| The Thomas B. Fordham Institute

Jessica Poiner

5.12.2026

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In December, the school board for the Cleveland Metropolitan School District (CMSD) unanimously approved a building consolidation plan as part of its Building Brighter Futures initiative, which aims to take “bold action to right-size, stabilize, and secure a brighter future for CMSD scholars.” The plan will close 18 buildings, end five leases, and merge dozens of existing schools. Beginning with the 2026–27 school year, the district will operate 29 fewer schools.

Closing and consolidating schools is never easy. It’s understandable that families and community members might have concerns. But district officials are correct when they point out that declining enrollment (CMSD serves roughly 34,000 students today, down from 70,000 in 2004), increasing expenses, the cost of ongoing repairs and building upgrades, and a “looming” $150 million deficit are issues that can’t be ignored.

The consolidation effort—a move that is both courageous and smart—should put CMSD on better financial footing, as it will save an estimated $30 million each year. District officials have also noted that students will benefit. Among those impacted, 96 percent will attend a school with an equal or higher star rating, and 95 percent will attend a school located in a building that’s in equal or better condition.

Putting kids first is always the right move, even when it's difficult. So in that spirit, here’s another idea Cleveland should consider: a unified enrollment system that offers information on all of the public schools available in Cleveland and allows parents to apply with just one application.

To be clear, CMSD already has a unified enrollment system for the schools it operates. Each year, it publishes choice books, one for K–8 schools and another for high schools. These resources outline a set of common data points: school hours, star rating, whether the school offers pre–K and before/after-school care, electives, athletics, and student activities and clubs. Families and students can also use the district’s online School Finder to search for buildings near their home address. Each spring—hopefully after they’ve had a chance to peruse these resources—parents submit their school choices in the district’s School Choice Portal. CMSD’s website notes that the district’s goal is to “assign students based on the school preference” of their parent or guardian.

What CMSD doesn’t have, though, is an enrollment system that includes all of Cleveland’s available public schools, namely charters. Cleveland is home to over 50 charter schools serving more than 15,000 students. It’s a portfolio district, which means it provides families with “the freedom to attend a quality neighborhood school or another school that is a better fit for their child.” CMSD works alongside charters in three ways: as a sponsor (it sponsors six schools), as a partner (it partners with five additional schools to share local tax dollars, data, and best practices), and through the District/Charter Compact.

And yet, none of Cleveland’s charter schools—not even those that are sponsored by the district or are considered partners—appear in the 2026–27 choice books provided to families. Charters aren’t listed in the School Finder, either. In fact, even families who live across the street from a charter school and enter their address into the search tool won’t see the building that’s directly in front of them identified as an option. Cleveland families might live in a portfolio district that allows them to find the best fit, but identifying non-district public schools requires a lot of extra work from parents.

Given how serious Cleveland leaders seem to be about wanting to do what’s best for kids, a unified enrollment system should be their next step. Charter schools should be given the choice to be included in the district’s information distribution efforts, like choice books and the School Finder. They should also have the opportunity to be listed as options in the School Choice Portal when families log in to make their selections each spring.

It’s too late to do all that for the 2026–27 school year. But now is the perfect time to start planning for a system that could launch in 2027. The district’s consolidation plan means that, over the next few years, thousands of students will enroll in a new building or attend a school that’s been merged with another. Hopefully, most families will find that their new school is a good fit. But if it isn’t—or even if it is—CMSD should be providing every family with information about all their options. The district is already doing an admirable job of ensuring that families are well-informed about district choices. Now it’s time to expand those efforts.

For anyone still on the fence, consider the following benefits of a unified enrollment system that includes charter schools:

It provides disadvantaged students with expanded access to high-quality schools.
It ensures that families have the opportunity to explore consistent, accurate resources that offer comparable data on all schools. For busy parents, having everything in one place is a huge time-saver.
It eliminates the need for parents to apply to several different schools (which might have different timelines and requirements) and keep track of multiple deadlines. It also saves them the trouble of submitting the same documentation (proof of residence, emergency contact information, vaccination records) to multiple places.
It could reduce student mobility. If families can apply to district-run and charter schools in one place and at one time, and if all placements are announced on the same date, the likelihood that students will un-enroll from a school because they were accepted elsewhere decreases.
District and school leaders will have more precise and detailed information about parent and student preferences. These data can be used to help CSMD better allocate resources, plan for the future, and home in on points of pride and areas for growth.

Plenty of urban districts—including New Orleans, Denver, and Washington, D.C.—provide families with a unified enrollment system that includes all public schools. As part of its effort to better serve families, Cleveland should do the same. CMSD already has an established history of working alongside charters for the benefit of students. Unified enrollment is the next step.

