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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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.

I have an unusual window into what’s happening in classrooms as CEO of DonorsChoose, which provides resources in 90% of U.S. public schools. Each year, 200,000 teachers post requests on our site.

Since the 2022–23 school year, requests for AI-related tools have surged more than 200%. But what’s interesting isn’t the growth. It’s the purpose.

Teachers are asking, overwhelmingly, for AI-enabled tools to reach students who have been left behind for decades: kids with disabilities as well as those learning English. In fact, 86% of requests are aimed at meeting the needs of students who have historically been underserved. In other words, teachers are turning to AI not only to save themselves time (although it can do that); nearly 9 in 10 are using it to get essential tools to the students who need them most.

For example, a middle school teacher near Atlanta requested AI-powered translation pens. With a simple scan, students can hear text read aloud or translated into more than 100 languages. For children who are learning English, or who struggle with reading comprehension, a $90 pen transforms their school day from frustrating to fulfilling. DonorsChoose has provided hundreds of these pens to teachers, along with more than 1,500 translation devices of other types.

In Chicago, an elementary school STEM teacher looked to AI to modify classroom materials when a child isn’t understanding a lesson.

In Miami, a middle school math teacher requested software that responds to students’ answers with immediate feedback that builds confidence rather than deflating it. Meanwhile, at another Miami middle school, a computer science teacher helps students get under the hood of machine learning by training robots to recognize and react to images. The project opens up discussions about ethics, real-world applications and how AI depends on what humans feed it.

In Detroit, high school educator Carrie Russell uses AI tools to effectively give every student a personalized tutor, expanding her capacity to teach each learner. She’s also mentoring other teachers about how to ethically and confidently incorporate AI tools into student learning.

These teachers aren’t asking for anti-cheating software or ways to monitor screen time, which is where much of the public debate is focused. They are experimenting and adapting tools that work for themselves and their students, without waiting for top-down guidance.

It shouldn’t be surprising that teachers are forging ahead and deploying AI in practical ways without directives from their schools and districts. Teachers have always been first responders to children’s needs.

In 2011, when American education underwent a seismic shift with states’ introduction of new academic standards, classroom teachers sounded the alarm on poor curriculum quality and misalignment to the new standards. Instead of waiting for the market or policy to catch up, they created materials that met the higher bar — and shared them with peers. 

More recently, on DonorsChoose, educators flagged the COVID pandemic’s effects on student mental health long before they became a national concern. We saw teachers request food for hungry students when SNAP benefits were disrupted last fall. And we routinely see teachers mobilize following natural disasters to replace what’s suddenly gone from their classrooms and restore some normalcy in their communities.

AI is the latest disrupter in education. It’s an opportunity to move toward a future when technology expands human potential rather than replaces it, where fairness is built into the design and where every student can experience moments of joy, discovery and magic. Teachers are showing what that can look like — one classroom at a time.

Early this month, The Center for Reinventing Public Education convened a group of current and former superintendents and experts to help shape questions for a national survey on how district leaders are coping with the financial pressures created by declining enrollment and federal funding cuts. The survey results will come out this fall, but our informants flagged several important considerations that district and state leaders need to grapple with right now, before the next budget cycle, before the next round of collective bargaining.

The financial challenges districts face today are just the beginning. In many districts, the kindergarten and first-grade classes coming through the door are smaller than the ones before. Low birth rates, sharp reductions in immigration, continued family migration away from cities and growing enrollment in charter and private schools of choice are all pushing in the same direction. District leaders who believe they are managing a temporary dip are likely wrong. This is a long-term shift, and the numbers will keep declining as long as newer classes of students are smaller than those they succeed. 

District costs keep rising, so doing nothing is not an option. Even a district that adds no new programs, hires no new staff and signs no new contracts will see its costs rise. Teacher step increases escalate pay automatically without any new collective bargaining agreement. Benefits and energy costs track inflation. Deferred maintenance on buildings and equipment eventually becomes unavoidable. A district can do everything to keep costs steady and still watch its budget deteriorate year by year. As one superintendent put it during our discussion: “You start with the painless solutions… And after a year or two…now you’re into painful cuts.” 

Parents and voters don’t know how bad it is, and district leaders are keeping them in the dark. The gap between public perception and fiscal reality is wide and growing. Superintendents habitually project confidence and avoid talking through budgetary tradeoffs and hard decisions; explaining what things actually cost often creates confusion, anger and confrontation. Newer leaders often lack the background to understand and explain the complexities of their districts’ financial crises. As a result, most people hold significant misconceptions about basic facts, from the real cost of special education services to what teachers take home in pay; they attribute budget shortfalls to mismanagement. As one advisor told us: “Families don’t know this stuff is going on… but they know that their kids are not where they need to be.” 

This lack of understanding undermines public support when it’s needed most. Local groups — including teacher unions, parents protecting schools and programs, social service advocates and others — fear losing resources they rely on. Since they don’t have the full picture, they naturally assume that districts can make ends meet if they tighten belts. At a time when teachers and families are facing rising costs in their private lives, many people think of taxpayer-funded schools as flush with resources and able to fill gaps. The lack of clarity from the districts guarantees pushback, and the result is political gridlock, not thoughtful fiscal strategy. This is where many districts across the country are stuck right now.��

States are not coming to the rescue. Federal cuts to domestic programs under the Trump Administration are setting off intense competition for state dollars. Schools will not be alone in that fight. Healthcare, transportation, housing and other civic necessities will be pressing state legislatures at the same time. The idea that states will ride to the rescue of districts facing structural deficits is not realistic in this environment. And it is disingenuous for district leaders to suggest this is a solution.

Our advisors were honest that they do not have a full set of answers. But they were clear that superintendents cannot afford to wait for the survey results, or for clearer signals from Washington or for the next school board election. CRPE has been studying and the for more than 30 years, and we have seen what works — and what doesn’t — for struggling districts. Here are some ways districts can act now to start telling the truth and prepare for what’s to come. 

First, calculate and forecast honest numbers. Not optimistic enrollment projections or revenue figures that assume federal dollars that may not arrive. Real numbers, with real ranges of uncertainty, shared internally first and then publicly with enough context so people understand how the situation got so bad, and what’s at stake. 

Then, go public with what you know and ask for help. Community members cannot engage in a meaningful way if they don’t understand the situation. The instinct to project confidence by withholding bad news almost always backfires, and it precludes the public conversation that might actually generate support for difficult decisions. Asking for help will generate new ideas and also build trust.

That means no longer pretending that extreme measures are off the table. If teacher layoffs and school closures are genuinely avoidable right now, say so, but don’t rule anything out entirely. Setting clear and realistic expectations will build trust and credibility that can help if the situation worsens. 

And it requires building real relationships with state officials and legislators, not just formal contacts. District leaders who have honest, ongoing conversations with their state counterparts will be better positioned to make their case when state budgets are being divided up. For their part, state education associations should be ready to step in with more accurate forecasts, financial expertise and support to superintendents and school boards stuck in gridlock.

Telling the truth isn’t a complete solution for climbing out of budget crises that are years in the making, but it is a starting point for thousands of local efforts to preserve children’s opportunities under conditions that our institutions were never designed to handle. 

The survey we are fielding this fall may reveal examples of districts that have found better answers. We hope it will. But the place to start is not with waiting for more data. Instead, leaders who have a stake in their public schools must gear up for tough conversations and tell the truth about where things stand.

Fair enough, perhaps. But in many ways, the episode serves as a case study in how political turf battles and institutional considerations can take precedence over even the most widely supported, logical measures, an outcome that’s particularly frustrating when benefits for students are on the line.��

The governor’s decision is disappointing, particularly because this bill represented one of the most cost-neutral, evidence-based opportunities available to improve children’s health. But in many ways, the veto was also a reminder of just how politically complicated school legislation can become, even when the underlying ideas enjoy broad bipartisan support. 

As it turns out, the recess and fitness provisions in Kansas had already been through the wringer, with competing political, institutional and industry interests swirling around them. They had already survived an unusually turbulent legislative journey — one deeply entangled with a separate and far more contentious debate — over pesticides, of all things. 

I should know. In late March, I spent three days on the ground in Kansas, moving between legislative offices, committee rooms and hallway conversations, speaking with lawmakers about improving health outcomes for the state’s students. At the center of those conversations was a school lunch bill, , originally designed to remove harmful additives from school meals. This was a policy that, on its face, seemed like a clear, bipartisan win.

