Eduwonk

This is a guest post by Anson Jackson, a Texas-based partner at Bellwether who leads academic advising work. Agree or disagree he’d welcome your feedback and engagement either way. Anson’s in a lot of schools, all around the country. (As with all content here, it’s the views of the author alone, Bellwether has never taken institutional positions and encourages a diversity of viewpoints across our team.)

Charters Have a Quality Problem. Collective Action is Part of the Solution. – By Anson Jackson

The party-splitting politics of President Trump’s new tax credit scholarship program are getting the attention of education advocates. Yet that is obscuring another story: public charter schools are also seeing a surge in support. The charter sector enjoyed steady growth over the past several decades, and charters are increasingly popular among parents. After years of flat funding, charters are one of the only education programs to see an increase in the president’s recent budget proposal. Despite this popularity, however, charters today aren’t consistently delivering the high-quality education students and families deserve. 

Parents should have options as to how to best educate their children, and excellent charter schools should be one of them. I’ve taught in and led public charter school networks, and my own children benefited from attending a charter school. A growing number of families seem to want the same, with nearly three fourths of parents saying they’d consider sending their child to a public charter school if one were available. 

In theory, charters allow more autonomy for schools — and more options for students — in exchange for increased accountability. In my work supporting and leading schools, I’ve seen a lot of innovative ideas that, if implemented well, would change students’ lives. But that promise falls apart if charter schools can’t deliver a high-quality education to all students. For the sector to succeed, persistently low-quality schools can’t be a part of the equation.  

To solve the sector’s growing quality problem, leaders must rethink how charter accountability works. Everyone who supports a charter school — from authorizers and funders to boards and charter support organizations — must take a more coordinated approach to improving school quality and giving parents and students a real choice. Here’s what that might look like.

Authorizers should be involved from day one

Many new charter leaders have incredible visions for teaching and learning, but lack experience in school operations. Others are strong entrepreneurs with expertise in other fields, but have limited school leadership experience. During the application period, charter leaders must identify the support and training they’ll need; in exchange, authorizers should ensure that leaders follow through with training and perform well in their roles. Authorizers can also help leaders uphold their promises, and address their own blindspots, by taking an active role in charter planning and design. That means reviewing charter design elements — like the instructional model, curriculum, and staffing practices — and offering timely, two-way feedback that helps leaders keep the school’s vision and mission central as it evolves.

Charters need longer pathways of support

Most charters close due to issues that come up not during the design and authorization phase, but during implementation. Ongoing collaboration among all stakeholders is crucial to ensuring a charter’s continued success.

In addition to providing support up front, authorizers must continue to set and hold a high bar for quality of training, and hold schools accountable if leaders aren’t following through. Other stakeholders — like charter incubators, funders, and support organizations — also play a role in helping charters maintain quality by providing support beyond year one. These stakeholders can help provide technical assistance, coaching, and curriculum implementation during the charter’s first year, and can tailor support for subsequent years based on the school’s performance and needs. This kind of adaptive partnership may be different than what charter leaders are used to, but it means they can address problems before they arise. 

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Charters need systems to track progress

Too often, quality slips because a charter doesn’t have the right metrics or systems in place to track its success. In my work with charters, I’ve seen many schools struggle with financial issues in their second or third years that should have been addressed in year one. This doesn’t just hurt the school; it negatively impacts outcomes.

To solve problems like these, charter school leaders and boards need clear and sustainable systems  that track their schools’ financial, academic, and operational performances. Instead of remaining far removed from decision-making, authorizers must work in partnership with charter school leaders, boards, and community members to create strong, proactive systems of support and shared accountability that center student needs and anticipate challenges. These systems must be aligned with authorizer requirements and research-based measures of school quality, and include benchmarks of distress to allow leaders to act quickly to identify problems. Authorizers can also require this data to be submitted at regular intervals, regularly monitoring metrics to flag issues early. 

This type of intervention isn’t too much oversight; it’s actually putting students’ needs first. Charters need these proactive checks in place to make sure they can catch issues and address them before it’s too late.

The right board is critical to success

Charter schools are nonprofit organizations run by volunteer boards. While only authorizers can review, renew, and revoke charters, it’s up to the board of each charter school or network to make sure the school is fulfilling the promises in the charter in between authorizer review cycles. For this reason, authorizers deserve a role in building the right board. While this might sound controversial, boards without the right makeup of members to support and hold the charter leader accountable lessen a school’s chances of success. Authorizers can provide schools with a range of supports to ensure quality board makeup – ranging from indirect assistance, like providing a rubric for board quality, to a direct approach, like identifying potential board members with the right expertise. Regardless of the level of support, authorizers cannot take a hands-off approach.

Charters must embrace transparency

All parents and taxpayers deserve to know how public schools in their communities are performing. All public schools should be transparent, but because of charters’ autonomy, this is even more important in the charter sector. Families and community members need to understand how metrics do or don’t align with the school’s mission and have a consistent understanding of how their children are performing in school, the school’s financial status, and the makeup of the school’s leadership and staff. Withholding performance information from families, good or bad, is malpractice. 

Charter boards, support organizations, and funders should partner together to provide regular, accessible updates to their communities. This might mean reimagining the use of social media, community events, and how and when board meetings are conducted to ensure community members always have access to the information they need. Social media and other communications strategies offer opportunities for schools to increase transparency and communicate with parents and community members about school performance.

It’s a time of political pressure on the charter sector but there are also opportunities for positive change —  collective action among authorizers, charter boards, and leaders must be part of the solution. If the charter sector embraces this type of collaboration and support today, in the coming years, it can truly deliver on its promise to provide the high-quality outcomes that every student deserves. 

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Items.

Alan Greenblatt, a reporter I hold in high regard, who has covered education over the years, is resigning from Governing because he was being censored with regard to the Trump Administration. I hope some philanthropy helps him keep writing independently – decline is a choice.

