| The Thomas B. Fordham Institute

Meredith Coffey, Ph.D.

10.2.2025

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I’m no fan of many so-called “equitable” grading reforms. Having seen firsthand their impact on my students and read the relevant research, I just can’t get behind policies like “no zeros,” no late penalties, or unlimited retakes. A new study by my colleagues David Griffith and Adam Tyner confirms that many educators share my concerns. Over three-quarters of the teachers they surveyed rated “no zeros,” for example, as either “harmful” or “very harmful” to academic engagement.

Yet I take no issue with standards-based grading, a system popular among grading reformers. In fact, at one high school where I taught, I witnessed firsthand how standards-based grading can increase transparency, motivate students, and support academic rigor—when done right. And in my experience, doing it right depends on school-level adaptations of grading practices, and not uniform districtwide mandates.

For the uninitiated: In “standards-based grading,” students earn grades based on course-specific “standards” for content knowledge and skill proficiency. (These standards are not necessarily linked to statewide learning standards.) Instead of accumulating points across a certain number of assignments, as is “traditional,” students demonstrate competency within a certain number of standards. The number of assignments is relevant only insofar as students have sufficient opportunity to prove their knowledge and skills. Students don’t receive grade penalties for anything that’s not part of the standards (e.g., handwriting quality), and revisions are encouraged to support additional learning.

How standards-based grading worked in my setting

At the standards-based grading school where I worked, every course was centered on ten learning standards. My English classes had standards such as using evidence to support an argument, analyzing literary devices, and organizing a paragraph. A global history class might reinforce interdisciplinary skills by including some overlapping standards, like using evidence to support an argument. Other history standards focused on course content, such as key events (e.g., the Haitian Revolution) or concepts (e.g., imperialism). An algebra class would have standards like writing algebraic expressions and graphing linear equations.

Every assignment was aligned with one or more standards. For each standard, clear criteria informed whether a student would earn a score of “incomplete,” “not meeting standards,” “meeting standards,” or rarely, “exceeding standards.” Say I tasked students with writing a paragraph about symbolism in August Wilson’s Fences, with grades to be based on two standards: their analysis of the literary device and the organization of the paragraph. A student might earn different grades for each standard if, for instance, her paragraph was well-organized but missed the fact that Troy was building more fences than just the literal one around his yard.

Per schoolwide policy, students’ performance on each standard determined their final grades. No one could pass a course without meeting expectations on at least three tasks for each of seven standards. The final grade was therefore not based on the number of assignments completed, yet without completing a certain number of assignments, students could not adequately demonstrate that they had met standards.

Why standards-based grading worked in my setting

Setting the bar high: A common criticism of standards-based grading is that it’s not rigorous. Like any grading system, however, that depends entirely on where the school sets the bar. After all, the traditional 0–100 system can also fail to challenge students and lead to grade inflation, if assessments are too easy. At my school, because our criteria for “meeting expectations” were appropriately rigorous, students were challenged to try to meet that threshold.

Students couldn’t earn any points without a genuine attempt, and they had to make a reasonably high number of genuine attempts in order to pass. In other words, they weren’t being de facto rewarded for submitting nothing, as is the case with the “50 percent rule.”

Grading participation: One place where we deviated significantly from the “equity grading” party line involved class participation. Many reformers contend that grades for participation are inherently problematic.

It’s possible for schools to deploy participation grades in troubling ways. Grading for Equity author Joe Feldman has highlighted troubling practices like awarding points for not using the bathroom during class, bringing in classroom supplies, and over-rewarding naturally talkative students. No, schools shouldn’t do any of the above—and I never worked at one that did, with traditional grades or otherwise.

Yet discussion and collaboration are crucial skills to develop in school-aged children, for college, career, civic participation, and beyond. As a painfully shy kid myself, I got outside my comfort zone and tried to raise my hand at least once if I knew my contributions were going to be graded—and today I’m grateful. In an era when it’s so easy to hide behind screens, it’s more urgent than ever to foster in-person communication skills.

