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Our Pressure Cooker Schools Are Destroying Children and Childhood

By dianeravitch
December 1, 2025 //
26

The New York Times Sunday Magazine published an article titled “America’s Children Are Unwell. Are Schools Part of the Problem?” It was written by staff member Jia Lynn Yang.

I anticipated that the article would be another lament about test scores, of which there have been many recently. But it wasn’t!

Instead, Yang described the explosion of mental health issues among the nation’s children. And she attributed it largely to the unending pressure to compete for ever higher test scores. EXACTLY!

Yang knows that the changes in school are not the only cause of declining mental health. There are many more culprits, including social media and the pressures of contemporary life. And there is also the possibility that children are being misdiagnosed and overdiagnosed. I can’t help but recall a story from 1994 about an elite private school that received a private $2 million grant to screen children for learning disabilities. Overrun by experts, the program “got out of hand.” Nearly half the children were diagnosed with disabilities, and the program was cancelled.

We live in a stressful world. Children are pressured to succeed, to comply, to compete, to win the approval of their peers, to dress the “right” way, to be and do things by which they will be judged by their peers, by their parents, by the world they inhabit. Some children succeed, many don’t.

Schools these days are doing things to children that add to their stress. They have been doing harmful things to children by federal mandate since 2002.

Besieged by expectations, demands, and pressures, many children are breaking. It’s our fault.

She writes:

One of the more bewildering aspects of the already high-stress endeavor of 21st-century American parenting is that at some point your child is likely to be identified with a psychiatric diagnosis of one kind or another. Many exist in a gray zone that previous generations of parents never encountered.

A diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder is practically a rite of passage in American boyhood, with nearly one in four 17-year-old boys bearing the diagnosis. The numbers have only gone up, and vertiginously: One million more children were diagnosed with A.D.H.D. in 2022 than in 2016.

The numbers on autism are so shocking that they are worth repeating. In the early 1980s, one in 2,500 children had an autism diagnosis. That figure is now one in 31.

Nearly 32 percent of adolescents have been diagnosed at some point with anxiety; the median age of “onset” is 6 years old. More than one in 10 adolescents have experienced a major depressive disorder, according to some estimates. New categories materialize. There is now oppositional defiant disorder, in addition to pathological demand avoidance…

The experience of school has changed rapidly in recent generations. Starting in the 1980s, a metrics-obsessed regime took over American education and profoundly altered the expectations placed on children, up and down the class ladder. In fact, it has altered the experience of childhood itself.

This era of policymaking has largely ebbed, with disappointing results. Math and reading levels are at their lowest in decades. The rules put in place by both political parties were well-meaning, but in trying to make more children successful, they also circumscribed more tightly who could be served by school at all.

“What’s happening is, instead of saying, ‘We need to fix the schools,’ the message is, ‘We need to fix the kids,’” said Peter Gray, a research professor at Boston College and the author of “Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life….”

Other books have echoed this critique. I think offhand of the book by Pasi Sahlberg and William Doyle: Let the Children Play: How More Play Will Save Our Schools and Help Children Thrive. This is how they summarize their argument:

“Play is how children explore, discover, fail, succeed, socialize, and flourish. It is a fundamental element of the human condition. It’s the key to giving schoolchildren skills they need to succeed–skills like creativity, innovation, teamwork, focus, resilience, expressiveness, empathy, concentration, and executive function. Expert organizations such as the American Academy of Pediatrics, the National Academy of Sciences, and the Centers for Disease Control agree that play and physical activity are critical foundations of childhood, academics, and future skills–yet politicians are destroying play in childhood education and replacing it with standardization, stress, and forcible physical restraint, which are damaging to learning and corrosive to society.”

There is an organization–Defending the Early Years–that fights for the rights of childhood, that tries to keep academic pressures out of the classrooms of very young children.

But who defends the children in grades 1-12? There are groups of parents in almost every state who oppose the pressures of high-stakes testing, oppose the efforts by tech companies to replace actual experiences with machines and technologies, oppose the interference of politicians to standardize teaching.

One group fights off the tech companies that use personal student data to market their products: The Parent Coalition for Studebt Privacy.

Corporate America now looks to the schools as a source of profit. The schools and students need to be protected from rapacious capitalism, which wants to privatize schools for profit and sell products that monetize instruction.

Yang describes the transformation of the school from the 1980s to the present:

School was not always so central to American childhood. In 1950, less than half of all children attended kindergarten. Only about 50 percent graduated from high school, and without much professional penalty. A person spent fewer years of their life in school, and fewer hours in the day furiously trying to learn. However bored a child might become sitting behind a desk, freedom awaited after the final bell rang, with hours after school to play without the direction of adults.

But as the country’s economy shifted from factories and farms to offices, being a student became a more serious matter. The outcome of your life could depend on it.

During an era of global competition, the country’s leaders also began to see school as a potential venue for national glory, or shame. In 1983, a commission created by Ronald Reagan’s secretary of education, Terrel H. Bell, released a dire report on the state of American schools called “A Nation at Risk.” It warned that “if an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.”

Over the next decade, Democratic and Republican governors such as Bill Clinton in Arkansas and Lamar Alexander in Tennessee began molding their states’ schools with new standards of testing and accountability. Schools were treated more like publicly traded companies, with test scores as proxies for profits. Before long, schools had public ratings, so ubiquitous they now appear on real estate listings.

The pressure kept rising. By 2001, 30 states had laws that imposed a system of punishments and rewards for schools based on their test scores. The next year, President George W. Bush’s signature education reform law, No Child Left Behind, made the effort national.

With school funding now on the line, there were unmistakable incentives for children to be diagnosed. Starting in the 1990s, students with autism or A.D.H.D. become newly eligible for added support in the classroom. Getting a child treated, potentially with medication, could help an entire classroom achieve higher scores, especially if the child’s behavior was disruptive to others. And in some parts of the country, children with disabilities were not counted toward a school’s overall marks, a carve-out that could boost scores.

The added metrics may well have compelled more children to receive the support they needed. Either way, educational policymaking yielded a change in diagnoses. In states that added new accountability standards, researchers found a clear rise in A.D.H.D. According to one analysis, the rate of A.D.H.D. diagnoses among children ages 8 to 13 in low-income homes went from 10 percent to 15 percent after the arrival of No Child Left Behind.

The impact of the law on autism diagnoses has been less documented. But there is a great deal of overlap among these disorders. Anywhere from 30 to 80 percent of children diagnosed with autism also have A.D.H.D. Experts have also pointed out that the rise in autism has largely taken place on the more subtle end of the spectrum, where psychiatrists expanded the diagnosis. Students with this profile often need educators who can be eminently flexible in their approach, a tough task when an entire classroom has to focus on narrowly mastering certain testable skills.

The demands on performance in higher grades trickled down into younger and younger ages. In 2009, the Obama administration offered greater funding to schools that adopted new national learning standards called the Common Core. These included an emphasis on reading by the end of kindergarten, even though many early childhood experts believe that not all children are developmentally ready to read at that age.

