Mississippi continues to outperform most of the nation in education, according to a new report, but health outcomes for children remain dismal. 

The , published annually by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, shows the state’s education ranking has held steady at 16th nationwide. Unchanged since last year, this ranking on education is Mississippi’s highest score ever, according to the foundation’s rubric.

In other measures, though, Mississippi still struggles.

The report puts Mississippi at 49th for economic well-being, 50th for health and 49th for family and community. 

“When we think about children and families where the household head lacks a diploma, that’s tied to a chance of children living in poverty in that house,” said Ashley Parker Sheils, executive director of Children’s Foundation of Mississippi. “Every one of these indicators is an opportunity for us to work together to do better for the children of our state.”

Despite progress in categories that measure economic well-being and outcomes for families and communities, those rankings fell this year for Mississippi. States are ranked relative to each other. Other states also saw improvements, so Mississippi’s rankings fell slightly in those categories. The results put Mississippi at 50th in the country for overall child well-being compared to 48th last year. 

For the first time since the foundation began maintaining these child-centric data rankings in 1990, states received a comprehensive score in the Data Book, tracking a number of indicators from 2019 to 2024. Across the country, state education scores were the lowest of the four categories — education, health, economic well-being and family and community.

Louisiana and Mississippi were the only states to make progress in education during the five-year period, according to the KIDS COUNT data. The Data Book attributes the state’s success to investing in teacher training, strengthening early education infrastructure and passing the 2013 Literacy-Based Promotion Act. Experts say that helped raise reading proficiency among the state’s youngest students. 

“Mississippi’s continued progress is the result of effective work by our educators, supportive families throughout the years and strong policies,” said Lance Evans, state superintendent of education, in a press release about the KIDS COUNT data. “We are proud of this milestone and remain committed to building on it for Mississippi students.”

Chronic absenteeism, however, remains an issue across the country and in Mississippi. The Data Book notes that chronic absenteeism, defined as missing 10% of the school year or 18 school days, among Mississippi students is 27.6% — more than double what was reported immediately prior to the pandemic.

State leaders have increasingly expressed concern about the chronic absenteeism rates in Mississippi. Absenteeism is directly tied to student achievement, and small schools in high-poverty districts are especially impacted.

Despite the state’s performance in education, Mississippi is still dead last in child health outcomes and had one of the sharpest drops in child health outcomes since 2019, according to the report.

Sheils said the findings were bittersweet. Her organization helps produce a  for the data each year, which provides county-specific information for local communities.

“You see the numbers and you have that moment of, ‘Should we just pack up and go home?’ ” she said. “There’s definitely disappointment … We must improve and do better for our children.”

Ohio lawmakers have passed a bill that would require schools to teach students to graduate high school, get a job, and get married — in that order — before having a baby. They call this order of events the success sequence.

 passed 58-36 during Wednesday’s House session and the Ohio Senate concurred with the changes made to the bill later that night before going on summer break.

Ohio Republican state Reps. Haraz Ghanbari, Gayle Manning, and Jason Stephens joined Ohio House Democrats in voting against the bill.

State Sen. Kristina Roegner, R-Hudson, introduced the bill, which originally began as legislation that would allow Ohio to join the Interstate Compact for School Psychologists, which allows licensed professionals to provide services across state lines.

The bill passed the Ohio Senate unanimously in November.

The Ohio House Education Committee made changes to the bill, including adding the success sequence.

“Young people are statistically far less likely to live in poverty when they complete high school, work full time, and marry before having children,” said Ohio Rep. Sarah Fowler-Arthur, R-Ashtabula.

“This gives young people tools to make informed decisions about education, work, family, and their future stability.”

The Heritage Foundation — the right-wing think tank that published — provides model legislation for the success sequence.

The bill requires the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce to have a curriculum list for the success sequence for grades 6-12 and this would be a graduation requirement.

Following these sequences of events means people are “overwhelmingly less likely to live in poverty in adulthood,” the says.

However, a found those who finish high school, work full time, and get married are less likely to experience poverty, but the order did not matter much.

“I feel like some of us must have missed the basic statistical lesson that correlation is not causation,” said state Rep. Beryl Brown Piccolantonio, D-Gahanna.

“It completely misses the fact that there are so many other explanations for why so many people struggle in life so much. … Teaching that graduation, then work, then marriage, and then kids equals success also leaves out all of the unique ways that people live in our state.”

, a standalone success sequence bill,

State Rep. Sean Brennan, D-Parma, shared the story of his mom who graduated high school, got a job, got married, and eventually gave up her job to raise her two children.

“Her path did not follow a fairytale outcome,” Brennan said. “She suffered horrible abuse from her husband, lost everything when he left. She’s forced to work two low-paid, non-union jobs, supplemented by public assistance to keep clothes on her kids’ backs, food on the table.”

She later died of breast cancer.

“The so-called success sequence did not save my mother,” Brennan said. “It didn’t shield her from poverty or systemic societal problems. … Just because some individuals who follow a certain pathway avoid poverty, it doesn’t mean those steps cause success for everyone.”

Brennan also said teaching the success sequence is one more burden on teachers.

“They’re already stretched thin, and this part of this bill adds another requirement,” he said.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Ohio Capital Journal maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor David Dewitt for questions: info@ohiocapitaljournal.com.

“I didn’t want to spend that much time away, pay all of that, and then get minimal time for my first baby.” But by the time Rex was 3, she noticed signs of a speech delay, so she decided it would be best to send him to an early learning program to increase his interactions with peers. She began researching local options and reached out to Pre-K 4 SA, a preschool not far from her home in San Antonio. 

She visited the program, which was in a brand new building with a spacious outdoor play area. The staff was friendly, she said, and meals were included. She didn’t think such an in-demand location would have an opening for Rex, but they did — and she was surprised to learn that he could attend at no cost to her. 

Pre-K 4 SA is a citywide early childhood education initiative that operates multiple preschools across San Antonio. Rex, like 80% of children enrolled in the program, qualified for a full scholarship.

After one year, Almendarez said she noticed improvements in his speech. Rex learned his letters and how to count, and even how to swim. When her second son, Raiden, turned 3, she enrolled him as well. Now, pregnant with her third child, she hopes to enroll the baby in the Pre-K 4 SA pilot program for infants and toddlers. She also hopes to put her degree in early childhood education to use and be hired as a teacher in the program. 

Like Almendarez, Mariana Rios was hesitant to send her daughter Emma to preschool. Her husband’s family is Salvadoran and believed young children should stay home with a parent or relative. But Rios and her husband were intrigued by the quality of education that Pre-K 4 SA offered and decided to enroll Emma in 2023. Because of the sliding-scale cost model, Emma’s tuition was only $128 per month. 

When Emma began kindergarten after two years at the preschool, Rios recalled her teacher saying she could spot the kids who had attended Pre-K 4 SA based on their exemplary behavioral and social skills. Her mother-in-law, once a vocal skeptic of preschool, now encourages other family members to talk to Rios about the benefits of the program.

From modest backing to broad support for early childhood 

Emma, Rex and Raiden are just three of more than 23,000 children who have gone through Pre-K 4 SA since the program began in 2013. The first two locations opened their doors to 3- and 4-year-olds shortly after San Antonio voters in 2012 to add a ⅛-cent city sales tax to fund early childhood programs. One-eight of a cent was the maximum increase the city could make, according to Texas law, which caps sales tax at .��

The sales tax revenue, which has steadily grown, has come to serve as a dedicated revenue source for the program’s five locations. At the time of its proposal, the tax was estimated to . In 2025, it brought in , the bulk of Pre-K 4 SA’s $61.2 million annual revenue. 

The path to building a designated funding source for early childhood education was complicated. The idea for Pre-K 4 SA came from then-Mayor Julián Castro, who created a , featuring prominent local business leaders, to address some of the issues plaguing San Antonio. Those included the city’s , its and . The city was also facing a : Young people were moving to Austin for college and then staying there.��

The task force came up with a plan to improve San Antonio: , and allocate a specified revenue source to do so. 

In March 2012, in his State of the City address, Castro to put a sales tax increase directed to Pre-K 4 SA on the ballot, but he wasn’t sure how it would go since any change to the sales tax .

In November 2012, many community members were unconvinced that 4-year-olds belonged in schools, said Sarah Baray, CEO of Pre-K 4 SA. “There were a lot of questions about whether the city belonged in education at all.” The plan faced opposition from some residents in the business community, from higher-income residents and even from leaders in local school districts, who viewed the city’s plan to establish pre-K centers as competition for their own publicly funded pre-K programs.��

“Texas is a state that doesn’t like to pay taxes,” said Baray. Ultimately a sales tax was the path of least resistance. 

“Property taxes tend to be highly visible and directly tied to household finances,” said Larrisa Wilkinson, deputy CEO of Pre-K 4 SA. “Sales taxes, although regressive, are smaller costs spread across many people in everyday purchases, so they’re less noticeable and less likely to trigger strong pushback,” she said. 

The 2012 measure passed with . Within a year, Pre-K 4 SA opened two centers. A year later,

By 2020, when the sales tax was up for renewal, the initiative had been underway for seven years and had . By that time, there was evidence of success. conducted by University of Texas at San Antonio found that by third grade, Pre-K 4 SA students had higher math and reading scores as compared to their peers. The most pronounced effects were for children from low-income families and those with limited English proficiency. A cost-benefit of Pre-K 4 SA found that families enrolled in its extended-day program earned an average of $240 more per week than families who did not participate. For many families in San Antonio, a city with one of the , those funds can make the difference between living in financial security or hovering close to the poverty line. 

These data points made going back to the community and asking for support easier the second time, said Paul Chapman, who had been the chief communications officer at the time and now serves as chief operating officer at Pre-K 4 SA. “We could communicate to the community the status of what they have invested in and how we are doing.” In 2020, the ballot measure .

After that, the program continued to grow, adding a fifth center in 2023, which opened in partnership with a local school district. 

As part of its mission to improve the quality of childcare, the program also provides shared services, training and education for more than 90 childcare providers in San Antonio. In 2025, Pre-K 4 SA spent over of its annual revenue on grants for external childcare providers in San Antonio, which has helped neutralize some of their earlier opposition that had viewed the program as a competitor. 

While sales tax revenue can vary year to year, it has provided enough stability to continue expanding. One of its locations, South Education Center, opened a new building in August 2025, as part of a with HOLT Group, a large, local manufacturing company. HOLT paid to build the center, which expanded capacity to serve more families, and the intention is that Pre-K 4 SA will buy it back over time, said Tonda Brown, Pre-K 4 SA’s chief of schools.

Astonishing teacher retention in a field with high turnover

Pre-K 4 SA has made deep investments in its workforce: All teachers and support staff are city employees with benefits including health insurance, paid time off and a retirement plan. 

The average pay for the program’s lead teachers is between $71,743 and $90,396, well over the of $65,000, and some lead teachers with extensive experience make over $100,000, Brown said. (Nationally, preschool teachers have of $32,000, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.) 

In April 2026, 324 teachers were offered a contract to return in 2026-27, Brown said. All but two submitted a letter of intent to return — an astonishing feat in the U.S. early care and education sector, which struggles with .

“What makes San Antonio different is quality,” Wilkinson said. “No program nationally does the comprehensive work that Pre-K 4 SA does,” she added, referring to the combination of direct services, family engagement and professional learning opportunities. In her experience, she said, many states and localities prioritize access to early care and education over quality. “If you do not have a quality program, what is the point? Mediocre programs can have negative impacts,” she said.��

As widespread budget cuts have strained the early care and education sector, some states and localities have been exploring how best to invest in early childhood programs. While some efforts have yielded progress — , and broadening — many have relied on a temporary windfall, such as federal relief aid or a one-time budget surplus. That can create long-term expectations for providers and families that become difficult to sustain once the funding expires.

San Antonio bucked that trend by identifying that a sales tax could offer a dedicated, protected revenue source to provide more stability and consistency for childcare programs.

“Funding innovation is happening on the local level,” Wilkinson said. “Communities are saying ‘we want this, we need this, we are not going to be able to rely on state funding on its own.’ ”

The sales tax used to fund early childhood in San Antonio will be up for a vote again in 2028, and Baray said she is “cautiously optimistic” for its passage. Baray has witnessed a shift in mindsets about 4-year-olds in preschool, with more families, like Rios’, realizing how beneficial such programs can be for young learners. It helps, Chapman said, that family engagement, especially in the Hispanic community, was such a large part of their program.

“It didn’t negate the role of family in early education. It brought it in,” said Chapman. “Our goal is that Pre-K 4 SA earns that place of inevitability in the mind of the community that we serve.”

In the midst of all the noise, one thing is clear: Americans, across party lines, want in public education. But most do not want it dismantled. Their top priorities are straightforward: teach students real-world skills, keep schools safe and make learning more engaging. Parents want more say in their children’s education, and they want schools to prepare young people to be active, participating citizens.

Anaheim Union High School District in California offers a for changing districts and communities, not just individual schools: reimagining what counts as knowledge, redesigning how educators are utilized and rethinking the boundaries of learning in high school, college and the workplace. The district serves 26,000 students in 20 junior and senior high schools, more than 80% of them high-needs. Its journey shows the pedagogical and political power of building shared purpose around deeper, more personalized learning tied to real-world skills.

The district made three big moves. It built the Anaheim Collaborative, a partnership that brings together colleges, social and health agencies, businesses and local organizations. It invested in community schooling that brings parent and student voice into teaching and learning. And it placed a premium on learning academic content through the 5Cs: collaboration, creativity, critical thinking, communication and compassion.

Anaheim began by loosening the grip of test-based curriculum and investing in teachers, many in hybrid roles, to lead bold innovations with their students. For example, biology teacher Sabina Giakoumis led the development of the Magnolia Agriculture Community Center, which fueled interdisciplinary teaching and service learning as students applied math and science to address Anaheim’s food deserts and develop entrepreneurial skills. Jason Collar, a social studies teacher, leveraged a Minecraft elective to engage students in solving neighborhood problems and soon established an e-sports career pathway in partnership with Fullerton College.

With the , the district offers an early glimpse of how AI can customize learning with whole-child supports, such as an AI-driven tutor that can help guide students’ thinking, and measure academic and so-called soft skills. Its Cambridge Virtual Academy has broken from the factory model of schooling by organizing teachers into interdisciplinary teams, blending live instruction with flexible independent study, and using peer mentoring and AI tools to strengthen relationships among teachers and students. Since the school opened in 2021, full-time enrollment has grown from 100 to 315 students.

District graduation rates have significantly since 2016, from 86% to 94%, and Anaheim Orange County counterparts serving fewer high-needs students in college admission and persistence rates. It is also California’s first Democracy District, integrating civic learning across schools and disciplines.

But Anaheim also teaches a humbling lesson: What got the district this far will not get it all the way to system transformation. Too many of its middle and high schools still operate with traditional bell schedules and isolated classrooms. Too few teachers have the time to learn from colleagues. The district’s collective bargaining agreement and salary schedule remain rooted in an archaic, one-teacher/one-classroom model that discourages educators from pushing one another to improve and sharing responsibility for student success. And the district office still needs a clearer mechanism to identify and spread teaching talent across schools.

These are not criticisms. They are mile markers on the roadmap to transformation. Drawing on the lessons learned, three major steps stand out.

First, build a community infrastructure for deeper, purposeful, real-world learning. Districts should formalize partnerships among colleges, health and social service agencies, nonprofits, business and industry into advisory boards and learning exchanges. They should establish a shared data system that combines traditional metrics with measures of student voice and parent engagement, civic participation and readiness for careers in the age of AI.

Second, redesign time, staffing and the job of teaching around shared accountability for results. Teaching teams, not isolated educators, must become the default unit of secondary school redesign. These teams should include academic teachers, career and technical educators, counselors, community school staff, college faculty and industry or community mentors who share responsibility for a common group of students. This will require new ways of thinking about human capital, including joint appointments and boundary-spanning roles for educators who work across schools, colleges, workplaces and community organizations.

Third, leverage AI to spur human-connected learning. Used poorly, AI will deepen the factory model: more screen time and more depersonalization. Used well, it can help teachers and students see what traditional schooling and current metrics miss: how young people are thinking, collaborating and creating. Districts should focus AI investments on helping students and teachers apply and reflect on what they are learning.