Washington Post story on Virginia’s effort to raise standards:

This has been going on for 3+ years. The phase-in will be four or five years. People sometimes ask me, ‘why are people so confused about some of these issues?’ It’s such a mystery!

Apparently there also wasn’t space to point out how out of alignment Virginia’s standards are with other states – Virginia having the lowest in some cases. You know….context. The comments on the article are worth reading. But this is a debate that will be won or lost at the elite level.

ICYMI

On a new WonkyFolk Jed and I talked with Macke Raymond about education overall but in particular what’s happening at CREDO. Listen through that link, wherever you get podcasts, or watch or listen below.

At LinkedIn Dan Goldhaber, Michael DeArmond, Melissa Steele-King and I talk about pandemic research – and our joint BW – Calder Pandemic Learning Project research. Covid disruption created a host of natural experiments as various policies were waived or modified on the fly. We’re trying to learn from that. We discuss all that and more in this conversation.

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The Vagueness Problem

I split my time between two communities. Politically, in the last election one went roughly 80–20 for Harris, the other 70–30 for Trump. As you might imagine, there was a more robust “No Kings” rally in one place than the other. That’s part of the point. In Virginia, No Kings was in part a turnout strategy—our statewide elections happen in off-years and are happening now—but as a message, it was more catharsis than strategy.

Think about effective political leaders for a moment. They use symbols and targets, not generalized vibes. Martin Luther King Jr.’s message wasn’t “things are bad” or “here’s what we don’t like.” He chose specific targets—symbolic and important—and went after them, strategically. (Worth noting: Trump, too, picks his targets well, at least from a political standpoint.)

By contrast what was the specific message of No Kings? Effective political efforts pick smart targets, apply pressure, and go after them. No Kings was every left-of-center cause under the sun: the environment, the economy, layoffs, the Supreme Court, trans rights, education, DOGE, tariffs, and so on. The unifying theme was simple: “We don’t like Donald Trump.” Fair enough—I don’t either. But that’s not an agenda for change; it’s an emotion. Politically, it was a rehash of an election we just ran—and Democrats lost. Not by the landslide Trump and his minions claim, but convincingly enough. And in that election—and the two before—we learned that about half the country doesn’t like Donald Trump. Maybe more now, according to polls. But in many cases, they like the Democrats even less. No we don’t like Trump is not revelatory; it’s retread.

The rally I saw was near Washington, D.C., where federal workers are being treated horribly by the President and OMB Director Russ Vought. That would be a specific thing to protest, with concrete remedies to demand. Or take the issue of masked federal agents grabbing people off the street—that’s both unpopular and actionable. Or various issues at the Department of Justice. Or the arguably extra-judicial killings of drug runners. The list goes on—but that’s the point. Plenty of good targets. Pick one or two. A generalized primal scream might be a fun way to spend a Saturday, if that’s your thing, but it doesn’t create leverage.

It’s great to get people fired up. But real politics isn’t therapy—it’s leverage. The point isn’t to shout at the throne; it’s to take back power from the crown.

“Patriotic Education” is not.

I don’t do a lot of public commenting through a formal process. (Part of my job, of course, is public commenting overall though, and I do a lot of that.) And I’m fortunate that I’m often asked for input on things in other ways.

But I did decide to offer a public comment on the proposal to make “patriotic” education a formal priority with a specific definition in federal policy. The answer to left-wing political coercion in schools is not right-wing political coercion in schools. We can do better and this proposal takes us in the wrong direction.

My comment is below.:

My comment reflects my personal views, not those of my employer (which does not take positions and where some colleagues may disagree with me) or any other organization with which I am affiliated. For background, I’ve had the privilege in my career of teaching civics, helping to write state standards in public roles, and advising various organizations and institutions on these questions. My comment is about the proposed definition of “patriotic education.”

It’s obviously essential that we do a better job teaching history–abundant state and national data make that clear. Our literacy and history challenges are intertwined, and so are their solutions. Ensuring that students have a rich history curriculum to support literacy–with books and primary sources reflecting diverse viewpoints and age-appropriate content–is critical.

However, this proposed definition of “patriotic education” would work against that goal rather than advance it in several key ways. First, we should not flinch from teaching how America has grown closer to a more perfect union, but neither should we shy away from teaching the ways we have fallen short. This definition overemphasizes the former while minimizing the latter. That is the path to indoctrination, not education. The response to coercive practices should not be more coercion of a different kind.

Second, related, this approach invites a counterproductive cycle as elections shift political control over federal policy. Over-indexing on one interpretation of history will inevitably lead to an overcorrection in the opposite direction. That energy would be better spent improving instructional quality for students rather than perpetuating political swings and adult-focused education politics.

Third, states are appropriately taking the lead here, and while the quality of their standards varies, there are exemplars. The key problem in state standards is less about red or blue, left or right, or woke versus anti-woke, and more about instructional ideology and quality. Standards should be specific, content-focused, accurate, and rigorous. This proposed definition distracts from that essential work.

Fourth, we are talking about public schools–open to, and funded by, Americans with a wide range of beliefs. It is entirely appropriate to teach students about patriotism, our traditions, and why they are worthy of respect. It is equally appropriate, in a free country, for people and families to see things differently and dissent. Our role in education is to ensure students can make informed choices about these questions, not to make those choices for them.

We can teach young students why and how people show respect for the flag, but we cannot coerce their respect for it; that is the role of their family and then themselves when they are of age. We can teach about the genius of the Founders’ design, but we cannot suppress dissent should students–after a rigorous and high-quality education–see it differently. In education, our adversary is not viewpoint; it is ignorance.

That’s why this proposed definition is as inappropriate as its inverse would be–a federal priority that called for a diminished focus on American accomplishments and leadership. American patriots are not afraid of exposing our history and achievements to scrutiny; they welcome it. They are not afraid to let students make up their own minds about American aspirations, values, traditions, and history after a high-quality education, because they have confidence in those very aspirations, values, and traditions. Patriots know that anything less denies and discredits our greatness; it does not advance it. When forced, it is the antithesis of patriotism.