At the school where I worked, we prioritized students’ engagement with one another via structured lessons and clear expectations. When we had a graded class discussion, for instance, we established clear participation goals. To earn full credit, students might need to cite relevant evidence in at least one response and ask at least one substantive question of a peer. We also structured the lesson to support all students, giving them time to jot down notes beforehand, and sometimes designating one or two students to ensure that everyone would have the opportunity to speak (e.g., if Jayden hadn’t spoken yet, the designated student might ask, “Hey Jayden, did you want to add on?”).

In other words, grading participation doesn’t have to be arbitrary, reward certain personality types, or disproportionately benefit the kids with outside-of-school advantages. If done thoughtfully—as all grading should be done—it can help students build crucial skills and classroom community.

Conversely, if participation is not graded, what incentive do quiet kids have to push themselves to speak up? What incentive do chatty kids have to give someone else a turn? What incentive do any kids have to make sure they know the material well enough to discuss it? Internal motivation is not going to drive all kids all the time, and schools have an obligation to teach young people how to speak to one another.

Balancing guardrails with flexibility for students: Many “equity” grading reformers argue that teachers should accept late work and allow retakes without grade penalty. They reason that grades should reflect knowledge, not behavior, and that late work is no less a reflection of a student’s knowledge than timely work. My school supported some flexibility but within clear bounds.

We were an alternative school on a tight schedule: four sets of two-week “benchmark” periods within a trimester. Teachers had substantial discretion within this framework, but most of us required a certain number of assignments to be submitted before a student took the culminating “benchmark” assessment at the end of the two-week period, and students had to attempt either three or all four benchmarks to pass the course. As a result, although there were few formal deadlines and no point-based late penalties, students couldn’t let the work pile up or attempt endless retakes.

Balancing schoolwide—not districtwide—commitment with teacher discretion: Standards-based grading was baked into school culture and expectations. We had a system that worked well for us: a small, alternative, traditional public school with low teacher turnover.

None of this was mandated at the district level. If teachers and students don’t buy into standards-based grading, it’s not going to work. A school with longstanding teacher retention challenges may not be the best candidate either, since it’s hard to maintain buy-in when there’s little institutional familiarity or expertise. I’m also not convinced it would work at a much larger school; could teachers realistically keep up with, for example, a potential mass influx of slightly-late submissions every two weeks from 150 students? To argue that districtwide conformity is necessary for equity is to misapprehend the reality that every school is unique in its student population and school community.

—

Despite Feldman’s claims to the contrary, grading reforms don’t all have to come together as a package deal. I saw standards-based grading work with participation grades included and without lengthy submission windows. At a recent webinar co-hosted by Fordham and TNTP, a Bronx school administrator shared that his school uses “no zeros” without any other “equity” grading practices, and that policy works well for his students. That’s great! Schools shouldn’t be pressured, by either the district or outside advocates, to accept or reject every “equity” grading policy under the sun. Instead, they should be encouraged to take what they feel will work best for their students and enact those policies in their unique context. Giving students what they need, rather than all the same thing—that’s true equity.

Policy Priority:

High Expectations

Topics:

Curriculum & Instruction

Governance

Standards

Teachers & School Leaders

Daniel Buck

10.2.2025

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My last column on teacher standards focused on the how. How should we deliver professional development? How long? Which teachers? Who leads? They were recommendations for structural changes about the medium of delivery.

But there’s a more fundamental and important question: What is a quality teacher? We can tinker with the delivery of PD, but if the content itself advances poor conceptions of education or ineffective instructional practices, what’s the point? Who cares about the means if the end in question is bunk?

What a school, district, or state defines as a quality teacher can be found in teacher evaluation rubrics. They are the policy that defines quality instruction and signals to all personnel in the system what teachers ought to be doing.

Rubrics for teacher evaluation became a hot topic during the early aughts. Race to the Top carrots and No Child Left Behind federal waivers incentivized states to adopt intensive teacher evaluation systems. Unfortunately, too often, these rubrics and evaluation incentivize all the wrong things.

Of all the frameworks that gained popularity, perhaps none are more famous (or infamous) than the Danielson Framework. New York uses it. My own state of Wisconsin uses it. There are no data that I can find proving that it’s the most popular one, but I’d bet the naming rights to my third child that it is. On this framework, what kind of instruction earns top marks?