But by the time I arrived, that bill had been amended to protecting pesticide manufacturers. Suddenly, a straightforward conversation about children’s health had become entangled in a much larger fight over industry protections and regulatory authority.

Specifically, the amendment introduced provisions shielding pesticide manufacturers from having to comply with state warning or labeling requirements that go beyond federal standards, which many deem to be insufficient. Some pesticides, such as paraquat, have been linked with chronic-disease pathology in epidemiological research — evidence compelling enough that Vermont lawmakers passed the on paraquat last month, citing growing concerns about neurological harm. Recent  has shown a strong association between paraquat exposure and Parkinson’s disease risk, for example.

The newly amended bill advanced out of the House Agriculture Committee, and suddenly, a straightforward public-health measure had become something far more complicated.

Over the next several days, I met with lawmakers across both chambers, including legislative leadership, to walk through what had happened and what was at stake. With the help of Republican Senate President Ty Masterson, I talked about the risks of chronic disease — not as an abstract issue, but as something increasingly affecting children. I connected the dots between food environments, physical activity and long-term health outcomes. And I made the case that the pesticide provisions not only undermined the original intent of the bill but risked derailing it entirely.

Those conversations had an impact. After our chats, lawmakers decided not to continue advancing the bill in its amended form. Instead, they looked for a way to preserve policy concepts that can meaningfully support student health. The solution emerged from negotiations in conference committee: creating a new legislative vehicle that included school lunch reform, daily recess for students and restoration of the Presidential Fitness Test.

conducted on behalf of my organization, End Chronic Disease, 88% of voters support increasing physical activity in schools. And no wonder: It’s one of the most evidence-based ways to improve children’s lives.

Regular movement supports cardiovascular health, reduces the risk of obesity and Type 2 diabetes, and has been shown to improve focus, behavior and academic performance. For many children, especially those without access to safe outdoor spaces or structured activities, school may be the only place they consistently get that opportunity.

Yet even with the bill’s new emphasis, the politics surrounding it never fully disappeared.

As negotiations continued, the school lunch provisions were removed amid pushback tied to the broader pesticide debate. In the final hours before the last legislative deadline of the year, the bill with its focus on recess and physical fitness passed both chambers, only to be rejected in late April by Gov. Kelly’s veto.

It’s important to acknowledge what this process revealed. A bill focused on removing harmful additives from school meals, something that should have been a “no-brainer,” was effectively derailed once it became entangled with the interests of another industry.

The speed with which unrelated pesticide provisions were inserted and the ripple effects that followed underscore how difficult it can be to advance even widely supported educational policies. Too often, such measures with broad public backing become secondary to institutional turf battles, procedural maneuvering and competing political incentives. 

Luckily, the medical establishment is starting to weigh in more forcefully. Just this month, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued describing recess as essential to children’s health and development and warning against withholding it for disciplinary or academic reasons. In other words, pediatricians increasingly understand movement not as a luxury, but as preventive medicine. It will be interesting to see how K-12 schools adjust to this guidance. 

Kansas ultimately did not follow suit this year. But if the legislative conversations I witnessed firsthand are any indication — as well as the new, encouraging guidance from the AAP — the broader direction of the conversation is changing. Someday, our schools will catch up, and students everywhere will benefit mentally, physically and academically.�� 

I knew I wanted to be one of the engineers building this future. But at the end of middle school, the time I spent in class felt stale and unambitious, like just another obstacle separating me from my goals. I wanted to take my education more seriously.

So I transferred to the Academy of Seminole, a charter school in Seminole, Oklahoma that offers more opportunities to move forward faster. 

The new environment took some getting used to, but I thoroughly enjoyed the challenging classes, engaging teachers and new friends during my first two years of high school. The real turning point came at the end of sophomore year, when we all began finalizing our upperclassman plans.

TAOS challenges us to start our postsecondary education early through college or vocational dual enrollment or Vo-Tech. With the contrast of a traditional high school timeline fresh in my mind, I wanted to squeeze as much utility out of the next two years as possible.

I decided to take college courses at Seminole State College to graduate with an associate’s degree like many other students at TAOS. At the same time, I enrolled in Gordon Cooper Technology Center’s machining program. 

Machining is the most precise form of mechanical manufacturing, so the trade appealed to my love of mechanical systems. For me as an engineer, it offered a better understanding of how projects are made, giving me a unique perspective to design for manufacturability. 

I also wanted a way to pay for my education to avoid student loans, so developing a valuable technical skill alongside college coursework made perfect sense. Even better, TAOS covered the remaining tuition and fees not paid by the state, removing any financial worry.

The biggest challenge was simply fitting everything into the day. My physics class ran until 1:35 p.m., but my Vo-Tech work started at 1. My college classes stretched into the late afternoon. I missed more class time than I liked and weathered quite a few late nights to make it work. But with the support of all three schools and my family, I graduated high school already four years into my postsecondary education.

For a long time, my post-graduation plan was simple: attend a local university close to home and earn my engineering degree while using my machine training to keep me debt-free. Then, while filling out scholarships in senior year, I discovered the QuestBridge National College Match and applied on a whim. To my surprise, I became a finalist. For the first time, I realized I was a nationally competitive student who could attend an elite university.

While I didn’t match through QuestBridge, I still applied to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and after a few weeks of anxious waiting, I was admitted with financial aid that completely covers my cost of attendance. Without even realizing it, I had been studying under the exact educational philosophy laid out by the MIT motto: “Mens et Manus” or “Mind and Hand” by applying myself both academically and technically. 

Looking back, I’ve grown so much since I was that pessimistic eighth grader. I found an ocean of opportunity at my three schools. More importantly, I found a community of people who believed in me and helped me become capable of far more than I once imagined.

Now, I look forward to pursuing a bachelor’s degree, and hopefully a PhD, in nuclear engineering at MIT. I plan to use my education to help pioneer new methods of producing abundant, safe and clean energy. I’ve already come farther than I once imagined, but I’m nowhere close to done yet. I can’t wait to see what challenge my ambition drags me into next and to meet the great people who will help me overcome it.

Schools have responded with attendance campaigns, tutoring and family outreach. These strategies matter. But they often treat absenteeism primarily as a logistical problem, when for many students it is fundamentally an engagement problem.

Many young people who miss school are struggling with anxiety, social disconnection, academic frustration or a lack of belonging. In other words, they are disengaged long before they become absent.

One overlooked contributor to this disengagement is how young people spend their time outside of school and the kind of boredom they experience there.

Today’s young people are spending an alarming amount of time in passive, solitary screen use. American teenagers average more than scrolling social feeds, watching videos or gaming alone for hours on end. has heavy passive screen use among adolescents to increased anxiety, sleep disruption and lower well-being.

What young people need more of is the opposite: active, unstructured , time spent walking in and .

Afternoons that once included neighborhood play, outdoor exploration or community activities are increasingly being replaced by solitary time spent on digital devices. Meanwhile, many schools have reduced recess, arts and experiential learning in favor of more instructional time to improve academic performance.

Ironically, that combination may make it harder for some students to stay engaged with school.

This is where afterschool programs, youth organizations and camps can make a meaningful difference. shows that these and other types of out-of-school-time programs can help students develop social and emotional foundations that support school engagement.

Programs run by organizations such as Boys and Girls Clubs of America, YMCA, 4-H, Camp Fire and thousands of local community organizations share several characteristics that appear to matter most.

First, they provide hands-on learning opportunities that differ from the traditional classroom. Whether building a robotics project, cooking together, being exposed to outdoor skills or working on creative arts, these activities allow students to experience curiosity and a sense of accomplishment in low-pressure environments.

Second, they foster meaningful relationships with peers and mentors, including adults who are not grading their academic assignments but supporting their growth. These connections help students build confidence, navigate social challenges and develop a stronger sense of belonging. has found that strong developmental relationships with adults are closely associated with higher school engagement and motivation.

Third, these programs often combine academic support with recreation. Homework help, literacy activities or STEM projects are embedded within collaborative and social settings. This balance allows students to rebuild academic confidence while still experiencing autonomy and enjoyment. For students who feel overwhelmed in traditional academic environments, these programs can provide an important bridge back to engagement.

Yet access to these programs remains uneven. According to the , about 22 million children in the United States would enroll in an afterschool program if one were available to them. Cost, transportation barriers and limited program capacity often prevent participation, particularly in lower-income communities.

If policymakers are serious about addressing chronic absenteeism, expanding access to high-quality youth programs should be .

