The Education Gadfly Weekly

The last two weeks of April featured a rare doubleheader at the Supreme Court, as the justices took up two cases dealing with the intersection of religious liberty and public education. In both instances, plausible outcomes could thrust the courts ever deeper into the daily operation of U.S. schools, with attendant line-drawing, hair-splitting, and interference likely for decades to come.

But the Court has a way out of that thicket that would respect the secular nature of public schooling while guaranteeing parents’ their right of free expression. And that is to declare that states must find a way to provide taxpayer support for a pluralistic education system, one that funds religious schools in addition to the public schools—though not necessarily through the charter school mechanism.

This approach might sound like judicial overreach, but it is much preferable to the road we are otherwise heading down—one that will bring endless lawsuits about the rules surrounding charter schools, as well as litigation to determine when and how religious parents can opt their children out of lessons and programs that public schools mandate but that parents find objectionable. The latter issue was at play in last week’s case, Mahmoud v. Taylor. The particular question was whether the school district in Montgomery County, Maryland violated parent’s First Amendment rights by not letting them opt their children out of early-elementary lessons on LGBTQ themed storybooks—books that clearly carry messages at odds with their religious views.

That question is easy, though, compared to others that might follow, as Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson noted. For example, do parents of faith have the right to insist that their children not be assigned to gay teachers? To pull their high school students out of biology classes that discuss human evolution? Is it feasible, much less educationally advisable, to turn our public schools into an a la carte experience?

Imagine that last week’s case had been about Montgomery County, Ohio, instead of Montgomery County, Maryland. There, religious parents have the ability to send their children to private schools—including religious schools—at taxpayer expense, thanks to Ohio’s multi-faceted school-choice options. That’s not the case in Montgomery County, Maryland, where the district schools are the only taxpayer-funded options. (Someone might inform Justice Jackson, who asserted that religious parents could always opt for religious private schools instead of public ones, without acknowledging the burden of paying for tuition.)

For states with private school-choice programs, the courts could show more deference to public school districts, knowing that religious parents have the option of exiting those schools entirely, rather than on a lesson-by-lesson basis. And to do so with the support of government funding.

Such an approach would also be helpful when it comes to the issue at play in the other half of the double-header, this week’s St. Isidore of Seville v. Drummond. Here the question is whether the state of Oklahoma, and the 46 other states with charter school laws, are discriminating against nonprofit religious organizations by prohibiting them from applying to create and run public charter schools aligned with their faiths.

This case hinges on whether charter schools are “state actors,” i.e., public schools. If so, they clearly trigger the first Amendment’s Establishment Clause and cannot be religious. The contrary view is that charter schools should be considered private, in which case Oklahoma is indeed guilty of “rank discrimination,” as Justice Brett Kavanaugh put it, by not allowing religious entities to win contracts to run faith-based schools — in the same way that it would be unfair to disallow Catholic Charities from managing government-funded food banks or foster care services.

That may be so. Yet for the Court to mandate that states support religious charter schools against their will would be to create massive upheaval in the charter sector. After all, federal and state law and practice for thirty years have rested on the assertion that charter schools are, in fact, public schools, and therefore state actors. For example, they must accept all applicants and, if oversubscribed, use lotteries, not selective admissions, to determine who will attend.  Could states require religious charter schools to abide by these same rules? Meaning that, for example, they would have to admit students and families who don’t adhere to their faith? What about LGBTQ children or families? (St. Isadore claims that it will accept everyone.) What’s more, a determination that charter schools are private may mean—especially in blue states—that they’ll no longer be eligible for state formula funding, putting their very existence at risk.

But here, too, the Court could take a wider view. It could rule that so long as states provide some vehicle to support religious education, they would not be required to do so through the charter school mechanism specifically. In the case of Saint Isidore, it could simply participate in Oklahoma’s existing tax credit scholarship initiative. Indeed, Justice Jackson wondered aloud about Oklahoma’s voucher program—perhaps an indication that she’s already seeing the big picture.

