The mismatch between the childcare arrangements parents say they prefer and those that public policy tends to emphasize — which I call the childcare preference gap — was reinforced by two recent surveys. 

A administered to 1,000 parents with children ages 5 and under in December 2025 by GBAO on behalf of Third Way — a center-left think tank — found that around half of parent participants preferred having a parent stay home to provide care, with another 15% preferring a family, friend or neighbor caregiver. While families were generally satisfied with the care their children were receiving, only around half of those using home- or center-based care said it was their preferred childcare arrangement, compared to 80% of those with a parent staying home and nearly 70% of those using FFN care.

The largest U.S. of parents with children under the age of 6, released in May by New America’s New Practice Lab, echoes these findings. When asked about their ideal childcare arrangement, 49% of nearly 5,500 parent participants said they’d prefer to care for their child themselves or for the child’s other parent to provide the care. Meanwhile, 11% preferred an FFN caregiver, and just 15% listed their ideal as a formal setting.

Surveys conducted earlier in the 2020s by and reported similar results. Importantly, these preferences are dynamic: As children age, there is more interest in formal programs, such as licensed childcare centers.

It’s important to consider that most of the polls described above asked parents to envision their ideal childcare scenario, setting aside costs and the financial impact of having a parent stay home. But families don’t live in hypotheticals. There are real financial implications for decisions about childcare, and when opportunities to access free or low-cost licensed early care and education arise — like universal pre-K or childcare — . What’s more, the strong preference for parental care in the first year of life seems to implicate a need for better paid leave policy as much as childcare policy, particularly since .

There’s also the reality that what people say they want to do in a survey can differ from what they actually do when making choices. However, the data can still be meaningful and should be considered when designing family and childcare policies. It is no more justified to ignore the desires of parents who prefer their children in licensed programs than those who prefer to provide the care themselves. 

Doing so can give policymakers a false impression that all parents need is access to any childcare slot, regardless of its characteristics. However, from the nonprofit Child Trends found that among the 622 families surveyed, 64% of those that used any form of nonparental childcare said there was moderate or high “misalignment” between their current care setup and their preferences and needs. That misalignment reflected parents using programs that didn’t fit their budget, align with their quality standards, reflect their beliefs or match their ideal setting. This discrepancy can actually cause material harm: Studies have found that when parents feel uncomfortable about their childcare arrangement, it may lead to . 

Yet current federal childcare policy, as well as most reform proposals over the past 20 years, do a rather poor job of reflecting parents’ stated preferences. While public policy does not always match public opinion (if it did, the U.S. would have, for example, and ), there is clearly room for improvement here. 

When it comes to childcare, for example, receive most of the funding from the Child Care and Development Fund, a federal program that sends grant money to states and is a key source of funding for childcare subsidies. Families with stay-at-home parents are categorically ineligible for childcare subsidies, and the most recent reauthorization of the law governing the program, the , made it harder for FFN providers . The Build Back Better Act that passed the House during the Biden Administration did not make any fundamental changes to that orientation.

To understand the persistent preference gap, one must understand the origins of modern U.S. childcare policy. Because childcare became , the conceptual underpinnings of the CCDBG Act are grounded in the premise that childcare assistance can increase employment and earnings, ultimately (the reasoning goes) enabling families to move out of poverty.

The appeal of such an approach is understandable: It’s far easier for policymakers to wrap their hands around licensed programs caring for children during parents’ reported work hours than to engage with the messy complexity of actually ensuring that parents have the care they prefer in order to bond with and healthily raise their very young children. Closing the preference gap, then, requires politicians on both sides of the aisle to reframe the goals of childcare policy — and to get more comfortable with trusting parents.

America’s current approach to childcare policy isn’t the only pathway. In the past, the U.S. actually did experiment with that allowed eligible low-income parents to use subsidy dollars to pay themselves, though such efforts never caught fire. Other countries have also built examples to look to. A recent from the People’s Policy Project highlighted how Nordic nations have built a childcare system that couples affordable licensed options with support for informal care. While the financial support available in the Nordic countries is unlikely to be high enough to enable a parent to stop working entirely, it could be the key to unlocking greater flexibility in balancing work and family responsibilities.

A shift does seem to be underway in America. Some policies are becoming more inclusive. New Mexico’s universal childcare system, for example, allows and receive $750 a month per child, though it does still exclude stay-at-home parents. Politicians are changing their tune, too: Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna that would create new structures to compensate FFN and stay-at-home parents alongside licensed programs, while the Democratically-aligned Project 2029 recently that would guarantee parents the right to choose the childcare that works best for them by offering access to either free licensed programs or a monthly stipend of $1,000 to compensate stay-at-home parents or FFN caregivers.

More and philanthropic leaders are also speaking up about the need to meet parents where they are at. For instance, the WeVision EarlyEd initiative, led by the Bainum Family Foundation, reimagining childcare policy to support two pathways for families: high-quality licensed ECE, and “trusted caregivers” which include parents and FFN caregivers.

This evolution can’t come fast enough: All families deserve the freedom to get as close as possible to their ideal childcare arrangement. That would benefit kids, parents and society writ large. The more that public policy can align with family childcare preferences, the better off the country will be.

Disclosure: The Bainum Foundation provides financial support to ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ.

But here’s what it feels like from his seat. In his classroom, his teacher references a “silent e,” but the intervention software calls it a “magic e.” His tutor uses different hand signals and follows a different skills sequence. Supports meant to reinforce classroom learning are unintentionally cutting against that, leaving him to sort it out alone.

When a student hasn’t mastered something in class, the standard response has been to try a fresh approach — a different program, a new strategy. But evidence from Knox County Schools in Tennessee suggests the opposite: What they need is more of the same.

Last year, Knox County conducted a , the “gold standard” of education research. Students below the 40th percentile on literacy assessments were randomly assigned to one of two tutoring models. Both received the same amount of tutoring time and similar support. The difference was the curriculum.Ìę

One group used off-the-shelf materials designed specifically for intervention. The other received tutoring built around the high-quality instructional materials used in their regular classroom. Content was delivered with scaffolding and pre-teaching, in groups no larger than four students who met at least three times weekly to ensure intervention kept pace with classroom instruction.

When Accelerate staff visited Pleasant Ridge Elementary, one of the pilot schools, the difference was immediately noticeable. Students receiving aligned tutoring moved seamlessly between intervention and regular instruction because the materials looked, felt and sounded the same. 

The data confirmed that impression. Students in the aligned group outperformed peers, posting gains of 0.12 standard deviations, or about 1.3 months of additional literacy growth, with even greater gains among students who began the year in the lower half of the tutored group. Those children saw the largest effect: 0.18 standard deviations in growth.

Under these conditions, trained paraprofessionals also delivered the aligned intervention at least as effectively as licensed teachers. That allows districts to keep experienced educators focused on core instruction while extending proven support to more children.

This idea isn’t unique to Knox County. In its recent report, “,” TNTP argued that instructional incoherence undermines learning acceleration and widens opportunity gaps. When districts align instruction across settings, students are better supported to engage in grade-level work.Ìę

This doesn’t mean standalone interventions should disappear. Some students require specialized instruction. But districts should stop assuming a separate intervention program is best for literacy learning, especially when they have a high-quality curriculum in place.

The practical case is just as strong.

• Teachers benefit from a unified system. When intervention specialists and classroom teachers use the same materials, coordination becomes genuine collaboration. In Knox County, who experienced both models preferred the aligned approach.Ìę
• Students face less cognitive load. When the words, routines, sequence and strategy hold steady between classroom and intervention, students stop spending energy navigating inconsistencies and can focus on learning.
• Cost savings are real — and can be redirected to other priorities. Districts invest approximately on literacy instruction, with a significant portion dedicated to parallel interventions. Tennessee SCORE estimated Knox County could save $2 million — — by drawing on the core curriculum rather than purchasing separate programs.
• Fragmentation falls hardest on students who need coherence most. Benefits should extend to multilingual learners and students with disabilities, who move between settings more than most. Knox County didn’t test that premise explicitly, but evidence from the pilot was promising enough that the district is expanding the aligned tutoring method to those students starting this fall. 

Exploring this sort of alignment doesn’t require major investments or a district-wide overhaul. Erin Phillips, Knox County’s executive director of learning and literacy, frames the opportunity in a refreshing way: “try in” rather than “buy in.”Ìę

District leaders can begin with a pilot — a low-risk one where teachers learn and refine with support, leaders build context-specific evidence, and costs stay low since they’re using materials they already own.

are drawing national attention, and districts everywhere are looking for what to borrow. Right now, leaders are making decisions about next year’s budgets, staffing and schedules. It may feel late to act, but the strategy embraced by Knox County doesn’t require a change of course, just a refocusing of intervention around the existing curriculum. Here’s how to do it:

• Start with a coalition of the willing. Pick one grade level and schools whose leaders want to try this. 
• Plan professional learning. Teachers and paraprofessionals can deliver this well but need effective support. Build training before the year starts.
• Set clear metrics. Decide how you’ll measure success: student movement between tiers, curriculum-embedded assessment results, teacher feedback or dollars saved. Monitor progress and adjust as needed.

The most compelling lesson from the Knox County study may be that it doesn’t ask leaders to buy another program or adopt a new initiative. It asks them to reconsider how the pieces of their existing instructional system fit together.

Education has no shortage of products promising to accelerate learning. Before investing in the next one, leaders should embrace Phillips’ suggestion to “try in.” They might discover, as Knox County did, that the most effective intervention materials are sitting on their shelves.

I respond in our native tongue, “Muy bien, Âży tĂș?”Ìę

We chat briefly about students from our class, and I ask about Camila — a silly ninth grader who always brightened our days. 

“Hay 
 la deportaron, miss,” he whispers. In that moment, I’m astonished but not surprised. This has become a familiar reality for many newcomer students.

These days, as an English language development teacher to newcomers in Santa Maria, California, I often hear my high school students speaking casually about going back to their native countries. Voluntary and forceful deportations have become commonplace over the last year and a half. The has doubled since President Donald Trump’s second term began, and the number of immigrants in detention facilities is at an all-time high. 

But families being broken apart and people being uprooted from the homes they’ve built — in many cases, the only homes they know — is not OK or normal. We as a society cannot accept this. It’s an outrage. It’s also painful and traumatizing for the families experiencing it. And I know that because I’ve experienced it myself. 

Ten years ago, on a Monday morning, I received a text from my older sister. “Mom is going back to Mexico,” it read. I was at Starbucks, reading my book, when I stared at my phone in disbelief. But something in her text made me believe that this news was real. As I headed home that day, “Te Vas Amor” by El Coyote y Su Banda Tierra Santa played in my white Honda Accord. El Coyote sang, “Te vas amor, tal vez mis ojos no te vuelvan a mirar.” You are leaving love, perhaps my eyes will never see you again. 

I cried at the prospect of losing my mother to the border. Given that she was undocumented, I knew Mami would not be able to come back.

The hours and days after were a blur. When I got home, Mami revealed she’d be going back to Mexico to care for my grandfather before he passed. Because she needed to leave so urgently, Papi would have to join her later. My parents owned an agricultural business that he needed to tend to. When they’d first immigrated to the U.S., they’d picked strawberries; eventually they’d begun cultivating fruit and hiring workers of their own. My parents had found the American dream they’d longed for: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness here.

Mami began getting her affairs in order that same day. I don’t remember asking her to stay. I was 23 years old, a recent graduate from UCLA and technically an adult at the time. I was also a U.S. citizen. I felt it selfish to ask my mother to choose between her dying father and her grown daughter, so I just processed the news and supported her decision. 