Not possible?

It is already happening across the country, albeit in bits and pieces. A window for transformation is opening. Growing in career education, apprenticeships and credentials suggests the field is ready to transcend political divides. The is leading a national effort in red and blue states to rethink the high school experience, coupled with efforts to overhaul what counts for college and career readiness. and the are working with innovative school districts to develop talent pipelines at scale.

Public education has a good future if educators, parents, students and business leaders work together locally to make the big changes Americans, Democrats and Republicans alike, say they want — and that every student deserves in this rapidly changing world.

A researcher at , a nonprofit focused on human connection in the age of AI, Lee asked: Why not?

In a word, the girl said: Instagram.

“If you try to dance at prom, you’re going to look stupid at some point,” Lee recalled her saying. Eventually someone will pull out a phone and you’ll end up on someone’s feed, seen by “the entire school” with mortifying results. Better just to play it safe. 

“Everybody just goes to prom to look cute,” the girl explained, “take a picture for the ‘gram, eat and leave.”

For Lee, who has spent years studying human belonging, that exchange unlocked an important, if unspoken, part of why AI holds such appeal. “We’ve created this set of conditions where young people don’t feel like they have permission to be their real, unfiltered selves,” she said in an interview. So they turn to AI, which is programmed to affirm them at every step.

from Lee and her colleagues offer this insight among others, painting a detailed portrait of how young people use AI and why. They surveyed 2,383 people ages 13 to 24 across the U.S. and found that for nearly half of them, AI has already reshaped their relationships in ways that are largely flying under the radar of parents, teachers and policymakers.

Among the findings:

• Just 15% of young people are in relationships with “personified AI” characters — but for about 45%, AI is already reshaping their real-life relationships;
• 53% of young people say they set clear boundaries with AI, using it alongside — not instead of — human support;
• 61% say parents rarely or never talk to them about AI, and 53% say the same about teachers;
• Youth from low-income households are three times less likely as others to engage with AI, but they report greater feeling: 21% feel lonely often or all the time, compared to 6% of high-income youth; 57% feel like a burden to others, compared to 42%; and only 34% feel a strong sense of belonging at school, compared to 62%.

For the study, researchers sorted respondents into four broad clusters. About 28% rarely or never use AI, often out of ethical reasons or just disinterest. The largest group, 39%, uses AI primarily as a practical tool. They turn to chatbots such as Claude, ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini for homework and research, while keeping clear boundaries between AI and their emotional lives. 

Another 18% use AI for personal and relational support, such as venting about a tough day, seeking relationship advice and processing emotions. And 15% engage with AI characters and personas in more intimate, companion-like ways.

Within the four groups, researchers found nine variations that challenge the conventional wisdom around AI use. For instance, among those who use AI for emotional support were two very different groups. Rithm calls them “Social Processors” and “Private Processors.” While they may look similar from the outside — both say they have lots of friends and use AI to work through their emotions — surveys found that the Social Processors use AI as just one tool among many. The Private Processors, by contrast, use it as a substitute for real human interactions because they feel they can’t bring problems to those around them.

That data point could hold the key to understanding problematic AI use, Lee and her colleagues said, challenging the idea that lonely teens with small social circles are most at risk of unhealthy AI dependence. The data suggest something else altogether, said Kashyap Rajesh, a rising junior at Cornell University who consulted on the report.

“The driver of risky AI use is not necessarily isolation,” he said. “It’s feeling like a burden [to others] — and that came through in the research.” 

The number of friends a young person has, the size of their social circle, how busy they are, whether they’ve got family nearby and even their feelings of loneliness barely predict whether they’ll fall into dependent AI use, he said. “What actually predicts it is specific feelings: Feeling like a burden to others, feeling like you can’t be your real self, feeling like there’s no one to turn to.”

Julia Freeland Fisher, a researcher at the Clayton Christensen Institute who advised on the study, said that finding should help start a different kind of conversation around AI. “Burdening one another is building reciprocity, which is how we maintain the social contract, how we maintain social cohesion,” she said. That young people are increasingly bypassing this step should be alarming, she said.

“AI companions wouldn’t be nearly so disruptive to human connection if we had a sturdier social fabric,” said Fisher. “It’s the weakness of our social fabric that makes these [findings] so worrisome, not necessarily the technology itself.”

‘It just keeps feeling easier than the alternative’

For Lee, the finding on being a burden reframes so much of our understanding about young people’s relationship to AI. Virtually every survey respondent reported a specific “relational rupture” or crisis that made them turn to the technology. 

One young woman’s first question to a chatbot was, “I didn’t get asked to Homecoming — am I unlovable?” Another: “I got into a huge fight with my best friend, and I don’t want to tell anybody else because I don’t want them to take sides, so I needed to ask AI.”

“Story after story after story,” Lee recalled, “of a very singular, acute, discrete moment when they really had a moment of need and needed somewhere to put it.”

Rajesh, the Cornell student, said the data reveal a steady shift in which perhaps millions of young people are quietly moving from letting AI help with homework to asking it to mediate their emotional lives.

“They start off using it to help them write an essay, or help them prepare for their interview, or to study for an exam,” he said. “And they’re like, ‘OK, damn, this is really good, this is really helpful.’ And eventually their interactions escalate.”

The drift happens gradually, he said. AI helps draft an email or respond to a text. Next it’s helping to navigate a social situation. Before long it’s processing a breakup.

Rajesh, who’s studying information science and AI policy, said his own AI use crept up on him: He went from studying with Claude to creating personalized AI study guides to wondering if even attending class mattered. 

“I found that how many times I go to class and how actively I’m paying attention in class is actually not the biggest indicator of my understanding of the content or exam performance,” he said. “It’s actually just how much time I spend with Claude dissecting the lecture slides and building study guides that work for me.”

The report notes that because even productivity-focused platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude are engineered to interact with warmth and reassurance, what starts out as homework help or playful experimentation can evolve into a substitute for human interaction.

What adults get wrong

Alongside the findings on AI use, researchers found that how adults talk about AI is also potentially problematic: Their conversations are almost always about academic integrity — cheating, plagiarism, source citation — and rarely about relationships.

Rajesh said adults should be asking directly whether young people are using AI to process emotions, to rehearse hard conversations and to get support when they’re struggling. “Those are questions that signal to a young person that the adult knows this dimension exists and isn’t going to freak out about it — which is, I think, the prerequisite for any honest conversation happening at all.”

Michelle Culver, the Rithm Project’s founder and a co-author of the report, said young people tell researchers that when the topic is AI use, they’re “navigating it alone.” She suggested that adults approach the topic with “curiosity” rather than “judgment or shaming.” That could help both sides gain insight into each others’ struggles in the face of a technology that’s constantly challenging their reality.

In the same way that educators are worried that young people aren’t engaging in the “productive struggle” of learning academic content, Culver said, “We similarly worry that young people might offload the relational work to AI and become ill-equipped to handle the very messy human friction of real relationships.”

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On a recent Friday morning, Fresno Unified high school students learned about the rise and fall of major companies in the stock market — from Walmart’s longevity to Apple’s surge past oil companies and Amazon’s emergence as a $1 trillion company.

Earlier that week, students at the Farber Educational Center, an alternative learning campus, had finished a competitive project for their personal finance class. Using $100,000 in pretend money, they invested in the stock market and tracked their strategy’s success.

The state’s third-largest school district, a pioneer in developing these personal finance courses, offers a preview of how educators will meet California’s new high school graduation requirement, teaching students life skills such as banking, managing debt and building wealth.

California will require all high schools to offer a personal finance course starting in 2027-28, and all students must take the class beginning with the graduating class of 2031. By adding the course at most of its high schools before the legislation, Fresno Unified emerged as an early adopter — so much so that the state tapped one of the district’s educators to help guide the statewide rollout.

Since the 2023-24 school year, Jeff Allen has led the creation and implementation of personal finance courses across Fresno Unified, helping turn them into some of the district’s .

The California Department of Education selected Allen to lead the statewide rollout because of his hands-on approach in implementing Fresno Unified’s program. Already, Allen has authored a curriculum guide for the state’s educators.

“He demonstrated a combination of subject-matter expertise and direct, district-level implementation experience, along with a strong understanding of scheduling, credentialing and classroom realities,” said Scott Roark, a spokesperson for the state department of education.

‘I wish I had that’

In 2024, the state Legislature . Assembly Bill 2927 made California the 26th state to require a stand-alone personal finance course for all public high school students.

Making personal finance a graduation requirement has received little resistance because adults recognize its value, Allen said.

“You say personal finance, and it’s like a universal, ‘Oh, I wish I had that,’ ” he said. “You do not see that physical reaction (to other subjects) from parents and community members the same way that you see it with personal finance because, as an adult, you understand what you didn’t know and how you paid the consequences for it.”

That sentiment resonates with students too, including 18-year-old Daniel Tecomulapa at the Farber Educational Center.

“I wanted to be better with my finances,” Daniel said.

The practical benefits students receive from learning personal finance has motivated many educators to teach the course. KongMia Her, who teaches the class at Farber, said he wants students entering adulthood to avoid the financial mistakes he made.

“I didn’t have any education,” Her said. “No one taught me at school or at home.”

Fresno Unified personal finance classes

Following a class project, teacher KongMia Her reviewed the different strategies that students used to invest in stocks on May 22, 2026. The project-based learning is an instructional approach that Jeff Allen, the district’s teacher on special assignment for personal finance, has coached teachers to do. Credit: Lasherica Thornton/ EdSource

Her is among 17 Fresno Unified teachers this year who are instructing 730 students in the course.

Most Fresno Unified high schools offer personal finance as a yearlong course, though state law will only require one semester. Regardless of length, the district’s personal finance classes already cover the 13 topics mandated under AB 2927.

The lessons on retirement plans, savings, investments and credit scores have been some of the most meaningful for students in Her’s class at Farber.

The teens learned why they didn’t yet have credit scores, for example. During a call to Experian, Daniel discovered he had not owned his credit card long enough to develop a credit profile.

Students also learned how to build and maintain strong credit, including by making payments on time.

“(The class) teaches you to manage money correctly,” 16-year-old Autumn Walker said.

“I grew up and I was fortunate enough to have parents that told me the value of putting money into a bank, but that’s where it started and stopped. To see that that’s not even a standard baseline was both discouraging and encouraging,” Allen said. “Discouraging that that’s where we were, but encouraging that we could bring that information so easily.”

Over the past three years, Allen has supported and coached teachers, reviewed lessons and organized professional development.

Because the classes are already aligned with state standards, and most educators are in their second year of teaching the course, Allen is now helping teachers enrich the personal finance classes through community partnerships and programs.

So, teachers are going beyond the classroom, bringing in speakers from local credit unions, Rotary clubs and businesses.

During a financial literacy event at Farber, community organizations presented students with real-life scenarios about how food, housing and transportation costs affect budgets. At McLane High, students use the on-campus bank as part of the course. At Edison High, students pitched business ideas in a “that required them to calculate startup costs, needed investments and profit margins.

The qualifications required to teach personal finance in Fresno Unified will change under the state mandate. Right now, any teacher with a single-subject credential can teach the course in the district. Beginning 2027-28, however, only teachers credentialed in four subject areas will be eligible to teach the class.

Other school districts aren’t waiting for the state mandate to begin teaching personal finance. Pasadena Unified, Yosemite Unified in Oakhurst and San Luis Coastal Unified have launched courses at multiple high schools.

Elk Grove Unified in Sacramento County has offered a course since 2021, with enrollment growing each year.

Supporting teachers and schools

Staffing is often a challenge when schools must add new graduation requirements, but the state’s personal finance law gives districts several years to train teachers before the requirement takes effect.

Allen, who led the rollout in Fresno Unified, wrote the state’s personal finance curriculum guide to help districts create their own courses. He said he authored the guide to make the implementation of the new mandate less daunting for rank-and-file teachers.

He intentionally organized the curriculum guide around three questions: why personal finance education matters, what students should learn and how schools can put the course into practice.

And Allen continues to support districts as the state rolls out the requirement. Nearly 700 educators registered for a late May webinar he led on legislative requirements, implementation challenges and professional learning opportunities.

Allen highlighted ready-made resources districts can use, including the Next Gen Personal Finance platform, so teachers don’t have to build courses from scratch. Teachers statewide can access hours of professional development on topics ranging from car buying to “buy now, pay later” plans — lessons to pass down to their students.

Allen said personal finance classes generate some of the highest student engagement he has seen. Students enter class eager to pick up where the conversation left off the day before, he said.

“This is clearly seen by families, by students as one of the most, if not the most, relevant topics that they can be exposed to right now.”

It’s a structural problem that explains why community engagement efforts in schools so often fall short. School staffs are already stretched thin. Teachers and principals do not have time to manage unpredictable volunteers, coordinate one-off partnerships or repeatedly onboard outside groups that disappear after a single event. Even well-intentioned community support can become a burden if schools are forced to organize it themselves.

In 2017, leaders in the Dallas Independent School District and a local nonprofit, United to Learn, began approaching this challenge differently. Instead of treating community engagement as outreach, they treated it as infrastructure.

The idea was straightforward: If communities wanted to help schools, someone needed to build the operational systems that would make that help useful, consistent and geared to what educators actually wanted.

That meant creating processes that sound more logistical than inspirational. Principals identified specific school needs. Philanthropies filled funding gaps. Volunteer roles were clearly defined. Literacy tutors followed the district curriculum and were scheduled regularly during class time. Schools did not have to invent partnerships from scratch every semester.

Eight years later, in the 2024-25 school year, 2,064 volunteers gave more than 13,200 hours across 103 United to Learn partner schools in Dallas. These included 140 educators-in-training who collectively delivered 15,000 hours of tutoring to 800 students across 23 Title I schools. Other volunteers, donors and corporate partners have supported projects identified by school leaders, including gardens, community pantries, refreshed libraries with hands-on learning and makerspaces, STEM labs and outdoor areas. This coordination matters because it helps ensure that community support strengthens the work schools were already doing, rather than creating additional layers for educators to navigate.

Here’s what this model looks like in practice:

On a Tuesday morning, college student Oscar Yañez arrived before the first bell at Bethune Elementary, six minutes from his house, to work with second graders on phonics. As an education major working in United to Learn’s Aspiring Teachers program, he is paid, has a regular schedule and was trained in the district’s reading curriculum before he ever sat down with a child. Because Oscar visits the school three times a week, the kids at Bethune know him. When he graduates in December, he hopes to apply for a full-time teaching position at the school. According to fall-to-spring i-Ready assessment data, 91% of participating students improved their overall reading scores, and 62% advanced at least one full grade level in reading proficiency.

Clinton P. Russell Elementary had a state accountability rating of D two years ago. After the district promoted Chara Pace to principal, she led efforts to strengthen school culture, build camaraderie among colleagues and help teachers deliver high-quality curriculum more effectively. This built greater confidence, collaboration and trust. With intensive support from United to Learn, Russell has climbed to an A. Pace credits the partnership and its volunteers, along with a leadership development program that addresses leaders’ mental health and helps to avoid burnout.

At Esperanza “Hope” Medrano Elementary, more than 100 volunteers came together to set up a community pantry and outdoor garden, a project conceived by fifth-grade teacher Karina Solis — the great-granddaughter of the woman the school is named after. The school was able to shape a project that meant something to its own history.

The district’s role in all this matters enormously. Many districts struggle to translate community interest into support that is actually useful to schools. In Dallas, district leaders made a deliberate choice to open doors rather than keep people out. Early conversations between the district and the team that would later form United to Learn centered on a few simple questions: What did schools need and how could the community help? Together, they created a clear path for ongoing sustainable support aligned with school priorities. This approach is particularly important for historically underinvested schools whose leaders often hear promises from outside organizations that fail to materialize. School leaders in Dallas say this consistency matters as much as the individual projects themselves.

Maintaining it across what are now more than 124 schools is ongoing work. Schools’ needs differ, resources are finite and sustaining trained volunteers and long-term relationships across so many schools and communities requires constant coordination and adjustment. Dallas’s experience does not offer a simple formula, and it cannot be replicated through a single volunteer day or short-term initiative. 