Mandating that states provide public support for religious schools might sound like a long shot. No doubt it would lead to massive bellyaching in blue states and from the usual suspects in teachers unions and the rest of the education blob. But beyond being a grand slam for kids and families, it might be the best way to avoid constant judicial micromanagement of our public schools for decades to come.

We’ve gone nearly a decade without a president who prioritized education reform—and the country is worse for it. If the issue is going to have a meaningful place in the next presidential race, the groundwork must begin now. While school choice has gained traction in red states, structural reforms—namely standards, assessments, and accountability—remain largely sidelined everywhere. Their abandonment after No Child Left Behind may have contributed to a steep drop in student achievement, with recent NAEP scores painting a bleak picture. Democratic reformers who want that to change need to start building alliances, refining messages, and preparing candidates. Waiting until 2028 is too late.

A key test of what’s possible will come next year, when voters head to the polls for midterms and a whopping thirty-six gubernatorial races. That cycle will offer a clearer picture of where education stands in the hierarchy of voter concerns—and which messages resonate across party lines. With Republicans currently in control of Congress and the White House, they have little incentive to change course. But Democrats, having seen their historic edge on education collapse during Covid, are adrift in the wilderness. If they’re serious about making their way back, going big on education could be part of the ticket.

But to reclaim the mantle of the education party, Democrats will need to decide whether they’re ready to let go of the recent past. With their old coalition shattered, they must chart a different path—one that brings together Black, Hispanic, and Asian voters, the college-educated, the affluent, and the upwardly mobile—alongside a slice of what was once the Eisenhower coalition. These are voters who value competence, civil rights, and good governance—and who see education as central to all three. It would mean leaving behind parts of their more populist base, just as LBJ turned his back on the South. The question is whether they’re ready for that kind of clarity—and that kind of gamble.

To start, Democrats should seize on “abundance” as a winning message. Republicans have been aggressive in expanding school choice, arguing that it empowers families and breaks down barriers to opportunity. But abundance can—and should—mean more than choice alone. It’s the idea that every child, regardless of race, income, or zip code, deserves access to an excellent education. That means not just more options, but better ones—strong academics, high expectations, great teachers, and rigorous assessments. It also means re-centering education as a civil rights issue. The latest NAEP results show the bottom has fallen out for our most vulnerable students. A party serious about equity (properly understood) and justice should treat that like the five-alarm fire it is. But first, it needs a serious platform—one that echoes the ambitions of the Clinton and Obama years rather than the timidity of recent campaigns.

To that end, Democrats must give their education platform the upgrade it desperately needs. The 2024 version was anemic—thin on ideas, reactive on school choice, and lock step with the teachers unions’ wish list of more money, less work, less competition, less testing, and zero accountability. As Matthew Yglesias recently argued, the current political landscape provides a chance for Democrats to address education reform head on:

If we’re talking about learning loss (and we should be), shouldn’t we be talking about the old education reform standbys of standards and accountability? High-dosage tutoring is a good idea, but it’s weird to put all the responsibilities for improving outcomes on tutors rather than everything else that happens in school buildings. More mental health inputs sounds like a good idea, but are we going to measure the outputs? We know that across the board in education, more inputs usually help. But just adding inputs is no substitute for measuring outcomes.

In short, Democrats need a bold education agenda to reclaim its edge—one that unapologetically focuses on student academic performance.

The unions may not welcome stronger policies on standards and accountability, but they also won’t abandon the party for it. Even during the Obama years—when teacher evaluations and charter schools were front and center—they didn’t break ranks. They had no choice then, and they don’t now. Backing Republicans—especially the current incarnation—would be a nonstarter.

It's early days, but the horse race is already under way. Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro’s star continues to rise, propelled by a throwback political brand centered on “getting shit done.” Meanwhile, former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has been leading the charge in search of a message that resonates on education, but he’s probably the wrong messenger for this moment. Democrats will likely need a candidate with populist resonance, someone like John Fetterman—who’s shown a keen ability to connect with working-class voters and break away from traditional establishment norms. Yes, his strong ties to teachers unions may complicate his appeal to a broader electorate, but he has not been afraid to buck party orthodoxy when necessary. If Fetterman can learn to navigate the complexities of education reform, he could become an unlikely—but powerful—champion.

