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Jeff Murray
12.5.2025
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Leading with kindness

Here’s a nice profile of Kim Simons, co-superintendent of Lakeland Academy in eastern Ohio. She manages the student- and parent-centered responsibilities alongside Jenn Bardall, who handles administrative duties. Simons was a novice to the charter school world when she first came to Lakewood. And after four years in which she’s taught in almost every grade, and handled special education and reading as well, she knows that “this place means family and community.” Awesome.

Research and exemplar

The Dayton Daily News provided coverage of Fordham’s latest research report, which looks at the academic trajectories of low-income Ohio students who perform well academically at third grade. The theme of the report is “leaky pipeline”, which gives an accurate picture of how many of those young people generally fare in later grades as compared to their higher-income peers. However, reporter Eileen McClory also highlights some local schools who do a better job at supporting their high-achieving low-income students to greater academic outcomes—including the very awesome charter school Dayton Early College Academy. Take a look!

That’s how school choice works

In a story about Akron City Schools planning to undergo their first performance audit in nearly 30 years, we also learn that district leaders are looking for “ways to boost student enrollment, including bringing students back who may have left for a charter or private school.” Leaving aside the fact that many such students opted out of the district for their entire school careers (and thus can’t be “brought back”), here’s hoping that their efforts focus on providing better services and more of what Akron families want from their schools.

Losing the race

Two staffers from the American Federation for Children opined last week that the school choice ecosystem in several states—including Ohio—could provide good models for their home state of Pennsylvania to emulate, including both private and charter school sectors. “If Pennsylvania truly wants to attract population from neighboring states while strengthening the overall education ecosystem,” they write, “it should…offer a panoply of educational choices” as Ohio and others already do.

Blocking the pipeline

Charter school opponents in West Virginia have hit upon a new legal strategy to try and stop the expansion of charters in their state…and it has proven successful in its first challenge. Two teachers sued the state, arguing that under the state constitution charters can’t open without approval from local voters. Kanawha Circuit Judge Jennifer Bailey concurred and ordered a temporary halt to the authorization of new charter schools statewide without voter consent. The injunction could become permanent—and indeed all currently operating charters could be shut down—if the order is not successfully appealed or if the state legislature and/or governor don’t intervene.

Boosting the pipeline

Meanwhile, Bloomberg Philanthropies and the City Fund announced a $20 million initiative to fund two charter schools in Alabama. One began its inaugural year this fall and the other is scheduled to open in fall 2026. Both are affiliated with HBCUs—Stillman College and Tuskegee University—and the new initiative is meant to strengthen the connection between the charter schools and their colleges. Among other supports, the Bloomberg/City Fund effort will facilitate dual-enrollment courses and community internship programs at D.C. Wolfe Charter School and I Dream Big Academy. An exciting future awaits all of their students!

*****

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Policy Priority:
School Choice
Topics:
Charter Schools
Jeff Murray
12.5.2025
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  1. Before the upcoming board vote on the proposal, lots of folks have a lot to say about the plan to close and consolidate school buildings in Cleveland Metropolitan School District. Patrick O’Donnell and most of the folks he interviews characterize the proposal as the abandonment of a popular effort to create smaller, more specialized schools such as MC2STEM and the School of Science and Medicine that attract students with specific interests. (The 74, 12/5/25) Signal Cleveland interviewed 30 CMSD high school students, many of whom attend the impacted schools. “While adults have vented worries or pushed civic agendas,” reporter Franziska Wild writes, “student concerns about the plan — minus a few public comments — have been more muted… Signal Cleveland learned that students are less focused on the big picture reshaping of the district to save money and improve academic offerings and are more keyed in on the details that might impact their daily lives next year.” These include such issues as accessing extracurriculars, finishing out career training programs already underway, how class ranking might change, etc. Oh, and whether the combined student bodies will actually fit into the cafeteria at lunch time! So practical…and so easily addressed. (Signal Cleveland, 12/5/25) Journalist Wild also talked to a group of parents whose children all attend one school—Louisa May Alcott Elementary—and who are saddened that their building will likely be slated for closure and its 160-some students will be integrated with two other elementaries in a newer, better-equipped building. The nuances are many and interesting, but it seems clear that big picture decision-making is generally not equipped to grapple with such individual-level concerns. (Signal Cleveland, 12/2/25) As mayor Justin Bibb puts it in a TV ad now running in Cleveland, CMSD needs to find a way to save $150 million in the coming years to avoid state fiscal oversight or more. And the main issue is that the student population has been falling for years and nothing has been done to right-size the districts’ resources in response to that reality. “That means too many of our schools are half empty,” he tells his citizens, “and too many of our kids miss out on the basics, like algebra, computer tech, band, sports and college and career prep.” (Signal Cleveland, 12/4/25) The CMSD school board, all members appointed by the city’s mayor, votes Tuesday on the plan.

