The Education Gadfly Weekly

For the better part of a decade, Natalie Wexler has helped reshape the conversation about American education. At a time when the field was (and in many ways still is) preoccupied with the naïve belief that reading comprehension can be taught with a content-neutral junk drawer of “skills and strategies” lessons, she has made a clear and necessary case that knowledge matters and that curriculum, education’s long-neglected, red-headed stepchild, belongs at the center of efforts to improve student outcomes. Like the rest of us who have made this case, she walks in the footsteps of E.D. Hirsch Jr., who turned 98 this week and has spent more than four decades arguing that literacy and equity, meaningfully understood, depend on shared knowledge and a coherent curriculum.

In many precincts, that argument has largely carried the day. “High-quality instructional materials” (HQIM) are now a central reform strategy in states and districts across the country. This is real progress. As Hirsch himself and Dan Willingham wrote this week in Education Next, “knowledge is having a moment in education fashion,” a phrase they use advisedly, given the field’s long history of faddish enthusiasms.

But reading Wexler’s recent Substack on how to tell whether “a knowledge-building curriculum…actually deserves that label,” I found myself returning to a chronic concern of mine that’s only grown sharper over time. This concern is not about whether curriculum matters. It does. The question is whether the gratifying enthusiasm for knowledge-rich curriculum represents a durable shift in practice or simply the latest turn in a familiar cycle. And whether fine-grained curriculum evaluation matters in a system where curriculum—any curriculum—is not yet central to the student experience.

Wexler’s excellent dissection of the widely used Benchmark Advance ELA curriculum echoes and advances a pair of Substack posts by Olivia Mullins, an elementary science teacher with a Ph.D. in neuroscience. Mullins points out that the units in Benchmark Advance are organized by abstract “themes,” rather than a coherent set of topics, and sometimes fail to clarify important vocabulary or facts needed to understand readings. Wexler affirms Mullins’s argument that Benchmark “lacks both the depth and the coherence to do an effective job of building knowledge.”

Wexler and Mullins’s analysis is both careful and correct. You can’t judge a curriculum by surface signals—test scores, adoption lists, or ratings alone. And claims from publishers that their wares are knowledge-building should be taken with a grain of salt.

To know whether a knowledge-building curriculum actually deserves that label, you have to look at what it asks students to do all day. Are students reading rich, content-heavy texts and grappling with ideas that build over time? Are lessons organized around coherent topics that accumulate knowledge, rather than disconnected skills practice? Do classroom tasks reflect what we know about how learning works—retrieval, attention to meaning, and sustained engagement with content—rather than superficial activities?

The trouble is that even if the answer to all of those questions is “yes,” you still don’t know whether students will, in fact, get a “high quality” curriculum. You don’t know if instruction, as students experience it, systematically builds knowledge over time.

“As students experience it” is the rub. It is more revealing to watch what people do than what they say. And what educators do with curriculum suggests that, for all our talk about its importance, it does not yet command real authority. It is still treated as optional—something to be reshaped or replaced at will—rather than the backbone of instruction. This in turn suggests it may be premature to fetishize fine-grained differences among curricula: Happily, we are getting better at distinguishing strong curricula from weak ones on paper. But we have not yet built a system that reliably delivers any curriculum as intended.

A curriculum is a designed experience. It reflects deliberate decisions about what to teach, in what order, using which texts, and toward what ends. Done well, it reflects expertise and promotes coherence over time. But that is curriculum as design. Curriculum as practice in American schools is something else entirely.

Much education analysis can leave the impression that classroom practice is largely settled and that the only meaningful differences lie in implementation quality. Talk of a “Mississippi Miracle” or “Southern Surge,” for example, suggests a level of uniformity that exists only in our heads. From state to state, within districts, even across the hallway in a single school, you can encounter entirely different instructional experiences. In one, students may be reading a complex text and grappling with ideas. In the other, they may be completing activities only loosely connected to the core content. Both teachers are, technically, using the same curriculum, but in practice they have diverged.

