| The Thomas B. Fordham Institute

Private School Choice

Aaron Garth Smith Jordan Campbell

11.20.2025

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A large body of research shows that effective teachers are the most important school-related factor in determining student success, making teacher compensation a key policy lever. “We need to pay all teachers more—and effective teachers even more,” said Heather Peske of the National Council on Teacher Quality in a recent SCHOOLED debate on teacher pay.

Peske has a point. The nationwide average teacher salary fell by over 6 percent between 2002 and 2022, going from $75,152 to $70,548 in 2023 dollars, according to new Reason Foundation research. In total, inflation-adjusted teacher salaries fell in 40 of 50 states, as shown in Table 1.

It’s also a fact that teacher salaries are tied to educational attainment and years of experience, meaning that high-performing teachers—and those in shortage areas like math, science, and special education—aren’t paid more for their results or expertise.

To put the right incentives in place, bold teacher pay reforms are needed. But to maximize the long-term impact of these policies, it’s important to address the root causes of stagnant salaries. Examining data both before and after the Covid-19 pandemic reveals structural problems in K–12 finance that keep dollars out of teacher paychecks.

Table 1: Inflation-adjusted average teacher salary growth (2002 to 2022)

Teacher salaries before Covid-19

Nationwide, inflation-adjusted teacher pay was flat in the nearly two decades leading up to the pandemic, with the average salary falling by 0.6 percent between 2002 and 2020. While a handful of states saw big swings—salaries rose by 22 percent in Washington while falling 19 percent in Indiana—most states saw moderate changes, ranging from -5 percent to +5 percent over that period.

Remarkably, teachers’ salaries weren’t increasing at a time of unprecedented growth in public school funding, which rose by 25 percent per student as all but one state boosted K–12 spending from 2002 to 2020. Figure 1 shows the growth in K–12 revenue and teacher salaries during this period.

With education funding at record levels, why wasn’t more money going to teacher paychecks?

Figure 1: U.S. revenue per student growth vs. average teacher salary growth (2002-2020, inflation-adjusted)

A surge in non-teaching staff

One reason teacher pay didn’t grow with K–12 spending is that public schools spent heavily on hiring non-teaching staff. From 2002 to 2020, as student enrollment grew by 6.6 percent, non-teaching staff expanded by 20 percent. For every five new students, public schools added about one non-teacher. In comparison, the number of classroom teachers rose by 6.6 percent—mirroring enrollment growth, but well below growth in all other staff.

Figure 2 shows the growth of public-school staff by position type. The largest growth category was in student support, which includes social workers, psychologists, speech-language pathologists, and other positions. A nearly identical number of instructional aides—paraprofessionals who assist teachers and often work with students with disabilities—were also added to public school payrolls. Taken together, the data suggest that special education and a greater emphasis on wraparound services played large roles in the growth of non-teaching staff.

Figure 2: Public school staffing growth by position type (2002–2020)

Rising teacher pension debt

Another expense that diverted funding from teacher salaries was employee benefits, a Census Bureau category that includes pensions, Social Security, health insurance, and other costs. Between 2002 and 2020, benefit spending per student rose by 79 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars. While salary and wage spending increased by $573 per student, benefit spending increased by $1,745 per student. Research indicates that rising teacher pension costs were the primary factor behind this trend. States have failed to set aside enough money to pay for the pension benefits promised to teachers, resulting in unfunded liabilities that accumulate over time.

Pension debt can add up to big bucks: In 2024, the Teacher Retirement System of Texas had an estimated $62.6 billion in unfunded liabilities, while the California State Teachers’ Retirement System had $85.5 billion in debt. These costs are usually paid for by increasing school districts’ and teachers’ contribution rates to the pension plans. As a result, K–12 funding that might go to salaries has increasingly been directed toward pension costs, even as many states have reduced teachers’ retirement benefits.

Before the pandemic, the story was relatively straightforward: Teacher salaries stagnated despite significant increases in public school funding, primarily because funds increasingly went to hire non-teachers and cover unfunded pension liabilities. After the pandemic began, however, a different story emerged.

Teacher Salaries after Covid-19

Teacher pay now plunged, falling 5.6 percent in fiscal year 2023 dollars, from $74,698 in 2020 to $70,548 in 2022. But this wasn’t because more dollars were going to new hires or benefit spending—the number of non-teachers dropped by 2 percent (before again rising sharply in 2023), and real expenditures on employee benefits inched up by $39 per student. While teacher turnover during the pandemic might have played a part, inflation during those years took a big bite out of teacher paychecks.