  2. The board of Columbus City Schools—all members elected by the citizens of Columbus—voted earlier this week to approve a package of cuts to stave off their own budget shortfall—which impends for the same reasons as in Cleveland—although their plan focuses more on staff and programming to the almost total exclusion of building closures. After the vote, I wondered whether the incoming board members—replacing three lame ducks who all voted for the cuts—would even go along with what was decided here when they take office in January. The Dispatch wondered the same thing and sent reporter Cole Behrens to ask them. Honestly, I’m not sure he actually got a clear answer from any of them. (Columbus Dispatch, 12/5/25)

  3. After the previous heavy-going, here’s a somewhat lighter story about how some Jewish day schools in Cleveland help their students prepare for the transition from middle school to high school. The effort sounds pretty comprehensive and laudably student focused to me, and it starts in sixth grade. Why? Because many of their graduates choose secular public schools for ninth grade and, as the school staffers interviewed put it as nicely as they can: It’s a whole different world of education that, for many kids, requires some new skills, especially around fitting in, advocating for personal needs, and maintaining identity. Nice. (Cleveland Jewish News, 12/3/25)

  4. But that’s the only good news we’ve got today. Because, unless my research has missed something (and I hope that any reader who knows different will tell me if so), all three of these well-intentioned, highly-capitalized, and super cool academically-relevant community student support programs are open only to students attending traditional district schools—no charter or private or STEM or home schoolers need apply. Such as this engineering immersion program at Ohio State University’s Lima campus for middle schoolers… (Hometown Stations, 12/4/25) …and this Hour of Code event—including robotics and digital design as well as software coding—happening this Sunday at the Athens Meigs Educational Services Center… (WOUB-FM, Athens, 12/4/25) …and the SOLE Box initiative, a clever idea to combine the design challenge aspect of STEM education with sneaker culture for middle schoolers. This one particularly hurts because it is interesting and unusual and well-supported by a number of well-heeled Akron-area charitable foundations. (Akron Beacon Journal, 12/5/25) Again, I’m not 100 percent sure all these programs do actively keep charter school and other non-district students from participating, but a) all the media coverage references district students only, multiple times (which could be the whole problem), and b) there is no obvious indication inside or outside of the media coverage that any of them recruit or would accept choice students who happened to apply. I’d love to be wrong and would hope that any reader who knows for sure would prove me so. Until that time, though: Shame on all of you community-minded student supporters who either actively or passively exclude kids based on where they attend school.

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Policy Priority:
School Funding
Topics:
Governance
Vic Klatt
12.4.2025
Donald Trump
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Last month, Mike Petrilli wrote about the Trump administration’s proposal to shift Department of Education programs to other agencies, mostly the Labor Department. His Substack is designed to elicit responses from friends in education policy, so others weighed in with their own impressions of the president’s decision.

After reading all of this, I came to the conclusion that people just don’t get it, or perhaps they just don’t want to speak up in the current political climate.

Let me start by saying that a few of the administration’s ideas make at least some sense: combining career and technical education and job training programs is completely logical, regardless of their bureaucratic home; and having the State Department take over international education and the Department of the Interior take over Native American programs has some merit. But overall, the proposal is nuts.

One feature of the administration’s decision is the notion that they’re going to “reduce union power” over Education Department programs by shifting them to the Department of Labor. This is absurd on its face. Anyone who truly understands Washington knows that there may not be a cabinet agency more captured by a set of interest groups than the Labor Department is by labor unions. Even under President Trump, the agency is run by a secretary rumored to be hand-picked by labor interests! Only out of touch Washington insiders could possibly think that shifting education programs to the Labor Department dominated by labor union politics and policies will reduce the influence of organized labor. I mean, come on, man! (As a recent former president known for his labor union ties used to say.)

Neither will shifting programs to the Labor Department reduce micromanagement and unnecessary and excessive bureaucratic meddling by educrats. Do administration officials not realize what this agency actually does? Have they heard of OSHA? The wage and hour division? How about issues like mine safety, pensions, or Davis Bacon? Ask some of your colleagues about the apprenticeship program and how nothing can happen there without union sign off.

The Labor Department runs a few small to middling grant programs—quite poorly, I should note, by virtually all accounts across the partisan spectrum in my experience. But what it mostly does is regulate and enforce regulations. This accounts for perhaps 90 percent of its staff’s work (my own estimate). This means that eventually—even if it takes a year or two—agency regulators will get their hooks into education programs, especially if the Democrats win the next presidential election. And when these regulators get going, they will be doing the bidding of the NEA and AFT, who will be whispering in their ears at every turn.

If the administration was really committed to moving these programs to another agency, the Commerce Department would have made much more sense. It’s the place where true partnerships between the government and the business community take place.

Lastly, as an old guy who has been around Washington for more than three decades, I must point out that combining education and labor programs was actually tried before on a smaller scale, in the mid 1990s during the Clinton Administration, by Republicans lawmakers. The effort was led by then Rep. Steve Gunderson, among others, but the Democrats opposed it for many of the same reasons they do now.

But conservative groups were just as responsible as the Democrats for stopping the idea dead in its tracks. The opposition then was led by Phyllis Schlafly, the Family Research Council, the Heritage Foundation, and various others of what we used to call “family groups.” In a nutshell, they opposed it because they believed that moving these programs to Labor would lead to a school-to-work pipeline that would create an unholy alliance between big government and big corporations. In those days, these groups informally referred to this as the Bill Clinton-to-Bill Gates pipeline, and they viciously attacked Republicans who thought about supporting this idea, or even a smaller version that just combined what used to be called “vocational education” with the training programs at the Labor Department.

Boy have things changed. It’s sad to see people putting their heads in the sand about all this, and it’s depressing that this kind of proposal sees the light of day at all, let alone get implemented—even if (and likely when) it will be reversed at some point down the line.

Policy Priority:
High Expectations
Topics:
Governance
Teachers & School Leaders
Robert Pondiscio
12.4.2025
Mike Goldstein
Mike Goldstein
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Editor’s note: To read more about this topic from Mike Goldstein and Sean Geraghty, co-founders of the Center For Teen Flourishing, see “What are students doing between 6 p.m. and midnight?“ and “How to help students when they need it most—when they aren’t at school.”