Understand this is not an anomaly, it is our system. Teachers routinely adapt, supplement, skip, and replace lessons. This is not to suggest that teachers should simply “shut up and teach the script.” Thoughtful adaptation—grounded in evidence, aligned to the curriculum’s sequence, and responsive to student needs—is part of the craft. But the default assumption too often runs in the opposite direction: that the curriculum is suspect and that professional judgment necessitates modifying or replacing it. A healthier norm would reverse that presumption—treating the curriculum as sound unless there is a clear, evidence-based reason to depart from it.

Remarkably, even as more educators embrace “HQIM” and districts invest heavily in it, this habit of customization appears to be intensifying, not receding. Teachers are now using more supplemental resources than in prior years, not fewer. On average, teachers report drawing on multiple curriculum programs and roughly five additional resources, such as Share My Lesson and Teachers Pay Teachers, a number that has grown over time. In other words, the rise of “HQIM” has not displaced the long-standing norm of customization. It has been layered on top of it.

The result is a wide and consequential gap between what is intended, what is implemented, and what students actually experience. And it is that last category—the experienced curriculum—that ultimately determines what students learn.

Not incidentally, there is also a hidden cost to this culture of constant customization that’s rarely acknowledged: teacher time. I spent 20 to 30 hours a week early in my career cobbling together lessons from scratch or searching for materials to “engage” students, differentiate instruction, or teach content-neutral “skills and strategies.” Those hours would have been far better spent studying student work, refining my delivery, or communicating with families. One of the underappreciated benefits of a coherent, high-quality curriculum is that it frees teachers from reinventing the wheel, allowing them to focus on the parts of the job that matter most and that, unlike curriculum creation, only they can do.

To be clear, this state of affairs is not entirely the fault of teachers. David Steiner, director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy, has described how even rigorous, thoughtfully designed curricula often remain, quite literally, on the shelf. At the core, he writes, is a mindset: Teachers “don’t believe their students can manage the rigor of grade-level HQIM instruction—thus, the avoidance and watering down.” But that’s not irrational or merely low expectations. Teachers are responding to classrooms where many students are below grade level and where the supports to bridge that gap are weak or incoherent. Steiner is persuasive that the onus is on publishers to include pre-unit diagnostic quizzes throughout the curriculum and on schools to use those results to design effective academic interventions.

Without these sorts of shifts in professional practice and norms, attempts to evaluate a curriculum, whether through test scores, reviews, or earnest deep-dive analyses like Wexler’s, are of limited use. We are observing what is printed, not what is delivered. It’s a bit like trying to infer children’s diet and nutrition by walking the aisles of a grocery store. The availability of healthy food is encouraging and tells you something about what is possible. It tells you very little about what children are actually eating.

This helps clarify what it means—or ought to mean—when we say a curriculum “works.” If a curriculum works, materials are used with coherence and purpose. Leadership is aligned. Expectations are shared. Professional development reinforces the curriculum rather than introducing competing priorities or initiatives. Teachers treat curriculum as a foundation rather than a suggestion.

In sum, we are facing not one challenge but two. The first and fundamental one is to establish the expectation that curriculum is central to the student experience and something to be used as designed. The second challenge is how to evaluate and valorize knowledge-rich curriculum as an essential tool of literacy and equity. Wexler is right to insist that ELA curricula should build knowledge in a careful and coherent way. But before we can confidently judge whether a curriculum is any good, we may need to ask a simpler—and more elusive—question: How can we tell what students are actually experiencing?

Until we can untangle the knot between what is intended, what is designed, what is taught, and what students actually experience, our claims about curriculum effectiveness will remain necessarily provisional—not because curriculum does not matter, but because, too often, it is not what students actually get.

The bottom line is that we are winning the intellectual argument about curriculum—but we have not yet won the operational one. We’ve barely tried.

Editor’s note: This was first published on the author’s Substack, The Next 30 Years.

The current system of residential assignment carries a lot of baggage. It also forces families into boxes where their largest investments (i.e., homes) are intrinsically tied to a single public school. This structure lacks the flexibility that should be afforded to students and their parents, especially as K–12 education is a deeply personal experience. Students aren’t just taught the three Rs at school, education shapes student’s views and introduces them to new ideas. This requires significant trust between families and schools. If it fractures, then students should be able to pursue their education at other public schools. More pragmatically, it can block students from learning options not available in their assigned district or trap them in schools where they feel bullied, unsafe, or alone. No one wants this for children.