The days after involved buying flights, speaking to a lawyer, putting the house — which they had just purchased and paid off — in my name, and changing bank accounts to include me as their fiduciary representative. I did all this while my heart ached at the thought of losing my mother to a border that would not welcome her back. 

By Friday night, just four days after Mami had made the decision to go back to Mexico, we were on our way to Los Angeles International Airport, where she said goodbye to her husband and boarded a plane to Oaxaca. 

Ten months later, once strawberry season had concluded, Papi was on his way to join her. Before he went through airport security, I gave my father a hug. This time, both my parents were leaving this country, leaving home.

It’s 2026 now, almost 10 years since I lost my parents to self-deportation. It’s a shame that things have only gotten worse for immigrant families like mine. It seems like every day we see social media posts about families getting separated from their loved ones and GoFundMe pages asking for help with legal expenses for family members who were deported. Each day, another family is broken by a border and laws that don’t allow them to stay together. 

And yet we, as a society, have accepted this new norm. Why? Why have we tolerated the idea that a father or mother can just be ripped apart from their child? Each day I walk into my classroom, overjoyed by the presence of my students, and think of the ache they must feel with this current administration. I lost my parents to the border at the age of 23; here they are, experiencing it as 15-year-olds. I understand that my students carry not only their backpacks, pencils and notebooks, but also the weight of potentially losing their loved ones. 

They also carry something else: resilience. Strength comes from trials and tribulations. Despite what they’re experiencing, my students are brilliant and thriving. I remind them of this each day. 

I offer a space of love and learning, a space where they know they are accepted and valued, no matter what else is going on in our country. In my classroom, they know they belong, and they know that while we’re working together to learn English, their native tongues are still welcome.

Despite what I can offer my students in my classroom, we as a society need to do better for them. What is going on in our country is not normal and should not be reduced to normalcy just because it’s happening. It should not happen at all. My students deserve to live and learn in a place where their only worry might be whether they studied enough for the science test or whether they made the baseball team, not whether their life will be uprooted by the presence of ICE at the local grocery store. 

For now, I cheer for them when they say, “Hello, Ms. Gonzalez, how are you?,” demonstrating they are capable of learning a new language. I celebrate them when they get a perfect score on a test they were worried about. For now, I do my best to put a smile on my face and assure them that no matter what, they are always welcome here.

That doesn’t have to be the case. As researchers and parent leaders, we watched a rare shift emerge over the past several years in Evanston, Illinois. PTA funds, typically raised locally within individual school communities, are now raised collectively across all schools in the district and reallocated equitably.

The district-wide PTA Council pools and redistributes all fundraising across schools in the district through a new initiative called the One Fund. Every school receives an equality distribution of a standard amount per student, as well as an equity distribution based on student need. This initiative emerged from and is supported by the — a multiracial group of parents, caregivers, and community members committed to advocating for resource sharing and equity-centered community work. 

Before the One Fund, there were significant differences in the fundraising capacity of PTAs across the 13 schools in Evanston’s K-8 district–with a gap of more than $40,000 between schools, totaling hundreds of dollars per pupil. One school might modernize track and playground facilities with just one year’s fundraising, while another struggles to fund basic school supplies. Two early PEP leaders how these fundraising discrepancies materialized and how parent and caregiver organizers worked hard to raise awareness of the vast differences across schools, often along familiar economic and racial lines. That made some people uncomfortable. 

Similar inequities in funding PTAs and other parent groups show up across the country, as  our research from and shows, as well as in New York City. Indeed, there has been with and critical questions that challenge these common regressive spending patterns.

Across several years, PEP leaders in Evanston held town halls, meticulously addressed questions and concerns, and made a great effort to organize community support — including from some of the most affluent parents in the district. Parents and caregivers developed a shared, common understanding of the problem: PTA inequities were inconsistent with their values and with the district’s commitments to imbuing equity across educational experiences and opportunities for students. 

With a clear sense that there was a problem, the community muddled toward a solution. This didn’t come easy — there were uncertainties and there remain pockets of resistance. However, PEP emerged as a solution by accommodating a range of how people thought about solving the problem of PTA inequities. 

For some, the One Fund represented “a charity thing” involving those with more giving to those with less. For many, the One Fund seemed like a no-brainer: The benefits would eventually come around to support all children, since every student in the K-8 district attends the same high school. 

Still others understood the One Fund as a form of mutuality and solidarity,helping to reframe PTA support from focused on “my school” to “we are one district
we need to start working as one school, as opposed to mine, my school, my kids.” This reframing around solidarity reflects ways that the One Fund and the PTA Equity Project have helped to deepen community across the district.

In Evanston, the work continues. There is a more even distribution of PTA dollars across schools. And despite smaller annual budgets, PTAs are still able to support valuable enrichments and programming as they embrace the new orientation around the entire district community’s needs. Currently, the One Fund is set up on a three-year cycle for PTAs to recommit to the equity initiative, which enables continued engagement and commitment to shared values around equity in and across schools.

What happened in Evanston should encourage parent and community leaders elsewhere that it’s possible to do something, even when that something might at first feel hard and a bit amorphous. In fact, two of us have recently been working with similar efforts in districts across the country to understand each community’s needs and hopes.

Beyond differences in dollars, it’s important to think about other ways that racial and economic inequities can show up — or be challenged — in PTA spaces. Prior to the One Fund, there were sustained initiatives in Evanston aimed at laying a foundational understanding and establishing a shared language around equity. This can help build toward solidarity, which is core to deeper shifts toward more equitable educational opportunities.

The model used in Evanston will not neatly import to all places. A few other models exist, including:

• In , each public school can raise up to $5,000 for its own campus. Past that amount, the rest of the funds go into a centralized pot that is distributed across the district’s schools.
• In some places, there are informal “sister school” PTAs, which pair differently resourced schools to share dollars, information and ideas.
• In , Black parents hosted parent affinity groups as an alternative to the traditional fundraising-focused PTA. That ultimately launched a district-wide grassroots movement of parents organizing for equitable educational opportunities.

In reflecting on Evanston’s One Fund model, we find it remarkable and unremarkable at the same time. Dedicated parent and caregiver organizers have donated their time, talent, and treasure to do something rare — shift dollar resources in a much more equitable way. And it’s just how things are done now — it’s not a big deal that this is the way PTAs raise funds in the district. The three of us hope that other communities can reflect, engage and join us in our commitment to exploring possibilities of more equitable educational experiences.

If communities continue treating facility investment as a secondary concern, they should not be surprised when families decide those schools are no longer the best place to educate their children.

The American Society of Civil Engineers has given for three consecutive report cards, while the rest of the country’s infrastructure improved. Nearly four in 10 public school buildings were constructed before 1970. The funding gap to bring them up to a functional standard now stands at an estimated $429 billion — and it keeps growing because communities keep deferring the problem.

On the ground, that deferred maintenance looks like leaking roofs, asbestos ceiling tiles and mold scraped from between wall coverings. It looks like parking lots full of potholes, playgrounds with rusted equipment, and classrooms that are too hot in summer or too cold in winter because the heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems failed years ago.

Another similarity most of these buildings share is a lack of any real technology infrastructure in an era when students cannot learn without one.

The physical condition of a school building is one of the primary drivers of the educational experience delivered inside it. And the research is catching up to what communities have been living with for years.

The economist Julien LaFortune, working with the Public Policy Institute of California, studied school facility investment using data from the Los Angeles Unified School District and in test scores, attendance and surrounding property values after new school buildings were constructed.

What made LaFortune’s findings notable was that the gains were not primarily explained by changes in class size, teachers, principals or student composition. When researchers stripped away every other variable, what was left was the building. By his analysis, for every dollar invested in school facilities, the program increased housing values.

Research going back two decades has documented a between facility condition and teacher retention. When a school building deteriorates, the teachers with the most options leave first. The ones who stay are often the ones with nowhere else to go.

When a school is modernized, that dynamic reverses. Qualified educators who previously passed over the school begin applying, while teachers who are already there choose to stay. The result is a more experienced, more committed faculty working with better tools in a better environment — and students who receive stronger instruction as a direct consequence.

That instructional improvement shows up in measurable ways. Students in modernized facilities score higher on standardized assessments and miss fewer days of school. Researchers saw this trend emerge during COVID, when they first noted the correlation between better ventilation and . More recent studies have found that boosted math scores and reduced suspensions in schools — because student comfort matters. 

When those results become visible, other families in the community begin seeking out the school. As enrollment grows, schools gain the resources that come with a larger student population and the capacity to expand what they offer.

One example of this is the Detroit Public Safety Academy, a dropout recovery program. It’s a school designed specifically for students who have already left the system or are on the verge of leaving it. The program does not offer a GED. It instead delivers a full, certified high school diploma, the same credential that any other public school confers. Upon graduation, students walk directly into careers in public safety with real wages and real futures. The school now posts a 90% graduation rate among a population that had largely been written off, and Detroit’s public safety workforce has a pipeline it did not have before.

That model wouldn’t work in a building that is falling apart. The aging building underwent a dramatic renovation, which has enabled its success. Without it, the program wouldn’t exist, and those students wouldn’t have that pathway.

Modern workforce-development programs require modern facilities. A manufacturing lab equipped with computer-controlled machine tools and robotic arms requires purpose-built space that a building from 1963 cannot provide. Forty-seven states . More than 11 million students nationally. The demand exists. In too many communities, the buildings to support it do not.

As enrollment grows and school quality becomes visible to the broader community, the effects extend beyond the school itself. Families relocate to be within a school’s attendance boundary. That increased demand for housing near high-performing schools drives up property values.

By tracking housing markets near improved schools, the National Bureau of Economic Research found that roughly $20 in housing value accumulates for every additional dollar in per-pupil spending — a signal of how much families are willing to pay to be near a school that works.

We tend to describe declining enrollment as the cause of deteriorating schools, but the arrow may point the other way more often.

Families leave schools that no longer meet their expectations. They move to districts with better facilities or choose alternatives that have multiplied over the past decade. The school loses students, loses funding and deteriorates further. That cycle is not inevitable. Modernize the building, and the sequence can begin running in reverse.

The question is whether communities are willing to treat the building as the starting point rather than the last priority. Children only pass through the education system once. They should not spend those years waiting for adults to decide that the building matters.

And they are shifting fast, to agencies that are often understaffed, under-resourced and themselves uncertain about what comes next.

The districts looking to them for help either. Learning recovery from the pandemic remains unfinished. Enrollment is falling in most of the country, and federal pandemic relief funds, which temporarily filled the holes in many districts’ budgets, have dried up.Ìę

And new disruptions, from shifts in required federal funding to rapidly changing guidance on civil rights enforcement, are hitting districts that are already stretched thin. As one superintendent told us as part of with the American School District Panel project: “All of this uncertainty, it definitely creates a lot of chaos that ultimately impacts students and families.”

The good news is that SEAs do not need to take drastic action to help districts. In fact, some of the most useful things states can do right now are relatively small, targeted and achievable without new legislation or major budget commitments. Here is where to start.

Provide legal and financial clarity immediately.

District leaders told us that timely legal guidance from their SEA has been essential as they navigate fast-changing federal directives around diversity, equity and inclusion policies, student mental health support, and civil rights enforcement. In the absence of clear guidance, districts often end up in protracted, partisan discussions about how to reconcile conflicting state, federal and local policies. One superintendent credited proactive SEA guidance with allowing the district to “get the politics out of it” and avoid getting “jammed up legally.” This is low-cost, high-impact work that states can do now.

Financial clarity matters just as much. Districts cannot budget responsibly if they do not know how much money they’ll have. SEAs do not need to wait to redesign funding formulas to help (though many formulas do need updating). They can start by helping districts build realistic near- and long-term financial forecasts that model different federal funding scenarios, so leaders are planning for what is likely instead of hoping for the best.

