NCES and IES, as we’ve known them, are unlikely to return. While that’s regrettable in many respects, it also opens the door to build something stronger—an independent entity that can carry forward NCES’s essential mission without being subject to political impulses and whims of the day. And importantly, we wouldn’t be starting from scratch.
Can school districts still work to close persistent achievement gaps in an era when race-targeted interventions may violate federal law? That question is no longer hypothetical. The Trump administration now argues that using race—even to expand opportunity—constitutes discrimination under Title VI. This reframing casts efforts like targeted funding or DEI initiatives not as remedies for inequity, but as violations of the very laws once used to justify them.
On Tuesday, April 29, I gave the keynote presentation at an event titled “New Pathways for Teachers in the Age of School Choice,” hosted by the American Enterprise Institute and the University of Austin.
Early in my tenure at the education policy organization I founded, we barely had any money. No money meant no lobbyist, which left me, a complete stranger to the legislative process, to figure out how to pass meaningful policy.
Over the past few months, a quiet but intense debate has broken out among education-reform Democrats over whether the party should embrace private school choice—particularly the ESAs spreading kudzu-like across the country.
In April of 2022, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute launched the National Working Group on Advanced Education.
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.
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. The Court has a path 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 provide taxpayer support to religious schools.
K–12 student enrollment nationwide has been declining since in 2019, with traditional school districts bearing the brunt of both a baby bust and
Three emerging issues—each unfolding in a different branch of government—offer a telling snapshot of where federal education policy could be headed. They involve religious charter schools, tax-credit scholarships, and ESSA waivers. 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.
Ezra Klein’s new book has sparked an important discussion about how the left can provide more housing and transportation. However, one area that particularly needs self-reflection is education. The left has often obstructed the creation of new and innovative schools.
The Trump administration’s K–12 education policy prescriptions typically focus on ways to provide financial support for private schools, including federal vouchers and tax-credit scholarships.
According to a report issued by the OECD in 2018, school closures are an inevitable consequence of declining populations of school-age children across much of the world, and the United States is not im
Countless articles have been written about students’ recent bleak performance on the Nation’s Report Card, most of which rightly bemoaned declines in reading and math, compared to 2019 and 2022 scores, especially among lower-scoring students.
It is decision time for the high school class of 2025, with commitments due to colleges by May 1. Among the many factors that students might consider when deciding whether a college is the right fit for them is the political climate on campus. Simply put, are both liberals and conservatives relatively well represented in the student body?
Red states are lining up to test just how much leeway they can get from Uncle Sam’s education mandates, with some pushing for block grants that would allow them to consolidate federal aid into a single grant with few spending restrictions.
It’s a bleak time in education policy.
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Jim Blew, co-founder of the Defense
Education savings accounts (ESAs) are taxpayer-funded spending accounts with differing eligibility requirements and usage guidelines depending on the state. Between the 2021–22 and 2022–23 school years, participation in them nearly tripled nationally, rising to roughly 489,000 total students.
Editor’s note: A different version of this essay was first published by The 74.
Set aside for a moment the debate about whether Elon Musk’s DOGE is an honest effort to cut waste, fraud, and abuse from the federal government. Let’s ask a different question: What would a serious effort to get more bang from our education buck look like?
For generations, the traditional public school has been a bedrock institution in American life.
Editor’s note: This was first published on the author’s Substack, Governing Right.
Trump administration officials announced on Tuesday that they are laying off 1,300 employees at the U.S. Department of Education. This is on top of nearly 600 people who had already taken early retirement or buyouts, as well as another 60 probationary employees who had already been fired. This brings the agency’s headcount down from about 4,100 to about 2,200, a major reduction. Here are some thoughts on the situation as we understand it now.
When my middle child was in high school, nothing I said or did could keep him from dropping out. But what if I’d tried paying him?
The idea of “sending education back to the states” is a cornerstone of President Trump’s rhetoric on schooling, and it has strong support from many congressional Republicans.
In recent years, school choice has made impressive strides. Eleven states have codified universal or near-universal private school choice programs.
Scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) were released on January 29. How were they?
Our latest study pilots a new measure of a school’s quality: its contribution to students’ grade point averages at their next school. It sends a clear message to educators that one of their core missions is to help their graduates succeed in their next step—not just in reading and math, but in all subjects—and not just on tests, but on the stuff that tests struggle to capture.
A new report from the Collaborative for Student Success aims to refocus attention on the “honesty gap” in the wake of the latest (and disastrous) NAEP results.
