Author: BelieveAgain

As voters nationwide head to the polls for next week’s midterm elections, they’ll be confronted with a wide range of dilemmas over where school funding should come from, how much schools should spend, and which priorities should be the focus of schools’ investments.Many of those questions appear in the form of state-level ballot measures. Some mention schools directly, while some have significant implications for schools even though they’re not mentioned in the ballot language.The questions touch on some of the biggest overarching issues school finance experts and practitioners have been thinking about in recent years. Politicians—particularly Republicans—are responding to a…

How much time students spend in school each year depends on where they live.While American students spend, on average, 1,231 hours in school annually, there is no national policy dictating how many days or hours students must attend classes each year. Instead, those decisions fall to state lawmakers and school boards, leading to significant variation across the country.Since late 2024, several states have passed legislation adjusting mandatory classroom time.Oklahoma, for example, increased required instructional days from 166 to 173, beginning in the 2027-28 school year. South Carolina added a minimum of 1,080 instructional hours, so state law now includes a…

Jeanne Allen is the founder and CEO of the Center for Education Reform. In 2021, she launched the Yass Prize, which has awarded more than $84 million to education entrepreneurs. She’s long been deeply invested in the worlds of parental activism and educational choice. And she’s out with a new book, The Education Avengers: How and Why a New Class of Heroes Is Fighting America’s Biggest Battle, which carries an enthusiastic endorsement from the directors of “Avengers: Endgame.” I was curious to hear more about the heroes, the battle, and what Jeanne sees on the ground. Here’s what she had…

Five Democratic governors are asking the Trump administration for more clarity on the federal government’s ambitious new school choice program as they consider whether to enroll their states.In an Oct. 22 letter to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, whose agency will oversee the program, the governors of California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Michigan, and New Jersey asked for more details on the soon-to-launch program, particularly regarding its costs to states, details on expenses it can cover for public school students, and whether they can do anything to ensure lower-income students benefit.Governors need to tell the Internal Revenue Service by Jan. 1 whether their…

As a former U.S. secretary of education and the director of a national education-focused nonprofit organization, we believe in the value of our nation’s public schools and the promise those schools make to educate future generations.That promise is being broken by the current administration as it pursues its aim to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education, holds back federal funding for public education, challenges state and local laws and policies that protect vulnerable students, and attempts to privatize education.That last category of attacks includes the new federal tax-credit scholarship program, which was signed into law in 2025 and takes effect…

Economic issues are top of mind for many voters as they head to the polls for the midterm elections. But education—in particular, school choice—is also playing a role in some major contests.While private school choice, such as vouchers and education saving accounts, may not be on statewide ballots, they are shaping debates in close races in states including Arizona, Iowa, and Texas.Private school choice has been ascendant in recent years, with 18 states passing policies in the past four-plus years to make virtually all students eligible for programs that send public funds to families for private education. And a new…

Education savings accounts, tax-credit scholarships, vouchers, charter schools, hybrid homeschooling, and microschools are transforming K-12 in profound ways. In our series of conversations, “Talking Choice,” Ashley Berner and I try to make sense of the shifting landscape. Berner directs Johns Hopkins University’s Institute for Education Policy and is the author of Educational Pluralism and Democracy. Whatever you think of educational choice, we seek to provide more concrete insight into what it means for students, families, and educators. Today, we discuss what a blue wave in next month’s midterm elections might mean for school choice programs.—RickRick: Ashley, Democrats look poised to…

The U.S. Supreme Court will take up a key issue arising in lawsuits that challenge school district efforts to use race-neutral methods to boost racial and socioeconomic diversity in selective programs.In a case involving student selection to magnet schools in the Montgomery County, Md., school district, outside Washington, the court said it would consider whether a plaintiff challenging a facially neutral admissions policy as racially discriminatory must establish that the targeted racial group suffered an “aggregate disparate impact” relative to its share of the applicant pool.That is a legally complex question arising in high-temperature suits that accuse some of the…

Another court declared Ohio’s private school voucher program unconstitutional on Thursday, finding it provides a choice to the private schools that must honor the taxpayer-funded vouchers rather than to Ohio families.The ruling by a three-judge panel of the 10th District Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court’s June 2025 ruling that found the EdChoice program violates an Ohio constitutional requirement for “a thorough and efficient system of common schools.” The ruling will not immediately affect the EdChoice program, which was allowed to remain operational in anticipation of an appeal.“EdChoice, as presently structured and funded, secures with taxpayer funds a competing…

How much money will flow to public school students from the new federal tax-credit scholarship program? And who is most likely to benefit? These are important considerations as states mull whether to opt into the program by Jan. 1. But they’re also difficult questions to answer.Traditionally, tax-credit scholarships and related state-run programs like vouchers give money to private school students. But the new federal program allows public school students to receive scholarships and even spend their money at their public schools. (How that will work is a separate question and debate. More on that here.) Josh Cowen, a professor of…