Show districts where they have more flexibility than they realize.

is pushing district leaders to reconsider all expenditures, and savvy superintendents are already finding pockets of flexibility in federal and state funding rules that others do not know exist. As one told us, “We take everything we can find.” SEAs should be mapping and communicating where that flexibility exists, particularly for funds supporting English learners, before- and after-school programs, teacher professional development and nutrition services — areas where funding gaps have been most acute. What one district discovers through trial and error, an SEA can share across the entire state.

Cut red tape. 

Districts burn through countless resources complying with state and federal rules and regulations, many of which are suddenly out-of-date due to dramatic changes at the U.S. Department of Education. Some of the superintendents with whom we spoke reported an uptick in “monitoring audits” over the past year as their SEA has increased reporting and program reviews. SEAs themselves on ensuring compliance with their own and federal regulations. SEAs should review this red tape and strip out old, outdated rules and regulations, freeing up resources to be redirected toward new priorities.Ìę

Help districts face the enrollment reckoning honestly.

Declining enrollment is arguably the most consequential problem districts face right now, and , 25% of districts nationwide reported that declining enrollment was one of their top three challenges. Similarly, a third of districts reported budget shortfalls as a top-three challenge, and budgets only get tighter as per-pupil funding follows students out the door. Districts grappling with this reality need two things from their state: permission to make hard decisions and practical tools for making them well.Ìę

Some states are beginning to act. Indiana’s Innovation Network Schools and Texas’s District of Innovation designations give districts regulatory relief to try new approaches. But SEAs scan move faster than legislation. They can help districts share knowledge about how to compete for and retain students, identify services that could generate revenue in states with education savings accounts programs, and build realistic plans for right-sizing that do not simply default to closing schools in the communities that can least afford to lose them.

Identify and spread what is working in teacher recruitment and training.

Proposed cuts to federal grants have threatened to reduce support for teacher professional learning, but they have also freed districts from some programs that were not workingÌę well. States can help districts figure out what actually moves the needle on teacher recruitment, retention and instructional quality. Creating new statewide teacher training systems is a long-term project. In the near term, SEAs can identify effective programs and share the best approaches.

Create real forums for superintendents to drive policy and collective action.

Superintendents valued time to solve problems with peers, whether in person or virtually. These conversations reveal emerging challenges before they become crises and spread practical solutions. They also give SEAs a real-time feedback loop on what is actually happening in districts, what guidance is missing and where state policy is creating unintended friction. When he was Louisiana’s state schools chief, John White to help inform and accelerate Science of Reading initiatives. This is not a major investment but can yield high returns.

Small changes like these will put SEAs on the path to reimagining their role and pivoting toward a more proactive, creative position. These moves will not resolve every challenge districts face. But they can reduce the chaos superintendents tell us they’re navigating. As the federal role in education continues to contract, the states that move quickly to become genuine partners to their districts, rather than sources of additional compliance burden, will be the ones best positioned to actually improve outcomes for students.

In the months ahead, CRPE will be tracking how states are adapting to the shifting federal landscape and highlighting lessons from their efforts, with particular attention to which states are moving past small adjustments and toward the strategic leadership that this moment demands.

More than 40 states now mandate evidence-based reading instruction in public schools. The specifics in these new laws and regulations vary — most require that schools use high-quality curriculum based on the Science of Reading, many invest in new teacher training, and some ban discredited methods. But they all have one thing in common: a focus on the early grades. 

In my nonprofit’s work supporting districts to implement new curriculum and instruction, we’ve seen educators work tirelessly to shift classroom practice. We’ve then seen them joyfully experience the positive impacts on teaching and learning. And we’ve been hearing a consistent question.

What about high school?

Time and again, school and district leaders would pose the same questions about grades 9-12 that we were exploring in K-8. They wanted guidance about what high-quality English curriculum should look like. They were looking for materials that would nurture literacy for older students, especially those who struggled with grade-level texts. They were asking: How could they identify well-designed materials that truly support strong English instruction in high school, especially as it relates to building knowledge through rigorous, content-rich texts?

At the same time, we were hearing from publishers. Some were expanding their programs for younger students to include high school English, while others were interested in strengthening existing materials. Several were just getting started developing something new. No matter where they were on this journey, publishers wanted thoughtful, evidence-based criteria and feedback to ensure their materials reflected the strongest research and instructional design principles. 

They weren’t simply looking for a rating — they wanted guidance that would help them build evidence-based curriculum that met the needs of high school teachers and students. 

These many questions converged. It became clear that there was an opportunity to create a shared framework that could support both sides of the equation: helping publishers develop stronger curriculum, while helping districts make more informed adoption decisions. That inspired the Knowledge Matters .

We had past experience to draw on: In 2023, we created a review framework for evidence-based, knowledge-building ELA in . We built on that foundation while bringing together additional experts with deep experience in high school English, to ensure the criteria reflected the unique demands of academic expectations and classroom instruction in grades 9-12. 

That yielded a set of about two dozen criteria across eight domains, starting with a curriculum’s alignment to the science of reading. A strong curriculum uses evidence-based practices that accelerate student literacy, such as building vocabulary and knowledge through reading a substantial and coherent volume of texts. That helps students grapple with challenging texts, including through communal close reads that build students’ stamina, confidence and ability to ensure that what they read makes sense. It also engages students with content-rich topics drawn from history, science, the arts and literature, because a rich knowledge base is what makes complex texts comprehensible and literary analysis meaningful. 

Our tool identifies the features of a curriculum that foster this growth, including activities that systematically develop academic and domain-specific vocabulary; guidance for educators to engage students in productive and sustained academic discussions; explicit instruction in writing and frequent writing opportunities anchored in texts; targeted supports to grant equitable access to grade-level content; and predictable, effective instructional routines and teacher-facing materials to inform professional learning.

We then field-tested the tool by reviewing Novel HS ELA, a knowledge-rich, novel-based 9-12 program published by , The curriculum was designed to foster engagement with rich literature while also developing the knowledge, analytical skills and reading experiences that prepare teenagers for success in college, careers and civic life. Working through the review process helped us refine the tool while providing meaningful feedback to support the development of the materials. It also provided insights into how hard many publishers are working to put strong curriculum into the hands of great teachers. 

Ultimately, our goal is pretty simple: help more educators gain access to the strongest possible instructional materials. We believe that better curriculum sets the foundation for strong teaching, and that clearer guidance helps both curriculum developers and school systems move the field forward. 

When educators have a common language of excellence, both teaching and learning thrive. Our hope is that this tool supports high school educators to develop a shared understanding of what high-quality literacy instruction looks like and where instructional time is best spent. The tool isn’t just a way to evaluate materials — it’s an opportunity to identify and inspire the rigorous, engaging, effective English curriculum and instruction that all high school students deserve.

The describes what young people are experiencing right now as a mental health crisis, and the numbers back it up — rates of anxiety and depression among young people have been climbing for years, and the pandemic only accelerated what was already in motion. While schools have responded as best they can, from added counselors to expanded mental health resources, those solutions don’t quite reach far enough. 

Earlier this year, our organization, the Kind Campaign, distributed a to thousands of educators across 311 school districts in the United States to find out what they’re observing in their classrooms. More than half (52%) said student friendships are more fragile and conflict-prone than they were just two or three years ago, and nearly two-thirds (62%) reported a notable increase in student loneliness and social isolation in the past year alone. When asked whether students have the skills to navigate friendship conflict in healthy ways, 59% of educators said no and 38% said only somewhat. Virtually no teacher surveyed said yes.

Peer conflict has also moved online in ways schools weren’t built to handle. While adults often picture bullying as something that happens face-to-face, 41% of educators said conflict most often originates on social media, with group chats and texting accounting for another 17%. Only 28% said it starts primarily in person. By the time a student walks through the school door in the morning, whatever happened in the group chat or online the night before has already taken root.

While so much of this conflict might originate outside the classroom, it certainly doesn’t stay there. When students are quietly devastated by something that happened between friends, that pain doesn’t wait politely outside the classroom door. It follows them into every lesson, every interaction, every moment that requires them to show up and engage. The social and emotional health of students is inseparable from their academic lives, and yet the responses from schools rarely reach its peer-level roots.

That is what social-emotional learning and kindness education are for. Not as soft programming layered on top of the real curriculum, but as ongoing, structured instruction in skills that can genuinely be taught: how to handle conflict without cruelty, how to repair a relationship, how to notice and reach out when someone feels isolated and alone. 

In practice, this can look like where students are guided through honest conversations about exclusion, conflict and the impact their behavior has on others. These programs let students see that they are not alone in what they’re experiencing, while practicing exercises in accountability, apology and how to recognize when someone is struggling. There are also that teach students empathy, emotion management and how to navigate peer conflict in healthy ways.

Both these approaches, and others like them, give young people the language and the opportunity to do something they already want to do but don’t always know how.

Through our work with Kind Campaign, we have seen what happens in schools where this work is taken seriously, where students are given consistent tools and language for what they’re experiencing and real opportunities to practice. For almost two decades, Kind Campaign has hosted assemblies in over 3,200 schools across the country. We’ve personally spoken at more than 780 of them and have witnessed these types of programs spark real change that makes an immediate impact. We’ve seen kids who were feuding find their way back to each other — just last year, two girls whose conflict teachers had been trying to resolve for years walked out of one of our assemblies hugging and talking through it in tears. We’ve also seen students who felt invisible start to feel seen — like one girl who walked out of one of our assemblies with over 20 apology cards given to her by her peers. 

That sort of repair is life-changing and can sometimes even be life-saving. 

We’re not the only ones seeing it: 79% of educators in our survey said they witnessed a small act of kindness between students that had a meaningful impact in the past year. The capacity for kindness is already in young people. It doesn’t need to be invented — it needs to be nurtured and it needs to be taken seriously by the adults responsible for their education.

The academic case for kindness education is also well-established. One study found that schools prioritizing social-emotional development had double the positive long-term impact on students than those focused solely on test scores, with higher graduation rates and better college attendance to show for it. It’s clear that when students feel connected, supported and equipped to navigate their relationships, they excel in the classroom, too.

As administrators lock in their priorities for the coming year they should consider this: Kindness education doesn’t work as a reaction to a crisis. It works when it’s built in from the start, treated as a priority rather than an afterthought and given the same consistency and intention as any subject worth teaching.

But while screen time limits are one solution, they still treat the screen itself as the problem, when a screen is simply another opportunity for communication and exploration, just like a book, game or toy. With this in mind, what if the real question isn’t, “How much screen time is okay for kids?” but, “How can we make children’s screen time more meaningful?”

At Pittsburgh’s PBS station WQED, we believe literacy starts long before a child can decode words on a page. It starts with conversation, curiosity, stories, songs, play and trusted characters who help children make meaning of the world. Instead of asking whether screens are good or bad, we should be asking: What kind of on-screen media are children engaging with, and how is that shaping their relationship with reading? 

When content is intentionally designed to build literacy skills through storytelling, vocabulary exposure and narrative comprehension, it can complement and encourage reading behaviors. from The Ohio State University found that first graders who engaged more frequently with educational media not only spent more time reading but also spent less overall time on screens. This emerging research complicates the long-held assumption that all screen time displaces reading and may even help shift the narrative toward seeing meaningful screen use as a gateway to developing healthy reading habits.

Educational media can also introduce children to characters, story arcs, vocabulary and language structures that mirror the foundations of books. in the American Educational Research Journal that reviewed evaluations involving more than 24,000 children, educational media developed through the Ready to Learn initiative was found to have positive effects on early literacy skills, including comprehension, vocabulary and phonological awareness.