That means several things. States and districts should treat afterschool and summer programs as a core component of their chronic absenteeism strategies, not an afterthought. Federal Title IV funding under the can be directed toward community-based youth programs, and more districts should use it that way.

Schools can also build formal partnerships with organizations such as Camp Fire, Boys and Girls Clubs and local YMCAs, to help students connect with them rather than relying on parents and guardians to find these programs on their own. Transportation, one of the most stubborn barriers to participation, can be addressed through late bus routes or coordinated ride-sharing arrangements. And in communities where demand far outpaces capacity, philanthropic and corporate investment in program expansion can help close the gap.

These programs should not be treated as simply another academic intervention. Their value lies in offering something different from the classroom. They create environments where young people can explore, collaborate, take healthy risks and experience the kind of unstructured, active time that fuels creativity and resilience.

In a world saturated with digital distractions and constant pressure, students may not need more stimulation. They may need more opportunities to reconnect with curiosity, community and purpose.

Those experiences may happen after school, in a community center, in a makerspace or around a campfire. But they can help students rediscover a reason to show up in the classroom.

More than 40 years later, students are still fighting to have a voice in their education. But they’re not quietly accepting being silenced or disengaging. When young people feel their voices don’t matter in school decisions, they’re taking their concerns elsewhere: to newspaper editorials, sidewalks and courtrooms that challenge the adults in charge. This generation expects to be heard.

In , after families and students raised attendance and budget concerns through official district channels and were met with silence, they organized a mass sick-out to protest district policies. After the Apalachee High School shooting in Georgia, students from more than 30 schools , demanding action on gun safety after their calls for policy changes through normal school channels went unanswered.

When , were informed the principal would have final say over what could be published in their newspaper, they spent months working through official channels on a policy proposal. But the school board’s proposed update included none of the students’ requested protections. They published a scathing editorial, forcing a delay and, ultimately, a policy revision.

Some students have gone even further to make their voices heard. In Newark, 16- and 17-year-olds successfully advocated for school board elections, arguing that students should have a say in decisions that directly affect their education. And students in Kentucky , arguing that inadequate education funding violates their rights.

These stories represent a fundamental shift in how students view their relationship with educational institutions and what happens when districts fail to create meaningful channels for young people’s input. 

Research confirms the benefits of asking students for their perspectives and listening to what they have to say. The Quaglia Institute’s of more than 100,000 students in grades 6 to 12 found that those who believe they have a voice in school are 48% more likely to report being academically motivated and 41% more likely to report being engaged in learning. Notably, the sense of having a voice declines steadily as students age—from 59% of sixth graders to just 46% of 12th graders — meaning districts are losing students precisely when the stakes are highest. These outcomes are undermined when students lack an authentic voice in decisions affecting them.

This gap between consultation and genuine engagement is what’s driving students to seek alternative channels for their concerns. But here’s what can happen when districts create authentic engagement opportunities.

At a high school in when students complained that social-emotional learning felt scripted and meaningless, administrators handed the redesign process over to them. Students surveyed their peers, identified what each grade level needed and created a program where seniors mentor younger students through workshops on everything from time management to conflict resolution. The resulting programming resonated with students because it emerged from student experiences, not adult assumptions. In fact, that students given genuine roles in school reform — reviewing curriculum, advising on instruction, bridging teacher and student perspectives — helps measurably improve teacher-student relationships.

In , students spent two years rewriting district policy, creating Mental Health Week and organizing community forums with school board candidates. The Student Voice Council operates as a genuine partner in district governance.

In Grandville, Michigan, a meets monthly, and students have shaped everything from classroom furniture to the district’s artificial intelligence policy and new course offerings including an aeronautics program. In Medford Township, New Jersey, a has students presenting at staff meetings and driving solutions to real policy questions, including the school’s smartphone policy. 

One of the great shapers of modern K-12 education, John Dewey, saw public school as the key to preparing . But a found that while 68% of students want to help others, only 44% feel confident they can make a difference and just 30% take civic action. That confidence gap closes when students get to shape their environment.

Empowering students with voice doesn’t mean handing over the keys to the school. It means inviting meaningful input while keeping adult leadership and accountability in place. Schools that provide genuine ways for students to advocate, organize and create change are preparing the next generation for participatory democracy.

This evolution in student voice represents both a challenge and an opportunity for districts. Schools can continue to treat student input as a public relations exercise while making decisions in closed-door meetings, which increasingly leads to external conflicts that damage trust and disrupt learning — or they can recognize that true student engagement requires genuine power-sharing. This means giving students real roles in policy development, creating transparent processes for addressing their concerns and accepting that this sometimes brings uncomfortable feedback.

Students are finding their voices with or without permission. The question is whether districts will listen before they’re forced to respond.

I grew up hearing that line. However bad things were in Oklahoma — from teacher pay to life expectancy — our nation’s poorest state, Mississippi, was presumed to have it worse. It was a cruel quip, but also a comforting one. At least somebody was behind us.

In education, however, that old prayer of gratitude has become obsolete. Mississippi, for one, has posted impressive gains in student learning, especially in the early grades. Oklahoma has been moving in the opposite direction. According to I conducted of National Assessment of Educational Progress data, the Sooner State now ranks 48th in the nation when fourth and eighth grade math and reading results are combined. Among the dozen states in the region, Oklahoma ranks dead last.

That is bad news for Oklahoma, but it is also a warning to every state that assumes lasting decline can’t happen there. 

In the 1990s, Oklahoma was not a superstar, but neither was it an educational basketcase. The state generally hovered around the national average and occasionally beat the average. And for years, Oklahoma outperformed Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee on the Nation’s Report Card. What I found when examining the NAEP scores over time is not just that Oklahoma ranks near the bottom today, but that Oklahoma experienced a generational erosion of performance that unfolded over decades and accelerated after 2015. 

Oklahoma’s math scores were on the rise until around 2015, when math scores plateaued before steep declines during the COVID-19 era. Because most states’ math in the era following the passage of No Child Left Behind, Oklahoma’s score increases did not translate into rankings increases, and the state fell from 30th to 40th in the nation in math scores from 2000 to 2015. Since then, Oklahoma’s math scores have dropped sharply, with declines larger than many other states, even as the entire .

In reading, the story is simpler: Oklahoma has experienced both relative and absolute decline over the last decade. In 2024, Oklahoma posted its worst reading scores on record in both fourth grade and eighth grade. In the years since 2015, the state’s reading rank fell from 34th to 48th.��

These shifts are sobering, but they are also confounding. Oklahoma has not experienced a unique economic shock or demographic shift that obviously accounts for the scale of its educational decline. Indeed, all but one major student group in Oklahoma performs poorly relative to comparable students in other states. 

White students, Hispanic students, Black students, wealthier students and poorer students all significantly underperform the national average. Only Native American students stand out positively, ranking first nationally among the 14 states with sufficient data to report scores. It is common to explain away weak test scores with demographics. But when a state’s relatively advantaged students also post dismal results compared with their peers elsewhere, demographics are probably not the main story.

The regional picture looks even worse. Oklahoma now ranks last among the 12 states in the region in combined math and reading achievement. Oklahoma’s current regional ranking is attributable not only to Oklahoma’s decline, but also to experiencing noteworthy change. Tennessee was the first state in the region to pull ahead of Oklahoma, overtaking it in 2013. Mississippi surpassed Oklahoma in 2019, followed by Louisiana, which passed Oklahoma in 2022. 

It’s a depressing state of affairs for Oklahoma, but Oklahomans are unlikely to accept this story as final. Public frustration with the state’s education system is rising, according to . The state’s schools are , and policymakers are increasingly looking to for ideas. 

The larger lesson is not just for Oklahoma. Educational decline can happen slowly, almost invisibly, until it becomes impossible to ignore. Other states should take note before they find themselves becoming someone else’s punchline.

California is doing something about diaper insecurity for its residents. Gov. Gavin Newsom that the state will provide 400 free diapers to families with newborn babies, beginning with hospitals that predominantly serve low-income households, before expanding more broadly.

Diaper need is a serious challenge for many families. of U.S. households with children under age 4 in diapers report diaper insecurity, according to a nationally representative study from the nonprofit National Diaper Bank Network. An infant typically goes through diapers in a day. At , the annual diaper cost for one baby can run roughly $1,000 during the first year. These costs hit during a period when families are often due to the combination of baby-related costs and employment challenges driven in part by America’s .��

The consequences can be harmful: When parents can’t afford enough diapers, they may turn to alternatives like using plastic bags or towels to make their own diapers, or reusing wet or soiled diapers. These practices can lead to severe diaper rash and urinary tract infections. In my work, I have spoken to childcare providers who describe the phenomenon of “Monday morning rash,” when babies arrive after having diapers stretched over the weekend.