With each new wave of reforms, the tenor of kindergarten changed. Rote lessons in math and reading crept into classrooms, even though experts say young children learn best through play. Researchers discovered that in the span of about a decade, kindergarten had suddenly become more like first grade.

Preschool was not far behind, as even toddlers were expected to stay still for longer stretches of time to imbibe academic lessons. This again defied the consensus among early childhood experts. Children, parents and teachers struggle through this mismatch daily. In 2005, a study showed that preschoolers were frequently being expelled for misbehavior, and at rates more than three times that of school-age children.

“We’re not aligning the developmental needs of kids with the policies and practices that go on daily with schools,” said Denise Pope, senior lecturer at Stanford University and co-founder of Challenge Success, a nonprofit group that works with schools to improve student well-being.

The pressure to learn more led to a restructuring of the school day itself. Before the 1980s, American children usually had recess breaks throughout the day. By 2016, only eight states required daily recess in elementary schools. And when researchers studied what had become of lunchtime, they learned that children often had just 20 minutes to not only eat but stop to use the bathroom after class, walk to the cafeteria and wait in line for food.

I think about my own time in the public elementary public schools in Houston. We had recess every day. I don’t think it was a matter of state law. Educators then knew that children needed time to play. It was common sense. Today, parent groups organize to persuade legislatures to mandate recess. If they don’t, parents fear, every minute will be spent preparing for tests and taking tests.

They are right. The so-called “reforms” of the past quarter century–No Child Left Behind, high-stakes testing, competition, Race to the Top, punishing or rewarding teachers for their students’ test scores, closing schools and firing staff because of low test scores, the Common Core standards–have made test scores and standardization the heart of schooling.

In a continuing campaign to raise test scores, there are winners and losers. Typically, the winners are children from affluent families, and the losers are the children of not-affluent families. The winners are celebrated, the losers are stigmatized. The social class divide among children is hardened by these practices.

Worse, the pressure on students has caused an increase in anxiety, depression, and boredom. In response, parents seek diagnoses of autism or some other learning disorder so that their children will get more time or attention.

Some parents blame the public schools for the pressure and competition imposed on them by elected officials. They seek alternatives to the public schools, which are obsessed with standardization, testing, and accountability.

Yang points out:

This discontent helps empower the conservative effort to defund the public school system and let parents pick their own schools, with taxpayers covering the tuition. Each child who no longer seems to fit into the country’s education system — and more often than not they are boys — potentially expands the constituency for these ideas. And trust erodes further in the progressive project of a democracy built on giving everyone a free and equal education.

The Democratic Party is unable or unwilling to see the problems they helped create. The Republican Party is quite happy to see the public search for alternatives like charter schools and vouchers, and it has enabled the movement to have taxpayers foot the bill for private and religious schools.

By turning childhood into a thing that can be measured, adults have managed to impose their greatest fears of failure onto the youngest among us. Each child who strays from our standards becomes a potential medical mystery to be solved, with more tests to take, more metrics to assess. The only thing that seems to consistently evade the detectives is the world around that child — the one made by the grown-ups.

Who made that world? Both political parties. Governors. Legislatures. Think tanks. The wealthiest, who believe their financial success proves their superiority. Editorial boards.

Here is the most significant lesson that our elected officials refuse to learn. Their elaborate schemes for testing and measuring children have hurt children and undermined the joy of learning. They have raised the anxiety level of children while corrupting education itself.

Education is not what gets measured on standardized tests. Education is exploration, investigation, insight, observation, wanting to know more, learning to love learning.

Our politicians, prodded by so-called “reformers,” have managed to pollute education while demoralizing teachers and destroying public commitment to public schools.

Our public schools need to be freed from the failed ideas that hurt children. We need a rebirth of sturdy ideas that

Categories Accountability, Childhood, Education Industry, Education Reform, Extremism, Failure, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Health, Joy, Standardized Testing, Students

Carol Burris: Another Religious Charter School Applies for Public Funding in Oklahoma, Backed by For-Profit Corporation

By dianeravitch
December 1, 2025 //
13

In this post, Carol Burris reviews the latest challenge to separation of church and state. A religious school has applied for public funding as an online charter school. But that’s not all: the religious school is a tentacle in the vast for-profit empire of the Florida-based Academia charter chain.

Carol Burris is the executive director of the Network for Public Education (NPE). She was a teacher and principal in New York State and was designated as Principal of the Year. She is an expert on the charter school sector. She follows the money, studying federal records, state records, and financial reports. She has posted numerous reports, which can be found on the website of NPE.

Burris writes:

After the first bid for an online religious charter failed in Oklahoma, we were told it would not be the last. True to that promise, the National Ben Gamla Jewish Charter Foundation has informed Oklahoma’s statewide charter board that it plans to seek public funding for an online high school serving roughly 40 students to start. According to Peter Deutch, who filed the letter of intent, a complete application is expected to be submitted before the end of the year. While owning a residence in Florida, Deutsch has lived in Israel for more than a decade.  

Ben Gamla Charter Schools were founded in 2007 by Deutsch under the nonprofit umbrella of the National Ben Gamla Charterschool Foundation Inc. Students receive instruction in Hebrew language and learn about Israeli culture and Jewish history during school hours. Religious teachings (such as prayers or Torah study) are offered as optional programs after school hours. According to this 2013 article in the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA),

About 150 students mill around for a few minutes before heading back to the classrooms. They are followed by Orthodox rabbis with dangling tzitzit fringes and black-velvet yarmulkes pushing carts laden with prayer books and snacks.

Within a few minutes, the kids are chanting morning prayers — even though it’s afternoon and until a few minutes earlier, the classrooms had belonged to a taxpayer-funded public school.

That’s because Ben Gamla’s lease on the building lapses at about 2:15 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays. For the next two hours, the classrooms are taken over by a religious Jewish after-school program.

From the beginning, it was widely understood that Peter Deutsch’s goal in launching Ben Gamla was to create a publicly funded alternative to Jewish day schools, which charge tuition and are often financially out of reach for many families. Deutch is not shy about using his charters to promote Jewish communal purposes. He made it clear to the Times of Israel that, “He wants to give Jewish kids who otherwise would attend public school an opportunity to be in a Jewish environment and develop a Jewish identity — at taxpayer expense. The Hebrew curriculum includes Israel education and Jewish history, and most of the schools are located on Jewish community campuses. Some 85 percent of the students are Jewish. Supplementary after-school religious programs take place onsite or nearby.”

Now, Deutsch appears to be abandoning even the pretense of maintaining a secular framework, creating a new nonprofit that includes “Jewish” in the foundation name. His new vision would effectively erase the boundary between public education and religious instruction, pushing the model well beyond the constitutional line that Ben Gamla once claimed to walk carefully around.

