| The Thomas B. Fordham Institute

Marguerite Roza

1.23.2026

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Editor’s note: This was first published in SCHOOLED, Mike Petrilli’s Substack, which hosts weekly education-reform conversations around K–12’s biggest topics.

There’s a debate on whether tutoring should be the next “big thing.” But the whole debate is moot if tight budgets mean districts can’t afford it.

Ah, but there’s a way they can. Let’s do the math.

First, let’s acknowledge that what districts have right now is a lot of employees.

When Covid relief funds were flowing, many districts expanded what we call the “middle layer” in schooling—non-teaching specialists, administrators, and support staff who sit between the classroom and central office. Michigan supplies the example below. (See other state-by-state staffing graphs here.)

Second, tutoring is something that most district employees can do. Administrators, specialists, and paras can all serve as tutors.

One option: Districts could, at any moment, redirect some in this “middle layer” to do tutoring.

Done. Tutoring at no additional cost.

But there’s a better option. We believe there’s an enormous amount of teaching talent in this “middle layer.” It was the strongest teachers that got promoted to newly-created coaching, specialist, or school administrator roles (only to have their teaching posts replaced with newbies).

So why not redirect the strongest in this “middle layer” back to the classroom, bumping the weaker of the newbie teachers to tutoring roles. For starters, that means more kids get rockstar teachers.

Meanwhile, the displaced teachers, along with a portion of the newly hired paras become the tutoring workforce. It’s a twofer. Classroom teaching gets a boost. And for kids that could benefit from tutoring, it’s a way to make it happen.

Think of it as musical chairs for school employees, but with student outcomes guiding where people land. The best part: Employees keep jobs, while kids get what they need.

What about labor agreements? Since unions tend to protect employment and pay—not roles—this strategy should be legit.

Sure, the district may want to honor pay bumps that were awarded with “promotions.” A rockstar teacher is worth the extra cash. And yes, districts might be paying more than the market rate for tutors, but let’s remember that these employees already know the school and the kids, so there’s some real value there.

Truth is, as enrollments continue to fall, some districts may need to reduce staffing through attrition or pink slips. That makes intentional labor deployment even more urgent. In many districts, lackluster results don’t justify this expanded “middle layer” staffing arrangement. Time to try something else.

Budget deficits always require difficult choices. In our recorded 30-min webinar, we offered eight ways that districts can cut their budgets without eroding district quality.

The real challenge for leaders is whether they are willing to manage their most expensive resource—people—in a way that prioritizes student need over the status quo.

Policy Priority:

Topics:

Jeff Murray

1.23.2026

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Stories featured in Ohio Charter News Weekly may require a paid subscription to read in full.

Stayed

Back on December 3, the Ohio Ethics Commission voted to require all charter school governing board members to file full financial disclosure statements, the same as elected board members in the state’s largest traditional school districts. The commission made this move in the interest of “transparency”, but the charter community characterized it instead as “imposing different rules on different types of public schools.” At the first Ethics Commission meeting of 2026 yesterday, implementation of the new rule was stayed by members, following a strong response—delivered in person—from House Speaker Matt Huffman.

The journey continues

Gov. Mike DeWine and the General Assembly were very thorough in their implementation of science of reading in Ohio—setting out a long-term process that not only embedded the best, research-based curricula and pedagogy, but also specifically outlawed harmful past practices. Even more importantly, the plan comes with multiple checkpoints (see the recent teacher prep program audits) and a long-term commitment to rigorous follow through. The latest example: Reading teachers in Ohio must retrain on SoR principles every five years to maintain their licenses. The clock is already ticking and the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce is hard at work preparing the refresher courses.

Odd logic

Mendez Middle School in Austin, Texas, will return to the full control of the Austin Independent School District this fall, after 10 years of administration by charter operators. The school became a charter starting in 2014 as part of the state’s 1882 Partnership Plan to improve chronically low-performing district schools. Charter network Third Future Schools began running Mendez in 2022 and their efforts improved its accountability rating enough as of 2025 (a B rating from 89 out of 100 possible points) to warrant discontinuation of the improvement plan.

