phonics program by the in all of our elementary schools. We鈥檝e also trained every single elementary school teacher and principal in the science of reading through the . 

I believe that each of these powerful tools are even more potent in tandem, because they give teachers comprehensive resources and training to implement evidence-based practices in their classrooms. 

By engaging our community in a comprehensive review, taking our time with a pilot, and working together with our school board to invest in a new, high-quality curriculum, we are helping all students to become skillful, knowledgeable readers.

Frederick Briggs is Chief Academic Officer of Wicomico County Public Schools in Salisbury, Maryland.

As I look at the impact of the pandemic on adolescents, two very different sets of data stand out. First, we have seen huge declines in teenagers鈥� mental health. In October 2021, the American Academy of Pediatrics a national emergency in child and adolescent mental health, pointing to soaring rates of depression, anxiety, trauma, loneliness, and suicidal thoughts. In March 2022, the Centers for Disease Control that more than 40 percent teenagers are 鈥減ersistently sad or lonely;鈥� a follow-up in February 2023 found that number rises to 57% among teenage girls. 

Meanwhile, and are up. In addition, an estimated 22% of students have been (missing more than 10% of school) since the pandemic, while one to two million students have not returned to school at all, according to the U.S. Department of Education. Not surprisingly, the situation is worse for students who have been historically marginalized and underserved. 

Second, and much more encouragingly, we have seen a huge surge in international interest in social and emotional learning (SEL), which supports students鈥� academic achievement and mental wellness, according to an extensive . While some U.S. politicians play politics with this issue, restricting what can be taught in American classrooms, other nations are coming to us for advice on the practices and policies that will help advance their students鈥� overall wellbeing. Indeed, countries such as Australia, Israel, Portugal, and Spain are making SEL a national priority. 

Strong business, family and educator support

Fortunately, a growing number of U.S. corporate leaders also get it. They tell us repeatedly that, while they can find employees with the right technical skills, many of these potential hires lack the key social and emotional skills that will help them thrive as team players in the workplace. Indeed, of surveyed executives say skills such as problemsolving and communicating clearly are equally or more important than technical skills. One corporate leader told me his response to policymakers in a state that is eliminating culturally responsive teaching and other SEL-related efforts: 鈥淚f you don鈥檛 want SEL in your schools, you don鈥檛 want my business in your state.鈥� 

The business support is not surprising, given the close alignment between employability skills and the : self-awareness (understanding one鈥檚 strengths and weaknesses); selfmanagement (including organizational skills, self-discipline, initiative); social awareness (listening, empathy, understanding others鈥� perspectives); relationship-building (communications, resolving conflict, teamwork); and responsible decision-making (problem-solving, analyzing the pros and cons of various choices).

Although we have heard some divisive narratives in media and politics, the data shows that the vast majority of students, families, and educators strongly support SEL: say it鈥檚 at least somewhat important to them that their children鈥檚 schools teach them to develop these life skills. Further, say they emphasize SEL in the classroom, 83% say it improves academic outcomes, and 84% say it boosts skills like collaboration, communication, and critical thinking. 

What schools are doing

Educators are building on this strong support鈥攏ot just to recover from the pandemic but to redesign education. Optimally, they鈥檙e taking a systems approach to SEL, teaching it not just as a one-off course in sixth period, but instead integrating it into everything they do. They are strengthening school culture and climate by prioritizing the relationships among students and between students and adults (from teachers to custodians). They are focusing on the well-being of staff, who have suffered as well. They are integrating SEL with academics, so that students are learning teamwork during math class discussions and better understanding various perspectives when studying everything from the American Revolution to Shakespeare, among many examples. 

For example, , serving high school students in the Pilsen community of Chicago, has committed to prioritizing both student and adult SEL and well-being. They鈥檝e implemented a competency-based instructional model that gives staff time not only to focus on the academic progress of students but also their social and emotional development. Students have the opportunity to put their SEL into practice when they share insights and perspectives through student committees. The school has also used staff-wide professional learning time to focus on adult SEL, and partnered with families to create a series of parent and caregiver discussions on SEL.

Going forward, we should continue discussing academic loss, but we must also talk about the impact of relationship loss. This is true for all grades, but is particularly important now in high schools, where students鈥� perception of teacher connection has declined to a new low, according to a survey by the nonprofit YouthTruth: less than a quarter of students say their teachers try to understand their lives outside of school, and less than half say there鈥檚 an adult at school who they can talk to when they鈥檙e having problems or feeling upset and stressed. 

Unless we strengthen relationships, we won鈥檛 close the learning gaps. SEL is not a distraction from academics, but a tool that can help us build relationships so we can get to academic recovery and success. Hundreds of independent studies confirm that SEL positively impacts academic achievement. And recent found that fostering ninth graders鈥� social and emotional development had a nearly identical impact on their academics as focusing specifically Taking a systems approach to SEL, teaching it not just as a one-off course in sixth period, but instead integrating it into everything they do. THE STATE OF THE AMERICAN STUDENT: FALL 2023 on test-score growth did. When students have social and emotional skills paired with positive relationships that make them feel like part of a community, they want to come to school and learn.

Schools also are strengthening their partnerships with parents and families, a natural outcome of families being more actively engaged in their children鈥檚 day-to-day learning during the pandemic. I experienced these challenges firsthand during the past two years, helping my middle schooler and eight-year-old navigate a changing world increasingly powered by digital media. And here comes artificial intelligence鈥攖he challenge of separating fact from fiction, good from bad, and making good choices just got a lot harder. Parents and teachers must help educate the next generation for digital citizenship.

Policymakers also have an important role to play. Out of the media glare, strong bipartisan support continues for evidence-based efforts to strengthen students鈥� well-being鈥攕ocially, emotionally, and academically. in SEL as part of COVID recovery efforts, and 27 states across the country have adopted SEL standards or competencies to guide pre-K-12 instruction. At the federal level, SEL is being embedded into key legislation, from the federal American Rescue Plan to the Safer Communities Act and bills addressing everything from mental health to opioid addiction. The long-term outcome: more students will succeed not only in school, but at work and in life as well. 

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