Policy Priority:

School Choice

Topics:

Charter Schools

Jay Plasman Aaron Churchill

5.12.2026

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NOTE: This piece originally appeared at The 74, under a different title.

Delivering high-quality career-technical education has quickly moved up the policy agenda across the country, with many states turning to industry credentials to help build students’ professional skill sets and signal to employers that they are ready for a job. These credentials range from basic job-safety certificates (e.g., the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s 10-hour training) to occupational licenses (e.g., licensed practitioner nurse).

Our home state of Ohio has put substantial energy into actively promoting credentials through various policy levers. For example, high school students can use state-approved credentials to meet certain graduation requirements, and schools receive credit in the state’s accountability system when students attain them. In the most recent state budget, policymakers renewed a funding program that incentivizes those approved credentials that related to state-identified “high-priority” careers such as advanced manufacturing and construction. With these incentives in place, attainment in Ohio has soared from 53,000 credentials earned by the class of 2019 to 170,000 by the class of 2024.

But which of these credentials truly add value for students?

A new Fordham Institute study examined the labor-market value that various credentials have for Ohio students. In general, credentials are associated with substantial expected wage increases in the early years after high school (almost $2,000 higher earnings in the first year after graduation). However, we found widely differing wage returns depending on field, with male-dominated careers in the skilled trades linked to larger income benefits. Students attaining manufacturing-related credentials, for instance, typically earn about 35% more than their non-credential-earning peers with similar backgrounds.

On the other hand, we also discovered that many credentials yield little to no economic value for students. For example, we found no significant differences in the annual incomes of students earning a nurse’s aide or culinary certificate six years after high school compared with peers who did not attain a credential. A few credentials, such as a cosmetology certificate, were even associated with reduced earnings after students leave high school.

Our findings lead to some important insights about how states can more effectively leverage industry credentials.

First, policymakers should not view credentials as an isolated indicator of career readiness, but rather as a key element within an integrated career pathway. In addition to finding variable wage returns by field, our study revealed that students who both attain credentials and complete a sequence of career-technical coursework reap larger wage returns than students who attain only a credential or do not participate in any career-focused education. This suggests that states’ accountability systems should count students as career-ready only if they both complete coursework and obtain an aligned credential.

Second, states must be selective about which credentials they approve and, in turn, incentivize. Here in Ohio, the credentials that provide the strongest and most enduring wage gains — lasting into people’s mid-20s — are linked to the transportation, manufacturing and construction industries. By contrast, credentials across a dozen other career fields provide no enduring wage returns. Policymakers should prioritize credentials that yield strong long-term economic payoffs. They should also be wary of approving credentials that lack a clear link to a specific occupation — for instance, a basic job-safety certificate versus a certified welder license — or those that might inadvertently encourage students to pursue low-paying jobs with limited opportunities for advancement.

Third, states should create robust frameworks for valuing credentials. Our study focused primarily on wages, which ought to play a central role in systems that identify “high-value” credentials and promote their attainment through policies such as targeted funding. Yet pay isn’t the only factor to take into account. How well credentials align with employers’ needs and labor market demands should also be a priority, because while wages and employer demand for a credential often overlap, that is not always the case. For instance, credentials linked to health care or education might pay modest starting wages but could also lead to employment that opens doors to a better-paying job later on. Policymakers should create tiered systems that place more value on credentials that are both high-wage and high-demand, and then provide secondary consideration to those that meet only measures of industry demand.

Ohio illustrates the promise and pitfalls associated with incentivizing credentials through policy initiatives. On the one hand, more students than ever are earning credentials that might give them an edge in the job market. On the other hand, the state has also struggled to pin down the value of credentials and maintain stringent quality control in the face of proliferating attainment rates.

All students should leave high school with the knowledge and skills needed for their next steps. To support this, make sure industry-recognized credentials benefit students and overall economic growth.

Policy Priority:

School Funding

Topics:

Career & Technical Education

Jeff Murray

5.12.2026

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Urban revitalization efforts touch many aspects of daily life for residents, with the ultimate goal of making the community a better place to live for all. While schools are not typically impacted directly by neighborhood renewal work, a group of researchers look at the student-level impacts of a federal program that does specifically cite school improvement as part of its revitalization model. Their new report finds only a weak connection between the program’s stated education-related goals and observed academic outcomes for students.

