The bipartisan opt-in chorus grows louder
Kathy Hochul’s announcement that New York plans to participate in the EFTC meets support across the ideological spectrum.
Happy Friday, friends. Greetings from Atlanta, where Rachel Canter and I are presenting about science of reading policy for LEE members. I’ll be curious if LEE (and TFA) alumnus James Talarico is the talk of the town.
Today we continue our debate on the federal education tax credit, with takes from Chad Aldeman, Brenda Dickhoner, Jason Riley, and Colin Pascal; catch up on ICE and schools with Jennifer Stern and Daniel Anello; and round up other edu-opinions from Nicholas Bagley, Robert Gordon, Marty Lueken, Colyn Ritter, Jeff Yass, Naomi Schaefer Riley, Bruno Manno, and Adriana Harrington.
On Tuesday, I argued that blue states should join their red state peers and opt into President Trump’s Education Freedom Tax Credit—even though the Treasury Department has not yet published the initiative’s regulations and even though the tax credit is far from perfectly designed. Today we hear from folks on the left and right about why they agree—with me, and with Democratic governors Jared Polis and Kathy Hochul.
I’d be happy to print rebuttals, including from those of you who oppose private school choice, but I haven’t received any. Maybe most reformers are coming to terms with the tax credit, given that it can support tutoring and the like for public school parents, too? If that’s not the case, weigh in!
Without further ado, let’s hear from the growing bipartisan chorus that does support the EFTC, starting with Chad Aldeman:
I’m with you on this one!
The only reason to opt out is to stop private schools. But if your goal is to help kids, full stop, you should be willing to opt in. And if public school advocates get their act together and start SGOs, they could drive real resources to the kids they say they care about.
The argument that this program will “drain resources” from public schools is too simple. Yes, this may induce more kids to attend private schools, and public school enrollment could go down. But I believe that competition effects are real, and public schools can and will respond in productive ways. I’m also not convinced that lower enrollment will necessarily lead to lower spending—if anything, we’ve seen that policymakers will adopt hold harmless provisions and boost per-pupil spending levels. And again, that’s on top of the direct benefits to public schools for things like tutoring and afterschool funding.
Next up: Brenda Dickhoner:
Spot on, Mike! As I said in my op-ed in the Colorado Sun last week, the new Education Freedom Tax Credit makes a lot of sense for blue states like Colorado—maybe even more than people realize. Colorado is staring down a massive budget gap right now, and the programs the legislature cut this session included grants for math tutoring and before- and after-school programs—with threats to come after the supplemental CTE/apprenticeship funding. This tax credit could fill the void of those programs on the chopping block using philanthropic dollars instead of scarce state resources.
Ready Colorado advocates for all forms of educational choice, and I’m excited that the EFTC can help more families access private school options if that’s the right fit for their child. And even with private school participation fully on the table, Colorado could still direct more than $66 million to public school students in just the first year of the EFTC. That means more tutoring, enrichment, CTE, etc. at a time when states are struggling to sustain those supplemental programs on their own. For blue states trying to balance ambitious education goals with real fiscal constraints, this seems like a pretty smart tool to have available.
Jason Riley uses his Wall Street Journal column to celebrate New York’s decision, too:
Ms. Hochul is up for re-election this year and waited to opt into the federal scholarship program until after her primary opponent dropped out of the race. That isn’t exactly a profile in courage, but it does suggest that some Democrats in big blue states are coming around to the view that spurning federal dollars while pushing for tax increases is a bad look. They might also conclude that the wrath of voters is worse than the wrath of the teachers unions. An Emerson College survey last year put overall support for the tax-credit program at 64 percent, including 61 percent of Democrats, 68 percent of Hispanics and 63 percent of blacks.
Meanwhile, Colin Pascal hopes Maryland Governor Wes Moore will follow suit:
Many parts of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act engender fierce resistance from Democrats. The act reduces funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and its tax cuts disproportionately benefit higher-income Americans. The way it reforms Medicaid will reduce the number of Americans with health insurance. Every American, whether liberal or conservative, should be critical of the act’s negative effect on our nation’s $39 trillion debt. Republicans passed a bill almost guaranteed to worsen a fiscal situation that’s already terrible.
It’s right for Democrats to oppose parts of the act likely to harm those with the greatest need, but the unwillingness of some Democratic leaders to embrace the school choice tax credit hurts the very people that Democrats strive to serve. The tax credit provision allows individuals to donate up to $1,700 a year to scholarship-granting organizations that provide or offset the cost of private school tuition. The credit is also available for donating money to groups providing educational services beyond tuition, which includes after-school tutoring and school supplies. Well-off Americans already have access to private schools and private tutors, and it’s lower-income Americans who struggle to provide these services to their children.