For more than two decades, I’ve admired Mike Goldstein as one of the true pioneers of modern education reform. As the founder of Match in Boston—one of the most relentlessly thoughtful, data-driven, and high-performing charter schools in the country—Mike built a reputation not just for results, but for an unusually rigorous way of thinking about how those results are achieved. He has never been content with slogans or easy answers. He interrogates assumptions, tests ideas, and follows the evidence wherever it leads.

Now he’s turning that same disciplined, clear-eyed approach to a challenge that sits largely outside the reach of schools, and in some ways dwarfs the academic debates that have consumed us for decades. His new effort, the Center for Teen Flourishing, starts from an uncomfortable truth: Even the best schools can’t get kids all the way to flourishing. Not when so much of what shapes their character, habits, happiness, and sense of purpose happens “from 3 p.m. to 3 a.m.”—in the unstructured hours where too many teens today drift toward passivity, isolation, and screens. If we are serious about helping teenagers truly flourish, we need to think beyond classrooms and curricula and confront the broader social, emotional, familial, and civic conditions that shape their lives.

I recently sent Mike a series of questions about this emerging initiative, how his thinking has evolved, and why he believes our field must expand its ambitions. His answers, characteristically, are sharp, honest, and provocative. I’m delighted to share them here.

1. What is the Center for Teen Flourishing?

The Center for Teen Flourishing is an R & D lab for the 3 p.m. to 3 a.m. hours. 

I started Match as a lab when ed reform was cooking. We tried things. Many failed! Some worked. High-dosage tutoring got its start at Match and scaled up. We also piloted an unusual teacher prep program and a new kind of college. The coin of the realm was achievement gains as measured by state tests. 

CTF also wants to experiment, but with a different outcome metric: “hours per week of flourishing.” Many teens describe themselves as not doing much out of school besides scrolling on their phones. Some try to change their behavior but struggle. The conventional wisdom does not seem to be helping, so let’s try some new ideas (and measure the results). We’ll collect field notes along the way. 

2. You helped invent one of the most influential charter school models in the country, Match. Now you’re working on something that sits outside of schools. What led you to conclude that even great schools can’t get kids all the way to flourishing?

Those teens I met in 1999 when I started Match Charter High? Now they’re 40. Some had the story they and we had hoped for: worked hard in high school, first in family through college, got good jobs. Others struggled—including a number who went on to become college graduates. Their labor outcomes weren’t what we’d hoped for. They’re still poor. Charter Growth Fund has led research in this area, to their credit. 

We’ve seen some entrepreneurs create great schools. KIPP, P-TECH, and Harlem Children’s Zone are all intriguing school models (college-for-all, career, wrap-around). The kids’ educational experience improved, and that matters. But randomized trials have shown disturbingly low impact on life outcomes. A 2023 Mathematica study found that attending a KIPP middle school increased the likelihood of a student enrolling in college, but not of graduating. MDRC found that P-TECH had no effect on college enrollment or graduation. Roland Fryer and Will Dobbie found that Texas charter schools didn’t seem to bolster later-in-life earnings. 

So I’m not sure that great schools alone get poor kids out of poverty.

But then something happened. A new problem appeared, and, unlike the achievement gap, it plagues poor and rich teens alike. I call it teen languishing. I’m referring to kids who, for the most part, from 3 p.m. to 3 a.m., do almost nothing besides screen time.

3. The Center for Teen Flourishing’s focus is on “languishing teens”—kids who aren’t clinically depressed but who aren’t exactly thriving either. What does languishing look like in real life? And what convinced you that this is an urgent problem?

A suburban Boston-area teacher emailed me this weekend. This, he wrote, is his median student:

  • Heavy screen time after school, over the weekend, and during the summer.
  • Little time outdoors, reading books, walking, engaged in fitness, working or volunteering.
  • Apathy; maybe low-grade anxiety/depression (unclear if clinical).
  • Going through the motions, little direction or ambition.
  • No clear out-of-school “passions.”
  • Haven’t found “their people.”

Once upon a time, boredom nudged teens to…do things. The smartphone and the trillion dollar companies who sell them defeat boredom. That leads to an idleness that I think is bad for young people.

4. This reminds me Yuval Levin’s essay on “The Changing Face of Social Breakdown” and his observation that “the challenges to America’s social order now seem less like exorbitant human desires driving people’s lives out of control and more like an absence of energy and drive leaving people languishing and enervated.” Are you seeing what he’s seeing?

Loved that Levin essay. I’m seeing what he’s seeing. 

He makes an interesting point in that essay. He notes that his professional peers see this social issue as a class divide; he cites a study indicating that wealthier Americans are getting married and having kids at higher rates than those with lower incomes. But Levin argues that the broader issue, which he calls “pathological passivity,” is across the board.

That’s what we believe at CTF as well. The “sitting around” problem is prevalent everywhere, even among teens in the wealthiest families. 

5. A lot of what you’re describing happens “from 3 p.m. to 3 a.m.,” outside the reach of K–12 education. What kinds of activities or environments do you think actually move the needle for teens in that window? How do we know?

Flourishing teens build busy calendars: sports, restaurant jobs, Starbucks hangouts with friends, church youth groups, scouting, playing guitar. Each domain (fitness, music, work, sleep, socialization) has its own vein of research showing benefits. Some flourishing teens do this the easy way: they join activities that the school offers. Other flourishing teens busy themselves with cool things that aren’t part of the school menu. 

What we don’t know is precisely how to increase languishing teen participation in all of these things. There aren’t many field experiments. That’s what our center wants to do: challenge the conventional wisdom and do some R & D on how to help teenagers live healthy and meaningful lives.

6. Jonathan Haidt and others have focused on reducing screen time through restrictions or “digital sabbaths.” You’ve suggested an alternative: substitution—filling teens’ lives with more engaging, real-world activities. What makes you think substitution might work better than suppression?