But Ben Gamla’s story is even more complicated than above. Since its beginning, Ben Gamla charter schools have been run by a for-profit corporation—the largest for-profit charter management corporation in the United States—Academica.

Ben Gamla and the For-Profit Academica

To understand how deeply Academica’s involvement with Ben Gamla reaches, one need only examine the network’s earliest tax filings. The first available IRS Form 990—filed in 2009 for the 2008 school year, when the original Hollywood, Florida campus was the only Ben Gamla school open—lists the organization’s address as 6361 Sunset Drive in Miami, the location of Academica’s offices at the time. By the 2011 submission, Academica had moved to 6340 Sunset Drive, Miami. That address then appears as the Ben Gamla address on the Foundation’s subsequent 990s.

The overlap goes beyond shared office space. Those early tax forms were signed and submitted by Academica’s longtime Chief Financial Officer, underscoring that from the very beginning, Academica was not merely a vendor or service provider—it functioned as the operational and administrative engine behind the Ben Gamla charter school network.

The Ben Gamla Foundation’s address at 6340 Sunset Drive is still listed on the latest public 990.According to the latest Foundation audit, Academica provides both “academic and administrative services, including, but not limited to, facility design, staffing recommendations, human resource coordination, regulatory compliance, legal and corporate upkeep, maintenance of the books and records, bookkeeping, budgeting, financial reporting, and virtual education services.” Personnel in the school work for another for-profit ADP, which appears as the personnel vendor for many Academica-run schools. 

But that is not all. The audit lists the following Academica-related corporations as having received finance lease agreements and lease liability payments for its Hollywood and North campuses in 2023: North Miami Lakes Campus, LLC, Van Buren Facility, LLC, and Hollywood Educational Annex, LLC. These corporations, located at the same address as Ben Gamla and Academica companies and affiliated charter chains, are three of scores of real estate arms of the for-profit. 

During the 2023-24 school year alone, the Ben Gamla Charterschool Foundation, Inc. paid Academica and what the audit terms as “its affiliates” $3,413,317.00.

The relationship between the for-profit Academica and charter schools is repeated across the nation: Academica’s “brands” are nonprofits that hold charters and get taxpayer funds, including federal CSP grants, while Academica, for all intents and purposes, runs the schools. 

Other Academica-affiliated charter brands beyond Ben Gamla include:

• Somerset Academy, Inc. – A large charter school network (founded 1997) that partners with Academica. It encompasses roughly 80 schools across Florida, Nevada, Texas, and Arizona, with a small international presence inSpain.

• Mater Academy, Inc. – A Florida-based chain (founded 1998) supported by Academica, and started by Academica’s owner, Francisco Zulueta. Mater Academy has grown to 44 charter schools in 3 states (primarily Florida and Nevada, with recent expansion to Texas). 

• Doral Academy, Inc. – A charter school network (founded 1999) affiliated with Academica and originating in Doral, FL. It operates 16 schools across six states – Florida, Nevada, Colorado, Idaho, North Carolina, and Texas. 

• Pinecrest Academy, Inc. – A charter network under Academica’s umbrella, founded in 2000. Pinecrest Academy operates 26 schools in Florida, Nevada, and Idaho.

• Sports Leadership & Management (SLAM) – A specialized charter school network focusing on sports-themed academics, co-founded by artist Pitbull in partnership with Academica. Since the first SLAM opened in Miami (2013), the network has expanded to multiple campuses. SLAM schools are located in Florida, Georgia, Nevada, and Texas. 

• CIVICA – A newer Academica-affiliated charter network focused on career and civic leadership academies. It began with the City of Hialeah Educational Academy (COHEA) in Florida and has grown into the CIVICA Network operating schools in Florida, Nevada, and Colorado.

• International Studies Charter Schools, Inc. – A boutique network of multilingual college-prep charters in South Florida supported by Academica in Florida. 

• Independence Classical Academy: Academica’s latest brand of classical virtuous charter schools, with schools opening in Colorado and Nevada.

Nearly all of these chains have an Academica-supported online school. In addition, Academica provides both national and international for-profit virtual education. And it operates colleges associated with its charter chains in Florida. All of this is tied together neatly by the for-profit here.

Implications for Religious Charter Schools

To believe that Peter Deutsch—who resides in Israel—and the National Ben Gamla Jewish Charter Foundation, which he created, are seeking approval to open a virtual religious charter school in Oklahoma without the quiet support and coordination of Academica is simply naïve. Fewer than 0.1% of Oklahomans identify as Jewish. No one launches a niche virtual religious charter in that context unless a far more powerful operator is standing behind it. 

And Academica is nothing if not opportunistic. When CTE schools became trendy, Academica created the Civica chain. When “classical education” surged in conservative states, it launched the Independence charter network. Whenever a new market emerges—no matter how small, remote, or ideologically charged—Academica is there to plant a flag.

Academica likely brings in billions each year through its vast ecosystem of charter schools, real-estate deals, management fees, and related-party businesses. But for Academica, enough is never enough. The possibility of religious charter schools—publicly funded, lightly regulated, and ideologically branded—is not just appealing. It’s a gold mine. 

Some will insist this new online religious charter will be “independent.” It will not be. The pattern is already documented. As far back as 2013, the Fordham Institute—itself a charter school authorizer—admitted as much. When a Ben Gamla governing board attempted to fulfill its legal duty to operate independently from the Foundation and Academica, it was swiftly shut down. The Institute’s candor in its commentary confirmed what insiders already knew: independence is tolerated only until it interferes with the chain and its operator’s control. From that report:

“But it seems this local board took its job too seriously. Peter Deutsch, the founder of the Ben Gamla network and a former Congressman from South Florida, told the Tampa Bay Times that the local board ended up making all the decisions about the school. The foundation, he said, wanted more control.”

If the Oklahoma Virtual Charter Board approves this application when filed and the case ultimately reaches the U.S. Supreme Court, the challengers won’t just be arguing before a bench that includes Amy Coney Barrett. They will also confront the power behind an established charter chain whose own governance and for-profit entanglements make the point more clearly than any brief could: charter schools—despite what their advocates claim—are not truly public schools in most states at all.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, For-Profit, Oklahoma, Privatization, Religion, School Choice, Separation of church and state

At the Root of Charter School Scandals: Lobbying for Money and Power

By dianeravitch
November 25, 2025 //
10

Ismael Loera writes in The Fulcrum about the recent scandal at Success Academy, the celebrated charter chain that regularly posts high test scores. Recordings leaked, showing that the leadership required teachers and all other staff to contact legislators on behalf of charter schools.

To a seasoned New Yorker who follows the shenanigans at charter schools, this is no scandal. It’s simply the charter school way of doing business. Both students and staff are props for their political and financial interests. Loera lives in Boston, so she might not be accustomed to Success Academy’s tactics.

Success Academy has been systematic about mobilizing its teachers and its students to demand legislation to protest any restrictions and to oppose accountability. This not a New York City phenomenon. It’s the way that charters get a firm foothold in state legislatures.

