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ACT Scores Show No “Miracle”

By dianeravitch
April 29, 2026 //
15

I begin by saying for the zillionth time that I do not believe in miracles or panaceas in education. There is not one way of teaching that is just right for all students. Teachers know this. And yes, I believe in the value of phonics as part of teaching reading.

I am not a proponent of the “science of teaching,” because I do not believe that there is only one best way to teach reading or math or science or history. I do not believe that legislators in the state or Congress should mandate HOW to teach. Well-prepared, experienced teachers know how to teach and are at their best when they have reasonable class sizes so they can give extra time to students who can’t keep up.

When state legislators start telling surgeons how to operate on patients, let me know.

Home life affects learning outcomes. All standardized tests show that family income affects test scores; the kids from the wealthiest families are typically at the top, while the kids who grow up in poverty typically have the lowest scores.

This is not because rich kids are inherently better than poor kids but because rich kids have advantages associated with family income, such as educated parents, regular medical care, good nutrition, economic security, better -funded schools, smaller class sizes, and predictability about where and how they live.

Poor kids often do not have these advantages because they are poor. The person who said it best and pulled together the data is Richard Rothstein, in his important book, Class and Schools. I first read it in 2007, and it was pivotal in changing my views about educational achievement and score gaps, and their causes.

Mississippi–and also Louisiana and Alabama–have been hailed for their improved reading scores on the NAEP. Fourth-grade scores have improved impressively. I am very happy for them. I have no doubt that their teachers work very hard and are not paid as well as they should be.

But I looked for an external monitor to see if there had been a “miracle.” A long-lasting miracle, based on their adoption of the “science of reading.” And I landed on the ACT, because in nine states (including Mississippi), 100% of students take the same test.

Mississippi started giving ACT to all juniors in 2015. First cohort for the “reform” hit 11th grade in 2022. If reading had improved dramatically, it should be reflected in rising ACT scores for the state’s students.

Here are the Mississippi scores:

Average ACT Composite Scores for Mississippi (Junior Year Administration)

  • 2025: 17.5
  • 2024: 17.4
  • 2023: 17.5
  • 2022: 17.4
  • 2021: 17.3 

Key Trends and Data

  • Graduating Class of 2023: Average composite score was 17.6.
  • 2024 Graduates: Average score was 17.7.
  • Participation: Mississippi typically reports 100% participation due to statewide testing, which contributes to a lower average compared to states with lower, self-selected participation rates.
  • Demographics: As of 2025, 9.5% of juniors met all four ACT readiness benchmarks. 

In states like Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana, the average score for Black students typically ranges from 15.0 to 16.5, roughly following national averages for this demographic (which was 16.0 in 2024).

As of 2025 and 2026, nine states have maintained 100% ACT participation because they mandate the test for all public high school graduates.

States with 100% ACT Participation

  • Alabama
  • Arizona
  • Kentucky (Note: Kentucky plans to switch to the SAT in Spring 2026)
  • Louisiana
  • Mississippi
  • Nevada
  • Oklahoma
  • Tennessee
  • Wyoming 

Recent and Upcoming Changes

Illinois: Switched to the ACT as its mandatory college entrance exam starting in the 2024-2025 school year, making it a graduation requirement for all public high school students.

South Dakota: Scheduled to join the list of states requiring the ACT starting in the 2025-2026 school year.

Nebraska: Frequently reports near-universal participation (often cited at 95-100%) due to state-funded testing initiatives. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

Why Participation is 100%

In these states, the ACT is typically used as a statewide accountability assessment. The exam is provided for free during regular school hours, ensuring that every student—regardless of their college plans—takes the test. This leads to more equitable access but often results in lower statewide average scores compared to states where only high-achieving, college-bound students self-select to take the exam.

You can check the ACT State-by-State Average Scores on the official ACT Website.

Categories Accountability, Childhood, Equity, Funding, Poverty

Dan Rather: Trump’s War on Science Is Outrageous!

By dianeravitch
April 28, 2026 //
6

Dan Rather, the esteemed journalist, wrote on his blog Steady about the dreadful consequences of Trump’s defunding of science, medicine, and public health.

But on Friday night, when we weren’t looking for a controversial announcement, Trump fired every single member of the 24-person National Science Board. Why? The simplest answer is that the members of the board were not his sycophants. They allegiance is to science, not to the person of Donald J. Trump. He couldn’t control them. They had to go.

Dan Rather wrote:

We toss around terms like “American exceptionalism” far too easily. But there is little debate that, in areas of science and medicine, this country has long been the world leader. We have more top scientists, elite doctors, and preeminent researchers than anywhere else. Their work has meant people live longer, healthier lives.

It is also a cornerstone of American influence around the world.

Scientific and medical research requires significant funding. It has thrived because our elected officials have had the political will to provide a financial pipeline to the public and private sectors.

President Donald Trump is severing that lifeline.

As the mainstream media was renting tuxedos and getting manicures ahead of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, Trump was busy pounding nails into the coffin of the American scientific research community.

Tucked away on Friday evening, in a terse, two-line email, the White House personnel office fired the entire National Science Board. “On behalf of President Donald J. Trump, I’m writing to inform you that your position as a member of the National Science Board is terminated, effective immediately,” the email read.

No reason was given in the email, and the White House has had no additional comment on the firings.

The independent, 24-person board is made up of top scientists and engineers who serve staggered, six-year terms, to ensure overlap between presidential administrations. They are chosen “solely on the basis of established records of distinguished service.”