The point is not that all screen time is equal; it is that trusted, intentionally designed media can help open the door to reading.

The interactivity and engagement of screen time can also be beneficial. One of the most consistent findings across early childhood research When used thoughtfully, highly engaging and interactive educational media can help caregivers and educators create everyday literacy moments, especially in communities where access to books, time, and resources can vary.Ìę

That’s why, in Pittsburgh, WQED has joined the “” campaign — a collaborative effort among libraries, literacy organizations, and The Grable Foundation to not only put more books in young people’s hands, but also to support the region’s adults as allies in children’s literacy.

Parents and early childhood educators can further support this approach by asking children open-ended questions, connecting media to children’s own experiences and turning screen time into a shared literacy experience. I’ve personally watched a child become absorbed in an episode of Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, then walk across the room to find a similar idea waiting in a book. That moment of recognition — that connection — is how a love of reading starts to blossom. And when children move from consuming stories to creating them through drawing and writing, it further strengthens their confidence and their identity as readers and storytellers.

We are raising children in a media-rich world. The answer is not to pretend screens will disappear or to leave families to navigate them alone. The answer is to surround children with meaningful stories — on the page, on the screen, in classrooms, in libraries and at home — and help caring adults turn those stories into conversation, curiosity and confidence. If we want to raise a generation of readers, we should see the educational media that children engage with on screens not being in competition with books but as another pathway to discover the joy of reading.

I taught math in a New York City public high school before I read a single study about how children learn. I was equipped with some basics, like making sure I checked if my students had understood the day’s lesson. At the end of every class, they would answer a few questions on paper while I moved around the room, reading over their shoulders to see what had landed and what had not.

Back then, blended learning was the hot thing: putting kids on screens for personalized instruction while I was supposed to circulate and answer questions. It did not work for my students, so I abandoned it and built my own lessons instead.

Fast forward to now, and the fight playing out in city councils and statehouses over . But that is the wrong battle. Screens are not the enemy of learning. The real enemy is older than any device: a classroom where students sit isolated and a teacher is too swamped with grading and paperwork to notice who is falling behind until it is too late to help. Technology can deepen that problem or solve it. It depends entirely on who you build it for.

There is a better way. I watched it this past school year in the Bronx.

At P.S. 83,Ìęa middle school in District 11, technology barely appears until the final minutes of math class. A lesson is projected at the front of the room, and students work through problems together on paper, talking and arguing as they go. Then, with a few minutes left, they open their school laptops and answer a short set of questions about the day’s work.

As they type, the teacher watches the answers appear, one student at a time, on a dashboard on his or her own screen. Rather than collecting stacks of papers to grade that night, the teacher can see, in real time, who understood the lesson and who did not, and offer help in the moment. By the time class ends, the teacher knows exactly where each student is stuck, and what needs to happen the next day: a quick conversation with one child, a small group lesson for a few others or a separate session for the handful who missed the same step.

That dashboard is part of a tool called , created by the company I co-founded, Kiddom. This past year, in a pilot program, District 11 added Atlas to the curriculum its teachers already used through the math initiative. The partnership became a co-design: District 11’s teachers shaped the tool, and Kiddom is now bringing it to schools nationwide. But the tool is not the point. The point is what it handed back to teachers: time and information early enough to act on. Those are the two things every teacher is short of, and they are essential for catching children before they fall behind.

That is harder than it sounds. American schools are notoriously bad at catching kids up. A student who starts behind usually stays behind, year after year — not because teachers are not good enough, but because no human can grade, diagnose and personalize for 20 or more children every single day. The math defeats them.

The early results from District 11 are worth a look. Across nearly 5,700 students and 179 teachers, Kiddom’s analysis found that children in classrooms using these quick daily checks most consistently outscored other District 11 students whose teachers used them rarely. In seventh grade, for example, District 11 classes scored an average of 68% on these checks, versus 52%. That’s a 16-percentage-point difference, which works out to roughly five additional months of learning in a single year.

District 11’s results were also measured against a demographically comparable district using the same curriculum without the real-time tool. District 11 still came out ahead, by 11 to 13 points in sixth and seventh grades. The effect was smaller in eighth grade, but the pattern still held, and it tracked with how teachers worked. The biggest gains came in classes where teachers returned graded work in under three days. When the tool handled the grading, teachers could respond to students faster than their colleagues elsewhere. 

Word has traveled. Since District 11’s superintendent, Cristine Vaughan, adopted this time-saving tool, senior city schools officials and parent advocates have come to the Bronx to see it for themselves.

Notice what is missing from this story. The children are not on screens all day. District 11 students spend class time talking, reasoning and writing by hand. The technology serves the teaching and finishes the paperwork.

This is what the screen-time debate keeps missing. The is not whether technology belongs in classrooms. It is who the technology is built for. Point it at the child, and you get a generation doing its thinking on a black mirror. Point it at the teacher, and you get educators who know, in real time, what each student will need the next day.

This is not a preview of some distant future. It is a public school district closing gaps right now for students who are behind, with the same children and the same curriculum it already had, because its teachers got their time back.

So keep pencils in children’s hands, but take the paperwork off teachers. It would make a catch-up crisis so often called intractable look a great deal more solvable.

Disclosure: The Gates Foundation provides financial support to Kiddom Atlas and ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ.

But recently I have noticed something I never expected.

Many of my more thoughtful and honest students are becoming critics of the very technologies that shaped them. They are tired of the slop. Tired of content created by code. They say they are repelled by the prospect of an AI friend or romantic partner.

When it comes to the classroom, they willingly admit they prefer a lively class discussion to an online activity. They resent teachers who use AI to grade their papers. And most powerfully of all: They admit their use of technology is a hurdle to becoming the educated Americans they know they should become.

They speak almost like addicts.

They don’t want to be on their phones eight or nine hours a day. They don’t want to use AI to complete their assignments and short-circuit their ability to learn and grow. They know their attention span is stunted.

But in so many circumstances, they simply can’t resist. These observations may sound anecdotal. Let me assure you, they are not.

Over the past year, a series of highly publicized incidents have suggested the emergence of something larger: the first widespread cultural backlash by young Americans against the digital world that shaped them.

Multiple public speakers recently referenced the AI revolution now upon us—a at the University of Central Florida, a at Middle Tennessee State University, former at the University of Arizona. In every instance, young Americans either passionately booed or, in Schmidt’s case, the remarks.

A community college in Arizona to read the names of graduates, but the system quickly malfunctioned. When the college announced what had happened, the backlash was both raw and immediate.

These incidents may appear isolated or trivial.

They are not.

Together they suggest the emergence of something larger: the first widespread cultural backlash by young Americans against the digital world that shaped them. The generation that grew up on iPhones, spending much of every waking hour online, now seems to be awakening to the perils of a digital world neither they nor their parents fully understood.

And yet these young people are increasingly lending their voices to a growing chorus of educators, parents and policymakers who have begun to realize a painful truth: There is no quick technological fix for the crises consuming the modern American classroom.

, , emotional distress and a generation-long erosion in students’ ability to concentrate all demand a fundamental reassessment of the role screens now play in the educational lives of our children.

Every other day a prominent newspaper or publication now gives voice to this fundamental truth.

Whether it’s The New York Times explaining or prominent Substack columnists offering a American educators should take advantage of this moment by defending traditional instruction rooted in foundational human relationships.

A generation ago, young Americans had access to a diverse chorus of influential adult voices that tethered them to the mighty responsibilities and possibilities of adult life. Children lived with two parents, numerous siblings and often spent considerable time with grandparents. Life exposed young minds to a faith tradition with pastors and priests on Sundays, sports activities with coaches after school and maybe Boy Scout or Girl Scout leaders as well.

Many of these voices from ages past are silent today.

But that doesn’t mean our children don’t hear voices. They do, and they often come from people and digital spaces their parents never would have chosen for them.

This is why — especially in this era — the humanity of teachers and the personal vitality of our classrooms are essential. The voices of instruction our children hear should be the voices of teachers who know and care about their students — not Alexa, not Siri, not some anonymous digital interface designed to maximize engagement rather than human flourishing.

Eye contact. Conversation. Personal relationships. No code or product required.

The kids know this. The kids want this.

Shame on us if we fail to give it to them.

Over the last decade, has embraced evidence-based reading instruction. Legislatures have passed literacy laws, and teacher preparation programs are (slowly) shifting their . Those changes are paying off: According to from the DIBELS early reading screener, 30% of second graders ended the year far offtrack in reading, the best mark since 2019-20.Ìę

Massachusetts is the latest state to join the movement. Last month, Gov. Maura Health a that requires school districts to use evidence-based reading instruction, prohibit the use of three-cueing and other discredited word-guessing strategies, require educator preparation programs to teach evidence-based literacy methods, expand screening for students with dyslexia and create a process for the state department of education to review and approve K-3 reading curricula.

Massachusetts is now a test case for what I like to think of as the Lexington Problem.

If a district has low reading scores and uses instructional practices that are inconsistent with what has been about how children learn to read, the case is clear for switching to an evidence-based science of reading approach.

But Lexington’s young readers are not struggling. They have relatively strong . So, perhaps not surprisingly, the prospect of being forced to change their literacy practices hasn’t sat well with Lexington’s leaders.

Famously, Lexington is the place where the first shots of the Revolutionary War were fired. Today, it’s a wealthy suburb about 10 miles outside of Boston. Its are extremely well-educated — 84% have a bachelor’s degree or higher — and the median price for purchasing a house is $1.2 million.

As state legislators debated the science of reading bill, Lexington Public Schools attracted because it continued to use literacy materials associated with (much-maligned) balanced literacy approaches, including Lucy Calkins’ Units of Study . (The district uses a supplemental program called in an attempt to fill in gaps.) The superintendent has been an outspoken of the state legislature’s efforts.

Perhaps in spite of its curricular choice, and thanks in part to the families it serves, Lexington’s students score pretty well on state tests. Last year, 70% of its third graders scored in reading, compared with 42% statewide. Lexington doesn’t have a lot of poor kids, but its low-income third graders outperformed their peers statewide (44% versus 24%). Only 25% of Lexington’s children with disabilities reached the same bar, but even so, that was higher than the statewide average of 14%.

ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ even named two Lexington schools — Joseph Estabrook and Harrington Elementary — to our list of Bright Spots schools whose third grade reading scores outperformed what would be expected based on their poverty rates.

The new law includes a waiver allowing districts to continue using unapproved reading curricula if those are “based on evidence-based literacy instruction” and can “meet quality standards” as determined by the state department of education. While it’s not clear yet what that process will look like, EdReports gives Lexington’s current program a rating of “,” so it seems unlikely it would pass muster. 

In an ideal world, Lexington’s leaders would see the writing on the wall and adopt a new, better curriculum for K-3 literacy. It’s quite likely that its students would earn even higher scores if it did a better job teaching foundational skills.Ìę

But Lexington’s test results illustrate a broader policy problem. Science of reading reforms have been most successful when they focused on basic skills where the evidence is strongest and the policy solutions are clearest. States can require phonics instruction. They can prohibit three-cueing. They can require universal screening and force changes at colleges of education.

But literacy involves more than the basics. Strong reading outcomes also depend on vocabulary, background knowledge, writing and countless other factors that are harder to regulate from a state capitol. 

And that’s what makes cases like Lexington so complicated. As Massachusetts moves from identifying a problem to implementing solutions, it should remain careful not to confuse compliance with success. A district using the “right” curriculum will not automatically produce strong readers, just as a district using a disputed curriculum will not necessarily fail its students. The best way forward is to keep focusing on the goal of helping more kids learn to read.