Aldeman’s piece concludes by asking whether anyone is willing to build the infrastructure to convert the care communities feel for their local schools into something sustained and measurable. 

Dallas suggests one possible answer. Community engagement becomes more effective when schools are not asked to carry it alone. Like curriculum, transportation or staffing, partnership itself requires infrastructure. Without it, community support can remain episodic and symbolic. With it, schools may gain something more durable: consistent capacity serving what students, educators and school communities actually need. It is possible to break the pattern. The question is whether other districts are ready to try.

The squeak of sneakers on a gym floor and squawk of whistles are common school sounds during PE class. But with the increasing emphasis on academic testing in recent decades, are Wyoming public school students getting enough physical education and activity?

Likely not, said Dr. Ben Kern, an associate professor at the University of Wyoming who specializes in physical education research and pedagogy.

“A research study that I conducted with colleagues across the country noted that Wyoming elementary students only receive about 73 minutes per week of physical education,” Kern told the Legislature’s Joint Education Committee. “There are some elementary schools in Wyoming that offer 30 minutes of physical education to elementary students once every six school days. That’s roughly less than 30 class periods over the course of the entire school year.”

National guidelines from the Society of Health and Physical Educators  150 minutes of weekly instructional physical education for elementary school children, and 225 minutes for middle and high school students. In the more general category of “physical activity,” the organization recommends school-age children accumulate at least 60 minutes and up to several hours of physical activity daily while avoiding prolonged periods of inactivity. 

Kern brought up the importance of physical education during a broader committee assessment on the so-called “basket of goods” that Wyoming provides to public school children. The Legislature is tasked with defining and specifying what a proper education is for a Wyoming child. 

On June 1, the Education Committee spent hours reviewing the state’s specific components, which range from computer science to English language arts and, yes, physical education. 

As lawmakers mull the right mix of components in the educational basket, Kern advised them to consider establishing minimum weekly PE time requirements.

“I respectfully urge the committee to consider strengthening physical education within the basket of goods through clear statutory expectations,” Kern said, “and specifically, Wyoming should consider establishing minimum weekly PE time requirements, prohibiting the withholding of physical education as a punishment … and requiring meaningful physical education credit for graduation, while limiting the substitutions for non-PE activities.” 

Lawmakers were receptive to the concept of encouraging more physical education but reluctant to embrace mandatory guidance. 

Get kids moving 

Kern has a PhD in kinesiology and has authored or co-authored  On Monday, he spoke in partnership with the Wyoming Association of Health, Physical Education, Recreation, and Dance, he said. 

“Physical education is not an extra. It’s part of a well-rounded education and directly supports the health, learning, workforce readiness and quality of life of Wyoming students,” he said. “Wyoming already includes physical education in its educational program, but inclusion alone doesn’t guarantee meaningful access. Many students in Wyoming receive far less physical education than is needed to develop their physical literacy.” 

One of his research studies found that “from 2005 to 2021 the number of minutes per week of middle school physical education went from 221 minutes per week down to 161 minutes per week … a significant reduction, and that’s been seen across the country as well.”

Some of that drop can be attributed to a decline in subjects like PE, art and music as due to a growing emphasis and accountability on state and national testing, he said. 

But high-quality physical education supports areas like attention, behavior, mental health, confidence, teamwork and academic achievement, Kern argued. “When students lose these opportunities to move, be creative, succeed beyond just test scores and experience joy in school, the day becomes less balanced and less engaging,” he said. “And for many children, school-based PE is the only structured physical activity they get through the entire week.” 

In another study his lab conducted, 95% of 145 principals responding to a statewide survey reported that their school’s PE curriculum is specifically designed to meet Wyoming’s PE standard, Kern said. “That same survey found that just over 42% of Wyoming schools could increase physical education time if the state required it … That tells us that school leaders value physical education, and many schools already have the capacity to act if the Legislature required it.”

Guidance

While he didn’t want to go as far as putting PE standards into statute, Laramie Democrat Sen. Chris Rothfuss suggested that the state can strive for clearer guidance. He recommended the committee draft a non-codified bill directing the Wyoming Board of Education to produce guidance on physical education access and to discourage any punitive taking away of PE. 

“So it is drafting a bill, but it’s not in statute, it’s not codified, and it would be providing a directive for this upcoming drafting of the standards to provide guidance,” Rothfuss said. 

The committee approved the idea. 

“I think PE and physical activity is highly important for our kids today,” Sen. Evie Brennan, R-Cheyenne, said, “and so whatever we can do to not take that away as a form of discipline and to encourage that movement, I fully support.”

In the first years after birth, the human brain develops at a remarkable pace. Every second, more than a  connections spring into being, shaping .

Since the Trump administration entered the White House last year, at least 500 babies and toddlers have spent some of that pivotal time in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

ICE has dramatically increased detentions of children aged 3 and under, holding 25 of them in custody on an average day between January 2025 and March of this year, according to a new analysis by The Marshall Project and MS NOW of records obtained by the , a group of academics and lawyers who collect and share federal immigration data. That number is 10 times higher than it was in the previous 12 months under former President Joe Biden. Back then, on an average day, fewer than three babies and toddlers were held at facilities across the country.

Parents in ICE detention have complained of substandard conditions that frequently left their young children sick, isolated and regressing in their physical and intellectual development.

ICE did not respond to a request for comment about the dramatic increase in the number of young children in detention; but, in an emailed statement, an agency spokesperson said families with children receive appropriate food, water and medical care. In a separate statement, CoreCivic –– the private company that operates the primary ICE facility used to detain families –– echoed that its facilities were safe for infants and toddlers.

Marsha Griffin, a pediatrics professor and co-founder of the executive committee of the , called the period of infancy and toddlerhood “probably the most harmful time of their lives to have them in detention.”

“Our immigration system is breaking children,” she said.

In March, Joani, her husband, and their 2-year-old son, Kaleth, showed up to a check-in appointment with immigration officials in California. Since the family immigrated and sought asylum in 2024, they had never missed a required appointment with immigration officials, according to the family’s lawyer. Nevertheless, that day, ICE took them all into custody.

As the whole family cried, Kaleth’s father was handcuffed and driven away to an adult detention facility in California. Joani and her toddler were taken to the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Texas, the primary U.S. immigration facility that holds families with children.

At the family’s request, we are identifying Kaleth and Joani by their first names only.

Separated from his father, Kaleth was despondent in the Dilley facility, Joani said in an interview. He repeatedly scooted a tiny table over to a phone that was mounted on the wall, so he could climb up high enough to try to use it. Each time, Joani moved the table away so he wouldn’t fall. Even if he could have reached the phone, contacting his father in another detention center would have been impossible.

Kaleth stopped eating for 12 days. Joani said facility doctors attributed it to depression. When Joani tried to force him to eat, Kaleth vomited. He eventually stopped having bowel movements. Joani watched her son’s face grow gaunt, and his eyes sink into their sockets.

Lori Goodman, the CEO of , a nonprofit group that supports families with young children in California and has worked with Kaleth’s family, said children his age may express trauma physically, since they have fewer verbal skills.

“He was so distressed that it manifested in his body in not being able to eat or digest,” said Goodman. “The longer a child is in that setting, the more the long-term damage.”

The most recent data available shows many very young children have spent prolonged periods of time in custody. Between Trump’s second inauguration and March of this year, ICE held at least 175 babies and toddlers for longer than a court-mandated time limit of 20 days. A federal judge interpreted 20 days to be the limit for detaining children in a 2015 opinion on the  which governs the treatment of children in immigration detention.

During the last year of the Biden administration, no children aged 3 or younger were held beyond the settlement’s 20-day limit. Biden had ended the practice of family detention in 2021, and the Dilley facility, which had mostly housed families, eventually closed. Trump restarted the practice and reopened Dilley shortly after retaking office.

In a May  submitted by ICE as required by the Flores settlement, the agency said it “works to assess cases and discharge minors from custody as promptly as possible.”

Alsu and Azat fled Russia last year, fearing that their opposition to the war in Ukraine would land them in prison and their 1-year-old, Amir, in an orphanage.

The family had braced themselves to spend a few weeks in immigration confinement upon arriving in the United States after crossing the southern border without visas, and presented themselves to authorities at a legal port of entry. But, as their incarceration stretched on, first in California and then at Dilley, they watched their once-lively son withdraw and begin hitting himself in the face.

“We came here to escape prison. We wanted to be free,” Azat said through a translator. “But once we arrived in America, we spent four months in detention.”

Dilley didn’t have many toys for toddlers, Amir’s parents said, and some desperate children resorted to playing with rocks. Even though Alsu and Azat knew it was important to read with him, they couldn’t find books in their native language of Russian. Amir’s speech development slowed. Eventually, he stopped saying anything other than two words: “mom” and “dad.”

Griffin, the pediatrics professor, said it’s imperative for parents to talk to their children to help them develop vocabulary. But the fear and stress of incarceration can cause both parents and children to become quiet.

“They don’t want to talk, and no one’s talking to them, not in a normal way,” said Griffin. She noted that the experience can also damage the parent-child bond, as a child witnesses their parent’s loss of control.

Rahil Briggs, a psychologist at the early-childhood advocacy organization , said these types of developmental setbacks can have a domino effect.

“If we miss this foundational time in early childhood when we see all these wonderful things going on in brain development with memory and learning and executive functioning, then it’s just harder than ever to catch up,” Briggs said. ”I can’t learn my ABCs because I’ve got to make sure that I’m safe in this scary situation. And because I haven’t learned my ABCs, now I’m not sure how to do this, and I’m not reading.”

Keeping Amir properly fed was another challenge.

According to Amir’s mother, Alsu, employees at Dilley forced her to wean him off formula, claiming he was too old. The solid food options, Alsu insisted, were not appropriate for a 1-year-old. She described being so desperate to get Amir to eat, that she sucked a spicy pasta sauce off noodles so she could feed them to her son. She and Azat resorted to hiding cereal from the dining hall at breakfast in their socks and hoods for later, so their child wouldn’t go to sleep hungry.

“Every single day, I would break down, hysterical, because my child had gone without proper food,” said Alsu.

After they argued with staff members to get Amir better food, Azat alleges that employees in CoreCivic uniforms woke him up in the middle of the night, threatening to send the parents to separate immigrant confinement centers and Amir to foster care if they didn’t stop complaining.

“As a husband, as a father, I can see the sufferings of my child, I can see how much my wife suffers,” Azat said. “It was horrific for me, because I could do nothing to help them.”

Both Amir’s and Kaleth’s parents said their children suffered fevers and stomach problems during their incarceration at Dilley and that they struggled to get them adequate treatment. Many other parents have reported similar challenges accessing care inside facilities, including waiting for hours in line to get basic, over-the-counter medication.

Elora Mukherjee, a Columbia Law School professor who has represented more than 80 children and parents incarcerated at Dilley over the past year, said that nearly all of her clients in recent months complained about poor medical care.

“Kids at this age also get sick more easily because their immune systems haven’t developed,” Mukherjee said. “Having such young children in a prison setting with hundreds of other kids and parents, it just makes them repeatedly, constantly sick. So they have fevers, they’re coughing, they’re vomiting, they have diarrhea. They are just miserable.”

Amalia and her parents were incarcerated at Dilley when the 1-year-old developed a fever and grew lethargic. Speaking through a translator, her parents said they returned to Dilley’s medical clinic again and again, but were only given Tylenol for her and warned not to complain. When Amalia’s mother, Kheilin Valero Marcano, went back to the clinic after her daughter lost consciousness, she recalled asking clinic employees, “How long are you going to leave her like this? Are you going to let her die?”

According to the family, Amalia eventually spent more than a week in an outside hospital, after her oxygen levels dropped to dangerously low levels. There she was diagnosed with COVID-19, an ear infection, pneumonia, bronchitis and RSV, a common but potentially serious childhood illness that affects the lungs.

According to , facilities should transfer sick people to an outside hospital if they cannot provide adequate care onsite.

Leecia Welch, a lawyer with Children’s Rights who has visited Dilley more than 10 times, said that babies and toddlers, many too young to receive certain vaccinations, had some of the most troubling medical cases she’d seen, calling the situation “the most gut-wrenching.”

Welch recalled mothers in detention describing how stress and lack of nutritious food made breastfeeding difficult. Marcano said Amalia would cry throughout the night, because she’d tried to nurse and nothing would come out.

Other parents, whose babies drank formula, have stated in court documents that the facility did not provide enough bottled water to hydrate powdered formula, and purchasing additional water at the commissary was, for many, prohibitively expensive. Tap water at the facility, families said, smelled foul and made children sick.

Parents also described difficulties getting children to sleep. The lights in the Dilley facility were kept on all night, and toys that can help kids sleep are prohibited in living areas.

“They can’t go to sleep with a stuffed animal,” said Welch “They can’t go to sleep with a security blanket, that’s just not allowed.”

Representatives for ICE and its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, did not answer specific questions about the sorts of conditions experienced by Kaleth, Amir, or Amalia. In a past , Homeland Security disputed Amalia’s family’s claims and insisted she “immediately received proper medical care.”

Brian Todd, a CoreCivic spokesman, responded in an email that the Dilley facility provides toddlers and babies necessary supplies, including formula, healthy food and clean drinking water.

An ICE spokesperson made similar claims in an emailed statement and noted that the agency “is working rapidly and overtime to remove these aliens from detention centers to their final destination — home.” In a May court filing, an ICE report stated that people are provided with an eye mask when they arrive at Dilley and, following complaints, the facility switched to lower-intensity lighting, though they remain on all night for security purposes. Agency officials also stated in the filings that water quality is monitored, babies under the age of 1 receive bottled water to make formula, and children have access to outdoor play structures, toys, multilingual books, and age-appropriate meals and snacks.

A  lawyers for detained children called ICE’s claims “fanciful.”

ICE released Kaleth and his mother in April, two weeks after their incarceration, and they were later reunited with Kaleth’s father. According to Mukherjee, Kaleth had not eaten solid food the entire time. In the car from the airport, he devoured four packets of applesauce.

Kaleth has since recovered remarkably, said Goodman, the LEAP CEO — a testament to the family’s resilience and the strength of their parental bonds. She’s seen how Kaleth’s mother looks into his eyes, and comforts him when he is distressed.

“That is so powerful at counteracting the abuse that our government is perpetrating,” Goodman said.

Amalia and her family  after spending two months in Dilley.

Amir and his parents were also released, under supervision, in January. The toddler, now 2 years old, is laughing and speaking more, and he has stopped hitting himself. His parents say he seems closer to the happy child he was before ICE imprisoned him.

Even so, it’s too early to tell what the long-term effects of child incarceration will be on the hundreds of babies and toddlers who have gone through ICE detention since Trump re-entered the White House.

“The long-term damage caused by prolonged toxic stress — by essentially abusing these children — we’re going to see those effects. They’re going to impact every child who was there for many, many years to come,” Goodman said. “It’s incalculable the amount of damage that is being done.”

This is an important reversal. The key trend over the last 10 to 15 years has been a steady decline in student performance across a range of tests, across ages and grade levels, and across a variety of subjects. Moreover, the steepest declines have been among the lowest-performing kids.

But the latest results showed something different. In math, for example, the median score for 9-year-olds rose 3.5 points. For the highest performers (those at the 90^th percentile), scores rose by 0.7 points. In contrast, for students at the 10^th percentile, their math scores rose 7.5 points. Similarly, in reading, the lowest performers gained 9.3 points.

These scores come from a nationally representative sample of some 32,000 9- and 13-year-olds who were tested on reading or math during the 2024-25 school year.

Called the Long-Term Trend, this battery of tests is administered using pencil and paper and has been given in comparable form since the early 1970s.

The latest gains are both meaningful and historically large. Depending on the year, students in general gain about 10 points per year on the NAEP math tests. As a rough comparison, that means achievement gaps narrowed by nearly one year’s worth of schooling over the last few years. In historical terms, the gains from 2022 to 2025 now represent some of the largest on record.

The gains were also widespread, with particularly large increases among the lowest-performing Black, Hispanic and low-income students.