Cloth diapers present an alternative that can save parents a lot of money, but they for many families because they require up front costs, need frequent laundering — which can increase utility bills — and importantly, because many center-based childcare programs won’t allow them.  

In fact, many childcare providers require parents to provide disposable diapers, and if they’re unable to do so, they may not be allowed to drop their children off. In of Connecticut diaper bank users, more than half of parent participants who relied on childcare programs reported missing work due to a lack of diapers, with an average of four missed days per month.

While the long-term solution to diaper need likely lies in ensuring all families have access to reliable and well-paying jobs, a statewide program like California’s Golden Gate Start can provide a strong preventative intervention that can set families off on the right foot, helping them leave the hospital with one less worry while they try to figure out how to care for the beloved, squalling creature that’s coming home without an instruction manual. In practice, the 400 diapers, which come in varying sizes, should cover about a month’s supply.

California is not the first state to try to tackle diaper insecurity. Illinois has, since 2023, been utilizing Diaper Dollars, a statewide initiative that sends out a monthly $40 e-card to eligible families that can be used to purchase diapers at various stores, and the idea has since spread to Ohio. In 2024, Tennessee to families enrolled in the state’s Medicaid system, although the program is being as the state legislature tries to shore up healthcare budget holes. 

California’s model, though, may have the most straightforward delivery system. Diaper Dollars has faced challenges because the stipends can only be used at participating stores and some major retailers don’t currently accept that form of payment, while Tennessee struggled with coverage because it delivered the benefit via pharmacies, and left many families lacking options. California’s use of hospitals is innovative, though it does mean only a one-time infusion of diapers versus an ongoing supply.

Despite the fact that California’s program seems like a clear win, it has . While plausibly driven by animus toward Newsom, a , commentators have focused on the fact that a nonprofit with connections to Newsom’s wife, Baby2Baby, is involved in the administration of the free diapers. Some see Newsom’s free diaper program as politically flashy but economically tokenistic, that giving new parents 400 diapers does little to solve the real reason California feels unaffordable — especially the state’s severe housing shortage and high cost of living. Others suggest routing diapers through a nonprofit and hospitals may cost taxpayers more than simply handing families cash directly.

This argument almost entirely misses the point. While it’s always worth watching the implementation of a benefit to make sure the government is working efficiently, the question on the table is whether there is a public interest in helping all parents and babies get off to a strong and healthy start. As conservative analyst Patrick T. Brown in his Family Matters Substack, “even if the program design could theoretically stand to be improved, it hardly deserves the scorn being directed at it. … Sometimes a program can be good without being perfect; and sometimes we should do a better job resisting the temptation to hold our political opponents’ ideas to a higher standard than our own side’s.”

Indeed, American families would surely welcome a race among states to figure out how to most effectively support them in securing an adequate diaper supply. Babies need diapers, but especially as the cost of living continues to rise, not every American family is in a position to provide them. California is taking action: That in itself is worthy of praise — and one way or another, there will be important lessons to learn.

“Blah blah blah.” That’s all I heard during story time, sitting on a colorful checkered carpet in kindergarten, feeling like a stain that didn’t belong, yet somehow stood out. English was not my first language, and mastering it took time. Years later, I became the one other students would ask, “What clicked?” or “How’d you do it?” 

The answer I always heard from upperclassmen was simple: “Just do the work.” But as a first-generation student in East Tulsa, I learned that doing the work was not enough. Balancing school, homework, extracurriculars, home responsibilities and applications all before turning 18 is tough. 

Like most of my classmates, fitting in was a priority. Many were Hispanic like me, but they often had siblings or parents who spoke English. I didn’t have that privilege. As the oldest, I became the bridge between home and my community: the translator, the example, the one who had to “walk” so my siblings could run. My mom was just as lost as I was, a non-English speaker herself, navigating a school system nothing like the one she grew up in. Nevertheless, she found a way to support me. 

She enrolled me at ReadSmart Learning, a tutoring program in Tulsa. I still remember the big cartoony bluebird at drop-off and the pins I earned for completing lessons. Slowly, my grades rose and I spoke English with more confidence. My mom noticed, rewarding me with packs of Shopkins figurines and saying, “Ya vez? No hay mal que por bien no venga mija, siguele echando ganas.” 

Every cloud has a silver lining, sweetie. Keep working hard.

Her faith in me made me believe that effort could change everything. For first-generation students like me, programs like ReadSmart aren’t extras. They’re essentials. 

Middle school brought a new challenge, an all-English environment. Although it was intimidating at first, it also brought math. Numbers became a language I could master, and that love followed me into high school. Tulsa Honor Academy’s College Readiness team was a constant presence, always helping me navigate hands-on opportunities that I wouldn’t have found on my own, including Tulsa Technology Center’s dual enrollment program. Tulsa Tech offers a two-year program that allows students to take classes and get a real view on what engineering or pre-med tracks might look like. It was here that I found that electrical engineering was the career path I wanted. 

I’ll never forget the project in which my team and I used programming sensors to detect a chocolate chip cookie. Our clay “chips” had a mind of their own and tumbled off the conveyor belt, scattering everywhere. Hours of troubleshooting, reshaping and laughing with my team taught me more about perseverance. I learned that pushing through the struggle is what makes the result feel rewarding and worth it. 

That same perseverance carried me through applying for programs and scholarships such as , and Imposter syndrome creeps in sometimes, but I always keep going. 

Perseverance has helped me become a and earned me a full ride to Washington University in St. Louis.

Now, when students come to me and ask “What clicked?” or “How’d you do it?” I don’t tell them to just do the work. I tell them to look for scholarships, apply to summer programs, build their extracurriculars, keep their grades up, and most importantly, take every opportunity in their path. I give them the guidance I had to piece together for myself, because nobody handed it to me. 

My story isn’t about being exceptional. It’s about dreaming big for your future and creating a plan. It’s about dedication to your goals and being relentless, no matter what obstacles stand in your way. It’s about the power of having someone who believes in you and is willing to walk alongside you, even if they don’t have all the answers. 

The truth is, your circumstances do not define your future. With perseverance, hard work and the courage to keep going, kids like me don’t just get by. We succeed academically. We become professionals. We go back and tell the next kid on that carpet: “You belong here, too.”

Launched in 1967 by the College Board, the nonprofit that also administers Advanced Placement exams, CLEP provides a highly-accessible pathway toward gaining college credits and reducing the time and cost of earning a degree. Yet, it is largely unknown to most American high school students, who are more familiar with AP exams tied to high school-based courses that can also lead to college credit. 

Cruz’s school had limited AP options, so she took CLEP exams throughout high school with the plan of transferring her college credits to a local university, East Tennessee State, and completing a bachelor’s degree quickly and at a much lower cost. Then, her plans changed. “I found out I got into Harvard, and they gave me really amazing financial aid,” said Cruz, who plans to major in human developmental and regenerative biology. “I think having the CLEP exams on my resume showed that I had initiative.”

Unlike AP exams, which are typically tied to semester- or year-long high school courses and are administered only once each year, CLEP exams aren’t connected to a specific course and can be taken any time at a local testing center or online through remote-proctoring. This flexibility was also a flaw: CLEP was an exam without a course.

“That’s when the light went on,” said New York philanthropist and private equity executive, Steve Klinsky. He founded the in 2017 to offer free, online courses connected to CLEP exam content, as well as to provide testing fee waivers to expand access. “CLEP exams have been around since the Vietnam War, but everyone had forgotten about them. We reverse-engineered to create the courses for the exams,” he said, adding that it seemed like such a simple and straightforward solution to helping address the college access and affordability challenge. “It was so obvious that I felt duty-bound to do it,” he said.

Klinsky has been passionate about education since the early 1990s, when he launched an afterschool program in New York City named after his late brother. He then went on to create the first public charter school in Harlem in 1999, before starting New Mountain Capital, a private equity firm that today has $60 billion in assets under management. 

In the 2010s, Klinsky was intrigued by the rapid rise of massive open online courses or MOOCs that enabled anyone to take free courses, often taught by top professors and subject-matter experts. He appreciated the decentralization of knowledge but felt that MOOCs were missing a key element: course credit. At the same time, he saw that CLEP exams offered credit for content knowledge but without courses. Modern States was built to bridge that gap.

