The Education Gadfly Weekly

It’s been two years since Ohio policymakers, led by Governor DeWine, enacted sweeping early literacy reforms aligned to the science of reading, an evidence-based instructional approach that research has proven is an effective way to teach children how to read. Key elements of the statewide initiative include high-quality curriculum, teacher professional development, and stricter standards for teacher preparation programs, as well as roughly $170 million in state funds.

How are things going? We don’t yet have test score data (that will come this fall), but a report given by Department of Education and Workforce (DEW) officials at a recent public meeting provides reasons for optimism. Let’s take a closer look at progress on the three key elements.

1. High-quality instructional materials

Ohio’s reading initiative requires public schools (both district and charter) to adopt and use high-quality instructional materials (HQIM) that are approved by the state based on their alignment to the science of reading. This was a smart move by lawmakers, as research demonstrates that HQIM can improve student learning and achievement. But it’s also the heaviest implementation lift. According to a statewide survey, just one-third of Ohio districts were using core ELA curricula that met the state’s newly established standards during the 2022–23 school year.

Reading programs can be expensive, which is why lawmakers set aside $64 million to help districts purchase new materials. DEW wisely allocated most of those funds to schools needing to make the most significant changes. Districts that reported using non-aligned curricula received an average of $121 per PK–5 student, while those that reported partial alignment received $101. As of June 15, more than three-quarters of Ohio districts and schools—732 in total, or 82 percent—report using state-approved HQIM. Unfortunately, 10 percent (eighty-seven districts and schools) admit to being just partially aligned, and another 8 percent (seventy-three districts and schools) are not aligned. Those districts will need to make changes prior to the start of the new school year to be in compliance with state law.

2. Professional development for educators

When it comes to improving student achievement, studies show that teachers matter more than any other element of schooling. It was a no-brainer, then, for lawmakers to invest in professional development for teachers working in Ohio public schools. They followed a two-pronged approach.

First, they required all current educators (that includes teachers and administrators) to complete a professional development course in the science of reading by June 30, 2025. DEW partnered with Keys to Literacy, an NCTQ recommended professional development provider, to provide the course, and offered multiple options based on an educator’s role, grade band, and previously completed training. Stipends were available for those who completed the course. As of July 1, more than 144,000 completion certificates had been issued.

Second, lawmakers sought to provide additional support to struggling schools via state-funded literacy coaches. A 2024 report noted that a total of thirty-three coaches provided over 5,600 coaching sessions, nearly half of which were one-on-one individualized support for teachers, in fifty-four schools. By 2025, eighty-four reading coaches were providing support to educators in 125 schools. More than 33,000 coaching sessions were conducted, with almost 60 percent (nearly 20,000) identified as one-on-one individualized support. During the recent public meeting, DEW noted that the number of sessions and time spent on coaching activities were “positively associated with increases in student achievement scores over time.”

But that’s not all. Recognizing the importance of ongoing professional development, lawmakers used the recently passed House Bill 96 to build on these efforts. Not only did they maintain funding for literacy coaches to the tune of $12 million a year, DEW will also be required to maintain its introductory science of reading course and develop a new competency-based course that licensed educators must complete every five years. Together, these efforts should ensure that Ohio teachers and administrators continue to receive the training and support they need to boost students’ literacy skills.

3. Audits of teacher preparation programs

If Ohio wants to boost literacy outcomes, it’s important to ensure that the next generation of educators has been properly trained before they enter the classroom. Unfortunately, a 2023 report analyzing the course materials of twenty-six Ohio undergraduate and graduate preparation programs[1] found uneven training efforts in elementary reading. Seven programs earned “A” ratings while another six received an “F.” The state’s largest preparation programs (including Ohio State and Ohio University) received mixed reviews.

To address this issue, lawmakers enacted provisions that require the state to exercise more significant oversight over teacher preparation programs. More specifically, the Ohio Department of Higher Education (ODHE) was charged with auditing programs to ensure that teacher candidates are well-trained in the science of reading. ODHE has already published its metrics and contracted with The Meadows Center to conduct the initial round of audits, which began this spring. This fall, the department will release final reports for each of the roughly fifty programs that were assessed along with an overall statewide analysis. Programs found to be out of alignment with the state’s science of reading expectations will have one year to address identified issues. If they fail to do so, the chancellor will revoke their approval. Going forward, programs will be reviewed every four years. 

