The Education Gadfly Weekly

Three emerging issues—each unfolding in a different branch of government—offer a telling snapshot of where federal education policy could be headed. On their own, each represents a flashpoint. Taken together, they provide a rare glimpse into the full machinery of federal influence—and a timely reminder that education policymaking in Washington still matters. In 2025, all three branches are asserting themselves on major K–12 issues, each shaping policy from a different perch of federal power.

Religious charter schools (judicial)

On April 30, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a high-profile case concerning whether states that allow secular charter schools must also permit religious ones. At the center is St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, greenlit by Oklahoma’s charter board as the nation’s first religious charter school. Predictably, lawsuits followed, and the state’s supreme court blocked the school’s creation.

The potential implications are sweeping. As my colleague Mike Petrilli has noted, if SCOTUS affirms the legality of religious charter schools, it would mark a tectonic shift in the charter movement—especially in blue states where “it would be easy to imagine [them] and their districts and authorizers clamping down on new charter schools altogether, especially given the political left’s antipathy to anything that blurs the line between church and state.” What’s more, if the Court allows religious charters, states may prohibit all charter schools from receiving automatic per-pupil funding—requiring annual legislative appropriations instead. Could the sector survive if its funding depends on yearly budget fights?

Among the many briefs filed in the case—including those from state attorneys general, charter support organizations, and constitutional law scholars—the most surprising came from a coalition that included the NEA and AFT. In a rare show of support for charter schools as public schools, the unions urged the Court to reject the authorization of religious charters. But if SCOTUS opens the door to them—the decision is expected by the end of June—don’t be surprised when the unions reverse course and declare, “See, we told you charter schools weren’t public schools after all!”

The Educational Choice for Children Act (legislative)

Over on Capitol Hill, the ECCA—sponsored by Representatives Adrian Smith (R-NE) and Burgess Owens (R-UT) and Senators Bill Cassidy (R-LA) and Tim Scott (R-SC)—is the latest Republican-led push to create a national framework for private school choice. The bill proposes federal tax credits for individuals and corporations that donate to scholarship-granting organizations. These donations would fund tuition and other education-related expenses for families, with no federal dollars going directly to schools. The legislation has been introduced in both chambers and is expected to move forward using the reconciliation process, which could expedite its passage.

ECCA is notable for both its ambition and its architecture. If enacted as written, about 90 percent of students in each state will be eligible. The bill proposes a $10 billion cap on federal K–12 tax-credit scholarships, with 10 percent evenly divided among states. This means each state would have roughly $19.6 million in incentives on offer (i.e., $1 billion divided by fifty states and D.C.). If a state exhausts its share, the remaining 90 percent ($9 billion) will be available on a first come, first served basis. Since this is a tax credit program—not a grant—states don’t receive money directly. Rather, individuals and corporations reduce their federal tax liability by donating to scholarship-granting organizations. The bill also includes an escalator clause that would raise the credit cap over time if demand is strong, signaling a clear intent to expand the initiative. Still, how this revenue reduction would play out across states remains an open question.

By placing the program under the Treasury Department—not the Department of Education—proponents aim to avoid regulatory entanglements. ECCA would be folded into what President Trump has called a “big, beautiful bill.” While not a spending bill in the traditional sense, the proposed tax credit reduces federal revenue and could still face resistance in Congress, particularly from a vocal minority of fiscal hawks. Choice advocates remain optimistic, but if ECCA becomes law, they may soon regret inviting Washington into the fold. Even with Treasury at the helm, federal involvement often breeds unintended consequences. Indeed, history and experience show that even well-meaning national programs can unravel over time.

ESSA waivers (executive)

A lot of attention has focused on the president’s executive orders, whether expanding school choice or “abolishing” the Department of Education. But functionally, these EO’s tend to operate more like glorified press releases than binding policy. More consequential is how U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon handles state waiver requests—moves that could quietly reshape the contours of federal education policy.

Iowa and Oklahoma are the first states to test the waters. Iowa’s request is relatively comprehensive and thoughtful; Oklahoma’s far less so. Both seek to rewrite how federal education dollars flow to states and districts. On paper, Secretary McMahon lacks the authority to block grant these funds. But with enforcement mechanisms weakened by deep staffing cuts, what would have been swiftly rejected in previous administrations now faces a murkier fate. The more pressing question is not whether other states will follow Iowa and Oklahoma, but whether anyone in Washington will even push back.