After Covid-19’s onset, price growth reached levels not seen since the 1980s. “We currently face macroeconomic challenges, including unacceptable levels of inflation,” said Janet Yellen, who was Treasury secretary at the time.

The price level during the 2022 school year was nearly 10 percent higher than just two years earlier. Large pay bumps were needed to keep pace with inflation, far more than the usual 3 percent or 4 percent that districts typically dole out. Yet this didn’t happen.

While school districts weren’t exactly strapped for cash—education funding rose by 7.4 percent between 2020 and 2022, reaching a new record of $20,097 per student in 2022—most of this $1,386 per-student increase came from federal Covid-19 relief funds. And because these dollars were temporary, many districts were hesitant to allocate them to long-term commitments such as teacher salary increases. Instead, they opted to spend the federal funding on things like building renovations, tutoring, and one-time bonuses.

Groups such as the American Federation of Teachers and National Education Association lobbied hard for the stimulus funding that ultimately squeezed teachers’ purchasing power. The consensus among economists is that Covid-19 fiscal stimulus—including the $2.2 trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act signed by President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, which sent $122 billion to public schools—helped lift inflation to historic levels. Public school lobbyists won the battle for pandemic relief funding, but that money didn’t increase teachers’ take-home pay even as inflation cut their purchasing power.

Conclusion

Public school staffing decisions and rising pension debt led to teacher salary stagnation in the years leading up to Covid-19. While teacher take-home pay failed to keep up with inflation during the pandemic, the rise in price levels was atypical—and due in part to the stimulus spending that teachers’ unions lobbied for.

For policymakers looking to boost teachers’ salaries today, states like Texas and Arkansas offer bold ideas for targeting dollars on effective teachers and those teaching in shortage areas. But to maximize the long-term impact of such reforms, they’ll also need to pay down pension debt, examine special-education costs, and encourage school districts to prioritize teacher pay over other expenses. That teachers’ wages had stagnated over two decades of unprecedented growth in public school funding highlights deep structural problems in K–12 finance that shouldn’t be ignored.

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School Finance

Michael J. Petrilli

11.20.2025

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For better or worse, AI, and especially chatbots associated with large language models, are already changing the daily rhythms of education here and around the world. Organizations, including the Center on Reinventing Public Education, are providing critical guidance to schools and policymakers about how educators can best take advantage of AI’s opportunities (such as personalized learning) while mitigating the risks (such as the collapse in student effort).

What’s received much less attention (more than zero but not enough) is how AI’s impact on the future of work, democracy, and human flourishing should translate into changes in the K–12 curriculum, and especially course requirements in high school. This idea isn’t exactly new; some of us can remember debates in the 1980s and 90s about what a transition to a knowledge economy meant for what students should know and be able to do. So, too, are these debates happening within the transition to the AI economy.

I can’t claim to know exactly what an AI-era education should entail. The road ahead is foggy, and nobody—not even the AIs!—can decipher exactly what impact this powerful technology will have on our democracy or our lives in the decades to come. Even in normal times, experts are not very good at predicting which jobs will disappear, and the AI age will likely be no different.

What I want to propose instead is a process—a public engagement experience, led by state policymakers, to figure out, as best we can, what high school graduation requirements should be now and in the near term.

I’m focusing on high schools—and graduation requirements—for several reasons.

First, in line with the logic of standards-based reform, we should start with the end in mind: what students should know and be able to do at the end of their K–12 experience. Then, we should back-map from there down to kindergarten.

Second, I doubt that we will find that elementary schools and middle schools need to change all that much. No matter what happens with AI, we are always going to want all children to learn how to get along with their classmates (character, civics); how to read, write, and do arithmetic (the three Rs); and how to explore the wonders of the world and all that came before them—which means a curriculum rich in history, science, literature, and the arts.