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Ohio’s bold early literacy reforms have the potential to vastly improve reading achievement, which could have a profound impact on short- and long-term outcomes for kids. To realize that potential, though, rigorous implementation is crucial. There’s still a long way to go before we can celebrate a job well done. But the implementation progress that’s been made in the three areas outlined above should hearten families and advocates.

Conventional wisdom holds that elected officials pay a political price when they champion bold education reforms. These efforts, after all, usually step on the toes of powerful interest groups—most notably, teachers’ unions, which can organize opposition and punish reformers at the ballot box. Here in Ohio, the supposed costs of seeing through tough-minded reforms has led lawmakers to backtrack as soon as they began to feel the political heat (think: academic distress commissions and reading retention).

But do bold reforms actually diminish electoral fortunes? A new study from Wisconsin sheds light, offering findings that should hearten policymakers seeking to shake up the status quo. Conducted by Yale professor Barbara Biasi and colleague Wayne Sandholtz, the analysis reveals that the school reforms led by Governor Scott Walker boosted his performance in subsequent statewide elections.

A quick primer on the Wisconsin context. Fresh off his first-term election in 2010, Governor Walker pushed through landmark legislation (“Act 10”) that weakened teachers’ unions and gave managerial authority back to district leaders. Among the provisions, the act dramatically narrowed the scope of collective bargaining to base wages only. This allows districts to determine teachers’ compensation above the base, whether tied to effectiveness, professional responsibilities, content area, seniority, or some mix of these and other factors. Act 10 also required annual union recertification by a majority of district teachers, a requirement that quickly reduced both the number of local unions as well as their membership. It also eliminated unions’ ability to strike and forbade them from automatically collecting agency fees (which the Supreme Court would later outlaw nationwide).  

These sweeping changes set off an uproar that attracted media attention and thrust Governor Walker into the national spotlight. The controversial measure also provoked a statewide recall election that put the governor’s career on the line. Yet beyond the political fallout, previous research (also by Biasi) has found that the act—as intended—significantly altered the way Wisconsin schools are run. Many school districts did indeed use their newfound pay flexibilities to better attract and retain effective early-career teachers by ratcheting up their pay, while also clamping down on seniority-driven pay raises. Most importantly, students benefitted from Act 10. State math scores, for instance, rose by 0.17 standard deviations five years after districts began implementing reforms.

Turning back to electoral impacts, Biasi and Sandholtz leverage the different expiration dates of districts’ pre-Act 10 teachers’ contracts to study the political implications for Governor Walker. In the years immediately after passage, some districts were “early treated”—they implemented Act 10 earlier, as their old contracts expired sooner than “late treated” districts, which still operated under the previous contract at the time of the election. This allows the analysts to look at vote shares in the early- versus late-treated districts. What do they find? The implementation of Act 10 increased the share of votes won by Governor Walker in the 2012 recall and his second-term race two years later. Specifically, they estimate that the reforms increased his vote share by 1.4 percentage points—about 20 percent of his margin of victory.

Why the boost? The analysts point to diminished union influence, but also evidence suggesting that voter gains were larger in districts where junior teachers received bigger pay raises and where student learning gains were stronger. In other words, educators and parents may have begun to sense the positive changes happening inside schools, and rewarded the governor at the ballot box. As the authors conclude: “The reform won votes not only by weakening unions, but also by improving the experience of public education for a significant share of providers [i.e., educators] and users.”

These findings don’t suggest that going big on education reform is entirely risk-free. Governor Walker, after all, faced a recall that would not have occurred sans Act 10. And unions have certainly defeated reformers in other places. Nevertheless, as the Wisconsin case demonstrates, pushing the envelope on education reform—and sticking to it—can be a winner, not only at the ballot box but also for parents and students.

Providing some form of “no strings attached” money to low-income individuals and monitoring the results is a longstanding research protocol aimed at finding a tipping point at which people’s lives measurably improve. Compared to what? Often it’s a comparison with others who are given lesser amounts in randomized control trials. A new report from the Rooted School Foundation looks at outcomes of the latest iteration—conducted with high school students for the first time. Some of the academic outcomes are interesting. And though the results are underwhelming, that may not be the point.