McMahon and her team have until July to respond to Iowa’s and Oklahoma’s requests, so stay tuned.

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These three developments aren’t unfolding in a vacuum. They’re playing out in real time, across all three branches of government. And they raise fundamental questions: What does it mean for a school to be “public”? What role should the federal government play in promoting school choice? How much flexibility should states have with their federal dollars?  

The answers won’t come easily. But the process of wrestling with them—the push and pull among branches, the back and forth between Washington and the states—is part of what makes federal education policy both maddening and meaningful.

In this time of uncertainty and divisiveness, I’ll begin by thanking Robert Pondiscio for lifting up the AFT’s magazine, American Educator. We are proud that it has been publishing cutting-edge research—and articles focused on strengthening democracy here and abroad—for forty-nine years.

While I’m glad he values our articles on curriculum and instruction, I find it odd that he singles out my one-page “Where We Stand” column as detracting from a union-sponsored magazine. This one-page space is where I speak directly to our members about contemporary issues most affecting them and their students. To suggest that this somehow undermines our commitment to instruction misses the moment we are living in—and frankly not just the threats, but the core purposes of public education.

The founders of this country believed that education was the foundation stone to the long-term viability of American democracy. Likewise, The AFT’s longtime motto is “Education for Democracy, Democracy in Education.” We believe not only that educators, students, and families should have a voice in their public schools, but also that the highest purpose of public schools is to prepare youth to be responsible members of their communities and our nation. Since the rise of Donald Trump, whose behavior is more akin to an authoritarian than one who believes in democracy, I have used this column to speak out clearly and consistently in defense of democracy. Context matters, and union members have a right to know where their elected leaders stand. Al Shanker understood that connection when he spoke out for democracy at home and abroad. I have no doubt he would do the same today.

American Educator is our most direct line to our K–12 and higher education members across the country. If Robert believes that hearing from their union leader is somehow a distraction from their professional mission, he doesn’t fully understand that our union’s purpose is to fight for a better life for all Americans. That requires not simply an understanding of reading and math, but engaging in how policy gets made. And Robert will be dismayed to learn that I also have a one-page column in our magazine for healthcare professionals, AFT Health Care.

As for leading on curriculum and instruction, I hope Robert would take time to learn more about the AFT’s work. To enhance literacy instruction—which Robert and I agree is critical—the AFT built and sustains several in-person and online professional development courses that more than 45,000 members have engaged with that are carefully crafted to share the research published in American Educator. We invest in and help scale Reading Universe and Colorín Colorado, and through our Reading Opens the World initiative, we have given away more than 10 million free books to children, families, and schools. Looking across subjects, our fifty-plus PD courses and 2.3 million-member Share My Lesson platform connect teachers with top-quality resources (from lesson plans to webinars) contributed by educators, researchers, and scholars.

Since day one of becoming the AFT’s president in 2008, I’ve crisscrossed the country, visiting thousands of members in their schools, hospitals, and colleges—listening to their challenges, learning from their expertise, and lifting up their voices. Those conversations shape so much of what I see. So, yes, I use my column to speak plainly about what’s at stake—not just in our classrooms but in our democracy. The real missed opportunity here isn’t a column. It’s the refusal to recognize that defending public education means defending the conditions that allow it to thrive—including democracy itself.

There are many roles to play in the messy ecosystem that is American public schooling. I appreciate Robert’s—as a journalist, analyst, teacher, and curmudgeon. And I hope he appreciates mine.

I appreciate and admire Randi Weingarten’s willingness to engage in a discussion about American Educator and the American Federation of Teacher’s role in education. I share her admiration of the journal’s nearly half-century legacy and thank her for her leadership in programs like Reading Universe, and the union’s generosity in giving away books to schools and families. However, her response misses the core of my critique. My piece didn’t question how American Educator uses its pages; its focus on research and instruction remains a strength. Rather, I suggested that Weingarten’s public voice as AFT president leans almost exclusively into political and cultural issues, overshadowing or eliding entirely the instructional challenges teachers face daily—challenges that the AFT, more than nearly any other institution in education, has both the standing and (as American Educator vividly illustrates) the institutional knowledge to advocate and address. As I noted previously, she’s free to use her “Where We Stand” column as she sees fit, but its focus and tone can feel so distinct from the journal’s valuable evidence-based content that readers might wonder if they stem from the same organization.