Third, it was clear well before the rise of AI that our high school graduation requirements are a mess. On the one hand, they are too lax, with pass-the-buck “credit recovery” programs and conflicting adult priorities making it easier than ever for barely-literate students to get diplomas. On the other hand, graduation requirements are too restrictive, especially for students pursuing career and technical education, as they mandate students spend an overabundance of time on traditional college-prep courses (English, math, foreign languages, etc.). There’s also continuous course-mandate creep as state and local policymakers seem unable to help themselves from adding new requirements, from ever-expanding health courses to coding to financial literacy, and on and on. When is a CTE student supposed to have time to do an apprenticeship, or even spend significant time at the CTE center or technical college getting started on learning their trade?

And if we’re really worried about teenagers getting more sleep, why are we overstuffing their schedules?

Someone call Marie Kondo: It’s time to declutter.

Zero-based budgeting

The idea of zero-based budgeting first came from private industry and was later picked up by reform-minded policymakers, including President Jimmy Carter. Rather than assume that next year’s budget should be much the same (but higher) as this year’s, the insight was to start fresh and go line by line to see if any items had outlived their usefulness.

I propose we take the same approach with required high school courses. The last time there was an overhaul was arguably the 1980s, after policymakers responded to A Nation at Risk by beefing up requirements in core academic subjects. That was OK for the time, but those requirements ought not be set in stone.

Every state should launch an effort, perhaps via a commission, to start over with its course mandates. The zero-based approach means starting from scratch. In other words, we assume that one real option is for the state not to mandate the completion of any courses for high school graduation. That seems radical, but in the wake of voters eliminating the MCAS as a graduation requirement, Massachusetts recently found itself in pretty much this position.

Commissions should then look at the evidence for requirements, course by course, to determine which qualify for inclusion in a new system. Importantly, these commissions shouldn’t be afraid to set different mandates for students planning to matriculate into traditional higher education versus those gunning for career and technical education.

For each subject, commissions should examine:

The evidence that a particular course is necessary for success in college and/or in bona fide careers.
The likelihood that a course’s body of knowledge and skills will still be relevant in the AI economy and an AI-infused democracy (as best they can determine).
Whether students might gain key knowledge and skills through other routes, such as extra-curricular activities.

Let’s consider what this might look like for a few familiar course requirements.

Commissions might look skeptically at “coding for all” mandates, given AI’s ability to outperform humans at low-level coding tasks. But perhaps they will encourage students to take courses such as AP Computer Science if they are planning to apply to selective colleges in STEM.
Commissions might question foreign language requirements, given the rapidly improving translation abilities of smartphones and connected earbuds, plus America’s lackluster record of effectively teaching foreign languages. This might be another recommended course for college-bound students (unless colleges start reconsidering the value of foreign language instruction, too).
They might create alternatives for mandated courses by allowing students to substitute participation in, for example, sports for PE, orchestra for fine arts, or debate for civics.
For core academic courses like math and English, they might determine that all students need to get through a solid foundation of skills (say, Algebra I and English II), but beyond that, only college-prep students need to continue with those subjects.

For these commissions to have real impact, their authorizing legislation should make it clear that lawmakers will vote their proposals up or down without revisions—as with military base-closing commissions.

Just as zero-based budgeting indicates that policymakers value taxpayer money, a zero-based approach to high school course requirements would indicate that policymakers value high school students’ time and future success. I see zero reasons not to give it a try.

Editor’s note: This was first published by The Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE).

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Chad Aldeman

11.20.2025

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Over at Slow Boring, Matthew Yglesias has been writing a series on immigration and arguing that Democrats can’t just “go back” to Obama-era policies. Yglesias makes the convincing case that the world has changed, and immigration policies need to change with it.

But in a footnote, he writes:

It also makes me a little bit sad that “go back to Obama’s approach from 2008 and 2012” isn’t the conventional wisdom on a larger set of issues. There are lots of controversial topics, like energy policy and K–12 education, where I think “copy Obama” would work well in a very literal way.

To give Matt the benefit of the doubt, I think he’s correct in referring to Obama’s general interest in K–12 education policy and his willingness to step outside the union-driven consensus that characterized the Biden years. But like immigration, the facts on the ground have changed and Democrats would be silly to run back the Obama playbook on K–12 education.

What was Obama’s K–12 playbook?

Barack Obama the candidate talked openly about the need to raise student achievement. He supported public charter schools. He angered the teachers unions by calling for merit pay and extra incentives for teachers who worked in hard-to-staff schools and subjects. The official Democratic party platform of 2008 called for parents to, “turn off the TV once in a while, put away the video games, and read to their children.”