Haidt has been invaluable for bringing more attention to the problem. And the school cellphone bans he’s championed have been great. He also backs a favorite thinker of mine, Lenore Skenazy, and her organization Let Grow, which encourages young kids to play together outside.

But outside of school, is the tactic of 3 p.m. to 3 a.m. screen suppression working for languishing teens age 14 and above?

China has tried since 2019 with various moves, including video game limits. A Nature Human Behaviour paper found “no credible evidence” the tactics worked.

Britain’s Online Safety Act took effect a couple months ago; VPN downloads multiplied by twenty times.

Teens find workarounds.

Big Tech offers a Maginot Line of blockers and parental controls. Those don’t seem to work. Have you ever tried? You’re peering over your teen’s shoulder and asking, “Hey is that really science homework, or is it TikTok?” It’s tough.

All of that suggests we may not see the gains we want from out-of-school suppression. We should try! But substitution’s advantage is that it inherently works. If you’re rock climbing, you’re probably off your phone. (Well, except for the selfie.) 

7. You’ve noted that teen flourishing straddles at least six different research silos: mental health, parenting, K–12 education, youth development, screen addiction, and workforce development. Your center touches all six and doesn’t fit neatly into any one of them. This makes fixing schools seem easy by comparison.

My wife Pru is a doctor and made this analogy: Have you ever heard of pediatric “failure to thrive” (FTT)? FTT isn’t a single-organ disease. It’s a syndrome: poor weight gain, lethargy, sleep trouble. The causes interact: feeding routines, sleep, parental capacity, reflux, mild infections, stress.

The fix is never just “see GI” or “see psych.” You need a coordinated plan: pediatrics + nutrition + lactation + sleep hygiene + social work, all aimed at the daily schedule (feeds, naps, play) with one shared outcome metric—the growth chart.

What Center for Teen Flourishing is chasing is perhaps akin to teen FTT. It addresses several issues at once, all unified by the need to fix teens’ daily schedules. 

The research silo problem is a barrier. The education people are understandably mostly worried about how 3 p.m. to 3 a.m. affects, say, chronic absenteeism. A teen who sits on the sofa all evening but shows up to school isn’t high on their list of problems to solve. The mental health people care about teens who meet clinical thresholds. And so on. 

8. You spent years in the charter world. What lessons—good and bad—from the education reform era are you applying to CTF? And what mistakes do you want to avoid repeating?

A. Education reform is at its best when we focus on details of practice. I so admire what happens at, say, Brooke Charter Schools from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Our sector needs similar fascination with the 3 p.m. to 3 a.m. lives of teens.

B. Sometimes you need to recruit a new tribe of talent. Charters had Teach For America, The New Teacher Project, Fisher Fellows, BES—at its peak, the sector was able to mobilize a whole new pool of talented young people. For teen thriving, I think we need a similar effort, somehow pulling in energetic adults and trying fresh ways to deploy them.

I don’t think that typical mentor programs are the answer. These programs are usually relaxed and unstructured—“Hey, you want to go to a ball game?” But that doesn’t seem to work with languishing teens. Because of screens, they’re not bored, so anyone trying to engage them has to be really good at motivating them try new things in the real world and helping them persist with the two or three things they’re interested in.

C. Stay humble. Ed reform got high-dosage tutoring right with a few thousand kids but scaled up wrong. We improved teacher prep but got the branding wrong. We got more kids to earn college diplomas but got the poverty-escape mechanism wrong. I hope to stay curious, be wrong, change my mind, and maybe occasionally be right! 

9. Where does AI play into all this?

There are at least 20 large funders seeking more AI in schools. They have a good cause: achievement! Ed tech, including AI, has always had the allure of scalability, so the interest in AI tools is understandable. If computers can solve education problems, you can help a lot of kids.

A downside is that even good AI use cases are probably more screen time. 

My friend Kyle playfully says that our Center for Teen Flourishing should be funded as a hedge, akin to a carbon offset. If you’re building things that will cause kids to spend even more time on screens, perhaps also help them reduce their total screen time in other ways. 

10. What’s the North Star metric? How will you know if you’re succeeding?

The North Star metric is hours of flourishing each week.

That’s counting the weekly hours on fitness, in-person time with friends, any sleep above 5 hours a night, volunteering or working up to 10 hours a week, pleasure reading, gardening, or walking the dog.

Instead of a pediatrician’s annual physical, we’re experimenting with a structured “life report card” process where a willing teen and parent are interviewed.

We estimate that, currently, the 75th percentile teen has about 20 hours per week in a flourishing state. That looks like an after-school sport, a hobby, a babysitting job, some in-person hangout time. The 25th percentile is closer to two hours per week. 

Policy Priority:
High Expectations
Topics:
Curriculum & Instruction
Teachers & School Leaders
Michael J. Petrilli
12.4.2025
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Across the country, tens of thousands of high-achieving children are sitting at their desks, waiting for the challenge they deserve. But for many—and above all for those from low-income families—that wait won’t end.

Sure, we encounter some success stories. The child of an impoverished rural Ohio “town drunk,” Beth Macy became the first in her family to attend college, rising to become a journalist and, today, a contributor to The New York Times. At just 16 years old, John Roger Stephens, the son of a west-central Ohio factory worker and seamstress, became his high school’s salutatorian and enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania; he graduated magna cum laude before becoming the three-time Grammy-winning John Legend. A few years Legend’s junior, J.D. Vance would soon emerge from Rust Belt poverty, ultimately attending Yale Law School and, yes, becoming the fiftieth vice president of the United States.