Over the past nine years, some 800,000 students have taken free courses through Modern States in preparation for CLEP exams, which range from 90 to 120 minutes in length. A passing score can lead to course credit at nearly 3,000 colleges and universities, from community colleges to state flagships. For Harvard-bound Cruz, Modern States was especially beneficial. She estimates that about one-third of her college credits came through CLEP.

I first heard about CLEP and Modern States two years ago when my older daughter took the Calculus CLEP exam at Bunker Hill Community College here in Boston, Massachusetts. She was a homeschooled high schooler at the time, taking dual enrollment courses through the community college. Modern States was the resource she used to review material for the CLEP exam, which enabled her to place into Calculus III and an advanced physics course. Those course credits transferred easily to the four-year university she attends, where she is now a pure math major.

Prior to Modern States there were not many options for course preparation or help in covering the $97 exam cost, plus additional testing center fees. These constraints limited the number of students who knew about the exams. Some homeschoolers and other nontraditional students took advantage of CLEP, as did U.S. military personnel who can receive exam fee waivers through the federal government. But it wasn’t a widely-known tool for acquiring course credit to save on tuition costs. 

At Bunker Hill, CLEP is touted as an opportunity to gain credit for content that students already know, with links to Modern States’s free courses and exam fee waivers featured prominently on the college’s website. Adult learners who may be returning to college or entering later in life find the exams particularly valuable, as do native French-, Spanish-, or German-speaking students, who gain credit for their language proficiency. “Community colleges in general can’t wait to save their students time and money,” said Danielle Tabela, Bunker Hill’s director of testing services and assessment.

Klinsky can’t wait either. He sees CLEP and free Modern States courses as a means to make college more affordable for more students “This is a paradigm for the way to really reduce the cost of higher or vocational education,” he said, explaining that he would like to see free online courses created for anything that has a credit-bearing exam as an endpoint, whether it’s for college or career.

“If Abe Lincoln was reincarnated — with no money, just brains and ambition — this is how he would get one year of college paid for, maybe two,” he said. “All you need is access to the internet.” Klinsky and his team at Modern States are eager to see this paradigm for course credit expand, including helping more high school students and their families access CLEP exams.��

He also hopes that more organizations, employers and government agencies that care about expanding access to post-secondary education and reducing the costs of college will recognize the opportunity that Modern States has found, while exploring similar strategies beyond CLEP.��

“My family is very proud to support this at a full level for many years, but ultimately free courses and exams is a method that could save money and help lots of people,” said Klinsky.

Naturally, the relationship among choice, income and quality varies across domains — but the relationship is consistent: If one’s budget can stretch only to McDonald’s, Burger King or Wendy’s, dining choices are severely quality-constrained. 

In American education, the triangle of choice, income and quality is more complex. Higher income enables greater choice, both among public schools (some parents can afford housing in top-performing districts) and among private schools (where tuition isn’t an impediment). By contrast, lower-income parents in locations without extensive vouchers, tax credits or education savings accounts have little choice beyond their zoned public school. This basic inequity in quantity underpins the policy argument that expanding school choice per se is good.

But when it comes to educational quality, the story is less straightforward. First, parents can’t infer the performance of any particular school from a district’s overall results (especially in larger districts). Within districts, school performance often varies widely. Moreover, many larger districts are — de facto or de jure — internally zoned, giving wealthier parents disproportionate access to preferred schools.

But the quality of a child’s education is contingent not only on access to a supply of decent public schools. There are also questions of teacher capacity and academic content. According to , the spread of teacher effectiveness in this country is wide. More strikingly, variation in teacher quality is far more pronounced within America’s public schools than between them. Strong research from Harvard’s concludes that “85% of the variation in teacher VA [value added — the impact on learning] is within rather than between schools.”

Using by Eric Hanushek and his colleagues, and by , it is possible to assess the learning impact of having a more or less effective teacher. A reasonable estimate is that a child in middle school who moves from a lowest-quartile teacher to a top-quartile teacher gains from 5.5  to seven additional months of learning in the year with the more effective teacher. This is a stunning difference that most Americans are unaware of. Most assume that school-level choice is overwhelmingly the most important determinant of their child’s education. But what if it’s truly a matter of teacher-level choice? 

Multiple factors drive the variation in teacher effectiveness, including a shrinking pool of candidates, poor preparation, low barriers to entry, inadequate professional learning and support, and a lack of a widely shared curriculum. But the bottom line is that, statistically speaking, almost every school in the country has teachers whose classroom effectiveness ranges from the top to the bottom quintile of instructional quality. What do most parents know about the quality of the educator assigned to their child? Little beyond what their child may report, which can be influenced by any number of idiosyncratic factors.

In public schools, parents have access to school- and child-level data on academic outcomes — assuming they can find and understand it. (In Texas, parents can log on to the state education department’s to find their child’s very detailed results, along with interventions to help them respond.) But what impact has a particular teacher had on those results? Even in Texas, how many parents can realistically research the effectiveness of the next grade’s teachers and influence their child’s teacher assignment? 

Parents may — at least in theory — be able to find out what the curriculum is. But in practice, most teachers substitute or add multiple self-chosen items to the school district’s selection (the average public school teacher regularly ). Once again, parents are often in the dark. 

In many private schools, the challenge takes a different form. Some don’t use nationally normed tests at all (each Catholic diocese, for example, makes its own decision). In others, the sheer variety of exams administered makes interpretation difficult. How, for example, should a parent judge Stanford 10 outcomes against Iowa Assessments results, or either against public schools’ scores on state tests? 

When it comes to instructional materials, the picture is mixed. As in many public schools, some private school teachers blend multiple materials, assembling them like DJs putting together a playlist. In other schools, teachers may use nationally published curricula or faith-based materials from sources such as Christian Light. Some Catholic schools use textbooks from major publishers, and some private “classical learning” schools are embracing the “great books” in their instructional materials. While parents may choose a private school for the values it nurtures, judging the academic quality of a school’s curricular choices is much tougher. 

America’s wide span of teacher effectiveness would be less troubling if students’ baseline performance were strong. But recent data affirm that . In most advanced industrialized countries, ministries of education specify the national or provincial academic content students are expected to learn. Educators are trained to teach that content, both before and after they enter the classroom, and children are tested on it. School choice is built on this foundational structure. As my colleague Ashley Berner , in most of these countries, pluralistic systems fund a wide variety of schools, including religious schools, as long as they prepare and test students using content-specified common assessments. As a result of this virtuous cycle, the range of teacher quality within schools is usually narrower, and/or the overall quality is often higher. Information about student outcomes is transparent across all kinds of schools.

The United States urgently needs a far more equitable and academically coherent education system — one in which teacher preparation, instructional content and assessments are aligned. Louisiana briefly offered this essential triangulation through curriculum-integrated English Language Arts state assessments, and Texas may do so in the future. But in the meantime, the parental and societal benefits of greater educational choices will be realized only if two conditions are met: expanded choice must increase the supply of quality schooling options, and all schools must provide parents with greater access to the information they need to make informed judgments among schools.

What does this mean?

Expanding high-quality schooling options will require new state policies on multiple fronts: low-interest loan programs or credit enhancements for proven operators (charter networks and high-performing faith-based or community-based schools); expanded to finance private-school facilities serving voucher/ESA students; right of first refusal and discounted leases for proven nondistrict operators that want to rent, purchase or reuse unused or underused public school facilities; and streamlined regulations to create a single, clear, predictable and publicly accessible set of rules governing where schools can be built and how applications are evaluated.

Expansion grants for schools with proven track records, greater support for and stabilization funds for new schools (to date, given only in urgent situations such as COVID) would expand quality choices for a broader student demographic. Finally, we need to fund fellowships and in academics, operations, finance and community engagement, with a bias toward those who will open or serve in schools serving disadvantaged communities.

All schools receiving public funds should publish clear information on state- and/or nationally normed academic outcomes and retention data. Non-public schools should publish information about their financial condition (many are nonprofits that must file Form 990 tax returns). Ideally, all schools should identify on their websites the curricula or textbooks used in each grade for the four major subjects (math, ELA, science and social studies) or indicate that teachers have the autonomy to select their own materials. Schools should also be encouraged to list the total years of experience and years at the school for grade-level teachers, along with their areas of specialization.

