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Bruce Baker Evaluates the Sorry Condition of Education in Florida

By dianeravitch
October 23, 2026 //
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Bruce Baker’s evaluation of education policy in Florida demonstrates that the state operates on the crazy theory that cutting funding is good, diverting funding from district schools to charters and vouchers is good, and underpaying teachers makes them better.

All of this makes no sense.

Read his report.

Here are his conclusions:

Several themes emerge from the analyses presented in this report.

First, regarding long term trends in Florida school funding, adequacy and efficiency:

• Florida schools have been squeezed by declining state aid since the early 2000s as the state has pursued its race to the bottom on taxpayer financing of public elementary and secondary schools.

• That squeeze has resulted in declining competitiveness of teacher wages over time and even more so, declining staffing ratios in schools increasing the workload on those that remain.

• Adjusted for labor costs over time, school spending per pupil in Florida and in Miami-Dade specifically, is less than it was 30 years ago.

• Florida school districts have responded by producing achievement levels beyond expectations given the resources they’ve been provided. Florida school districts are efficient when compared to school districts nationally, accounting for differences in costs.

• Still, because of the long slow reduction in effort, spending, staffing ratios and competitive wages, student outcomes in Florida have continued to decline, dropping among states and dropping in recent, post-COVID years as other states and the nation, on average, have begun to rebound.

• As the state has reduced its share of funding for public schooling, local districts have been forced to make up the difference with increased property taxes, to mitigate further damage to student outcomes by slowing the declining of competitive wages for teachers.

Second, regarding providing equal educational opportunity to all children in Florida:

Financing Florida’s Schools

• The state school finance system provides no discernable support to schools serving students with greater educational needs, outside of additional support for children with disabilities.

• The state’s charter school sector exacerbates inequality across student populations by operating within low-income neighborhoods, but serving far fewer children from low-income families, fewer children who are English learners and fewer children with disabilities.

• The state’s charter school sector also yields poor educational outcomes on state assessments when compared to traditional district schools or district magnet schools serving similar populations within the same district.

Finally, regarding spending for the greatest return on investment:

• The state has currently budgeted $3.8 billion dollars to be spent on students attending private schools, approximately 70% of which will likely be spent on children from higher income families who had not previously attended public district schools. That 70% of $3.8 billion would likely yield far greater return on investment and greater public benefit, based on existing research, if invested in public district schools in high poverty settings.

These findings lead to a clear set of policy recommendations. As shown in this report, the state has the economic capacity to pursue these recommendations. Even at the state’s own prior (2000s) education effort, funding for public schools would be 28% higher than it is presently. Add to that, more efficient allocation of funds currently being diverted to the school voucher program, and much of the state’s public education adequacy gap could be eliminated. As such, we propose the following recommendations:

Recommendation #1 – Phase 1: Engage in the work of setting a manageable standard of “high quality” public schooling for Florida’s children by engaging in analyses of the costs associated with providing each and every child in Florida with equal educational opportunity to achieve high education outcomes.

d. Establish a statewide commission on school funding.

e. Engage stakeholders in setting standards of excellence for Florida children.

f. Engage experts to estimate the costs associated with meeting those standards, applying appropriately rigorous methods.

Recommendation #1 – Phase 2: Guided by those estimates, reform the school finance formula and increase state aid to schools so as to provide them with the necessary resources for all children to have equal educational opportunity to achieve high education outcomes. That is, meet the constitutional standard ratified by Florida voters in 1998 and 2002. This should include estimates of commensurate funding for charter schools, based on needs and costs.

b. Take eliminating or reducing property taxes off the table. The most effective form of property tax relief is increased state aid, as would occur under implementation of this recommendation.

Recommendation 2 – Part 1: Impose a moratorium on charter school expansion, including the Schools of Hope Program. The existing charter school sector in Florida is compromising equity, eroding efficiency and producing poor educational outcomes for those it serves. New York’s Success Academies have no proven track record of serving children like those they’d be called upon to serve in Miami-Dade, having served very few English learners and underserving Latino communities in New York. Like Miami-Dade’s current charter sector, they have also underserved low-income populations and children with disabilities. Introduction of Success Academies in Miami-Dade will most likely exacerbate equity concerns that are already significant.

Recommendation 2 – Part 2: Establish new regulations for evaluating existing charter operators and vetting new charter operators to ensure improved equity in the distribution of students by their needs across schools. Adopt and enforce stricter regulations pertaining to student outcomes.

Recommendation 2 – Part 3: Adopt updated charter school legislation to ensure that charter schools are sufficiently “public,” required to operate as if “state actors,” protecting children’s constitutional rights and abiding by all relevant federal statutes.

Recommendation 3: Freeze expansion of the voucher program to free up state resources to support a fully funded, overhauled public school finance formula, to provide a uniform system of schools.

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Extremism, Florida

Meg White: Spellings and Duncan Want to Revive Their Failed Programs

By dianeravitch
October 21, 2026 //
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Charters proved to be the stepping stone to vouchers, persuading parents they school was a consumer choice.-z

Education advocate Meg White writes about one of the worst ideas of our time: Margaret Spellings and Arne Duncan have teamed up to support a revival of No Chid Left Behind and Race to the Top.

They might as well call their effort, “Make failure great again!”

If it didn’t work the first time, do it again.

Both programs shared a common strategy: Test and punish. George W. Bush’s NCLB created a singular focus on standardized test scores as the measure of schools. Educators were told that they must raise scores every year or face dire consequences, including turning the school over to a charter organization or private management; firing and replacing teachers and the principal; closing the school.

The unintended consequences: teaching to the test, once considered unethical, became the norm; narrowing of the curriculum to only the subjects tested, reducing time for history, civics, science, recess, and the arts; cheating. Testing became the goal of schooling, rather than a measure.