Skim through it, and a clear vision of the ideal teacher stands out. In a “distinguished” teacher’s classroom, students “critique and write” their own curricular materials. They design “their own rubrics.” Teachers invite students to teach each other the content. Rooms are organized to facilitate “centers and groups.” Student direction, not teacher-lead instruction, is the gold standard towards which we are supposed to strive.

Collectively, “distinguished” teachers are those who shun explicit instruction to instead facilitate activities, run centers, and otherwise build their classroom on a constructivist understanding of human knowledge and learning. As a corollary, “unsatisfactory” teachers are thus those who rely on anachronistic lectures, rote practice, or (God save us) desks in rows. The horror, the horror!

I’ll pause here because I can already sense readers typing me an email in protest. Surely, Daniel, you don’t mean to imply that direct instruction is better than student-directed learning. While a column in a newsletter is no place to cover all research on effective instruction, I’d recommend reading up on the shortcomings of constructivist models such as project-based learning and inquiry learning and the research supporting direct instruction, spaced and interleaved practice, worked examples, and other traditional, structured instructional techniques.

That these rubrics reward high marks for happy-clappy pedagogy and assigns low marks for more traditional (and more effective) pedagogy is significant. As I’ve argued before regarding students, everything that a school does communicates a message. What behavior is rewarded or punished, which books are read, who are the heroes of history, what posters hang on the wall—each inculcates a worldview in students even beyond what is explicitly taught.

The same is true for teachers. These rubrics incept the idea that the best teachers have turned their classrooms over to the students, avoid anything that whiffs of traditional instruction, and incentivizes them to seek out opportunities for development grounded in progressivist, constructivist pedagogy.

Principals, too, as they consider professional development regimes for the year, are more likely to choose for a yearlong focus something like running learning stations, which has little evidentiary base, instead of knowledge building, which has much evidence bolstering its implementation. When teachers set their own improvement goals, they may focus on workshop models instead of direct instruction.

And on the flip side, these rubrics tie the hands of teachers who want to pursue more traditional models of instruction. Such teachers risk poor marks, professional consequences, or the reputation of being one of the buildings “bad teachers” if they put desks in rows (research finds this is the optimal arrangement for most instruction). When an assistant principal at a classical school, I had to grade my teachers using a rubric that ran in direct contradiction to our own stated belief in teacher-led instruction.

For those who have already drank the traditional instruction Kool-Aid, a central difficulty is convincing others. Learning styles have been debunked more times than years I’ve been alive, and yet their myth persists. Teacher rubrics are a policy lever that would both incentivize more teachers to adopt such instructional techniques and also begin to shift the view of the profession towards more effective instruction. If they’re reading every year that “distinguished teachers” make effective use of interleaved practice, they’ll begin to hold that view themselves.

If we want to make better teachers, it begins with how we define that.

Policy Priority:

High Expectations

Topics:

Curriculum & Instruction

Teachers & School Leaders

Adam Tyner, Ph.D.

10.2.2025

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The age-old debate over whether principals or district offices should hold the reins in schools has gotten a fresh empirical test, courtesy of a new NBER working paper from Northwestern University economist Kirabo Jackson. The question seems simple: Should principals be empowered as the CEOs of their schools, or should they mainly implement directives crafted by their districts?

How that question is answered could have implications for school cultures, teacher morale, resource allocation, and ultimately, how much students learn in school.

The new study uses data from Chicago Public Schools (CPS), where, in 2016, the Independent School Principals (ISP) program was launched. It gave select school leaders more authority over budgets, staffing, and instructional priorities. Only principals with strong past performance and favorable evaluations were invited and, even then, joining was voluntary. Once on board, these leaders received a salary supplement, agreed to stay at their schools for at least two years, and were empowered to tailor school policies to their students’ needs. For example, they might reassign specialist teachers into core classrooms, shrink class sizes, or redirect funds toward bilingual programs, counseling, or special education.

Jackson’s study leverages a decade of detailed CPS data (2009–2019) and compares the performance of ISP schools against carefully matched peer schools whose principals didn’t join the program. Sixty-eight elementary schools ended up in the treatment group, and the results they achieved are revealing when compared to control group schools. On average, student test scores rose by about 8 percent of a standard deviation, a modest but real effect. And in ISP schools, teachers and students also reported better school climates, class sizes fell by more than one student per class, and principals were less likely to bolt.

