Jeff Murray
12.19.2025
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Letter and spirit

The elected board members that run Columbus City Schools voted unanimously this week to demolish four buildings that they previously voted to close due to underutilization. While there is no firm date for any closures, the lame duck elected board president said the demo order was necessary because the buildings—which are currently serving students and will continue doing so until the day they shut down—would somehow become immediate neighborhood eyesores as soon as the last student leaves. He also asserted they are in such bad shape (send a prayer for the unfortunate Columbus Schools teachers who still have to work in them!) that no charter operator would want them. Thus, despite both the letter and the spirit of state law that requires districts to offer unused facilities for sale to charter and private schools, the board believes they are justified in demolishing these buildings without doing so. Fordham’s Aaron Churchill and United Schools’ Andy Boy are quoted in the coverage explaining why the elected board members are acting in bad faith.

Kudos

Kudos to Black Enterprise for this super awesome profile of GEO Schools, the high-performing charter network operating in Indiana and Louisiana. The report touts the long-running successes of their schools, profiles several amazing graduates, and notes that network leaders are working on expanding to Cleveland in the next couple of years. In fact, it’s such a good piece that we are able to overlook the fact that it mistakes Cleveland for the largest city in Ohio.

Retiring

Here is a detailed profile of the career of Susan Schaeffler, founder of the KIPP DC Public Schools network, who is retiring after 25 years at the helm there. There’s as much coverage of charter school evolution and the ups and downs of charter/district coexistence in the District over time as there is of Schaeffler’s specific work. But rehashing all the drama is indeed one way to highlight her vital role through the years.

Digging deep

Penn Live this week published the eighth (!) in an ongoing series digging deeply into the growth, operation, and impacts of Commonwealth Charter Academy, Pennsylvania’s fastest growing virtual charter school. This one focuses on testing and accountability, and it reports, among other findings, that less than 30 percent of the school’s students take state assessments.

Concerned charter leaders

The Columbus Dispatch covers reports of federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity in the capital city this week. The geographic focus appears to be the Northland neighborhood, home to a number of campuses in the Horizon Science Academy and Zenith Academy charter networks. Concerned leaders of both networks are quoted in this coverage from yesterday.

Once more unto the breach...

Peter Greene examines the recent West Virginia circuit court ruling that prevents the authorization of any new charter schools by the state charter board without the approval of voters in the county where the school wants to locate. He explains that the current case is actually a refiling of a previous lawsuit, which had resulted in a similar injunction later tossed out by the West Virginia Supreme Court. Greene is sure this one will end up in the same place for a final verdict…but stops short of predicting the outcome.

*****

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Policy Priority:
School Choice
Topics:
Charter Schools
Jeff Murray
12.19.2025
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News stories featured in Gadfly Bites may require a paid subscription to read in full. Just sayin’.

  1. This is subscriber-only content (just like the disclaimer says), but it’s just too awesome for me not to tell you about it, even if you can’t read it all. It’s discussion of Ohio Senate Bill 328 which would help build on existing momentum in the state to ensure high-quality career-connected learning for students prior to high school. As quoted in the Gongwer/State Affairs piece, my colleague Jessica Poiner recently analyzed the bill’s provisions with her usual rigor and, happily for you all, that blog post is freely available here. Here’s hoping for a swift hearing process for SB 328 when legislators return to work after the holidays. (Gongwer Ohio/State Affairs, 12/15/25)

  2. At least three of the universities whose teacher prep programs were reported this week as failing their science of reading implementation audits say they have already eliminated the problems discovered—namely using textbooks and curricula which included banned teaching practices. This piece details those responses from Wright State and Central State. (Dayton Daily News, 12/17/25) This piece documents Bowling Green State University’s declaration that they are also already in compliance and states that the other seven delinquents have also done so…although I’d like to hear/see/read more from the birthplace of Reading Recovery myself. Just sayin’. (Bowling Green Independent News, 12/17/25)

  3. Implementation of a four-day week, increasing the number of magnet schools, and numerous program cuts are still on the table for the long term, but Toledo City Schools’ budget deficit (due to ongoing enrollment losses) is so large and so pressing that the elected school board was forced to vote in emergency session last night to make cuts in their biggest line item: staffing. 115 positions were eliminated via unanimous vote, effective immediately, with more to come. “The district does not have a choice,” explained the deputy superintendent before the vote. “We must be in solvency” before the district can even begin to get assistance from the state. (Toledo Blade, 12/18/25)