Ideally, if we were starting from scratch, we wouldn’t design a school assignment system based exclusively on residential assignment. This is where the vision of a boundaryless education system arises. But the tie between home ownership and public K–12 education isn’t going anywhere in the short term. Pragmatically, well-designed open enrollment programs can weaken the rigid barriers imposed by residential assignment. These policies let students transfer to public schools with extra seats available, which means that resident students are never displaced from their assigned schools by transfer students. This is the case in all of the 16 states with universal open enrollment laws on the books.

The bones of a good open enrollment law

Reason Foundation’s seven open enrollment best practices create a model open enrollment policy. Together, these provisions seek to balance true local control (families’ decisions about the public school that’s best for their kids) with the communal local control often associated with public schools.

Under a strong open enrollment law, districts with available capacity must admit transfer applicants, ideally through a randomized lottery. These capacity limitations, often set by districts themselves, wouldn’t require districts to admit students if it would require them to build new facilities, hire new staff, etc.

Robust open enrollment laws also ensure that districts can’t stop students from transferring to other public schools. Weak policies in California, New Hampshire, and Mississippi let districts cap the number of students transferring out of their districts (if districts can’t stop students from leaving to go to private schools, the same logic should be applied to cross-district transfers).

What does this mean for neighborhood schools?

In many states with robust open enrollment laws, public schools remain a cornerstone of a community. The latest Gallup polling shows that many families are still satisfied with their public schools, suggesting that most students would remain in their current schools. Plus, open enrollment data show that these programs tend to scale up gradually, giving districts plenty of time to respond to fluctuating enrollments.

For example, data from Wisconsin’s program show that it scaled up incrementally, growing from 2,400 (0.29 percent of public school students) to 62,000 participants (8 percent of public school students) over the course of 27 years. Similar data from West Virginia and Kansas indicate similar trends, where just 0.6 percent and 0.3 percent of students transferred to public schools in other districts during the programs’ first year of operation.

This means, contrary to many district administrators’ fears, that robust open enrollment laws don’t lead to chaos. In fact, we have good data from multiple states showing that districts can successfully operate even when student mobility is high. For example, 103,000 Arizona students (13 percent of students enrolled in the state’s traditional public schools) transferred to districts other than their assigned ones. On average, data from the 14 states with strong cross-district open enrollment laws show that 6 percent of these states’ public school students use these programs.

In sum, open enrollment is a step toward a boundaryless education system, giving students more flexible education options when extra seats are available. This increases public school accountability as families can vote with their feet and helps many students attend schools that are a better fit regardless of where they live.

I still remember my elementary music teacher roaming the halls, pushing a cart overflowing with tambourines, recorders, and sheet music. This vibrant world was threatened, however, when I was in fourth grade as the district began discussing cuts to our music program. That night, in a small act of defiance, my parents took my brother (who was in sixth grade band) and me to Old Navy to buy “Save Our Music” T-shirts, which I wore proudly to school the next morning.

We quickly realized we were not alone in this fight. Later that month, our town hall was packed with students, parents, and community members united in protest. It was because of that collective resistance that my music teacher was able to keep pushing her cart, and why I eventually had the privilege of participating in North Smithfield’s band program from sixth grade through high school.

But many students today are not so lucky. Across the United States, access to music education is turning into a discretionary luxury. Amidst district budget cuts, music programs have taken significant hits over the past decade in states such as Oklahoma and California. Nationally, more than 3.6 million students lack access to music education, and these gaps disproportionately affect students in high-poverty schools, large urban districts, and communities with high populations of Black, Hispanic, and Native American students.

Access also declines as students grow older. While 87 percent of elementary schools offer some form of music instruction, that figure drops to 78 percent by high school. Even in schools that technically “offer” music, the quality of access is uneven: Fewer than half of high schools have the instruments, sheet music, or modern equipment necessary for every interested student to participate.