The fact that Loera finds this blatant political activity disturbing seems to reflect a certain naïveté. The charter lobbyists in every state have worked as other lobbyists do: they write the legislation; they build in privileges and protections; they attack the motives of anyone demanding accountability. Eva Moskowitz has been more eative than most charter leaders in using students to pack legislative hearings, to take buses to the state Capitol, and to engage in activities to protect the charters’ interests.

Loera wrote:

When I was running a school, I knew that every hour of my team’s day mattered. A well-prepared lesson, a timely phone call home to a parent, or a few extra minutes spent helping a struggling student were the kinds of investments that added up to better outcomes for kids. 

That is why the leaked recording of Success Academy CEO Eva Moskowitz pressuring staff to lobby elected officials hit me so hard. In an audio first reported by Gothamist, she tells employees, “Every single one of you must make calls,” assigning quotas to contact lawmakers. On September 18th, the network of 59 schools canceled classes for its roughly 22,000 students to bring them to a political rally during the school day. What should have been time for teaching and learning became a political operation.

This is not simply about one leader’s poor judgment. It exposes a structural reality in the charter model. Unlike traditional public schools, charters must continually secure their share of taxpayer dollars, which creates pressures that blur the line between education and politics. Public money intended for classrooms can easily be redirected toward political activity.

Success Academy has a history of doing this, having mobilized staff and families for rallies during the early days of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration. More recently, charter leaders aimed pointed comments at Zohran Mamdani’s opposition to lifting the charter school cap in NYC beyond the current limit of 275, avoiding his name but making clear he was the target. That level of hostility toward an elected official’s policy stance edges close to electioneering and shows how charters use taxpayer resources and compromise public trust.

The pattern makes clear that this is not a one-time mistake but a recurring strategy. If a school cannot survive without turning its teachers and its students into a lobbying force, then it does not deserve to survive.

The costs of this pressure are real. Every hour assigned to calling legislators is an hour lost to lesson planning, supporting a struggling reader, or improving curriculum. Involving children in rallies goes even further, turning students into props for a cause they did not choose. Families send their children to school to learn, and taxpayers expect their dollars to fund classrooms, not political campaigns.

I know from personal experience how easily this kind of mission drift happens. As a charter school leader, I once sat through an anti-union presentation about blocking organizing. The tactic was different, but the impulse was the same: using institutional power to shape employees’ civic choices. Whether the issue is suppressing a union drive or directing staff to advocate for legislation, coercing political activity erodes trust and undermines the purpose of schools.

Charter networks have also invested heavily in professional lobbying. Families for Excellent Schools, a former NYC advocacy group for charters, once spent nearly $10 million on lobbying in a single year in New York. Success Academy itself reported $160,000 in federal lobbying in 2024. Those outlays are legal. But was Moskowitz trying to save money by conscripting educators and even students into the work that paid lobbyists usually do? That is legally questionable. The fact that someone on the inside took the risk to leak the recording shows some recognition of how inappropriate these practices were.

Lawmakers have already taken notice. State Senators John Liu and Shelley Mayer called the Moskowitz rally “an egregious misuse of instructional time and state funds” and urged a formal investigation. 

Publicly funded institutions should never compel political participation, and clear boundaries protect everyone. Leaders know their limits, employees know their rights, and families can trust that students will not be pulled into political theater.

Policy reforms can strengthen those boundaries. Oregon bars employers from disciplining workers who refuse to attend political or religious meetings, and Connecticut bans mandatory political meetings outright. New York should adopt similar protections and go further for publicly funded schools. Any requirement that employees engage in political lobbying during work hours or with public resources should be explicitly prohibited. Students should never be taken out of class to participate in political events.

Some will argue this is only one leader’s excess. That response ignores the incentives built into a model that ties school growth and charter renewal to political capital. Unless lawmakers act, the cycle will repeat. The safer and fairer path is to set boundaries that keep politics out of the school day, protect staff from coercion, and safeguard children’s learning.

When I left school leadership, a mentor told me, “The real test of a model is what it makes people do under pressure.” The Success Academy scandal is a test for the charter sector, and it’s failing. Institutions that rely on coerced speech to sustain themselves are not just bending rules; they are breaking faith with the families and taxpayers who fund them.

Ismael Loera is the Director of People and Culture at Room to Grow and a Paul and Daisy Soros and Public Voices Fellow with the OpEd Project.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Harlem Success Academy, New York City, Scandals

Pennsylvania Requires Public Schools to Adopt “Evidence-Based” Reading Programs

By dianeravitch
November 24, 2025 //
30

Rebecca Redelmeier writes in Chalkbeat about passage of a new law in Pennsylvania mandating the use of “evidence-based” reading instruction. By that, they mean that teachers should teach reading by relying on what is called “the science of reading.” This terminology is based on a federal report that was released to the public in 2000, affirming the importance of phonics, the connections of letters and sounds.

The Department of Education spent $6 billion testing the “science of reading” recommendations. The program–Reading First–was abandoned after investigations found conflicts of interest and self-dealing among Department staff who awarded contracts.

When Reading First was evaluated, the results were unimpressive. Students did well in phonics but comprehension levels were unchanged.

Now states are mandating the same approaches that were tested 25 years ago.

Redelmeier wrote:

Pennsylvania will require schools to adopt evidence-based reading curriculum by the 2027-28 school year and institute new literacy instruction training for teachers.

The new requirements come as part of the state’s 2025-26 budget, which Gov. Josh Shapiro signed into law Wednesday, four months past the budget deadline. Literacy instruction and initiatives will get $10 million in the budget. The $50.1 billion budget deal puts $665 million total towards public schools. 

Moments before signing the bill, Shapiro said the budget invests in “something known as structured literacy,” referring to an approach to reading instruction that includes teaching students phonics and phonemic awareness, which research supports as effective.

The approach “puts a renewed emphasis on teaching [kids] to read well and training our teachers to teach reading effectively,” Shapiro said.

Last year, national test scores showed only about 1 in 3 Pennsylvania fourth graders could read at a proficient level. 

Some Pennsylvania school districts previously used reading curriculums that did not follow research-backed methods. In Philadelphia, the school district implemented an evidence-based curriculum last school year. But the rollout has been rocky. Students’ reading scores dippedafter the first year.

The curriculum mandate brings Pennsylvania up to speed with several other states that have passed laws that require literacy instruction to follow the science of reading, a body of research that has found young children need phonics instruction to learn how to read well.

Categories Education Industry, Education Reform, Literacy, Pennsylvania, Research

Tennessee: Parents’ Lawsuit Challenges Vouchers

By dianeravitch
November 24, 2025 //
1

Andy Spears of the Tennessee Education Report writes that a lawsuit has been filed in state courts challenging the Tennessee voucher plan. Not only does it violate the state constitution, the plaintiffs say, but the cost will bankrupt the public schools.