Their stories show that kids—even from the most difficult circumstances—can have what it takes to succeed in college and beyond. And as Americans, we love Horatio Alger tales of young people overcoming hardship to find adulthood success. It’s the American Dream!

Yet the tragic reality is that most high-achieving, low-income (HALO) students don’t have access to the opportunities that would open those doors. New research by Stéphane Lavertu, published by my organization, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, finds that in Macy’s, Vance’s, and Legend’s own Buckeye State, HALO students are outnumbered just 3-to-1 by their more affluent counterparts in third grade—but a decade later, they’re outnumbered 6-to-1 at four-year colleges and a staggering 10-to-1 at top colleges.

Thankfully, some HALO students are beating the odds.

What makes the difference?

While many factors are at play, our study finds that access to advanced coursework is one of the most significant. In Ohio, HALO students are more likely to attend a four-year—and a top college—if they receive gifted services. In middle school, advanced math is a key lever, boosting the odds of a HALO student attending a top college by 6 percentage points—and if the course is high school level, that likelihood jumps to 18 percentage points. And for HALO students in high school, taking just one AP or IB course is correlated with a 29-percentage-point spike in college-going. Our study also finds that being surrounded by high-achieving peers is part of this statistical boost. Simply put, challenging these students works.

And still, we systematically deny these opportunities to the students who need them most. Compared to their affluent peers, HALO students are 26 percent less likely to take advanced math in middle school, 34 percent less likely to take AP or IB or dual-enrollment courses in high school, and 44 percent less likely to receive gifted services in middle or high school. These aren’t just statistics—they are closed doors.

We’ve chosen to settle for a status quo that leaves a vast reservoir of human potential untapped. This is a tragedy for students and a crisis for our nation. But state and district leaders can choose differently. Our school systems can adopt policies that better serve low-income students.

The solutions start with widening the pipeline. First, find the students and put them in the right classes. Instead of relying on subjective teacher referrals or savvy parents opting in, schools should automatically enroll high-achieving students in advanced courses. Second, offer more seats in these courses. Advanced education is not a zero-sum game. There’s plenty of room for HALO students alongside their affluent peers. All students should be screened for gifted or advanced learning opportunities—regularly and across subjects—to give them lots of chances to show they’re ready for a challenge.

At the same time, policymakers should expand high-quality school choice. If a student’s neighborhood high school doesn’t have the capacity to offer AP or IB courses, for example, that student shouldn’t be trapped. States might consider selective-admission or magnet schools for high-achieving students or pass robust interdistrict open-enrollment laws. To ensure these programs actually reach HALO students, leaders must be intentional: set seats aside specifically for low-income students and launch information campaigns to ensure families know about these life-altering options.

How many future Nobel laureates, cancer researchers, or tech innovators are sitting bored in classrooms right now, their potential slowly draining away because of their ZIP code? How much more economic growth and human progress are we willing to forfeit?

We can—and we must—fix this. Identifying and challenging our brightest students, regardless of background, shouldn’t be a partisan issue. Those on the left value equality of opportunity; those on the right prioritize merit. Getting more HALO students on track to achieve their dreams checks both boxes. The Beth Macys, John Legends, and J.D. Vances should be the rule, not the heartwarming exception.

Policy Priority:
High Expectations
Topics:
Evidence-Based Learning
Curriculum & Instruction
Governance
Advanced Education
Teachers & School Leaders
Jeff Murray
12.4.2025
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There is a widely-held belief that the foremost mission of American public education is to provide a pathway to success for every student, including those who face considerable life obstacles. However, persistent achievement gaps along dimensions of race, income, family education level, and other factors challenge the truth—or at least the practicality—of this conviction. Research, including from Fordham, has shown that these gaps often form early and are persistent or even widen over time. A new CALDER working paper looks at both test-based and non-test-based high school outcomes for a population of third grade students in an effort to locate evidence that initially-low-performing students have the ability to rise.

The longitudinal student-level data for this study come from Washington State, comprising more than 581,000 unique students who entered third grade from 2006 to 2013. These students were followed through 12th grade—the latest cohort reached that milestone in 2022—with data focusing on outcomes such as math and English language arts test scores, college-level course-taking while in high school, absences, disciplinary incidents, GPA, and high school graduation. To keep their analysis consistent, the researchers make a number of adjustments to the wide swath of data to account for changes in testing regimes and for students who come into and out of the various cohorts over time.

“Academic mobility” is defined as how much a student’s rank in the distribution of academic (and non-academic) performance changes during their time in school. An education system with high academic mobility would be one where students’ early-grade ranks are less predictive of their later-grade ranks; one with low academic mobility would see students locked into their early-grade ranks for their entire school career.

The researchers find low evidence of mobility in their sample. Higher performance on third or eighth grade assessments strongly predicts better high school outcomes, including test scores, GPAs, college-level course-taking (in both math and ELA), and graduation rates. Higher performance on these exams also predicts lower rates of absenteeism and disciplinary incidents. And the corollary for low initial performance is true as well. Early achievement in math is even more predictive of high school outcomes than early achievement in ELA, and third grade achievement overall is more predictive than eighth grade achievement, indicating that potential for academic mobility—or lack thereof—sets in early without much capacity for change.

That’s not to say that some students don’t exhibit upward academic mobility after a slow start in third grade. On average, students who score at the 25th percentile of their third grade test score distribution move up to the 31st percentile by high school. But those same students also experience varying degrees of downward mobility in the non-test-based outcomes of college-level course-taking, absenteeism, and disciplinary incidents. Asian students are generally the most upwardly mobile racial/ethnic group, and Black males are generally the least mobile. Gender gaps also vary in size but almost always favor females, regardless of student group or outcome.