We deeply understand how the U.S. Department of Education protects and supports children with disabilities. Laurie served as the director of the Office of Special Education Programs in the first Trump administration. Stephanie led that office in the George W. Bush administration. We both agree that the federal department is key to ensuring every child deserves a fair chance to get a quality education and the opportunity to reach their full potential.

That is why we oppose moving the office that oversees special education to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. We are concerned this step, announced last month, is being driven by a broader push to close the Education Department, rather than by clear evidence that it would improve services for children.

The proposals to dismantle the department are framed as “returning education to the states.”ÌęYet this proposal simply splits federal education responsibilities across multiple agencies, separating expertise that is meant to work together. It risks placing education decisions for children with disabilities in an agency primarily built for health programsÌęand shifting oversight of school-age programs to agencies whose core mission is not K-12 learning.

These changes won’t reduce bureaucracy or empower states. They would add confusion, duplicative processes and hurdles, and inconsistent guidance across agencies. That creates a more fragmented system that is harder for parents, school districts and states to navigate, especially when families are already working to secure timely evaluations, services and coordinated support.

We recognize that the education system is not perfect, and improvement is needed. But meaningful reform must be grounded in facts about how the system actually works and the role the federal government plays within it.Ìę

States and local school districts already control the vast majority of education decisions. The federal department does not set curriculum, determine reading lists, decide how subjects are taught or control teacher certification.

What it does is less visible but critically important. It distributes and oversees federal education funding, provides technical assistance to states and districts and ensures accountability when the rights of students are not upheld.

Breaking up the department will affect all students, families and educators. It also carries an outsized risk for children with disabilities, because services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act depend on clear accountability, coordinated implementation and accessible pathways for families when something goes wrong.

More than 8 million students with disabilities (15% of all students) require and currently have the right to special education services. We are talking about children with dyslexia, autism, Down syndrome and other disabilities. These are children who can learn and grow up to become productive members of their communities and taxpayers — if they get the support they need.

They are also kids who, until 50 years ago, were largely excluded from public schools. Most people don’t know that it was federal action, through the enactment of Public Law 94-142 in 1975, that established the right for children with disabilities to attend public schools and receive a free, appropriate public education. That federal role is intrinsic to the success of children with disabilities. It provides essential oversight and technical assistance to states who are not otherwise equipped to implement the law and protect the rights of children with disabilities.

Dismantling the federal role in special education is rolling the dice for children with disabilities. Any breakdown in the system has devastating effects. When learning is delayed, the impact compounds; each missed milestone makes it harder to catch up, creating a ripple effect that can last for years.

For as long as we can remember, special education has had broad support. While we both worked in Republican administrations, we know that families, regardless of party or ideology, want the same thing: a school system that helps every child learn, belong, and succeed. Leaving parents and educators to fend for themselves, without the support they need to navigate a complex system, is not what they are asking for and is not what students need.

This is a moment for parents, families, educators and community members across the political spectrum to pay close attention and speak up. Every person who cares about children has a responsibility to truly understand what is being proposed, ask practical questions about how services and accountability would work, and share your perspective and concerns with state and federal policymakers.

Children need adults to protect consistent support and clear rights. The time to act is not tomorrow. It is today.

This year, a student told me: “I gave up on myself because school wasn’t a place for me. It wasn’t until I got to Central Coast High School that I could see myself doing more, even going to college.” 

At CCHS, an alternative education school on California’s Monterey Bay Peninsula, many of our students arrive carrying more than a backpack. They carry trauma. They carry anxiety. They carry depression. Some of our students are unaccompanied minors navigating housing insecurity. Sleeping in cars. Staying in shelters. Staying with friends or not knowing where they will sleep that night.Ìę

Too often, students facing these challenges are viewed through the lens of their behavior, not their circumstances. They are pushed out of classrooms. Suspended. Excluded. Ignored.Ìę

By the time our students arrive at CCHS, they have spent years being told what they are not. Not motivated enough. Not smart enough. Not focused enough. Rarely have students been asked about their strengths, interests or goals. 

During the 2025-26 school year, CCHS began its first year as a community school, with grant funding that allowed us to bring more services and support for students onto our campus. ItÌęgave us an opportunity to redesign our school around one question:ÌęWhat if we stopped asking students to fit into school and started building a school that fit our students?Ìę

Then, we designed a school around the answer. 

This is what we heard. Students wanted relationships with adults. They wanted opportunities that felt relevant to their future. They wanted support when life became difficult. Their feedback led us to rethink school. 

So this is what we did. First, we addressed basic needs. We partnered with Meals on Wheels to provide take-home meals and layered that support with food bank access so students and families could receive fresh produce. Nearly 2,000 meals were distributed each month. We placed a case manager on site to help students navigate essential services, such as housing insecurity. Students cannot engage in learning when focused on survival. 

We knew meeting basic needs alone would not be enough. Students also told us they needed support for their mental health. In response, we expanded access to services during the school day, including equine therapy and boxing. Both programs help students regulate emotions and manage stress. One student said: “Boxing is the one thing that quiets my brain.” 

Next, we created pathways that helped students see a connection between school and life after graduation. Students explored the following pathways, including auto detailing, window tinting, HVAC, mechanics, horticulture, barbering, podcasting, eyelash technician and barista. And we developed paid internships in these fields before they graduated.

Through these programs, students connected with mentors. They continued working with students on Saturdays, helping them build their skills. Two students earned their certification through our HVAC pathway, creating opportunities for employment immediately after graduation. Other students participated in internships with Meals on Wheels, helping to prepare meals that go out to our families. 

The impact was immediate. In our auto detailing pathway, 75% of students reported the class made them more likely to attend school. Similarly, in our window tinting pathway, 100% of students reported feeling more motivated to attend school, and 100% reported that the class helped them feel like they belonged. When students see a connection between school and their future, engagement grows. Students who once questioned the value of school found a reason to be there.Ìę

And yes, we built a coffee shop. Yes, it’s on campus. 

Students helped design it, brand it and bring it to life. This is more than coffee. Students developed a business from the ground up, named it and designed the logo.Ìę

We’ve learned that these opportunities are not separate from academics. They are often the bridge that reconnects students to school. Without that bridge, we risk losing the most powerful resource we have in society: our young people.

When students see a reason to be at school, attendance improves. Engagement grows. Confidence follows. While belonging can feel difficult to measure, our students at CCHS are telling us that something is changing. 

This year, CCHS’s sense of belonging score on the YouthTruth Survey ranked in the 83rd percentile nationally. That represents a 73-point increase from last year. 

Numbers alone do not tell the full story, but they help confirm what we are seeing. Students are building relationships with adults. They are participating in pathways and support services. They are beginning to see school as a place where they matter. One student said, “When you’re here, you feel like you’re someone.” 

Community schools are often described as a framework built on partnerships, supports, extended learning and shared leadership. While those structures are important, I have come to see community schools as something greater. 

They are a commitment to listening and responding. When students tell us what they need, our responsibility is to act. The work is never really about programs, pathways or initiatives. Those are just tools. 

The real work? It’s helping students believe in themselves again. When a student who once gave up on themselves can suddenly imagine a future they never thought was possible, something bigger than a program has happened. 

School becomes more than a place they attend. It becomes a place where they can become.

This problem isn’t new. In 1998, the National Commission on the Cost of Higher Education, created by the U.S. Congress, issued a report “Straight Talk About College Costs and Prices.” I served as its executive director. It warned that colleges had allowed “a veil of obscurity” to settle over their financial operations. It cautioned that continued inattention would create “a gulf of ill will” between higher education and the public it serves.

More than a quarter-century later, that warning is less a prediction than a diagnosis.

Yes, colleges publish tuitions, offer online calculators and send financial aid letters. Yet too often, the answer to a family’s simplest question about what college will cost arrives late and varies by institution. It’s also wrapped in language that blurs the difference between free money, borrowed money, campus jobs, parent loans and the amount the family must pay.

A grant or scholarship lowers the bill. A loan delays the bill. A campus job helps a student earn money but isn’t a discount. A parent loan isn’t financial aid in the ordinary sense. It’s debt shifted from the student to the family. When these categories are mixed, the fog thickens. And price confusion isn’t neutral. It shapes who believes college is possible.

The most concrete example is the financial aid offer. For many high school students and families, it’s the moment college becomes real. It’s supposed to answer practical questions: What will this school cost? How much is free? How much is borrowed? How does this compare to another school’s offer?

Too often, those answers are harder to decipher than they should be.

In 2022, the how nearly two-thirds of colleges follow half or fewer of the 10 best practices for providing families with clear, standardized information. Aid offers used different terms for the same thing, failed to clearly separate loans from scholarships and presented parent loans in ways that made family borrowing look like institutional generosity. Families were then expected to compare offers that weren’t comparable. GAO concluded, “Federal law doesn’t require colleges to include clear, standard information in all of their financial aid offers. Congress should consider mandating that colleges do so.”

The data on public confidence tells the same story. that Americans still value postsecondary education but increasingly doubt whether an affordable path is within reach. Strada’s finds that confusing college prices do more than irritate families. They erode institutional trust.

The most striking institutional warning comes from Yale University. In April 2026, a faculty committee appointed by Yale’s president released a on trust in higher education. It identified three immediate causes of public distrust: soaring prices, questions about who gets in and why, and campus controversies over speech and political bias.

The committee reported that trust in higher education has dropped from 57% of Americans expressing high confidence a decade ago to an historic low of 36% in 2024, a faster decline than in almost any other institution. That a committee of tenured faculty from one of the wealthiest universities in the world was compelled to write that sentence signals how serious the trust deficit has become.

Affordability is also the political word of the moment. From housing and groceries to health care and college, both political parties are talking about the cost of living. In higher education, that’s turned price transparency from a financial-aid concern into a larger argument over whether families can still afford the basics of opportunity.

Washington has noticed. Both the U.S. and are considering legislative proposals to require clearer college pricing. Additionally, the U.S. Department of Education’s proposed Student Tuition and Transparency System, or , would give families better information about specific programs, not just college-wide averages. The reason is simple: Students don’t enroll in institutions. They enroll in nursing, business, engineering or social work. The cost and payoff of those choices can vary widely.

To rebuild trust, higher education needs a new transparency compact with students, families and taxpayers. No student should have to enroll, borrow, or make a financial commitment before knowing program cost, what’s free, what must be repaid and what students can expect after completing it.

Five commitments are an important first step to get there. 

First, standardize financial aid offers. Every offer should clearly separate scholarships and grants from loans and work-study, show the full expected cost of attendance, tuition, fees, housing, food, books and transportation; it should never label a loan as “aid” without making plain that it must be repaid.

The which more than 400 postsecondary institutions have signed on to, is an encouraging voluntary step. But voluntary action reveals the size of the problem. If colleges need a national initiative to agree that aid letters should be clear, the sector should ask why that wasn’t already the norm.

Second, give students program-level information, not just college-wide averages. A student deciding whether to enroll in a nursing program, business degree, teaching credential or graduate program needs information about that choice, not just the college’s overall average.

Third, make the real price knowable earlier. Families shouldn’t have to apply, wait, be admitted and decode a letter before receiving a realistic number. Earlier, more personalized information should be the standard.

Fourth, connect price to outcomes. This exercise shouldn’t reduce education to a salary ranking. Students deserve to know completion rates, debt levels, loan repayment patterns and likely earnings. But higher education has civic, intellectual and personal value, too. Transparency should illuminate the risks and rewards of different paths, not flatten them.

Fifth, treat clarity as a trust-building obligation. A college can satisfy a federal reporting requirement and still leave families confused. The real test is whether ordinary students and parents understand the offer, compare it to alternatives and decide without needing an expert translator.

Higher education does not need to pretend college pricing is simple. It’s not. But complexity isn’t an excuse for obscurity.