Meanwhile…

Meanwhile, in Orlando, Florida, an overwhelming majority of parents at Orange Center Elementary School voted this week to turn their district school into a charter. The conversion will get underway soon, in partnership with local nonprofit Lift Orlando, and conclude with the new school opening its doors this fall. “What they’re saying to us is that, ‘We believe your vision and your ability and commitment to work with us’,” said Lift Orlando VP Mark Shamley. “And we understand that it comes with great responsibility.” School parent Nadia Bellande added: “I think the main thing that I really love about this conversion is that they said that it will continue to be a community school, and that it’s not going to be taken away from us. And that is big for me…. I want our kids to continue to get the perfect education that they were getting.”

Updates from Indy

Indiana House Bill 1423, which would, among other things, establish a unified Public Education Corporation to oversee all K-12 education in Indianapolis, passed out of the House Education Committee by a vote of 7-4 last week. It now moves to the full House for debate. Meanwhile, education watchers in the state capital are touting a boost in high school graduation rates in Indianapolis Public Schools—93 percent for the class of 2025—including all district high schools and a group of charters that are currently part of the district’s Innovation Network. Additionally, those same watchdogs are reporting that IPS enrollment dropped by 6 percent between 2024-25 and 2025-26. This figure represents district schools only. Innovation Network and non-Network charters are down 3 percent over the same time. District enrollment this year is 19,774 students; combined charter enrollment is just under 22,000 students.

*****

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Policy Priority:

School Choice

Topics:

Charter Schools

Bowen Paulle

1.23.2026

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Editor’s note: This was first published in SCHOOLED, Mike Petrilli’s Substack, which hosts weekly education-reform conversations around K–12’s biggest topics.

Let me add some data from outside the U.S. that might sharpen the question Mike Petrilli posed recently on his SCHOOLED Substack: “Should tutoring play a big role in America’s schools going forward?”

I’ve lived in the Netherlands for decades, where I got my Ph.D. and hold an associate professor position in sociology at the University of Amsterdam. Perhaps relevant to this crowd: The Dutch welfare state may reduce the share of kids growing up in poverty—we can debate that. But within the remaining pockets of poverty, the welfare state clearly is not, by itself, creating conditions where truly disadvantaged kids learn. High-poverty schools here are less violent, fewer gangs, yes. But they remain lousy. As in the U.S., we’re seeing, for example, huge percentages of kids 4 years behind by age 12.

After following Match from the blueprint stage in the late 90s—and high-dosage tutoring (HDT) at Match from the early 2000s—I started advocating for bringing HDT to high-poverty primary and secondary schools in the Netherlands in 2008. I finally got philanthropic support in 2013, which led to the first HDT intervention in the country, at the primary level—as far as I know, the first in Europe.

The results across four randomized controlled trials (RCTs):

First primary-level RCT: 0.28 (p < 0.01) standard deviation (SD). Implementation was mediocre; I couldn’t hire or fire and kept getting pushback.
Started a non-profit dedicated to HDT. First secondary-level RCT: 0.44 (p < 0.01) to 0.72 (p < 0.01) SD depending on the test.
Primary school in the poorest hood in Amsterdam, RCT: 0.3–0.65 SD depending on the model. (Dutch only.)
Most recent secondary-level RCT: 0.19 SD. (Dutch only.) My sense is that, partly due to research design demands, we were forced to allow in too many students who were already fairly advanced given the curricular materials. But it could also be less fire in the belly, less talent. Hard to tell.

So what does this tell us about Mike Petrilli’s original question?