  4. To end the week on a high note, Bio-Med Science Academy, one of my beloved independent STEM schools, is on the move in the very best way. The school’s two elementary-grade buildings will merge into one and relocate to the campus of Kent State University. In this win-win partnership, Kent gets a rent-paying tenant for some of its underused space, and the STEM school students get access to a fully equipped lab facility and attend school on the campus of an actual higher ed institution. Fantastic news! The new site should be open by fall 2027, by which time I reckon that Bio-Med’s reported “900 students from 45 school districts in the region” will also be on the move—upward! (Cleveland.com, 12/18/25)

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Policy Priority:
School Funding
Topics:
Governance
Michael J. Petrilli
12.18.2025
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2025 will be remembered for a lot of bad—no, terrible—news outside of education, but inside our little sandbox of ed-reform, there’s plenty to be grateful for.

Let’s start with the nice before getting to the naughty:

Pros

Cons

It’s close, but to my eye, that adds up to more light than darkness for 2025—and reason for hope as we enter 2026.

Policy Priority:
High Expectations
Topics:
Evidence-Based Learning
Curriculum & Instruction
Governance
Teachers & School Leaders
Emily Freitag
12.18.2025
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This year, I am conducting the AI in Action Learning Tour to see student-facing AI solutions in classrooms and to learn about what the product developers are wrapping around the large language models in the design of the apps. I am doing this because I believe, though educators will always be instrumental in teaching and learning, student-facing AI can make it easier for teachers to be great. Earlier this year, I shared early patterns from what I am learning and committed to sharing more as I go.

After completing another round of product conversations, I see more clearly three defining instructional choice points that I predict will drive trends in the year to come.

1. Product designers either presume teacher autonomy or design for common implementation at a district or school level. The products that presume teacher autonomy are largely selling to teachers with freemium models, then encouraging districts to purchase enterprise accounts. Teacher-facing tools include functions like lesson planning, text selection, and materials development. The student-facing sides of these products are designed for flexible use-cases. Other products presume that districts are giving teachers direction about what materials they should be using, with day-by-day or week-by-week pacing expectations. Their products are designed to become part of that model. They are selling, not classroom-based, but district-wide solutions. Products are designed to fit into a defined instructional model; they intentionally do not add features that would encourage modification. Currently, more AI products on the market are designed around teacher autonomy than common implementation.

2. Product designers either design features to “meet students where they are” or anchor to grade-level instruction. Many educators and parents hold the belief that good teachers target instruction to the student’s current academic level. Fueled by reports like the Opportunity Myth and analysis of the difference between acceleration and remediation, many state and district leaders have been trying to replace that belief with the idea that all students can meet high expectations and will make more academic progress if they’re given access to grade-level instruction. Product developers seem to subscribe to one belief or the other—those designed to support teachers in “meeting students where they are” offer tools like text releveling. Those designed to provide grade-level instruction steer away from such choices and launch all instruction from a grade-level starting point. There are currently more products that try to “meet students where they are” than anchor to grade-level instruction.

3. Products are either built to do a single instructional job or designed to have multiple coherent touch points. Some products try to do one job well, usually across grades and subjects—for example, nailing exit tickets. Other solutions try to help with a full stack of instructional jobs—for example, using Tier I instruction and assessment with teacher PL in middle school ELA. Most products start with a lean design but end up adding more functionality.

In 2026, I predict that student learning gains will correlate with the quality and specificity of instructional leadership and teacher support more than product selection; however, it will be a year that shapes AI’s future role in teaching and learning. Here is what I suspect we will see:

1. I predict that the teacher autonomy tools will win the early adoption surge but will begin to lose market share to products designed for district-wide use. It will be much harder for teacher autonomy tools to prove impact than common use solutions—and the more comprehensive instructional model-based tools will start to show outcomes more clearly. AI has some superpowers in analysis and personalization that can improve coherence when used across classrooms. Common applications can also give leaders visibility into what students are doing and learning across the school or system. Districts will only be able to leverage those insights if everyone is using the same products in similar ways. Ultimately, districts hold the power of the purse. I suspect we will see more muscular district guidance on what tools they expect teachers to use and which tools they don’t want to see influencing instruction.