Price transparency won’t by itself make college affordable. It won’t fix state budget cuts or the uneven labor-market value of different credentials. But without it, no college affordability agenda will be trusted.

The gulf of ill will the 1998 commission warned about is now visible in surveys, in congressional hearings, in federal audits of aid letters and in families who conclude college is unaffordable before they even apply.

The first step toward rebuilding confidence is also the simplest. Tell students and families, plainly and early, what college will cost them.

But from where I sit in Birmingham, Alabama, the focus in Washington and in many statehouses misses a crisis just as deep and consequential as the one over whether kids spend too much time on TikTok. 

The more urgent issue for millions of families is that too many children and adults lack the digital skills employers now require. That gap is not driven by overexposure to technology but by uneven access to it. Alabama is far from the only state facing this challenge. Roughly one-third of U.S. workers , even as 92% of jobs now require them. 

Concerns about technology overuse deserve attention, but they shouldn’t crowd out the work of building stronger pathways into the digital economy. That means ensuring students and adults have the tools they need, along with access to the instruction and hands-on training that lead to employment. Policymakers and state leaders should be just as focused on helping communities build the workforce pipelines the economy depends on as they are on mitigating screen time. 

As a parent, I understand concerns around screen time on a personal level. My wife and I think about it constantly with our 13-year-old son. Like many families, we have set limits. We decided early not to give him a smartphone until he turns 14. We would rather he spend time outdoors, read real books and experience the world away from a screen.

At the same time, I lead a nonprofit organization whose mission is to prepare young people for the future of work. From that vantage point, I know something else is true: My son’s comfort with technology will play a major role in the opportunities available to him as an adult. Those two realities must coexist, but only one seems to be driving magazine cover stories and congressional hearings.

For many students, school is the only place where they can reliably access a laptop, high-speed internet, or guidance from someone who understands how these tools actually work. In Alabama, lack adequate internet access at home. Nationwide, lack access. Unfortunately, even inside schools, opportunities to develop meaningful technology skills remain uneven. Only of U.S. high schools offer computer science courses at all, and of elementary students are enrolled in computer science learning experiences. As a result, many students never get the chance to learn how technology actually works.

The stakes around this gap are rising quickly. According to the World Economic Forum’s , technological skills are expected to grow in importance faster than any other skill category in the next five years. Artificial intelligence and big data top the list, followed by networks and cybersecurity, and technological literacy more broadly.

Students cannot easily gain these skills from worksheets. They cannot learn to code on paper alone. Educators cannot prepare students for careers in cybersecurity, robotics or digital design without placing technology directly in their hands. And students cannot meaningfully understand artificial intelligence without interacting with it. Yet many policy conversations treat technology in schools primarily as a distraction to be managed rather than a skill set to be developed.

Every school should have dedicated learning spaces where students can experiment with coding, explore AI and develop creative skills. These spaces should be guided by educators who can teach not only the technical skills, but also the ethics and responsibility required to use these tools wisely. Across the country, some schools are showing what that hands-on approach can look like.

At outside Birmingham, for example, a newly built learning lab provides students with access to a podcast studio, music production equipment and video editing tools. Students use the space to produce original music and record podcasts. Meanwhile, at Robert C. Hatch High School in Perry County, a tech-forward space — which was developed through a partnership with the State of Alabama and Ed Farm — combines in-person and remote instruction to expand learning opportunities for students in a rural district.

These schools remain the exception, not the norm, with many districts lacking funding, infrastructure and training. State and federal policymakers should treat that gap as an urgent priority. Digital fluency is now as foundational as reading, writing and math.

Parents, educators and policymakers all play a role in setting healthy boundaries around technology use. Students should not spend every hour of the school day staring at a screen, and devices should not replace teachers or human connection. But schools that lack meaningful access to technology leave students just as unprepared. If the national conversation continues to focus only on keeping technology out of students’ hands rather than putting it within their reach, too many young people will be locked out of the opportunities that define the modern workforce.

Now there’s a once-in-a-generation designed to change that. But most educators, workforce leaders and even some state policymakers haven’t heard of it yet.

The Rural Health Transformation Program represents a $50 billion federal commitment between 2026 and 2030, administered through the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and flowing to states based on rural population and approved transformation plans. Every participating state will receive roughly $1 billion or more to redesign rural healthcare delivery, stabilize rural hospitals and build sustainable health systems. Education and workforce development are explicitly named as core investment priorities.

The question isn’t whether this money will be spent. It’s whether states will spend it wisely enough to actually build the talent pipelines rural communities need — or whether it will flow almost entirely to system stabilization, leaving the workforce crisis unaddressed at its root.

We think states should dedicate a meaningful share of this funding to catalyze cross-sector partnerships that build the healthcare workforce starting in high school. Here’s why.

Nursing is one of the most powerful engines of economic mobility in America. 

The Wall Street Journal on nursing’s standing as an exceptional pathway — accessible without elite credentials, leading to stable middle-class wages and open to students from all backgrounds. Burning Glass confirms the nursing degree is among the least likely to be underemployed of any college degree program. For rural students — who are disproportionately low-income, first-generation and from communities of color — a clear, supported pathway into nursing isn’t just career preparation. It’s economic transformation and community revitalization.

But pathways don’t build themselves. They require high schools, community colleges and universities, and hospitals to do something most of them have never done together: align curriculum, clinical placements, financial aid and hiring pipelines into a coherent system.

Models like in Indiana show this is possible. There, high schools, colleges and regional health systems have built integrated pathways that braid together K-12 funding, registered apprenticeship dollars, Pell grants and direct employer investment to move students from healthcare CTE coursework into Licensed Practical Nurse credentials — and ultimately toward RN roles. 

Students earn credentials, communities get nurses, and hospitals get a workforce they helped train. Similarly, the Rodel Foundation in Delaware just released a confirming that these approaches work. The study finds that 81% of high school graduates from healthcare pathways are either enrolled in postsecondary education or employed in healthcare within 18 months of graduation, demonstrating a clear connection between high school pathways and in-demand careers. That’s what a system designed to work looks like.

Bloomberg Philanthropies’ early investments in have generated important proof points — demonstrating how partnerships between schools and hospitals can be structured, funded and sustained over time. These efforts have shown how to align curriculum with real workforce needs, embed clinical experiences into high school programs and create clear pathways into postsecondary education and healthcare careers. As such, they offer a scalable model for other states and systems. The critical lesson for rural contexts, though, is that place matters. Rural communities can’t typically support a standalone healthcare high school. What they can support — and what this new federal funding should support — are regional pathway models that serve students across multiple school districts, built around a hospital or health system as the anchor employer and clinical training partner.

This is exactly the kind of cross-sector, multi-institution collaboration the new federal program is  designed to enable. It explicitly prioritizes regional partnerships across healthcare providers, workforce boards and educational institutions. It allows braiding with federal and state workforce dollars. And states could create a public-private innovation model that attracts philanthropic and employer investment alongside federal resources — multiplying the impact of every federal dollar.

The infrastructure for this already exists in many states, with the vast majority prioritizing high-quality career and technical education and supporting statewide college promise programs or workforce-focused scholarships. What’s been missing is a funding mechanism substantial enough to make cross-sector partnership worth the coordination cost — and a policy signal from state leaders that building the healthcare workforce of the future is as important as stabilizing the hospitals of today.

The new federal program creates the opening, but state leaders will determine whether it becomes a short-term stabilization fund or a long-term workforce strategy. States that move quickly to align their education, workforce and health agencies, and invest in regional pathway models that move rural students into nursing and allied health careers, will be better positioned to strengthen both hospitals and communities for years to come.

The $50 billion is already arriving, and states are starting to roll these resources out into communities. The only question is whether it builds something that lasts.

That experience stayed with me long after graduation. It taught me something that is becoming increasingly vital in today’s digital world: Confidence is not developed by having the perfect answer but by believing in authentic ideas. 

Many young students are losing confidence in their own ideas. It is undeniable my generation grew up behind screens, with videos and phones embedded in everyday life. As a 16-year-old high school student, I don’t consider artificial intelligence a futuristic invention but rather a simple extension of the world we already live in. That is why I believe many conversations about AI in schools are missing the bigger issue entirely. The real concern is not technology itself but what happens when student voices become overshadowed. 

Technology has not only changed the way students learn but also the way we communicate on a daily basis. Many young people have become highly skilled at digital tools, with FaceTime and Zoom becoming frequent parts of everyday life. It is a common joke that if our generation does not put their phones down, they will forget how to talk to someone on a date!ÌęThere is immense truth behind that. As we become more accustomed to immediate responses, we are slowly losing the patience to sit with a thought.Ìę

About 54% of students already use AI for schoolwork, a number continuing to rise. AI can certainly help students organize their thoughts. I even used it during the brainstorming process of this piece, but the important aspect is that my writing remained a reflection of my voice. With this expanding access to knowledge, an important question remains: Where does student voice fit in? If students begin relying on AI from the moment their education begins, they risk losing the discomfort that comes from developing confidence in their own ideas. That uncomfortable part matters. 

I have personally experienced how being in an uncomfortable position can lead the mind to function in ways AI cannot replace. It was the day of a long-awaited DECA business conference, and I put on my dress and blazer, a stark contrast to the comfortable clothes I wear at school. I had recited my speech until I knew it by heart, yet during the presentation, I felt the pressure set in and my thoughts begin to blur.Ìę

For a moment it felt as though all my preparation disappeared, but after taking a moment to slow down, I looked back at my notes and continued. It was not the polished performance I had imagined, but by the end I had conveyed what I wanted to say. More importantly, the experience taught me something AI never could, which was how to recover in real time.

Through these experiences, I have seen how much students can grow when they are asked to use their own voices. Recognizing this, I am proud to lead a summer program in the Chicagoland area called First Voice Academy. 

Here, middle school students learn and practice public speaking in a low-stress, immersive environment. Designed to promote interpersonal connection, the program walks participants through the importance of communication and concludes with their delivering a speech on their own. Taught directly by high schoolers, the program gives younger students the opportunity to learn from peers who have faced many of the same obstacles.

I can envision a student struggling to present during a speech, but that is the key: The words are theirs. The goal is not to ignore AI, but to ensure younger generations have opportunities to develop confidence in their own ideas.Ìę

Artificial intelligence can polish language perfectly and respond to a question in under a second, but what it cannot do is replace a student’s voice. Confidence is gained when students believe their own thoughts are worth sharing, even when they come out wrong the first time. Students who feel they have a voice at school are seven times more motivated to learn. 

A program like First Voice Academy allows for real world experience while in a learning environment. If similar programs can be expanded into schools, more students would build interpersonal skills at a crucial point in their lives.Ìę

I think back to the moment I stepped up to give my graduation speech and how scared I was. All it took was to say the first word, and suddenly I felt connected with the audience. Student voice offers a perspective unlike any other, and simply needs the opportunity to be heard. Technology may help develop ideas, but true opportunity comes from nurturing one’s own voice.

after laments the death of entry-level hiring, and according to the World Economic Forum, the they’re building will be out of date by the end of the decade. 

As both a mother of two teenagers and the head of one of the nation’s largest education , I’m asked a version of the very same question from both parents and policymakers: How can we ensure that today’s students are learning things that are actually going to matter?

I found part of the answer in an unexpected place: a high school theater.

My daughter recently performed in her school’s production of “Legally Blonde: The Musical.” She played Pilar, a scene-stealing member of Elle Woods’ sorority. After the show, she cried — not from exhaustion or stress but from pride. And not pride in the accomplishment, but the learning that came with it.

Of course, what she learned from that play won’t show up on a standardized test. Colleges won’t find it on her transcript, either. But like thousands of other theater kids, she’s building exactly the sort of skills that the labor market is demanding.