Educators should have a place on the school website to describe their pedagogical approach and how they assess their own success. In math and ELA, if they choose to share growth data for their students from previous years, they should be able to do so once the principal has signed off on the data. Principals should share their vision for supporting effective teaching, outlining specific plans for providing professional learning and explaining how it will be distributed across the subjects and grades taught. Since repeated classroom observations using curriculum-integrated rubrics are the most effective form of professional development for raising teacher performance, parents should know the extent to which this is being offered (if at all).

Families can choose to ignore all information, of course. Only school performance — surely because, in the vast majority of cases, they have little or no practical alternative when selecting their children’s public school. However, the vast, unmet demand for places in top urban charter schools demonstrates that parents care about academic outcomes and want an education for their children that is more mentally nourishing than the dietary equivalent of fast food. 

of all children of color nationwide have experienced racism in school, and nearly of LGBTQ+ youth have been bullied. These abuses have far-reaching consequences, as they with poor mental health, increased suicide risk and substance use, especially for youth of color and transgender students.

Now, as the Trump administration dismantles civil rights protections — labeling diversity, equity and inclusion efforts as “illegal” and gutting civil rights protections — students are being left in the lurch.

In Massachusetts, which tops national education rankings and prides itself on progressive values, brutal identity-based harassment still exists. Disturbing incidents across the state underscore the extent of this problem:

• A Black middle schooler in Melrose was called the N‑word and physically attacked by classmates. Another Black fifth grader at the same school was taunted with racial epithets such as “monkey” and “ape,” and had her braided hair — an expression of her cultural identity — cut off in the classroom by white students.
• A Black eighth grader in Brookline was called racially derogatory , such as “cotton picker,” and was physically assaulted, pinned to the ground while a white student placed his knee on his neck, yelling, “George Floyd! George Floyd!”
• Two Black sisters in Millbury were called the , “monkey,” “ugly” and “Black as fuck,” and were told to “go back” to their “motherland.”
• Students in Southwick conducted a mock “slave auction” on a Black classmate.

Identity-based harassment isn’t confined to classrooms or cafeterias, but also happens on the field, court and rink. Just last month, Black girls on a high school basketball team were the subject of viral racist social media referring to them as “hood rats” and “violent animals,” and calling for a return of segregation. And following the growing visibility and popularity of the television series “Heated Rivalry” depicting gay hockey players, there has been a troubling in reports of bullying, harassment and use of homophobic language within school-affiliated hockey programs.��

Athletics is a space where young people can build self-esteem and learn life lessons like teamwork and fair play, but that opportunity is being corrupted by harmful stereotypes and bigotry.

Schools and associations’ failure to intervene meaningfully and protect their students from identity-based harassment has exacerbated these incidents. When institutions fail to protect students, the message is clear: Their safety and dignity are not priorities.

But we can send a different message. Lawyers for Civil Rights has filed civil rights complaints against schools for failing to protect students. We filed a lawsuit against the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association seeking records regarding incidents of discrimination and harassment to better protect youth athletes from identity-based bullying.

And we brought the urgent issue of LGBTQ+ bullying in athletics to the attention of the Massachusetts Attorney General’s office. Legal action increases the stakes and demands reform.

But avenues for accountability are narrowing. With several offices of the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights now , including the Boston office, students have fewer pathways to seek relief. 

One of the remaining avenues is pursuing a civil rights complaint with the Massachusetts Attorney General’s office. The attorney general is currently considering investigations into certain public schools, and we need stronger protections to ensure schools are held accountable. We also need institutions like the athletic association to take meaningful steps to ensure that school sports are safe and inclusive for all students. 

The Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education can strengthen enforcement of the state’s existing anti-bullying law by requiring more robust incident reporting and mandating timely investigations. And the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination should prioritize student civil rights complaints, ensuring that the closure of the federal Office for Civil Rights in Boston does not leave students without a meaningful remedy.

Our children should not have to question whether their schools see them, value them or will protect them. And at a moment when the federal government has abandoned these commitments, progressive states like Massachusetts must step up. To remain a true leader in education, we must stand firmly with students.

Stripped of careful phrasing, the logic is familiar: Some students are deficient, fixing them is costly, and enrolling too many of them threatens institutions.��

That is deficit thinking dressed in the language of stewardship. When an institution implies that certain students are the problem, it has already made a judgment about who belongs.

Consider what deficit framing erases. Imagine a first-generation student who graduates near the top of her class from an under-resourced high school in a rural district. She has taken every math course available to her through Algebra II, taught by a long-term substitute, from a textbook nearly a decade out of date. She arrives at a university, sits for a math placement exam, scores below the cutoff and is routed into non-credit remedial coursework that she may have to pay for out of pocket. It delays her progress and drains her financial aid. Within two years, she leaves without a degree.��

The institution calls this an outcome. The data suggests it was a decision made the day she sat for that test. But context is key.

The label “underprepared,” when used to disqualify students rather than support them, turns a snapshot of current performance into a verdict about their potential. Researcher Gloria Ladson-Billings argued that we should stop focusing on the so-called “achievement gap” and instead examine the “” — a historical accumulation of disinvestment that shapes who gets access to strong instruction, advanced coursework, advising and college preparation.��

The core issue is not what students lack. It is what institutions have failed to provide. 

The math placement problem is not neutral. Given what , a significant portion of remedial placements may have been unnecessary. A placement exam, however well constructed, measures what a student has had access to, not what they are capable of learning. When a single test score is the primary determinant of a student’s math pathway, universities routinely mistake opportunity gaps for ability gaps. 

The result is that capable students — disproportionately students of color, multilingual learners and students from low-income backgrounds — are funneled into remedial sequences that delay and derail degree completion, while the system presents that routing as objective.

Research from Policy Analysis for California Education has documented in high school math access: Despite strong evidence that taking advanced math courses in high school predicts postsecondary success, access to and achievement in those courses remain unequally distributed.��

A student who completes Algebra II in an under-resourced high school and a student who completes the same course in a well-resourced district may arrive at the same institution with the same transcript notation and radically different preparation — not because of any difference in their capability, but because of differences in what their schools were able to offer. 

The evidence on alternatives is clear. The Community College Research Center found that incorporating high school transcript data into placement decisions could . Studies of corequisite remediation — where students enroll directly in gateway, credit-bearing courses while receiving concurrent academic support — show stronger outcomes than traditional  prerequisite sequences.

 For example, Tennessee community colleges found that students in such courses were more likely to pass gateway math within one year. The conclusion is not complicated: Institutional design choices, not student deficits, determine who succeeds.

For more students to succeed, colleges should provide support alongside college-level instruction. The University System of Georgia replaced traditional, non-credit remedial math with a that places students directly into college-level courses while providing just-in-time support through labs, tutoring and aligned instruction. This approach has significantly improved outcomes, tripling completion rates in gatework coursework and boosting pass rates while offering more responsive, individualized help that keeps students on track, including in STEM pathways.��

The students described as “profoundly underprepared” are not a liability. They are young people who have navigated inequitable systems — under-resourced schools, inadequate counseling, economic instability and placement exams that measure circumstance more than capability — to arrive at a gateway that institutions gatekeep. The question is not whether today’s incoming college students are capable. The question is whether colleges are willing to invest, build, and deliver the supports that remove the institutional barriers hindering their success.��

Students do not fail the system. The system fails to build what they need to succeed. Restricting access is not stewardship. It is a choice and it is worth being honest about who bears the cost of the choice.

Unlike needs-based programs that are limited to households where students qualify for free or reduced-price school lunch, families with of the median for their area would be eligible to apply for a Federal Scholarship Tax Credit from a participating organization. An estimated could benefit.

This could be a game-changer for New Yorkers currently struggling to afford educational opportunities for their children. At the same time, the scholarships could also prove an incentive for even more public school students to exit already . 

Since they would be the ones most immediately affected by it, I asked the New York City families subscribed to my and social media how they felt about Hochul’s announcement.

To begin with, there was general confusion about how the program would operate.

One anonymous poster asked, “(Does) ‘donate money to an eligible scholarship-granting organization’ means you gift a school $1,700 per year and that gets deducted from your tuition? Otherwise, how does this increase choice for parents? Also, can I donate $1,700 to a tutoring company and get $1,700 worth of lessons?”

That is not how it would work. Donors could not directly benefit from their donations, and the reason supporters believe the program would increase school choice is that it would give parents who otherwise could not afford private schooling a break on tuition.