Liz Cohen’s ideas are compelling; I will read the book! As the essay Mike Goldstein and I wrote indicated, the lesson from the Netherlands is the same lesson you find everywhere: Tutoring can be transformative if you have enough hard-working, talented people running the intervention—and, I’d now add, if you have adequate fit between (1) what you offer (curriculum and tutor skills), (2) the skill level and needs of the kids, and (3) the research design/high-stakes standardized test you’re using to measure growth.

As I said on Mike Petrilli’s podcast, I think a lot boils down to this: When you’re working in overwhelmed schools, no matter what the program, a “tsunami of curveballs” is going to be thrown at you. So...do you have managers who will troubleshoot, again and again? I mean are they warriors? Or will they do what countless managers and teachers do in high-poverty schools all over the world—lower expectations, make excuses?

Here’s my harder conclusion: I didn’t get into this to achieve less than, say, 0.6 SD. We all know about fade-out versus persistence of treatment effects. Anything less than such a meaty effect size isn’t going to alter trajectories or increase objective life chances. Given all the political, organizational, and financial constraints, and the ongoing challenges to operational excellence on the ground, I’ve concluded it’s going to be damn hard—even on a small scale—to achieve and maintain tutoring interventions that generate anything like 0.6 SD, even when you can build coalitions willing to pay for in-person, relatively intense models costing around $5,000 per kid, per year. And I think you can imagine how difficult this is.

Scaling up, cutting costs, moving online to reduce expenses and solve sourcing problems... I think you need truly exceptional managers who can build and maintain an extremely tight culture.

Which brings me back to the “degree of difficulty” framing. The difficulty isn’t primarily in the intervention design. It’s in building and sustaining the organizational conditions where the intervention can actually rock. That’s a different kind of problem—and one that policy levers are poorly suited to solve.

To answer Mike Petrilli’s original question: Yes, tutoring can be “the next big thing”—but only school by school, crew by crew. If you’re warriors and want to try it for a few years, go for it. Just know what you’re signing up for.

Policy Priority:

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Evidence-Based Learning

Jeff Murray

1.23.2026

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News stories featured in Gadfly Bites may require a paid subscription to read in full. Just sayin’.

There are a couple of ironies in this piece, which discusses with some testiness one of the nonnegotiable future requirements for teachers in Ohio’s pulling-out-all-the-stops effort to make science of reading the one and only way that they teach reading to their students. One of those ironies: The teachers union president saying that SoR implementation was “disjointed” yet insisting that the teachers who were responsible for that implementation need to be involved in creating the refresher courses state law requires in five years’ time. (Cleveland.com, 1/22/26)
All eight of my longstanding, long-suffering, and endlessly-forbearing Gadfly Bites subscribers (I’m sorry, y’all: After more than 10 years of sending you an “unsubscribe” button three times a week along with all my unsubscribe-worthy blatherings, your continued perseverance really has to be on you at this point) will no doubt recall that I am automatically dubious when a teacher leads with “I was a bad student” or “I hated school” and follows up with “That’s why I became a teacher.” Especially when it is (inevitably) followed by some variation of that teacher needing to “go beyond” some aspect of…you know…actually teaching kids stuff. In that spirit, I present to you this profile of a sixth grade teacher in Dayton City Schools, which checks all of those dreaded boxes for me. Her chief goal appears to be “fun”—in response to her own, negative school experience. That is especially clear around the debate project covered in the piece, but I suspect it is the case more broadly as well: “I think the biggest thing for teachers is meet the kids where they are and get silly with it.” She is also lauded for going “beyond the classroom” by the district’s academic chief--without any details provided, natch. IYKYK. I know this is a singular snapshot and perhaps I am reading too much into it, but take a look at the details provided here and double check me for yourselves: What academic skills do you see being learned or applied here? Did anyone perhaps do a cost analysis on the issue? Or maybe an opinion poll turned into a graph? Do you think there was ever even a possible answer to the debate question beyond mildly-informed opinion? I'd love to be proven wrong, but I just don't see any of that vital teaching work going on here. (Dayton Daily News, 1/23/26)