These improvements, however, weren’t evenly distributed. The strongest leaders, including the principals with the highest past ratings and results, drove the most impressive school gains. By contrast, principals with relatively weaker records sometimes presided over stagnation or even declines. This pattern underscores an uncomfortable truth: Autonomy amplifies both strengths and weaknesses. For skilled leaders, it can unleash a virtuous cycle of stability, morale, and achievement. For less capable ones, it risks compounding problems.

Another important finding of the study is how schools with atypical student populations benefited disproportionately from greater principal autonomy. Schools with many English learners, high concentrations of students with disabilities, or demographics far outside the district norm saw especially strong gains under ISP. That makes sense: Central-office policies are inherently one-size-fits-most. The more a school deviates from the “average,” the more useful it is to have a principal who can make adjustments. In such settings, local discretion can be transformative.

The study also looks at the mechanisms behind these effects. Principal stability was perhaps the most straightforward. Turnover plummeted after leaders joined ISP and remained lower even after the two-year commitments expired. This alone has educational value, since frequent leadership changes can destabilize schools. Jackson says that principals choosing to alter their schools’ allocation of resources is also probably part of the story. Class sizes dropped, schedules were reworked, and in schools with atypical student needs, funding flowed toward bilingual or special education services.

Most impressively, all this occurred without additional resources devoted to the ISP schools, apart from the small bonuses to the principals. These changes are a result of different management and resource allocation, not increased spending. That these positive effects were realized without new funds, splashy technology purchases, or costly retraining efforts implies that the return on investment from this program is off the charts, even if the effects are modest.

Still, caveats abound. This wasn’t a blanket district policy but a selective intervention aimed at proven leaders. The results, then, tell us what happens when already capable principals get more autonomy, not what happens when every leader does. The fact that, even within this selective group, weaker principals sometimes stumbled may suggest that the eligibility bar for the ISP was set too low. Expanding autonomy indiscriminately could backfire.

Still, Chicago’s experience shows that when schools have effective leaders and distinctive needs, giving them more latitude can yield real dividends for kids—all without draining the public purse. That’s a lesson worth heeding for reformers nationwide.

SOURCE: C. Kirabo Jackson, When Decentralization Works: Leadership, Local Needs, and Student Achievement, NBER Working Paper No. 34216, National Bureau of Economic Research, September 2025.

Policy Priority:

High Expectations

Topics:

Evidence-Based Learning

Teachers & School Leaders

Jeff Murray

10.1.2025

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

In case you might have missed it, every building in Mentor City Schools was closed yesterday—with the announcement sent at 6:15 that morning—due to an excess of bus driver absences. How very big city of them! (WKYC-TV, Cleveland, 9/30/25) All indications are that Mentor is back to business today, according to this piece, but you can also read all the details about the precarious nature of the district’s system that led to yesterday’s issue…and which makes such “calamity days” almost guaranteed to happen again in the future. (Fox 8 News, Cleveland, 10/1/25) This morning, it’s Lakota City Schools. They are on a two-hour delay due to an electrical problem that, among other things, impacts radio communications, refueling, and other services for their buses. Again: sounds like big city problems to me. (Cincinnati Enquirer, 10/1/25) As a side note to these clips: I needed to do some research recently on transportation-related problems experienced around the state so far this school year—above and beyond the big ones in Dayton and Columbus. I found some stories that I had missed when they originally occurred, including two suburban districts who also cut out high school busing due to lack of drivers and/or general budget problems. These didn’t make international news like Dayton did because, I think, they are obviously not blamable on school choice. (And I know you remember how the Dayton story was missing some important context in that regard anyway.) But the common thread seems clear enough to me: If big city transpo is cooked and the suburbs are heading that way too, regardless of the reason(s), we now have plenty of evidence that it’s time to scrap the old way and come up with something new. Stat.
The comments given by the superintendent of Olmsted Falls City Schools on Ohio’s school and district report cards are called “sarcastic” and “facetious” in this piece. This is an inaccurate take, if you ask me (which no one has ever or will ever do). The proper description of those words is “dripping contempt”, and the target in my estimation is every poor family in Ohio. Unless I’m reading this wrong, Bossman seems convinced that standardized tests are so unfair to low-income students that those kids will never be able to pass them as long as their family income remains under a specific level. And indeed, if their family income were to be boosted to that specific level, I think he feels that their ability to pass those exact same tests would miraculously go up. Incredible. I definitely disagree with this mindset. But if it is true, it would also have to mean that low-income students are also unable to achieve positive academic growth, graduate from high school, or successfully transition to college/career. Because all those things are also part of the report cards he reviles. So while the contempt is clear, I’m hopeful that his vitriol is inadvertently clouding whatever it is that he actually means and that it is somehow less repugnant than what I read here. (Cleveland.com, 10/1/25)