Duncan’s Race to the Top dangled big cash rewards to states if they adopted his program: evaluate teachers by the rise or fall of student test scores; fire teachers who don’t raise scores: adopt the Common Core; enact laws to permit charter schools.

Together, these two federal programs thoroughly demoralized the teaching profession and caused enrollments in teachers’ colleges to plummet. They crushed the joy of teaching and learning without achieving their goals. Teachers were unjustly fired. Charter schools were opened by for-profit entrepreneurs, as well as grifters and profit-seeking corporations. The charter industry boomed but also burst, as charters closed almost as frequently as they opened.

NCLB required that every school must ensure that every student reached “proficiency” on standardized tests, a clearly impossible goal, by 2014.

Race to the Top blamed teachers and schools for low scores. Duncan wanted the public to know how terribly the schools were doing. He counted on the adoption of Common Core and the spread of charter schools to produce a huge jump in test scores.

On the very last day of the Obama administration, the Department of Education quietly released an evaluation admitting that Race to the Top had failed to achieve its goals.

Meg White writes:

Two former U.S. education secretaries—one Republican and one Democrat—argue that the federal government needs to stop just handing out money for public education and start demanding real results. Margaret Spellings, who served under President George W. Bush, and Arne Duncan, who served under President Barack Obama, have offered their collective ideas on how to strengthen public education, many years later.

Under their proposed plan, the federal government would provide funding to states, pay for scientific research on how kids learn best, and ensure test scores are made public so schools cannot hide poor performance. State governments would be responsible for setting high standards and choosing the actual teaching methods without lowering the expectations to make their states look better. Spellings and Duncan refer to the success in Mississippi, saying, “Mississippi’s historic gains in student test scores since 2013 does not come at the expense of any other state. Instead, it’s a chance for those states to learn from and build on Mississippi’s progress (edweek.org).

Regarding the Mississippi miracle, I wrote about this earlier this year. Much controversy surrounds the increase in test scores.

Their bipartisan plan outlines several goals for every state to ensure student success from early childhood through graduation. First, they suggest schools focus on early learning by giving every child access to high-quality preschool and ensuring they can read well by the third grade. Second, middle schoolers need to learn practical skills, specifically finance and technology. Finally, for future preparation, high schools must provide access to advanced classes so that every graduate leaves with a clear path to a job, trade school, or college, regardless of their family’s income (edweek.org).

Critics, educators, and policy experts argue that this approach is fundamentally flawed because it heavily relies on strategies that failed under initiatives like No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and Race to the Top (RTTT). When federal funding is tied to standardized tests, schools face tremendous pressure to meet those numbers. This forces teachers to teach to the test. Consequently, this dynamic narrows the curriculum, systematically pushing out untested subjects like history, art, music, and physical education (edweek.org).

To avoid losing federal money or facing public embarrassment, many states historically responded by lowering their testing bars so more students would technically pass. This creates a false illusion of progress where state data looks positive, but independent national audits show that actual student performance has stagnated or declined.

If they are serious about research on how children learn best, they will see that it is not scripted curricula or one-size-fits-all literacy programs.

This strategy has failed because it treats low achievement strictly as a bureaucratic problem that can be solved with goals and data, completely ignoring any socioeconomic inequalities that can predict a child’s success. It does nothing to address underfunding in low-income districts, food insecurity, unstable housing, or the widespread teacher shortages caused by low pay and poor working conditions. 

Imposing top-down mandates from Washington ignores the challenges of different communities, and strips local educators of the flexibility they need to build tailored solutions for their students. Hiring uncertified and inexperienced teachers does not support strong pedagogy for students who need good teachers.

Spellings and Duncan conclude, “This is a moment for national leadership. We call on the president, Congress, governors, and education leaders to put student achievement back at the center of the nation’s agenda. Washington should provide the direction, research, and transparency. States should set high expectations and act when schools or students fall short. Parents should hold all of us accountable for results(edweek.org). This is a repeat of the failed policies of NCLB and RTTT.

NCLB and its strict test-based accountability system created unintended consequences that damaged public education. The law included an outrageous expectations that 100% of American students achieve academic “proficiency” in reading and math by 2014, which was statistically impossible.

No Child Left Behind was built on the mistaken belief that low test scores stemmed entirely from ineffective teachers or indifferent administrators who required threats to improve. By focusing on classroom performance, the policy overlooked the systemic, out-of-school challenges that directly hinder student success—including chronic poverty, food insecurity, inadequate healthcare, and massive funding disparities between school districts.

Race to the Top pressured states to alter their education policies for a share of $4.35 billion in grants, but ultimately failed to improve student test scores. This failure stemmed first from a rushed adoption of the Common Core State Standards. The initiative forced states to tie teacher job security to standardized test scores using unproven statistical models. States made unrealistic promises to turn around failing schools in four years, yet the federal prize money amounted to a mere 1% of state education budgets—far too little to execute such massive structural overhauls (economicpolicyinstitute.org).

Ultimately, RTTT repeated past policy mistakes by relying on a narrow, data-and-testing approach that hyper-focused on classroom metrics while completely ignoring the actual out-of-school drivers of the achievement gap, such as deep childhood poverty, food insecurity, and unequal school funding (economicpolicyinstitute.org). If Congress seriously considers data on charter schools, vouchers, and Educational Savings Accounts, they need to look at their high cost and lack of success in Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas. It didn’t work there, but depending on where you get your news, there were miraculous gains in test scores. 

Two former secretaries of education who initiated failed programs, are again suggesting ideas that didn’t work, and again do not address the extrinsic issues students face before they ever get to school. 

These are my reflections for today.