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Policy Priority:

School Funding

Topics:

The Education Gadfly

1.23.2026

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WHAT WE’RE READING

Education Week’s deep dive into school funding disruptions under Trump reveals widespread cuts related to stated goals like “shifting school funding responsibilities to states” and “cracking down on programs serving immigrant students.” But it also reveals reductions to initiatives the administration claims to support. —Mark Lieberman, Education Week

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“From Head Start to civil rights, 8 ways Trump reshaped education in just 1 year.” —Linda Jacobson et al., The 74

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In New Jersey, Camden’s schools show signs of progress—especially charter schools, but traditional public schools, too—while student achievement in Trenton remains at rock-bottom. “The disparity in performance between these two cities can’t be explained by money from the state or poverty. Both have plenty. And it’s not hopeless because Camden shows that progress is possible,” writes Julie O’Connor. Amid union pressure, city officials in Trenton failed to embrace an opportunity to bring in high-quality charters under a 2012 law. Now, with Camden’s upward trend under state control, new governor Mikie Sherrill has an opportunity to similarly transform Trenton’s schools. —NJ Spotlight News

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“A bipartisan and bicameral proposed agreement released Monday to fund the U.S. Department of Education at $79 billion for fiscal year 2026—or at $217 million above FY 2025 levels—dealt a major blow to the Trump administration’s efforts to downsize and eventually eliminate the agency.” —Kara Arundel, K–12 Dive

Editor's note: This was first published on Mike Petrilli's Substack, SCHOOLED, a twice-weekly free Substack and email newsletter restarting the education-reform conversation.

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Sharp analysis of the week’s biggest K–12 debates
Curated commentary from across the ed-policy world
Lively discussion—including reader reactions and pushback

The Education Gadfly

1.23.2026

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CHEERS:

After initial community resistance to Houston’s state takeover, a recent survey indicates families increasingly believe the district is heading in the right direction. —Naaz Modan, K–12 Dive

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Can Democrats win back voter trust on education? Laura Meckler covers Rahm Emanuel’s efforts to get Democrats to embrace reform again, which included a campaign-style trip to Mississippi. —The Washington Post

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High schoolers in Clark County (NV) will gain an extra hour and a half of sleep next year. District leaders announced the decision to move the school start times from 7:00 a.m. to 8:30 a.m., a change supported by research and, presumably, bleary-eyed teens. —Rocío Hernández, The Nevada Independent

JEERS:

“It’s not what they’re reading that matters; it’s that they’re reading.” So writes Erich May, a former English teacher and current superintendent in Pennsylvania who wants teachers to stop assigning “boring” books like those written by Shakespeare and Jane Austen. —Education Week

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“The small Minneapolis charter school where Renee Good sent her 6-year-old son has switched to online learning out of safety concerns after receiving multiple phone and email threats.” —Becky Z. Dernbach, Sahan Journal

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“Russian strikes force Kyiv schools to close amid rolling blackouts.” —Constant Méheut, The New York Times

Editor's note: This was first published on Mike Petrilli's Substack, SCHOOLED, a twice-weekly free Substack and email newsletter restarting the education-reform conversation.

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Sharp analysis of the week’s biggest K–12 debates
Curated commentary from across the ed-policy world
Lively discussion—including reader reactions and pushback

Mike McShane

1.22.2026

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Last year, the College of Cardinals elected a new pope to lead the Catholic Church. Leo XIV, born Robert Prevost in Chicago, Illinois, was installed on May 18th in St. Peter’s Square.

Just six months later, he published an Apostolic Letter titled “Drawing New Maps of Hope,” outlining his vision for Catholic education. It is a fascinating document because it comes at a time of change in Catholic education in America. Emphasizing the idea of hope is an appropriate one because I think today is one of the most hopeful times for Catholic education, certainly in my lifetime, and perhaps stretching back even farther.