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Policy Priority:

School Funding

Topics:

Governance

Michael J. Petrilli

9.30.2025

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Editor’s note: This was first published on Mike Petrilli’s Substack, SCHOOLED.

Some education debates are evergreen, but here’s one that’s a bit more urgent: How to get at least a handful of Democratic governors to opt their states into the big school choice opportunity included within the One Big Beautiful Bill Act?

Today, I’d like to (mostly) set aside the policy debate over private school choice. Let’s talk tactics. Assume you believe that it would be a net positive for low-income and working-class kids in blue cities in blue states—including New York, LA, Philadelphia, and Chicago—to be able to attend Catholic schools and other private schools at public expense. Given the odds against enacting school choice legislation in such locales, this federal opportunity might be the best shot in at least a generation.

The question is how the Trump administration can make it more likely that some blue-state governors take the plunge. The reason the Trump team plays such a key role is that the language in the law itself is rather vague when it comes to key issues around program design—issues that might matter to said Democratic governors. Which in turn means that the Treasury Department, which is charged with implementing the initiative, can settle some questions via regulation. This was at the heart of a really good debate that my colleagues at Education Next hosted earlier this month.

Here’s a fast refresher on key bits of the new tax credit. Starting in January 2027, taxpayers will be able to take a dollar-for-dollar credit worth up to $1,700 on their federal taxes for donating to any eligible scholarship granting organization (SGO). The SGO does not have to be in the same state as the taxpayer, but SGOs do have to be approved by a given state’s governor, who also opts into the program. The SGOs raise money via taxpayer “donations,” and then can turn around and provide scholarships to families making up to 300 percent of the median income of the local metro area. Scholarships can also go toward tutoring and other allowable uses covered by the Coverdell program, including uses by public (and public charter) school students.

So what should the Treasury Department do? (Specifically, a guy named “Steve” at Treasury, who is supposed to come up with the regulations, or so I hear.) Here are the three main options.

Cut off opportunities for governors to specify how the initiative will work in their state. This hardline position, supported by Robert Enlow and Jim Blew, among others, would say that once governors opt in to their state’s participation in the initiative, they have little more to decide. They must (for example) approve any SGO that applies and meets the requirements of the federal law, which are quite minimal.
Bar governors from opting in to the “public school” portion of the initiative without also signing up for the private school choice part. This middle ground (which I prefer) would ensure that “opting in” to the tax credit initiative means opting in wholeheartedly. A Democratic governor shouldn’t be able to block private school scholarships for kids in his or her state while giving public and charter school students access to tutoring assistance and the like. But those governors could tailor the private school provisions to their liking (more on that below).
Offer maximum flexibility. Governors could opt into just the supplemental services provisions if they wanted, not the school scholarship part. And could regulate the SGOs operating in their states, for example by limiting scholarships to just low-income and working-class kids, or make participating schools abide by the state’s human rights laws (i.e., pro-LGBTQ rules), or release test score results at the school level for transparency purposes. My read is that Jorge Elorza supports this option.

I see pros and cons to each and try not to be clouded by my own policy preferences (namely, to limit private school choice to low income and working-class kids, and to ensure testing and accountability is in place).