Spears writes:

Tennessee’s expanded, universal school voucher scheme violates a state requirement to maintain a system of free public schools, a new lawsuit says. 

The Education Law Center, on behalf of a group of Tennessee parents, filed the suit in Davidson County Chancery Court. 

“I taught for 12 years, and I fought to get my children into Rutherford County Schools because I knew the quality of education here,” said Jill Smiley, Rutherford County parent and former teacher. “Now the state is systematically defunding the very schools families like mine depend on. You can’t expect excellent schools on a shrinking budget.” 

The suit cites the requirement in the Tennessee Constitution that the state establish and support a system of free public schools. 

According to the plaintiffs: 

The lawsuit argues the voucher law violates the Education Clause of the Tennessee Constitution in two ways: 

  • The Education Clause’s adequacy requirement: By diverting public funds away from already underfunded public schools, the law prevents Tennessee from providing students with the adequate education guaranteed by the state constitution. 
  • The Education Clause’s mandate of a single system of public schools: By funding schools outside the system of free public schools, the voucher law violates this Education Clause mandate. 

Estimates by state analysts suggest the program will cost more than $140 million this year alone and may cost over $1 billion a year within 5 years. 

Additionally, an issue advocacy group calling itself Tennessee Leads says it will fight to expand the school voucher program as well as the state’s charter schools so that as many as 450,000 students are removed from the state’s public school system by 2031.

Categories Budget Cuts, Education Industry, Funding, Privatization, Tennessee, Vouchers

What You Need to Know about New Orleans: The Stories Behind the Statistics

By dianeravitch
November 24, 2025 //
3

Kristen Buras lives in New Orleans and has written several notable books about the charter school takeover of the city’s schools. After two decades at Emory University and Georgia State University, she currently works in New Orleans as a scholar-activist. She is cofounder and director of the New Orleans-based Urban South Grassroots Research Collective, a coalition with Black educational and cultural groups that melds community-based research and organizing for racial justice. Buras has written multiple books on urban educational policy, including Charter Schools, Race, and Urban Space: Where the Market Meets Grassroots Resistance and What We Stand to Lose: Black Teachers, the Culture They Created, and the Closure of a New Orleans High School.

Her latest report appears here:

The Stories Behind the Statistics: Why a Report on ‘Large Achievement Gains’ in Charter Schools Harms New Orleans’ Black Students

Buras’ latest report exposes how “Large Achievement Gains” in New Orleans’ charter schools mask persistent inequities

The National Center for Charter School Accountability (CCSA), a project of NPE, has released a new independent report, The Stories Behind the Statistics: Why a Report on ‘Large Achievement Gains’ in Charter Schools Harms New Orleans’ Black Students, authored by noted scholar Dr. Kristen Buras. The report delivers a penetrating critique of the widely circulated “success narrative” surrounding the charter-school takeover of New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. It challenges the Education Research Alliance for New Orleans (ERA)’s claims of significant achievement gains. It reveals how shifting metrics, questionable data, and students’ lived experiences paint a far more complex—and troubling—picture.

The Stories Behind Statistics raises substantial concerns about the foundations of ERA’s conclusions. First, it details how Louisiana officials repeatedly modified the school performance metrics in ways that boosted the apparent success of charter schools, creating an illusion of dramatic improvement. Second, it questions the reliability of the data ERA relied upon, noting allegations, lawsuits, and documented violations—including grade-fixing, financial mismanagement, and other irregularities—that have occurred across the New Orleans charter sector. Third, the report underscores the longstanding lack of meaningful oversight and accountability for charter schools, which further undermines confidence in the performance data.

Finally, the report scrutinizes ERA’s surveys on teaching quality and school climate, demonstrating that the experiences of Black students—when examined at the school level—are far more negative than ERA’s brief suggests. To bring these realities into focus, Dr. Buras incorporates original qualitative research, including firsthand testimony from students and parents describing their experiences in New Orleans charter schools.

The Stories Behind the Statistics urges policymakers, researchers, and the public to look beyond celebratory headlines and examine the deeper structural issues that continue to shape the city’s all-charter experiment—issues that profoundly affect the educational experiences of Black youth and their families.

According to Network for Public Education President Diane Ravitch, “As cities and states across the nation look to New Orleans as a model of charter-school reform, this report cautions how important it is to dig deeper than surface metrics. Without transparency, accountability, and attention to student experience, reforms that appear successful on paper may in fact perpetuate inequities and undermine educational justice for students.” 

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Hoax, Inequality, Louisiana, New Orleans

Stephen Dyer: How the Ohio Legislature Cheats the Majority of Students, Who Are Enrolled in PUBLIC Schools

By dianeravitch
November 17, 2025 //
1

Stephen Dyer is a former legislator who keeps watch on the ways that Ohio Republicans have cheated public school students. Ohio Republicans love charters and vouchers, even though taxpayers have been ripped off repeatedly for years by grifters.

He writes on his blog Tenth Period:

Look, I like Greg Lawson as a guy. We’ve been on panels together and fought over things on the radio and in other places. 

But man, he really, really thinks y’all are stupid.

In an op-ed he had published in the Columbus Dispatch yesterday where he argued that public school districts whine too much about money, he made the following claim:

“State K-12 spending in 2023 was 39.5% higher than in 2010 — and school spending in 2024 and 2025 shows no sign of cooling off: “State funding for primary and secondary education totaled $11.64 billion in FY 23; was $13 billion in FY 24 (a $1.36 billion or 11.7% increase); and is estimated at $13.42 billion in FY 25, the second year of the state budget (a $415.8 million or 3.2% increase).”

See, Greg wants you to conclude something from these numbers: that public school districts are swimming in money and their griping over vouchers and his budget-sucking agenda is bullshit. It’s those greedy bastards in your local school districts that are causing your property taxes to skyrocket.

What he leaves out is that the numbers he’s using to make the districts-swimming-in-money claim include money for charter schools and vouchers. 

That’s right. 

He’s writing an entire article complaining that school districts whine too much about vouchers taking away money from public school kids by citing K-12 expenditure data that … includes money going to vouchers and charter schools.

Can’t make it up.

I’ll break down his ridiculous claim in two parts. 

Part I — Overall K-12 Funding

First, let’s look at the overall claim — massive increases to K-12 spending. Forget about the fact that the voucher and charter money need to be deducted out of that number. 

Let’s just look at Greg’s topline claim — the state’s spending tons more now than 15 years ago on K-12 education, so quit whining! 

Yes. Spending is up. But you know what else is up? 

Inflation. 

See, in the 2009-2010 school year, the state spent a total of $7.9 billion on K-12 education. In the 2024-2025 school year, that number was $11.5 billion. 

Big jump, right?

Well, if you adjust for 2025 dollars, that $7.9 billion spent on K-12 education in 2009-2010 is the equivalent of $11.9 billion, or about $400 million less than what the state spent on K-12 education last school year.