Categories Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Failure, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Propaganda, Race to the Top

Andy Spears: Tennessee Republicans Want State Takeover of Nashville Schools, Despite Record of Failure

By dianeravitch
October 20, 2026 //
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Andy Spears is a veteran education journalist from Tennessee. He writes on his blog that Tennessee Republicans want the state to take control of the public schools in Nashville. They have already taken over the schools of Memphis.

They are unfazed by the fact that Tennessee’s first effort to take over “failing schools” was a disastrous failure. It was called “the Achievement School District” and was launched with bold promises of catapulting low-performing schools into high-performing schools. Other states copied Tennessee’s lead without waiting for results. When the results came in, the low-performing schools were still low-performing schools. The state has no magic formula.

He writes:

Tennessee Republicans spent the past two legislative sessions engineering a state takeover of Memphis schools. Now, they’ve set their sights on Nashville. 

State Rep. Scott Cepicky of Maury County, who chairs one of two Education Committees in the Tennessee House of Representatives, told WKRN in Nashville that he’s looking at an effort to have the state take over Nashville schools.

“We’ve already gone after Memphis, and now it’s Nashville’s next,” Cepicky told the radio show host.

Cepicky also spoke about the comptroller potentially doing a financial audit: “I am asking the Speaker to do a forensic audit on Nashville to start the process of looking at taking them over. We’re going to get the comptroller involved, financially.

A board appointed by Tennessee Republican leaders now has authority over Memphis schools, after some legal wrangling that delayed the takeover. That board includes the leader of a dark money issue advocacy organization that has been at the forefront of state education policy since 2010 – Tennessee Score.

Tennessee has a terrible track record in the school takeover business. The so-called Achievement School District, run by the state, was supposed to turn schools around in Memphis. Instead, the ASD failed massively, leaving students and Memphis communities behind. 

Four Tennessee schools are now returning to local control after getting taken over by the state ten years ago. The Memphis-area schools were brought into the Achievement School District with the promise from state leaders to turn things around.

But the schools are now returning to Shelby County Schools with no significant improvement in test scores.

The latest data from the Department of Education shows each of the four schools report less than five percent of students performing at grade level. ASD as a whole reports just 4.5 percent of students performing at grade level.

This is the type of terrible policy Cepicky and his GOP colleagues want to bring to Nashville schools.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Failure, State Takeover, Tennessee

Ohio: Appeals Court Rules Vouchers Unconstitutional!

By dianeravitch
October 16, 2026 //
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In response to a lawsuit filed by more than 300 public school districts, a state appeals court ruled vouchers unconstitutional. The vote was unanimous.

Article VI, Section 2 of the Ohio State constitution says:

The General Assembly shall make such provisions, by taxation, or otherwise, as, with the income arising from the school trust fund, will secure a thorough and efficient system of common schools throughout the state; but no religious or other sect, or sects, shall ever have any exclusive right to, or control of, any part of the school funds of this state.

The Ohio Capitol State Journal reported:

An Ohio appellate court has ruled that the state’s “EdChoice” private school voucher program is unconstitutional. The program uses public taxpayer dollars to fund private school tuition.

The program will still be able to exist, as the judges expect the state to appeal. An appeal will go to the 6-1 Republican-controlled Ohio Supreme Court. Ohio Republican state lawmakers made Ohio Supreme Court races overtly partisan by adding party labels in 2021.

The state Attorney General will appeal. He responded that parents should send their children to the school of their choice, and the state wants to help them.

The state of Ohio spent more than a billion dollars of taxpayer money on private school vouchers in fiscal year 2025.

A panel of Democratic judges on the 10th District Court of Appeals in Franklin County unanimously sided with the more than 300 public school districts that sued, alleging that the EdChoice private school voucher program was violating the Ohio Constitution by funding a separate school system, one with a lack of oversight that isn’t available to rural students.

“EdChoice, as presently structured and funded, secures with taxpayer funds a competing system of uncommon schools that is not subject to the same obligations imposed on Ohio’s system of common schools,” Judge Dave Leland wrote.

The voucher program is also illegal because it draws taxpayer money away from schools and cherry-picks the students it wants, which harms public schools.

Former Attorney General Dave Yost appealed Judge Jaiza Page’s 2025 ruling that the EdChoice universal school voucher program was unconstitutional. Less than a year later, Yost resigned as Ohio Attorney General to work for the Christian conservative legal group Alliance Defending Freedom, which actively defends and promotes universal school vouchers and public funding access for faith-based and religious schools. Alliance Defending Freedom is one of the most outspoken defenders of vouchers in the nation.

It’s not clear how the highest court of the state will rule, given its domination 6-1 by Republicans.

Categories Education Industry, Ohio, Privatization, Religion, Vouchers

Thomas Ultican: Ohio’s Big Voucher Scam

By dianeravitch
October 16, 2026 //
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Tom Ultican, retired teacher of physics and advanced mathematics, writes powerful columns about the value of public schools and the misguided efforts of those who vilify public schools.

In this post, he wonders why Ohio adopted an expansive voucher program without bothering to get the consent of the public. He writes, “Even though vouchers are very unpopular, residents in Ohio will never have the opportunity to vote against them. “

He writes:

At NPE Houston, a woman from Ohio gave me the book Right Down the Drain. It is a product of the Department of Education graduate school at Miami University Oxford, Ohio. In 2023, the state created the EdChoice Expansion Voucher Program which takes more than $1 billion a year away from public education with no audits. I have visited Ohio a few times and really liked what I saw but do not believe it is immune to corruption. Having no oversight for a billion dollars of taxpayer money is bizarre. As Education Professor Thomas Poetter wrote, “… the EdChoice Expansion Voucher Program feels to us like throwing Public money right down the drain?” (Right Down the Drain [RDTD] page 13)

President Ulysses S. Grant saw the Common Schools as a tool to enhance democracy. In his 1875 address to the Army of Tennessee, He stated, “Encourage free schools, and resolve that not one dollar of money appropriated for their support, no matter how raised, shall be appropriated to the support of any sectarian school.” He concluded:

“Leave the matter of religion to the family circle, the church, and the private school, supported entirely by private contribution. Keep the Church and State forever separate. With these safeguards I believe that battles which create us ‘The Army of Tennessee,’ will not have been fought in vain.”