All of these themes still make sense in today’s world. But they don’t necessarily reflect the policies that Barack Obama the president actually adopted. As president, Obama overreached on teacher evaluation policy and in the process ended up undermining support for annual testing and weakening federal oversight, first with a set of waivers he granted to states and eventually to a new law that significantly rolled back accountability for schools and districts.

The evolution here is instructive, because when most people think of Obama’s K–12 education playbook, they might start with the Race to the Top program. Armed with $5 billion in one-time federal funds as part of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and his team created a competitive grant program with a bundle of priorities that included:

Adopting a set of common standards that were aligned to “college- and career-ready” expectations (what became known as the Common Core);
Adopting common tests that were aligned to those standards;
Implementing robust teacher evaluations that evaluated teachers in “significant part” on the contributions they made to student growth;
Identifying the bottom 5 percent of schools for serious improvement efforts; and
Eliminating charter school caps and allowing high-performing providers to expand; plus
A grab bag of other policies around things like data infrastructure and STEM and teacher preparation.

These policies could all make sense as part of a competitive grant program where the winners get money to execute their plans. In retrospect, I think it would have made more sense to handle these discretely rather than as a full package, but the most recent research suggests that Race to the Top did improve academic outcomes for students in the winning states.

But Obama didn’t stop there. When Congress struggled to reauthorize the No Child Left Behind Act early in his first term, he decided to authorize a set of comprehensive waivers from the law. In return for getting out of the most onerous parts of NCLB, states had to commit to adopting Race-to-the-Top-lite reforms.

I was part of the team working on waivers at the U.S. Department of Education at the time. I was in the audience in the East Room of the White House when Obama announced the initiative. I recall private conversations where we worried that it was over-reach and most states weren’t ready for it, but it seemed like a clever way to integrate and extend the Obama education reform agenda. Other Democrats either agreed or were willing to stay quiet about it.

As it turns out, Obama made a bad deal. He traded away a strong federal requirement that states pay attention to and intervene in low-performing schools and districts in exchange for fuzzy promises around standards, weak commitments around teacher evaluations, and a pinkie promise that states would finally do something about their lowest-performing schools.

At best, the waivers provided a temporary Band Aid. At worst, they put Obama on the path to eventually signing an even more watered-down version of federal law with the 2015 Every Student Succeeds Act.

And ultimately, all of Obama’s signature policies suffered from weak implementation efforts and largely failed to have their desired effect. The push for higher academic standards did not lead to higher student achievement. States responded to the teacher evaluation push by making a lot of surface-level policy changes without much real change on the ground. Even after the new “tougher” policies went into effect, very few teachers were identified as ineffective and the reforms ultimately had no discernible effect on student learning.

All of this sounds quaint now in an era where federal leadership on education is scarce. The Biden administration (wrongly) bet it could win over working class voters by following the union policy playbook. He largely ignored K–12 education during his presidency while reading and math scores slid down to multi-decade lows. For his part, Donald Trump pins the blame for today’s declines on Jimmy Carter creating the U.S. Department of Education back in 1980, even though student achievement rose, for all groups of students, throughout most of the 1980s, 90s, and early 2000s.

We need a new playbook for federal K–12 policy

When Obama first took office, he was the beneficiary of gains made under his predecessors. At the time, the challenge in K–12 education was to accelerate those gains and to keep pulling up the lowest-performers.

But since then, things have been trending very differently. American student achievement scores started declining across a range of tests, grade levels, and subject areas around the time Obama started granting waivers. (Other research argues the declines started as early as 2009.) Worse, those declines have been especially bad for the lowest-performing kids.

Other cultural phenomena aren’t helping. Like their parents, kids today are spending less time reading for fun. Support for public schools is falling. Teacher dissatisfaction is high, and the supply of new teachers is low. And thanks largely to Covid-related school closures, more kids are missing more days of school.

These trends demand a different set of responses than the ones Obama pursued as president.

That starts with leadership. Donald Trump, for example, is famously not a reader. He doesn’t read his briefing documents. He watches a lot of television and spends a lot of time on social media. While he has been successful in business and politics, his attention span is poor and he struggles remembering details.