Some choice advocates think that, even with the hardline option 1, they will be able to move some Democratic governors into the “yes” column (maybe Shapiro and Polis)? After all, it’s “free money” on the table, including for tutoring and such for public and charter school kids, plus private school choice for key constituencies in the Democratic party, including the Black and Hispanic voters who are slipping away from them. Don’t compromise on program design issues, goes the thinking, just focus on putting maximum pressure on the governors. Some will bend. So it’s predicted.

On the flip side, allowing those governors to opt into a lite version of the initiative via flexible option 3, even just for tutoring scholarships, might open the door to more school choice down the line. Once parents get a taste for mini scholarships, they might put pressure on governors to give them access to the whole thing. Maybe?

I like the middle option 2 (yes, that’s on brand for me). It doesn’t feel right to turn what was meant to be a private school choice initiative into just another federal funding stream for public school services, so I’m not enamored with option 3. But I’m not convinced that option 1 will actually result in any Democratic governors saying yes. I worry that it will be too easy for them to say, “I’m not in favor of windfalls for private school families making $400,000 a year” (as could happen in some wealthy metro areas) or “I don’t believe in public funding going to schools that aren’t accountable to the public.” Let’s take those excuses away, says I. And let a Governor Shapiro, for example, embrace private school choice for low-income kids in Pennsylvania.

But what do you think? Please weigh in!

Policy Priority:

Quality Choices

Topics:

Governance

Private School Choice

Teachers & School Leaders

Jessica Poiner

9.30.2025

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Last week, the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce (DEW) released updated report cards for the 2024–25 school year. Overall, the results are troubling. Early literacy numbers are disappointing. Reading proficiency rates dipped down. Statewide math proficiency crept up but still sits at just 55 percent. And in the majority of urban districts, overall proficiency rates are alarmingly low.

Clearly, there’s work to be done. But Ohio’s issues extend beyond academics. Chronic absenteeism, which is defined as missing at least 10 percent of instructional time for any reason, can negatively impact both academic and social-emotional development. And according to state report cards, a fourth of Ohio students—roughly 400,000 kids—were chronically absent last year.

Figure 1 displays Ohio’s statewide chronic absenteeism rate over time. In 2018–19, it was just shy of 17 percent. But by 2021–22 it had jumped to 30 percent, as the number of students who were chronically absent skyrocketed during pandemic-era disruptions. Ohio’s rate ticked down to 27 percent the following year, which many hoped would be the start of a significant downward trend. But the last two years have dashed those hopes. The statewide rate was 25.6 percent in 2023–24 and 25.1 percent in 2024–25. That’s an improvement of fewer than 2 percentage points over the course of two years.

Figure 1. Statewide chronic absenteeism rate, 2018–2025

RC Chronic absenteeism blog Figure 1 — *2019–20 has been excluded due to pandemic-related disruptions that impacted the data.

The statewide rate obscures even worse numbers at the local level. Table 1 identifies nine districts that registered chronic absenteeism rates above 50 percent during the 2024–25 school year. The highest rate was in Lorain (which also happened to post the state’s lowest performance index score), followed by Youngstown and North College Hill near Cincinnati. More than half of students in Cleveland and Columbus were also chronically absent last year. Rates from the 2023–24 school year have been included for comparison. The final column shows the year-to-year difference, with green shading indicating a decline in the district’s chronic absenteeism rate and red shading indicating a rise.

Table 1. Districts with chronic absenteeism rates above 50 percent in 2024–25

From a year-to-year perspective, it’s not all bad news. East Cleveland, which dropped its chronic absenteeism rate from an eye-popping 63.5 down to 53.2, is a welcome bright spot. That’s a decline of more than 10 percentage points and, along with some impressive academic improvements, signals that things are looking up in East Cleveland. Lockland Local also registered a sizable decline of 5.3 percentage points. But four other districts saw their rates jump. North College Hill had an increase of 5.1 percentage points and Cleveland went up by 4.2 percentage points.

Chronic absenteeism is a problem for all schools. But it’s especially troublesome in districts where large numbers of students are academically behind. Table 2 identifies the pre- and post-pandemic chronic absenteeism rates in the Ohio Eight, a group of eight urban districts with a long history of academic struggles, as well as the statewide average. The final column identifies the difference between pre-pandemic rates in 2019 and the most recent post-pandemic percentage in 2025.