To be fair, there are several good reasons to temper any collective enthusiasm.

For one, the gains for 9-year-olds on the latest NAEP results did not transfer up to 13-year-olds. Particularly in math, the scores of middle school students continued to decline, for low performers. It’s quite likely that COVID-related school closures contributed to a lost generation that is slowly working its way through the nation’s schools.

It’s also possible that the gains from 2022 to 2025 may not be replicable. That is, they could just be a bounce off the depths of the COVID lows, fueled in part by an infusion of federal funding, and not the start of a new rising tide.

Still, while the increases on the Long-Term Trend tests are surprising, they are not the only evidence pointing toward recent improvements. For example, a team of researchers from Dartmouth, Harvard and Stanford universities released an last month that mainly documented the “learning recession” that began around 2013. However, their full report also showed increases in 2025 in both reading and math. Similarly, interim assessment data from shows that students made larger-than-expected gains in the 2024-25 school year, and the 2025-26 results are on a similar trajectory.   

In other words, it’s worth pausing to reflect on the increases that have emerged recently. The policy question now is how to understand what changed and how to extend those gains upward through the grade levels.

Disclosure: The author consults with NWEA and is serving in an advisory role with NAEP on an unrelated project. The conclusions drawn here are his own. 

With many students and educators already using widely available artificial intelligence tools, state lawmakers and school districts are playing catch-up on AI policies.

In Maryland, for example, AI usage policies for K-12 schools are “all over the map,” Democratic state Sen. Katie Fry Hester said.

In some school districts, she said, AI use is encouraged, while in others it is restricted, or — a worst-case scenario for Hester — there is little to no policy guidance at all.

“What we heard repeatedly is that the teachers were feeling like they had to navigate artificial intelligence entirely on their own,” Hester said.

Hester said square one for lawmakers is AI literacy, which was the aim of new legislation that she sponsored and that was signed into law in May. It requires an AI coordinator in each school system, a statewide AI professional development for teachers and AI literacy to be a component of career readiness and computer science standards for K-12 students. It also requires the state Department of Education to provide certain guidance on AI.

Many other states have also been trying to create AI policies for schools. Lawmakers filed more than 134 bills across 31 states this year related to AI in education, focusing on data privacy, usage restriction in the classroom, literacy and training, according to MultiState, a government relations firm.

A survey by the Center for Democracy & Technology showed that (85%) reported using AI in their classroom during the 2024-25 school year, while 86% of students said they’d used AI for either personal or school-related reasons. But only about half of teachers and students reported that they received some training or information about AI from someone at their school, and few received training or information on risks of AI use.

A turning point for schools came with the rollout of ChatGPT in 2022, said Noelle Ellerson Ng, chief advocacy and governance officer for the School Superintendents Association. “AI was something that could not be gatekept,” said Ellerson Ng. “It was in the classroom the minute students were able to access it.”

Her association does not take positions on state AI bills or policies. But she said districts are trying to avoid knee-jerk, reactive policies such as New York City’s brief 2022 ban of ChatGPT because of fears about cheating.

Some states have made progress in laying the groundwork for AI policy in K-12.

Ohio has set a July 1 deadline for every school district, community school and STEM school to adopt an AI use policy. The state’s model policy recommends that districts address student and staff uses, privacy, ethical use, teacher-specific uses, vendor agreements, third-party AI tools and student assessments.

A new signed in March requires local school districts and charter schools to devise local policies for AI usage in K-12 schools, requires state standards for AI literacy and education training and ensures that no AI “replaces or eliminates a human teacher.”

enacted last month requires AI tools to be age-appropriate and requires teachers to review anything AI produces before using it in the classroom. It also allows parents to opt their children out of using AI tools. The law also directs the state education department to develop AI guidance and requires local school boards to set policies before the 2027-28 school year.

Yet even as schools are being sold on AI products by numerous vendors, there’s a growing skepticism about AI in classrooms. It follows a similar backlash about social media and digital technology’s academic and mental health effects on students, which has led to more states and districts putting in place bans and rethinking their reliance on laptops.

In the Center for Democracy & Technology survey, half of students said using AI in class made them feel less connected to their teachers, and 70% of teachers said they were concerned that students’ use of AI was preventing them from learning important skills.

Schools need to weigh the benefits of adopting AI tools in the classroom against their effect on student privacy, mental health and social skills, said Sue Thotz, director of outreach for Common Sense ���Ķ���vlog, a nonprofit advocacy group focused on technology and its effect on children and families.

Schools, Thotz said, may be the “only mandated safe space” where students can learn to use and access emerging technology. But she and other education experts believe districts need to increase scrutiny of products.

Globally, the market for AI products in K-12 schools was worth around $391.2 million in 2024, and could rise to more than $9 billion by 2034, , a market research company. That includes AI products for tutoring, personalized learning, automated grading, lesson planning and administrative tasks.

“When I talk about AI literacy, it’s not how to use AI. It’s understanding how AI is built,” said Thotz. “Why is it being created? Who’s profiting off of this?”

‘Giving a tool to children’

New York Assemblymember Robert Carroll said he uses artificial intelligence in his own work and sees its value. As someone who struggled with dyslexia as a child, he also thinks technology can help students with disabilities.

But he also wants to keep AI out of most K-8 classroom instruction. Students should learn basic subject matter first — in conjunction with critical thinking — and then later use the tools that can assist them, he said.

Carroll, a Democrat, has that would prohibit the use of most AI in K-8 classrooms, with exceptions for diagnostic testing and support for students with disabilities.

“It is imperative that all children gain strong foundational skills, especially in literacy and numeracy, and it seems that AI is uniquely positioned to possibly undermine that,” he said. “There’s a difference between giving a tool to adults and giving a tool to children who have yet to master skills.”

Rather than full bans, most bills seeking to restrict AI have opted to focus on age restrictions, parental opt-outs, oversight and bans on using AI to replace teachers.

This year, Florida’s would have included a statewide restriction on student access to AI instructional tools before sixth grade, with exceptions for use supervised by school personnel, English-learner translation support and disability accommodations. It overwhelmingly passed the Senate 37-1, but died in the House.

A adds computer science to the required public school curriculum, including AI and emerging technologies. Connecticut lawmakers in 2025 failed to pass aiming to stop AI from “replacing” public school educators.

Sophia Romee, the general manager of the GenAI Studio, an initiative studying how students and educators use generative AI at the College Board, the nonprofit that administers the Advanced Placement curriculum and SAT tests for high schools, said she is concerned that only that allow students to use generative AI have a formal policy governing its use.

The College Board’s research, Romee said, shows many students are worried about becoming too reliant on AI, and that adults need to give clearer guidance about where using AI tools for brainstorming, revising and tutoring crosses the ethical line into cheating.

“Students are far more self-aware about AI’s risks than headlines suggest.”

Like aviation in 1905

Jason Coley, director of the Center for Academic Innovation at Maria College in Albany, New York, said the policy debate needs to move beyond whether schools are “for” or “against” the use of AI.

“The better question is what kinds of AI use are supervised, age appropriate, transparent, and tied to real learning,” Coley said. Schools need guardrails around privacy, student data, bias, teacher training and equity of access, he said, but also permission to “experiment responsibly.”

Ellerson Ng, of the School Superintendents Association, said superintendents see AI as part of a larger umbrella of disruptive technologies in schools that has evolved from calculators to laptops to cellphones. The lesson, she said, is that overreactive policy rarely works. She also said schools should not cover AI in a separate policy, but as part of a broader technology policy.

“I don’t have a calculator policy. Why would I have an AI policy?” she said, describing how some district leaders think about the issue. “I have a technology policy.”

With past technologies such as cellphones and laptops, adults could often control when students had access, Ellerson Ng said. With AI apps and platforms, many students accessed the tools before teachers, principals or state officials were even aware of them.

That makes bans difficult, she said. Schools can block tools on school-owned devices and networks, but “you’re only one personal device away from social media and AI being in your schools.”

Justin Reich, an associate professor of digital media at MIT, said that uncertainty around AI should make policymakers cautious about declaring best practices too soon.

Reich said states are trying to regulate classroom AI at a moment when the field is still so unstable that “writing a guide for AI in 2026 is like writing a guide for aviation in 1905” before airlines, airports or even commercial flight.

“If you were to take any of the AI literacy documents, AI readiness documents, even the moratorium documents, and put them against a checklist,” said Reich, “there would be a lot of boxes in the ‘we’re making this up’ column and not a lot in the ‘we have evidence’ column.”

State lawmakers and school districts should be honest that they don’t know what they’re doing, are relying on limited expert information and that policy is subject to change with new information, Reich said.

“Lawmakers will need to be honest that what they propose now could be completely outdated in two years.”

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That assumption is not always true. Until very recently, it was not required to be.

On August 29, 2023, 12-year-old Yahushua Robinson went to Canyon Lake Middle School in Lake Elsinore. The high temperature that day reached 107 degrees. According to accounts from the day, Yahushua and other students were sent outside during physical education class and ordered to run laps as punishment for not suiting up in time. Yahushua told the school staff he was not feeling well, said he could not breathe and asked for water.

He was made to keep running.

Yahushua never came home from school that day. The Riverside County Coroner determined his cause of death was a heart defect, with extreme heat and physical exertion listed as contributing factors. His mother, Janee Robinson, is herself a P.E. teacher in the same district. That same afternoon, she kept her own students inside because of the heat. She later said, “These students should not have been outside, and to think that my child died while my students were in.”

That sentence should stop every parent in their tracks.

What Yahushua’s death exposed was a gap most families had no reason to know existed. In California and across the country, most heat safety policies were written specifically for organized high school athletics: football practice, cross-country and track. A high school football coach may be legally required to follow heat protocols. A middle school P.E. teacher had no comparable legal requirement.

Yahushua was not a high school athlete. He was a 12-year-old in P.E. class, and the system had no uniform standard designed to protect him.

That is what I set out to change.

Less than two weeks after Yahushua’s death, I prepared a formal advocacy brief on behalf of his family and began building the case for legislation. As a parent and family advocate, I understood that what was missing was not medical knowledge or parental love. What was missing was a legal standard that did not leave child safety to individual judgment during dangerous heat.

State Sen. Melissa Hurtado, a Central Valley Democrat, championed the cause and introduced Senate Bill 1248, with Assemblymember Akilah Weber, a doctor and Democrat representing the San Diego area, as principal co-author. The bill passed unanimously, and Gov. Gavin Newsom signed it into law in September 2024.

That law is known as Yahushua’s Law.

Here is what it does, and why every California parent needs to know about it before this summer.

 now requires every school district, county office of education, and charter school in the state to develop, adopt and implement a weather safety policy. The compliance deadline is July 1 — weeks away.

This is not guidance. It is the law.

Every policy must include clear criteria for modifying or suspending outdoor physical activities when conditions become dangerous, procedures for monitoring weather forecasts and alerts, communication plans for staff, students, and parents, access to indoor alternative activities, and staff training to recognize weather-related distress. These policies must be reviewed and updated annually, and the California Department of Education must identify schools that are not in compliance and provide technical assistance.

California now has one of the strongest and broadest student heat safety laws in the country because it covers all students across all grades in school-supervised physical activities, including P.E. class, recess and field trips.

This matters for your child specifically if they have asthma, a heart condition, sickle cell trait, obesity or a medication that affects heat tolerance. It matters if your child has an IEP or a 504 plan. It’s important because many children are too young, too scared or too overwhelmed to explain clearly and quickly when something is physically wrong.

The American Academy of Pediatrics has  that exertional heat illness in children is preventable when evidence-based protocols are followed by supervising adults. The science behind heat safety laws is not disputed. What has been missing is a requirement to act on medical guidance.

Now, California has that requirement.

But parents still have to ask whether their school is ready. If you live in California, call your district and ask: What is your weather safety policy under SB 1248, and when will staff be trained? If you do not get a clear answer, keep asking. The law says your child’s school must have this in place, and you have every right to know whether it does.

If you live elsewhere, connect with your own state lawmakers about passing similar legislation. The California law can serve as a model for other states.

Yahushua used to say, “I AM HIM.” His family carried those words into legislative hearings, conversations with lawmakers, and every act of advocacy that turned grief into law.

Every child who walks onto a school campus is someone’s Yahushua. This summer, the adults in California responsible for your children are required to follow a standard designed to bring every student home.

Make sure your school is ready to keep that promise.

Texas charter schools recently saw their smallest enrollment bump in state history, signaling that similar forces crushing traditional public districts may soon hit them as well.

Students have enrolled in charters at significant rates since they launched in the state three decades ago — even as traditional public school enrollment started to fall. But with birth rates going down, new schooling options popping up and fears regarding immigration enforcement spreading, experts say that growth may soon reverse.

“They’re headed to a cliff, for sure,” said Bob Templeton, a senior consultant with an Austin-based public policy firm called STRIVE. He has studied Texas school demographics since the 1990s. “And I don’t know if it’s going to be next year, but it could definitely be within five years.”

This year, Texas public schools experienced their in nearly 40 years. The drop of more than 76,000 students, mostly Hispanic children, occurred primarily in traditional neighborhood campuses.

But charters — public schools managed independently by nonprofits and private companies — continued growing their enrollment. The number of students in state-approved charters increased every year since the Legislature authorized them in 1995.

Charters now educate roughly 446,600 — or 8% — of Texas’ nearly 5.5 million public school students.

Texas’ 178 charter operators oversee 935 campuses, according to from the state education agency — up from about a decade ago. Significant growth in the number of charters, coupled with families searching for schools tailored to their children’s educational needs, largely contributed to the enrollment uptick over the last 30 years.

Parents, for example, have grown tired of schools’ emphasis on standardized testing, the overuse of technology and the time kids spend indoors, said Inga Cotton, founder and executive director of the School Discovery Network, a San Antonio-based group helping parents access improved educational options for their children.

“Families feel under pressure from the world changing so fast,” Cotton added. “If humans are looking for alternatives, then what systems are going to best be able to present those options for families? And charters have been really good at that.”

But the uptick has slowed. State data shows that year-to-year growth in charter enrollment over the past three decades ranged from 3.1% to a high of 217%. However, that growth this year, according to nonprofit group Texas 2036.

That in turn affects every component of education because Texas funds schools based on how many kids show up to class.

“It is an adult-centered issue that adults really need to figure out. It shouldn’t have to impact the students. Sadly, it does,” said Axinia Zepeda, principal of the Raul Yzaguirre Schools for Success Early Childhood Academy, a Houston-based charter school. “Just knowing that enrollment is going to impact funding, funding is going to impact resources, resources are going to impact the instruction that’s being given.”

To stay ahead of enrollment shortfalls, Zepeda’s campus recently expanded from offering only pre-K and kindergarten to adding first grade. The school plans to teach second grade in the near future, she said. It also started offering child care services to families willing to pay tuition.

“It’s a lot of us having to hit the streets and do a lot of recruitment, setting up tables at fairs — at school choice fairs — going to neighborhood libraries or local restaurants and asking if they can put our flyers out,” Zepeda said. “We’re having to hit the streets and try to figure out how we can get kids in.”

Although , families are having fewer children. That means fewer kids entering school. The state’s growing immigrant population that helped schools overcome the birth rate decline has decelerated too. Educators have said some of their students stopped showing up to classes out of fear that immigration officers will show up to arrest them.

“It was the changes in immigration enforcement that caused the enrollment to turn the way that it turned this year, especially as it relates to the Hispanic community,” said Templeton, the education demographics expert.

Expanded school choice options also played a significant part in enrollment decline, Templeton said, more than factors like birth rates.

Public education advocates have long for flooding urban communities with new schooling options that already exist on traditional neighborhood campuses, contributing to districts’ enrollment drops. But now both school districts and charters are seeing families choose another part of the education ecosystem: home schooling.

The Texas Home School Coalition estimates that more than receive instruction in their households, far outpacing enrollment in charter schools. Home-school enrollment has skyrocketed in the years since the pandemic, a nod to families’ with public schools and desire to personalize their children’s learning experience.

Meanwhile, the state is launching a voucher program that allows families to use public funding for private schools and home schools, which could mean more students leaving public options.

