For every dollar states spend on K–12 education, less than half a penny is earmarked for advanced learning. This surprising finding comes from our recent study of K–12 education spending in the U.S., generously supported by the Carina Initiative.
Jonathan Plucker, a research professor
Editor’s note: This is the second in a three-part series written by Elainah Elkins and Jill Hoppe, born in 1999 and 2000, respectively. There is growing discourse surrounding Gen Z, but the voices of Gen Zers themselves are often missing from the conversation. This is their response.
Our latest study gauges teacher union strength in every state. Those with the strongest are Vermont, California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Hawaii. The states with the weakest are Arkansas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Mississippi. There’s a clear red state/blue state divide, but that’s not the whole story.
For many of us born in the twentieth century, “English class” evokes memories of tattered copies of The Great Gatsby or Macbeth, chapter-a-night reading assignments, and that all-too-familiar sinking feeling when the next day’s pop quiz appeared.
These profiles accompany Fordham’s report, A Crowded Table: Teacher Union Strength in 2026, which updates Fordham’s 2012 rankings of state teacher union strength.
Researchers use the latest publicly available data and a fresh survey of K–12 stakeholders in all 50 states to provide a comprehensive update to Fordham’s 2012 rankings of state teacher union strength.
School board members are possibly the most overlooked decision-makers in education, and they rarely dominate reform conversations. However, local school board members routinely approve one of the most important decisions school districts make: curriculum. As science of reading reforms accelerate across districts and states, this role is becoming more consequential—and more complicated.
Shortly after being elected Pope in 2025, Leo XIV explained that he chose his name as an homage to Pope Leo XIII, who is remembered for his historic 1891 Encyclical Rerum Novarum, which provided an enduring framework for tackling the enormous social and ergonomic disruptions
The National Assessment Government Board made some very good news last week, albeit a decade or two late, when it voted to commence more frequent testing of civics and, especially, to make 12th grade results available at the state level.
From Oklahoma to California, states across the political spectrum are moving to require
It’s commencement season, including for my firstborn son, who graduates high school in less than two weeks. So it’s a good time to check in on the “portrait of a graduate” movement. If that term is unfamiliar to you, CASEL defines it as:
High school graduation season is upon us. Across the U.S., graduation rates are up—whether through grade inflation, credit recovery programs, or genuine persistence—while interest in traditional four-year college attendance wanes.
During the 2024–25 school year, more than 8.2 million students participated in high school sports, with varsity athletes representing an important subset of that group.
Editor’s note: This was first published by The 74. “We want to be good readers. We want to understand, not just get a good score on a test.”
On this week’s solo episode of The Education Gadfly Show, Mike Petril
A new Fordham report estimates the value of earning industry-recognized credentials and certificates as part of high school CTE pathways. The study provides some of the best evidence to date on the economic value of technical education that students can earn during high school. Now, Shaun Dougherty, one of the nation’s leading CTE scholars, puts the Plasman study in the context of the larger research literature.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul has announced her intention to participate in the federal Education Freedom Tax Credit, joining Colorado Governor Jared Polis as the only Democrats thus far to do so. Should those who support school choice in all its varieties but aren’t crazy about the particulars of the federal initiative celebrate these decisions?
One year, I decided to write down bullet-pointed notes on all the chaos, violence, and disorder that occurred in my school: Two students held a peer against a wall while a third pummeled them in the face and stomach; another student beat up a special needs child on the bus; a girl brought a hammer to school but it was confiscated before she could use it.
Over the six years I taught high school, I tried every response to student cellphone use that was available to me: one warning, three warnings, no warnings; reacting to the mere sight of a phone, looking the other way if the use wasn’t conspicuous; calling the front office, calling the counselor, revisiting “classroom norms,” emailing parents, buying
National Charter Schools Week (May 10 to 16) rightly focuses our attention on the millions of students attending public charter schools. Less attention goes to the federal program that helped make much of that growth possible.
Arkansas Education Secretary Jacob Oliva joins The Education Gadfly Show to discuss the
Students can earn more than 1.8 million credentials in the United States today. We know education pays—particularly for those with a bachelor’s degree.