The board advises the National Science Foundation (NSF), which supports a wide range of research, from Antarctic exploration to quantum computing. NSF-funded research helped develop the MRI machine, LASIK eye surgery, and Wi-Fi, among many other innovations. It distributes $9 billion in research grants annually.

“[I]t is not enough simply to keep abreast of the rest of the world in scientific matters. We must maintain our leadership,” President Harry Truman said in 1950, when he established the board.

Keivan Stassun, a physicist and astronomer at Vanderbilt University who was appointed to the board in 2022, called the Trump purge “a wholesale evisceration of American leadership in science and technology globally,” to the Los Angeles Times.

Although the president is often reluctant to explain why he does imprudent and detrimental things, if one looks hard enough, a reason can usually be found. In this case, there may be two.

Reason one: to save face. The board was set to meet in early May to work on the release of a new report. The report outlines how the U.S., once the world leader in scientific research, is losing ground to China. If there is no board, the report can’t be released.

Reason two: money. In its 2026 budget, the Trump administration recommended a 55% cut to the NSF. After lobbying by the National Science Board, Congress rejected the White House’s proposal and funded the NSF at 2025 levels.

To avoid the same fate for this year’s budget, which again recommends slashing the foundation’s funding, Trump did away with the board before its members could convince members of Congress.

Friday’s firings are just the latest in Trump’s long list of objectionable actions to cast doubt on scientific findings and thwart research.

The United States has been on the cutting edge of scientific and medical research since the end of World War II. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has been the world leader in funding biomedical research. A 2020 study found that NIH-funded research was associated with every new drug approved between 2010 and 2019.

But all of that is now changing. And Trump is to blame.

Science is “explicitly designed to counter human self-deception,” psychologist Steven Pinker told Chris Mooney in his book “The Republican War on Science.”

When deception is your modus operandi, you will naturally try to squash, discount, and demonize the truth. Being anti-science helps protect established special interests. Think climate change denialism and fossil fuel companies.

Trump called the climate crisis “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world” at last year’s United Nations General Assembly. He said this even as the globe is in the midst of the warmest 10-year span on record, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The NSF’s board is not the first the Trump administration has hamstrung. In June of last year Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Secretary of Health and Human Services, fired the 17-person vaccine advisory board and replaced many with vaccine skeptics. Trump himself replaced leading scientists with tech billionaires on the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

The administration significantly cut funding to the National Cancer Institute, once the gold standard for rigorous, evidence-based research. It no longer funds mRNA research, a revolutionary technology that has the potential to radically improve cancer care.

It canceled 22 separate mRNA contracts, including one working on a vaccine for brain cancer in children. Kennedy is an mRNA skeptic, claiming the vaccines aren’t safe while providing no evidence.

Pancreatic cancer is an incurable disease with a dismal survival rate. Fortunately for pancreatic cancer patients, research into an mRNA vaccine was far enough along that the cuts didn’t affect the very promising treatment.

BioNTech, a German biomedical research company, partnered with Moderna, an American company, to develop pancreatic cancer vaccines using mRNA technology.

The technology, already in development when the pandemic hit, was used to create the Covid vaccine. The Lancet estimated that mRNA vaccines prevented 14.4 to 19.8 million deaths just in the first year of use.

MRNA vaccine technology was in the pipeline thanks to billions of dollars in federal grants over decades. This allowed researchers to get Covid vaccines to market incredibly quickly. This technology is now helping people with pancreatic cancer live years longer than ever before.

Moderna is also using mRNA therapy in combination with other drugs to cut melanoma death rates by 49%. Applications for a variety of cancers are in the works.

Paul Darren Bieniasz, a British-American virologist, wrote in The Guardian, “If we continue the destructive course plotted by this administration, medicines that would otherwise have saved lives in future generations, will not be invented. Technologies that would have ensured future employment and prosperity in the U.S. will not be devised. Solutions that allow the generation of power while causing less damage to the environment, will never be developed. Clearly, if we decline to nurture science, the lives of future Americans will be shorter, sicker and poorer.”

While Donald Trump won’t be around to see that, millions of Americans will. Trump doesn’t like inconvenient truths. Science is a kaleidoscope of inconvenient truths. Rather than deal with them like the world leader he should be, he gaslights, he rages, he denies all.

And as with so much else in this administration, we the people pay the price.

Categories Academic Freedom, Corruption, Democracy, Disruption, Ethics, Extremism, Funding, Health, Injustice, Medicine, Science, Stupid, Trump

Miami-Dade Board Reluctantly Approves Five Schools for Controversial NYC Charter Chain

By dianeravitch
April 27, 2026 //
8

Success Academy (originally called Harlem Success Academy) wil open five charter schools in Miami. The board had the paperwork for only one day, but were pressured to make a decision or have the decision made by a special magistrate.

SA is run by Eva Moskowitz, a former New York City Council member. She has nearly 60 charter schools in NYC. The chain is amply funded by billionaires, including several Wall Street titans.

Her debut in Miami is facilitated by a gift of $50 million by billionaire Ken Griffin.

Under a law passed recently, SA is authorized to move into any school with empty classrooms. In NYC, this is called co-location. It inevitably creates bad feelings between the public school and the charter school, because the charter school–especially SA–is better funded than the public school and has better everything.

Moskowitz hopes to enroll 8,000-10,000 in Miami and then expand into other parts of Florida.

Board member Luisa Santos, who represents the district Homestead Senior High is in, expressed concern for what the co-location would mean for students with disabilities. 

“ On paper it may look like we have the seats, but in reality, once I started looking at how you implement this year one and year two, at the specific school in my district, the reality would be that you’re doubling and tripling up some of those highest need students into environments that frankly will become very chaotic,” Santos said.