Students in grades nine through 12 were recruited during their orientation at three charter schools—two in New Orleans and one in Indianapolis, all supported by the Rooted School Foundation—over two consecutive school years. Those chosen for the treatment groups received $50 per week over 40 weeks via a reloadable debit card funded by another non-profit, while those in the control groups received a $10 Amazon gift card monthly. The big picture goal is stated to be “rapidly reduc[ing] child poverty while increasing academic achievement, financial capability, and mental health” among young people, though this report concentrates on the academic and financial capability outcomes.

Phase I of the project (2022–23) comprised 74 treatment students and 77 control students at two schools; Phase II (2023–24) comprised 90 treatment students and 150 control students at three schools. Spending data, for treatment group students only, came from the bank issuing the cards, with permission from students over 18 and the parents of those under 18. (The average age of students in both treatment and control groups was 16.) Academic data were provided by the schools and all students completed a Financial Capability Survey created by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, as well as an in-depth questionnaire called Possible Selves, developed at the University of Kansas, to assess their self-perceptions.

The vast majority of students in both groups were Black and low-income, with more than 80 percent of families reporting $50,000 or less in annual income. Nearly 90 percent of treatment group students reported having jobs, as did 92 percent of control group students.

First let’s look at the comparison findings. Students who received the cash attended 1.23 more days of school in the semester following the intervention than students in the control group. While differences in average GPA were not statistically significant, control group students did consistently record higher average GPA than their treatment group peers. On the other hand, the latter showed greater understanding of financial products (such as savings accounts and IRAs) and long-term expenditure planning compared to the control group. Both groups reported increased feelings of control over their finances and confidence in making long-term decisions, with no significant differences between groups.

What did students who received $2,000 per school year spend their money on? The basics. Nearly half (45.8 percent) was spent on food, with retail sales and services (35.2 percent) and transportation expenses (12 percent) consuming most of the rest. Quotes from student interviews state that many in the treatment group became co-breadwinners for their families, contributing to food, transportation, rent, and other necessities for siblings and parents, as well as themselves. Additionally, some treatment group students amassed significant savings[1] by underspending their weekly $50 in pursuit of some large future expenditure.

The report does not analyze these findings at all, but Hechinger Reports coverage of it finds several voices within the Rooted School family willing to laud the handful of statistically-significant results as “incredibly impactful” or “laying the foundation for lifelong financial capability,” despite the fact that much of the data shows little or no difference between the higher-award and lower-award groups. Nor does $50 per week seem likely to achieve the goals of rapidly reducing childhood poverty, boosting academic achievement, and all the rest.

But even before numbers were crunched for this report, the “no strings cash for kiddos” experiment was already expanding to more schools in Louisiana (thanks to a $1 million investment by the City of New Orleans) and to a school in Washington, D.C. Each of the expansions is using the same methodology and data capture protocols with the promise of more reports in the years ahead. So perhaps making strides toward understanding the results is secondary to just running the experiment again and again in different permutations, perhaps hoping for more dramatic results.

Is that a pipedream? A recent New York Times piece discusses another novel iteration, this time focused on children in four metro areas whose low-income moms received $333 per month for four years after giving birth. Their children showed no significant differences in terms of language skills, behavioral problems, executive functioning, or cognitive development than four-year-olds in a comparison group that received just $20 per month. “We were all very surprised,” by this outcome, said one of the researchers. “The money did not make a difference.” Similar findings to the Rooted School experiment. But another member of the birth-mother research team stressed that there was still two more years to go on the experiment and conclusions must wait for the next report showing outcomes when the children turn six. In that case, as with the Rooted School experiment, the point seems to be to keep the research dance going with new and innovative permutations in the hope that minimal or null effects will somehow grow.

SOURCE: Stacia West, Zibei Chen, and Joana Halder, “The $50 Study: Outcomes from a dual-year randomized controlled trial,” Rooted School Foundation (June 2025).

For more than twenty-five years, Florida has been ground zero for school choice expansion. Among the many options for families are charter schools, private schools, tax-credit programs, microschools, ESAs, vouchers for students with special needs, homeschooling, and more. This diverse landscape makes the Sunshine State a perfect laboratory for analyzing what works—and what doesn’t—in the realm of school choice. A new report looks at a thorny issue specific to vouchers: why tens of thousands of Florida families who applied for and received private school scholarships ended up not using them.