These disparities are likely to worsen. Though the Every Student Succeeds Act (2015) explicitly emphasizes music as a core component of a “well-rounded education,” the Trump administration proposed eliminating funding for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), an agency that provides crucial grants to schools and communities to support music and arts programs, particularly for underserved students. While Congress ultimately maintained NEA funding for FY2026, the calls for its elimination ignore the large body of research demonstrating that music is a powerful engine for cognitive development.

From an early age, music helps children learn how language works. We learn our alphabet by singing it, we learn how to rhyme through “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” and we play the recorder to learn about the foundations of attention and pattern recognition. These traditions reflect how music reinforces phonics and literacy by helping young students internalize language patterns long before formal instruction clicks.

Research shows that these benefits begin well before elementary school. In one randomized study, nine-month-old infants were assigned to either music sessions or non-musical play for 12 classes. Babies in the music group showed stronger neural responses to patterns in both music and speech, demonstrating early improvements in language processing before they can even speak.

Even short, low-cost programs can have lasting effects. A two-year study of five- and six-year-olds found that weekly “music playschool” lessons in kindergarten significantly improved phoneme processing and vocabulary, compared with peers in dance classes or with no organized activity. Programs like these help build the foundations for reading, language development, and long-term academic success.

The benefits of music education extend well beyond early childhood. Studies of middle and high school students consistently find that sustained participation in school music programs is associated with improved academic outcomes, higher standardized test scores, and stronger executive function. In one national survey, 87 percent of teachers and 79 percent of parents said they believe music education positively affects students’ academic performance.

Music’s value is not just something that can be measured in test scores or metrics. It is the experience of learning to persist through frustration and to create something meaningful with others. It’s the confidence of mastering a difficult piece and the sense of belonging that comes from being part of a group.

These benefits may be more important now than ever. Students continue to face unprecedented post-pandemic challenges, including slow recovery in reading and math scores, a weakened sense of belonging at school, and rising psychological struggles, such as anxiety and insomnia. These trends are especially pronounced among high-poverty students and students of color, the same groups that are least likely to have access to music education. Yet research consistently shows that music education can help address these challenges: 92 percent of teachers say music provides an outlet for students to express themselves, and 90 percent report that it helps students build confidence. If music helps students reconnect with school, rebuild confidence, and strengthen academic skills, then the students who stand to benefit most are precisely those who are most often denied access.

Music education should not be treated as a nice-to-have, or the first program that gets cut when budgets tighten. In fact, communities should advocate for their expansion, ensuring universal access and emphasizing the role music can play in post-pandemic recovery. Every child deserves the chance to pick up an instrument, find their voice, and discover the discipline, creativity, and connection that only music can bring.

High school graduation is often treated as the pivotal moment when one becomes an adult. But for many young people today, adulthood unfolds unevenly over time, through a mix of work, further education, financial pressure, stalled plans, and gradual independence.

Turning the Tassel: What Generation Z Says About Life After High School Graduation focuses on that post-graduation reality. It’s a first-time survey by a nonprofit called Agency, as well as The Harris Poll. They queried more than 5,000 district and charter high school Gen Z students born between 1997 and 2012 who graduated between 2015 and 2025, examining outcomes such as salary, postsecondary degree attainment, homeownership, and civic engagement.

The findings are mixed, which is why the report deserves attention. Most survey respondents are working full-time. Most have pursued some further education or training after high school. And three in four say they believe they are headed in the right direction. But many also say they were underprepared for what they’re doing, financially fragile, and trying to find stable footing in work and adult life.

That picture fits what other recent Gen Z research has found. Gallup, Jobs for the Future, and the Walton Family Foundation reported in 2025 that fewer than 30 percent of high school students feel “very prepared” to pursue the postsecondary pathways they are considering, and even among students very interested in a pathway, fewer than half feel very prepared to follow it. Too many are trying to plan their futures without enough clarity, guidance, or confidence.

The Agency-Harris analysis reports that about three-quarters of recent graduates enrolled in some postsecondary education or training after high school. That suggests that Gen Z understands that a high school diploma by itself often is not enough. Young adults know they need more learning, more skills, more credentialing, or more direction after graduation.