I don’t mean to pick on the president here, but these traits are emblematic of the times we’re living in. Kids too are affected by too much screen time and shallow digital content. Politicians can’t just turn into scolds here, but they also shouldn’t be afraid to make knowledge cool again. Kids really can’t “just Google it.” They will never develop into the creative, critical thinkers we all want for them to be unless they start with a solid foundational base of facts and dates and formulas on which to inform their thinking.

The next president has an opening here if they choose to accept it. America can be a country of achievement and rigor and excellence without sacrificing our values around helping the neediest students. That takes leadership though. It requires speaking the harsh truths about our current situation and learning from history about how we got here.

Editor’s note: This was first published on the author’s Substack, Aldeman On Education.

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Jeff Murray

11.19.2025

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News stories featured in Gadfly Bites may require a paid subscription to read in full. Today's story definitely does. Just sayin’.

There was no education news worth talking about on Monday, thus no Bites. Today is hardly better.

It’s subscriber-only content, but Gongwer covered the Ohio Senate General Government Committee (who?) hearing yesterday, in which several witnesses and legislators weighed in in favor of SB 107. That’s the proposal to add party affiliation to candidate names on school board election ballots. Said one witness: “As a parent, I want my tax dollars and my kids’ education guided by elected officials whose values I can vet — not hidden behind nonpartisan veils… Pass SB107 to make school board ballots a tool for democracy, not deception.” The bill remains in committee. (Gongwer Ohio/State Affairs, 11/18/25)

Did you know you can have every edition of Gadfly Bites sent directly to your Inbox? Subscribe by clicking here.

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School Funding

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Miriam Kurtzig Freedman

11.18.2025

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Editor’s note: This is the first 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 II explained that new legislation must be built on the science of learning, not the adversarial legal system, and Part III outlined the key components for better special education in the U.S.

How many presidents begin a bill-signing statement with the word, “unfortunately”? Only one—President Gerald Ford, when signing the landmark special education law on November 29, 1975:

Unfortunately, this bill promises more than the federal government can deliver, and its good intentions could be thwarted by the many unwise provisions it contains. Everyone can agree with the objective stated in the title of this bill--educating all handicapped children in our Nation. The key question is whether the bill will really accomplish that objective.

Now, after 50 years of implementing the law—known today as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA—we can reflect on its legacy: the good, the bad, and the realities that shape today’s schools and America’s future. We can ask if President Ford’s concerns were off-base or prescient—and how we might chart a path forward to fulfill the promise of education for all students.

I’m proud to have spent some 50 years in public education: first, as a teacher during the civil-rights era, when the new law inspired me; later, as a hearing officer at the dawn of the IDEA; and then as an attorney representing public schools. I’ve witnessed this law transform students, families, schools, and our nation. Now, I am compelled to share what I’ve learned—so we can do better for students with disabilities (SWD), their peers, and our nation.

Why do we have public schools?

Before we look at the IDEA itself, let’s ask what the mission of public education is. The U.S. Department of Education states that it is “to promote student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness by fostering educational excellence and equal access.”

Before delving into that pivotal question, whether we are achieving that mission for all students, including SWD, let’s briefly review the IDEA’s implementation and achievements.

Equal access, the IDEA’s defining success

Before 1975, many students with disabilities were excluded from public schools. The IDEA changed that forever. Today, every SWD has the right to attend school and receive individualized services. The days when schools could tell parents, “We don’t educate children like yours,” are long-gone. The number of SWD served under the IDEA has risen from about 3.6 million in 1976–77 (roughly 8 percent) to nearly 8 million today (about 15 percent), a rise far greater than overall public-school enrollment. Thanks to the IDEA, schools have become more inclusive, welcoming, and accepting of learning differences. The IDEA succeeded! It’s an extraordinary achievement.

Who are today’s SWD?

To receive IDEA services, students need a disability label, even as the criteria for those labels are often subjective and imprecise. SWD are categorized as those with mild, moderate, severe, or profound disabilities. An estimated 10–20 percent of SWD have severe or profound disabilities. The vast majority have mild disabilities. This discussion focuses on students with mild or moderate disabilities. Of the law’s 13 categories, the four largest are students with (a) specific learning disability (32 percent), (b) speech or language impairment (19 percent), (c) other health impairment (15 percent), and (d) autism (13 percent). Notably, the first two labels alone make up more than half of all students that the IDEA serves.