The Choice Neighborhoods Initiative (CNI) is a program of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) started in 2009. It “aims to decrease neighborhood racial/ethnic segregation and concentrated poverty by developing mixed-income housing units and attracting economically diverse residents.” Additionally, “high-performing schools are an explicitly stated goal of the CNI.” This analysis looks at one CNI project in Memphis, Tennessee. It is called “South City” today (and throughout the report), but this was primarily a “branding” identifier applied to a previously-unnamed section of downtown beginning in 2016 as the CNI revitalization got underway in earnest. A nearly $30 million grant was specifically aimed at demolishing one 1940s-era low-income housing project and providing 712 new housing units it its wake—600 on the original site and 112 in the surrounding blocks. The report’s authors go into lengthy detail about all of HUD’s goals and intentions for bettering neighborhoods and residents’ lives, but the mechanisms by which schools are/were supposed to be improved remain unclear even after the analysis is complete.

The report explains the CNI intervention generally as improving physical infrastructure in the neighborhood—specifically, the renovation and replacement of housing—and forging “new partnerships across community organizations, local businesses, and schools, from early childhood to and through college.” More specifically, the researchers look at students whose families received what are termed “case management” and support services. They denote a vague but wide range of services including “asset building, basic and emergency services, adult education, employment services, health and family services, early childhood services, youth services, legal services,” and more. Such services were promised to all original CNI resident families (and provided from an office in the local district high school) for up to 5 years after redevelopment. Demolition began in 2017. Construction was completed in six phases between early 2019 and October 2025.

The researchers focus on 59,277 children who lived within the South City footprint and whose student-level data were available from the 2015–16 through the 2021–22 school years. The two treatment groups consisted of nearly 3,000 students who attended one of the four Memphis-Shelby County School district buildings in that footprint and a second group of 621 students who also received “case management services” via CNI. Student outcome measures analyzed were attendance, disciplinary rates, and academic performance (first via NWEA MAP scores—later by the i-Ready Diagnostic scores when the district switched tests—in reading and math).

The researchers applied a robust difference-in-difference analysis to dynamically estimate CNI impacts on students. Attending a CNI partner school decreased suspension days by 41 percent compared to non-CNI students and reduced absences by 6 percent—the latter almost fully accruing to male students only. The only other statistically-significant overall effect of attending a CNI school was a small decrease in math performance—roughly 0.06 standard deviations. Meanwhile, students receiving CNI case management services showed no overall impacts one way or another, although a marginal increase in reading test performance—0.12 standard deviations and still significant—was observed in a small subset of students with a history of family economic distress. Some significant positive effects emerged in year one of both types of interventions, only to be lost by the end of year two.

Despite what sounds like tepid results, the report nonetheless concludes that place-based investments in revitalization can be effective in boosting students’ academic outcomes. This would be more plausible if the researchers could have connected one or two mechanisms to the findings observed, but there are just too many vague variables here to do so. As valuable as any individual service may be to neighborhood residents, the list is too broad and too opaque for a researcher to understand how their combination could result in both a dramatic reduction in suspensions and a decrease in math scores, for just one example.

Interestingly, an image in the report that lists some concrete services does a better job of explaining the educational interventions than the text of the report itself. The closer researchers can get to determining how much of these kinds of supports were provided and to which students in CNI cities, the more likely they will be to find models of change than can truly be called effective.

SOURCE: Jason Jabbari et al., “Can Neighborhood Redevelopment Initiatives Improve Educational Outcomes? Novel Evidence From the Choice Neighborhood Initiative,” Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis (March 2026).

Policy Priority:

School Funding

Topics:

Curriculum & Instruction

Chad L. Aldis

5.12.2026

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NOTE: Today, the Ohio Senate’s Education Committee heard testimony on Senate Bill 127. The legislation would, if enacted, make changes to the way the state identifies charter schools for closure going forward. Fordham’s Vice President for Ohio Policy provided the following proponent testimony.

I appreciate the opportunity to return and testify on the amended version of Senate Bill 127. In my prior testimony, I expressed support for the bill’s goals but recommended several changes to strengthen its approach to identifying and addressing persistently low-performing schools. I am pleased to say that this amendment reflects meaningful improvements, and Fordham now strongly supports the bill as amended.

At its core, Senate Bill 127 tackles a longstanding challenge: ensuring that chronically low-performing schools are identified clearly and addressed decisively. As I noted previously, Ohio has too often maintained fragmented and confusing accountability systems, allowing some schools to persistently underperform without meaningful consequences.

The amendment strengthens the bill in several important ways:

First, it creates a clearer and more predictable charter school closure framework.