2. I predict that existing curriculum, assessment, and intervention providers will start offering AI-powered features. I sense that  many companies have been waiting to see how AI unfolds, but they’ll begin increasing pressure to implement their own AI solutions—as well as a sense of possibility about how AI can improve their services. They will have a leg up with an existing client base, but I don’t know how much districts will trust evolutions versus purpose-built products. I predict some will allow for the “meet students where they are” functionalities, while others will resist demand for these features and this, eventually, becomes a flash point in selection.

3. I predict that instructional super products will begin to emerge that transcend categories (e.g., serving as curriculum, assessment, and intervention with embedded PL all in one). I predict that district and state leaders will get most excited about the way these superproducts can improve coherence, reduce the volume of testing, and displace cost categories rather than just adding more log-ins or budget line items.

4. I predict that some districts, teachers, and parents will opt out of AI entirely. The pressure against screen time is real, and the risks of cheating that come with access to any browser will likely lead to bifurcation of interest and use. I think some parents will choose schools based on technology use or disuse. I predict this will become a factor in teacher job interest—some teachers will favor districts that give them access to AI tools, and others teachers will favor districts where they can teach “old school.” Ultimately, I do not think this will be a large group because the benefits of strong tools to student learning and the teacher job will be so evident and significant.

My record of predictions is wrong as often as it is right. Either way, I look forward to learning more together in 2026. I wish you and your families a healthy and happy holiday season.

Editor’s note: This was first published by Instruction Partners.

Policy Priority:
High Expectations
Daniel Buck
12.18.2025
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For my first four years in the classroom, I taught English as a second language to Somali refugees and Latin American immigrants in a small city in Wisconsin. I offer my experience teaching these children not as an omniscient viewpoint but as an informative sliver of a perspective.

Which immigrants should we let in or remove? On what criteria? What benefits should we provide or not? While important, answering those questions is not this article’s focus.

Instead, I’m interested in how many immigrants interact with our institutions once they’re here. What do they learn about our country? How do we shape them or not? For many young immigrants, their first experience with America is the public education system, an experience that is terribly flawed.

The primary issue was chaos. Students were in constant conflict across cultures. They expressed verbal hatred toward one another, and that animosity spread to violence in the hallways. I still recall talking one Hispanic student down from choking a Somali student unconscious. You don’t quickly forget the sound of a 12-year-old gagging and wheezing.

Unfortunately, the district administration was too sheepish to enforce order. Who were they to impose their cultural norms? What were the optics of suspending a refugee? They instead tried various restorative circles and listening sessions to build community. At one listening session, a mother said that her children feared other students, yet seemingly no one was ever punished.

The tribal hatreds from their home countries didn’t suddenly disappear once they came to my classroom at the end of the hall. Warring factions threatened to disrupt the school. And without school leaders enforcing rules, these conflicts festered. Instead of softening, the hatreds hardened.

The kumbaya strategies failed, and so these refugee students walked into a Hobbesian building where only strength and clannishness could protect them from bullying and fights. What is their primary, formative experience with America then? A public education system flush with resources — they previously attended small shack schools in refugee camps — but terribly violent. A place where rules went unenforced and strong-arm tactics were tolerated.

The second biggest issue I encountered, which led to the first, was the progressive pedagogical mindset among the teachers. Grammar instruction, memorization of new vocabulary, rote practice, and explicit, systematic phonics instruction were shunned. Should we really be forcing them to learn English, anyway?

Instead, we encouraged students to learn content in their first language. All reading and writing was “taught” through exploration and self-expression. For spoken language, such “learning by osmosis” can work, but it fails dramatically when learning how to write. As a result, these children didn’t learn English, didn’t learn any other academic content, and were forever on the peripheries of the school. Without English, they were always “other.”

Third observation: Immigrant students received a very negative perspective on their adoptive country. More than an honest account of history, they heard a narrative that cast America’s story as one of slavery, impoverishment, and evil. Any suggestion that gratitude is an appropriate emotion, that America is a great country, or that they should adopt the ideals in our Constitution was anathema.