These things have a tendency to snowball. Now that Polis and Hochul are in, others will likely follow. Especially if you think that’s a bad idea for Democrats, weigh in by responding to this newsletter, posting a comment, or emailing me at SCHOOLED@fordhaminstitute.org.
Jennifer Stern and Daniel Anello have experienced massive ICE immigration actions firsthand from their perches in Minneapolis and Chicago, respectively, and they take to The 74 to argue that schools should be off-limits to federal enforcement. (We’ve covered this issue at SCHOOLED before, here, here, and here. But it’s not going away.)
We recognize the value of immigration enforcement when it is focused on those who pose a safety risk to our communities, but schools should not be the place where this enforcement occurs. Armed immigration officers patrolling school bus stops and outside school buildings are causing significant instability and impacting learning….
Children, including citizens in or near schools where indiscriminate immigration actions have bled into their safe spaces, have racked up learning loss similar to what was experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic. ICE enforcement near schools is effectively manufacturing the same devastating effects on children as the pandemic.
This will require a policy solution, it appears, as a judge recently ruled that ICE has the legal authority to do its enforcement work at schools.
Speaking of law enforcement and schools, Nicholas Bagley and Robert Gordon argue that “Democrats should fire bad teachers and bad cops.”
The left has two competing impulses: Expand high-quality government services and embrace the public sector union agenda.
But those two impulses are in tension with one another—and too many Democrats are in denial about that. At its core, the problem is that public sector unions generally fight to minimize differences among employees, including both standouts at the top and weak links at the bottom.
That means governments cannot recruit and retain the best workers or manage up or out the worst performers. That, in turn, badly degrades the quality of government service in ways that damage the Democrats’ own cause.
But some elected officials are showing courage, Nicholas and Robert write:
Denver Mayor Mike Johnston recently changed the rules so that merit, not just seniority, has weight in layoff decisions. Johnston took a lot of heat from union members who shouted “shame” at him. But he did the right thing for the city he governs.
Furthermore, they argue:
David Broockman and Josh Kalla recently tested how Democrats and Republicans changing their views on issues might move voters. Across 29 topics, the authors found that embracing teacher accountability ranked third for winning voters over. It’s a slightly better issue for Democrats, the study found, than moving to the middle on transgender kids in sports or on immigration….
Wow. How many millions more words have Democrats spoken on gender rights than teacher accountability over the last year? That gap exists because getting crosswise with teachers unions is more politically costly than fighting with gender-equity groups.
Truth!
The most salient argument against school choice is that it hurts public schools by leaving them with less funding. Polls show that this sentiment, if believed, moves public opinion sharply against support for choice. Yet study after study finds this narrative not to be true, both with respect to competition from charter schools and from private school choice programs. Now Marty Lueken and Colyn Ritter dig into twenty years of federal data to determine whether states that adopted private school choice programs started spending less on their public schools. In short: nope.
In the five years before choice, average real per pupil expenditures among choice states hovered between about $15,800 and $16,100 per student. In the year before launch, average real PPE was $15,895. It rose to $16,032 in the launch year and $16,664 five years later—an increase of about $769 per pupil, or 4.8 percent. That does not prove that choice caused spending to rise. But it is hard to square with the claim that choice programs lead to a collapse in public school spending.
Speaking of money and school choice, hedge fund billionaire Jeff Yass argues in the Wall Street Journal that “Mamdani can make moms into millionaires.” Based on the article’s headline, I was worried this was going to be a pie-in-the-sky paean to education savings accounts and the opportunities they open to mom-run microschools and the like. But nope, that wasn’t his argument at all. Instead, he offers a lesson in financial arbitrage, suggesting the city offer NYC moms half of what it spends per pupil on the public schools (currently $42,000) to be used as a scholarship to the school of their choice. And then:
We are going to take the other $21,000 and put it in a real account, for which her child is the sole beneficiary. If it returns a paltry 2 percent over the next 13 years, that child will graduate high school with $300,000—enough for college, trade school or a down payment on a home. Give $300,000 to a graduate who can read, write and do math, and adios, affordability crisis…
Properly understood, every mother of two in this city is already a millionaire. Over the 13 years we spend to educate her two kids, we spend more than $1 million for results that are a national shame. The school-choice movement should tell that mom she is a millionaire and we are going to give her the money so she can control her destiny.
Still pie-in-the-sky, but creative!