Let me repeat that.

The state is spending the equivalent of $400 million less on K-12 education than they did 15 years ago, adjusted for inflation.

Funny Greg didn’t mention that.

Part II — Privatizers Force Property Tax Increases

Now let’s look at charters and vouchers. Let’s just set aside how poorly charters prepare kids, or how the EdChoice program is an unconstitutional scheme that provides not a single dollar to a parent or child and voucher test scores aren’t great either, compared with school district counterparts.

Let’s just look at the money.

In the 2009-2010 school year, Ohio sent $768 million to charter schools and vouchers. 

Last school year, that number was $2.3 billion. 

For those of you scoring at home, that’s a more than 100% increase in funding for these privatization efforts … above inflation!

So while in 2009-2010 the state spent about same percentage of their K-12 spend on the percentage of kids who attended public schools at the time, last year the state spent 77% of their K-12 spend on the 84% of kids who attended public schools.

This cut in the share of state funding going to public school students can be directly tied to the state more than doubling the inflationary increase on charter schools and vouchers over the last 15 years.

Bottom line: What has this meant in funding for Ohio’s public school kids?

Well, in 2009-2010, the state, after deducting charter school and voucher funding, provided $7.1 billion for Ohio’s public school students. 

Adjusted for inflation, that’s $10.7 billion in today’s dollars. 

(I would also like to add that the 2009-2010 school year was the first year of the Evidence Based model of school funding that I shaped as the Chairman of the Primary and Secondary Education Subcommittee on the Ohio House Finance Committee. We pulled off this investment — greater than last school year’s investment, adjusted for inflation — in the middle of the Great Recession. So it’s not like we had shit tons of money lying around the way lawmakers do now. Which should tell you about the priorities back then vs. today.)

I digress.

Last school year, Ohio’s public school students received $9.1 billion.

That means that Ohio’s public school students are receiving $1.6 billion less, adjusted for inflation, than they did 15 years ago.

Should I mention here that not a single penny of the more than $1 billion going to vouchers is publicly audited to ensure the money goes to educate kids rather than Lambos for Administrators?

Anyway.

Put another way: If Ohio lawmakers and governors had simply kept the same commitment to charter schools and vouchers that they did 15 years ago and kept pace with inflation on their K-12 spend, Ohio’s public school students would have received $1.6 billion more last year than they actually did. 

In other words, we’d have a fully funded Fair School Funding Plan.

I’m not asking the legislature or Governor to do anything crazy here. No elimination of vouchers and charters. 

This is simply doing inflationary increases and making sure the percentage of state funding going to each sector (public, charter and voucher) matched the percentage of kids attending each sector. 

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, if the state had actually let “money follow the child”, Ohio’s public school students would have a fully funded Fair School Funding Plan and there would stillhave a $1.2 billion charter and voucher program!

Instead, state leaders have so overvalued private school vouchers and charter schools that now we have an unconstitutional EdChoice voucher program that doesn’t send a single dollar to a parent or student, charter schools that spend about double the amount per pupil on administration that public schools spend while tragically failing to graduate students, and a school funding formula that’s severely underfunded for the 84% of students who attend public school districts. 

While Greg might tell school districts, “Quit your bitching!”, I might humbly suggest that school districts haven’t bitched enough.

So when people complain about property taxes, directly point fingers at the Ohio legislature and Governor because they’re doing what they’ve always done — force you to fund the only thing — public schools — the Ohio Constitution requires them to fund. 

It’s governmental malpractice. And our kids are the ones who suffer.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Education Industry, Ethics, Evil, For-Profit, Ohio, Privatization, Vouchers

John Thompson: Oklahoma Wants to Copy the “Mississippi Miracle” by Retaining 3rd Graders

By dianeravitch
November 12, 2025 //
6

Oklahoma legislators are debating whether to follow the lead of Mississippi by adopting a phonics-based reading curriculum and requiring the retention of 3rd graders who can’t pass the reading test. Mississippi has been hailed for the dramatic rise in its 4th grade reading scores, which was initiated by the Barksdale Foundation in 1999 with a gift to the state of $100 million to improve reading.

The dominant Republicans in the Oklahoma legislature are taking advice from Jeb Bush’s ExcelinEd group, which enthusiastically supports school choice, privatization, high-stakes accountability, and holding back 3rd graders who don’t pass the state reading test.

The key to instant success in the Mississippi model (it worked in Florida too) is holding back 3rd graders who can’t pass the test. If the low-scoring students are retained, 4th grade scores are certain to rise. That’s inevitable. Is the improvement sustainable? Look at 8th grade scores on NAEP. Sooner or later, those kids who “flunked” 3rd grade either improve or drop out.

Many years ago, I attended a conference of school psychologists. While waiting my turn to speak, the president of the organization said that the latest research showed children’s three worst fears:

  1. The death of their parents
  2. Going blind.
  3. The humiliation of being left back in school

Let’s not lose sight of the pain of those left back and think about alternative ways to help these children .

John Thompson, historian and retired teacher in Oklahoma, urges the legislators to think again before enacting a punitive retention policy.

Thompson writes:

The appointments of Lindel Fields as Oklahoma State Superintendent (replacing  Ryan Walters), and Dr. Daniel Hamlin as Secretary of Education, create great opportunities for improving our state’s schools. In numerous conversations with a variety of advocates and experts, I’ve felt the hope I experienced during bipartisan MAPS for Kids coalition which saved the Oklahoma City Public School System, and working with the experts serving in the administrations of Sandy Garrett and Joy Hofmeister. 

On the other hand, we still face threats from ideology-driven politicians and lobbyists who spread falsehoods about the simplistic programs they push. 

Just one example is a legislative committee meeting on the “Science of Reading.” Although I admit to being slow to acknowledge the need for more phonics instruction, and “high-dose tutoring,” as long it is not a part of a culture of teach-to-the test, I remain skeptical of simple solutions for complex, interconnected, problems. So, I am more open to positive programs, like those that enhance the background knowledge that students need to read for comprehension, as opposed to increasing test scores. 

But I’m especially worried Oklahoma could focus on the punitive part of the so-called  “Mississippi Miracle,” which requires the retention of 3rd graders who don’t meet accountability-driven metrics. 

For instance, when Rep. Jacob Rosecrants, a former inner-city teacher who took over my classroom when I retired, expressed concern that their “highly structured teaching and testing approach … might actually discourage reading,” his reservations were “largely dismissed.” Instead, Rep. Rob Hall, who asked for the meeting, said, “What we’ve learned from other states is that wide-spread illiteracy is a policy choice.” 

In fact, it is unclear whether Rep. Hall’s policy choice has produced long-term improvements in reading comprehension. 

Based on my experiences in edu-politics, and the judgements of local experts, who saw how our 2012 high-stakes testing disaster unfolded, I’d be especially worried by how the Oklahoma School Testing Program could be used to hold back kids, and the reward-and-punish culture it could produce. The same persons pushing accountability for 3rd graders also seem to believe the lie that NAEP “proficiency” is “grade level,” and that setting impossible data-driven targets will improve student outcomes. 