Of course, skeptics will argue that Democrats can’t simply turn on a dime, shedding the far-left factions that currently dominate its education discourse. Complicating matters, growing internal dissent within the party makes such a pivot appear increasingly unlikely. But the reality of American politics is that politicians, for better or worse, eventually go to where the voters are. The GOP’s rapid shift in response to Trump is a clear example of this maxim at work. Voters care about outcomes—and if the Democratic Party embraces a more pragmatic, reform-oriented agenda on education, they may find a durable coalition eager to rally behind it.

Over the past year, publications from Teen Vogue to the Associated Press have bemoaned students’ lack of reading stamina. Everyone seems to agree: these days, middle and high school teachers are assigning mostly short or excerpted texts, and now college students can’t read more than a few pages at a time. Many of these pieces cite the same reasons for the abbreviated readings, including smartphones, standardized testing, the prevalence of cheating, student disengagement, and reading skill deficits.

Although my colleague Mike Petrilli has correctly observed that no hard evidence backs these claims, these arguments nonetheless resonate with my experience as a former high school and undergraduate educator. I also appreciate the additional rationale for banning smartphones and implementing evidence-based reading instruction. But these pieces tend to conclude with a call for teachers to assign entire works, rather than excerpts.

OK, yes, agreed. But with what time? With what supports?

When I shifted from teaching college to high school English nearly a decade ago—back in those days when undergraduates were regularly assigned actual books—I was appalled by the commonplace practice of assigning high schoolers excerpts of longer works. How could students make meaning from material they never fully saw? I did not oppose teaching some poems, essays, and short stories, but I still worried that my students weren’t being exposed to enough extended text.

An inspirational story, which you very much might like to hear, would be that I pushed back against school culture, leapt onto a desk like John Keating, and added multiple full-length readings to every course I taught.

That story, however, would be neither true nor realistic.

I added a grand total of zero novels, plays, or memoirs to any high school syllabus. I decreased the number of excerpted readings, but yes, I still taught some. I had my reasons, though, and I suspect they’re similar for many other teachers.

First, in my experience, was the issue of alignment with school culture and expectations. The other teachers in my department, including other teachers of the same course, frequently assigned short or excerpted readings. I could not have diverged from these assignments without substantially revising syllabi and pursuing conflict with far more experienced teachers and administrators—and even then, the answer might well have remained no. A serious change to the short-reading status quo would have required a shift in priorities and expectations from the top down.

Schools are not without reason for the shorter assignments, either. As the various think pieces have flagged, the reasons I encountered as a teacher included ever-waning attention spans and, indeed, standardized test preparation.

My colleague Mike Petrilli has also argued that standardized testing isn’t likely to blame for fewer pages being assigned. He’s right with regard to private schools and some grade levels, but when I taught grade levels that were tested, the narratives around teaching shorter texts for test prep were compelling and pervasive.

In New York, for example, the notorious Part 3 of the ELA Regents exam asks high school students to read a short excerpt, identify the “central idea,” and analyze how a “writing strategy… develops the central idea.” (I’ll set aside my numerous objections to this prompt for the moment.) I acknowledge that in a perfect world, teachers wouldn’t spend time “teaching to the test,” but in reality, teachers need to ensure that students know what to expect on an intimidating assessment that determines whether they graduate.

Over and over, highly experienced educators told me that students could prepare for Part 3 by reading new, short texts, and drafting practice responses. I have to tell you—this take is not unreasonable. If the state assessment is testing students on excerpts, then it makes sense to prepare students with… excerpts. And New York is hardly the only state that relies on this assessment strategy.

But even if the challenges of school culture, attention spans, and test prep suddenly disappeared, the practical fact remains that teachers lack the time that is now required to support extended reading.