For a more robust approach, I urge you to look at Virginia’s 2023 History and Social Science Standards, which cover both American and global history as well as civics. The front matter and the standards themselves offer a roadmap–praised by experts on the political right and left–for how to balance teaching all of our history while avoiding indoctrination one way or another. They explicitly note that debate, petitioning the government for change, and protest can be patriotic and essential to progress. In this country, we don’t fear disagreement; we manage it through the brilliance of the Founders’ work.

The confidence in our way of life embodied in that approach offers a more constructive path forward than fragile efforts at coercion reflecting fear and insecurity. We don’t need to ennoble American values, because we believe that when exposed to them, students will see their worth and merit. We don’t need to force unity, because we believe in E pluribus unum. In other words, true patriotism includes faith in our institutions, in our people, and in our ability to confront our full history because of our belief in America. A patriotic education would reflect that. This definition does not.

I urge you to withdraw or revise this priority.

Fish Porn

It’s Friday, so fish.

Here’s Simmons Covington with a monster from the Frying Pan on a recent Colorado trip.

Friday Fish what? New around here? In this unique archive, you’ll find hundreds of pictures of education types and their relatives with fish from rivers, lakes, and streams all over the world. Send me yours to be included.

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OK, it’s been a minute. It’s a chaotic time, and no small part of my job is helping people separate signal from noise. Below you’ll find some Virginia politics, a big thing to watch for on the federal education tax credit regulations, some reading about reading, odd takes on school safety, ed research ideas and some fish porn.

First, a few recent events and coming attractions:

Look for a new WonkyFolk next week. Jed and I talk with Macke Raymond about what’s happening at CREDO and her new project on American education.

On Monday, Bellwether and CALDER are hosting a conversation about what we can learn from pandemic natural experiments with various policy reforms. You can watch later or join live to participate in the discussion.

In RCE, Rick Hess and I took a look at the proposed higher education compact. The idea itself isn’t terrible—some of the specifics are—and the method isn’t how government is supposed to work. This is Congress’s job.

It was really fun to talk high schools and how to innovate with high schools and pathways with a great Bipartisan Policy Center panel. What are the opportunities and risks with pathways? What do students need to know? We get into that and more.

Over on LinkedIn, Bellwether hosted a discussion, sponsored by Curriculum Associates, on opportunities and risks around devolving more education authority to the states. It featured a great panel of people involved in this work at the state and federal levels. Listen or watch here.

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Virginia

Did you know that’s a song by Clipse? I was at their show recently. They still have it. Unusual stuff in politics? Virginia still has that, too.

Last time we talked about how a few swirling culture-war issues had failed to break out in the Virginia election. One of those—allegations about a school facilitating an abortion for a student—is now being strongly refuted by the school system after an investigation. I doubt it will change many minds; it’s mostly an issue among partisans. Some people are still arguing loose ends and that the district isn’t coming clean. One signal to watch though: the public investigative report goes pretty hard against the whistleblower’s credibility, which would be an aggressively reckless thing to do if they weren’t pretty confident.

Tax credit disruption or tax credit divisiveness?

A few weeks ago on WonkyFolk, Jed Wallace and I talked with Shaka Mitchell about the new education tax credit scholarship program that was part of the recent tax bill. (Calling it the “Big Beautiful Bill” only underscores how often these things are misnamed—calling it the “Big Ugly Bill” just sounds juvenile.) It was a valuable conversation. Shaka is on top of this, but understanding the program’s potential impact depends on many contingencies—the biggest being that the Treasury Department hasn’t yet released regulations about it. That’s normal; these things take time.

We’ll see what they do. Those who know aren’t talking. Those who talk don’t. Some of the issues stem from things that weren’t allowed because the program had to survive a strict legislative process under the Byrd Rule, informally known as a Byrd Bath, and how to address that.

A threshold question however is: will they regulate it as “tuition scholarship plus” or “tuition scholarship only”?

• Tuition scholarship plus would be the more disruptive path—further unbundling the system by ushering in new providers. States could allow scholarships not just for non-public school tuition but also for tutoring, special education supports, and other activities. That would require variable scholarship amounts but create a robust alternative pipeline of financing for unbundled education supports. It would make it harder for some Democratic governors to say no. It would please rural Republicans. It would make it a more expansive program. More expansive = more long term disruption.
• Tuition-only would set larger scholarships closer to or at tuition levels. That route would likely generate more political division. There would be less incentive for blue states to opt in, but more intra-state strife over doing so. A divisive wedge. If you haven’t heard, 2026 is a big election year.

(Not doing tuition scholarships at all won’t be an option for states that choose to participate in the program, and a key thing here is states have to opt in.)

Not always, but pretty often, when the Trump administration faces a choice between creating divisiveness or creating long-term change, it picks the former. The president and his team are rarely accused of consensus-building.

Will the West Wing and OMB take yes for an answer?

Reading

Two recent stories about reading in national publications:

Kelsey Piper notes in The Argument that some of the states making meaningful gains share common strategies around literacy. Why isn’t that catching fire more? I have a hunch:

In The Atlantic, Idrees Kalhoun sees the same problem—we’re not doing a great job on reading. Why might that be? Wait, wait, I have a hunch:

That’s right, don’t mind all of us over here with our “I love science!” lawn signs. It’s almost like this is politics rather than evidence.

Here’s the thing: this work contains multitudes. There’s plenty to debate—even deep questions of values that can’t be resolved empirically so you can fight about those forever. We don’t have to make everything partisan or strident. The lousy job we do on literacy is a choice—a longstanding poor one.

Howling at the moon on school safety?

First, Daniel Buck writes for Fordham that maybe we just can’t do much about mass shootings in schools (which, thankfully, are rare). Shrug emoji.

“Through it all, I’ve come to a conclusion that I don’t like: There’s not much schools can do to prevent mass shootings. The best, or even the only, approach may be to focus on the everyday threats to student safety that receive far less attention.”