 Grant Ignored in Ohio

Curiously, Grant was a Republican born in Ohio. Strikingly, the Ohio GOP of today completely rejects Grant’s admonition. In 1995, Republicans in Ohio’s legislature passed the Cleveland Scholarship and Tutoring Program. A coalition of parents and teachers sued to stop the program because among other reasons it allowed for taxpayer money going to religious institutions. This turned into a protracted legal struggle that saw victories for both sides. Finally, on June 27, 2002, the United States Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision declared that vouchers were constitutional. This opened the door for sectarian institutions to receive taxpayer money.

2023 saw Matt Huffman, one of the most powerful politician in Ohio, push through the billion dollar a year EdChoice Expansion Voucher Program. Huffman comes from the small isolated and shrinking old city of Lima, Ohio. An illustration of his political power is for the first time since the 19th century this politician was able to serve first as president of the Ohio senate and then became speaker of the house with no interruption between positions. The change was forced on him by term limits.

EdChoice’s adoption is an example of authoritarian government in action. Ohio is deeply gerrymandered and even though vouchers are very unpopular, residents will never be given the opportunity to vote against them.

The top 100 schools receiving the most cash for vouchers in Ohio are religious institutions. (RDTD page 51) In fact, 90% of Ohio voucher money is going to religious schools. (RDTD page 75) Even if Ohioans are not Catholic or Hindu, they are sending tax dollars to those institutions. So, the modern Ohio GOP supports sectarian schools and is unconcerned with the separation of church and state.

Maybe we should send taxpayer funds to religious schools but shouldn’t the public have some say in this?

What is the GOP Motive?

In 1955, economist Milton Friedman wrote an essay calling for the creation of a voucher system in America. The political establishment including President Eisenhower, the GOP and Democrats ignored what they perceived as a crackpot. It was Ronald Reagan who gave Friedman credibility in the 1980s which for the first time gave the voucher movement legs. In the early 2000’s, Friedman told the American Legislative Exchange Council that parents should pay for educating of their own children. Today, voucher zealots following Friedman’s lead are working to end taxpayer supported public education. (RDTD page 67) This appears to be the Ohio GOP motive.

Vouchers are a state-designed mechanism for channeling public dollars to private education providers. For the GOP, it is important that this money is provided without state oversight. For example, in June, Democrats put forward the Take the Dough, We Gotta Know Act that calls for state audits and monitoring enrollment, capacity, student demographics, tuition, services offered, and accreditation. This bill is probably already dead because House Speaker Huffman has contended that the fact parents enroll their kids in private schools constitutes accountability, and he is concerned that the bill might infringe on a private business. (RDTD page 77)

A Privatization Outcome

In their essay, Elijah L. Fenwick-Sanders and Anthony W. Rose state:

“When large amounts of public money are permitted to flow through private systems with limited transparency, the risk of corruption increases.”

“Public trust requires more than good intentions. It requires rules, records, audits, transparency and consequences.” (RDTD pages 84 and 85)

If a school does not want public audits, public reporting, nondiscrimination requirements, academic transparency or fiscal oversight it can opt not to accept public funds. That is a reasonable choice.

Support or opposition to vouchers is not a Left-Right situation. Many conservatives support public schools and some liberals support privatization. Emma Errang, who grew up in traditionally conservative Kentucky, bolstered this point in her essay when writing about the 2024 constitutional amendment vote that would have allowed school privatization in her state:

“The coalition against Amendment 2 was not liberal or conservative, nor was it Democrat or Republican. It included progressive voters like me and conservative voters like my father, who believe that choosing private education is a right but not something that should be funded at the expense of public education.” ( page 128)

Conclusion

I side with President Grant when he advised, “Encourage free schools, and resolve that not one dollar of money appropriated for their support, no matter how raised, shall be appropriated to the support of any sectarian school.” I would go a step farther and say that all private schools, not just those from religious institutions, be on their own and receive no taxpayer funding. Of course, the public has the right to support private schools if it desires, but that choice has the potential to undermine public schools and that would be a tragedy.

Reagan’s fraudulent A Nation at Risk report claimed, “We report to the American people that while we can take justifiable pride in what our schools and colleges have historically accomplished and contributed to the United States and the well-being of its people, the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people.” SAT scores were cited to defend this statement. Seven years later, the Sandia Laboratories in New Mexico found that using proper statistical techniques all groups disaggregated by race and gender showed improved scores in 1983. This is where the ongoing attack on public schools began in earnest and it was based on a fraud.

In America, public education has been a great bulwark for democracy. It is a shared democratic obligation that must be defended from greedy entrepreneurs and misguided social theorists.

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Education Industry, Extremism, Funding, Ohio, Privatization, Religion, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

The Sordid Voucher Scam Cheats Everyone But Billionaires

By dianeravitch
October 15, 2026 //
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I have written about the devastating consequences of vouchers for years and the fact that they are promoted by billionaires and rejected whenever they are put to a statewide vote. So it is very satisfying that The New York Times, the newspaper of record, published this sharp opinion piece by Jessica Grose, a regular contributor. No both sides here; vouchers are a scam that billionaires love and that most public school parents loathe.