The amended language establishes transparent criteria tied to both achievement and growth, using consistent measures over multiple years. Schools that fall into the lowest 5 percent on performance index and demonstrate weak growth are identified in a straightforward way.

This clarity matters. Policymakers, educators, and families all benefit from knowing exactly how schools are evaluated and when closure is required.

Second, it raises the bar for accountability by more effectively identifying the lowest-performing charter schools.

By refining the metrics and phasing in a consistent standard across grade spans, the amendment ensures that the state is focusing on schools that are both low-achieving and failing to improve over time.

According to our analysis, this updated framework would result in approximately 25 schools being identified for closure, compared to about 14 under current law. That is not a flaw—in our view it reflects a system that is doing a better job of identifying schools where students are not being well served.

Third, it appropriately removes earlier provisions that would have allowed persistently struggling charter schools to reorganize instead of close.

That earlier approach would have been a step backward. Charter schools operate under a clear bargain: autonomy in exchange for accountability. When a school consistently fails to deliver results for students, closure—not reorganization—should be the outcome.

By eliminating that provision, the amendment restores integrity to Ohio’s charter school accountability system and reinforces high expectations.

Finally, the amendment narrows the bill’s focus by removing closure provisions for district schools.

While we continue to believe that states must take strong action when any public school persistently fails students, we recognize the complexities associated with district school closure. The amended bill appropriately focuses on strengthening the charter school accountability framework, where closure is both a well-established and necessary tool. At the same time, Ohio should continue to ensure that district schools identified as persistently low-performing are subject to meaningful and effective interventions.

Taken together, these changes move Ohio in the right direction. The amended bill promotes clarity, transparency, and rigor in the charter sector, ensuring that chronically low-performing schools are not allowed to continue year after year without meaningful consequences.

Most importantly, this is about students. Every year a child spends in a persistently low-performing school is a year of lost opportunity. Senate Bill 127, as amended, helps ensure that Ohio is acting with urgency when schools are not delivering results.

Thank you for your leadership on this issue and for strengthening this legislation.

Policy Priority:

Public Testimony

Topics:

Accountability & Testing

Chad L. Aldis

5.12.2026

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NOTE: Today, the Ohio Senate’s Education Committee heard testimony on Senate Bill 311. The legislation, if enacted, would make changes to the state’s laws regarding unused school facilities. Fordham’s Vice President for Ohio Policy provided the following proponent testimony.

I want to focus my testimony on one part of this bill that is both overdue and absolutely necessary: the provisions strengthening Ohio’s unused school facilities law.

Let’s be clear about the problem. Ohio already has a law on the books requiring school districts to make unused or severely underutilized buildings available to other public schools. That includes buildings that are sitting empty—or those operating at less than 60 percent capacity.

That 60 percent threshold is not new. It is not radical. It is existing law.

And yet, too many districts have treated that law as optional. They’ve slow-walked requests. They’ve redefined “use” to avoid triggering the law. They’ve warehoused half-empty buildings while denying access to public charter schools serving Ohio students. They’ve quickly torn down buildings to avoid making them available to charter schools.

This isn’t speculation—it’s well documented. Charter leaders have long reported that districts are “generally uncooperative” in making facilities available, and state officials have flagged similar concerns.

Put more bluntly: districts have been playing games.

That’s why the unused facilities language in SB 311 is so important. It doesn’t invent a new policy. It clarifies, enforces, and brings transparency to an existing one.

The bill tightens the definition of what it means for a building to be “less than 60 percent used,” tying it to real enrollment metrics instead of vague interpretations. It requires reporting, so the state and the public actually know which buildings qualify. And it ensures a clear, fair process for offering those facilities to other public schools.

In other words, it makes the law real. And that’s exactly why you’re hearing pushback.

Opponents will frame this as an attack on local control. It isn’t. Local control does not mean the ability to ignore state law. It does not mean sitting on taxpayer-funded assets while other public schools struggle to find space. And it certainly does not mean shielding anti-competitive behavior.

These are public buildings, paid for by taxpayers, intended for public education. When they sit empty—or half empty—while students elsewhere lack adequate facilities, something is wrong.

SB 311 begins to fix that.

Now, I also want to briefly address another provision in the bill: the allowance for remote administration of state assessments for e-school students.

I understand the rationale here, but I do have reservations—specifically around test security.

Even with guardrails like remote proctoring and training requirements, the risk of inconsistent conditions and potential improprieties is real. Maintaining the integrity of Ohio’s assessment system must remain paramount.

That said, I appreciate the committee’s inclusion of language requiring ongoing review and study of remote testing results. That is a prudent step. If remote testing is to continue, it should be accompanied by rigorous monitoring and transparency to ensure confidence in the results.