Procedures and their paperwork

Students enter the special education system through a referral and evaluation. A team of educators and parents meets at least annually to develop an IEP—an Individualized Education Program for each student. SWD are entitled to a free appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment.

It is a noble—though highly complex—process. Federal regulations now total more than 500 pages. State and local requirements add even more. Here President Ford’s prescience rings true: The law has “complex requirements under which tax dollars would be used to support administrative paperwork and not educational programs.”

Parents and rights

Parents of SWD play an integral role, as partners and legal stakeholders because Congress created the IDEA as a private enforcement system, with parents as its enforcers! Parents have the right to participate in the development of the IEP and accept or reject the school’s plan. If they dispute any of the above, they can pursue due process options, such as mediations or hearings. Parents and schools often hire lawyers for such disputes. This uncapped private enforcement entitlement program creates a house divided in our schools—between parents and schools and between general and special education. What happens to children whose parents can’t work the system? Whither collaboration and partnership?

It is important to note that SWD and their parents are the only groups in our public schools with individual entitlements. None exists for children who are poor, minority, advanced, immigrant, homeless, gifted and talented, English learners, or any other group.

Compliance cost in money and time

Special education is expensive—but surprisingly, no one knows how many billions are actually spent. The federal government pays about 15 percent of the total, with states and districts funding the rest. Whatever is spent, it’s never enough! Of course, funds spent here impact programming opportunities for all students. Again, we hear President Ford’s words: The law’s promises are “falsely raising expectations,” claiming funding levels by Congress that are “excessive and unrealistic.”

As well, a huge cost is the time and energy drained by compliance requirements. Research shows special educators have but 29 percent of their schooldays left for teaching. Many leave the field, fueling a national shortage of special educators.

Student outcomes and excellence

Since SWD have varying needs, generalizations are difficult to make, beyond noting that recent (2024) National Assessment of Educational Progress scores (“The Nation’s Report Card”) showed SWD performing significantly lower than their general education peers (as might be expected). Whither evidence of success?

So where are we now? We have much to celebrate because the IDEA succeeded in its mission to provide access and opportunity for all SWD. It’s time to declare victory, sunset this law, and create a new one for our era, a Special Education 2.0.

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Chad L. Aldis

11.18.2025

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Today, the Ohio Senate Education Committee heard testimony on Senate Bill 19 which aims to establish academic intervention services at public schools and to implement mathematics improvement and intervention plans. Fordham’s vice president for Ohio policy submitted the following testimony in favor of the bill.

Thank you for the opportunity to provide written testimony in support of Senate Bill 19.

At the outset, I want to thank Chair Brenner for his tireless leadership in confronting what can only be described as Ohio’s math crisis. His focus on numeracy—an area too often overshadowed by reading policy—reflects a deep understanding that a strong foundation in mathematics is essential to both our students’ and our state’s future.

The Scope of Ohio’s Math Challenge

Despite recent academic gains, Ohio remains well below pre-pandemic achievement in both reading and math. As Fordham’s recent analyses show, math proficiency remains 5.7 percentage points below 2019 levels, with only 55.3 percent of students proficient (on grade level) statewide.

Statewide proficiency rates in math and reading, 2018–19 (pre-pandemic) to 2024–25

Chad Aldis Testimony on Senate Bill 19 chart

These gaps aren’t just academic—they’re economic. Employers consistently cite quantitative reasoning and problem-solving as top skills for the modern workforce. Whether a student aspires to be a nurse, electrician, or software developer, math is a gatekeeper to opportunity. Without stronger math achievement, Ohio risks leaving a generation of students—and the state’s economic future—behind.

How Senate Bill 19 Addresses the Crisis

Senate Bill 19 takes a systematic, evidence-based approach to improving math outcomes that—if implemented robustly—has the potential to boost math achievement. It includes:

1. Academic Intervention and Monitoring

The bill requires schools to identify and support students scoring “limited” in math or English language arts, providing evidence-based interventions at no cost. This includes high-dosage tutoring, extended learning time, and other targeted supports.

2. Math Improvement Plans for Students and Districts

Beginning in the 2026–27 school year, each struggling student must receive a Math Improvement and Monitoring Plan, developed collaboratively with parents and teachers. Additionally, districts where fewer than 51 percent of students score proficient on the third-grade math assessment must create a Math Achievement Improvement Plan, ensuring leadership-level accountability and strategic intervention.