Jessica Grose wrote:

“I’ve been voting Republican my whole life. I’m superconservative,” the Pine Tree superintendent, Steve Clugston, tells the camera in an Instagram reel. “I’m going to tell you what: When Greg Abbott sold us out to the billionaires and sold out our schools, I’m done with his leadership.” In the Texas governor’s race, Clugston is voting for Abbott’s Democratic opponent, State Representative Gina Hinojosa.

The Pine Tree public school district is in the bright red small city of Longview in East Texas, between the big cities of Dallas and Shreveport, La. A majority of its 4,400 students are economically disadvantaged. When I caught up with Clugston on Friday, hours before the Pine Tree football team trounced its opponents under the lights, he was at his farm. “My wife’s a teacher. My daughter’s a teacher. My son-in-law’s a teacher. Both my sisters are teachers. My brother-in-law’s a retired superintendent. So I’d say education’s kind of in our blood,” he told me over the phone.

Clugston told me he’s sick of his fellow Texas conservatives straying from their principles of fiscal common sense and straight talk; he even attempted a run for the Texas State Senate as an independent conservative. He is particularly appalled by Texas’ voucher program, known as Texas Education Freedom Accounts, which went into effect this year. This program puts state money in accounts for Texas families to use outside the public school system: up to nearly $10,500 for children enrolling in private school, up to $30,000 for children with disabilities and up to $2,000 for those who are home-schooled.

The State of Texas has no say over the curriculum taught at the institutions that accept vouchers, and participating schools can discriminate against applicants for any number of reasons, including religion and disability status. Texas’ vouchers are universal, which means anyone can apply for them, regardless of financial means, though poorer students have been prioritized.

Around 70 percent of this year’s voucher recipients already were enrolled in private schools or were home-schooled. Vouchers are costing the state about a billion dollars this year alone and could ultimately cost $4.4 billion annually. While funding for vouchers comes from a budget that is separate from the public school pot, the state’s funding for public schools has not kept up with inflation.

Texas public schools are projected to lose $227 million just this year as they shed head count, according to The Houston Chronicle. More public schools may close as a result of vouchers siphoning that money away from them. In Clugston’s opinion, vouchers are “abillion-dollar giveaway program for the rich, and we’re going to have no accountability in it. Zero.”

Hinojosa has made saving public education central to her campaign for governor, and it is what got her started in politics. Her child’s school was on the brink of closure, and she describes her political trajectory as concerned parent to local school board member to Texas House member. If elected, Hinojosa has vowed to “end the voucher scam.”

I have long been frustrated at the way both parties barely talk about K-12 public education, despite plunging test scores and post-Covid woes. But the reason politicians don’t talk more about education is that votersdon’t care about it. What makes Hinojosa’s message on schools effective beyond irate public school parents and educators is that she ties the passage of vouchers to larger themes plaguing Republicans in the age of President Trump: corruption and the outsize power of billionaires.

Vouchers failed in the Texas Legislature multiple times, with rural Republicans tending to side with Democrats to block the measures. In rural areas “school choice,” even with vouchers, tends to be a mirage. There are few private schools, and public schools are often the biggest local employers and the heart of small-town life; nearly every Texan I spoke to for this newsletter said the reverence for “Friday Night Lights” is real.

When Abbott couldn’t get vouchers passed the honorable way, he decided to primary Republican state legislators who opposed the policy. He took $12 million from Jeff Yass, a pro-voucher Pennsylvania billionaire, got most of his preferred candidates into office and got vouchers passed in 2025, as The Washington Post noted.

The outcomes for students participating in voucher programs in other states have been decidedly mixed, but Yass doesn’t give a rip. “If the mother or the parent wants the kid to go from one school to another, who the hell is anyone to tell them not to?” he told The Post. “I don’t care what the studies say.”

Yass isn’t the only billionaire who meddled in vouchers in the Lone Star State. The religious Texas billionaires Tim Dunn and Farris and Dan Wilks have also poured money into pro-voucher candidates over the years. As The Texas Tribune explains, “Dunn is also the founder of Midland Classical Academy, a private school that offers its approximately 600 K-12 students a ‘classical education from a biblical worldview,’ according to its website.” (It’s worth noting that many of the elite, popular and highly ranked private schools in Texas refused to accept vouchers this year.)

Some voucher proponents claim that Texas offers more choice to underprivileged children in underperforming schools. But the data we have on other states with universal voucher programs, like Arizona, suggest that they are redistributing money to the highest income and most educated ZIP codes in cities and suburbs. An Arizona ABC station found that parents were spending their voucher money on everything from trampoline parks to ski tickets.

In Iowa, which has a universal voucher program for private schools that’s similar to Texas’, the Democratic candidate for governor and the current auditor, Rob Sand, has made a similar connection among vouchers, special interests and corruption. “The current school voucher program is an open invitation to waste, fraud and abuse of taxpayer dollars,” he explains on his campaign website.

Sand lists his voucher stance under the headline Accountability for All, where he also talks about protections for whistle-blowers and banning stock trading by politicians. By doing so, he is saying that you don’t have to care about what’s going on in the classroom to be outraged that a New York-based company called Odyssey, which manages his state’s voucher program, allegedly got a sweetheart deal for the work. As auditor, Sand found that the company “more than doubled its rate less than a month after signing their no-bid contract, costing taxpayers an additional $2.7 million.” (Odyssey, which has ties to Yass, also administers the voucher system in Texas.)

Whatever you think about public schools, it is difficult not to seethe at the fundamental unfairness of voucher programs that give money to schools that don’t have to educate all students. The Texas Observer found that of 291 private schools approved for voucher funds from the state, over 90 percent were religious or faith-based schools, “more than 100 of those schools require or prioritize for admission students of the same faith and more than 60 have a written policy that discriminates against L.G.B.T.Q.+ students, the schools’ own data shows.”