The story of Catholic schooling in America is well trod ground for those in the education policy world. Anti-Catholic bigotry in the mid-19th century drove Catholics to create an expansive, parallel education system to public schools. Enrollment in that system peaked in the early 1960s at more than 5.2 million students in almost 13,000 schools. By the year 2000, the number had been cut in half, to 2.6 million students attending 8,146 schools. By 2020, it had fallen to 1.6 million students in 5,981 schools.

Why did this happen? There were a lot of reasons. A few, in no particular order:

Explicit anti-Catholicism decreased in public schools.
The numbers of priests, nuns, and religious sisters declined, ruining the human capital model.
Other free options like charter schools emerged (often explicitly copying traits of Catholic schools).

Catholic schools closing has been a terrible thing. Nicolle Stelle Garnett and Margaret Brinig wrote a fantastic, if depressing, book a little more than a decade ago called Lost Classroom, Lost Community that documented the cost to the social fabric of communities when Catholic schools closed. Crime goes up, disorder goes up, and communities become less cohesive.

But it isn’t just communities that are hurt. Students are hurt, as well. Recent research by David Figlio dug into the different types of schools that participate in Florida’s Tax Credit Scholarship Program and found that students who attend Catholic schools perform better than students who attend other, non-Catholic private schools. This remains even after controlling for demographic characteristics that might explain the variation in performance. In fact, Figlio writes, “I found similar patterns—a consistent apparent Catholic school advantage—across every other dimension I investigated: household size, parental marital status, racial and ethnic identification, and student gender identification.” Closing Catholic schools means narrowing opportunity for students.

If you’ve gotten this far, you might be wondering, “Hey didn’t this guy start by saying this is a hopeful time for Catholic education in America?”

Correct. This is a hopeful time in Catholic education in America, and we can look to Florida to see why.

As Ron Matus and Lauren May have documented, after long periods of decline, enrollment in Florida Catholic schools is on the rise, and substantially. Using data from the National Catholic Education Association and looking at the top ten states by Catholic school enrollment over the decade from 2013–14, they found that Florida was the only state to see an increase in enrollment. While the total U.S. Catholic school population declined by 14.2 percent over that time period, Florida’s Catholic school enrollment grew 9.2 percent.

Florida is not alone. Iowa Catholic schools saw an enrollment increase around 4 percent from 2023–24 to 2024–25.

What do these two states have in common? If you’re reading this Substack, you’ve probably already figured it out: robust educational choice.

Families want Catholic education, but they can’t afford it. Private school choice programs solve that problem.

It is important that leaders in Catholic education and in the church more broadly understand both the incredible opportunity that choice provides, as well as its consonance with the vision that Pope Leo lays out in “Drawing New Maps of Hope.”

As he writes:

The educational community is a “we” where teachers, students, families, administrative and service staff, pastors, and civil society converge to generate life. This “we” prevents water from stagnating in the swamp of “it has always been done this way” and forces it to flow, to nourish, to irrigate.

Educational choice programs are one source of water into the swamp of “it has always been done this way.” Rather than relying on financial models that are no longer fit for purpose, Catholic schools can benefit from the flows of public dollars, via families, into their schools.

Now, they might need to make some changes. Schools might need to invest in communicating their culture to integrate new students and families into their community. They might finally be able to build out their infrastructure for students with special needs that they have been hoping to serve but have been unable to do so due to cost. They also might need to fight for students in a more competitive environment than they were used to. But the Pope is encouraging them to do so!

For those skeptical, it is important to also see how choice is complementary to the values and charisms Pope Leo shared. He writes:

The family remains the first place of education. Catholic schools collaborate with parents; they do not substitute them because the “duty … devolves primarily on them.” The educational alliance requires intentionality, listening, and co-responsibility. It is built with processes, tools, shared assessments. It is both hard work and a blessing: when it works, it inspires trust; when it fails, everything becomes more fragile.