OK, right. Except most school shooters signal or say what they’re going to do in advance. In advance. That’s something schools can get upstream of with good school culture. The Parkland shooter told anyone who would listen what he was up to. Other high-profile shooters did, too, in various ways. In some cases, people even gave them firearms despite the signals and warnings. Against that backdrop, “oh well, what can we do?” seems like the wrong takeaway?

Second, from the Rockefeller Institute: higher-powered firearms are more lethal in school shootings. I had to read this a few times to make sure there wasn’t a subtle point I was missing—but no. Look, nobody wants to get run over, but if it happens, you’re better off if it’s a bike than an SUV. Chainsaws do more damage than kitchen knives. Same idea here. Again, most of these people tell us what they’re going to do beforehand. The problem is disconnectedness and weak relationships. Let’s listen more—and make sure schools are places with trusting relationships so administrators can hear those warnings early.

Friday Fish Porn

A few weeks ago Rachel Dinkes was featured here. She then sent more pictures—and also wrote an interesting essay on education research for The 74. I recently wrote one for The 74 with some colleagues on the same topic. And that, friends, is all it takes around here to skip the line.

Below her 74 essay, you’ll find a couple of pictures of Rachel with fish off Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.

How to Remake IES to Strengthen Research and Fuel Student Success

Friday Fish what? In this unique archive, you’ll find hundreds of pictures of education types and their relatives with fish from rivers, lakes, and streams all over the world. Send me yours.

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Last month Nat Malkus, Rick Hess, and I talked through the current issues. Listen to The Report Card there or wherever you get podcasts. This was just before the Kirk assassination.

From Bellwether:

In an effort to help education organizations build capacity around artificial intelligence, pilot new ways of selling, and experiment with new staffing models, we’re launching a new project: AI cohort for education and youth-serving organization leaders. This is for youth-serving organizations that are not schools – we are serving that part of the sector in other ways on AI. If you would like more information please contact my colleague Amy Chen Kulesa .

Rebecca Goldberg, Akeshia Craven-Howell, and I talked about strategic planning earlier this week on LinkedIn. Look, I get it, you’re a grown adult walking around a room putting stickie notes on large sheets of paper. I’m a skeptic, too. But strategic planning doesn’t have to be like that, and can be instrumental for organizations when it’s done right and well – it’s especially important in chaotic times like this. We get into all that and more. Learn more here.

Here’s a new Bellwether analysis of education media coverage. Academic outcomes, 2%. Great.

And here’s a Bellwether analysis on thinking about outcomes with AI use.

Bellwether does fiscal sponsorships – and doesn’t take organizational political positions.

ICYMI – We lost the smartphone battle. AI is next.

Why we can’t have nice things. Higher education edition.

The idea of a compact around higher education that creates incentive for reforms makes some sense. Could be an opportunity for leadership. It’s not too much to ask colleges and universities to follow federal law, respect civil rights, be attentive to national security, and address affordability. And credit where it’s due, this new gambit is more transparent than some past actions the Administration has taken. Still, this new proposal from the Trump Administration raises two serious issues. First, what are things, even if they have merit, that you don’t want the federal government doing? And, second, and not really second, First Amendment concerns.

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Loudoun Calling: Is it 2021 in Virginia Again?

TL/DR, it’s not.

The Virginia election is about a month away. Early voting is underway, October surprises abound, and a lot of people are wondering if education will loom as large in 2025 as it did in 2021. Good question. I talked with Carl Cannon on his SiriusXM show and podcast about that, and with the RTD. Dave Weigel also took a look at the dynamics for Semafor.

From RTD:

A few things to keep in mind:

• Big picture: In 2021, Glenn Youngkin had the wind at his back thanks to an unpopular White House incumbent. In 2025, there’s also an unpopular president in the White House—Donald Trump. This time, that’s a headwind, and it was there even before the shutdown. The longer that circus drags on, the worse it gets in the vote-rich, federally dependent parts of the commonwealth. Politically, Trump is underwater in Virginia, which—along with Maryland—has been hardest hit by federal layoffs. Tough landscape for the Rs, good for the Dems.
• On education: People remain frustrated with the schools, and enrollment keeps slipping. But there hasn’t been a singular focusing event like Loudoun County in 2021. Loudoun sure tried: the system punished boys who objected to changing with a girl in their locker room. That case, as inane as it is, hasn’t caught fire outside of conservative media. Nor has a Fairfax case where staff allegedly facilitated at least one underage abortion without parental knowledge. There is a whistleblower on that one. Or the bizarre issue of a sex offender leveraging gender ID to enter girls’ locker rooms around Northern Virginia. Absent something that really crystallizes attention and links it to a policy, these stories are background noise against a more general, and hardened, political environment. The Republicans can’t expect much help: Most media outlets aren’t rushing to cover this stuff.
• The candidates: Former congresswoman and CIA officer Abigail Spanberger, the Democratic nominee, benefits from a strong, accurate frame of normalcy. She’s mostly middle of the road. She was early to call out “defund the police” nonsense, for example. Yes, she fumbled easy questions on transgender youth and sports, but a pliant media isn’t making much of it, and to most voters she seems moderate and competent. Because she is. Crucially, she hasn’t had a galvanizing ‘don’t listen to parents’-style gaffe. Republican Lt. Governor Winsome Earle-Sears, by contrast, has struggled to focus the race on any particular issue. She hasn’t landed on schools concealing gender transitions from parents, for instance, or school choice. Overall, her campaign has lacked clarity and message discipline, which is an acute problem in this climate where you need something to break through to succeed.
• Youngkin’s record: On education policy, the governor has a good record overall. (Spoiler: his 2022 stance on transgender students, which seemed so controversial at the time, is on its way to being the default consensus position.) The state board, where I served until July, just raised academic standards after years of slippage, in some cases to the lowest in the country. The board is also launching a performance reporting system to close the “honesty gap,” so parents get real information instead of the old 9-in-10-schools-are-fine line, even as achievement declined and then cratered with the pandemic. Virginia is also implementing Science of Reading reforms and making standards more specific, content-rich, and academic. That’s the good news. The political problem for Republicans is…who cares? These changes matter in real life for young people, but they don’t fire up the GOP base. Education politics are mostly downside. In fact, Youngkin has taken real heat from Republican base activists for not doing more on the culture war front. You might not have heard about that because we live in bubbles. Meanwhile, the Democratic base—and teachers unions—despise these reforms despite all the “We love science and data” yard signs. Its own bubble. 