SA is a “no-excuses” charter chain, which has strict rules about student behavior. It retains the power to oust students who don’t conform to its rules.

It has been controversial in NYC for multiple reasons. For high student attrition; for high teacher turnover; for accepting only students with the mildest disabilities; for ousting students who can’t comply or keep up; for bringing students to legislative meetings at the city or state levels to lobby for more funding for charter schools; for Moskowitz’s compensation (close to $1 million a year including bonuses); and for using a powerful, wealthy campaign PAC to support candidates who back charter expansion.

The students who survive 12-13 years of SA get very high test scores.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Florida, Funding, Harlem Success Academy, Miami

Florida: A For-Profit Charter Firm Plans to Cash In on Public School Revenues

By dianeravitch
April 24, 2026 //
4

Jason Garcia, investigative reporter, explains how giant for-profit charter chain Academica plans to grab a bigger share of local property taxes. Academica long ago figured out the importance of working with the right lobbyists and contributing generously to the right politicians. Their efforts have paid off in bigger profits.

Garcia writes:

In late February, toward the end of this year’s regular legislative session, Republican leaders in the state Senate introduced a measure to make public school districts across Florida give a bigger share of local property taxes to privately run charter schools.
The idea seemed to catch some senators by surprise when it was presented to the Senate Finance & Tax Committee as part of a larger package of proposed tax cuts and changes. The charter school provision prompted an extended round of sometimes-confused questioning during the hearing; Sen. Ed Hooper, a Republican from Clearwater who is a part of the Senate GOP leadership team, confessed that even he did not fully understand it.
But there was someone who knew about the property tax plan in advance: Academica Corp., the charter school management giant that stands to profit from the change.
Records obtained by Seeking Rents show that the sponsor the Senate tax package shared a draft of the charter school language with a lobbyist for Academica the week before it was filed for the rest of the public to see. An aide to Sen. Bryan Avila (R-Miami Springs) emailed the still-secret tax-sharing scheme to Academica lobbyist Andreina Figueroa with a one-word subject line: “Review.”

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Ethics, Florida, For-Profit, Funding

John Thompson: What Is the Best Way to Improve Oklahoma’s Public Schools?

By dianeravitch
April 13, 2026 //
5

John Thompson, retired teacher and historian in Oklahoma, considers ideas about how to improve Oklahoma’s schools, but insists that one overlooked cause of lower academic progress, was the torrent of misguided mandates written in Washington, D.C., such as No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top.

Thompson writes:

Despite our disagreements on some policies and research methodologies, I have respect for Adam Tyner, the executive director of the Oklahoma Center for Education Policy  He earned a doctorate in Political Science, and was the National Research Director at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.Tyner is the author of The Fall to 48th: Documenting Oklahoma’s Educational Decline, which draws upon NAEP scores, and cites Diane Ravitch as to their reliablity. While I agree that Oklahoma schools can come back, I’m troubled by the title of his NonDoc piece, “The ‘Southern Surge’ suggests Oklahoma’s education system can bounce back.” 

Being a retired inner-city teacher, I am pleased by Tyner’s rejection of cheap, quick, and simple solutions. But, as a historian, I would focus on different NAEP test scores, and the way that No Child Left Behind (NCLB); Race to the Top (RttT); and budget cuts undermined teaching and learning.

To his credit, Tyner linked to Matt Barnum’s analysis of both the potential benefits and harms of the “Southern Surge,” and the “Mississippi Miracle.” Barnum acknowledged the gains in 4th grade test scores by states that drew upon the “Science of Reading.” But, he concluded:

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.

I believe that Tyner’s history of the last three decades should be read in conjunction of his recent commentary in the Oklahoman. 
He starts it with Phonics instruction being “a first step towards teaching literacy.” But, he adds, “Background knowledge is key to reading comprehension.”

Tyner then explains:

To become a strong reader in middle school and beyond, students need a firm foundation of core knowledge, and that comes not just from practicing reading, but from developing a broad vocabulary and an understanding of a large range of topics — from geography and history to literature and science.

He then critiques many Oklahoma schools for efforts to improve comprehension by mainly:

Having students practice so-called “comprehension skills and strategies,” such as finding the main idea in a passage and making inferences. These Chromebook-based exercises often resemble test prep. Although some of this practice is fine, hours spent on it crowd out history, geography, science and literature.

This is very consistent with a scholarly paper by the SRI, Report: Beyond the Surface: Leveraging High-Quality Instructional Materials for Robust Reading Comprehension Learning brief, funded by Tulsa’s Schusterman Family Foundation. As reported by the 74, Katrina Woodworth, the director at SRI’s Center for Education Research & Improvement, explained. “The point is to both teach reading and to build students’ knowledge base so that they have more scaffolding for future learning of both content and meaning.” But even the most promising Science of Reading programs they studied, may be “unintentionally encouraging teachers to focus on surface-level goals.”

One of the lead authors, Dan Reynolds, asked, “Are we teaching our K-4 kids that reading is just tasks? Are we teaching them that they just need to label stuff and fill out graphic organizers?”

Reynolds said the “Surface-level” instruction they discovered, “weakens instruction for students and can later manifest as a skills disadvantage.” 

And, getting back to Tyner, he wrote that an “important caveat to the undeniable successes of Mississippi and Louisiana in raising fourth-grade reading is that those states have seen little improvement in eighth-grade reading.”

While I very much agree with his position on the harm done by the failure to focus on background information, educators didn’t voluntarily undermine the teaching of history, the arts, and critical thinking. After all, the SRI study finds hope in the evidence that students and teachers prefer deep reading instruction.