Educational choice puts parents in the place of prominence that Pope Leo describes. Choice sees parents as their child’s primary educators and welcomes schools to collaborate with them to teach and form their child. It is not easy, as the Pope recognizes. It takes communication, compromise, and maturity. But when it works, it creates incredible institutions where the whole of a child can flourish.

There is an old joke about the non-Catholic kid who enrolled in a Catholic school who went home after the first day and, when his mother asked how it went, replied, “man, these people take math seriously, they’ve got a guy nailed to a plus sign in every classroom!”

But that ubiquitous image in the Catholic classroom is perfect for thinking about Catholic schools in America today. At first glance, we see suffering, hopelessness, and a figure stripped and bleeding. But we all know that isn’t the end of the story. It is actually a symbol of new life and new hope.

It is my hope that Catholic school leaders embrace Pope Leo’s exhortation to be bold and embrace the challenges and opportunities to provide a life-changing education for the millions of students who desperately need it.

Editor’s note: This was first published by the author on his Substack, Informed Choice.

Policy Priority:

Quality Choices

Topics:

Private School Choice

Dale Chu

1.22.2026

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The grownups are fighting harder and louder than they have in years, both in words and deeds, about education, as well as everything else. Across the political spectrum, schools are treated not as civic institutions but as battlegrounds in a broader struggle over identity, power, and national belonging. In rhetoric and increasingly in policy, education is framed in existential terms, with nearly every issue cast as a fight for the nation’s soul. The temperature is high, the language martial, and the stakes are described as nothing less than civilizational.

This escalation among adults comes at a moment when war and conflict are not abstract tropes in political speech but real headlines, from a U.S. operation in Venezuela to renewed talk of military action against Iran and strategic bluster over Greenland’s place in our great power rivalry. This war-footing posture is not limited to one party; in education, nearly everyone now speaks the language of culture war. The current administration, however, has leaned into it in striking ways, characterizing certain ideas, curricula, and educators as national threats. Indeed, the president once called upon his supporters to “lay down their very lives” against what he described as racial indoctrination in K–12 schooling.

Yet for all the funhouse-mirror war talk, the reality inside most classrooms is strikingly prosaic. Teachers are not manning ideological barricades; they are managing behavior, trying to cover material, and scrambling to fill gaps left by chronic absenteeism and staffing shortages. Although the charged political rhetoric may spook a few teachers—primarily in red states—from discussing current affairs, most classrooms carry on without incident. But that surface stability masks deeper problems, according to a New York Times book review of “The Cradle of Citizenship” by journalist James Traub:

The real crisis… is not that students are learning about 1619 rather than 1776, or the reverse. It is that so many are learning nothing at all… If students do want to engage, their dependence on social media simplifies their views. As Traub discovers, their credulousness toward online sources renders them dependent on present-day culture war influencers whose historical claims they are unprepared to challenge. Against this tide, teachers struggle to get their students to see how the world of the past could be both alien and instructive in a way that might stoke their skepticism.

Students are not pawns in a pitched battle so much as victims of academic neglect, nearly all of whom will graduate high school with little understanding of history or government.

The evidence here is sobering. The latest national results show that only about 14 percent of eighth graders scored at or above the proficient level in U.S. history, and only 22 percent did so in civics, while scores in both subjects continue to fall as part of a disappointing decade-long decline. More students now score in the lowest categories, unable to answer even basic questions about the Constitution or the Civil War. Many can read the Gettysburg Address without recognizing that soldiers died in the conflict.

We also lack comprehensive state-level civics data, so policymakers cannot answer even simple questions like whether there was a “Mississippi Miracle” in civics the way we have for the “Southern Surge” in reading. Expanding NAEP civics assessments at the state level could fill this gap, providing a clearer picture of what works and what doesn’t. Traub’s excellent new book documents a range of issues in civics education, from curriculum gaps to classroom realities, and readers should consult it for a deeper understanding of how students are—or aren’t—learning the foundations of democracy.