Bottom line: The environment is tough for Republicans. The ticket isn’t unified (the GOP’s candidate for Lt. Governor is openly gay, which the top of the ticket, Earle-Sears, still can’t abide, even in 2025). Independents are sour. Democrats are angry. The race feels nationalized in many parts of Virginia. The education flashpoints of 2021 aren’t breaking through this time. Barring a major surprise, Virginia’s first (yes, first(!), did I mention it’s 2025?) female governor looks likely to be Abigail Spanberger.

Friday Fish Porn

Here’s America Succeeds’ Tim Taylor and his wife out on the Green in Wyoming.

In this unique archive you will find hundreds of pictures of education types and their relatives with fish on rivers, lakes, and streams all over the world. Including some past ones of the fishing Taylors.

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Around the country, states are passing bans on cell phones in schools. Thirty-five states now have some sort of restriction—either all day or just during instructional time. Policymakers are quickly realizing that the best policies are ones that don’t turn teachers into cops, so expect more total rather than partial bans. Teachers, for their part, generally—and understandably—like the bans. Public support is also rising. One story that sticks with me: a Virginia teacher thanked Governor Glenn Youngkin’s administration after his executive order banning phones in schools, saying, “thank you for giving us our kids back.” (There was a brief attempt at partisan pushback on Youngkin’s ban policy—because we live in stupid negative-polarization times—but the popularity of the policy quickly settled the matter even among people who otherwise did not support the governor.)

Around the country the bipartisan expansion of restrictions and bans is being hailed as a big victory by everyone from Jonathan Haidt to the NEA. It feels like a long-overdue pushback against toxic, addictive apps that Silicon Valley foisted on young people (and the rest of us). And at one level, it is progress. Social media in particular seems to be metastasizing a range of social ills. It’s a huge problem.

But in schools, we should also see these bans for what they are: surrender.

We have nothing on offer to compete with phones, so we’re banning them.

What schools offer just isn’t compelling enough to win kids’ attention. As a teacher remarked to me, you’ll always have some students checked out for various reasons, but overall good teachers don’t have boring classrooms. The problem is we don’t have enough of those classrooms. Phones didn’t create that problem, but they revealed—and then amplified—it.

Of course, phones aren’t the only thing we ban or meter out for young people. Cars, alcohol, drugs, and sex are examples of others. (At Bellwether, we recently looked at the incoherent patchwork of laws around those policies.) Age limits can make sense, and I’m not troubled by some phone bans or social media restrictions for young people.

But with AI bearing down on us—technology so compelling it makes today’s smartphones look like Atari’s Space Invaders—we need to ask: how can schools compete with that? What will be engaging enough to draw kids in? What will offer relationships that matter more than ones available through AI? What will make the struggle of learning something new feel like the more attractive option?

These are not easy questions. But they’re urgent. Right now, we’re not winning against new tech. We’re losing. And over time, you can’t ban your way out of that.

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I agreed with Charlie Kirk on little in contemporary American politics or American life, and I was not a fan. Still, what I did admire about him was his willingness to debate, not grudgingly but enthusiastically. Today’s politics are a toxic mix of certitude and cowardice—certitude about policy, politics, and American questions, and cowardice when it comes to debating opponents who can push back thoughtfully. Shutting down debate has become more common than welcoming it. And yes, in various ways this is a both sides problem. Meanwhile, too many people lack the skills and knowledge to even articulate a position opposed to their own. And what we’re seeing all around us is where that leads, as thinkers from Jefferson and Tocqueville to Martin Luther King have warned us. At the same time, there is an alarming rise in the percent of young people saying violence is sometimes acceptable to counter speech. That’s an unsustainable and frightening brew.

Regardless of what we ultimately learn about the circumstances of his death, it is the cruelest irony that Kirk was killed while doing exactly that—debating. Given the alarming rise in political violence against figures on both the right and the left, this should shock us. It should especially trouble those of us in education because a large part of our project is, or should be, ensuring that students have the knowledge and skills to settle our differences at the ballot box, through debate and free expression, and with a culture of pluralism rather than violence.

Yes, people will say there are too many examples of coercive education practices and will then cherry-pick cases from the left or the right depending on their point of view. If you’re doing that, you’re part of the problem. It’s both left and right and there is more than enough illiberalism to go around. We should call this out and have zero tolerance for that kind of thing in the classroom regardless of where your sympathies happen to lie. I’m not naive; this will not completely solve what ails us now. Yet it is within our power in education and part of a broader set of solutions to a political situation that is spiraling dangerously.

We cannot allow this to become who we are.

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Today on LinkedIn I talked with Alex Johnston about his book, Money with Meaning, his own journey into philanthropic advising, and what it will take to get more capital off the sidelines. Plus, advice for grantees.

You can watch here on LinkedIn.

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Today I have some odds and ends as summer winds down and kids go back to school. And it’s Friday so fish.

New WonkyFolk. This is a fun and important one, Jed and I sit down with Shaka Mitchell of American Federation for Children to talk about the – big – new education tax credit program that was part of the recent federal tax bill. Did I mention it’s big? The Commodore estimates $28 billion annually. And it’s going to be politically disruptive. We get into all of that and Shaka’s take on what there is to learn from past experiences with choice.