3. Statewide Oversight and Transparency

SB 19 strengthens state oversight by requiring the Department of Education and Workforce (DEW) to audit 5 percent of schools annually, reviewing the quality and fidelity of intervention programs. These findings will appear on public report cards—providing families and taxpayers with greater transparency.

4. High-Quality Math Curriculum and Instructional Materials

In one of the bill’s most significant provisions, DEW will review core math curricula and publish a list of high-quality, standards-aligned instructional materials by April 2026. Schools’ use of these materials will be publicly reported on state report cards.

5. Strengthening the Teaching Profession

SB 19 recognizes that great instruction begins with great teachers. It calls for new math proficiency assessments for early-grade teacher candidates and state-developed professional development programs focused on evidence-based math instruction. These steps ensure educators have both the content knowledge and tools to deliver high-quality math lessons.

6. Opportunities for Advanced Learners

Finally, the bill opens new doors for high-achieving students by requiring that students who score accomplished or advanced in math on the state assessment be automatically placed in accelerated math or Algebra I courses, with a parental opt-out. This provision ensures that excellence is nurtured, not neglected—a crucial step in closing both the lower and upper ends of Ohio’s achievement gaps.

Why This Matters: Ohio’s Path Forward

Ohio has taken strides to improve literacy through the Science of Reading reforms. But as Fordham has repeatedly emphasized, we must now apply that same urgency to math. The bill reflects a clear understanding that strong math achievement is not optional in today’s economy. It is the foundation for innovation, progress, and workforce readiness. Students who can think mathematically will not only succeed in college but also thrive in trades, technology, and countless real-world applications.

Conclusion

In short, Senate Bill 19 is both timely and essential. It creates a coherent, statewide strategy for improving math outcomes—built on evidence, transparency, and accountability. Most importantly, it affirms that every Ohio student, regardless of ZIP code, deserves access to rigorous math instruction and the opportunity to succeed.

Chair Brenner and members of the Committee, thank you for your leadership in confronting this urgent challenge. The Fordham Institute strongly supports Senate Bill 19, and we urge its swift passage.

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Public Testimony

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Accountability & Testing

The science of reading (SoR) movement has driven states and districts to improve teacher preparation, adopt evidence-based materials, and clarify for K‒3 instruction. Yet one critical tier remains missing: early childhood education (ECE).

Children's ability to read begins long before phonics and decoding lessons. It’s built through oral language: the vocabulary, syntax, discourse skills, and back-and-forth talk that gives printed words meaning. When ECE is excluded from policy and funding, we make reading success contingent on remediation rather than prevention.

Recent peer-reviewed evidence underscores three key points: first, language drives later reading comprehension; second, explicit instruction in code-based skills, especially phonemic awareness, is effective in preschool and early primary years; and third, the strongest interventions combine language and code.

A 2021 meta-analysis showed that multicomponent reading interventions improve not only word reading, but also comprehension. Subsequent reviews have confirmed that phonemic awareness (PA) instruction is robustly effective from preschool through first grade and are identifying optimal dosage levels. A 2025 meta-analytic review found that interventions combining oral-language targets (vocabulary, inferencing) with code-based targets (phonological awareness) reliably strengthen emergent literacy—the integrated foundation children need for kindergarten readiness.

Language, however, grows not just in lessons but in relationships. Studies link the density of adult–child conversational turns with gains in language, executive function, and self-regulation—skills that make instruction “stick.” In classrooms, the quality of teacher talk also matters: a 2025 meta-analysis shows that richer teacher language is associated with stronger child language outcomes. Far from a “nice to have,” oral language is the foundation for reading comprehension and should be explicitly cultivated from birth onward.

If reading development begins at birth, SoR policies starting at kindergarten are starting late. Here’s how states, districts, and schools can fulfill SoR’s promise by pulling ECE into the center.

State: Align the system from birth to grade 3

1. Write ECE into literacy laws. Most SoR legislation to date has focused on K–3 and teacher preparation. States should explicitly include licensed child care, Head Start, and state pre-K in their literacy statutes, setting expectations for evidence-aligned language and early literacy instruction and funding the supports to deliver it. Multicomponent approaches that weave language and code already show the strongest preschool outcomes.