This critique isn’t offered in anger but in sorrow. As union president, Weingarten has every right—even an obligation—to weigh in on matters beyond teaching, from democracy to social policy. That’s a given. But it seems uncontroversial to suggest that channeling some of her vast energy toward highlighting the kind of work American Educator does could make teachers’ jobs easier and more impactful. Yet her X feed and public statements frequently prioritize topics like elections or health care over curriculum or pedagogy. Her column follows suit, favoring political advocacy over instructional insights. Ironically, Weingarten cites Share My Lesson as a point of pride, but that doesn’t answer the critique, it amplifies it: Without high-quality, coherent curricula, teachers—her members—must scramble for materials, making their work harder. Share My Lesson isn’t a triumph. Teachers’ lives, job satisfaction, and student outcomes would improve if such a platform weren’t needed.

If Weingarten’s used her platform, even part of the time, to amplify American Educator’s instructional focus, it could inspire a profession-wide renewal. That possibility remains within reach.

Can a parent-education initiative help a school district to boost the readiness of three-year-olds who will soon enter pre-K? One Texas district has been implementing such a program for almost a decade, and a new working paper documents outcomes that are both promising and problematic.

Alief Independent School District, which serves around 39,000 students outside Houston, created the Jumpstart Program (JSP) as a means of teaching local parents how to support the pre-K readiness of their children. Approximately 83 percent of district families are economically disadvantaged and 43 percent of students are English Language Learners. Topics covered in the twenty-two-week JSP curriculum include learning colors, acquiring fine motor skills, counting, name recognition, and book handling, all of which are considered foundational for success in Alief’s pre-K program. The hour-long communal programs are held in district buildings during the school day three times each month throughout the school year. They are facilitated by a family liaison and, although they focus on parent education, children attend every third meeting to allow liaisons to gauge how the curriculum is being implemented by parents.

Compared to other early education interventions reviewed by the research team elsewhere, JSP is low-cost, as it uses existing district resources rather than purchasing outside curriculum or contracting with third-party providers. It is also directly applicable to local needs and readily scalable. In fact, creating the randomized control trial required a huge boost in participation above the sixty families that typically participate each year. Those added costs (approximately $200 per additional family) were covered by the Laura and John Arnold Foundation for purposes of this study.

Using these new resources, JSP was advertised to families of age-appropriate children in the catchment zones of all twenty-four Alief elementary schools, up from the previous eight, starting in 2016–17 and continuing for the next two school years. The intent was to get twenty families in each school zone to apply to the lottery so that researchers could implement a randomized control trial. In practice, there was varying interest from school to school, despite recruitment incentives. Some schools had more than twenty applicants, some had less, and the effort never resulted in a full complement of 480 families applying. Further, 25 percent of families awarded spots in JSP attended five or fewer sessions, and 10 percent never attended a single session, although attrition rates did decline from year to year. Cumulatively over the three years, 1,216 families entered the lottery, with half from each school randomly assigned to JSP (treatment) and half assigned to control.

All students whose parents agreed to be in the study (treatment and control) were evaluated using Alief’s own “Jumpstart Assessment Tool”—geared to determine children’s fine and gross motor skills, knowledge of colors, and a few other foundational skills identified by the district—as well as Pearson’s Bracken School Readiness Assessment, which adds number and shape knowledge, among other skills. Each test was re-administered at the end of the twenty-two-week program. Researchers then compared scores on the overall tests, as well as for individual components.

On the Jumpstart Assessment, both groups showed test score gains over the twenty-two-week period—meaning that while control group student didn’t receive the district’s programming, some substantive learning was going on—but the treatment group showed a 7.2 percentage point advantage over their control group peers. Scores on the name recognition and book handling components were most striking. For example, less than half of control group children could recognize their name in writing during the post-test, while nearly 70 percent of the treatment group could do so. Impacts of JSP participation were markedly higher for children whose parents reported not having a high school diploma.