Math and reading scores have long been troubling, but history and civics are particularly consequential because students who lack basic knowledge in these areas are more susceptible to polarization, mistrust, and civic breakdown. At the same time, Uncle Sam has scaled back research capacity and sent mixed signals about his commitment to assessment and accountability, potentially leaving researchers and policymakers with less evidence of how students are faring.

That remains the real education challenge—and today’s air war among adult factions isn’t helping the country to meet it. The effect is not just theatrical. When education policy is framed as a struggle for the heart of the republic, the machinery of governance starts to bend toward drama rather than evidence. As political pundit Jonah Goldberg explains:

When you invoke war as the analogue to something else, you’re trying to steal the authority and permission that war gives… trying to say that the rules don’t apply… War causes people to… follow orders. That’s why politicians love to invoke war—to sidestep the messy rules… War fever is seductive and intoxicating…

It’s one thing to draw on the urgency of Sputnik-era education reform, when the nation mobilized to strengthen math and science without turning classrooms into weaponized battlegrounds. It’s quite another to ratchet up the language to the point that Washington’s handling of schools feels like a life-or-death cause—so much so that the very essentials of teaching and learning are pushed to the margins.

None of this is to deny that partisan signaling exists in schools. Traub documents real political battles in places like Texas and Florida, as well as Minnesota and Illinois, and he did encounter isolated examples of overt ideological expression by teachers. But those cases were the exception, not the rule. Far more common was a quieter reality: educators trying to do their jobs while navigating shifting directives and political pressure from above. The danger of today’s martial spectacle is that it turns what should be treated as an urgent national imperative—getting students back on track—into a permanent emergency. Emergencies reward theatrics, demand loyalty, and short-circuit judgment. In the end, the central conflict in K–12 education is not good versus evil or red versus blue, but seriousness versus stupidity. And too many adults, including those with the most power, have mistaken performative combat for serious thinking, to the detriment of the students they claim to be fighting for.

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Josh Boots

1.22.2026

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Across the country, student attendance post-pandemic remains a crisis. For the thousands of school principals who added “reduce chronic absenteeism” to their 2026 New Year’s resolutions, please know that you are not alone. According to a recent report from the American Enterprise Institute, chronic absenteeism remains 57 percent higher than it was before the pandemic. In 2024, the national rate dropped only slightly to 23.5 percent. The rate in Washington, D.C.—where my organization, EmpowerK12, is based—while improving, still hovers near 40 percent.

Fifteen states and jurisdictions have adopted a goal of cutting chronic absenteeism in half by 2027. But progress is uneven, and without school-based strategies that work, that target may remain out of reach.

This includes D.C. Chronic absenteeism is one of the most pressing challenges facing the city’s schools, and its ripple effects are increasingly visible beyond the classroom. A recent investigation by the Washington Post found that widespread breakdowns in the city’s approach to truancy have contributed to a troubling spike in youth crime. Middle school students have been especially affected, with truancy rates at triple pre-pandemic levels.

EmpowerK12 research finds that for every day of missed class, a student’s score on the city’s test (called “CAPE”) declines by one point. When the difference between the assessment’s “Meeting Expectations” and “Partially Meeting Expectations” levels is just twenty-five points, every day of school attended counts.

This article tells the story of Center City Congress Heights and D.C. Prep Anacostia, two of the city’s high-poverty schools showing that significant and sustained attendance improvement is possible. Students in pre-K through eighth grade at both schools saw chronic absenteeism rates double after the return to in-person schooling during the pandemic. Now their rates are at the lowest levels of any school east of the Anacostia River in D.C.’s most impoverished communities of Ward 8, where half of the students are chronically absent. (See figure 1.)

