With this toxic stew of factors both internal and external, I fear America may be entering a dangerous period for K-12 public education, with an increased risk of corruption and malfeasance.

Look at what鈥檚 happening in Illinois. The state Board of Education recently voted to for the Illinois Assessment of Readiness, the standardized test used in the public schools. The result: 53% of students will now be judged to be proficient in reading, rather than 38%. It appears to be a blatant effort to lower standards in order to make the public schools in Illinois look better.

The board claims that it has to do this, because so many of those students are going on to college despite falling short of proficiency. But talk to anyone who works with incoming university freshmen and you will realize that, in the current era, college enrollment is of college readiness.

The K-12 school system is embattled: Enrollment just keep coming, and public support is at an . Since the pandemic, has gone from stagnant to declining, especially when compared with that of other wealthy countries. Many districts have unfunded pension plans that will add even more financial strain. And the current workforce, especially in the big urban districts, is about the future of public education.

K-12 districts are largely controlled by local politicians 鈥� school board members 鈥� who often have strong incentives to keep powerful interest groups happy in the short term, whether they are parent organizations or union leaders, instead of making difficult decisions that would protect their school system’s long-term integrity. These include closing schools, reducing administrative positions or redrawing (or eliminating) attendance zone lines. These board members control hundreds of in taxpayer funding every year and what may be over a trillion dollars worth of underutilized real estate assets.

This is a powder keg of risk with vast amounts of money at stake, not to mention the public trust and the educational opportunities of a generation of children.

Adding to the problem, local journalism has deteriorated in the last two decades, as newspapers around the country have gone out of business or cut their news desks. The education beat seems to have . What鈥檚 more, after being gutted by the Trump administration, it鈥檚 unlikely that the federal Department of Education is going to be able to play much of a watchdog role in coming years.

The legal oversight of the public schools mainly falls to state legislatures. But most Republican lawmakers have other fish to fry, focusing on culture war issues and giving families escape routes from the system in the form of tax credit scholarships or educational savings accounts.

Democrats, reeling from recent electoral losses and paralyzed by internal divisions, are reluctant to even acknowledge the potential for bad behavior in the school system, as the public districts and their unions are a tremendous store of political power for them 鈥� even in red states. As Dana Goldstein in The New York Times, 鈥淒emocrats, for their part, often find themselves standing up for a status quo that seems to satisfy no one.鈥�

As a result, powerful interest groups can often exert their influence over the system and extract special privileges or take advantage of wasteful spending. Here are just a handful of recent stories, many of which received little to no coverage in the mainstream press:

• In Chicago, the district , which could be worth tens of millions of dollars. But, in a classic case of anti-competitive behavior, the district prohibits future owners from operating charter schools there, meaning the properties will go for millions below their true market value. 鈥淥ur goal is not to sell them for the highest dollar amount,鈥� admits a district spokesperson.

• In New Jersey, the state teachers union to fund the gubernatorial campaign of a candidate 鈥� the union’s president 鈥� who finishes fifth in the Democratic primary.
  
• In Tampa, the district , a failing school serving African-American students. The nearest school for many of these families is A-rated Gorrie Elementary, which primarily serves wealthy white families. But not one of the Just students is allowed to enroll in Gorrie, instead getting bused to C-rated schools farther from their homes.
  
• In Los Angeles, the district spends to increase permanent capacity at Ivanhoe Elementary School, one of the most coveted in the district, despite thousands of empty seats in schools just five to six minutes away.

• Outside Sacramento, the Center Joint Unified School District fights efforts of local families to be allowed to that is just blocks from their home, because the district fears losing funding if its archaic district boundaries are redrawn.聽

Strong investigative journalists are needed to step into this void, for there will be important stories to tell. Nonprofit watchdogs, like my organization, Available to All, will play a role, too.

Most importantly, state legislators need to step up their oversight of local districts. Legislators need to ensure they do not lower our academic standards to make their schools look better. There also need to be strong transparency laws, and districts should be subject to external audits of their financials and real estate holdings.

Public education can survive the current crisis and emerge stronger than ever, but only if those of us who believe in public education work together to ensure that trust in the system is restored.

In theory, the closure should have been good news for families whose children attend Just. There鈥檚 a great public school, Gorrie Elementary, about 2 miles away. At Gorrie, 80% of the kids read at grade level. For many Just families, Gorrie is much closer to home, so a reassignment there would mean a shorter commute, too.