Though the Texas vouchers prioritize students with disabilities, The Observer also noted that most of the private Texas schools they analyzed lack special education services. A Dallas Morning News analysis found that thousands of students with disabilities returned state money, in part because private schools rejected them or didn’t even respond to their applications.

Some educators I spoke to in Texas and Iowa told me that they’d already seen students ricocheting back to public schools because their private or home-school experience wasn’t all it was chalked up to be. Another outrageous part of this legislation is that Texas public schools are still required to do the disability testing for families that choose vouchers, and it’s straining their limited resources.

When put to a public vote, school vouchers have been unpopular; they’re perennial losers on the ballot. It’s maddening that ideologically motivated billionaires, who probably never sent their own children to public schools, have been able to push this policy through.

According to the latest New York Times/Siena University polling, Hinojosa was up by four points, and Sand was up by 11. Texas is obviously the tougher battle, but after spending the week talking to parents there, I’m cautiously optimistic. Rebekah Baus, who described herself as a conservative Christian and lives in the Dallas-Fort Worth area with her husband and two kids, told me she is so upset about the state of public school policy that she doesn’t know which way she is voting.

The State of Texas, Baus said, is trying to pretend “our public school system is failing, but in the reality, we’re failing our public school system by not funding them properly.”

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Billionaires, Budget Cuts, Closing schools, Corruption, Disruption, Education Industry, Funding, Iowa, Privatization, School Choice, Support for public schools, Texas, Vouchers

Do You Agree with the Education Experts?

By dianeravitch
October 7, 2026 //
67

The New York Times asked 37 education experts to rank the best ideas for reforming schools. This is a gift article. Many of you are current or retired teachers. Please read it and share your thoughts.

The experts were asked to rank the “best ideas” by their effectiveness and their cost.

Among the five “most effective ideas” were:

  1. Small-group tutoring.
  2. Science of reading.
  3. Universal pre-K.
  4. Increase per-student funding.
  5. Increase teacher pay for high-poverty schools.

The authors–Sarah Mervosh, Francesca Paris, and Claire Cain Miller–begin:

U.S. schools are facing a daunting problem. Students simply can’t read or do math as well as they used to.

Student test scores have declined over the last decade, in an academic slump that started before the pandemic and has continued since. Compared with 2015, reading scores are down in 83 percent of districts, and math declines are nearly as pervasive.

But improving student achievement is notoriously difficult. Do schools need more money? Better teachers? More standardized testing? Less?

What could actually help turn things around?

We asked 37 top academics and researchers who study education to rate a range of ideas for both effectiveness and cost, on a scale of 1 to 7.

*****£*******

Overall, no single idea was enough on its own, experts said. And no idea would be successful unless it was executed well. But the results showed there are a number of ideas that can work.

We asked experts to evaluate each idea for its impact on academic achievement, which is generally measured by standardized test scores.

Lots of other things matter, too, including enrichment activities like the arts, teacher work satisfaction, and student excitementabout learning. Children also have other needs beyond academics, including mental health and well-being.

But given the results of the last decade, we were interested in what could lift student achievement, which is tied to many later life outcomes, for students, society and the economy.

Interestingly, the least effective idea was “private school vouchers.” Second, reduced class size. Third, increase all teacher pay.

Among the comments, the most frequent complaint was: “Why didn’t you ask the real experts–the teachers?”

My biggest complaint about the survey and the responses is that it omits the most powerful influences on student performance in the classroom: the effects of poverty, family stability and support, health, and other factors outside the teacher’s control. According to the American Statistical Association, about 1-14% of variation in test scores is under the teachers’ control. This is not to say that teachers don’t make a difference, but that you can’t change a child’s academic performance if he or she is persistently sick, absent, has vision or dental problems, doesn’t get fed regularly, and lives in substandard housing.

I didn’t see any mention of community schools, which address some of these problems, making sure that children have medical check-ups, dental and vision screening, have a food pantry and clothing supply, offer job counseling for parents, etc. That is, the school recognizes that the children’s well-being is a necessary precondition to school performance.

I don’t have all the answers. Some of the ideas in the survey are good; some don’t go far enough. But if this I feel sure: children are at their best when they are healthy, when they are well-nourished, when they don’t worry about the physical safety of themselves or their family, when they have a stable home.

Maybe that is too much to hope for in our highly individualistic society, where everyone is on their own and expected to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, even if they don’t have any bootstraps.

Recommended reading:

Richard Rothstein, Class and Schools.

Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, The Spirit Level

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Class size, Closing schools, Community Schools, Curriculum, Education Industry, Education Reform, Funding, Innovation, Literacy, School Choice, Standardized Testing, State Takeover, Teacher Pay, Teaching, Vouchers

John Thompson: What Do “Experts” Know About School Reform?

By dianeravitch
October 7, 2026 //
5

John Thompson, historian and retired teacher in Oklahoma, asked the obvious question about “education experts”: what is their own experience in teaching? He was prompted to ask the question by a recent article in The New York Times:

The New York Times asked 37 experts to evaluate 30 ideas for their “impact on academic achievement, which is generally measured by standardized test scores.”

That goal seems to be the reason why the panel concluded that the “Science of Reading,” and the Mississippi Miracle,” and accountability-driven reforms were low-cost approaches that produce the most benefits.

But, what are the costs to students? After all, they have endured a couple of decades of test-driven, competition-driven mandates that started with the No Child Left Behind Act, that was launched in 2002, and the teach-to-the-test culture that many advocates for the Mississippi Miracle want to bring back.

At least, the Times reporters “asked researchers to rate effectiveness ‘when done properly.’ In the real world, a lot can fall apart because of the details.”