In 2023, Governor Ron DeSantis removed the previous income-based eligibility limits on the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship and the Family Empowerment Scholarship for Educational Options, making both private-school tuition-support programs available to every K–12 student in the state. Caps on the number of available scholarships were also eliminated. This resulted in a surge of applications, awardees, and users—to the tune of a 70 percent increase in usage in two years. That usage would have been even higher, but 41,000 families that applied for and were awarded scholarships for their children from these two programs did not ultimately use them. Step Up for Students, a Scholarship Funding Organization approved by the Florida Department of Education to administer the various scholarship programs available to residents, wanted to know why. Researchers Ron Matus and Dava Cherry emailed over 32,000 of these families in January and February of 2025. Using reminders and a drawing for ten $100 gift cards as incentives, they eventually received 2,739 completed surveys.

Approximately 40 percent of survey respondents’ children were Hispanic, approximately 31 percent were White, and 23.5 percent were Black. Thus, survey respondents were more likely to be Black and Hispanic, and less likely to be White, than families who received and actually used their scholarships. Survey respondents were also less likely to be in the highest income tier and more likely not to have reported their incomes than the families who used the scholarships. However, 40 percent of respondents who did report incomes were below 185 percent of the Federal Poverty Guidelines. Interestingly, a majority of survey respondents (50.3 percent) reported a bachelor’s degree or above as their highest level of educational attainment, followed by some college but no degree (14.5) and associate-level degrees (14.3). Less than 3 percent of respondents indicated they had an education level below high school graduation. Survey respondents with multiple children indicated using a variety of school types, with zoned or assigned public schools the single largest category (36.9 percent), followed by private schools (25.2) and charter schools (13.3). Fifty-five percent of respondents said they were somewhat satisfied or very satisfied with their child’s school at the time they applied for the scholarship, while 30.2 percent were somewhat dissatisfied or very dissatisfied.

Despite the fact that they ultimately didn’t use their awards, the vast majority of respondents indicated a strong desire for those scholarships, and Black and Hispanic parents were likelier to say the scholarship was very important to them (94.3 percent) than White parents (77.6). Higher income parents, with a similar spread, were more likely to say the scholarship was very important to them than their lower-income counterparts. Specifically, a desire for more individual attention and smaller class sizes was the most-commonly-cited reason for applying for the private school scholarships, with Black parents and low-income parents being the most motivated by this factor.

So why didn’t these relatively well educated and motivated families use the scholarships they applied for? Just over a third of respondents (34.7 percent) said there were no available seats at the private school they wanted, and 19.7 percent said the scholarship amount—both programs provide an average of $8,000 per year—wasn’t enough to cover tuition at their desired school. Another 19.6 percent were specifically concerned about affording additional fees beyond tuition. Just under 10 percent cited lack of transportation to and from school, and 5.8 percent said the school they were interested in was too far away to be practical for them every day, with or without transportation provided.

A third of parents (36.5 percent) who didn’t use their scholarships ended up switching school types anyway (such as moving from a traditional district school to a charter). Destinations included brick-and-mortar charters, virtual schools, and open-enrollment district schools. And those who moved were twice as likely to express satisfaction (20.4 percent) with their new school than to express dissatisfaction (10.5), regardless of destination. Two-thirds of respondents said they’d apply for the scholarships again, including 63 percent of those who switched school types and 55.5 percent of those who were satisfied after doing so.

Overall, two things seem to be going on. First, universal eligibility with no caps incited a sort of widespread “speculation” among families looking for a different choice, and many applied without a concrete plan as to how their scholarships could or would be used. Since Florida does not require scholarships to be used once awarded, families were free to choose other options that they determined were a better fit without any sort of penalty.

Second, the longstanding barriers to voucher usage that have been commonly associated with choice programs in various states—lack of open seats, finding reliable transportation, and affording out-of-pocket expenses—are still present in Florida, and universal eligibility does not alleviate them. The only element that has changed in Florida is that folks who would normally be deterred from applying by these roadblocks are emboldened by open eligibility and no enrollment caps to try their luck anyway. Eligibility for future years is not impacted by failing to use an award, but families do have to apply again in future years, which 66.7 percent of survey respondents indicated they would do. Thus, while many families were able to capitalize on the new, unlimited eligibility model, that model was still not robust enough for tens of thousands of other families still dissuaded by the same old troubles voucher families have faced since their inception.