In the weeks leading up to the performance, she had to collaborate with a diverse cast, manage her time across competing priorities, take direction and feedback, recover from mistakes in real time and perform under pressure. She built confidence, resilience and the ability to communicate with clarity and presence. We used to call these “soft” skills. In the age of AI, they’re the hard currency of economic mobility. 

Perhaps it should come as no surprise that some kids who participated in the performing arts have landed themselves in positions of significant power and influence, including former Disney CEO and U.S. Supreme Court Justice .

As AI accelerates the automation of routine tasks, a suggests that the uniquely human capabilities are becoming even more valuable, not less. More often than not, these “durable skills” are cultivated in places we don’t traditionally count: theater productions, debate teams, student government, part-time jobs and community-based experiences. 

This raises an urgent question: If the skills that matter most for success in the world of work — and the world at large — are developed in unconventional ways, why do we continue to treat those experiences as peripheral?

The simple answer is that our education system is largely oriented around what is easiest to measure over what matters most. If we can’t measure it, we can’t evaluate it. And if we can’t evaluate it, why teach it? But when it comes to high school, what we measure is beginning to change.

In recent months, a growing number of states are changing high school graduation requirements and replacing traditional diplomas with “,” designed to provide a broader understanding of what students have learned that more holistically captures the skills necessary for success in life. 

The Carnegie Foundation recently a new set of skills progressions designed to complement “decode” the “skills genome” by transforming skills like collaboration and critical thinking into their component parts — a significant step toward developing new forms of assessment, curricula and ultimately teaching methods that bring “theater” skills to center stage.

As business leaders begin to question the value of longstanding skills-proxies — including even the college degree — they are signaling to young people that skills honed outside the academic context are not optional; they are essential. That includes designing hiring and interview processes that explicitly take human skills into account; assessing those skills as workers progress in their careers; and adopting training programs that focus on those skills alongside technical competencies.

 More and more businesses are recognizing that if the pace of technological advancement isn’t slowing down, the best way to keep up is to ensure that their employees have the resilience and agility to navigate a world of work defined by change.

And for parents, perhaps most importantly of all, it may mean recognizing that the path to opportunity is not always linear or confined to the classroom. It’s time to stop thinking of theater, sports and volunteering as ways of burnishing a resume for college. Those activities have always been the places where students learn to work together, navigate uncertainty and step up in scary situations. Reading and math will never stop being important, but without the skills to put academic accomplishments to work, too many of our young people will find those dire headlines starting to come true.

My daughter didn’t just perform in a musical. She practiced the very skills that will help her navigate a world where change is constant and careers are nonlinear. If we are serious about preparing young people for the future of work, we need to expand our definition of what counts as learning — and where it happens.

Then someone picks up a guitar.

From the first notes, his face transforms, and just like that, he is with us. He sways to the rhythm, eyes alive with an emotion we almost never see in him. In those moments, music gives him something the rest of the world rarely does: the chance to participate and enjoy the moment equally.

I grew up watching this and wondering why. The science, it turns out, is unambiguous. nearly every region of the brain simultaneously. Singing, moving to a beat, even passive listening engages the brain’s centers for emotion, memory and motor function.Ìę

For people with disabilities, this makes music an unusually powerful tool capable of regulating emotions, rewiring neural pathways and opening channels of communication that language cannot reach.

A of intellectually disabled youth in Senegal found that music therapy improved both fine and gross motor skills and reduced social discrimination by fostering inclusion. Healthcare professionals routinely prescribe it for neurological conditions. The evidence is settled. Not uncertain. 

This begs the question of why it is so hard for people with disabilities to access it. And the answer, the honest answer, is that this is a policy failure, not a scientific one. 

are the professionals assigned to work most closely with disabled students, but are trained in behavior management, not in how rhythm and movement support motor development. Music teachers, meanwhile, receive virtually no instruction in adaptive or inclusive techniques. A found a severe lack of resources and training specifically for inclusive music education. In practice, that means music teachers are rarely trained to adapt lessons for students with motor, cognitive, or communication challenges, and paraeducators are not equipped to use music as part of developmental support. 

The result is a cruel paradox: Even when programs exist, the students who stand to gain the most from music are the least likely to receive it.

Fifty years after the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act promised students with disabilities access to a free and appropriate public education, access still depends on local resources, staffing and training. When budgets are stretched, programs like music and the arts can be treated as optional. But for students with disabilities, music is not enrichment. It can be a pathway to confidence, movement, memory and community.Ìę

I saw what that access can look like through in New York City. I first encountered DMF when I performed with the Dalton Chorus at the in 2024. During George Dennehy’s song “The Moment,” I was so focused on his voice that only when the song ended did I fully register that he had been playing the guitar with his feet. What stayed with me was not difference, but sameness: the same joy, nerves, pride and hunger for expression that I feel when I sing.Ìę

DMF is built on the belief that music is a right, not a privilege, and its free online and in-person classes show what that belief looks like in practice. With my family, I later organized Harmony Without Borders, a cross-cultural benefit concert supporting DMF. We brought together Indian and Western music and invited students, teachers, and community members so that more people could see inclusive music not as charity, but as a shared space where everyone can belong equally.

I understood that even more clearly when I volunteered at the DMF in-person classes, sharing Indian and Western solfĂšge and Bollywood dance steps. The response was immediate: Rhythm turned into movement, repetition into confidence, and high-energy music into a room full of attention and connection. Watching that happen made the research feel real. Music engages movement, emotion, memory, and learned patterns all at once. Students with disabilities deserve the same chance to participate in music.

Organizations like DMF have been quietly expanding that access for years. But they were never meant to replace public systems. Their work matters because it shows what is possible. It also shows what is still missing.

This is what brings me back to my uncle. He never received music therapy. He never had adaptive music education. His response to a song is entirely instinctual. I think often about what structured musical support might have unlocked for him or others with cerebral palsy over a lifetime.

That question carries a specific kind of grief, because the support he needed existed. It just never reached him. For my uncle, music is the closest thing he has to a common language with the rest of us. Protecting that connection for my uncle, and making it possible for every student with disabilities in America, requires two things: training teachers to deliver inclusive music education, and defending the funding and oversight that make any of this possible.

Although Connecticut’s charter school sector has produced, per-pupil funding has not increased in years, and the pipeline for new charter schools was effectively closed without a clear opening in sight for schools and families.Ìę

But something incredible happened in this year’s legislative session: Four new schools won approval, lawmakers provided a special fund specifically for charters, and charter paraprofessionals gained new benefits.  

To accomplish this, it took a coalition of education advocacy organizations showing up together, sharing strategy, coordinating closely with school leaders and families, and trusting each other through the hard moments. 

Currently, Connecticut has 23 operating charter schools serving roughly 12,000 students. Massachusetts, with a similar demographic profile and only modestly larger population, has more than 80 charter schools serving close to 50,000 students. The gap reflects, in part, a system that has made opening new schools unusually difficult, even as waitlists continue to grow. This session began to change that.

and the Alliance for Connecticut Charter Schools, both built specifically to grow and strengthen the state’s charter sector, came into this session as close partners. and the , with their deep statewide education-policy expertise and relationships across the broader public education landscape, were essential allies, bringing their own statehouse relationships and credibility to bear on behalf of charter families when it mattered.Ìę

That kind of multi-organization coordination is harder than it sounds in a policy environment where groups often compete for credit or diverge on strategy. This year, these groups didn’t. The result was the most consequential legislative session for Connecticut charter schools in decades.

Now four new schools are on the path to opening, a significant achievement in a state where new launches have been stalled for some time. 

cleared its final legislative hurdle and is fully funded to open. This marks the culmination of years of community organizing, including more than 3,000 letters of support from New Haven families. , already serving students in Stamford, secured full funding, cementing its long-term footing. And three more schools, , in Stamford, and in Ansonia, received planning grants that formally launch their path to opening in the coming years.

PROUD Academy is incubating through the , a joint initiative of The Mind Trust Connecticut and Leaders for Educational Advocacy and Diversity that backs leaders building new charter schools across the state.

The legislature also passed an $8.7 million supplemental grant for charter schools, the largest single-session funding gain the sector has ever seen, adding approximately $685 per student. 

Charter paraprofessionals had been wrongly excluded from a state healthcare subsidy available to their traditional district peers. Legislators adjusted this so that these educators may finally gain access. It’s the kind of fix that sounds technical until you talk to the people it affects. 

There is still work to do. Two schools with approved charters in hand — one in Danbury, one in Middletown — still have no clear path to open. The Mind Trust Connecticut and ACCS will keep showing up for those communities until that changes. Charter schools also still need a long-term structural funding fix, not just supplemental grants, to ensure real financial stability. 

Supplemental grants prove the political will exists to fund charter schools. A permanent change to the funding formula turns a good year into a durable system that fairly funds high-quality charter schools across Connecticut.

But the trajectory is unmistakable. Governor Ned Lamont has convened targeting a school finance overhaul in 2027. State education leaders have committed to releasing a formal charter application process later this year after several years of pausing applications. The pipeline behind it is packed with talented operators who have been waiting a long time for exactly this opening. 

Connecticut has no cap on charter schools, which means the ceiling on growth is set by political will and quality execution, not by statute. The demand is real: thousands of families on waitlists, communities ready to organize, school leaders ready to build.

More importantly, these wins reflect a broader commitment to expanding educational opportunity for students and families who need stronger public school options.

None of this was inevitable. It was built by The Mind Trust Connecticut and ACCS, alongside partners ConnCAN and the School and State Finance Project, and the families and school communities who never stopped showing up. The coalition is still standing. Connecticut’s charter sector is just getting started on its next chapter.

Charters are built on the premise that all kids can learn when a culture of high expectations, great teaching and deep relationships with students and families works together to help each child in the school learn and grow.

This year alone, over 30,000 high school seniors in hundreds of high schools across the country that our fund invests in earned over a billion dollars in college scholarships. And close to 100% of them have been accepted and are going to college.

For individual students, this is an extraordinary outcome.“For my family, this scholarship means that all of their support and sacrifice over the years has truly paid off,” said Laythan Davis, who is graduating from Uncommon Schools in Rochester, New York, this year, and headed to Cornell University on a QuestBridge Scholarship.

But it is surprisingly ordinary in a subset of public schools that have created an approach that works year after year. Our hope is that this becomes ordinary in all communities across the country. 

I had a chance to ask four great leaders of these extraordinary charter school networks about their “secret sauce,” and this is what I learned:

At Friendship Public Charter School in the heart of Southeast Washington, D.C., CEO Pat Brantley and her veteran team of educators are not only graduating 100% of their senior class, but also helping students earn more than and acceptance to four-year colleges and universities across the country. Friendship leaders credit their success to creating a school environment where students are exposed early to college coursework, career pathways, internships and real-world experiences that help them see new possibilities for their future.Ìę

From NASA partnerships and architecture mentoring programs to dual-enrollment classes and study abroad opportunities, Friendship students are encouraged to see themselves not only as college students, but as future leaders, engineers, designers and innovators. For many, those pathways are already paying off: Students are leveraging their career training to earn real income while in college, taking on work in their chosen fields that goes well beyond what a fast food job or work-study position might offer. Educators at Friendship often describe the school community as a “village,” one where students are deeply known, challenged and supported long before graduation day.Ìę

Across the country, public charter schools like Friendship are helping students achieve outcomes that often go unnoticed and therefore uninterrogated. We should be looking to these schools for strategies that work, not only in the charter sector but in public schools across the country with similar needs and student populations. 