The authors point out that there is a missing counterfactual here (“we do not know what achievement would look like in the absence of any existing interventions”), but nonetheless conclude that “five years of elementary and middle school experiences and interventions”—whatever they are in this context—“do little to substantially shift the educational trajectories of students who begin school with low achievement” at third grade. This is bleak and challenges the belief that schools can provide a pathway to success for every student. But it is vital information to know. The road to a student’s ultimate academic outcome begins early, and lowtest scores by third grade should be a clarion call to do everything possible to give those students the best chance of moving up.

SOURCE: Dan Goldhaber, Stephanie Liddle, and Suvekshya Gautam, “Assessing the Academic Mobility on Test and Non-Test Outcomes for Students from Third Grade Through High School,” CALDER Working Paper (November 2025).

Policy Priority:
High Expectations
Topics:
Evidence-Based Learning
Curriculum & Instruction
Governance
Teachers & School Leaders
Jill Hoppe
12.4.2025
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As states continue to confront abysmal post-pandemic attendance patterns, understanding why students miss school has become increasingly important. A recent study published by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) examines how reasons for student absences have shifted before, during, and after the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Panorama survey, administered annually in Rhode Island, captures student experiences with school climate, engagement, learning, and other topics. The state’s chronic absenteeism measure asks students “Why have you been absent from school?” followed by a predetermined list of reasons including bullying, taking care of family, and illness. Students could select one or more reasons from the list.

Using self-reported responses from more than 660,000 Rhode Island students in grades 3–12 between 2017 and 2024, the researchers compared the pre-pandemic period (2019–20) with the post-pandemic (2023–24). They disaggregated reasons for absence by grade level, gender, race/ethnicity, and school characteristics (e.g., poverty level, achievement rating), and explored how different reasons for absence may be correlated.

The research team presents many different findings. Illness remained the most common reason for missing school before and after the pandemic (75 percent of all absences). Illness-related absences declined sharply during remote learning but rebounded to pre-pandemic levels once students returned to classrooms, increasing between 2020 and 2024 by 3.6 percentage points among elementary students, 2.4 among middle schoolers, and 3.2 among high schoolers. It is worth noting that illness is not cited more frequently post-pandemic than pre-pandemic, contrary to some assumptions that illness-related absences would surge after the pandemic.

Lack of sleep was the next most common reason for missed school, cited by about one in four students. Post-pandemic, sleep-related absences rose among elementary (+1.9 points) and middle (+4.3 points) school students but declined slightly among high schoolers (-1.3 points).

Reports of boredom and “giving up” increased among younger students and fell among older ones, suggesting disengagement has become more concentrated in the early grades. Safety-related absences—feeling unsafe, bullying, or rumors—increased slightly among elementary and middle schoolers while remaining stable in high school.

The study also examined how particular reasons for absence tend to cluster. The strongest correlations were between “bullied” and “rumor” (r = .42) and between “bullied” and “not safe” (r = .37), suggesting that students who report one safety-related concern commonly report others. In contrast, “rumor” and “sick” were nearly unrelated (r = .01), indicating that illness-driven absences are largely independent of safety and mental wellbeing issues.

Patterns differed across demographic groups. White students were more likely than students of other racial and ethnic backgrounds to cite illness as a reason for missing school, while students of color more often reported engagement or safety-related reasons. Among younger students, boys more often reported lack of sleep and boredom, whereas among older students, girls more frequently cited lack of sleep and “giving up.”

Furthermore, students in low-achieving, high-poverty, or high-minority schools reported substantially higher rates of absences for nearly every reason except illness. For example, absences due to “caring for others” were three times as common in low-performing schools (18.5 percent) as in high-performing ones (6.3 percent).

While the findings are descriptive rather than causal, they highlight important shifts in why students miss school—and where interventions might focus. Rising disengagement and safety-related absences among younger students suggest that attendance initiatives must address not only health but also the broader challenges in school climate, student engagement, and day-to-day experiences. At the same time, persistent sleep-related absences point to health and family-life factors that schools cannot ignore.

The study’s limitations are also important. The Panorama survey is anonymous, so researchers cannot link reasons for absence to individual attendance records or determine how many days a given student actually missed. In addition, some survey categories are overly broad: “Lack of sleep” reflects a wide range of underlying causes, from late-night work to anxiety or technology use. Without a clearer understanding of root causes, designing targeted solutions becomes challenging.

The findings also show that the factors driving absences vary widely across schools, suggesting that one-size-fits-all approaches to reducing absences are unlikely to succeed. Recognizing contextual differences is critical: Schools serving different populations face distinct barriers, and solutions must be tailored accordingly.

Ultimately, the findings underscore that absenteeism reflects a complex mix of health, engagement, and environmental factors that evolved in the wake of the pandemic. Understanding these dynamics is essential for crafting equitable, data-driven strategies to improve attendance and ensure students are present, supported, and ready to learn.

SOURCE: Kevin A. Gee, Peter Yu, and Arya Ansari, “Why Were You Absent? Students’ Reasons for Missing School Before and After the Pandemic,” American Enterprise Institute (October 2025).

Policy Priority:
High Expectations
Topics:
Evidence-Based Learning
Teachers & School Leaders
Jessica Poiner
12.3.2025
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Over the last few years, career-connected learning has become an increasingly important priority in the Buckeye State. Policymakers have established a variety of initiatives and invested hundreds of millions in career-technical education. Ohio business leaders have called for students to explore careers earlier so they’re better prepared for the future. And recent polling indicates that voters across the political spectrum—parents, in particular—consider better workforce preparation and more robust career exploration to be top priorities.