Once upon a time, as many of you will recall, English teachers assigned most reading and writing to be completed at home. Class was largely reserved for lectures, discussion, and assessments. This structure was far from perfect. Plenty of students did not complete the readings (CliffsNotes have existed since 1958), and students with additional commitments like work or caregiving were further disadvantaged.

Today, many districts and schools encourage more reading and writing in classrooms. This shift has its advantages: reading together can enhance comprehension of challenging material, for example, and writing in class allows students to seek feedback in real time. Still, a school day has a limited number of minutes, and lengthy readings in class mean fewer minutes for everything else. Within these parameters, unfortunately, short texts make logistical sense.

English teachers don’t need to be told that full-length novels, plays, and memoirs are good. They already love books; that is literally why they became English teachers. What they do need, however, is a culture shift and more practical support from district and school leadership to teach more full-length works.

What might that support look like? There’s no silver bullet, but in my next post, I’ll offer ideas for ways to support teachers in getting kids to read books—or at least, equipping them with the tools they need to be able to read them. Stay tuned.

State-level school funding reforms are common means by which state policymakers can make broad changes in the flow of money to districts, schools, and students—usually aiming for increased funds to students with the most need in a quest for improved student outcomes. Still, research on the impacts of statewide funding reforms is not clear cut. A widely-cited 2018 study, for example, estimated that state education expenditures increased by approximately $500 per student in high-income districts and $1,200 per student in low-income districts following a specific reform, while another found that states without school finance reforms (SFRs) weren’t that different from those with them since they tended to adopt similar formula components. A working paper aims to add more nuance through a deep dive into how various states responded to SFRs and how per-pupil funding changed as a result.

Analysts Shelby McNeill and Christopher Candelaria use state-level finance data from the U.S. Census Department covering fiscal years 1987–2007 and a list of SFRs that occurred between 1989–2005, a period also known as the “adequacy era” of finance reforms. They examine the text of legislative statutes that were passed around the same time as—and often because of—the SFRs in order to glean data on local property tax revenues and record changes in state financing schemes intended to fund the proposed increases. They also merge into their dataset state-level population data and student enrollments. Their analysis purposely avoids the Great Recession due to the larger finance changes brought on by that upheaval. There were 24 states that had at least one SFR during the sample period; twenty-six states did not have a reform during this period, and these never-treated states serve as a comparison group. McNeill and Candelaria examine average effects up through ten years post-reform to allow sufficient time for all of the changes to play out. They use an approach similar to difference-in-differences that helps to improve the quality of the match between the treatment and control states before the SFR intervention.

McNeill and Candelaria find that six of 24 state SFRs significantly increased per capita state education expenditures in the years following the reform. There is no clear indication as to why such a large-scale reform would not show impacts within ten years in those other states, but speculation centers on funding changes that result in redistribution of funds rather than increases, potential tax revolts from citizens (!), and what can be politely called legislative foot-dragging. By zoning in on the six states that did increase and sustain spending after the SFR—Vermont, New Hampshire, Kansas, Arkansas, Maryland, and New Jersey—the analysts observe the average effect on state education spending ranging from a high of $5,553 per pupil ($914 per capita) in Vermont to a low of $479 per pupil ($77 per capita) in Maryland.

The report includes a plethora of details on the mechanisms by which each state funded these increases, but it appeared to boil down to two things: 1) States took control of property taxes—by imposing, collecting, and/or distributing them. In Vermont, for example, that meant total property tax revenues remained largely unchanged but got redistributed using a foundation grant program, which guaranteed a base level of funding per pupil. The state assumed primary responsibility for funding the foundation grant program, so the total amount increased while local property tax revenues tended to decrease. 2) States increased a variety of taxes aside from those on property, including on hotels, meals, gas, and cigarettes, as well as sales taxes, corporate income taxes, and a bank franchise tax.

McNeill and Candelaria find minimal evidence that non-education state expenditures were reduced or that state debt increased in the years following an SFR, but they can’t be sure given their data limitations, including their small sample of six impacted states.

