CHEERS
MJ Slaby shares limited good news from Indianapolis, where the school board unanimously voted to end its pandemic-era “no-zeros” policy. District leaders took feedback from teachers and shifted toward a “happy medium” where students must show some attempt at completing assignments to earn points.
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Good news from Denver, too, where accountability seems to be working. Four schools at risk of closure made serious efforts to improve student outcomes, boosting their ratings enough to stay open and continue their good work.
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Let’s make it a hat trick with good news from…(checks notes)…New York? “Mayor Zohran Mamdani is locked in an unlikely showdown with a powerful classroom ally: the New York City teachers union,” reports James Fanelli. The Democratic socialist mayor is taking on his own base, suing to stop a fiscally irresponsible bonus payout to school aides despite the union boss’s threat of “all-out war.”
JEERS
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, perhaps in a misguided attempt to distract from the corruption allegations engulfing him and many others in the governor’s orbit, decided to take on the Catholic Church. He’s threatening to ban Catholic schools in the Sunshine State from its voucher program if they require vaccinations for their students, arguing that the bishops have “no legitimate religious reason” to deny religious exemptions. The current saber-rattling may be a culture war attention grab, but it raises important questions about how much control states should have over private schools accepting public funding for vouchers, and whether accepting the funds—and the rules—removes the qualities that make those private schools appealing to families in the first place.
Editor's note: This was first published on Mike Petrilli's Substack, SCHOOLED, a free Substack and email newsletter restarting the education-reform conversation. Click here to subscribe for sharp analysis of the week’s biggest K–12 debates, curated commentary from across the ed-policy world, and lively discussion—including reader reactions and pushback.