You can get it wherever you get podcasts or through the links below:

Show notes, transcripts, etc…

If you want to watch:

Katrina 20. On Monday I hosted a discussion with three-term Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu, NOLA educators Jamar McNeely and Alexina Medley, and Tulane’s Doug Harris to discuss education in New Orleans post-Katrina.

You can watch the video here. If you want to hear from people who were there, before the storm, and in the rebuilding after, along with a fact base on what’s happened, then this is it. It’s part of a series of Bellwether webinars on different aspects of education in New Orleans.

Smart disagreement. This discussion from The Disagreement about exam schools is worth your time. Ian Rowe and Stefan Redding Lollinger talk through the issues with host Alex Grodd. Nuance!

You should hold space for this: Third Way with a political memo about language, that reads like a bingo card from the last education meeting you attended.

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Equitable grading, now rebranded under some other names, is not popular with teachers. There are a few issues like this where a lot of people are suddenly struck mute. They go on and on about teacher voice until it conflicts with some political norm. You run into a lot of teachers who are scared to speak up, too.

This article from The Boston Globe is something else.

It’s a little hard to square the idea of a lot of class skipping and, as the article suggests, students not paying attention when they are present, with an average GPA north of 3.8. I dunno, would the viewpoint diversity problem—apparently blamed on overcommitted students by the faculty—be even worse if students showed up more often?

Here’s Ben Sayeski slinging some candor in CharterFolk:

This seems directionally correct to me. It’s also worth pointing out, though, that some people have a different theory of action, sort of a hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil approach believing that the best way to garner support for public schools is to tell a certain story. I think that theory is flawed on a few levels (it’s the wrong thing to do and won’t work indefinitely anyway) but it is a theory of action. There is also just the generalized adult-first politics of the sector.

Fish Porn

Here’s Cognia’s Brad Wever in West Grand Traverse Bay near Traverse City, Michigan with a beauty. Michigan is a fantastic state, with great river and lake fishing, if you like to be outside .

Want more? Here are hundreds of pics of education folks with fish. Even more pics here. Send me yours!

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Today we’ve got a remembrance, healthy food and unhealthy politics, some media and narrative discussion, and what is real competition in education?

NOLA then and now

First, a reminder, next week we kick off a set of webinars about the post-Katrina education experience in New Orleans. For the first one, on Monday, we have three-term Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu, who also hails from a legendary New Orleans family, as well as NOLA educators Jamar McNeely and Alexina Medley who were there pre- and post-storm. On many New Orleans education questions people have views that -surprise!- align with whatever their larger reform priors are. This is a chance to learn from three people who were actually there, sleeves rolled up. And get a fact base from the leading analyst of education in the city. It’s part of a series, learn more and register (free) here.

Healthy Competition

Adam Peshek, who if you don’t know him is one of the nicest people you’ll run into in this sector, posted an essay in his newsletter about increasing competition in education (he’s also funded Bellwether, but I’d say that part about him being nice regardless).

Peshek notes that competition, and behavioral responses to competition are a feature, not a bug, of school choice plans. Yes. And although a lot of people have somehow decided that education is the one part of the world where the normal rules of human behavior, incentives, economics, and politics don’t apply that’s not actually the case. And as a champion of mass customization in public education I welcome more. We should have more and varied kinds of schools and options for kids in publicly funded education.

But, not all competition is created equal. As Rick Hess noted years ago in Revolution at the Margins, a book with newfound salience given the new wave of school choice underway, competition can take different forms. In politically controlled institutions like public schools that form is often cosmetic not substantive. It’s great to see schools advertising and not taking parents for granted. But you know what matters more? What happens in the classroom.

Consider Washington, D.C. The disruption caused by increased school choice and the growing market share for charters created the political disruption that ushered in Michelle Rhee and Kaya Henderson. That was important. But what really changed the facts on the ground for kids was the specific teaching and learning reforms (and some foundational operational reforms, DC really was dysfunctional) that came once Rhee and Henderson were on the scene.

Peshek writes, “School choice doesn’t just introduce new options. It reshapes the behavior of existing ones. It forces everyone to ask: What are we offering? For whom? And why should they choose us?“

That’s quite true, but in an industry without clear consistent reporting on outcomes (a problem school choice is currently making worse not better) keep an eye on what’s an actual change versus what only looks like changes.

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Today’s Friday, are we for or against healthy lunches today?

If you had told me even a few years ago that one of Robert Kennedy’s kids would run for president and I wouldn’t be over the moon about, it I’d have said that’s crazy. (People have their own favorites but I’d suggest Evan Thomas’ biography if you’re looking for a good entry one on the OG RFK and why he inspires so many). Now, in 2025, I’m not happy that one of his kids is Secretary of Health and Human Services given his views on vaccines and research. But, that doesn’t mean he’s wrong about everything. Negative polarization will make you stupid, and maybe also fat.

Case in point: School lunches have a lot of room to go to be more healthy for kids. It’s really a crazy program in some ways. And yes the Trump Administration has cut some adjacent programs that are aimed in the direction of healthy lunches because, well, DOGE. But when the admin says they want to get food dye and ultra-processed foods out of what kids eat, take the W and move on to fight about other stuff. We don’t have to fight about everything. “Brace” for healthier food? Really? It should be what we expect and if you code it partisan you’re part of the problem.

Here’s chef Tom Colicchio on healthy lunches from a 2016 Bellwether publication. And here’s local farming leaders Lindsay Lusher Shute and Eric Hansen on how local food can fit into the equation from the same pub.

Look, it was good when Michelle Obama championed healthier lunches (and the political right lost its collective mind about that it’s worth remembering) and it’s good when RFK does, even I think he’s quite wrong on other things and you might, too. American politics can’t be a game of 100%. Food dyes and ultra-processed food are bad news regardless of who is in the Oval Office.