Figure 1: Student chronic absenteeism rates in D.C. Ward 8, Center City Congress Heights, and D.C. Prep Anacostia, 2018–2026

* School chronic absenteeism rates as of the end of November 2025

The strategies behind their success are not complicated, but they are deliberate and sustained. They begin with a belief that attendance is everyone’s job and that no intervention works without first building trust through quality relationships and cultivating a sense of belonging.

At both schools, the work to improve attendance begins long before the first day of school. Over the summer, staff at D.C. Prep Anacostia review attendance data from the previous year and identify students who may need support. The school holds one-on-one meetings with families to create personalized plans. Sometimes that means providing alarm clocks or arranging wake-up calls, or the plan may include incentives like gift cards or special snacks. These plans are not just written and forgotten. They are tracked weekly and adjusted as needed. “We start our attendance planning in the summer,” said D.C. Prep Anacostia’s Vice Principal Kia Coleman. “Using data, meeting with families, and setting real goals. It is not just about getting students here. It is about making sure they feel celebrated when they do.”

At Center City Congress Heights, the message is just as clear. During the first parent night of the year, the school lays out its expectations and asks for families to mutually hold the school accountable in return. Staff make clear that attendance matters, not only because it affects grades, but because it affects access to unique learning opportunities. Every newsletter includes attendance updates. Teachers and leaders recognize progress and follow up when students miss time. Staff conduct home visits when necessary, and they do not shy away from difficult conversations.

According to Principal Niya White, that level of honesty is possible only because the relationships are already in place. “We talk about shared accountability between staff and families, and back again,” White said. “That means holding each other to high expectations, being clear from the start, and following through with both recognition and consequences.”

While the staff at both schools take attendance seriously, they also know that students are more likely to show up when school feels like a place where they belong. That sense of belonging is cultivated through opportunities for joyful learning, creating a sense of community, and academic momentum.

At D.C. Prep Anacostia, attendance gets celebrated publicly and often. The school’s “Golden Clock” competition rewards homerooms that reach 95 percent attendance for the week. Three clocks earn a pizza party. Five clocks get the class a spot in the school’s Hall of Fame. Ten clocks win a field trip. Students also earn door prizes and school store rewards. The tone is upbeat, but the message is serious: Your presence matters.

Students at Center City Congress Heights are offered similar motivators. Every other week, and sometimes more often, every student has an opportunity to experience a field trip. They are a key part of the school’s instructional model and a powerful incentive. Students understand that missing class can mean missing out, and staff reinforce that connection consistently, linking attendance to participation, grades, and long-term academic growth.

Just as important as the incentives are the systems of follow-through. At both schools, data are used early and often. Teachers and leaders monitor daily attendance trends, flag concerns early, and adapt interventions based on what each student and family needs. Families of students who are at risk of chronic absenteeism receive check-ins through phone calls or home visits as early as the first week of school, and when necessary, discussions address the academic consequences of chronic absences, including summer school and grade level retention.

Even these conversations are framed with care. At the core of both schools’ approach is the belief that families want their children to succeed, and that schools have a responsibility to help make that possible. When teachers and staff speak with parents about attendance, rather than insinuating blame, they emphasize problem-solving and partnership.

Their all-hands-on-deck philosophy to boldly improving attendance sets these schools apart from other schools where staff often think attendance work is someone else’s or another city government responsibility. At D.C. Prep and Center City, the challenges and solutions belong to everyone—and so does success.

The primary ingredient that encompasses everything is the development of strong, trusting relationships amongst educators, students, and families to create a true sense of belonging at school for everyone. Then they focus in equal measure on utilizing data early and often, identifying meaningful incentives and consequences, communicating the importance of high attendance standards, and problem solving the support each student and family needs to meet high standards.

What is happening at D.C. Prep Anacostia and Center City Congress Heights is not theoretical. It is real, replicable, and already making a difference. These schools show what it looks like when staff share ownership, when data are used with intention, and when students feel like they belong. If D.C. is serious about improving outcomes for its young people, it must be equally serious about learning from the schools that are already getting it right.

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