In closing, I’ll return to where I started.

The unused facilities provisions in SB 311 are not about creating new obligations. They are about enforcing existing ones.

For too long, the law has said one thing while practice has said another. This bill helps close that gap.

It sends a simple but important message: laws passed by this body are meant to be followed.

And in this case, following the law means putting publicly funded school buildings back to their intended purpose—educating Ohio’s students.

Thank you for your time.

Policy Priority:

Public Testimony

Topics:

Charter Schools

Jeff Murray

5.11.2026

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Not much to talk about yet again, but we’ll start with this quick first coverage of the Center for Christian Virtue’s recent announcement that it would be starting a nationwide scholarship granting organization (SGO) to take advantage of the new federal tax credit program. The coverage comes from Cleveland.com so you can guess that it leans toward the negative as an initial response, but I have no doubt that the tone will change in due course as other states and organizations—hello, New York—figure out their place in the new paradigm. (Cleveland.com, 5/11/26)
The City of Cleveland is desperate to save four long-closed district buildings from demolition, last week putting out a call for development proposals for any or all of them before the excuses run out and the wrecking crew arrives. If Cleveland Metropolitan School District had sold them when they were decommissioned 15 or more years ago, it is likely they would have sold—at market price—to a charter or private school operator. Wanting to keep the competition from getting “their” buildings, CMSD instead held onto them, paying millions to secure the buildings and maintain the grounds for all those years. The dreamed-of surge of new students never materialized—and in fact enrollment has shrunk even further in that time, supercharged by CMSD’s insistence on staying closed during Covid longer than anyone and relying on ungraded paper packets to “teach” students throughout. Now, the empty buildings have deteriorated so far that no school—and maybe no other developer—could think of using them without millions of dollars of rehabilitation. (Even demolition would cost more than they are worth.) Thus, the City of Cleveland is now clearly so desperate on CMSD’s behalf that any plausible pitch for these “historic properties” at any bargain basement price will likely be accepted. Sounds to me like a steep cost to keep out the competition. (Signal Cleveland, 5/8/26)

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Policy Priority:

School Funding

Topics:

Governance

Jeff Murray

5.8.2026

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Glimpses of the future?

The new K-12 education paradigm in Indianapolis—intended to be student-centered and helping the charter, district, and private school sectors work together—is only a few weeks old, but we’ve already got a couple of glimpses of what its future may hold. First up is The 74’s Patrick O’Donnell, whose coverage lays out a number of potential landmines that the city’s new Public Education Corporation must avoid. Here’s hoping these leaders are up to the task. Second is Chalkbeat, informing us that Indianapolis Public Schools’ first move in the new paradigm is to begin the process to become a charter school authorizer themselves, a move which elected members called a “step toward unparalleled local accountability”.

A win?

Staff members at three charter schools in Arizona are celebrating this week after a National Labor Relations Board ruling cleared the way for them to unionize. “In unionizing, we’re hoping to build a stronger and more resilient community among staff,” says Haley Odom-Mackey, an algebra teacher at City High School in Tucson. Contract negotiations will start soon. “We are saving our concrete asks for the bargaining table,” Odom-Mackey adds. “But forming our union gives us more safety to be able to continue doing our jobs in the immediate future.”

A battle forming?

The elected school board of Jackson-Madison County School District in Tennessee voted last week to move forward on the application for Union Academy, a proposed charter school that would, if approved at the state level, be run by a private Christian college in the town of Jackson. As with Catholic- and Jewish-affiliated charter school proposals in other states, there will be pushback against this potential precedent.

Standing pat, no matter the cost?

Minneapolis Public Schools has a longstanding rule that forbids the sale of closed school buildings to charter or private schools, citing the potential deleterious effects of competition. This has left the district with an expensive portfolio of underutilized (but still open) and closed (but not sold to anyone) buildings still on their books. But Minneapolis is not immune to the same financial pressures facing shrinking districts across the country. Because of their looming budget problems (despite what they say publicly, the math doesn’t lie), calls are growing to sell off some or all of their costly white elephants to anyone who will buy them.

Who’s the bigger threat?

An interesting runoff election is on the calendar for May 26 in Texas, where two Democrats are vying for the District 5 seat on the State Board of Education. By most measures, they seem very similar. How will voters decide? Apparently the biggest difference between the two is which boogieman—charters or vouchers—each believes is the biggest threat to traditional district schools in the state, according to this coverage from the Austin Chronicle. Easy peasy.

*****

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Policy Priority:

School Choice

Topics:

Charter Schools