But, I wish he had explained how the decline of holistic instruction was the predictable result of the NCLB’s and RttT’s test-driven mandates. During that time, for example, I served on a team assembled by our outstanding State Superintendent Sandy Garrett, in order to minimize the harm we knew was coming with NCLB.

Due to the demand that schools meet impossible testing goals, schools were forced to cut back on social studies, history, science, and the arts, as well as critical thinking. They inflicted the worst harm on schools serving the poorest children of color. Being a history teacher in extremely high-challenge high schools, I was horrified by the hundreds of stories I was told by students who said they were “robbed of an education.”

And those experiences explain why I’m worried by Tyner’s call for “deliberate efforts to improve instruction and accountability.” I would communicate with many thousands of teachers, and students, and I can’t remember anyone who lived through those “reforms” and didn’t see test-driven, accountability-driven instruction as a failure.

Moreover, while Tyner calls for solid funding of the infrastructure necessary to implement the Southern Strategy, he is less clear about the harms that retaining students can have. Given the lies perpetrated by rightwingers who claimed Oklahoma failed to improve reading because Joy Hofmeister quickly ended retentions, I wish he would be more explicit in fact-checking them.  

A history of 21st century education in Oklahoma should also explicitly include the reasons why Oklahoma backed off from passing four End of Instruction tests. Rep. Joe Eddins explained in 2005, “Based on test data, the House of Representatives staff estimates 89,000 failed tests each year.”

So, Oklahomans focused on win-win policies, and NAEP 8th grade test scores, stopped declining in 2005, and went up from 2009 to 2013.  (2013 was the year when national 8th grade reading and math scores also peaked.) 

I taught in an alternative school, in 2012, when new End-of-Instruction tests were being piloted. I resigned after being required to give the vast majority of my students’ worksheets, and focus on tutoring a few students who had a chance of passing the test, and graduate. Fortunately, under the leadership of Superintendent Joy Hofmeister, that law was repealed in 2016.

A history of what went wrong in Oklahoma schools should also address the budget cuts that killed those successes.

As the Oklahoma Policy Institute reported in 2016:

Oklahoma’s per pupil funding of the state aid formula for public schools has fallen 26.9 percent after inflation between FY 2008 and FY 2017. These continue to be the deepest cuts in the nation, and Oklahoma’s lead is growing. On a percentage basis, we’ve cut nearly twice as much as the next worst state, Alabama.

Moreover, Mississippi’s cuts ( -9.2) were about a third of Oklahoma’s, and Florida’s and Louisiana’s cuts were a little less than 20% and about 10%. Tennessee increased its funding by 9.8%.

After Nearly a Decade, School Investments Still Way Down in Some StatesPublic investment in K-12 schools — crucial for communities to thrive and the U.S. economy to offer broad opport…

Although I would have written a different history on Oklahoma education’s decline, I do believe we can rebuild our education systems.

But, I would have liked to read more of Tyner’s thoughts about the damage teachers witnessed by accountability-driven reforms that were imposed on Oklahoma schools, and huge funding cuts. My main response to his history, however, is that this is the time to be more blunt in terms of what it would  really take to achieve equitable levels of reading for comprehension.  

Given the lack of evidence that the “Southern Surge” is improving reading comprehension, providing long-term benefits, and doing more good than harm, we should find a more holistic way to reverse the harm inflicted on our schools by top-down mandates of the last quarter of a century. 

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Education Reform, Funding, NAEP, Oklahoma

Oklahoma: Jewish Families Oppose Public Funding for a Religious Charter School

By dianeravitch
April 9, 2026 //
0

An organization called the Ben Gamla Charter School Foundation wants to open a virtual Jewish religious charter school in Oklahoma.

The story is not as straightforward as it appears.

Behind the Florida-based Ben Gamla charter chain is a for-profit management company called Academica, which derives huge annual profits from its connection to more than 200 charter schools across the nation.

There are fewer than 9,000 Jews in the state of Oklahoma, and they are not clamoring for a Jewish charter school.

The state charter board twice rejected the Ben Gamla application, because a previous appeal for a Catholic online charter school was turned down by Oklahoma state courts, then by a 4-4 decision in the U.S. Supreme Court because Justice Amy Coney Barret recused herself due to her friendship with a lawyer for the religious school.

The Ben Gamla Foundation filed a lawsuit on March 24, claiming that the state law banning public funding for religious schools is unconstitutional religious discrimination.

The lawsuit asks a federal judge to strike down Oklahoma’s ban on religious charter schools, and to order the state to stop denying applicants on the basis of their religious character.

“We’re asking the court to end that blatant religious targeting and allow families to choose schools that are best for them,” Peter Deutsch, a former Democratic congressman in Florida and founder of the National Ben Gamla Jewish Charter School Foundation, said in a statement.

The lawsuit alleges that Oklahoma’s requirement that charter schools be “nonsectarian” is unconstitutional, citing the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause and the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.

But Jewish organizations in Oklahoma are wary of the Ben Gamla application. A small group of Jews and a rabbi in Tulsa recently asked to join a lawsuit to block the Ben Gamla charter school.

The group filed a motion Wednesday in federal court in Oklahoma City seeking to intervene in the lawsuit brought by the National Ben Gamla Jewish Charter School Foundation, which is trying to become the nation’s first publicly funded religious school.

Rabbi Daniel Kaiman, the principal rabbi of Congregation B’nai Emunah in Tulsa, says he opposes the mixing of religion and government because of the potential for abuse. His own children attend a public elementary school in Tulsa.