Narrative

Recently at the baseball All-Star game players were asked how many hits the average fan would get off of major league pitching. This set off a discussion on social media as well with a lot of armchair DHs speculating about how much good contact they could make. Spoiler alert: As Red Sox ace Garrett Crochet concisely noted, the correct answer is none. Unless you have played for money or were in elite NCAA baseball these pitches are too fast and have too much movement on them. (As one wag noted if you did manage to get lucky and make clean contact you might get a hit because the fielders would be too shocked to move to the ball). Even the jump from AAA pitching to the majors is real. That’s why you pay money to watch those guys play, they’re that good and the differences are that significant. The game as fans talk about it and as it’s actually played is quite different. Rooting interests are a lot of fun, the mechanics and analytics of the game something else.

I thought about that dynamic reading the dueling accounts of what happened recently at Virgina’s George Mason University, one of many schools now in the crosshairs of Trump’s Department of Justice. We talked about UVA and what happened there, the Mason situation is at once similar and different but there was a lot of speculation the Mason president might be terminated at the school’s board meeting.

But read this account and then this account of the board meeting. What’s important here is less what you think about the various issues, the school’s president, DEI, the Trump Administration, or any of that than how things like this are increasingly covered. It’s the failure to even get facts and context right. We’re moving back to late 19th-Century approach to media and information. On a range of issues it leaves people confused or with an incomplete picture. And a time of rapid social and economic change that’s a real problem. It’s a big problem in the education sector.

Yes, the labor of staying informed has increased. Treating public affairs as a rooting interest sort of thing, like we do sports, obscures more than it reveals and makes it that much more challenging.

Life Well Lived

John Forkenbrock passed away earlier this month. He was 80. Among a broad career in service he ran the organization focused on federally impacted schools. At least for now, and hopefully in the future, the federal government owns a lot of public land and land for other purposes. Schools can’t tax that land as they can other property. So there is a transfer program to try to make them whole. The sort of program that’s both mundane and essential and often not considered in conversations or theatrics about the federal role in schools.

That’s where I got to know John. When he was running that organization – an organization he continued to assist even after he retired. He was exceptionally kind and a generous source of information and advice when he had no need to be. He helped me when there was nothing in it for him. When his passing came up with a few of my contemporaries, unprompted, that is the first thing people said about him – what a generous person he was in all ways. That’s unusual in a town where people step on each other to get ahead or get an edge (and then talk about all the mentors that stood in the way of their path to greatness). It’s a genuine legacy. The kind that doesn’t get washed away with changes in politics.

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New Covid Analysis And NOLA Katrina & Schools Discussion

Bellwether just released a new brief about Covid learning loss interventions, and what we can learn.

This is part of a larger Bellwether–CALDER partnership to look at the lessons of Covid disruptions. Essentially, the pandemic created all sorts of natural experiments as policies were suspended and emergency measures were put in place. Obviously, no one would wish for this but we also shouldn’t let all the opportunities for learning go to waste. That’s the idea behind this collaboration.

I have long been frustrated by the nationalization of the New Orleans experience after Katrina. Whether reformers and the oil spot idea, or the minimizing of the role people from New Orleans played in the education work—by both sides for different reasons—these are incomplete stories.

So I’m excited to lead a discussion on August 18th with Senator Mary Landrieu, and educators Alexina Medley and Jamar McNeely about what actually happened and their role in it. Doug Harris of Tulane will kick it off sharing research and data on the changes since the storm in the city’s education sector. It’s one part of a series of four online events looking back at what’s happened and forward toward today’s challenges and what is next. I hope you can join us.

Trump And Pennies

Penny Schwinn acknowledged the inevitable last week and withdrew from consideration as Deputy Secretary of Education, despite her nomination getting out of committee. Some Republicans were not comfortable with her, some Democrats felt they couldn’t vote for any more Trump nominees given everything going on even if they thought she’d be good in the job. After the past few weeks, though, on nominees and otherwise, the bottom fell out. The Tennessee governor’s race also played a role. A big one. Politics. But a telling episode about education politics.

My hunch is that anyone celebrating this (other than the Penny is too ‘woke’ crowd) is not going to be happy with Plan B, which could be consequential for long term Department leadership.

Dems Fighting About Vouchers

Dems in disarray I guess…about school vouchers. Though it was a refreshing break from all the stories about how screwed up men are, I’m not sure this new Times story advances things much beyond making clear the fracturing among the groups over the private school voucher question. I continue to think that as a matter of political geography Democrats can’t blackball ESA and voucher supporters – the programs are just too widespread and if you want to be competitive that’s an issue. But the party also doesn’t need to embrace choice in whatever form comes down the pike. Lost in some of the back and forth is the reality that the direct payment plans states can enact with federal tax credits under President’s Trump’s recent tax bill could be for tutoring or other things. They could benefit public schools, too. That’s an opportunity – politically and for kids.

Good a time as any to point out that vouchers remain the one issue where Republicans are like, ‘yes, let’s give the poor some money to do as they wish,’ and roughly the one issue where Dems are against that.

A Subtle Shift? And A Less Subtle Move.

The Democrats’ numbers are unbelievably bad, especially given the context right now. I continue to think education offers part of a way back, and will have more on that soon. But, this doesn’t mean the President’s numbers are that great. And he and Congress might be thinking about that. The midterm will be a referendum on them, not the Dems.

One indication? Well, life comes at you fast. The Trump administration unfroze education funding it had just been holding back. You can read more about that here and here. It’s worth noting: the freezing and unfreezing, or reviews, or whatever you want to call it, of these funds isn’t really a thing, legally speaking — there’s no formal process that authorizes it in this way. It’s just something the Trump Administration has been doing.

This latest reversal came on the heels of the restoration of PEPFAR – the international AIDS program—funds in the recent rescission bill after bipartisan pushback on that cut.

What’s notable isn’t just the policy outcomes—it’s how it went down. In both cases, Trump yielded to bipartisan pressure, backing down over the objections of hardliners. That’s a break from the pattern. In the past, when challenged like this, Trump would typically double down, escalate the rhetoric, and whip his supporters to push people to toe the line. The whole TACO zeitgeist overstates just how much Trump has bent Congress to his will. I never thought Trump would fail to get a reconciliation bill through Congress by whatever deadline he set, for instance. I did think he’d have to scale it back. That didn’t happen and instead he met his deadline with his bill largely intact.