SOURCE: Ron Matus and Dava Cherry, “Going with Plan B: Why thousands of Florida parents didn’t use their school choice scholarships,” Step Up for Students (July 2025).

Writing in National Review, Audrey Fahlberg describes efforts by Republican governors in a growing number of states to ban candy and soda from purchases paid for with federal SNAP benefits—the program formerly known as Food Stamps.

Hurrah for them, I say, aware that they must get waivers (from the federal Food Nutrition Act) to do this and that the food industry fights back fiercely, with heavy lobbying both in Washington and in their state capitals. The waiver part appears to be getting easier—four more states have requests getting reviewed—under RFK’s “MAHA” initiative, but the lobbying isn’t getting any less intense.

Why are governors (and Kennedy) doing this? Sure, it will help a bit on the margin to make the population healthier—a good thing—but GOP leaders tend to shun “nanny state” practices. At least as important, they’re saying, is to curb government subsidies of bad nutrition with taxpayer dollars.

As HHS Secretary Kennedy recently put it at a rally with Oklahoma governor Kevin Stitt, “If you want to drink a bottle of soda, you should be able to have that right….[But] the federal government should not be paying for it through taxpayer money.”

What I’m wondering is whether GOP leaders—governors, especially, but also Education Secretary Linda McMahon—will apply the same standard to awful schools and fraudulent providers that are supported by payments generated by federal tax credits (from the “Big Beautiful” new measure) and state-level voucher and ESA programs. (Because it’s a tax provision, Treasury Secretary Bessent will have more to say than McMahon—but he will likely seek her advice when writing the regulations.)

The libertarian wing of the school-choice world—including smart and earnest folks like Robert Enlow and Michael McShane—appears to be as opposed to quality-control regulation of such programs as Coca-Cola is to soda bans.

Whereas Food Stamps got underway in 1961 and (as with school lunches) there’s much history and debate about what does and doesn’t qualify, the explosion of private-school choice programs—which now sometime include subsidies for home schooling and sundry education “supplements”—is a recent development, the more so with Congress having just entangled Uncle Sam in a potentially very big way even as Texas lawmakers created a vast new program in the Lone Star State.

What does and doesn’t qualify is, today, a hodgepodge of differing state definitions and rules. That’s not wrong, for states generally do and should decide these things. They license schools to operate in the first place and they determine what satisfies their “compulsory attendance” laws. So governors should engage with this issue, with what gets put into kids’ heads as well as what goes into their mouths.

What’s to be done with fraudulent education operators? With schools in which almost nobody learns to read or cipher? With schools (and “supplements”) that ignore U.S. history and civics? With rules so lax that ski trips may be charged as field trips?

If, as every serious economist believes, K–12 education serves a public purpose—creating an educated society—as well as private purposes determined by parents and designed to benefit individuals, then states and their leaders have an obligation to ensure that that happens.

Every state has a constitutional provision assigning itself the responsibility of delivering education to its residents. The wording varies but the obligation is omnipresent.

I’m particularly taken with Indiana’s phrasing:

Knowledge and learning, generally diffused throughout a community, being essential to the preservation of a free government; it shall be the duty of the General Assembly to encourage, by all suitable means, moral, intellectual, scientific, and agricultural improvement; and to provide, by law, for a general and uniform system of Common Schools, wherein tuition shall be without charge, and equally open to all.

Indiana governor Mike Braun is among those now pushing to block soda and candy from SNAP. Will he and his peers do the same for K–12 schooling purchased with state or federal assistance? How will Secretary McMahon—or Bessent—encourage them to?

How high should that bar be set? Governors working on SNAP aren’t saying that only organic products qualify or that bran flakes are the only breakfast cereal worthy of subsidy. They’re actually setting quite a low bar, just evicting the worst offenders.

When it comes to schooling, some of us would be thrilled to see states set the bar high, allowing only high-performing schools and providers to participate. But that edges into nanny state territory and may discourage the innovation and dynamism that K–12 education sorely needs.

Surely, though, there should be at least a low bar—and where exactly to set it should get serious discussion and gubernatorial attention. Should doughnuts qualify for SNAP? Should schools that fail to teach the basics qualify for tax credits? Even the much-more-heavily regulated charter sector continues to run into fraud problems. So let’s get these questions into high-level policy considerations, not just disputations among ed-wonks. A good place to begin is agreeing that it’s nuts to say there should be no bar at all!