“I am passionate about Jewish education—indeed, I have dedicated my life to it. Kaiman wrote in a declaration filed with the court. “Children in my congregation, including my own children, receive excellent, privately funded Jewish education through our synagogue and at home in accordance with our community values. But the mixing of religion and government creates opportunities for religious coercion…”

The motion was filed on behalf of the seven by the ACLU, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the Education Law Center, the Freedom From Religion Foundation and Oklahoma Appleseed.

The Ben Gamla school would under insert religious teaching into all subjects and require all employees to uphold Jewish values in their lives. What any of that means is unclear. How would math, reading, science, and other subjects be taught from a Jewish perspective. What sort of “values” would employees uphold and who would determine whether they did?

The Ben Gamla application is opposed by state Attorney General Gentner Drummond, who is against religious charter schools. But Drummond leaves office in January and might be replaced by a supporter of religious charter schools.

The state charter school board is pro-charter and is not vigorously opposing the Ben Gamla application. In fact, the state charter board retained First Liberty Institute to represent it. It is a conservative Christian legal group that believes that religious charter schools should be legal.

Oklahoma Jews are opposed to Ben Gamla. The Jewish Federation of Greater Oklahoma City sent a statement to the state Attorney General saying that religious charter schools “risk eroding the constitutional safeguards that protect both religious freedom and government neutrality toward religion.”

Ben Gamla’s financial interdependence on the Academica charter chain should alarm Oklahomans as much as the effort to turn public money over to religious schools.

Academica is a very wealthy for-profit charter management organization.

According to Ben Gamla’s strategic plan, Academica will control its budget and finances, facilities and management, human resources, and much more. And, of course, charge a management fee.

Academica manages more than 200 charter schools in at least 22 states. Its biggest chains are Somerset Academy (at least 80 campuses), Mater Academy (40-50 schools), Doral Academy, and Pinecrest Academy.

Academica held more than $115 million in properties in Florida in 2010 and collected $19 million in profit. That’s 16 years ago, the network has vastly expanded, and no one has updated the total value of Academica’s real estate since then or its annual profits.

Academica makes its hefty profits through management fees and “related party transactions.”

This is how a “related party transaction” works:

A real estate LLC controlled by Academica allies buys or builds a school property. The nonprofit charter school, like Ben Gamla or Mater or Somerset, leases the building. The school collects public funds from the state or the city, then pays rent to the LLC. The rent is high, often as much as 20% of all public funding. The management company chooses the services provided, making contracts with its allies.

The Network for Public Education described Academica in its report on for-profit schools:

Academica: The largest EMO is Academica, based in Miami, Florida. Academica’s owner is a real estate developer, Fernando Zulueta, who opened the first charter, Somerset, as part of a housing development he had constructed. He reasoned that his real estate venture would be more attractive to buyers since students would have a school within the development. Using their real estate companies, Fernando and his brother, Ignacio, built what journalist Jessica Bakeman called “an empire of charter schools.”

Over 100 active corporations linked to Fernando Zulueta and his family members are listed as residing at Academica’s Miami headquarters at 6340 Sunset Drive and 6457 Sunset Drive in Miami.39 They include real estate corporations, holding companies, and finance corporations, as well as sub-chains both within and outside of Florida.

Like many other charter schools and chains, Academica cashed in on the COVID Paycheck Protection Program during the pandemic. Individual schools and other nonprofit and for-profit entities related to the chain received in total up to $35.7 million dollars, even though there is no evidence of revenue lost during the pandemic. In fact, during the pandemic, the EMO continued to expand. In total, charter schools cashed in on one billion dollars from the PPP program.

Mater Academy Foundation, Inc., the related non-profit corporation that oversees Academica’s Mater brand of charter schools, acquired a $127.5 million educational facilities lease revenue bond to purchase several facilities from Academica. The South Florida Business Journal detailed the purchase price of several of the facilities and the Academica-affiliated real estate entities that cashed in on the sales, concluding that “the Pandemic Profiteering deal allows Academica to cash out after investing in the development of charter schools, although it will still earn management fees for the schools.”

The connection between Fernando Zuleta’s real estate holdings and his for-profit managed charter schools goes beyond the state of Florida. According to the State Public Charter School Authority, Academica Nevada pays the lease on behalf of the charter school Mater Academy Mountain Vista of Nevada to Stephanie Development LLC. The managingmembers of Stephanie Development are Fernando and Ignacio Zulueta and Robert and Clayton Howell. Robert Howell is the manager of Academica Nevada.

About 18% of all charter students are enrolled in for-profit charter schools, like those of Academica. If Ben Gamla is approved in Oklahoma, that will open new horizons for their expansion.

Be sure to read NPE’s report:

For-Profit Charter Schools Gone Wild—Proof That Greed and Education Don’t Mix

https://share.google/KgVigiNsDfKzQa0AD

Categories Charter Schools, Funding, Oklahoma, Religion, School Choice, Separation of church and state

Stephen Dyer: Ramaswamy Wants to Cripple Public Higher Education in Ohio

By dianeravitch
April 6, 2026 //
4

Vivek Ramaswamy is running for governor of Ohio.

Stephen Dyer, former legislator, current budget watchdog, warns that Ramaswamy wants to close some of Ohio’s institutions of higher education and make the cost of college even higher for the families of Ohio.

Vivek’s proposal to close public colleges follows years of Republican disinvestment in higher education and public education. Rising costs cause enrollments to decline. Declining enrollments are then an excuse to close colleges.

Why does Ohio want a less-educated public?

Please open the link to his excellent article to read the footnotes.

Dyer writes:

They’re hoping you don’t notice.