2. Fund professional learning and materials for birth–5. Grant programs should underwrite (a) shared-reading curricula that scaffold rich talk, and (b) explicit instruction in phonological awareness and alphabet knowledge in pre-K, using developmentally appropriate routines. Meta-analyses confirm PA’s effectiveness and suggest that optimal dosage delivers gains without displacing language-rich interactions.

3. Adopt common birth–grade-3 standards and assessments that include oral language. Align standards for vocabulary, syntax, listening comprehension, and discourse with code-based skills. Approve screeners that capture both strands—not to “test toddlers,” but to detect risks early. Comprehension in later grades depends on language growth now.

4. Incentivize family language partnerships. Evidence shows that coaching families to increase conversational turn-taking boosts children’s language. Policies should fund programs that measurably expand adult–child talk.

District: Build a single B–3 literacy spine

1. Select curricula that interweave language and code. Adoption processes should ensure pre-K materials provide (a) sequenced PA and print concepts and (b) structured talk through interactive read-alouds, narrative retell, and oral reasoning. Combined language and code interventions have the strongest evidence.

2. Create a birth–grade-3 professional learning continuum. ECE teachers, K–3 teachers, reading specialists, and speech-language pathologists (SLPs) should train together. PD should cover designing conversations that stretch language, delivering brief explicit PA routines, and connecting oral language to comprehension.

3. Include pre-K in MTSS. Many districts start MTSS at kindergarten. Include universal screening for language and PA in pre-K, add Tier 2 small-group interventions (vocabulary, inferencing, grammar), and monitor progress in both language and code. Early prevention yields far more leverage than remediation.

4. Measure what matters. Beyond letter names and sounds, track growth in vocabulary depth, narrative skills, and listening comprehension, capacities that drive comprehension in grades 2–4. Oral language is the bottleneck for later understanding.

School: Make language visible in daily practice

1. Use interactive read-alouds with purposeful talk every day. Model rare and academic words, press for explanations (“why” and “how”), and scaffold complex syntax. Structured shared reading improves preschoolers’ vocabulary, the raw material for comprehension.

2. Explicitly teach phonological awareness. In pre-K, target larger sound units (sentences, words, syllables, onset–rime) and simple phoneme play; in K–1, link PA tightly with phonics. Meta-analyses affirm its effectiveness through grade 1 and highlight dosage as key: short, consistent daily routines outperform longer, infrequent lessons.

3. Engineer conversational turns. Organize small-group centers and routines that prompt children to talk with adults and peers. Turn-taking builds language, executive function, and attention—skills that make instruction more effective.

4. Plan with SLPs as instructional partners. SLPs are not just service providers but language experts who can help teachers design oral-language targets, monitor progress, and co-lead Tier 2 language groups. This collaboration aligns with the evidence that multicomponent interventions work best.

The payoff: Fewer “late” readers, more fluent comprehenders.

When we wait until decoding begins to address language, we ask phonics to bear the entire load of reading development, and the evidence is clear that it cannot. The SoR literature shows both strands, language and code, must be woven early. Combined approaches in preschool set children up for later reading success.

To put simply: The best K–3 reading reforms are actually birth–3 policies in disguise. To realize the full promise of the science of reading policymakers must write birth–5 into literacy laws and budgets; districts must create a unified B–3 spine linking curriculum, PD, assessment, and MTSS; and schools must make oral-language growth as measurable and routine as mastery of letter-sounds.

Until early childhood sits at the heart of literacy policy, we’ll keep trying to fix in third grade what could have been built from birth.

References

Denton, C. A., et al. (2021). A meta-analysis of the effects of foundational skills and multicomponent interventions on reading comprehension.
Rice, M., et al. (2022). A meta-analysis for planning effective instruction: Phonemic awareness in PK–1.
Erbeli, F., et al. (2024). A meta-analysis on optimal cumulative dosage of phonemic awareness instruction.
Cusiter, J., et al. (2025). Combined language and code emergent literacy interventions: A systematic meta-analytic review.
Carolus, A. E., et al. (2023). Conversation disruptions in early childhood predict EF and language links.
Jiang, Y., et al. (2025). Does teacher talk matter? A meta-analysis of partial correlations.
Hulme, C., Snowling, M. J., et al. (2020). Children’s language skills can be improved: Lessons for policy makers and educators.
Cipolletti, L. B., et al. (2025). Structured shared-book reading improves preschool vocabulary.

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Evidence-Based Learning