But that鈥檚 not what happened. Like many elite urban elementary schools, Gorrie is full up with families who have crammed into the attendance zone. So the Just students got assigned to Tampa Bay Boulevard and Washington elementary schools, which have reading proficiency levels of 51% and 27%, respectively. For most of these families, their new school is further away than Gorrie.

The outcome was predictable. It is a pattern that plays out in almost all urban American districts.

In 2020, I published a about educational redlining and the coveted public elementary schools that are protected by attendance zones 鈥� places like Lincoln Elementary in Chicago, PS 8 Robert Fulton in Brooklyn, Lakewood Elementary in Dallas and Mount Washington Elementary in Los Angeles.

Gorrie shares all the telltale characteristics of these schools: full enrollment, demographics that skew wealthier and whiter than nearby schools, much higher rates of proficiency on state tests than the district average and homes that cost than those just outside the zone because they come with privileged access to a 鈥渇ree鈥� high-quality public education.

My book features maps showing that the attendance zones of many of these schools mirror the racist redlining diagrams drawn during the New Deal era to determine who would (and wouldn鈥檛) qualify for federal housing assistance. If you line up the Gorrie attendance zone with the from 1940, you鈥檒l see that the school zone covers all the areas deemed to be 鈥渂est鈥� and 鈥渄esirable鈥� over 80 years ago.

It also boxes out almost all the areas of town that were shaded red and labeled 鈥渉azardous鈥� because they had a high concentration of low-income people of color. Those areas are still low-income neighborhoods, and once again those families find themselves on the losing end of discriminatory government maps.

Those maps are not so easy to change.

Earlier this year, before the vote that closed Just Elementary, Superintendent Addison Davis of the Hillsborough County Public Schools released a rezoning plan developed by a high-end New York urban planning firm. His goal was to reduce costs by closing underutilized schools and assigning children to buildings closer to their homes. According to Davis, 44% of Hillsborough schools are underenrolled, while 24% are overenrolled 鈥� an imbalance that had contributed to the district鈥檚 ongoing . The projected capital savings of up to $160 million and annual savings of up to $30 million.

The plan, however, caused a huge public controversy. Many students at Plant High School 鈥� an overcrowded, high-performing school that serves many high-income families who live quite far away 鈥� would have been assigned to other, closer schools. But their , and Davis had to scrap his plans to redo the zone for Plant. The closure of Just Elementary, however, did pass, as there were so few parents left who would object to shutting a failing, half-empty school. Davis has since , perhaps a casualty of the bitter politics of his rezoning effort.

Similar tensions play out in my old neighborhood of Los Angeles. In northeast L.A., seven elementary schools surround coveted Mount Washington. Those seven schools saw average enrollment losses of 66% in the last 15 to 20 years. Meanwhile, Mount Washington saw enrollment increase by almost 40% in a little over a decade. Families have crowded into the Mount Washington zone, pushing housing prices even higher and making access impossible for students of modest means.

Such imbalances cannot go on forever, though. Since coveted schools can accommodate only so many students, and operating half-empty buildings around their perimeter is extremely expensive, districts are eventually forced to do something. Typically, they announce plans to redraw zoning lines. But, as happened with Plant, powerful parents and homeowners object, and school board members make extraordinary concessions to appease them. A number of districts have spent as much as $20 million to renovate a school to add more seats, even though there was a public school just down the road with plenty of room. At , and , officials approved millions in wasteful spending just to avoid upsetting parents who had already 鈥減aid for鈥� access to a specific public school.

Before he resigned, Davis that he believed part of his job was to ensure that home values continue to go up. Of course, artificially inflated home prices are concentrated in the zones of the most coveted public schools 鈥� those protected by educational redlining. It鈥檚 astounding that school officials are proud that they contribute to the ongoing housing affordability crisis, which is exacerbated by the persistent use of exclusionary school zones.

Eventually, districts may move away from this archaic model of school assignment, since it violates fundamental American ideals of fairness and undermines the public schools鈥� noble purpose of providing every child with a fair shot at the American dream. When they do, they should look to the history of the community college system in California. For decades, the system relied on geographic assignment, and enrollment eroded, much as it has in urban K-12 districts.

Then, in 1987, a state commission recommended ending the geography-based system. The legislature agreed and opened up the colleges to all state students. Enrollment rebounded, and now the community college system is one of the most trusted institutions in the state.

School access needn鈥檛 be a zero-sum game governed by bitter political fights over maps.