The overwhelming majority of students will continue with public education. Still, if families opt in to the new education savings accounts, that means less money for every child absent — a challenge that educators say will only grow worse without consistent and reliable funding increases from the Legislature.

At Por Vida Academy at Corpus Christi, 28 students just earned their high school diploma from the college prep charter campus. Principal Sandra Valencia hopes that the school’s recruiting phone calls, TV advertisements and meetings with parents will help the campus recoup the more than two dozen kids who graduated.

“The thing that affects me the most is trying to stay competitive,” Valencia said. “That’s important, because if they can’t get from you what they can get at the ISD, well then what’s the reason really for them to come to you?”

The state exempts the privately run charters from many of the laws and policies districts must follow, with charters’ approval contingent upon whether such campuses offer specialized instruction — from project-based learning to STEM programs — that families cannot easily access at a traditional neighborhood school.

Texas charter schools reported late last year having nearly on a waitlist, according to the Texas Education Agency.

Brian Whitley, vice president of communications for the Texas Public Charter Schools Association, notes that campuses have slightly fewer students on the waitlist than in recent years. Still, he views the current data as an indicator of “strong parent demand.”

Some public education advocates hope traditional neighborhood campuses and charters work together to identify solutions to the enrollment challenges — either through convening to share ideas or partnering to provide innovative academic programming for kids.

“Institutions need to be able to be willing to innovate and grow,” said Marisa B. Pérez-Díaz, a San Antonio Democrat who serves on the Texas State Board of Education, which votes on whether to approve charter applications.

“Because if not,” she added, “we’re gonna get left behind.”

Disclosure: Texas 2036 and Texas Public Charter Schools Association have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete .

“What we want is that, if and when families need it, there’s childcare that’s available, that works for their needs, that’s affordable and high quality,” said Anne Hedgepeth, senior vice president of policy and research at Child Care Aware of America. “We’re seeing a lot of gaps in that promise right now.”

To get federal childcare funding, states have to put a minimum amount of their own money into the system as well. But of state funding for childcare and preschool in fiscal year 2026, conducted by Child Care Aware of America, found that seven states — Arkansas, Idaho, Missouri, Nevada, Rhode Island, West Virginia and Wyoming — don’t spend any money above that bare minimum. And a handful of states don’t spend more of their own money on preschool than what is strictly required: Arizona, Idaho, Montana, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming. Idaho and Wyoming find themselves on both lists, putting nothing extra into either system. 

The lack of additional investment has a lot of root causes, from political hesitance to the realities of state budgets, which must be balanced every year, Hedgepeth said. In part, she said, the problem stems from the end of federal funding from the American Rescue Plan Act, which infused billions of dollars into the system and allowed states to make but has since disappeared. Other constraints include a reduction in tax revenues and cuts to federal programs stemming from the Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill package that passed last year. 

No matter its source, the lack of funding creates “a frustration for parents and families and childcare providers on the ground,” Hedgepeth said. Without more state investment, legislatures are unable to improve the system by, for example, expanding their subsidy programs to reach more families — or even to serve all eligible ones — or reimbursing providers the amount it actually costs to care for children instead of at lower rates. That has led to over a dozen states recently instituting or expanding waiting lists for childcare subsidies, leaving parents to try to pay for care out of pocket. The waitlists hurt providers, too, if they can’t enroll new families, which can lead to closures of classrooms and even entire programs. “The whole system suffers,” Hedgepeth said. 

State spending disparities have also created an uneven national system that leaves parents better or worse off depending on where they live. The study analyzed total investments for each child under age 5 for 37 states and found that spending ranged from less than $500 per child under age 5 to more than $5,000 per child. Eleven states spend between $1,500 and $9,900 per child, with Washington, D.C. spending the most. 

“We do have really different experiences state-to-state, based in part, on what states are putting into their childcare and early learning systems,” Hedgepeth said. That creates frustration for families, especially those who move between states and have to navigate such different systems. But it hurts everyone. “It also really presents a challenge when we think about having an overarching goal when it comes to child development and support of our earliest learners,” she said. Children arrive at kindergarten with a variety of readiness levels depending on what was available to their families before then, she pointed out. That necessitates instituting “a more robust floor” so that there is a baseline across the whole country.

Hedgepeth sees a silver lining: In the states that are failing to spend more of their own funding, “there is room for these states to do more and maybe even an appetite.” Some of them signaled in their recent legislative sessions that they want to invest more, she said. of governors talked about childcare and early childhood education in their state of the state addresses this year. She also noted that, since the pandemic, all states are at least fully meeting the federal match requirement for childcare funding, even if many aren’t going above and beyond. There were some years before 2020, mostly in “extraordinary circumstances,” such as a recession or budgetary challenge, when some states did not even spend that much, she said.

Even so, some states are moving in the wrong direction. Child Care Aware of America found that six states — Florida, Kansas, Kentucky, North Carolina, New Hampshire and Rhode Island — decreased how much of their own money they spent on childcare and preschool in fiscal year 2026 compared to fiscal year 2025. West Virginia invested in childcare in fiscal year 2025 but then failed to do so in fiscal year 2026. 

According to from Child Care Aware of America, this lack of state spending has led to the first decline in the number of licensed childcare centers in several years. In the years directly after the height of the pandemic, between 2021 and 2023, childcare supply experienced “robust growth,” Hedgepeth said, after states made investments that “paid off in terms of making it possible for childcare programs to open.” But between 2024 and 2025, the number of licensed centers declined by 1%. 

Hedgepeth cautioned that the data is messy and the drop is “very, very small.” Still, she said, “It is very clear to us that we are not moving in the direction we need to be moving.” of American children already live in childcare deserts, according to a report from the Center for America Progress. In states that aren’t spending enough for providers to be able to open and operate with some semblance of financial stability, “the supply trend is going to continue in the wrong direction,” she said. 

This is especially concerning given that state budgets are about to enter a particularly rough patch. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act enacted the to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and Medicaid in history, cuts that state budgets have to absorb. The possibility that states will feel forced to further pull back from childcare and early childhood education funding in order to cover for some of those reductions is “very much on the horizon,” Hedgepeth said. While some states started to worry about the problem in their most recent sessions, next year’s legislative sessions are where the cuts are likely to really hit home, she said. “We’re looking at a tough several years.” 

Congress can act by increasing funding for childcare programs, something it has with . “It’s very clear that the gap is there and it needs to be closed,” Hedgepeth said. “We have a very direct call to action here, which is, ‘Let’s make investments to make sure we grow the supply for childcare.’ ”

Three progressive superintendents defended their policies for parental involvement and transgender inclusion during a congressional hearing Wednesday in which Republican lawmakers called them “pathetic” and said they should find other jobs.

House Education and Workforce Chairman Tim Walberg with the title “Breaking Trust.” Much of the questioning centered on policies intended to protect the rights of transgender students or create more inclusive school environments. But lawmakers also brought up abortion, the role of teachers in promoting political protest, and eighth grade algebra access.

Called to testify were San Francisco Unified School District Superintendent Maria Su, Loudoun County Superintendent Aaron Spence in Virginia, and , .

Each of these superintendents is a relatively new leader in a district that has been at the center of intense controversy over race, gender, and other topics that are often referred to as part of culture war fights. and , in particular, have been the targets of repeated investigations by the Trump administration, which has also threatened to withhold funding.

Two days before the hearing, the conservative advocacy group America First Legal, founded by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, accusing all three districts of violating parental rights and federal law with policies that give students a say in whether parents are notified that that child wants to change their gender presentation.

Walberg, a Michigan Republican, said in his opening remarks that Congress has a responsibility to ask questions of school districts, including when “parents are excluded from major decisions involving their children” and “when classrooms become vehicles for political or ideological agendas.”

“Across the country, school districts are losing sight of their core mission: educating students,” Walberg said.

The superintendents, in turn, said they respect parents as partners, develop policies with input from local communities, and want to create school environments where students can show up as themselves.

“We’re in education because we care about students, and part of that means ensuring an environment where all students can reach their full potential,” Spence said.

Lawmakers and superintendents spar over abortion, transgender students

Asked repeatedly if parents can opt out of lessons related to sexual health or LGBTQ topics, superintendents said yes or that they comply with state and “binding” federal law.

Rep. Joe Wilson, a South Carolina Republican, asked King about Chicago Public Schools making information about abortion available to students. He also pressed her about “which form of abortion” she preferred after offering graphic descriptions of the procedure.

“I’m very disturbed by that question,” King said after a pause. “I want to say that Chicago Public Schools’ sexual education curriculum is in compliance with Illinois state law.”

Rep. Rick Allen, a Georgia Republican, cited a recent malpractice lawsuit in which a by a mastectomy she had as a teenager when she identified as male. He compared that to school districts having policies that require addressing students by their preferred names and pronouns.

“You’re going to be held responsible legally for what you’re perpetrating on young people,” Allen said.

Democrats for their part used their time to highlight cuts to the Office for Civil Rights, the value of diversity, and Republican efforts to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education. They emphasized that the superintendents were accountable to local elected school boards and that policies reflected community preferences.

“This committee talks all the time about ‘decisions should be made at the local level,’ but I guess that’s only if they like the decisions that you make at the local level,” said Rep. Jahana Hayes, a Connecticut Democrat and .

And Democratic Rep. Summer Lee of Pennsylvania urged the superintendents not to “change your values or your positions, because you know who you work for, and it is the parents and the students in your community.”

Spence came in for some of the most intense questioning. The Virginia district has been at the epicenter of political battles over COVID restrictions, parental rights and and . Most recently, the district from federally funded career education.

Virginia sits under the jurisdiction of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled in the 2020 that students cannot be prevented from using restrooms that align with their gender identity. Loudoun County officials have said they are bound by that ruling until the 4th Circuit or the Supreme Court decides otherwise.

The Trump administration, in contrast, says Title IX, the federal law that bars sex discrimination in education, actually requires that transgender students be excluded from restrooms that align with their gender. It has threatened Loudoun County with the loss of federal funding.

“Yes or no, should biological men be allowed in locker rooms with biological women or girls?” asked Rep. Robert Onder Jr., a Missouri Republican.

“Transgender women should be allowed in women’s spaces,” Spence responded.

“That’s a yes,” Onder said. “So biological men should be able to go into locker rooms and shower rooms with biological girls?”

“Federal law requires it,” Spence said.

“No it doesn’t,” Onder said.

“Yes, it does,” Spence said.

“No,” Onder said. “Title IX is, in fact, quite the opposite. Title IX requires you to protect women and girls.”

Loudoun County has also been investigated over an incident in which a . The U.S. Department of Education said the school district violated Title IX in its handling of the incident.

Several representatives interrogated Spence over the incident and why the students who complained about being filmed allegedly received longer suspensions than the transgender student.

Spence said he could not discuss specifics due to student privacy laws but said that the incident had not been described accurately in public reports. He also said the district applies discipline “appropriately” and in accordance with its policies, including policies against bullying.

The hearing did have moments of comity. California Rep. Kevin Kiley, who recently switched from Republican to independent, said he’d long been a critic of San Francisco Unified but praised Su, giving her a platform to talk about changes she’s made.

Su said the district has brought back eighth grade algebra, revised its ethnic studies curriculum, and implemented literacy approaches consistent with the science of reading, among other changes.

“When I came on as superintendent 18 months ago, I listened to families, listened to parents and our educators, and we moved quickly,” Su said.

Kiley said he probably disagrees with many things the district is doing.

“But these are really good, important steps, so thank you for your leadership,” he said.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at .

Sabrina Jennen’s family has deep roots in Arkansas, but she said moving to Maryland three years ago brought them a sense of safety they didn’t have in the Natural State.

The Jennens were one of  who sued Arkansas in 2021 over its law banning gender-affirming healthcare, such as hormone replacement therapy, for transgender youth like Sabrina, now 20.

Both  and , where Sabrina attends college, have shield laws protecting gender-affirming healthcare. She and her family have also found that states with more accepting LGBTQ+ policies have stronger foundations in other areas, such as education.

“When I talk about my home state of Arkansas with my peers, I really hype up the natural geography, but I make sure to disparage the politics because it truly is a limiting factor, not only for people like me, but also just normal Arkansans,” Sabrina said in an interview.

The Jennens’ choice to leave Arkansas wasn’t unique. The growing number of Republican-led states imposing restrictions on transgender youth — and sometimes adults — on matters ranging from pronouns to medical decisions have forced families to make difficult choices. Some are choosing to stay, but many have looked to other states.

State and national trends

Nearly half of transgender adults in the United States have moved or considered moving from states with laws targeting them to states with safer legal and social environments, according to a  last year from the Williams Institute, a research center on gender identity and sexual orientation at the UCLA College of Law.

“For those transgender people who do pursue relocating, service providers, businesses, and state and local governments should both consider the costs of losing members of their communities and support and welcome those who are making new homes,” the Williams Institute states.

A federal judge  Arkansas’ ban on transgender minors’ healthcare in 2023, around the same time the Jennens moved. Another family that challenged the law, the Dennises, also  where Brooke Dennis, 14, faces no legal barriers to her healthcare.

The U.S. Supreme Court  Tennessee’s similar ban last year, and an appeals court responded by allowing Arkansas’ ban . The federal government has since  from providing transgender minors’ healthcare as a condition of participating in Medicare and Medicaid programs.��

The bans on gender-affirming care have been opposed by most major medical organizations, including the . 

Healthcare for transgender adults has also become more difficult to access thanks to sweeping federal orders.

However, some transgender Arkansans prefer to stay or don’t have the means to leave the state.

Yara Sandefur and one of her four children are transgender. Leaving isn’t financially feasible for their family, but staying can be frustrating due to Arkansas’ conservative leadership and the professional obstacles that arose for Sandefur after she came out, she said.

“I just want to be able to breathe like normal folk,” she said.

‘The fight is here’

Tien Estell grew up in Arkansas and works for the state’s only transgender-owned community center, Intransitive. Estell’s work includes helping LGBTQ+ people obtain health insurance.

Estell’s work and their family, both biological and chosen, would be difficult to replicate in another state, they said.

“My heart is with my people, and the fight is here,” Estell said. “The fight is in the South.”

That fight comes forth in elected officials’ statements in addition to the legislation they approve. Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders declared June in Arkansas “.” Other Republican-led states such as  and  made similar declarations as a counter to LGBTQ+ Pride Month.

Additionally, President Donald Trump’s administration released  in May that calls for “the rapid identification and neutralization of violent secular political groups,” including those considered “radically pro-transgender.”

“What does it look like to move from one pocket of hatred, one pocket of erasure, to move somewhere else in this country where we still have a president who thinks I’m a terrorist?” Estell said.

‘Continuity of care’

Arkansas “has always felt like home” to Marie Mainard O’Connell, a Presbyterian pastor and mother of three, including a transgender 18-year-old who attends college in-state. When lawmakers propose bills targeting LGBTQ+ people, O’Connell routinely speaks against them.

“As I see the Legislature dog-whistling to try and distract from the real issues that are facing Arkansans, it seems all the more important to stand up for our humanity,” O’Connell said.

She is a founding member of the Central Arkansas Queer Collective, which provides support and social events for LGBTQ+ people and families. O’Connell said her own family considers Arkansas worth staying and fighting for, but it’s been “painful to lose good people to other places, simply because they need something Arkansas won’t give them.”

Shea McGinnis is among those people. His transgender 11-year-old was receiving gender-affirming healthcare in Oregon for over a year before the family moved there in May.

“We had the opportunity to keep that continuity of care for our kid and go to a place where we knew we would be protected and safe and be able to thrive,” McGinnis said.

He also said he has more peace of mind about his own healthcare, since the Trump administration  discouraging gender-affirming care for trans adults. Arkansas is  with a law allowing private insurers to refuse to cover gender-affirming care.

When Arkansas became the first Southern state to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act in 2013, Estell was part of a team assisting LGBTQ+ people with enrollment. Over a decade later, Estell is among many Americans whose insurance premiums spiked this year because Congress did not extend  by the end of 2025.

“Moving to another state doesn’t solve my lack of access to healthcare,” Estell said.