By and large, we know now that students from traditionally disadvantaged backgrounds no longer attend poorly funded schools. Beyond the scope of this study, however, is whether these funding increases create meaningful improvements at the district, school, or classroom level.

Other research on that topic has identified unintended consequences of state-level reform (such as additional funding boosting already-advantaged students and populations via less-than-diligent implementation) and the shortcomings of increased funds that do not also address equal access to classroom resources. In the end, knowing what happens at the policy level is important, but change on the ground is what really matters.

SOURCE: Shelby M. McNeill and Christopher A. Candelaria, “Paying for school finance reforms: How states raise revenues to fund increases in elementary-secondary education expenditures,” Annenberg Institute at Brown University (May 2024).

K–12 student enrollment nationwide has been declining since in 2019, with traditional school districts bearing the brunt of both a baby bust and a surge in non-district options, public and private. This is clearly evident in Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), where you can add negative reactions to Covid school closures and out-migration of families from the city to the list of baleful influences on enrollment in recent years. LAUSD’s elementary schools alone have experienced a 46 percent decline in enrollment from their peak in 2001. While all of this may sound like a clarion call for right-sizing—consolidating students in the best buildings, closing and selling the oldest and least-used, merging academic and extracurricular offerings—that’s not what happened, as a new report lays out in sad detail.

The report comes from Available to All, a nonprofit watchdog dedicated to making sure that public schools live up to their “open to all” mantra. They looked at all LAUSD elementary schools (both district-operated buildings and district-affiliated charters) which were open at the start of the 2024–25 school year and serving grades 2–5, but excluded schools that covered higher grades as well, such as K–8 or K–12 models. Although the majority of elementary schools in Los Angeles are considered magnets that can admit students who reside anywhere in the city, most also operate attendance zones and prioritize admission to students residing in their zones. The same is true for many L.A. charter schools and is the crux of the problem as identified by the researchers. Any elementary school operating with an “exclusionary” attendance zone (in the report’s preferred parlance) was included. The analysis looks at capacity (defined as the highest enrollment previously recorded, although this measure could be problematic), current enrollment, student demographics, and academic performance (defined by percentage of students testing proficient in English for their grade level).

Of the 456 elementary schools included in the sample, almost half (255 buildings) have seen enrollment declines of 50 percent or more since their peak occupancy. In fifty-six of those, the decline has been 70 percent or more. It should be noted that some schools’ “peak enrollment” likely included overcrowded classrooms and/or modular units in the parking lot, which means that some fraction of “peak” is actually better for students. However, as the researchers note, it is the only publicly-available data on maximum capacity in LAUSD buildings and they do attempt to adjust for the possibility of previous overcrowding as best they can. Far less equivocal: Thirty-four buildings have fewer than 200 students enrolled for this current school year. Twenty-nine of these are operating at less than 50 percent of peak, with twelve hovering closer to 25 percent.

On the achievement side, only thirty-nine schools in the sample record English proficiency of 70 percent or more for their students. In these thirty-nine schools, 45 percent of the students are white, while the district’s other 417 schools are only 7 percent white. In fact, twenty-one of these thirty-nine schools are majority white, while only eleven of the district’s hundreds of other schools are majority white.

The thirty-nine highest-performing elementary schools have also bucked the trend of plummeting enrollment, showing a decline of just 5 percent from peak enrollment through 2019 and an additional 8 percent since the pandemic. But they have definitely lost students over time, to the tune of nearly 6,900.