And, they noted::

Several experts also said that schools should think beyond test scores and focus on making learning less boring and more engaging — less passive listening and memorizing for tests, for example, and more open-ended research and project-based learning.

But, I experienced the disaster that began around 2004 in Oklahoma City’s schools when the NCLB was fully implemented, and worsened after corporate reforms, like Race-to-the-Top, were fully implemented.

So, a big question jumped out to me.

How many of the panelists had experience in what happened in the “the real world” of the highest-challenged schools? 

And, I was stunned to read the list of the best known experts that were surveyed. 

Around a third of them were smart data-driven people, ranging from economists like  Eric Hanushek and Tom Kane to Marguerite Roza, the Director of the Edunomics Lab, whose “intentially deceitful” spin is documented in Bruce Baker’s “Seventeen Years of Roza-Tinted Glasses.”

Being a former academic, I had communicated with several of them who correctly understood how difficult it would be to scale up systemic reforms. That’s why reformers usually said that is why they pushed the more affordable, simplistic, quick fix of test-driven accountability; “Our kids can’t wait.” 

I understood why so many of them sought quicker, transformative changes, as opposed to the incremental improvements that followed the failed “Nation at Risk” of the Reagan years, his Supply Side economics that wiped out so many blue collar jobs, and the crack and gangs era. 

But, many of the best-known advocates I communicated with, including those who served on the Times survey, seemed like they didn’t know what they didn’t know about public schools. 

Often I was told, maybe you are right, and if you are, we’ll run more controls. 

Yes, many of them now reject the hypothesis that market-driven policies, alone, could replace the complex reforms that traditional educators and their unions, worked for. But, based on my conversations with reformers, then and recently, they still blame us Baby Boomers for supposedly having “low expectations, and accepting “excuses.” 

If those experts had had experience in public schools they might have known that “giving schools a rating, like an A-F letter grade, and requiring underperforming schools to make changes” would create the nightmare that the less-expensive, test-driven, competition-driven reforms produced. 

Again, to be fair to the Times, they reported that “several experts also said that schools should “think beyond test scores and focus on making learning less boring and more engaging — less passive listening and memorizing for tests, for example, and more open-ended research and project-based learning.”

And they quoted Chris Torres, an associate professor at the University of Michigan, who asked, “How do we get an education system that promotes high academic achievement, but is also a place where kids really want to be?” 

And, their reporting prompted numerous readers’ comments advocating for the policies of Scandinavian countries, like Finland, which “has better schools than the United States because its system focuses on equity, high-level teacher training, and student well-being instead of high-stakes testing,” and where “teachers have total autonomy over their lesson plans and methods.

Another commentator also shared her thoughts about how “none of the experts consulted for this project mentioned an evidence-based school improvement approach called community schools.”

I can’t complain when data-driven advocates provide interpretations that educators like me oppose. But, the surveyed group should have included an equal number data-informed, not data-driven researchers, who have done qualitative research, as well as those who listened to the poorest children of color, like my students, who repeatedly complained they had been “robbed of an education,” by standardized testing. 

And that is why I’m focusing on the dangers of the “Mississippi Miracle” where ideology-driven advocates “in recent years, …  have used a model of accountability that focuses more on student progress,” hoping that will give “underperforming schools support to improve.” Like so many reforms, Mississippi has produced short-lived 4th grade increases, but not increases in 8th grade reading scores, which likely is due to their failure to improve reading comprehension. 

I also googled around twenty members of the survey group who I didn’t know. Several were completely committed to the Science of Reading and/or the Mississippi Miracle. For instance, one claimed that this approach is “affordable, effective, and should be done everywhere.” And another expert that I hadn’t studied before said, “Mississippi’s success offers a proven solution to the reading literacy crisis facing many states – a clear road map for closing early literacy gaps and improving reading outcomes nationwide.” 

Through my googling, however, I concluded that there were more panel members, who I didn’t know about, who opposed the “Miracle.” Also, I couldn’t find what a number of the other experts believed about it.  

Yes, supporters of the “Miracle” often say their 8th grade NAEP reading scores haven’t dropped as much as other states. But, I didn’t see any supporters of the Science of Reading in the Times article who mentioned  the way Mississippi is using NAEP materials for test prep, and the effect of small group tutoring becoming too expensive now  that the Covid money is gone. 

And I didn’t see pro-Science of Reading experts explaining why the Mississippi Miracle is teaching so many kids to reject reading.

Understandably, the debates have focused on the harms vs. the benefits on student retentions. 

But, what I fear will matter the most is the degradation of learning cultures. Increased test prep and placing stats over children could bring back a revival of the destructive school cultures that were, I believe, the most important factor that got us here. 

Finally, the Times’ other cost /benefits analyses raised questions about their excessively quantitative approach. When they minimized the attempts to control cell phones, A.I., and other technologies, did they try to estimate the harms to students that will result from turning the clock back to unregulated use of digital products? When they minimize the test score gains due to better funding for teachers and class sizes, how would they estimate the human costs of continuing to abandon teacher autonomy, and retaining teachers? And, if they minimize the benefits of non-academic supports for students, mental health supports, and pre-k because they are too costly, how will they measure the costs of treating kids as more than a test score?    

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Education Reform, Research, Standardized Testing, Teaching, Testing

ProPublica: It’s Easy to Open a Private School and Get Voucher Money!

By dianeravitch
October 7, 2026 //
7

A team of reporters from ProPublica learned that almost anyone can get approved to open a new private school, regardless of their experience and background. They found out by doing it themselves.