It’s important to note that many of these were deeply troubled students who had come from traumatic and unstable circumstances. While that observation may offend some, it’s a reality that schools cannot ignore. They have to reckon with it whether they like it or not. I had many students whose parents were brutally murdered by cartels or whose fathers were missing limbs from a warlord’s machete.

As a result, these students were more prone to violent outbursts and volatile emotions. It made a school full of them difficult to manage, let alone any efforts at acculturation or assimilation. It was even harder as new students came to our classrooms unexpectedly in the middle of the school year, often with little English and sometimes no paperwork to confirm their age.

One veteran teacher contested these policies. She is herself a Latin American. She saw that students needed explicit instruction, that they needed to learn English first, that they needed strong behavioral systems, and that America was a good country. But eventually, the stressors of teaching in this environment and her unheeded calls for improvement overwhelmed her. She checked into a mental health institution sometime around spring break and never came back.

I have nothing but sympathy for these students. They are innocent of their country’s lawlessness and don’t deserve the hardships they’ve endured. We cannot return to a forced assimilation that beats students for speaking their home language, but we cannot then spurn helping them adopt different behavioral norms, learn a new language, or develop an appreciation for their new home. To do so only compounds their hardships.

Editor’s note: This was first published by the Washington Examiner.

Policy Priority:
High Expectations
Jill Hoppe
12.18.2025
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In the 1990s, Sweden overhauled its public education system. Previously run almost entirely by local governments, public schools could now be operated either by districts or by private providers—similar to U.S. charter schools. Unlike the United States, Sweden’s compulsory schooling lasts 10 years, followed by an optional three-year high school program. Students rank their preferred high schools and are admitted based on their grade 7–9 GPA rather than residential zoning. By 2023, nearly half of Stockholm high school students attended charter-like schools, and roughly 80 percent of them were enrolled in for-profit providers.

In a new study, Petter Berg of the Stockholm School of Economics examines long-run economic outcomes for Stockholm’s high school students who attended for-profit or non-profit charter schools. He links data from roughly 20,000 students who enrolled in 158 high schools between 1995 and 2008 with administrative data on their graduation, college enrollment, field of study, and labor earnings at ages 23 and 30.

Using a value-added regression framework that controls for observable differences in students’ prior achievement and family background, Berg estimates three effects on long-term outcomes: school value-added (school-wide features such as teacher quality), program value-added (market-wide returns associated with different fields of study), and the school-program match (how well a specific school delivers a certain program). To understand why students choose certain schools, he also analyzes rank-ordered school applications from 2013–2015, which reveal how location, programs, and admissions constraints shape demand for for-profit and non-profit charters.

The topline finding is that Swedish charter schools reduce on-time high school graduation by 2.3 percentage points and reduce college enrollment by 3.2 points. Charter attendance also lowers long-run earnings by 1.11 percentiles (roughly 2 percent) relative to traditional public schools, with non-profit charters producing larger losses (1.5 percentiles) than for-profits (0.8–0.9 percentiles).

The mechanisms underlying these losses differ sharply by sector. For-profit charters losses are driven by weak school value-added. Despite offering higher-return vocational programs, cost-cutting practices such as hiring younger, less-credentialed teachers reduce overall quality and diminish student earnings. For non-profit charters, earnings reductions stem from a disproportionate focus on programs, such as art, that yield lower labor-market returns than the academic or vocational tracks offered in public schools or for-profit charters. When program type is held constant, non-profits yield similar or even slightly better school-value added compared to traditional public schools.

Given these outcomes, why do students choose charters? Berg finds that choices are largely driven by location and program availability rather than effects on long-term outcomes, with students showing little willingness to travel farther for higher-value schools. Low-GPA students often end up in for-profits not by choice but because GPA-based admissions and capacity limits in nearby public schools leave them with fewer options. Though top-tercile students typically attend their first or second choice school and bottom-tercile students attend their fifth or sixth, low GPA students in for-profits enroll in higher-return programs than their public-school peers. The reverse is true for high-GPA students. As a result, for-profit charters are nearly as effective as public schools at boosting long-run earnings for students lower GPA students but are significantly worse for top performers.

So what are the implications for charter schools in the United States?

Sweden and America’s charter sectors differ in countless ways. Far fewer American charter schools are run for profit compared to the Swedish system. Most U.S. charters use lotteries for admission, whereas students in Sweden are admitted largely based on GPA. In fact, Swedish “high schools” may have more in common with America’s for-profit colleges as they do with U.S. charter networks like KIPP or IDEA.