Putting all this together, we get the picture of a lot of empty desks throughout LAUSD, including both the lowest- and the highest-performing elementary buildings. Since all of these schools are designated as magnets—open to families outside the attendance zone—enrollment declines could present the perfect opportunity for families to secure seats for their children in coveted, high-flying schools. But that’s not what the data show. According to the analysts’ estimates—sympathetic to the “peak might be overcrowded” argument—the thirty-nine best-performing schools have room for at least 4,300 more students, but are reporting only fifty-eight seats available for students outside their attendance zones. That’s just 1 percent. And, no surprise, those attendance zones today mirror the race- and income-excluding redlining maps from the 1930s. Things are no better at the district-affiliated charter schools. Analysts called every school, asking about seats for out-of-zone first and fourth grade students. Every school but one reported no available seats—unless students lived in the attendance zone—despite the analysts’ estimate of at least 2,589 empty seats in total based on historical enrollment data. The report suggests that the persistence of these blatant exclusionary tactics could be another reason why Angelenos have been abandoning LAUSD schools in recent years.

The report recommends a set of five reforms to address these longstanding problems. They include allowing families to cross attendance zones if they live within five miles of a given school, publicly reporting buildings’ true maximum capacity, and creating an independent appeals process for any exclusionary denial of enrollment. At least one of them—listing all available seats as open to students from outside the attendance zone—is already required by California law but is largely ignored by schools, so hopes should probably not be high that any of the others will come about either.

One suggestion unfortunately not brought forward in the report: automatic closure for schools whose enrollment falls below a specific threshold (with or without connection to academic quality). LAUSD superintendent Alberto Carvalho is clearly not champing at the bit to do so, having settled a support staff strike in 2023 with a promise to increase hiring, preparing to negotiate with teachers who are also demanding more staff, and saying in a recent interview with The 74 in response to the Available to All report that, “The savings [from closures] are not what people think,” because “students still have to go somewhere” and be served by staff. This new report, showing that LAUSD’s old-timey attendance zones continue to benefit wealthy and white families even in the face of impending enrollment collapse, will likely make no difference. Unless forced to right-size its footprint by outside forces, district leaders clearly intend to keep all their buildings open with full staff rosters and ever-shrinking enrollments…until the students or the money run out. Whichever comes first.

SOURCE: Available to All, “Crisis in the Schoolhouse” (April 2025).

On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Rachel Canter, the founding executive director of Mississippi First and the new director of education policy at the Progressive Policy Institute, joins Mike and David to discuss what really fueled Mississippi’s dramatic gains in student achievement. Then, on the Research Minute, Amber reports on a new study examining the impact of Ohio’s EdChoice voucher program on college enrollment and graduation rates.

Recommended content:

• Rachel Canter, "Dear Democrats, Republicans Are Eating Your Lunch on Education. What Are You Going to Do About It?," Real Clear Education (May 1, 2025)
• Rachel Canter, "The Truth About Mississippi’s NAEP Gains," Mississippi First (July 5, 2023)
• Emily Freitag, “A bold state move to improve reading,” Thomas B. Fordham Institute (February 20, 2025).
• Aaron Churchill, “Ohio’s EdChoice scholarship program improved college outcomes,” Thomas B. Fordham Institute (April 25, 2025).
• Matthew Chingos, David Figlio and Krzysztof Karbownik, The Effects of Ohio’s EdChoice Voucher Program on College Enrollment and Graduation, Urban Institute (2025)

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

Cheers

• Despite being home to some of the poorest states in the nation, the American South has seen an impressive literacy surge, thanks to its embrace of the science of reading and high accountability standards. —RealClearInvestigations

• Indiana charter schools secured major funding wins and facility access reforms, promising greater school choice opportunities to parents and families. —Chalkbeat

• New York lawmakers banned phones in schools “from bell to bell” —Associated Press

Jeers

• After lengthy challenges in the courts, the Texas Education Agency released disappointing statewide school and district accountability results from 2023. —KERA News

• “A Global Flourishing Study Finds That Young Adults, Well, Aren’t”—New York Times

• A fair but tough appraisal of Trump’s first 100 days in education. —Rick Hess Straight Up

• The Supreme Court will decide the fate of St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, a taxpayer-funded online religious charter school, in a case with sweeping implications for religious education and practice nationwide. —The Washington Post

• As grades and graduation rates rise amid more lenient grading policies, students from married-parent homes are still more likely to earn mostly A’s than peers with other family structures. —Institute for Family Studies