If these regulations were used to determine whether 3rd graders are retained, the damage that would be done would likely be unthinkable. It is my understanding that 50% to 75% of the students in high-challenge schools might not be eligible for promotion. And like the latest expert who briefed me about 3rd grade testing, I’ve witnessed the humiliation that retention imposed on children as Oklahoma experimented on high-stakes End-of-Instruction tests, which undermined learning cultures, even when they were just a pilot program.

I would urge legislators to read this study by Devon Brenner and Aaron Pallas in the Hechinger Report on 3rd grade retention. Brenner and Pallas concluded, “We are not persuaded that the third grade retention policy has been a magic bullet; retention effects vary across contexts. Even in Mississippi, the evidence that retention boosts achievement is ambiguous.”

By coincidence, another reputable study of the “Mississippi Miracle”  was recently published. Chalkbeat’s Matt Barnum evaluated the “Southern Surge” in reading programs in Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Alabama. And, yes, “Mississippi’s ascent has been particularly meteoric and long-running. Since 1998, the share of fourth graders reading at a basic level on NAEP has increased from 47 to 65%.” And, Louisiana’s 4th graders made progress.  

But, eighth graders’ results “have been less impressive for these Southern exemplars.” Alabama’s eighth grade reading scores have been falling and are among the lowest in the country. Louisiana’s eight grade reading scores remain at the 2002 level. And, Mississippi’s eighth grade reading scores are about the same as they were in 1998.

Barnum noted, “a number of studies have found that retention does improve test scores.” But:

The long-run effects of holding back struggling readers remain up for significant debate. A recent Texas study found that retaining students in third grade reduced their chances of graduating high school and decreased their earnings as young adults. A paper from Louisiana found that retention led more students to drop out. (Some studies find no long run effect on high school completion, though.)

I would also add that Tennessee’s huge School Improvement Grant, which was focused on test score gains, “did not have an impact on the use of practices promoted by the program or on student outcomes (including math or reading test scores, high school graduation, or college enrollment).”

Moreover, as the Tulsa World reported, Mississippi “spent two years and $20 million preparing for the rollout of the program.” It provided far more counselors and more intensive teacher training and student interventions. But it cites data suggesting “students who received intensive literacy instruction in third grade made only temporary gains, briefly besting their national peers in fourth grade but falling back behind in subsequent years.”

Even the most enthusiastic supporters of the “Mississippi Miracle”, like The 74, agree that it required “universal screenings to identify students with reading deficiencies early and to communicate those results to parents.”

And Mississippi’s success required the prioritization of “proactive communications and stakeholder engagement strategies around early literacy;” “building connections and coherence with other agency efforts across the birth through third grade continuum, especially pre-K;” and anticipating a “multi-year timeline to see changes in third grade outcomes, and invest in monitoring and evaluation strategies that can track leading indicators of progress and identify areas for improvement.”

What are the chances that Oklahoma would adequately fund such programs?

So, what will Superintendent Fields conclude after studying evidence from both sides of the debate?

The Tulsa World recently quoted Fields saying “that literacy is the building block. … So until we get that right, everything else is just going to be hard.” I’m impressed that he then added, “I’m learning about it myself.”

He then said:

What’s important to note about that is the Mississippi Miracle was not an overnight thing. It was more than a decade in the works. And I think if we were to model that and replicate it, you have to do the whole thing — we can’t walk around the block today and run a marathon tomorrow. I think replicating that and setting the tone for the next 8 or 10 years, we can expect to see the same kind of results. I think that’s an excellent example to look to.

Fields wants more than a “program.” He wisely stated:

We might disagree on how we actually get there, but I haven’t found anybody that disagrees that we have to get reading right before the other things.

He then called for “systemic, long-term dedication” to “a multi-faceted approach.” He also emphasized investments in teacher training, and the need to improve teachers’ morale.

In other words, it sounds like our new Superintendent is open to humane, evidence-based, inter-connected, and well-funded efforts that draw on the best of the “Mississippi Miracle,” but not simplistic, politicized, quick fixes, that ignore the damage that those ideology-driven programs can do to children. And I suspect he would think twice before holding back third graders before studying the harm it can do to so many students.

So, if I had just one recommendation to offer, I would urge a balanced effort that combines win-win interventions, not programs that can do unknown amounts of harm, especially to high-poverty children who have suffered multiple traumas. That would require a culture that uses test scores for diagnostic purposes, not for making metrics look better.

Categories Accountability, Curriculum, Education Industry, Education Reform, Ethics, Literacy, Mississippi, Oklahoma

Corporate Reformers Take Charge of National Governors Association, Undermine Public Schools

By dianeravitch
November 12, 2025 //
9

The National Governors Association is led this year by Colorado Governor Jared Polis, a cheerleader for charter schools who launched two of his own.

The NGA, at Polis’ instigation, chose K-12 education as its leading issue for the year, which is very bad news, considering his low opinion of public schools.

Mike DeGuire, former principal in Denver Public Schools and current public school activist, described the NGA meeting when Governor Polis invited Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, former wrestling entrepreneur, to discuss the needs and future of American education.

At the top of their concerns was the failure of public schools to prepare students for the workforce. Long ago, education leaders used to describe the purpose of education as preparation for citizenship in a democratic society. But that was then and this is now.

DeGuire described the cohort assembled by Governor Polis, all leaders of the corporate reform sector:

As the 2024-25 chair of the National Governors Association, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, selected K-12 education as the priority of the NGA’s yearlong initiative. Titled “Let’s Get Ready! Educating all Americans for Success,” the project defined its purpose in its call to action: Identify solutions to address the belief that schools are not preparing graduates adequately for the work force today. 

The initiative had support from philanthropic foundations and companies that promote technology-related solutions, school choice, data-driven accountability, and other neoliberal market-based reforms in public education. One of the supporters, Stand Together Trust, founded by Charles Koch, provided millions to groups that back charter schools and other “alternatives to public education.” 

Many of the “project team” members were involved with organizations that prioritized “redesigning” the public education system. Polis has been a longtime supporter of expanding charter schools and workforce training as ways to address deficits in student outcomes, and eight of his staff worked on this project. Project team member Jen Walmer was on Polis’ staff in his first administration, and she worked previously as the Colorado director of Democrats for Education reform, which continues to call for Democrats to support school choice and charters.

The project team also included representatives from Watershed Advisors, All4Ed, Savi Advising, and the Urban Institute. Watershed’s CEO, Kunjan Narechania, was the CEO of the all-charter Recovery School District in New Orleans. Several Watershedand All4Ed staff either worked or trained in the Chiefs for Change program, which Jeb Bush founded to promote charter school models. All4Ed promotes online learning in both charter and district schools. 