Notice that for 30 years, Ohio Republicans have slowly starved higher education funding, which has made the $1 million promise of a college education less attainable for middle-class families.

They’re hoping you fall for the anti-college mythology — they waste money, are giving kids diplomas for basket weaving, are full of hippies. Whatever. They don’t care. Just buy it, already!

They want you to blame anyone but them, even though it’s all their fault.

A personal note. I’m a tuition-paying parent for a public university student.

It’s now more expensive to send my son to Ohio State as an in-state resident than it was for my parents to send me to Tufts University in the 1990s.

Yeah. That’s crazy.

But that cost hike wasn’t because Ohio State is so inefficient or concerned with basket weaving majors that I’m paying through the nose for my son’s education¹. 

Nope.

Ohio Republicans made this happen. They’ve steadily made the unattainably expensive college degree a reality since they started dominating the statehouse and Governor’s mansion in 1994. In fact, it seems the two things they’ve consistently done from a public policy perspective is de-fund both public K-12 education and higher education.

The numbers don’t lie.

So, for example, in 1979, 11.6% of the state budget went to pay for the State Share of Instruction (SSI) — the direct funding portion of the state’s higher education budget that essentially subsidizes in-state tuition (it does more than that, but trying to keep it simple). That was the highest proportion on record.

Next year, it will be 4.7% — the lowest on record. 

If the state committed as much of the state budget to SSI next year as it did in 1979, the state would be providing $3.2 billion more just to SSI. 

How much is that, you ask?

In the 2024-2025 school year, the total tuition collected by all 2-year and 4-year public higher education institutions by all students, in-state and out-of-state, was $3.6 billion. 

That’s right. 

If Ohio had maintained the same commitment to its college students that it did in 1979, we could have tuition free — or essentially free — 2- and 4-year public universities for every Ohio resident … and then some. 

But we don’t even have to go back to 1979. If you went back to the last time the percentage of SSI funding went up under Gov. Ted Strickland in the 2009-2010 school year, you’d have another $1.6 billion. Or if you went back to the first year Republicans had complete governmental control — 1994-1995, you’d have $1.8 billion.

Wanna bet whether Ohio’s public 4-year institutions would be facing an “enrollment crisis” if tuition were reduced this much, Vivek?

Yet for some reason, Ramaswamy seems to want to make closing University of Akron and Kent State University — and the elimination of tens of thousands of jobs — a tentpole of his gubernatorial bid. 

As a former stat legislator who used to represent parts of Summit and Portage counties — where those two universities reside — I’m gonna say that’s certainly a strategy.

A fucking stupid one. 

But it’s a strategy.

This is not rocket science. As state commitment drops, the burden placed on college students and their families increases. The correlation is strong, as my buddy Claude pointed out here²:

Notice there’s a little blip in the percentage during the FY10 and FY11 years. Just as a reminder, those were the only two years of a politically divided legislature and Democratic Governor.

As an aside, you’ll recognize a similar blip on the state share of public K-12 education funding during this same period — the only year on record that more state than local property tax funding paid for Ohio’s public schools. 

By the way, did I mention this all good stuff happened in a budget I helped negotiate during the height of the Great Recession? Please excuse my shameless public policy prowess plug (and alliteration).

Every other year on that chart, Ohio Republicans controlled every lever of power. And the pattern is clear:

  1. Defund the state funding stream that makes college affordable for working families
  2. Make that option far less affordable for those same families
  3. Then when fewer students attend the universities that rely on first-generation students (Kent State and University of Akron come to mind, don’t they Vivek?), blame the universities
  4. Count on everyone both not noticing the steady drain of resources while they get hooked by the “out-of-touch” higher education narrative 
  5. Call on the schools to stop focusing on educating our students and instead become corporations’ training arms
  6. Or, in the case of the Ohio GOP’s billionaire gubernatorial candidate, shut them down

This is all Republicans’ fault. They didn’t have to do this. There wasn’t some crisis that forced them to divest from SSI since they took power. 

In fact, according to the most recent Grapevine report, while student share of higher education cost has gone up since 1980, it’s been by 18 percentage points nationally. 

In Ohio, that increase has jumped 24 points. 

The average Ohio student has to come up with 57 percent of their higher education cost. The national average is 39 percent — still way too high for a country that has to rely on innovation to dominate the world economy. 

But Ohio is 46 percent worse than that. 

In only 10 states do families have to pay a higher share of the higher education freight than Ohioans.

Since 1980, Ohio has cut its appropriations for higher ed overall by 14.8 percent. The national average over that period was a 13 percent increase.

Look. I know Vivek wants to shutter two of the state’s main economic and intellectual engines because they struggle with enrollment. But that struggle isn’t because of what he says — inefficiency, lack of excellence (whatever that is), etc.

I think that spending 30 years dropping the share of the state budget going to subsidize tuition below 5 percent for the first time ever might explain why fewer kids go to college in Ohio than they used to and why enrollment at first-generation universities — whose students typically come from working-class backgrounds — has struggled to grow. 

Yeah. 

That sure as hell seems more likely than whatever the fuck Vivek is imagining under his Jimmy Neutron hair. 

Categories Budget Cuts, Elections, Extremism, Funding, Higher Education, Ohio

North Carolina: Public School Parents React to Overturn of Leandro

By dianeravitch
April 2, 2026 //
2

PublicSchoolsFirstNC reacted with outrage at the decision of the North Carolina Supreme Court, overturning the Leandro Decusion of 1994.

The long-awaited North Carolina Supreme Court ruling on the state’s landmark Leandro school funding case is out.