As the majority of NYC private schools charge upward of $60,000 a year, detractors scoffed that a measly $1,700 wouldn’t make a meaningful difference. But that’s assuming the scholarships given would be only $1,700 per family. If 40 benefactors donated $1,700 to a private school like Trinity, Horace Mann or Dalton, one child could receive a full scholarship, or two children could get half-off tuition.

In addition, NYC is home to dozens of parochial schools, which charge much less than the independent schools name-checked above. Some Catholic elementary schools cost $6,000 to $10,000 per student per year, as do some Jewish yeshivas and Muslim madrassas. An increase in donations from the Federal Scholarship Tax Credit might make it possible for many new students to attend at a discount.

This doesn’t sit well with NYC mom Rebecca Garte, who wrote that the program would be “publicly subsidizing private institutions.”

That’s true, but public money is already being used to subsidize city private educational organizations in a variety of ways across all grade levels. 

The only way then-Mayor Bill de Blasio could get his signature initiative, universal pre-K and, later, 3K, off the ground was to pay private schools, including religious ones, with public money. The majority of afterschool programming in public elementary and middle schools is who are paid by the city. And there are , which students can use for public and private colleges — again, including religious ones. 

Nevertheless, parents like Elizabeth Kelly don’t care about precedent. Her position is simple, “I am against the tax credit.  Let’s just make our public schools better.”

Yiatin Chu, parent of an NYC public school ninth grader, on the other hand, recognizes how the Federal Scholarship Tax Credit would help families like hers. She says, “I support the federal tax credit scholarship program because even middle-income families are eligible, a segment of public school families that don’t get much help. I like that the scholarship can be used for SHSAT (Specialized High School Admissions Test) and SAT preparation or extra tutoring on any subject that our children might need. If Gov. Hochul doesn’t renege on her support, I hope to use it for my child’s SAT prep.”

In the end, opinions in support ran 3 to 1 versus those against. Those who were for the program expressed sentiments similar to those of mom Desiree Milin, who said, “Since the NYC public school system is not equal for all children, I would have no problem helping parents pay into a private school education. We switched our child into Catholic school after he did not get any of his public middle school choices. A good education should be accessible to all children.”

As of now, have signaled that they plan to opt into the program. Only three of them are headed by Democratic governors: Colorado (Jared Polis), North Carolina (Josh Stein) and now, New York. With New York City being the largest school district in America, the results of the Federal Scholarship Tax Credit here could become a case study for all those still on the fence about bringing it to their respective areas, and answer questions— not to mention address misconceptions — that many still have about it.

She taught for more than 40 years in the South Ward of Newark, New Jersey, one of the lowest-income communities in the country. Her students regularly achieved high Advanced Placement scores and earned admission to some of the nation’s most selective colleges. 

But those outcomes don’t fully capture her impact. Marie built a classroom grounded in intellectual rigor, cultural relevance and deep human connection. It was a place where students felt seen, challenged and capable. It was also where I learned how to teach.

As a young inexperienced student teacher, I entered her classroom full of conviction for teaching as a political act, but little understanding about what it would take to create learning opportunities that mattered. I was trying to figure out how to connect with students whose lived experiences differed from my own, how to teach in ways that were both rigorous and relevant, and how to confront my own assumptions about race, curriculum and schooling. 

Marie didn’t hand me any simple answers. She coached me, pushed my thinking, challenged my decisions and stayed in the work with me long after my formal placement in her classroom ended. What began as a student-teaching experience became a decades-long professional partnership that shaped my career.

Today, as a teacher educator and policy advocate, I have come to understand something that should be obvious but is rarely treated as such: Mentor teachers like Marie are not just “helping out.” They are doing some of the most important work in our education system. And we are almost entirely failing to support them.

Across the country, mentor teachers are the backbone of how we prepare new educators. They model instruction, provide feedback, guide reflection and help novice teachers navigate the realities of the classroom. consistently shows that high-quality mentoring improves teacher effectiveness, job satisfaction and retention, especially in the first three years when teachers are most likely to leave the profession.

Yet mentoring is too often treated as an informal add-on rather than essential to recruiting and retaining new teachers. Mentors are frequently selected based on availability, not expertise. Many receive little to no training in how to coach adult learners. Compensation is inconsistent at best or nonexistent at worst. And the time required to mentor effectively, often hundreds of hours, is layered on top of already demanding teaching loads. The result is a system built on goodwill instead of deliberately designed to support and sustain educators in this role.

Millions of research dollars have been spent studying the teacher pipeline, how to recruit more candidates into the profession, and how to retain teachers serving in our highest needs urban and rural schools. But schools spend far less time and resources addressing what happens once student-teachers get there. And mentor teachers are the missing link.

If schools are serious about strengthening the educator workforce, they need to treat mentoring as what it is: a form of adult education that requires skill, preparation and sustained investment. The best classroom teachers are not automatically the best mentors. Coaching new teachers, many of whom are young adults or career changers. requires expertise in facilitation, feedback and developmental support.

So, what would it look like to take mentor teaching seriously?

At the local level, school districts must create the conditions for mentoring to succeed. That means providing reduced teaching loads or dedicated time for mentor teachers to observe, coach and confer with new educators. It means selecting mentors based on demonstrated instructional expertise and relational capacity, not just availability. And it means integrating mentoring into the culture of schools, rather than treating it as a compliance requirement tied to credentialing.

At the state level, policymakers should establish clear standards for mentor teacher preparation and provide dedicated funding for stipends and professional learning. States can also require data collection on mentor participation, teacher retention and outcomes, ensuring that investments are tied to measurable impact. Without statewide expectations and funding, access to high-quality mentoring will continue to depend on local resources, exacerbating inequities between districts.

At the federal level, lawmakers should expand investments in teacher residency programs and other clinically rich preparation models that prioritize sustained, high-quality mentorship. Federal funding streams, such as Title II, should be leveraged to support mentor teacher development as a core component of teacher preparation and retention strategies nationwide.

When I think about Marie Gironda, I don’t just think about the mentor who shaped me. I think about the thousands of students she taught and the many educators she mentored — people whose lives and careers were influenced by her commitment to their learning. I also think about how rare it is to find someone like her in many schools, not because educators lack dedication, but because the conditions that sustain this kind of work are increasingly difficult to maintain.

We cannot build a strong, stable teacher workforce on exceptional individuals alone. If we want more teachers to stay, more students to thrive and more communities to benefit from excellent schools, we must invest in the people who teach teachers. We must invest in mentor teachers.

The ruling did not find that oversight is no longer needed because the funding disparities have been resolved. Instead, it concluded that the courts cannot enforce the remedy, leaving implementation entirely to the political branches of government.

The is deeply disappointed by this decision.

Across the South, states are grappling with how to fulfill constitutional obligations to provide all children with a quality education, and who is responsible for enforcing those commitments. In , courts have acknowledged funding disparities while leaving remedies largely to the legislature. In and , ongoing debates over school funding formulas and resource allocation continue to raise concerns about whether students in low-wealth communities are receiving adequate resources. While each state’s legal framework differs, the underlying issue is consistent: whether constitutional promises of education will be meaningfully enforced or left to shifting political priorities.

In North Carolina, plaintiffs in the original successfully argued that the state was failing to meet its constitutional obligation to provide every child with access to a quality public education. The court has long recognized that not all students, particularly those from low-income communities and communities of color, have been afforded equal educational opportunity.

But now, it is abrogating its duty for ensuring that the law is enforced, shifting responsibility for addressing these inequities to the North Carolina General Assembly and state leadership.

This decision comes at a pivotal moment, not just for North Carolina, but for the country. The United States is at a critical inflection point in how schools prepare students for a rapidly evolving economy. New, of education are emerging. Technology, particularly , is reshaping how students learn and how systems in the workplaces they will eventually graduate to operate. At the same time, the demand for a highly skilled workforce continues to grow. Today’s students need to learn how to function in this new, technologically advanced world.

How are we as a society going to meet that growing demand for skilled workers? The federal government is forecasting in the technology workforce. If America’s education leaders, both in individual states and as a nation, commit to giving more students access to the best advancements in technology and preparing them to join that highly skilled workforce, American competitiveness globally will increase. This is an opportunity.

But if longstanding disparities in access to quality education are not addressed, then the benefits of these advancements will not be shared equally among students. Instead, they will widen existing gaps.

This is no time for any branch of government, particularly the judiciary, to step back from its responsibility. Instead, local, state and federal leaders must work in unison to address the educational needs of students — particularly the deficiencies that courts themselves have identified over decades.