Table 2. Pre- and post-pandemic chronic absenteeism rates in the Ohio Eight districts

These data answer several important questions about progress (or lack thereof) in the Ohio Eight.

First, how are districts faring overall? Not well. At least a third of students are chronically absent in each one. Three of them—Cleveland, Columbus, and Youngstown—have rates above 50 percent. And they’re all well above the statewide average, with the gap ranging from 7.9 percentage points in Canton to a whopping 32.8 in Youngstown. Youngstown’s sky-high numbers are particularly noteworthy because, although the district technically improved between 2024 and 2025, it was by less than 1 percentage point. Not only is Youngstown’s 2025 rate the worst among the Ohio Eight, it’s the second worst in the entire state.

Second, did chronic absenteeism rates decline during the most recent school year? In six of the eight districts, the answer is yes. Only Cincinnati and Cleveland registered higher percentages in 2025 than 2024. Canton saw the biggest improvement, with a decline of 5.5 percentage points, followed by Toledo with a drop of 2.5. The four remaining districts clocked in with improvements below 2 percentage points.

Third, after several years of fully in-person classes, have districts bounced back to pre-pandemic levels? No. Not even close. Five of them have a gap of roughly 10 percentage points between their 2019 and 2025 rates. Another two—Akron and Cleveland—have appallingly large discrepancies of more than 20 percentage points. And while Cincinnati was one of two districts to see an increase in its 2025 rate, it’s also the district with the smallest gap—8.6 percentage points—between current and pre-pandemic numbers.

Overall, these data paint a depressing picture. The needle has barely moved at the state level. And in some districts, chronic absenteeism has actually gotten worse. State leaders have tried to address the issue with pledges and taskforce recommendations and toolkits. But if those efforts are having an impact, it’s still not visible on state report cards.

Part of the problem is that state report cards only come out once a year, which means Ohio publicly updates absenteeism rates just once a year. Now that last year’s numbers have been published, we’re all pretty much in the dark until next September. Given the sizable impact chronic absenteeism can have on short- and long-term student outcomes—and Ohio’s troubling academic results on this year’s report cards—annual data dumps aren’t going to cut it.

For a better alternative, Ohio could look to Rhode Island, where leaders have created several publicly available, interactive tools. For example, the state’s real-time attendance dashboards update daily to show attendance trends in individual schools, along with data on early dismissals and tardies (both of which can have a sneakily big impact on chronic absenteeism). Ohio could create its own version of these dashboards to give local officials, district and school leaders, and families consistent access to detailed data that they can act on immediately instead of waiting and hoping that next year’s numbers are better.

State-level policy alone won’t solve Ohio’s chronic absenteeism problem. In fact, boosting attendance is largely in the hands of local leaders, schools, and community members, as they’re the ones who are trusted by parents and regularly interact with kids. But state leaders can support local efforts with real-time data. Here’s hoping they choose to do so quickly.

Policy Priority:

School Funding

Topics:

Governance

Jeff Murray

9.30.2025

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The new school year got underway with some familiar speedbumps for student transportation in a number of cities and suburbs. These kinds of troubles are nothing new, but they seem to be on the rise. That’s a problem because getting eligible students to and from school safely, efficiently, and on time is a basic function of the system. In that spirit, new survey data from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research are timely and interesting (despite the potential conflict of interest stemming from their partnership in the effort with “supplemental” transportation provider HopSkipDrive.)

Data come from two separate surveys. The first was conducted with a random sample of 838 parents of school-aged children, recruited via AP’s AmeriSpeak platform and designed to be representative of the U.S. household population. It was administered online between June 30 and July 11, 2025, and included demographic information about respondents. The second was a group of 510 school administrators recruited via survey company Dynata. There is no further information available about these administrators—location, school type, school size, longevity, etc.—except their job. Their surveys were conducted between June 30 and July 25, 2025.