PRESS ALERT: NC Supreme Court Dismisses Case, Does Not Enforce State Constitution

For immediate release: April 2, 2026

In a reversal of its 2022 ruling, which required lawmakers to fund public schools according to the Leandro Comprehensive Remedial Plan (designed to bring lawmakers into constitutional compliance on school funding), the current court majority “dismissed the case” ruling that a 2017 NC Trial Court ruling was made in error and all subsequent Leandro rulings are invalid.

More than thirty years of fact finding and four prior NC Supreme Court rulings had established that the North Carolina State (legislative and executive branches) had not fulfilled its obligation to North Carolina’s students.

Statewide, students’ right to a sound basic education under the North Carolina State Constitution had been violated, affirming the initial 1994 claim that became the landmark Leandro case. These facts were not disputed.

The North Carolina State Constitution clearly states that all children across our state, no matter their circumstances or background, are entitled to a sound basic education funded by the state. While the court’s decision is disappointing and shocking in the degree to which it removes the courts from responsibility, it does NOT absolve legislators of their legal duty to adequately fund public schools.

Individually and collectively, we must take action to remind our lawmakers of their responsibility to abide by the state constitution’s requirement to ensure our children’s civil and human rights by fully funding a free, uniform public education.

In her dissent, Justice Anita Earls writes that, “The Court today betrays these constitutional commitments.

The majority dismisses North Carolina’s landmark constitutional education rights litigation with prejudice and with no relief for any injured party because no plaintiff formally filed an amended pleading to challenge the current statewide funding system. In other words, the majority concludes that it will not order the State to correct the way it has harmed public school students, even in very low-wealth school districts like Hoke County, and even as two previous Courts concluded that the State is failing to adequately educate students and must act to fix the public education system. In reaching that decision, the majority relies on a hyper-technicality that is not even lawful grounds to dismiss these proceedings and was not argued by any party. Specifically, no party asked this Court to dismiss this case because it was an improper “facial” challenge. The majority’s narrow holding rests on stunning and unsupported assertions.”

PSFNC agrees! The ruling today highlights the judicial and legislative neglect facing our public schools. They have been operating the entire school year without a 2025-26 budget even though their operating costs have increased. Later this month, the legislative short session begins. North Carolina’s students can wait no longer.

PSFNC calls on all North Carolinians to urge legislators to fulfill their obligations—fully fund public schools including Leandro, pay teachers professional, competitive salaries, and invest in the future of our children.

Media Contact: Heather Koons, Communications Director

heather@publicschoolsfirstnc.org (919-749-6184)

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Funding, North Carolina

North Carolina: Supreme Court Reverses Fair Funding Decision

By dianeravitch
April 2, 2026 //
0

Supporters of public schools in North Carolina have relied on the Leandro decision for more than three decades as they demanded fair funding of the schools. The North Carolina Supreme Court, now with a Republican majority, just overruled Leandro, which was decided in 1994. The new decision ruled that courts can’t tell the legislature to spend money.

For 32 years, North Carolina leaders have struggled to define what it means when the state constitution says “equal opportunities shall be provided for all students.” The long-running Leandro school lawsuit has seen the courts go back and forth on what the courts can do to provide a “sound basic education” for North Carolina’s 1.5 million public school students. Thursdays ruling by the N.C. Supreme Court marks the latest and potentially final chapter in that fight….

T. Keung Hui of the North Carolina News & Observer wrote:

The North Carolina Supreme Court has overturned a 2022 decision that allowed judges to order the transfer of hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to fund public schools.

In a decision released on Thursday, the Supreme Court’s Republican majority ruled that state courts do not have the constitutional authority to order the spending of state dollars for schools. The decision was 4-3 with Republican Associate Justice Richard Dietz joining the two Democratic justices in dissenting.

The decision reverses a 2022 ruling by the former Democrat majority that the courts can require state officials to transfer funds to try to provide students with their constitutional right to a sound basic education. The court dismissed the lawsuit, apparently putting an end to the nearly 32-year-old court case.

“As this litigation comes to a close a few weeks shy of its thirty-second anniversary, we are reminded of these principles from our prior cases: In our constitution, the people established a tripartite system of government,” Chief Justice Paul Newby wrote in the majority ruling.

“In doing so, the people did not vest the judicial branch with the power to resolve policy disputes between the other branches of government or to set education policy. We would be especially ill-equipped to resolve such questions in any event.”

Decision disappointment for school supporters

The long-delayed ruling had been expected after the 2022 elections flipped the court majority to Republicans. The court’s Republican majority then agreed to block the money transfer and rehear the case over the objections of the Democratic justices.

“Today’s decision is disappointing — but not surprising,” Keith Poston, president of the Wake Ed Partnership, said in a statement Thursday. “The Court ruled on process, not whether students are getting what they need. That responsibility now sits squarely with state leaders. The needs in our schools haven’t changed—and neither has the urgency to act.”

It has been 770 days since oral arguments were heard in February 2024. The lengthy wait for the new ruling had raised questions.

This year’s Supreme Court election won’t shift the court’s majority. Only Democratic Associate Justice Anita Earls, who is running against GOP state Rep. Sarah Stevens, will be on the midterm ballot

The decision comes at a turning point in how the state funds education. A report released in December by the Education Law Center ranked North Carolina last in the nation in school funding effort and 50th out of the 50 states and the District of Columbia in funding level.

State Republican legislators fought the judicial money transfer, arguing that only the General Assembly can order state dollars to be spent. Democratic lawmakers have supported the 2022 court decision.