This story encapsulates the downward slide of American education since the first charter school opened in 1992 in Wisconsin. In pursuit of innovation or deregulation or whatever, many states have gone too far, to the point where anyone can open a school. Anyone can teach. No accountability. In Arkansas, the reporters needed only to fill out a form on the Internet, pay $45, and buy an American flag. That’s all! They had their own school and were eligible to get public money from the state voucher program. After January 1, their “school” would qualify for federal voucher money too!

They wrote:

We have no business running a private school.

We’re reporters, not teachers. That doesn’t matter. Inexperience has hardly been a barrier for those who want to start their own schools, as we have reported this year. And it didn’t stop us, either. 

Over the last few months, to test the process, reporters from ProPublica partnered with local journalists in three states to establish private schools. None required much effort.

In Arkansas, all it took was a few clicks on the Arkansas secretary of state website, $45 and an American flag to form a bona fide private school with the Arkansas Times.

We established a school with Mountain State Spotlight in West Virginia after filing our new school’s name and location with authorities on a piece of notebook paper, then exchanging a few emails.

And with The Assembly in North Carolina, we filed an online notice of intent to open a private school at Ponysaurus Brewing Co. in Durham, while perched on its metal bar stools, eyeing glasses of a crisp kolsch.

We used our names and news organization email addresses, following each state’s rules for starting private or microschools, a type of private school intended for just a few students. Experience running a school wasn’t needed. No one from any of the states asked us about our backgrounds or qualifications, though West Virginia did ask for proof of a high school diploma. No one questioned what we plan to teach or how we would measure whether students are learning.

And yet we could enroll students in two states right now, if we wanted to. Arkansas even suggested ways our school could accept public money through the state’s voucher-style program.

For the record, we are not enrolling students and have no intention of operating our new schools. We did, however, register a website for our new school ventures, ProPublicaAcademy.com, and even designed some fun pencils to show our school spirit.

This year, a team of ProPublica reporters has been documenting how the American education landscape is shifting dramatically as states use public money to help fund private schools. With few regulations, hundreds of new private and microschools have proliferated.

Our reporting has shown the relative ease with which people — some with questionable backgrounds — founded their own schools in unusual places. They’ve popped up in barns and on farms, in strip malls between an antique shop and an ax-throwing business and in churches, where lighting and sound for worship services is part of the curriculum.

All of this led to a clear reporting question: If the hurdles to open a private school are so low, could we do it? And what would we learn along the way?

Smith Richards, Cohen and Strain, in the Arkansas Times newsroom at Strain’s cubicle, apply online to found a private school.

Open their graphic to see which nine states allow anyone to open a school with no curriculum, no standards, no testing, no experience.

Categories Education Industry, Funding, Ignorance, Innovation, North Carolina, Privatization, School Choice, Stupid, Vouchers, West Virginia

Why States Should Avoid the Federal Voucher Program

By dianeravitch
October 5, 2026 //
4

In the Public Interest is an organization devoted to protecting the public interest. We live in an era when the public sector is at risk of being privatized, so that private sector organizations can extract profits. This project is reflected in the privatization of hospitals, vegetarian practices, nursing homes, retirement communities, private homes, and any other opportunity to turn a profit. All too often, the private owners drain their prize of profit, bankrupt them and move on.

This is happening in public schools, where entrepreneurs have persuaded many cereal and state officials that they can run schools better and for lest cost than educators.

The public has NEVER approved a voucher program yet they are being passed by state legislatures, adopted despite parents’ opposition. Now comes a federal voucher program, which mainly subsidizes the tuition of students in private and religious schools. Some public schools kids take a voucher, but whatever comparable data exist, the children lose ground compared to those who attend the public school they abandoned.

For every student who leaves public schools, the school must make cuts. Will it be sports, recess, the arts, or larger class size?

It’s basically a lose-lose situation: the public schools lose students and funding. The voucher achools hire uncertified teachers and are unable to match the certified teachers in the public school.

Here is a commentary on the federal voucher program by Jeff Hagan of In the Public Interest:

New proposed regulations released for public comment regarding the federal tax credit school voucher program have done nothing to alleviate concerns that the federal program—a tax program administered through the Treasury department—will further undermine public education in the United States.

“Not only is the program not in the best interest of the nation’s school children, it’s not in the best interest of the nation itself,” says Shar Habibi, executive director and research director of In the Public Interest, a national research and advocacy organization that explores the role of privatization of public things, including education.

“To our school children we owe the best possible education, and this lets them down,” she says. “Nothing about this program suggests that supporting and improving academic and educational outcomes for children–especially our most vulnerable children–were considered in its development. The fact that it is—as even supporters state—“a tax law…not an educational program” tells you what this legislation was always about: a subsidy for wealthy families who already send their children to private schools.”

In the Public Interest has long been opposed to school vouchers at every level.

“School vouchers have never been in the public interest,” says Leigh Dingerson, senior fellow at In the Public Interest. “They offer taxpayer dollars to private and religious schools, draining resources for our public schools. Where public schools are and have always been ‘the great equalizer,’  vouchers only divide us.”

Habibi points out that the problems with vouchers go beyond the schoolhouse.

“Vouchers put the nation as a whole at risk. A strong, nationwide system of public schooling is essential to a thriving democracy and a robust economy.”  

While President Trump promised to “return education to the states,” this program in fact denies states the ability to choose how to ensure — as every state constitution requires — that all children have access to a quality education, free of charge.

Under this program, multi-million-dollar organizations can collect donations and hand out school vouchers in virtually any state in the country that agrees to participate, with little oversight from state policymakers or voters and with no regard to the state’s history or vision for providing public education to its children.

This federal school voucher program will, over time, lead to the decimation of our nation’s system of public schools. ITPI’s already-stated position that all states decline to participate in the program has not changed with the release of these new regulations.

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Categories Budget Cuts, Citizenship, Democracy, Education Industry, Privatization, School Choice, Vouchers
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