: “The majority’s message to our children is clear: pull yourself up by your bootstraps, but there is nothing this court will do if the political branches never met their obligation to put boots on your feet in the first place.”

The question now is whether the state will act. Whether and how the North Carolina General Assembly and state leadership will fund solutions, and whether additional legal challenges will follow, remain open questions.

The Southern Education Foundation urges state leaders to take immediate action to meet the obligations set forth in the North Carolina Constitution and to ensure that every child has access to a quality education.

The court’s decision does not resolve the issues identified in Leandro; it changes who is responsible for addressing them. What happens next will depend on whether state leaders choose to fulfill the constitutional promise of education for all students.

Over the past few decades, the internet has increased teenagers’ access to information about their options after graduation. Theoretically, this could lead to more equitable outcomes for students from a range of backgrounds. However, that window of shared information is quickly closing. 

A from College Access: Research & Action, a New York City-based nonprofit organization whose work includes peer mentoring programs and whole-school change to increase college access, shows that social media has created a new digital divide when it comes to information about postsecondary education.

In 2026, social media algorithms have the biggest impact on what shows up on young people’s feeds. Our data shows that there is an entire algorithm for teenagers who want to explore their college options — if they know to look for it. 

On TikTok and Instagram, users can find videos covering every aspect of the college process: how to write the perfect college essay, what to look for on campus tours, which scholarships to apply for and what essentials to buy for your dorm. Proactive college-bound high schoolers can curate their feeds to include this kind of content if they take the initiative to search for similar topics.��

While this content may not always be 100% accurate, the research participants reported that the information did meaningfully contribute to their postsecondary searchers, especially for first-generation students who didn’t have as much access to information about college.

But what does social media say to high schoolers who don’t “tell” their apps they’re interested in college? Mostly that they should do anything else. According to a , only 7% of the content about college is positive, and negative posts outnumber positive ones five to one. A quick scan of young people’s feeds will show negative posts that range from targeted attacks on higher education from figures like the late Charlie Kirk to get-rich-quick schemes that are often misleading, if not illegal.��

One of the main problems is a lack of context: The algorithm can very effectively provide a feed of compelling options, but an online economy of soundbites and “hot takes” doesn’t reward nuance.

Several students described videos featuring people talking about the catastrophic consequences of taking out student loans, which gives the impression that all higher education is unaffordable.

However, many student loan borrowers struggling with repayment are in more complex situations: The bigger loans are often from graduate school or elite, private institutions that only represent a small fraction of college enrollment. A young person scrolling through content misses this larger context, and if no adults are addressing it, then they begin ruling out options for their futures.

This phenomenon isn’t new, it’s just changing. Historically, access to information about college has always been unequal, since wealthy students whose parents went to college have that others must intentionally seek out. Low-income and first-generation students have historically been , including private, for-profit institutions, expensive trade schools and a system more invested in seeing BIPOC students not furthering their education.��

In the past, these strategies have been in plain sight, from subway ads to army recruitment tables in the cafeteria. Now, so many of these interactions happen on young people’s phones, essentially invisible to their families, counselors and other trustworthy adults.

So, what do we do about it? Is it the job of over-worked college counselors to follow every viral TikTok trend? Well, no. The population most aware of what’s happening online is always going to be young people, making them the experts and most important voices in these conversations. By asking high schoolers what their feeds are telling them about college, adults can open the door to learning not just what messages are out there, but how these students are making sense of them. 

It’s also important to understand why young people turn to social media. Apps like Instagram and TikTok offer users the ability to hear real stories from real people, from different backgrounds with different perspectives. Counselors and educators can share their experiences navigating college and career, including their missteps and lessons learned. 

During these conversations, young people can share the options they’ve become familiar with online, giving counselors an insight into the processes they may not otherwise be privy to. Opportunities can arise for trusted adults to provide context and perspective to the often incomplete information shared on social media, providing an essential service to fill in the blanks for young people.

In the past few years, there has been a shift toward limiting how much young people use social media. Fourteen states have now passed , and Australia became the first country to from making social media accounts in December 2025. While these measures have good intentions, it is unlikely that adults can fully eliminate the influence of social media on teenagers. 

Even in phone-free schools, educators can, and must, invite their students to share how social media is impacting their thinking about postsecondary paths. Without this guidance, students will still be affected by online messaging, but without the resources to truly comprehend it.

Their bill, titled the , is being framed as a defense of public education. It is actually something else: a revealing glimpse into the mindset that is holding Democrats back.

A decade ago, Democrats were more willing to challenge the status quo. On education, they pushed for higher standards, greater accountability and new models like charter schools. They believed public education wasn’t just something to defend, but something to improve. They were willing to take on districts that weren’t delivering for students, even when it meant challenging teachers unions.

That spirit is hard to find today. 

The federal scholarship tax credit program, enacted last year, lets states direct federal dollars — potentially billions — to a wide range of student needs, including tutoring, afterschool programs, transportation and services for kids with disabilities. In states that opt in, families have the choice to use these scholarships to fill the gaps in their children’s education.��

That is something denied to states that opt out. And yet, the majority of Democrats in the Senate are trying to repeal the program — not because those uses fall outside their priorities, but because the funding flows outside traditional public school systems. 

Even though the tax credit program would provide significant new resources to advance priorities Democrats themselves have championed, its support for private school scholarships crosses a line in the sand for them. To most families, turning down new funding for students doesn’t make sense. But for Democrats, it follows a clear chain of logic, one that prioritizes the preservation of existing school systems over students’ needs, defers to the interests of teachers unions and applies ideological purity tests that treat any nontraditional learning environment as a threat.��

That way of thinking carries real consequences, especially at a moment when students need more support, not less.

The country is in the midst of a decade-long education depression, one marked by historic learning loss, widening achievement gaps and growing disengagement. Families see it, educators feel it and districts, facing acute financial strain, struggle to meet students’ needs.

For years, many on the left have that the United States always finds money for other priorities but refuses to invest meaningfully in education. President Donald Trump’s proposed record-breaking $1.5 trillion defense budget underscores the point. But for the first time in a long while, there is also, finally, new money for education. And Democrats want to turn these dollars away.��

That choice is even harder to justify when you consider the broader fiscal reality. The federal government has run deficits for more than two decades; if lawmakers are going to keep borrowing against the future, the least they can do is invest in the generation who will inherit their debt.

Democrats’ reflexive opposition to the tax credit program reveals how much their policy imagination has narrowed, leaving them unable to see how it helps their constituents and advances their priorities. Some of their critiques are substantive: Questions about accountability, oversight and whether private school scholarships are subject to the same civil rights protections as traditional public schools deserve serious answers. But those are arguments for getting in the room and shaping the program, not walking away. Repealing the program would only ensure that the students who need those dollars most — low- and middle-income families, children with disabilities, communities of color — would end up with nothing. Democrats should be fighting to make this program work for those families, not fighting to take it off the table. 

Democrats long held a clear advantage over Republicans on education. That advantage has in recent years as voters have grown more skeptical that the party is delivering results. Trying to repeal the tax credit program will only make matters worse.

Polling across multiple states shows strong support for participation in the scholarship tax credit program, including among Democratic voters. In many cases, support approaches or exceeds , particularly among working-class families and families of color.

What some Democratic politicians see as an unacceptable departure from orthodoxy, many families see as a practical way to get their children the help they need. At some point, the gap between how policymakers view the issue and how families experience it demands a reckoning. Democrats should focus less on defending what exists and more on exploring what could be. 

When Colorado’s Jared Polis became the first Democratic governor to announce that his state would opt into the scholarship tax credit program, he framed it perfectly: “[I]t’s only our own creativity that can hold us back. Anything we can envision, this is a very powerful funding mechanism.” He called the decision a “no-brainer” and said he “would be crazy not to” participate.

That is the mindset Democrats need right now. Not a defensive posture, but an expansive one — grounded not in scarcity, but in abundance. 

An starts from the premise that the goal is an educated public, not the preservation of any particular school model or the adults employed within it. It recognizes that public funding can support a wide range of tools, strategies and approaches, so long as they serve students well. And it invites educators, families and policymakers to imagine different ways of organizing learning, rather than assuming the century-old model designed for an industrial economy is the only one capable of serving today’s students.

The tax credit program is not a cure-all, but it is a meaningful new investment. At a moment of real need, real disruption and real opportunity, Democrats should not be narrowing the conversation. They should be expanding it.