Savi Advising’s founder, Archana Patel, worked for KIPP charter schools and was the senior director at the Broad Academy, a training ground for school leaders to promote charter schools. The Urban Institute published research that downplayed the effects caused by charter schools in exacerbating school segregation. The Institute received $11 million from the Walton Family Foundation and other foundations to identify “measures of students’ skills and competencies in prekindergarten (PK) through 12th grade that drive economic mobility.”  

Polis chaired seven “convening” sessions to determine the project’s outcomes. Featured “experts” at the sessions included Eva Moskowitz, founder of Success Academy Charter schools in New York; Sal Khan, founder of Khan Academy, a computer-based learning system; Geoffrey Canada, founder of Harlem Children’s Zone charter schools; John B. King, founder of the Uncommon schools charter chain; Angela Duckworth, co-founder with Dave Levin (KIPP charter school chain founder) of the now defunct Character Lab; and Steve Levitt, author of Freakonomics and a promoter of personalized AI tutoring. 

Secretary McMahon added her views about the needs of students today:

McMahon commented that a “return to shop classes” would serve some students better for their future job opportunities. She stated, “We have to rethink how we’re doing education … from beginning to end the goal is to get people into a productive job.” 

“Shop classes”? Really. That’s really turning the clock back!

At a time when major corporations are shedding tens of thousands of workers and executives, when AI poses a challenge to many current occupations, none of these neoliberal ideas seems relevant today.

DeGuire recommends a broader role for education today:

While workforce preparation is an important part of schooling, defining education primarily as a pipeline for economic productivity in the marketplace ignores the broader purposes of education. The Polis report neglects to focus on the essential role educators provide in developing positive relationships with students, and the benefits students gain through an emphasis on critical thinking, creativity, collaborative learning and exposure to the arts, social sciences and the humanities. Focusing primarily on charter schools as the answer to America’s problems in education negates the findings that 70% of parents are satisfied with their local public schools, as well as the research that charter schools have not proven to be the answer to America’s education problems. 

One of the defining characteristics of corporate reformers is that they cling to failed ideas. They have claimed for the past 35 years that school choice, high-stakes testing, competition, and incentives would drive school improvement. They refuse to admit that their ideas have been tried and didn’t work. NCLB, Race to the Top, and Common Core came and went. Of course, the “reformers” are dissatisfied because none of their promises was successful.

Rather than admit defeat, they keep repeating the same old same old.

Shop class indeed!

Categories Charter Schools, Colorado, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, School Choice

New Hampshire: Voucher Program Grows Beyond Its Budget; 80% of Vouchers Used by Students Enrolled in Private Schools

By dianeravitch
November 11, 2025 //
4

Garry Rayno of InDepth NH reports on the status of the New Hampshire voucher program, called Education Freedom Accounts. The program is growing beyond the budgeted amount, and the number of students it serves is expected to grow as family income limits are removed.

The program was sold, as it always is, as a way to save low-income children from low-performing schools. Actually, that claim is simply a hoax. By now, we know that vouchers mostly subsidize students who were already in private and religious schools. That’s the case in every state with vouchers. In New Hampshire, 80% of the students who take vouchers never were enrolled in public schools. In Arkansas, it’s 88%. The state is subsidizing their tuition, which was previously paid by their parents.

Garry Rayno writes:

CONCORD — Information released by the Department of Education this month shows the Education Freedom Account program has 10,510 students enrolled this school year.

The figure is based on average daily membership as of Oct. 1.

The program is capped at 10,000 students with exemptions for continuing students, students in the same family and students from households below 350 percent of the federal poverty level, or $74,025 for a two-member family and $112,525 for a four-member family.

According to the DOE information, the program with the current enrollment level will cost the state $51.6 million, while the program is budgeted for $39.3 million, or $12.3 million over budget this fiscal year.

Because the program hit the 10,000 cap this year, the cap will be increased to 12,500 next school year, which with similar distributions of children from lower income households, special education needs and English as a second language students, would project to be $61.4 million while $47 million is budgeted for fiscal year 2027, or $14.4 million over budget.

The total cost of the EFA program for the biennium would project to be $113 million, or $26.7 million over budget for the biennium.

The average grant under the program for this school year is $4,911, which is down from last school year when it was $5,204 when the program cost $28 million and served 5,321 students.

The percentage of low-income students who qualify for free and reduced lunch and receive additional money of $2,393 per student has fallen with the expansion of the program this school year to any student qualified to attend school in the state regardless of family earnings.

The percentage of students for low-income families dropped from 37 percent last school year to 19 percent this school year, while the percentage of students needing special education services increased from 7 to 9 percent, while English language learners totaled 20 this school year while there were only two students the year before.

Students qualifying for special education services receive an additional $2,185, and English language learners receive an additional $832 per student.

The base adequacy grant every EFA student receives is the same as public school students $4,266, which goes to the school district.

At the Joint Legislative Performance Audit Oversight Committee meeting Friday, the Legislative Budget Assistant’s Office said the audit of the EFA program is expected to be presented to the Joint Legislative Fiscal Committee by next summer.

Christine Young, director of the LBA’s Audit Division, said her agency is currently doing field analysis and reviewing observations, which are concerns raised about practices or following statutes or rules.

The performance audit is required by law, but the LBA was unable to access program data because the DOE and the Attorney General’s Office said that information belongs to the administrator of the program, Children’s Scholarship Fund NH, which the state hired.

The LBA sought the information from the company, but was denied under the advice of former Department of Education Commissioner Frank Edleblut and told the committee the audit would have to focus on the DOE’s oversight of the program.

Young told the committee to date 40 observations have been noted with 15 finalized, most dealing with eligibility.

She said another 20 observations are being drafted.

A compliance report done by the DOE several years ago of the first two years of the program found about 25 percent of the applications to the program and for additional money for services were approved without the required documentation by the Children’s Scholarship Fund NH.

The organization may retain up to 10 percent for administering the program, which would be over $10 million this biennium.

The program was touted as an opportunity for low-income parents to find alternative educational programs for their children if they do not do well in the public school environment.

But as is the case in other states with similar programs, the vast majority — or about 80 percent — of the students enrolled in the program were not attending public schools, but attended religious and other private schools, or homeschooled when they joined the program.

With the expansion this year, many families whose children attend religious and private schools or homeschools, receive what is essentially a state tax paid subsidy.

The cost of the program when it was expanded to all eligible students in Arizona nearly bankrupted the state, and similar problems occurred in Ohio and North Carolina.

In the only vendor listing published by the Children’s Scholarship Fund NH, was for the first year of the program and is no longer on the Children’s Scholarship Fund’s website, the vast majority of grants went to religious and private schools.

Critics of the program have long claimed it lacks guardrails and accountability, but program supporters say parents are the best judge whether their child is receiving a good education.

Garry Rayno may be reached at garry.rayno@yahoo.com.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Education Industry, Hoax, New Hampshire, Privatization, Vouchers
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