But the report also shows how difficult it can be to persist. Completion rates were 60 percent for certificate programs, 51 percent for online courses or bootcamps, 48 percent for four-year degree programs, and just 39 percent for two-year degree programs. Starting is common. Finishing is much harder.

This gap between aspiration and completion may be one of the most important findings in the report. American education is still very good at telling students to dream big. It is less effective at helping them navigate the space between aspiration and attainment.

Students are often urged toward college and career readiness. But many leave high school without a clear sense of which pathway fits them, what the tradeoffs are, and how to persist when the first plan falters.

The employment findings offer further cause for concern. While about half (49 percent) report working full-time, 18 percent are working part-time, and nearly one-fifth (19 percent) are looking for work. Among employed graduates, the largest share works in service and customer-facing roles, followed by education, healthcare, and caregiving. Smaller shares work in office and professional roles, skilled trades and labor, or science, technology, engineering, or math (STEM) fields.

The report also shows that recent graduates are more likely to land in shrinking job sectors than in growing ones, even as demand rises in healthcare, skilled trades, advanced manufacturing, and technology. So too many young adults are entering adulthood through jobs that may not offer a durable opportunity.

Some outcomes show differences between district and charter public schools. For example, charter high school graduates are more likely than their district peers to say that they were encouraged to break barriers or defy expectations (71 percent versus 58 percent). Charter graduates who enrolled in two-year community colleges are also more likely to persist and complete: Only 7 percent drop out or fail to finish, compared to 20 percent of district school graduates.

We also learn that less than one-quarter of recent graduates own their own homes. More than 40 percent live rent-free with family or friends. Eighty percent are registered to vote, but only 55 percent say they have voted in a federal election, and 45 percent in a state election. This generation is engaged and trying but also delayed in achieving the stability that previous generations associated with adulthood.

What, then, should K–12 leaders and other stakeholders do with this message from Gen Z?

First, policymakers should be clear about their definition of high school success. Graduation rates and test scores still matter. But if the point of schooling is to prepare young people for adult life, then states and districts should pay more attention to tracking and reporting on what happens after graduation: employment, postsecondary enrollment and completion, earnings, and civic participation.

Second, school systems should make pathway advising an earlier and more serious part of secondary education. The report shows that about three-quarters of recent graduates pursue some form of postsecondary education or training, but many do not complete it. That suggests a weakness in navigation and persistence more than a lack of aspiration. Students need much more help understanding the range of choices before them, what those choices cost, and where they lead.

Third, educators should connect academics more deliberately to adult life. One of the clearest signals in the report is that many young adults leave high school without feeling prepared for postsecondary coursework, even though college-going remains common. At the same time, employed graduates are concentrated in service and customer-facing roles, while smaller shares enter STEM, skilled trades, or professional sectors.

Fourth, schools and community partners should expand access to experiences that make the future visible. Dual enrollment, early college, work-based learning, career exploration, and college and financial-aid advising should be part of the core design of high school, not peripheral programs for a few students. The report itself points to stronger use of advising, flexible scheduling, and academic supports as part of the pattern associated with better postsecondary outcomes.

Fifth, parents should begin these conversations earlier and widen them beyond the default four-year college script. The lesson of this report is that, while college plainly matters, it is also not the only route. Parents can help by talking with their children earlier about degrees, certificates, apprenticeships, military service, and career-connected learning as real pathways to adult success.

Sixth, students themselves should treat high school less as a checklist and more as a launchpad. In addition to taking the right high school courses, students should pursue other activities and experiences that prepare them for adulthood. One of the strongest findings in the report is that graduates who felt more prepared in areas like time management, career planning, and money management were better positioned for life after school.

Gen Z is giving adults a message that is simple and demanding. While acknowledging that high schools can’t solve all the problems these young people describe, high schools can do more. This includes giving young people more visibility into their potential choices after high school through experiences, including career exploration and internships.

The tassel still turns in a single moment. But life after high school does not. It unfolds through a series of decisions, opportunities, detours, and supports. If schools want to claim success, they should be judged not only by who walks across the stage, but by how well students can move forward once they leave it behind.