The most important thing to note is that a majority of parents report providing their own transportation for some or all of their school-aged children. (The survey allowed for multiple responses to the question, thus percentages that add up to more than 100.) Sixty-three percent report driving a child themselves to and from school on a typical day; 33 percent report another family member or friend driving their child; and 5 percent say they use a multi-family carpool. Walking, biking, older students driving themselves, and rideshare use are also reported. Black parents are more likely to drive their children to school than White parents (71 percent versus 58 percent). For those providing their own transportation typically, 32 percent say they do so because no school-based transportation is available to them, 20 percent because it’s easier than availing themselves of school-based options, and 14 percent because of general safety concerns. For families whose students participate in extracurricular activities or before or after school care, school-provided transportation is even less typical. Only 17 percent report using a school bus or other school-arranged vehicle for those activities.

On the other side of the ledger, 43 percent of parents report using a school bus or other school-arranged vehicle on a typical day for at least one of their children. Three percent report using public transportation, but there are no details provided about whether those trips are paid for by the school/district or are self-funded. The vast majority of parents believe that school bus travel is safe—far safer than walking, taking public transportation, or hiring a rideshare—whether they use buses or not.

Interestingly, parents seem quite happy with the transportation plans they have arranged, regardless of type, reporting minimal stress over daily transportation and only rare conflicts between school transportation issues and their own work and personal schedules. Only a tiny fraction of parents report that their student has ever missed school services, tutoring, or field trips due to transportation issues. Even the school choice question—“How likely would you be to send your child to a different school if easier transportation options were available?”—finds few potential takers, with 72 percent saying they are not too likely or not at all likely to switch schools in that case.

Turning to the other survey, the overwhelming message from school administrators is that their current transportation systems are inadequate to the need. Forty-five percent of administrators report that all students in their districts and schools are eligible for school-provided transportation, with lower percentages reporting specific subgroups of students being eligible, such as students with special needs or those experiencing homelessness. (Again, multiple answers were allowed, rendering the eligibility data unhelpfully murky.) And even though large percentages of parents report not using available school-provided options, as found by the other survey, 44 percent of school administrators in this survey say that the number of students eligible for transportation has increased in the last five years. Bus driver shortages, budget reductions (or simply a lack of budget increases), and traffic congestion around schools are all cited as major or minor problems related to transportation. (One assumes the latter is due to all those family vehicles dropping kids off!) Eighty-three percent of administrators report office staffers have had to take on transportation duties in the last year, with 54 percent saying such gap-filling happens on at least a weekly basis. Administrators express concerns over absenteeism, academic outcomes, and providing services for specific subgroups of students due to sub-optimal transportation.

As to solutions: 55 percent of administrators report raising driver pay or benefits to help boost recruitment, 26 percent report cutting or shortening routes to spread out available drivers, 20 percent report changing school day start or end times so drivers could double up, and 13 percent report canceling transportation services for groups of students (such as high schoolers) if it is not mandated by state or local law. The survey also offers several other potential policy changes related to transportation—including creating centralized drop-off and pick-up points and having schools arrange alternatives like cars or vans when traditional buses are unavailable/not tenable—all of which the majority of administrator respondents expressed favor for.

The report offers neither recommendations nor analysis of the survey results. But if I may be so bold, it seems as though parents and school administrators may be on two different pages when it comes to transportation. While administrators are stressing about what can’t be provided to all eligible students—and what might happen as this increasingly becomes the case—families are far more chill about what they provide for their own kids. If a majority of families are providing their own door-to-door transportation at least twice a day (and experiencing little or no scheduling problems to speak of), nothing less than that level of service would likely change their habit if it were offered by their schools. And since that halcyon scenario is unlikely to return, short of miraculous changes to bring an influx of new drivers, these findings indicate that school leaders are fretting unnecessarily on the topic.

With continued enrollment declines, the ongoing expansion of school choice (a topic not explored enough in either of these surveys), and a majority of parents already moved on from the old yellow bus model (maybe because of the rise of work-from-home arrangements) perhaps policymakers can finally accept reality as reflected in these surveys and give their beleaguered school administrators a break: Scrap the tattered vestiges of traditional, universal, district-centered busing; start building new, community-centric models that focus on the neediest students first; pay families who provide transportation on their own; and only after those steps are accomplished, worry about wooing back the hardcore carpool moms, dads, and grandmas.

SOURCE: AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, “2025 State of School Transportation Report” (September 2025).

Policy Priority:

School Funding

Topics:

Governance