Clearly, career-connected learning is popular. That’s why it’s a bit of a headscratcher that Ohio lawmakers failed to make it a higher priority in the state budget finalized this summer. There were some important developments within the bill, including a much-needed requirement to revamp the state’s industry-recognized credential framework. But as I wrote in July, lawmakers missed some pretty big opportunities.

The good news is they have a second chance. Senate Bill 328, which was proposed in mid-November, is chock full of workforce readiness initiatives that would help Ohio build on its solid career-connected learning foundation. Let’s take a look at two key provisions.

1. Academic and career plans

Current law requires students in grades nine through twelve to have a graduation plan that maps their academic pathway to a diploma. Unfortunately, graduation is the only goal these plans take into account. Students aren’t expected to consider potential careers when choosing their academic courses, which creates a disconnect between high school and adulthood. As a result, many kids graduate with no idea how to pursue their interests or even what they’re interested in—and that makes finding a job or picking a major a lot more difficult.

Senate Bill 328 seeks to change that by establishing a planning framework that asks students to think beyond high school graduation. Starting with the eighth-grade class in the 2026–27 school year, Ohio students would be required to create an academic and career plan. Each plan must include a list of the student’s strengths, interests, and aptitudes; academic, career, and financial goals; and a description of the pathway the student will take to meet not only diploma requirements but also post-graduation career goals. Plans must be evaluated annually to monitor progress and make adjustments.

There’s a lot to like here. First, the level of detail that’s required in each plan should prevent this policy from becoming a box-checking exercise. Identifying strengths, interests, and aptitudes will require effort from students, as will creating action plans for career and financial goals. (Career exploration courses for students—discussed in detail below—will also help.) Moreover, requiring plans to be reviewed annually gives students plenty of time to accumulate knowledge and adjust their goals accordingly. An annual opportunity to shift course should assuage concerns about students being locked into a pathway they’re no longer interested in.

Second, the bill requires plans to be transferable between schools. For most kids, the only transfer they’ll experience will be between their district’s middle and high school. But in a state with a robust school choice sector—and in communities with high student mobility rates, in particular—ensuring that plans can follow students is crucial. Requiring the Department of Education and Workforce (DEW) to develop a template for plans should make it easy for districts to meet this expectation.

Finally, the bill recognizes the important role that families play in shaping students’ futures. Parents and guardians must be involved in the plan development process and are required to sign off on the final version. Districts must also provide families with at least one update on their student’s progress each year, including a copy of the plan itself and contact information for a person who can answer any questions they may have. Collectively, these expectations should ensure that families are involved and can provide students with an extra layer of support.

2. Career exploration courses

Requiring schools to help students craft career plans is a step in the right direction. But ensuring students have the information and tools they need to take advantage of planning opportunities is critical. That’s where career exploration courses come in.

Beginning with the 2026–27 school year, districts would be required to offer at least one-half unit in career exploration to middle schoolers, who must complete the course by the end of eighth grade. Although districts are free to design their own unique courses, they must include all of the following:

  • Career field exploration, including an overview of the state’s sixteen career clusters.

  • Hands-on learning opportunities such as research projects, guest speakers, and job shadowing.

  • Life budgeting and financial planning exercises.

  • Interest and aptitude assessments.

  • Professional skills development.

  • At least one quality career coaching session per student.

  • Career academic planning, including the completion of each student’s academic and career plan or a preliminary plan if the course is completed prior to eighth grade.

In some districts, career exploration efforts are already underway. Rather than forcing these schools to abandon their work and start from scratch, Senate Bill 328 permits them to submit an alternative career exploration plan to the state. If approved, alternatives are valid for two years and can be renewed.

To ensure rigorous implementation, state leaders need to balance flexibility with oversight. Senate Bill 328 accomplishes this by clearly outlining DEW’s compliance responsibilities. The Department is charged with issuing guidance for schools on acceptable course delivery models, funding eligibility, and reporting requirements. For the sake of transparency, DEW will publicly report the districts that are enrolling students in career exploration courses, districts that have approved alternative plans, and any districts that are out of compliance. The Department will also audit up to 5 percent of schools each year to monitor and enforce compliance through intervention and support measures. These standards should ensure that districts take their new responsibilities seriously—and that students reap the benefits.

***

Ohio policymakers deserve kudos for how they’ve prioritized career-connected learning over the last few years. But they can and should do more. To build on Ohio’s solid foundation, lawmakers should ensure that every student has an opportunity to explore careers and create a plan for the future. Senate Bill 328 would accomplish both.

Policy Priority:
Standards & Accountability
Topics:
Career & Technical Education
Jeff Murray
12.3.2025
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News stories featured in Gadfly Bites may require a paid subscription to read in full. Just sayin’.

  1. Here is some fantastic coverage of our recent research report, looking at the academic trajectories of low-income Ohio students who perform well academically at third grade. The theme of the report is “leaky pipeline”, which tells you a lot about how those young people generally fare in later grades as compared to their higher-income peers. Not only are report author Stéphane Lavertu and Fordham research guru Aaron Churchill quoted extensively, reporter Eileen McClory also highlights some Dayton-area schools who do a better job at supporting their high-achieving low-income students to greater academic outcomes—including Hamilton and Mason school districts and the very awesome charter school Dayton Early College Academy. Kudos! (Dayton Daily News, 12/2/25) Full report is here if you haven’t already taken a look; but shame on you if you haven’t.