‘Moving parts’

Whether to stay in Arkansas or leave is a decision with “a lot of moving parts” for O’Connell’s family, and the most important thing for them at the moment is to stay with the people they love in their home state, she said.

“Right now, staying with our friends, family, loved ones and community is outweighing the other variables, and I recognize that that’s going to be different for every family,” O’Connell said.

Dozens of Arkansans — including O’Connell, McGinnis, and Sabrina’s father, Aaron Jennen — pressured lawmakers into  a 2023 proposal that would have criminalized adults entering a restroom that doesn’t match their gender assigned at birth. The state passed a law  last year, drawing more public frustration. O’Connell told lawmakers it was “not good for our community, and it’s not good Christian values.”

What gives O’Connell hope for LGBTQ+ people’s future in Arkansas, she said, is her belief “in the resilience of human nature.”

“People, and Arkansans in particular, are fundamentally kind and want to be kind to each other,” she said.

Sandefur said she and her family lost some of their support system when she came out, but what remains of that system is in Arkansas.

“It’s my state too, and it’s my home too, and I should feel welcome here,” she said. “Part of me wants to stay and fight and part of me wants to flee, so I’m caught in the middle, but right now, it makes sense to stay and hope for the best.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arkansas Advocate maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Andrew DeMillo for questions: info@arkansasadvocate.com.

Of course, if students don’t fully master the content in a given class, they may struggle to succeed in the next one. And once they graduate, they could go out into the labor market knowing just a little bit less than they would have otherwise.

Educators across grade have been the about students who aren’t adequately prepared to succeed in their class. They’ve been forced to adjust their assignments and lower their standards.

But it can be hard to quantify the longer-term impacts of grade inflation.

Now, a from Texas economist Jeffrey Denning makes that connection: His team found that grade inflation actually does lead students to learn a little bit less in school. And, when students who face lower grading standards go out into the labor market, they really do earn a little bit less money than their peers who had to deal with tougher graders.

For a long time, all anyone has known about grade inflation is that it was . Denning’s paper cites survey evidence from the National Center for Education Statistics showing that high school grade-point averages have risen by 0.48 points since the mid-1980s. College GPAs have risen by almost as much.

To look at both the short- and long-term effects of grade inflation, Denning’s team used data from the Los Angeles Unified School District and from all public high schools in Maryland. They started by breaking grade inflation into two components. The first is what they call passing-grade inflation, which occurs when a teacher has a low bar for what level of work should receive a D or better, as opposed to an F. The second type is mean grade inflation, which measures how much a teacher raises students’ grades, on average, in relation to their objective performance on standardized tests.

It turns out that the two have opposite effects. Passing-grade inflation can benefit students because, with a reduced risk of flunking out, they’re more likely to stay in school, less likely to be held back and more likely to graduate from high school. Importantly, this type of grade inflation did not seem to harm academic achievement.

However, when teachers inflate the average grade they give out, it has negative effects that begin playing out almost immediately. Students who were taught by a teacher with lower grading standards had observably lower test scores in the following year than their peers whose teachers were tougher graders. This type of grade inflation also reduced high school graduation rates and led to fewer students taking the SAT in preparation for college.

Even worse, Denning’s team documented that the harmful effects of this type of grade inflation trickle into early adulthood. Compared with students taught by educators with more honest grading standards, students whose teachers inflated their grades were less likely to enroll in any form of postsecondary education and to be employed up to six years after high school graduation (when their study stops). The differences were not that large for any individual, but as a whole, the students with the more lenient teachers earned $56 less one year after graduation and $145 less six years later. Those results were statistically significant and grew over time. Moreover, these estimates are for one student taught by one teacher. A typical high school teacher reducing standards for 90 to 100 students reduced their collective lifetime earnings by $213,872 per year of teaching. 

Denning’s team did not find that grade inflation was any more or less harmful to certain student groups. But evidence from Virginia suggests that it may be more prevalent in classes with historically underserved students. Matt Hurt, the director of a of public school districts in Virginia, high school test scores in the state and found that, in 2025, 5.5% of white students earned an A in a high school course in the same year they failed the state exam in the same subject. For non-white students, the rate was 12.2%. For students with disabilities, it was 27.2%.��

In other words, Virginia schools tend to be relatively accurate about the chances a white student will pass the state test, while grades are more misleading for kids of color and those with disabilities. Other research has found that lenient grading standards are most harmful to students who are the furthest behind. 

To analyze these disparities in Virginia, Hurt created an index that compared high school course grades against the state’s end-of-year exams. Because Virginia has tests for a wide variety of grades and subjects, he ended up with a sample of almost 400,000 grades and tests. He found that comparing these was highly predictive of a district’s overall scores and concluded that “High expectations appear to be one of the major factors which differentiates highly successful divisions, schools and teachers from those less successful.”

The goal for teachers and policymakers should not be harsher grading for its own sake. But as more students appear exceptional on paper, the signaling value of grades has diminished over time. While parents may value course grades, they are, in many instances, being misled about their child’s true achievement level. Over time, grade inflation risks weakening one of the core purposes of grading: providing honest feedback about where students stand and what they still need to learn.

Those were dark years before principal Carol Leveilee arrived at the Seaford, Delaware school.

Kids were never greeted by staff when they entered the building. It was a familiar sight to see school aides in the back of classrooms on their cellphones and children fighting or running out of the building. There was no art on the hallway walls, decorated instead with mold and paint that looked like it was original to the school’s opening in 1922. 

The school felt like a “prison,” multiple teachers said — dark, dreary with overwhelming behavior problems amounting to over 300 suspensions in one year. The school was like the district’s “stepchild,” veteran staff said — a school no one wanted to send their kids to, ranked last in test scores; and on the edge of a state takeover 12 years ago.��

“I really thought about quitting teaching. I didn’t want to teach anymore because it was that bad here,” said fourth-grade teacher Mike Hurlock. “In my second year I was feeling like, ‘I’m gonna go be a corrections officer because I’m already [one] here.’ ”

Hurlock filled out an application for a nearby prison and decided to wait one more year before submitting it. 

His wait paid off. Leveilee arrived in September 2014, bringing with her a dramatic overhaul.

“It saved my career,” Hurlock said, now a 15-year veteran teacher at the school. “There was never a sense of pride — until Carol got here.”

Armed with more than 30 years of experience, 11 as an elementary teacher and the rest in administration in schools across Charles County, Maryland, Leveilee had been on the brink of retirement before she took the job at Frederick Douglass. 

She felt her work wasn’t finished.

“I didn’t feel like I’d done enough or helped enough kids yet,” she said. “I saw [Frederick Douglass] was high needs and I knew I wanted a challenge. I didn’t know quite how big of a challenge I was getting myself into … [but] I just felt like I was meant to be here.”

It may have felt like an overwhelming transition at first, but Leveilee has made all the difference at the school an hour south of Dover, the state capital.

The veteran educator not only saved Hurlock’s career, but also thousands of kids along the way, providing them a school where they would be educated and emotionally supported.

Now, at 8 a.m. every morning, hundreds of students flood out from a row of yellow school buses. Outside the school’s front door stand Leveilee and other staff who are swarmed with high-fives, hugs and laughing children racing to get inside.

As the children enter the building, they’re also greeted with banners recognizing the school as a 2020 National Blue Ribbon School and a 2024 Delaware Department of Education Recognition School alongside blue bulletin boards highlighting kids of character and upcoming birthdays — all a testament to the school’s transformation under Leveilee.

Throughout her time at Frederick Douglass, Leveilee has created spaces that are warm and celebrate students.

She got rid of staff that didn’t see her vision or fully commit to the idea that everything done at the school is what’s best for kids. And most importantly, she fought for her school, several staff members said, whether it was pushing back against layoffs, advocating for renovations or paying for supplies out of her pocket.

“You see Carol and you don’t see her as a fighter. She looks like she’s somebody’s grandmother, just sweet — but no, she’s a fighter,” Hurlock said. “She came in and fought for us, and the difference in the students [and staff dynamics], just in one year, was tremendous.”

Frederick Douglass Elementary School enrolls about 500 students in grades 3-5, a majority of whom are children of color and from low-income backgrounds. Expected to have a reading proficiency of 32.8%, according to a data project focused on Bright Spot schools launched by The 74, it’s defying the odds at 60.5% and is among Delaware’s top five exceptional schools. 

For educators who have stuck out the journey, they say the school’s transformation feels “unreal” and “something that you dream of.” They credited Leveilee as the sole factor in the school’s success, but she argues it was the relationships that were built.

“Some people say you start with instruction, but in my opinion, in this building, I could have had the best curriculum possible, state-of-the-art smart boards and everything, and we would have been taken over by the state,” Leveilee said, “because it’s all about people.”

Soon to be 12 years, the principal’s commitment to the school continues to pay off in strong staff retention, low disciplinary referrals and growing student achievement.

Cleaning house

When most people hear B.C., they think of dinosaurs or other prehistoric periods, but Jen Covington thinks of it as “Before Carol.”  

Covington, a former third and fifth grade teacher who recently became the school’s special education coordinator, taught at Frederick Douglass Elementary School for 15 years before Leveilee’s arrival. Off the top of her head, she could rattle off at least six principals and 12 assistant principals that were part of a leadership revolving door.

“It was pretty much a free-for-all,” Covington said. “There weren’t set guidelines. There weren’t expectations. … Nobody was on the same page.”

Shannon Rolph, another veteran staff member who joined the school in 2004, said Frederick Douglass had hit rock bottom and remained there for several years before Leveilee.

“There was no consistency. There was no leader,” Rolph said, a former third and fourth grade teacher turned reading coach. “It just was not a great place to work. The behaviors were crazy, … but I lived here in Seaford. My kids went here. I was invested.”

So, when Leveilee came to the lower Delaware city in 2015, it took time to gain trust, both teachers said. 

“For those of us that had been here, it was like, ‘OK, here comes another one. How long are they gonna stay? How invested are they gonna be?’ ” Covington said.

Just like the teachers at the school, Leveilee had no idea what was in store when she signed her first three-year contract.��

She remembers walking into the school on her first day and no one acknowledged her or offered her the keys to her office. When she toured the campus, she couldn’t figure out why the hallway was so dark, until a teacher told her they had the custodian take out all the center lights because they didn’t want people looking at walls full of ripped paper, chipping yellow paint and destroyed cork boards.

Just 32% of third graders were proficient in reading and the school was under “a constant magnifying glass” she said with recurring visitors from the state asking questions, doing walkthroughs and scrutinizing student data. 

Like the hallways at the school, it was a dark time for Leveilee.

“I’ll never forget my first year was all defeats,” she said. “I got here and I regretted my decision daily. I cried myself to sleep many nights. I worked 16-hour days, seven days a week. … People didn’t like kids. Kids didn’t want to be here. Parents didn’t like the school.” 

But, Leveilee knew her students were her saving grace.

“Every single one of those kids needed me,” Leveilee said. “They needed me to hire the best teachers and staff possible. They needed me to wake the para up that was always asleep in the chair. … Needed me to tell the kindergarten teacher in my first year, ‘You know teaching isn’t good for you, you don’t like our kids’ and those hard conversations. Those 383 kids were counting on me and my team.”

Within two months, it was clear to Leveilee it was time to clean house, both among staff and the actual physical space of the school.

She first tasked teachers with cleaning out their rooms, many filled with decades of outdated material.

“We were like ‘Why does she care about what’s in our closet? … Why does she keep telling us to clean out our filing cabinet? … She’s lost her mind,’ ” Covington said, gritting her teeth with an eye roll before laughing at the memory. “But, what [we later realized is], when your space is organized and clean, you become more effective.”

Leveilee was in and out of classrooms, taking notes on a notepad she still wears around her neck and that staff now jokingly call “her brain.” Within three months, seven teachers were put on improvement plans. 

By Christmas, two of those educators had left. In her first three years, about half of the staff followed, Leveilee said.

‘We needed a leader’

When Reesie Jones and Monika Kittell arrived at Frederick Douglass Elementary School a year before Leveilee, they were long-time veteran aides.

But in that year, they learned that students ran the school. The kids’ behaviors were out of control, disrespectful and students didn’t care about the consequences, they said. Suspension was a normal occurrence, and anytime one of them was called to be a substitute, they’d ask the other to come for extra support.

“We needed a leader,” Jones said. “We were in desperate need of a leader.”

In Leveilee’s first year, she bought everyone a copy of The Energy Bus for Schools by Jon Gordon. Weekly, she assigned a chapter to read and led discussions. The book stressed the importance of collaboration and how everyone needed to be heading in the same direction, said Kittell, now a third grade teacher.

“If you are a Negative Nelly, you need to get off the bus. [Leveilee] would truly say ‘If you are not part of this bus, you need to get off because you’ll bring all us down,’ ” Kittell said. “That’s how it all started shifting.”

After 11 years, the veteran educators — including Jones, Kittell and Rolph — have kept yellow toy school buses that were gifted after completing the book.

“Some did not give it a chance. … It took a few years to get some people out that just weren’t here for the right reasons. Carol wasn’t going anywhere, so either you needed to change or…” Rolph said, trailing at the end of her sentence with a laugh.

Changing from reactive to proactive

A handful of other changes occurred simultaneously in Leveilee’s early years, including a new piloted reading curriculum, aligned with the science of reading, which has stuck around.

The district also reconfigured the school from a K-3 campus to 3-5, which shifted demographics and created more diversity within the city’s four elementary schools.

Curriculum alignment and reconfiguration in the district were catalysts to some growth, but continuing work on school climate was the biggest challenge — and game changer. 

Beyond staffing changes, the actual campus needed an overhaul.

“The decor was probably the same from the time the building was constructed,” Rolph said. “We saw other schools and they looked so nice, and it was just like, why didn’t anyone care to fix our grounds up?”

More than just cleaning closets, Leveilee had the school repainted, cork boards installed to decorate the halls with students’ proudest work, new furniture installed, murals painted and fences and landscaping fixed outside.

While it began with small cosmetic changes, Leveilee was also acutely aware of the needs of students.

“When I first came here, there were 312 suspensions,” Leveilee said. “Not only are [our kids] in high poverty, but they come with huge backpacks filled with trauma. … We had to do something because sending these kids home was not the answer.”

In Leveilee’s first few years, she kept a dozen students with her and out of the classroom because of behavioral issues. She would take children into the cafeteria to try and regulate them, which eventually led to the creation of the Reflection Suite and Positive Path.

The Positive Path extends through two hallways, decorated with Legos, velcro tic-tac-toe and coloring paper walls, where kids can get 10-minute passes to go into the hallway and “reset.” 

The Reflection Suite is a series of rooms, some empty to prevent a child from hurting themselves, and others filled with bean bags and motivation quotes on the wall for when students are overwhelmed or need sleep. In the Reflection Suite, students can also meet with counselors.

“Prior to Carol coming in and reworking the whole system, it was very much punishment based,” Covington said. 

But now, the relationship has changed. This year, there have been only three suspensions.

“You can tell when their feet hit the pavement … what kind of morning they had had, what kind of night they had — if they needed to just go in the Reflection Suite and sleep the first hour because they were up taking care of a one-year-old little brother or sister,” Covington said. “We have to take care of all their basic things first before we can ever expect them to learn.”

In addition to having designated spaces to regulate student behavior, there’s an incentive model, including positive office referrals, character slips that praise a child’s positive decision-making and other rewards which have changed how kids view school. 

Over time, the changes began to come together.

“Once the kids started realizing staff checks on them — whether it’s the reading specialist, whether it’s the nurse, whether it’s the cafeteria — … we turned the behaviors from reactive to proactive,” Rolph said. “They just needed to feel that this is a safe place.”

The behavioral improvements led to a 37 percentage point increase in reading scores between 2014-15 and 2018-19.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, 70% of third graders at Frederick Douglass Elementary School were reading on grade level. 

The school saw a dip after the pandemic, which persists, but reading scores remain higher than the state average, which was . Math scores at Frederick Douglass are also nearly double the state average.

Twelve years later

When Leveilee walks around Frederick Douglass, kids stop her in the hallway for a hug and start telling her about their weekend. When she stands by a classroom door, kids wave. When one student passed on his way to the bathroom, Leveilee knew to ask about the passing of his grandfather and to ask if he was doing OK.