Some important questions are difficult to answer. Would students in non-profit arts schools have chosen these low-return programs without expanded choice policies? If not, school choice reforms may be reshaping long-term career trajectories by increasing access to programs with poor labor-market returns. If students would have selected these programs regardless, then the issue may not lie with non-profit charters themselves but with program demand.

The Swedish case underscores that school choice must be paired with careful attention to program quality and outcomes, a major lesson for the U.S. charter sector.

SOURCE: Petter Berg, “Schooling for Profit: Long-run Effects of Private Providers in Public Education,” Stockholm School of Economics (November 2025).

Policy Priority:
Quality Choices
Topics:
Evidence-Based Learning
Charter Schools
Governance
Jeff Murray
12.17.2025
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  1. Despite explanations of the intent of state law from local charter school leader Andy Boy and Fordham Institute research director Aaron Churchill, elected school board members in Columbus voted yesterday to approve demolition for the four school buildings they previously voted to close. The demolition order had “nothing to do with charter schools,” quacked lame duck elected board president Michael Cole by way of response to Boy and Churchill’s concerns over why none of them were going to be offered for sale to other education entities prior to demolition—as the law requires. Cole went on to explain that these four buildings will instantly become neighborhood blights as soon as they are closed, despite the fact that they are all currently serving students and will continue to do so until they are officially closed—which may not actually happen for two years or more. Despicable. (Columbus Dispatch, 12/16/25)

  2. Staying on topic, Canton City Schools has suddenly discovered that it too is facing a multi-million-dollar deficit due to continuing student enrollment losses and lack of right-sizing following therefrom. (Canton Repository, 12/17/25)

  3. Cuyahoga Falls City Schools, also facing a deficit, is taking a slightly different tack toward “right-sizing”. They have been deliberately shrinking the number of students admitted via interdistrict open enrollment over the last couple of years—specifically getting rid of some “problem students”, we are told here—and using those lower numbers to justify eliminating staff. It’s gone so well, they’re now thinking about ending interdistrict open enrollment entirely. How clever of them. (Signal Akron, 12/17/25)

  4. From closing borders to blowing them wide open: Laura Hancock continues her exploration of proposals from “the left-leaning New America’s Education Funding Equity initiative” (as she likes to phrase it) that redraw school district boundaries in three different ways, all of which are intended to bolster economic and racial heterogeneity among them in whichever new configuration may be chosen. This time, she looks at actual efforts to effectuate related changes in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. As you might have suspected, the Wisconsin plan (passed in the lower chamber and now sitting in the state senate) offers a big fiscal incentive for any districts that do consolidate. Meanwhile, Pennsylvania lawmakers are proposing a feasibility study on the topic. This feels like an opportune time for me to repeat my favorite saying—be careful what you advocate for report on wish for—but I know that all seven of you dedicated Gadfly Bites subscribers (Merry Almost Christmas, you crazy elves!) already sensed that would be the theme of my commentary in this matter. And I know none of us think it’s going to end here! (Cleveland.com, 12/16/25)

  5. Because this piece is otherwise super awesome—touting the long-running successes of charter school network GEO Schools, profiling several amazing graduates, and noting that they are working on expansion to Cleveland in the next couple of years—I will graciously overlook the fact that the reporter erroneously states that CLE is the largest city in Ohio. (Black Enterprise, 12/16/25)

  6. As part of the comprehensive effort to install the science of reading in Ohio schools, teacher prep programs in all colleges in the state were required to undergo audits of the ways they educate their teacher candidates to teach reading. The results of those audits were released yesterday, and one distressing aspect of the findings actually caused Gov. Mike DeWine to swear on the record during the press conference: Ten universities—including many of the largest institutions in Ohio—failed their audits because they had “one or more violations for banned teaching practices” such as three-cueing. (Not sure why anyone is surprised that the state that birthed Reading Recovery would have a hard time letting go of it, but here we are.) These schools now have another year to correct these violations (even though they are already a year beyond the original deadline for complying) or face the loss of certification for their teacher prep programs. (Columbus Dispatch, 12/16/25)

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Policy Priority:
School Funding
Topics:
Governance