  2. Speaking of school choice (were we…?), some folks in Pennsylvania are peering across the border jealously at Ohio’s school choice ecosystem. Two staffers from the American Federation for Children opine that “If Pennsylvania truly wants to attract population from neighboring states while strengthening the overall education ecosystem, it should…offer a panoply of educational choices.” They’re talking mainly about the options for parents looking at private schools, but also about the charter school sector. Good luck, chaps! (Penn Live, 12/2/25)

  3. Meanwhile, staying on the topic of school choice (yes we were), the elected board of Columbus City Schools voted last night to approve a package of cuts in order to fill an estimated $50 million budget hole. These include a minimal amount of school building closures (only one of which could even occur before 2028) and a whole lot of staff cuts. And while busing for high school students was spared from the chopping block, waaaaaay down at the bottom of this story is the fact that busing for K-8 students “who lottery into a non-100 percent lottery school” will be eliminated. This measure passed unanimously, including the lame duck board members who were attending what is likely their last voting meeting. I don’t know the timeline of this particular cut and can’t say whether the new board will ever see any of these decisions through, but I reckon a cut like that to intradistrict choice will face some stiff opposition should it ever threaten to come true. (Columbus Dispatch, 12/2/25)
     
  4. Finally today, speaking of districts needing to make big cuts to remain financially solvent, Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb hit on what I think is a great idea for gathering public input on CMSD’s consolidation and closure plan: Visiting local barber shops on Saturday mornings. And while the shop owner interviewed might have been disappointed with the level of turnout, I personally think that’s a good thing, because it means that union member district staff member attendance was also at a minimum and bossman could hear what his actual constituents really think without the usual noise drowning them out. (The Land, 12/2/25)

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Policy Priority:
School Funding
Topics:
Governance
Miriam Kurtzig Freedman
12.2.2025
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Editor’s note: This is the third in a three-part series in which Miriam Kurtzig Freedman reflects back on a half-century of special education law in the United States. Part I focused on where we are now and the need for a new law, and Part II explained that new legislation must be built on the science of learning, not the adversarial legal system.

First, let us be brave and consider this big shift: End the individual entitlements for students with disabilities (SWD) with mild or moderate needs and their parents. Since all SWD now are in school with access to individualized services, it’s time to sunset that old law and create a new one. Continuing on our current path will only increase its quagmires and dysfunctions. Lawyers, bureaucrats, and hearing officers are not educators. We need special education to draw from the science of teaching and learning, not the machinery of law.

Six shifts to restore focus on learning for all students based on science and common sense

1. Focus on general education. Work very hard to improve that. End the reading wars and teach students how to read! Provide services for struggling students before they fall behind. End the house divided approach between general and special education. Special education should serve students who are disabled—not students who were failed by the lack of general education’s focused teaching, supports, and interventions.

2. Build on the whole child: strengths as well as needs. Individualized education programs (IEPs) too often dwell endlessly on deficits, largely ignoring student strengths. That is not based on science. Evidence from vocational technical schools demonstrates that many SWD thrive there because, during the week, they get to do what they like and are good at. How many of us became successful by focusing only on what we cannot do?

3. Empower parents as partners and children’s first teachers. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) provides parental rights but is silent on parental responsibilities. Families are a child’s first teachers. For a child’s success, schools should support parents in that pivotal role. How about rewards for parents who get their kids ready for school and stay involved thereafter?

4. Foster student agency. Empowerment and effort should be central goals. Too often we do too much for students instead of helping them do for themselves. “Learned helplessness” helps no one. It’s time to empower students and promote engagement, as they are key players in their own success.

5. Build honesty, trust, and clarity about standards. What is considered success should be unambiguous for each child and clear to all. While accommodations for SWD may be appropriate, they should not muddy our understanding of achievements for all students and must be made clear from the outset. For trust in the system, we need honest reports of achievement—for all students, including SWD. Today we don’t have that. Exhibit A: While many students can’t read, they graduate from high school. Why? Whom does that benefit? Real trust requires real honesty.

6. Use objective and reliable research. School policies should serve all students—including those with disabilities. For example, today’s “inclusion” push (also called “mainstreaming”) to have students with widely varying abilities and achievements in the same classrooms needs to be tempered through objective, reliable research and common sense—not just notions of rights or preferences. It needs to actually work effectively for all students—disabled or not. Symbolic gestures will not do.

Summary: A call for courage

To paraphrase Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz: “We’re not in the 1970s anymore.”

It’s time for boldness. We need a new law today that builds on the IDEA’s success. Design the new law to rebalance responsibility, free teachers to teach, and rebuild trust among students, families, and schools. Having achieved access for all SWD, it’s time to end the no-longer-needed entitlement and focus instead on what works in classrooms for SWD and all students. We can’t continue to endure the 50-year-old house-divided approach of regulatory-paperwork-lined battlefields inside our schools. Instead, we need to focus on today’s needs—improving student outcomes and working toward excellence for all students.

President Ford ended his signing statement for IDEA with guarded hope: “Fortunately,” he said, “Congress can revise the legislation and come up with a program that is effective and realistic.” But Congress never did. It falls to us to finish that work.

It’s time to build a system for our era that gets us back to the mission of education: achievement, growth, knowledge, skills—not rights, regulations, or disputes. Education is optimism personified. Teachers need more than 29 percent of time for teaching; parents need to partner with schools. Let’s free teachers to teach, support parents as true partners, get lawyers and bureaucrats out of those classrooms, and keep our promise focused where it belongs—on students and their learning. Education has never been about compliance and paperwork. It is about effort, trust, and the belief that every child can learn and grow.

Going forward, that is the promise we are called to keep.

Policy Priority:
High Expectations
Topics:
Evidence-Based Learning
Curriculum & Instruction
Governance
Teachers & School Leaders

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