Similar patterns were seen on the Bracken Assessment, although the gains shown by both control and treatment groups were more muted. JSP participation increased overall Bracken test scores by 2 percentage points over the control group, with no one component standing out. However, robustness tests indicate that the Bracken findings are not statistically significant after student attrition is factored in.

Interestingly, indicators of parental involvement in children’s education (measured by surveys administered before and after the 22-week timeframe) rose for both groups, although two of those indicators—amount of time parents read to their children each week and owning ten or more children’s books—were significantly higher for JSP families than for control families. A detailed analysis of potential mechanisms indicates that 75 percent of the program’s impact is attributed to direct effects—parents actually implementing the strategies that JSP teaches—while 25 percent is mediated through changes in habit formation in children. That is, when parents establish and reinforce consistent, high-quality preparatory routines, children assign value to the interactions and activities.

While the impacts of the Jumpstart Program’s pre-K preparation are generally positive, two realities undermine them somewhat—neither of which is discussed in the working paper. First, intensive recruitment efforts were required just to get families in the queue—only to see dozens of them vanish upon the start of actual programming. (Recall that only sixty families were participating annually in the entire 39,000-student district before the research program began.) Perhaps it indicates a lack of value placed on JSP by parents or maybe just difficulty committing to the required dates and times. Whatever is holding parents back from participation in JSP must be addressed before this or similar programs is likely to have substantial impact. Second, we don’t know how any of the students actually fared in pre-K or beyond. Evidence from other early education program studies leans heavily toward a fading out of even the strongest academic impacts by third grade or sooner. So the modest initial improvements associated with JSP need to be studied over time before any real conclusion can be made.

SOURCE: Flavio Cunha et al., “An Evaluation of the Alief Independent School District Jumpstart Program: Using a Model to Recover Mechanisms from an RCT,” NBER Working Papers (March 2025).

On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Anne Hyslop, Director of Policy Development at All4Ed, joins Mike and David to discuss the evolving federal role in K–12 education—particularly how the Secretary of Education’s waiver authority may—and may not--impact state flexibility on spending and testing under ESSA (the current iteration of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act). Then, on the Research Minute, Amber reviews a new study out of Massachusetts that examines whether students in departmentalized elementary schools perform better in middle school.

Recommended content:

• Anne Hyslop and Dave Powell, ESEA Waivers 101: Explaining the Secretary of Education’s Waiver Authority, All4Ed and Education First (2025)
• Dale Chu, “Waiver and out: How red states plan to push the limits of federal ed policy,” Thomas B. Fordham Institute (April 3, 2025).
• Andy Smarick, “Trump needs to call Lamar,” Thomas B. Fordham Institute (March 20, 2025).
• Benjamin Backes, James Cowan, Dan Goldhaber, Building Bridges to Middle School? Elementary School Departmentalization and Academic Achievement in the Upper Grades, CALDER (2025)

Feedback Welcome: Have ideas for improving our podcast? Send them to Stephanie Distler at [email protected]. 

Cheers

• Montgomery County, Maryland schools are tightening grading rules to raise standards and end years of confusion over effort-based policies. —Bethesda Magazine
• “Charter schools to benefit from new Indiana tax law…” —WFYI Indianapolis

Jeers

• Freddie deBoer argues that the school reform “abundance agenda” tells a story of sweeping change in schools but doesn’t do enough to deal with the hard limits of what policy can actually do. —Freddie deBoer, Substack

• The Education Department under the Trump administration has adopted a more aggressive civil rights enforcement strategy, marked by rapid investigations, funding threats, and a focus on LGBTQ+ and antisemitism issues. —K-12 Dive
• Declining literacy and reasoning skills—fueled by excessive screen time and cultural disengagement from intellectual effort—have eroded Americans’ capacity for sound judgment, as exemplified by the irrationality of Trump’s new tariff policy. —David Brooks, The New York Times
• In Alabama, students will soon have the choice to take career and technical education courses in place of math and science, earning a workforce diploma and preparing them for careers right out of high school. —Chalkbeat