For most students, if you ask about their favorite thing at Frederick Douglass Elementary, they admittedly say recess, but a close second is the staff.

“I really like the playground and the teachers and the stuff that they do in the school,” said David Impert, a fourth grader. “I really love all this.”

Fifth graders said they feel ready and prepared for their next academic journey, but confess it’s a little scary to be leaving a place that’s made them feel heard and accepted for who they are.

“I’ve just had a lot of people who understand me. A lot of people, when I tell them I want to be a bug scientist, basically, they’re like ‘Ew, what? That’s weird.’ But I come here and they’re like ‘Wow that’s cool. How can we help you learn more about this?’ ” said fifth grader Willow Pinkerton.

Those responses are not something that would’ve been heard 10 years ago, Leveilee said.

Teachers see the difference too, especially with some of the highest-need children.

“I’ve had kids that have been through [the Division of Family Services], and have been [emotionally] withdrawn, but as soon as they’re back [to school], they’re so excited to be here because it’s their safe place,” Hurlock said.

For teachers, they say one of their favorite parts of the job is Leveilee. Several educators said she spoils them, and they can’t imagine what the school will look like without her one day.

“I could probably cry,” Covington said. “There are many times that she fights for teachers and teachers don’t even know that she’s fighting for them. I truly think that there is never going to be another like her.”

As for Leveilee, finding a new place to call a second home has been one of her favorite parts of the journey. She doesn’t cry every night anymore, she said, and the challenges were worth it to see the school thrive.

“I’m so glad that I did come, and for the sake of these kids that they’re able to learn and laugh in a much better setting than what they were in,” Leveilee said, “and to me that’s worth all the tears, all the gray hair, all the stress.”

But over 40% of those planning to launch new schools in the coming years are Black, according to the latest national report on the growing sector of small, unconventional learning programs. Just 18% of current school founders are Black.

New leaders include Monette Mottenon, a retired educator who will open in Montgomery, Alabama, this summer. It’s a goal she’s had for 15 years, ever since realizing her middle schoolers would “bomb the test” because they could barely read.

“They knew the material, but they couldn’t understand what the questions were asking,” she said. When she learned more about microschools at a conference in Atlanta, she thought, “I have found my people.”

The National Microschooling Center’s annual update also shows that a slightly higher percentage of Asian and Hispanic leaders plan to open microschools. The latest analysis doesn’t include the racial and ethnic makeup of students served, but Don Soifer, the center’s CEO, plans to gather that data in the future. 

Microschools are “shifting to more closely reflect the communities in which they operate,” he said. One reason is because “leadership positions for educators of color are lacking in many communities and states.”

The report, based on a survey of 1,000 microschools in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, also covers topics such as tuition, enrollment and government regulations. Here are some of the other top findings:

Half of all microschools receive more than a quarter of their tuition funds from state private school choice programs.

That’s a big increase over last year, when 38% of microschool leaders said their students use state school choice funds, like education savings accounts. Another 18% said they have students who use an ESA for a portion of tuition and pay the rest themselves.

Soifer attributed the jump to the proliferation of ESA programs like , which went into effect this school year, and the addition of more survey respondents in states with existing ESA programs.

Next year, the percentage could be even higher. Texas’ program launches this fall. In addition, during this year’s legislative season, a restriction on microschools participating in the state’s private school choice program. 

In South Carolina, however, some families are in limbo. The state has allowed one segment of homeschoolers, known as “unbundlers,” to receive ESA funds. These families often supplement homeschooling with a couple days a week in a microschool. But lawmakers are that would lock unbundlers out of the program. Some homeschool advocates, worried about government involvement in homeschooling, pushed for that provision in the law. 

Over 1,000 families are now “eagerly waiting and wondering” what the legislature will do, said Ryan Dellinger, director of education policy at the Palmetto Promise Institute, a school choice advocacy group. If the proposal passes, the unbundlers might be restricted to homeschooling only or “may need to scramble to get themselves on a waiting list and find a private school or a charter school” for the fall, he said. 

Future microschool leaders are heavily focused on nonacademic learning.

In a subsample of 199 “prelaunch” founders, 172 said their greatest hope for students is growth in nonacademic learning. Specific skills might depend on the school’s model, Soifer said, but would likely range from self-management and social awareness to resilience and workforce readiness. That category was followed by 163 who said students’ academic proficiency or mastery was their top goal. 

A from the center last December highlighted a few schools using online platforms, such as IXL and i-Ready, to track progress.

But the field still lacks independent comparisons between microschool students and their peers in traditional schools. Last year, the Rand Corp. said it was “nearly impossible” to measure the impact of attending a microschool on students’ academic outcomes. A lot of schools didn’t have enough assessment data to determine growth in reading and math over time.

1 in 5 microschools have been open at least six years.

The largest share, 45%, have been in operation for three to five years. While the movement exploded during the pandemic, the numbers show that the small programs are more than a short-term solution to a crisis. 

The Success Center, operating out of a former courthouse in South Carolina’s Lowcountry, began as a tutoring service and expanded to offer a microschool when COVID hit. Joining the state’s independent school association was a way to “avoid looking like we just put out a shingle,” said Alicia Dickerson, who co-founded the program with her husband Doug. 

The small schools can also form close relationships with families, which contribute to a longer lifespan for a program, Alicia said. According to the report, the majority of current microschool leaders, 70%, said they expect to operate for 10 years or more.

Those who have closed their microschools are staying in the business.

Microschools shut down for a variety of reasons. The lease on a facility might run out, or the founders’ children age out of the program, Soifer said. 

Some leaders lack the skills to run a business, said Allison Serafin, vice president of the Building Hope Impact Fund, which offers loans and financial tools to founders. Tasks like budgeting, invoicing and getting business insurance are time-consuming, she said, “but they make the business durable.”

But 78% of former microschool leaders said they’re still part of the movement.

With a background in management consulting, Sheila Banister didn’t struggle with the administrative aspects of the microschool she co-launched in the Huntsville, Alabama, area during the pandemic. But there were other rough patches.

“It’s definitely a challenge finding a teacher who is willing to teach in this type of environment because it’s so different from public school,” she said. The teacher they hired had experience in early childhood, but lacked the skills to teach higher-level math skills to older students. 

Banister’s expectations for the program also didn’t line up with those of the other parents who co-founded the school. 

“I think they wanted more of a co-op experience, not necessarily focused on academic growth,” Banister said.

They decided to discontinue the program at the end of this school year. But Banister said she still believes in the microschool approach. She leads the state’s affiliate of Love Your School, a nonprofit school choice advocacy organization that began in Arizona, and coaches prospective founders on administrative aspects of the business, like how to incorporate.

Like many former microschool leaders, she said opening another one is “not off the table.” 

Public microschools are bigger than private ones.

The median number of students attending private microschools is 20. But with more districts and charter schools launching small, individualized programs, this year’s report notes that the median enrollment figure for public microschools is 30. 

There’s growing interest from public school leaders in opening microschools. Some examples include in Middletown, New York, in the Hudson Valley region, and a new in the Elizabeth City-Pasquotank district in North Carolina. But Soifer said it’s too early to get an accurate count. 

The Eastern Hancock district, in a rural community outside Indianapolis, enrolled 62 students in Nature’s Gift Microschool this school year, with 140 students on a waitlist. Several more public microschools will launch across Indiana this fall, and Superintendent George Philhower said he’s “in discussions” about creating a multi-state collaborative.

The term microschool, he said, has more to do with a “mindset” that emphasizes personalization and flexibility than with a specific enrollment number.

93 hours per year — that’s the average amount of time microschool leaders spend on compliance issues.

Getting government approval, whether that’s obtaining a business license or passing an inspection, takes up about 20% of that time, the respondents said. Business permits, zoning and facility regulations, and fire or safety code requirements top the regulatory categories that microschool leaders would like to see eliminated.

While standardized test requirements and ESA reporting rules only apply to some microschools, 8% of founders said they would like to see these requirements go away. 

School choice advocates argue that state and local laws haven’t kept up with the . The Institute for Justice, for example, which has won major school choice cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, also provides legal assistance to microschool founders originally meant for traditional schools.  

of the movement say those rules exist to protect students and that if microschools receive ESA funds, the public should know how the money is spent and whether children are learning.

Some states have tried to make it easier for founders to open and operate. Because of a legislative change this year, microschools registered as private schools will be able to operate out of former churches, libraries or other community facilities without getting zoning changes or making facility improvements. 

But many other jurisdictions require extensive renovations to run a school during the week in the same church classrooms used for Sunday school, Serafin said. 

“Life safety is critical, no argument there,” she said. “But I’m not sure the International Building Code leaders or local planning commissions envisioned a world of 20- to 50-student schools.”

The Nation’s Report Card released Long-Term Trend assessment data this morning, and the findings are mixed. While 9-year-olds are making progress in math and reading, 13-year-olds have stagnant scores. Across the board, students are largely working below levels seen during the pandemic and around 2012 when achievement was at a high point.

In math, where the declines are sharpest, average scores for 13-year-olds are down roughly 10 points from just before the pandemic and around 15 points from 2012. Average math scores for 9-year-olds are still down too, though they’re now moving in the right direction.

The new report shows trends dating to the 1970s. In reading, 13-year-olds are still working at the same levels as their counterparts then. The report also includes survey questions about student experiences in and outside of school. The share of 9- and 13-year-olds who report they read for fun most days is stuck at historic lows. For example, just 14% of adolescents say they generally read on their own daily. That’s the same as in 2023, but it’s down significantly from 35% in 1985, when the question was first asked. Among 9-year-olds, 37% read almost every day, down from 53% in 1984.

In addition, the share of 9- and 13-year-olds who say they talk about the things they’re learning in school with their family nearly every day is low. Only 1 in 5 13-year-olds report having these regular conversations. Among 9-year-olds, about a third have these talks just about daily. As a book lover, and mom to two school-aged boys, all that hits hard.

I hear all the time from parents who have been told their child is fine but have started to suspect that story is not the whole picture. These new NAEP results confirm something the country has been slow to address: Average scores for students peaked a decade and a half ago.

It’s important to look at what’s changed in schools if parents, policymakers and educators want to improve them. Around the time these declines began, after decades of progress, there was a loosening of policies around the country that brought attention and focus to achievement and made schools more accountable for learning gains.

As accountability loosened, distractions expanded.

The iPhone launched in 2007, when the 13-year-olds working at the 2012 high water mark were 8 years old. Instagram launched when they were 11. They were likely aware of these products and platforms during their adolescent years but not immersed in them. This 2012 cohort may be the last whose childhood happened mostly off a personal screen. It’s notable that students in subsequent grades did worse academically.

The country has spent the last year or so debating phones and artificial intelligence in schools, and confidence in education technology is low. In a recent , half of students said using AI in class makes them feel less connected to their teachers. But the cost of letting that collective distrust harden into blanket rejection is high.

When I taught special education students in New York City, the children in my classroom were the ones a ban on technology would have hurt most. I’ve seen the value of tech tools that help identify learning gaps and support accessibility. It’s imperative for teachers and school and system leaders to be able to tell the difference between research-based learning resources and distraction engines, and be clear in articulating that distinction to parents and teachers.

It is possible to return to an era of progress across subjects and grades if state, district and school leaders focus on creating strong, coherent teaching and learning strategies, taking responsibility for what is and isn’t happening in schools, and building lasting trust with students, families and teachers. Here are ways to help make that happen.

Tell parents the truth, clearly. Schools can send families regular updates on individual student performance and outline how they are addressing areas of concern. States like Arkansas, Texas and Louisiana are starting to promote these practices, and Mississippi provides reports to parents when students need extra help with literacy. But many state and school systems are not being transparent with parents, and are doing much of the hiding.

Make the school-to-home conversation easier. My family gets regular emails home from school with updates and questions that can spark face-to-face conversations with our children. On busy and chaotic days, it’s so helpful to have a prepared question to ask a student, like, “Today in math, children estimated the circumference of a pumpkin or apple by cutting a string and comparing it to their fruit. Ask your child which fruit they chose, and whether their string came out longer or shorter.”

Make AI governance a discipline, not a slogan. AI guidelines must actually be used in schools, not just filed away. They must be clear so they enable school and system leaders to make decisions quickly, learn from what’s happening and adjust as evidence comes in. States and districts should name outcomes before naming tools, audit what they already pay for and design for safety before scale. And, of course, parents and educators should be included at every stage of this work.

Teach every child how to decide. The Alliance for Decision Education and the Burning Glass Institute reviewed 6.8 million U.S. job postings and found 41% required decision- making skills. Educators must help young people understand information they encounter by teaching strong analytical, critical thinking and other skills that will always be in demand. Ensuring that students read broadly, are exposed to a range of perspectives and debate ideas across subjects is a good start.

Put real books back in children’s hands. Schools and libraries should make space and time for kids to pick books they actually want. Let their curiosity be the spark and their choice be the fun. Adults can put reading time on the family calendar. Educators and leaders can offer support for parents who haven’t read aloud since they were kids.

Today, 13-year-olds in the U.S. read at roughly the same achievement level as the federal government assessed more than 50 years ago — a worrisome sign that education isn’t progressing over time as it should. I don’t believe the solution can be bought or banned. It requires real books, engaging learning opportunities, evidence-based approaches and meaningful data accompanied by the will to act on it. 

The number of remote charter academies operating in North Carolina is expected to nearly double next school year, according to state education officials.

Ashley Logue, executive director of the Office of Charter Schools, told the state’s Charter Schools Review Board on Monday that 19 remote academies are expected to operate during the upcoming school year, up from 10 during the previous year. That total includes four statewide virtual schools.

Remote charter academies have seen huge growth in the state since a law was passed in 2023 allowing traditional brick-and-mortar schools to establish separate online programs or operate as standalone virtual schools. The first seven remote charter programs opened under the law in 2024.

Logue said that the growth is creating new administrative demands for the Office of Charter School staff. 

“The impact of that is that we now authorize and monitor remote academies on top of the brick and mortar academies,” Logue said during her presentation of the 2025 North Carolina Charter Schools Annual .  

The office is also creating a different renewal process for the remote academies. Under state rules, remote charter academies receive fixed five-year contracts and are not eligible for the up to 10-year extensions available to traditional charter schools.

This past March, board members  over whether the rapid growth of remote programs is driven by educational needs or by the ability it offers schools to enroll more students — and collect the state funding tied to each one.

“I see it as a money grab for a lot of schools that are doing it,” board member Stephen Gay said during that debate.

Board Chairman Bruce Friend, whose own school earlier this year received approval for a remote charter academy, bristled at the characterization.

“If it’s a money grab, then we need to weed that out from the get-go,” Friend said, “not make that a generic comment that applies to those involved in this learning environment.”

While charter school performance grades and student academic growth improved slightly, grade-level proficiency still hasn’t caught up to pre-pandemic levels, and college and career readiness declined to 38.9%, according to the report. That is down 2 percentage points from 2024 and 13 points from 2019.

“Grade-level proficiency improved slightly but remains below pre-pandemic levels, which is what we see across the state in all public schools,” said Ashley Logue, executive director of the Office of Charter Schools.

She added that college and career readiness remains the “clearest academic concern.”

Charter school enrollment in North Carolina continues to rise, with the state ranking fourth in the nation for growth over the past six years, behind Texas, Florida and California, according to figures presented Monday.

Between the 2019-20 and 2024-25 school years, enrollment grew by 31,000 students, a 26% increase. More than 161,000 students now attend charter schools, accounting for more than 10% of the state’s public school students.

But the schools are also heavily concentrated in urban counties, led by Mecklenburg with 34 schools, followed by Wake with 26, Durham with 17 and Guilford with 15.

“Mecklenburg, Wake, Durham and Guilford account for almost half of the charter schools in the state,” said Logue.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. NC Newsline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Laura Leslie for questions: info@ncnewsline.com.

Historically, those are the three pots of funding districts have relied on to educate America’s students. One of the nation’s leading school finance experts says leaders should start planning for a fourth — the new from the IRS.

Advocates for the program, which Congress passed last year as part of President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, have promoted it as a way to expand for parents who want to leave public schools. But according to Marguerite Roza, director of Georgetown University’s Edunomics Lab, district schools could also be big winners.