But maybe things are changing? Last week the Senate Appropriations Committee essentially told the administration to pound sand with an appropriations package that rejects most of what they want to do.

I don’t want to over-read this, or get carried away. It could be nothing. An aberration stemming from some lack of focus. Donald Trump remains erratic and sometimes unpredictable. By this time next week, we could be at war with Switzerland or discussing 500% tariffs on Norway. Maybe it’s as simple as Ed Secretary Linda McMahon won the last round but OMB Director Russ Vought will win the next time in a rescissions package or next year’s budget request to Congress—both things you should keep an eye on to see what is happening here. They may try to use recent Executive Orders as a pretext to withhold other funding or scrutinize all the funding that impacts non-citizens.

Or, this may be a trend worth watching if normal political gravity is starting to reassert itself, even just a little.

One indicator to watch, in addition to the education appropriations bill, is the bipartisan effort to address some NIH funding that is now being slow walked, reviewed, whatever they are calling it. Keep an eye on what happens there, too.

We’re getting closer to an election in 2026 that is likely to put the brakes at least some of Trump’s policy ideas. That raises the question: are some of the loudest parts of Trump’s political identity—the posturing, the provocations, and the arm-twisting and coercion— starting to give way, however subtly, to the demands of the broader electorate, his party’s politicians, and mundane realities of politics?

We’ll see.

The Greatest Trick Randi Weingarten Ever Pulled

It’s easy to forget now, but in the late 2000s and early 2010s, American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten was giving speech after speech about the need for reform. Tenure, she acknowledged, couldn’t be a job for life and it sometimes was. She warmed to other reform ideas, too, like opening a charter school (that was later shut down) and was essentially telling her members: get on the reform bus or get run over by it. Those annual National Press Club speeches are wild to read now. The AFT even hired Kenneth Feinberg to design an expedited 100-day dismissal due process for teachers with tenure (an initiative that ultimately led to little change).

Then Chicago teachers’ union leader Karen Lewis offered a third option during the teachers’ strike there — the people on that reform bus, fight them. Chicago was a strike that didn’t even have to happen, the union wanted and needed it to happen. Lewis saw the opportunity to drive a wedge. Education politics hasn’t really been the same since. Lewis died tragically early from cancer in 2021, but insofar as reform is concerned we’re still operating in an education politics she galvanized.

After the strike, Weingarten pivoted. Lewis wasn’t a risk to unseat Weingarten, but she did have influence inside the union. One large union leader told me that after Chicago the question members were asking was, ‘why aren’t we fighting, too?’ Reform unionism, always a sickly patient, went on life support. Weingarten is a good tactician and seized the moment. Suddenly she was at once tone policing reformers, talking about how reformers were too disruptive and divisive and also fighting back hard on reform initiatives behind the scenes. She pressured politicians and philanthropists. What education needed, she insisted publicly, was collaboration and consensus. Behind the scenes, the unions came roaring back as the Obama agenda lost its edge.

And in one of the more remarkable political sleights of hand in recent memory, she convinced many reformers that she was right — that they were, in fact, part of the problem if not the problem with a system that had failed to deliver equitable or acceptable results for decades—especially for racial and ethnic minorities and poor kids.

This happened, of course, just as DEI discourse was taking hold in education organizations. Contrary to popular politics and retelling, it didn’t start with the 2020 reckoning; the shift began around 2014. Reformers began to wonder if they were too abrasive, too adversarial, too unwilling to listen. Or worse, if education reform, and by extension they, were part and parcel of issues like the abusive policing many reformers were just learning about. They didn’t think this up themselves, a then-cottage industry of DEI experts (that post-2020 would become Big DEI) was pushing it out. And if you felt guilty about the unearned, unfair, or whatever privilege that got you into Stanford, Princeton, or Harvard, here was a way to performatively assuage it.

So, many decided the answer to all these concerns was yes. The problem isn’t the system, which is structurally unfair, something that should be apparent to people ostensibly concerned with structural inequality, the problem is us! It wasn’t so much the Stockholm Syndrome that paralyzes the Democrats overall as it was abused spouse syndrome. And it worked.

So acrimony was out. Disruption was out. Consensus was in. It didn’t help matters when Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016. If he was for charter schools, for example, a lot of people decided that they were not. Weak, yes. Unexpected, no.

It all left a movement trying to transform a quarter-trillion-dollar system* — one deeply entrenched and politically defended — while shying away from the conflict that transformation inevitably requires and unable to work in a cross or bipartisan way. (If you’re just in this work for conflict, you’re a sociopath but political conflict is part of change).

The greatest trick Randi Weingarten ever pulled was convincing a lot of reformers they could somehow reform an enormous, powerful, politically controlled industry without some real acrimony and disruption and odd bedfellows political coalitions. And, that although they were trying to dismantle a system with notably inequitable outcomes, they were actually on the side of oppression. A lot of reformers, especially those donning a DEI hair shirt, turned out to be easy marks for all this.

If you’re new around here, the point is not that the unions are wrong about everything. At times their interests and the interests of students align. Sometimes their line leaders are savvy observers of the education scene and what might improve it. All else equal they want what’s best for kids, too, they’re not monsters. But all else isn’t always equal and they are big powerful institutions with prerogatives, power, and politics to advance. The problem comes up in the constant confusion about who is actually the client here and the adult-first politics that follow. (Correct answer: students, parents, and taxpayers.)

Anyway, at some level you have to tip your hat. Even pre-Janus the unions knew they faced an existential problem with demographics and membership. This strategy helped them sidestep it, buy some time, and regain relevance and leverage. But it’s a shame it contributed to the reform coalition becoming a shell of its former self.

Reformers, heal thyself? Good things will follow.

*editing mistake.