“Today’s decision rightly recognizes the constitutional role of the North Carolina General Assembly, since the state Constitution entrusts sole appropriations authority to the legislature,” Demi Dowdy, a spokesperson for House Speaker Destin Hall, said in a statement Thursday. “House Republicans remain committed to investing in public education, including through our budget proposal to raise starting teacher pay to $50,000 and provide 8.7% average raises to our public school teachers.”

Read more at: https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/article312274642.html#storylink=cpy

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Funding, North Carolina

Vermont: Malign Rightwingers Target Public Schools

By dianeravitch
March 31, 2026 //
3

Ken Fredette is a Vermonter who is dedicated to improving the state’s public schools. He is a former President of the Vermont School Boards Association and is currently active in Friends of Vermont Public Education.

A decade ago, when I visited Vermont, I was very impressed by the State Secretary of Education Rebecca Holcomb. She had a vision for public schools that was centered on the well-being of children, not punishments for teachers and schools. She ran for Governor and unfortunately lost. She is currently serving in the Legislature.

The current Governor is Republican Phil Scott. Ken Fredette wrote me that Scott left the Secretary of Education job open for a year (after Holcomb’s replacement Dan French resigned). Then, Ken wrote:

In 2024, following Phil Scott delaying appointing a replacement for SecEd Dan French for a year, he then appointed Zoie Saunders, from Florida, who worked for a for-profit charter school organization, and whose only experience with public schools was closing them. I was in the Vermont Senate chamber when the vote was 19-9 against approving the appointment – that advise and consent thing – and Scott reappointed her to “fill the vacancy” created by that vote before I was out of the building. You can’t make this stuff up.

So, clearly, Vermont has a Governor and Secretary of Education who have no commitment to Vermont’s public schools, attended by 90% of the state’s children.

You can help save Vermont public schools! Log in here. Stay informed.

Ken wrote this article, which was published by Weekender Rutland Herald and also the Barre-Montpelier Times Argus.

If anyone had any doubts that there is a concerted effort to undermine public education here in Vermont and throughout the country, those doubts should have evaporated on March 20, when an assistant U.S. secretary of education — on a tour to visit a school in all 50 states — opted to visit a small (less than 60 students) parochial school in Newport for a good example of schools in Vermont.

The plan to shift support from our constitutionally-mandated public education system to private schools — sometimes religious, sometimes for-profit charter schools in other states — has been orchestrated somewhat quietly for decades by groups employing tactics from a national playbook.

But the campaign is no longer quiet, bolstered by edicts from the White House, such as the federal voucher program; The Heritage Foundation (which carved out the dark caverns of Project 2025); questionable opinions from the U.S. Supreme Court regarding the separation of church and state, enshrined in the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution, and articulated by Thomas Jefferson; and countless other conservative groups.

The never-ending attacks have presented in blatant falsehoods: Remember the absurd claim that Critical Race Theory — a college level course — was being taught in our public schools? Lacking even a shred of evidence, it seems the fallback position of those promoting this was the more times the lie was told, and the louder the bombasts got, the more people would buy into it.

At the height of that hoax, a sitting member of the Vermont Legislature came to a local school board meeting with a list of words and phrases I recognized as having been generated by the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (one of the above-mentioned conservative groups). I watched with my eyes growing wider as they rattled off the list, ending by demanding the board immediately issue a directive to all teachers that nothing on it would ever be spoken in a classroom.

When the air let out of the CRT balloon, it merely meant it was time to turn to the next page in the national playbook. That presented as empowering parents. Seriously, what possible argument could be given against parents having a say in their children’s education?

Choice has been a highly charged topic around the country for many years. Here in Vermont, this has reached a point where it is pitting the administration against our Legislature. My faith is placed with our representatives and senators to thoughtfully deliberate such important policy matters, and not afford so much decision-making authority to the governor’s office.

Also on March 20, a commentary from the director of policy and communications at the Vermont Agency of Education sang praises of Mississippi raising their fourth-graders’ reading proficiency dramatically, and relatively quickly; our governor had also pointed to this remarkable achievement during his recent State of the State address.

I’m very glad for the kids of Mississippi, but to imply Vermont students are falling off some sort of educational cliff by cherry-picking numbers and using vague phrases like “… trending downward for a decade” (starting about when our current governor took office) is chicanery. So is skipping over a major piece of the story: Mississippi third-graders who weren’t likely to excel in the fourth-grade assessments were forced to repeat third grade.

Vermont is unique in many ways, including — and perhaps especially — our education system. When 30% of school budgets failed at Town Meeting 2024, Vermonters weren’t saying to tear down our school system — they were saying that property taxes were burying them.

There are some pretty basic steps that could be taken to relieve those tax burdens on longtime working Vermonters. Asking those affluent enough to have a second home here to pay a fairer share is an obvious one, and that’s been a very successful program in a couple of other states already. Following that, let’s update the Common Level of Appraisal system such that if I buy a place in Vermont for $475,000 that was listed at $247,000, I just agreed the new value is $475,000, and my new neighbors’ property tax rates won’t float up to subsidize mine.

There are other steps we could take, but going back to a foundation formula is not among them. When you hear talk from the administration about a plan that is “evidenced based,” please bear in mind that the highly paid outside consultants providing the evidence repeatedly conceded that it didn’t really apply to Vermont, because we are different from any of the places they’d studied.

We need to look at data germane to who and where we are in order to make informed decisions on how to best proceed, because we need to get this right.

Ken Fredette lives in Wallingford.

Categories Democracy, Education Industry, Extremism, Funding, Privatization, Religion, Separation of church and state, Supporting public schools, Vermont
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