Under the program, which kicks in next year, taxpayers will get a dollar-for-dollar credit, up to $1,700, if they donate to a scholarship granting organization. Just like an SGO can provide scholarships to private and religious schools, another could direct awards to kids in district schools.

“Given that 90% of the kids in our country, and their families, have attended public schools,” Roza said during “these SGOs could have …broader appeal, to the average taxpayer.”

The Treasury Department further confirmed that public school students will be eligible for scholarship funds during a Tuesday with advocates, according to reporting from the New York Times. The agency is still finalizing rules for the program, and states that opt in [] will have to approve a list of SGOs to accept donations. With the vast majority of U.S. K-12 students eligible for the scholarships, a variety of organizations, like the , have already envisioned how the tax credit could support public school kids who need afterschool and summer learning programs. Chad Aldeman, an education analyst and frequent contributor for The 74, , including public school foundations, to become SGOs. 

But some who oppose the program warn that districts shouldn’t get their hopes up, arguing that the Trump administration’s ultimate goal is to weaken public schools.

The federal tax credit “will give tax money that should be used on public goods, like public education, to unregulated SGOs to fund mostly private school tuition and other private education expenses,” Jessica Levin, litigation director for the Education Law Center, said during .

She suggested that it’s unrealistic to expect the administration to make it easy for public school students to benefit from the program “now that they finally achieved their dream of a federal voucher law.” 

Cecilia Retelle Zywicki, founder of LearningSpring, which is building a system for states to track SGOs and payments, attended the closed-door meeting at Treasury Tuesday. While excited about the prospects for helping more students, she urged caution until the administration releases rules for the program later this year.

“This is big, and represents a lot of opportunity for a lot of people,” she said. “But this means the details matter. Compliance and accountability are paramount. It’s exciting, but requires outstanding management and unbiased information.” 

‘Maximize those dollars’

Before Congress passed the law that included the new tax credit, organizations supporting public schools worked hard to stop it. In March 2025, Sasha Pudelski, director of advocacy for AASA, the School Superintendents Association, the “greatest threat to public education we’ve ever had at the federal level.” She noted how private schools accepting scholarships would be able to discriminate in admissions based on students’ religion, disabilities or academic performance.

But the potential for public school kids to benefit is one reason Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, opted into the program. Gov. Kathy Hochul in New York, also a Democrat, plans to participate as well.��

Scott Smith, chief financial and operating officer in the Cherry Creek district, southeast of Denver, is among those who have been skeptical that the tax credit will be a windfall for public schools. 

“This administration has shown that it doesn’t support traditional public education,” he said. But he’s still hopeful, and said across the district’s 70 schools, there is uneven access to opportunities like summer camps and afterschool enrichment. “If the rules get written in such a way that allow public schools to benefit, we will most certainly do everything we can to maximize those dollars and invest them into the students who need them the most.” 

The tax credit will pay for a broad range of , including supplies, fees, field trips, uniforms and digital devices — a lot of the items that public education foundations already provide to supplement district budgets across the country, said Mike Taylor, CEO of the National Association of Education Foundations. 

Many public school districts currently charge tuition for students who live outside of their boundaries. A district, Taylor said, could accept more of those students through scholarships. 

There has been “a sea change” in attitudes toward the program, he said. “It’s happening, and we’re going to make sure we take advantage of this.”

Even Josh Cowen, one of the nation’s most outspoken voucher critics, , “It’s important to squeeze every dollar out of the new federal scholarship tax credit for public school families.” 

He urged nonprofits to learn from the well-established SGOs supporting private schools and said he wouldn’t “” public school supporters if they need guidance on how to use this new “revenue stream.” 

At least one group, which worked to expand internet access in schools and students’ homes, has already reinvented itself as an SGO. plans to deliver scholarships for high-quality literacy tutoring to kids nationwide who enter first grade off track in reading. 

“This is the pathway to take tutoring to scale in public school,” said Evan Marwell, the organization’s founder and CEO. The challenge is getting taxpayers without kids in public schools to donate, but he thinks he has the right approach. “A message of ‘America has a reading crisis, this is our way to fix it and here’s the evidence that shows it works’ is going to be incredibly compelling.” 

After the legislation passed, he began meeting with governors in both red and blue states to encourage them to add his organization to their approved SGO lists. He said it was clear they all care about improving literacy, but existing states and districts can’t afford to provide tutoring to all the students who need it. 

Roza described a more expansive scenario in which a district would set a price on a “bundled set of enhanced services” for every student, not just those with specific needs.

That bundle, funded by an SGO, might include field trips, a robotics lab or special assemblies — offerings that go above and beyond the basic education that schools are legally required to provide. She doesn’t think it would be hard for district leaders to convince local taxpayers to donate to an SGO that would direct scholarships to students in a specific district. 

“Donating a portion of your federal taxes to our SGO helps us go beyond the bare minimum to better serve our students,” is one pitch a school board might make to the community, she said.

‘Financial gaps’

Levin, with the Education Law Center, slammed the idea and said it’s wrong for districts to start charging parents for things that they don’t already pay for. The logistics of offering such a “premium package,” she added, would be difficult for districts to manage. 

“There are way too many variables for public schools to try to control,” she said, including the SGO raising enough every year to cover all students and ensuring parents apply for the scholarships.

Others wonder if district-focused SGOs would attract major donations in some communities, but not others — similar to cases in which PTAs in wealthier districts can collect enough donations for facility upgrades and while others can only raise enough for small grants to fund teachers or field trips.

“Taxpayers are most likely to fund an SGO that directly benefits their own school district,” said Katie Roy, executive director of the . An acronym for Strategic Public Education National Data, the new effort aims to preserve and collect education finance information after the many large surveys. “The benefits of these tax credits — and the resulting funding — are poised to flow primarily toward more affluent school districts, potentially widening existing financial gaps between schools.”

To take advantage of the full $1,700 credit on their income taxes, a donor must have that much to contribute to an SGO each year. In lower-income communities, many residents don’t earn enough to .

But the extent to which an SGO can narrow its scholarship eligibility to students in specific schools or districts will depend on the rules the Treasury Department sets for the program, said Kristin Blagg, a principal research associate at the Urban Institute, a left-learning think tank. 

“For those seeking to develop an SGO, I’d imagine it’s difficult to plan for the future without knowing what those federal regulatory guardrails are,” she said, “and what additional guardrails, if any, a host state may be able to impose.”

Tucked in New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s sprawling universal childcare plan is a little-talked-about milestone: In September, the city will open what appears to be the first free daycare for municipal workers in the country. 

The center, called , is a pilot program that could prove to be a model for cities across the country that are childcare curious, but not ready to take the big universal swing. 

Housed in a renovated space on the first floor of the David N. Dinkins Municipal Building in Manhattan, home base for more than 2,000 city workers, the Little Apple will offer free care to the kids of full-time staff. All workers in the Department of Citywide Administrative Services (DCAS), a city government support agency, can also take advantage of it regardless of their work location.

The center will be small — just 40 seats for children ages six weeks to 3 years old. To pay for it, the city budgeted about $1.5 million, or $35,000 per child.

“This is what Wall Street could call a good investment,” Mamdani . “We know that after housing, the cost of childcare is what is pushing working families out of this city.” 

DCAS Commissioner Yume Kitasei told The 19th said the solution came about as a retention strategy, responding to the needs workers shared. In surveys, workers enthusiastically embraced the idea. One worker described access to free childcare as “life-changing.”

That’s probably not hyperbole. Childcare affordability is a national problem that has only grown more acute. Childcare costs an average of nationwide; in New York for an infant at a center it’s closer to on average. Paying for a daycare now vies with housing costs as , so much so that some parents have had to move or . 

Cities, meanwhile, have been since the pandemic. Benefits like childcare, which some cities and private companies have dabbled with, can help address the quality-of-life issues that are pushing workers out of jobs. 

“This is a great time for us to sort of be thinking about: How can we make our jobs even more attractive to people and also retain the city workers that we have?” Kitasei said. “This is one piece of that puzzle.” 

Kitasei added that a “healthy” number of staffers applied for The Little Apple and the department expects to fill its 40 childcare seats. Anyone who doesn’t get a spot will be put on a waitlist.

There is an appetite across the country for childcare solutions that could help bring down costs for certain workers, and cities are already taking on creative fixes. 

Several already have childcare centers in municipal buildings or for city employees, including , , and , Colorado, though none of them are free like New York’s. In Chattanooga, Tennessee, the county school district and a local childcare center known nationally have partnered to provide childcare for the children of teachers inside unused classrooms in schools. Boone County, Missouri, is . 

In the private sector, and closed longstanding childcare centers they operated on their campuses in recent years, but efforts continue elsewhere. Patagonia has operated at its California headquarters since the 1980s, a move it argues has lowered turnover from employees who use the site by 25%. Overstock.com also has an at its Utah headquarters. Both are subsidized, not free.��

“As cities in every region of the country compete with the private sector and other municipalities to attract and retain workers and elected officials, ensuring access to childcare offers an opportunity for local governments to build a representative workforce and invest in the future of their communities,” said Quincy Midthun, an outreach specialist with the Mayors Innovation Project at the High Road Strategy Center, a think tank focused on solutions to social problems.

The Little Apple, and New York City broadly, reflect a when it comes to childcare. 

The announcements of universal childcare in New York City and in the last year received an enormous amount of attention across the country. Both places took an idea that for many years was floated as a pipe dream — treating childcare similarly to public education — and turned it into reality. In New York, it’s one of the few issues that Mamdani, a Democratic socialist, and Gov. Kathy Hochul, a centrist Democrat, . 

Voters are also hungry for more solutions: In poll after poll, they assert that spending money on childcare is a . 

Emmy Liss, who heads Mamdani’s childcare office, said childcare is at a “political tipping point.” 

“We’re in this moment where folks across all political, socioeconomic, demographic spectrums recognize that childcare is essential, that childcare is something families are struggling to access, and know that the market economics of childcare don’t work without public investment,” Liss said. “We see recognition of that.”

With Little Apple, New York is testing what it looks like to commit to its promises of free care for all, but doing it first for its own employees. 

“If we are asking folks to report to work in person in parts of the city where childcare is expensive, as it is all over the city, I think that we have to recognize that childcare is an important part of how we keep people in the workforce,” Liss said. 

Mamdani and Hochul have been working to make childcare universally available to children in the city through a phased rollout set to conclude in four years. For 2-year olds, the mayor announced that will be available in the fall in four largely low-income areas of the city. Another 12,000 are planned for 2027. For 3-year-olds, about 2,000 new seats will be added in the fall, as well. The city has an existing universal childcare program for 4-year-olds. 

Universal childcare as Mamdani envisions it will cover kids ages 6 weeks to 5 years with a price tag of about $6 billion annually, making it the most expensive pillar of his affordability agenda. Mamdani is expected to push to fund the program with a tax increase on the wealthy, a strategy Hochul for, though the state is . Mamdani has not yet unveiled what his universal childcare program would look like for infants and young toddlers.

How New York City’s program rolls out and its sustainability are being closely watched by proponents of universal care, who argue it’s also an anti-poverty measure.

“We know that other places are watching as we try different things out, including the work at the Little Apple,” Liss said.

In New York City, 21% of working parents experienced some kind of childcare hardship in 2024 that forced them to forgo care or use inadequate care, particularly families living in poverty, single mothers and Black parents, from Robin Hood, an anti-poverty organization, and Columbia University’s Center on Poverty and Social Policy.��

An average of 3,400 2- and 3-year-olds were pushed into poverty between 2022 and 2024 specifically due to the cost of childcare, a from the same organizations found. An estimated 4,100 2- and 3-year-olds would be lifted out of poverty each year if they had access to universal 2-K and 3-K education. That would reduce poverty for this age group .��

Rebecca Bailin, the executive director of the parent organizing group New Yorkers United for Child Care, said the problem has reached such a fever pitch that thousands of parents started to organize around the issue in 2023 and helped push the agenda that was central to Mamdani’s election. 

Bailin, who has a 1-year-old, said she can now depend on a 3-K program when her child turns 3 and likely a 2-K program, as well — a savings of about $100,000. The 2-K program Mamdani is rolling out will also be full-day care rather than partial-day care that wraps up around 2 p.m. like the existing 3-K program, addressing a top ask from parents.

“People are stoked,” Bailin said. “People feel like they can stay in the city.” 

The Little Apple is a small part of the larger effort, but, “if we want to retain people, we have to do this,” Bailin said. 

“This is something we want to see scaled. If city workers can’t afford to live here, that’s a real problem,” she continued. “This is really critical and we need this for everybody.” 

was originally reported by Chabeli Carrazana of .

Unfortunately, conventional wisdom in American education is that until third grade, students learn to read by building foundational literacy skills, and from fourth grade on they read to learn, mastering subject matter without the need for basic literacy support. This means that after third grade, there’s no time in the schedule for literacy instruction or intervention, and most secondary school educators aren’t trained to teach it. If you’re a sixth-grade English teacher, you’re expected to focus on literary analysis, not literacy. 

Given that the most recent found that only 31% of fourth graders and 30% of eighth graders read proficiently, it’s fair to say that this approach is not serving students well. Literacy is a continuum, not a finish line that kids cross at the end of third grade. The two-thirds of students who can’t read proficiently still need to practice key literacy skills. But that’s not what they’re getting.

A solution is to provide educators and students with a core curriculum that includes supports for students who struggle with reading. For example, eighth graders might be reading To Kill a Mockingbird, with an assignment to discuss the role of racism in the story. Students who can’t read To Kill a Mockingbird can absolutely practice that same grade-level skill with a book that has a slightly more accessible text. The same applies to background knowledge: Students who read about civil rights at a more accessible level than their classmates are able to join the discussion even though they aren’t yet able to read To Kill a Mockingbird independently. 

Several dozen schools and districts across the country have adopted this approach of embedding grade-level standards into foundational literacy skill instruction, and it has proven effective. In a 2025 conducted by Johns Hopkins University, students at five middle schools showed both increased NWEA MAP scores and a more positive attitude toward reading. In my conversations with middle and high school teachers around the country, I’ve found that they are eager — even desperate — for a curriculum that allows their entire class to practice grade-level skills together, regardless of their differences in literacy ability.

Closing the gap between knowledge and practice also requires interdisciplinary communication. When middle and high school teachers collaborate with the reading interventionist, multilingual learners’ coordinator or special education teacher about what works for their struggling readers, they can identify strategies to reinforce literacy growth across subject areas.

Students must read to succeed in science, social studies and even math, so all educators must become teachers of literacy who connect the dots among subjects. If students are learning about the water cycle in science, their teacher can introduce the unit with a morphology lesson where students learn the Greek prefix hydr– and the Latin base aqua. They may learn about the Hydra (a serpentine lake monster) when studying Greek mythology in English class and aqueducts when studying Ancient Rome in social studies. Then, they can apply their knowledge of the Greek prefix to understand what it means when a character is dehydrated.

Reinforcing these interconnected threads across subject areas enables students to simultaneously learn grade-level subject matter and strengthen their understanding of how words are formed and meaning changes, based on their structure. For this approach to succeed, secondary school educators in all disciplines need professional development focused on how they can engage and support students with varied literacy skills.  

Engagement is essential because kids who struggle with reading often become discouraged. But when they read about subjects that spark their interest, in a format that feels comfortable, the opposite happens. I believe that when it comes to struggling or reluctant readers, all reading is good reading, whether it’s in a book or on a tablet, in an audiobook or a graphic novel. 

Students who can’t sound out words but can understand concepts can listen to an audiobook and deepen their knowledge without the barrier of decoding. They can also read an accessible text that uses simplified grammar or defines challenging vocabulary words by offering strong context clues. Once they’re engaged, students can make amazing leaps quickly, just like my fifth-grade student who was obsessed with the Jonas Brothers. From there, teachers can gradually increase the rigor of the language, enabling students to progress toward the literacy outcomes they need to succeed in school and life.

While teaching literacy can be more challenging in the upper grades, a coherent curriculum that marries engagement with rigorous instruction can not only teach older students how to read, but also inspire them to love reading.