For example, at DSST Public Schools in Colorado, seniors have earned more than $48 million in scholarships this year alone, while maintaining a 100% postsecondary placement rate for every graduating class since 2008. Each student averaged more than six college acceptances while earning highly competitive national scholarships, such as QuestBridge, Daniels Fund and Posse Foundation scholarships. This success comes from a that begins long before senior year. Students receive individualized advising, support in navigating financial aid and scholarships and access to counselors and educators who help students see college and career success as attainable and expected.

In Chicago, Noble Schools, which serves roughly 10% of Chicago’s public school population, consistently account for over $500 million in scholarships, more than 30% of the district’s annual scholarship dollars. More than two-thirds of Noble seniors are first-generation college students, and the network has built a college-going culture where students are surrounded by counselors, mentors and alumni who help make higher education feel attainable rather than out of reach. More than 1,000 Noble seniors enroll in college each year, many the first in their family to navigate the process. Noble to rigorous academics, mentorship and a strong college persistence model that helps students succeed after high school graduation. 

At Uncommon Schools — a charter network operating in five Northeastern communities — graduating seniors earned more than $29 million in scholarships, while 95% of students were accepted to four-year colleges, continuing a long-standing culture of academic excellence and college persistence for first-generation students. Overall, Uncommon students graduate from college at nearly four times the national rate of their peers. Leaders to long-term alumni support systems that help first-generation students navigate the challenges of college enrollment, persistence, and completion. 

Students like Laythan represent what becomes possible when schools combine high expectations with real support. During high school, Laythan helped build an AI-powered litter detection program, volunteered in his community and launched an eco-friendly clothing business — all while preparing for college as the first student from his school to attend Cornell.

Through dedicated coaching and continued engagement after graduation, Uncommon works to ensure students not only get into college but also earn their degrees.

These stories aren’t just about scholarships and college acceptance letters; they are a call to action. These schools prove every day that excellence is possible and that potential isn’t in short supply: opportunity is.

The divide also shows up in who actually uses school choice. Charter schools — the most widespread form of publicly funded options — serve black, Hispanic and lower-income students, especially in urban areas. In many cities, the number of kids on charter school waitlists reaches into the thousands, reflecting intense demand among families seeking alternatives to the schools they are assigned.

, author of , coined the term “” to describe ideas that cost their holders nothing while imposing real burdens on others — positions that are easiest to maintain when one is insulated from their consequences. Debates over policing have often followed this pattern, with calls to enforcement carrying far in high-crime neighborhoods than in more affluent ones.Ìę

Opposition to school choice is another clear example of this pattern. Many of the most vocal critics oppose school choice politically while enjoying it privately. Widespread school choice already exists for families with means.

Affluent parents have long exercised school choice by paying a premium to buy homes in desirable school districts or by sending their children to private schools. They have already secured the outcome that families with fewer resources are still fighting for. For them, the debate is shaped more by ideology than by the realities faced by parents without the same educational options.

For lower-income families, access to better schools through the housing market is often out of reach. Policies that expand school choice — charter schools, vouchers or open enrollment — are among the few mechanisms that allow these parents to exercise the kind of educational agency that affluent families already enjoy. The real debate over school choice is not whether it should exist, but who gets access to it.

Choice critics that the should instead be on traditional public schools. For students assigned to underperforming schools, this means waiting indefinitely for reforms that may never arrive, while viable alternatives are blocked. It also assumes that equalizing school quality is both feasible and sufficient — a concept at odds with decades of uneven reform and a large body of showing that peers and community environments shape long-term outcomes.

Another common concern is that school choice from traditional public schools. But this argument confuses institutional interests with student welfare. When a child leaves a traditional public school, the district is responsible for educating one fewer child. Funding that follows students to schools that are serving them better is not a loss to education — it is education working.

Importantly, find that expanding school choice actually leads to improvements in nearby public schools. When families have options, traditional public schools have stronger incentives to respond. 

None of this is to suggest that school choice policies are without trade-offs. Program design matters, and poorly designed systems can create real problems. But broad opposition to school choice, especially from those who have already secured educational options for their own children, rests on a position that carries little personal cost while limiting opportunities for others. 

Opposing school choice while overlooking who bears the consequences is a luxury belief that many families cannot afford to hold.

Both these goals could be scuttled by an alarming increase in the number of young children who lack access to healthcare. Our new shows that nearly 1.2 million children under age 6 were uninsured in 2024, and that number has been on the rise, with about 220,000 of them losing coverage between 2022 and 2024. That’s a 23% hike, larger than the increase seen for older children. It brings the rate of uninsured youngsters to its highest level in nearly a decade.Ìę

Drawn from U.S. Census Bureau data, the numbers are a harbinger of what’s to come, given the nearly $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts that Congress approved in 2025. Some under age 19 have been disenrolled since January 2025, signaling real potential for these trends to grow worse.  

The children under age 6 include newborn babies, toddlers, preschoolers and kindergartners — all going through key stages of brain development that require regular well-child visits and follow-up appointments to assess their physical and social-emotional health. The American Academy of Pediatrics’ evidence-based recommend 12 check-ups by age 3 to help ensure that children are developing properly and receiving necessary preventive care.

links expanding Medicaid eligibility to improved fourth and eighth grade reading scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. That likely means that health providers are identifying the sort of developmental delays and disabilities that can keep young children from learning to read — and that youngsters are receiving early interventions that can help to turn these problems around before kindergarten. These issues become harder and more expensive to address when children are older. 

Access to medical care can also ensure that children miss fewer days of school. — even in preschool and kindergarten — add up to weaker reading skills and math skills later. National trends show that young students miss the most school days in these early grades.

Our analysis found that more than half of states saw in the number or rate of uninsured young children between 2022 and 2024. Connecticut actually saw its rate drop during that period. But 16 states saw significant increases. More than 73,000 children under age 6 joined the ranks of the uninsured in Texas, where 253,000 youngsters — 1 in 10 —  lack coverage. In Florida, 27,000 young children became uninsured, bringing the state’s total to nearly 104,000. In North Dakota, the number of young children is far smaller, but the rate of those uninsured jumped from 5.3% to 9.8% in just two years.

Much of the change can be attributed to the end of pandemic-era protections that kept children enrolled in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program. When the federal requirement for continuous coverage expired, hundreds of thousands of children lost their insurance. 

In some cases, their families no longer qualified for the healthcare programs offered for lower-income children. But in far more instances, children lost coverage because of administrative hurdles, red tape or even .Ìę

Most of those who lost coverage are U.S. citizens. While we do not yet have data to show trends in 2025 and 2026, we are concerned about the ways stricter immigration enforcement is creating a on Medicaid enrollment. In some places, families with children who are citizens declined to enroll them for fear that their participation could endanger family members. The Trump administration’s aggressive seem likely to exacerbate that trend. 

So will a new requirement that all low-income adults on Medicaid prove that they are looking for work. It may seem counterintuitive that a provision aimed at adults would affect health access for children, but past show that when parents lose access to Medicaid, their kids as well.

So what can states do to turn these trends around?

The first step is to ensure more young children don’t lose their health coverage. That means paying careful attention to Medicaid and CHIP, which currently cover nearly three-fourths of all low-income children under age 6. of the nation’s uninsured children were likely eligible but not enrolled in these programs in 2019, the most recent year for which data is available. Historically, that number is closer to two-thirds.

Keeping kids enrolled in Medicaid helps parents afford and needed interventions for physical and emotional health concerns in the early years. These steps pay dividends later on by preventing children from needing special education services and other costly support when they’re older.  

State leaders should review their rules to ensure new enrollment and renewal requirements for adults don’t affect their children’s coverage. They and their community partners can help families understand that changes to parents’ coverage need not affect children. 

Unlike adults, children in every state are entitled to 12 months of uninterrupted coverage. State lawmakers can take that a step further by monitoring children’s enrollment to ensure the state is correctly implementing for all children covered by Medicaid, and by investing in community-based outreach and enrollment assistance. 

allow continuous eligibility for young children for up to five years, keeping them covered from birth to kindergarten; many cite school readiness among their objectives. Unfortunately, the Trump administration has said it will not policies, effectively taking this promising tool off the table. 

that young children with access to health coverage are more likely than those without to graduate from high school and college, and even grow up to earn more money and pay more in taxes. Medicaid is a smart investment that can keep young children on track to learn and succeed in life, providing long-term benefits for families and society as well. States should take every possible step to protect coverage for infants, toddlers and preschoolers to maximize this investment.

It’s the social capital gap — the yawning differences between rich and poor in access to the relationships, networks and institutions that are key to successfully navigating through life. Indeed, a landmark 2022 led by the Harvard economist Raj Chetty demonstrated that a form of social capital — what he called “economic connectedness” — is the single strongest predictor of a child’s ability to rise out of poverty. 

My 35 years of experience as CEO of a nonprofit education organization working with schools across New York City, most serving students from high-poverty neighborhoods, underscored just how profound is the social capital gap they face and how significant a barrier it poses to their success. 

I will never forget, for example, how a bright and capable young woman — the valedictorian of her Bronx high school — could not find her way to Manhattan by subway to meet with me about a scholarship to a summer preparatory program at an Ivy League college. After several attempts, I eventually had to go get her. When I did, I learned that her travel difficulties stemmed from the fact that she had never been to Manhattan. She had almost never even ventured out of her immediate neighborhood. Nor had she ever been to a restaurant, like the one where we met, that required placing orders with a waiter.  

What makes this story noteworthy is that it is hardly unique. This student is one of millions of young people who live in social capital deserts, where opportunities to engage with the wider world are extremely limited. This stands in sharp contrast to the experience of wealthier students, whose circumstances give them a deep reservoir of social capital to draw from and provide significant advantages.

What is perhaps the most critical takeaway from this young woman’s story is that it is not preordained. It is possible to change the narrative for future students who grow up in circumstances similar to hers, so they can possess the social capital they will need to succeed in the workplace and in other aspects of their lives.

Accomplishing that would require some reimagining of the school experience to make sure that the building of social capital is seen as an essential element of a formal education. Schools would be held accountable for ensuring that their students have access to a range of people, resources and experiences aimed at broadening their horizons and opening them up to new possibilities.

For high school-aged students, this would include participation in internships that would expose them to potential career paths, along with the norms and rhythms of work. It would also include visits to a variety of colleges, so they can see firsthand what each has to offer and how good a fit each would be. And wherever possible, it would include mentorship programs that would connect them with people who could offer support and guidance, as well as to networks that would otherwise be unavailable to them. 

For students of all ages, this focus on the cultivation of social capital would involve placing a premium on real-world experiences that extend beyond the classroom, utilizing cultural institutions, parks and other community assets as sources of learning. Students would have a chance to engage with the world around them and, in the process, acquire knowledge and learn valuable skills that can’t be imparted only through the classroom. 

About 10 years ago, a colleague and I were invited to one of New York City’s most prestigious private schools to see a new virtual reality program developed for a sixth-grade unit on ancient Egypt. The program was quite impressive, and when it was completed, its developer turned to us expectantly for our reaction. My colleague’s response: It was really well done, but it would be so much better if the students were actually able to go to Egypt.

That comment was partially tongue-in-cheek, but it speaks to a powerful truth: There is no substitute for direct experience. This feels especially relevant right now, when so much of young people’s time is spent engaged with their phones or computer screens, divorced from real life. While not all students can visit Egypt, it is possible to provide them with an education that is filled with experiences — in and out of the classroom — that allow them to learn about, connect to and successfully make their way through the world in which they live.

To be sure, even a guarantee of such an experience-rich education would probably not entirely eliminate the social capital gap. But schools can play an important role in narrowing it and making it possible for rich, poor and everyone in-between to find a place on the ladder of opportunity that is part and parcel of the American dream. That’s a role that everyone who seeks a fairer, more equitable society should insist they take on.