Meanwhile, Chad Aldeman (yes, him again) argues this week in favor of reading retention policies because they change adult behavior:
For example, a study from Michigan—a state where, thanks to various exemptions and remediation efforts, the number of kids who are actually retained is just 0.5 percent—found positive effects of its third grade reading law even in districts that did not hold any students back. A Florida study found that flagging a child for retention improved the academic outcomes of their younger siblings. One of the study’s authors speculated that “the high-stakes retention signal for the older siblings might inform parents and educators about the educational needs of the younger sibling and induce them to act.”
If the actual act of retention were the trick, these results should be impossible. As is, they imply that the laws are forcing adults to change their behaviors in ways that boost reading outcomes even for kids who were not retained.
One of the most active champions of third grade reading laws is ExcelinEd’s Kymyona Burk, who implemented Mississippi‘s third grade reading bill while serving as the state’s literacy director. Last year, she told EdWeek, “Retention is not the goal of the retention policy.… The goal is for students to be identified early and receive the tutoring, the attention, the individualized reading plan to prevent a student from being retained.”
This is the same argument that Todd Collins made back in 2022:
A fixed, public promotion standard is one of the most effective tools we’ve found to change the actions of adults. Retention policy may or may not be effective for the kids who repeat a grade, but it is very effective in getting adults—teachers, administrators, even parents—to focus their attention and change their behavior.
Let’s not wait another four years for someone else to make this argument before we put retention policies into place (or bring them back). Including you, Ohio!
My colleagues at the Fordham Institute—past and present—know I live by the adage that “all press is good press.” But perhaps that’s not the case with a scathing book review in a national newspaper? So it is with Naomi Schaefer Riley’s take on Deborah Kenny’s new book, The Well-Educated Child, with lessons gleaned from founding and leading Harlem Village Academies:
It seems as if Ms. Kenny has embraced more and more…trendy classroom practices. (Doing so has likely brought her support from celebrities such as John Legend, who wrote the foreword to her book.) She doesn’t like it when teachers explain how to do something first—let’s say a math problem—and then ask the students to do it themselves. Instead, at HVA, “each lesson started with students grappling with a problem for a sustained period of time, and only then did the teacher lead them through a process of guided thinking to get at the underlying principle the problem exemplified.” This sounds great, but as my American Enterprise Institute colleague Daniel Buck has pointed out, this approach has been disastrous for student achievement and motivation. These struggle sessions, to borrow a phrase, lead students to learn less—particularly students for whom math does not come naturally—and persuade them they’re bad at it.
Furthermore:
There are some parts of Ms. Kenny’s critique of modern schooling that are completely correct. Students should read entire books, not decontextualized passages. HVA’s emphasis on reading lots of challenging books of different genres and finding teachers who will instill a love of reading will serve students well. But who exactly is Ms. Kenny arguing with? Much of “The Well-Educated Child” is best understood as a critique of the way that other high-performing charter schools operate.
Especially Success Academy.
But Eva Moskowitz, Success Academy’s founder, has the same goals for her students. The test scores are also the floor, not the ceiling. The 20,000 students at her schools read complete books. And they learn to appreciate art and music. In “A+ Parenting“ (2023), Ms. Moskowitz recommends great works of literature as well as games and music and movies to help children “become enthusiastic learners.” In the past 20 years, though, HVA’s scores have fallen while Success Academy’s have not. While they are still outperforming many neighborhood schools, Harlem Village Academy East, for instance, only has a 52 percent proficiency rate in reading.
Criticizing her book and her schools? Ouch!
In happier news, for National Charter Schools Week, Bruno Manno offers five ways to tap the lessons of chartering to improve all public schools:
Use the charter authorizing process to learn how to renew faltering district schools.
Expand how school success is measured.
Create more career-connected schools.
Think differently about building and using school facilities.
Focus on a “more good public schools” strategy.
We’ve been talking recently about how states can encourage students to attain valuable industry credentials—which are much scarcer than the millions of credentials on the market today. Now Adriana Harrington offers her perspective on how to connect pathways to employment outcomes:
At ExcelinEd, we view this through the lens of return on investment. Our comprehensive ROI analysis evaluates how well K–12 and postsecondary education-to-workforce programs align with high-demand, high-wage careers. By reviewing enrollment, completion and employment data on a recurring basis, states can develop evidence-based policies that maximize student success. But this research reveals that most states don’t even have the data to actually do an ROI.
The good news, though, is that we’re getting smarter about how to do this right!
New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani released an updated budget proposal scaling back an expensive teacher hiring spree tied to state-mandated class size reductions. The mayor—who campaigned on reducing class sizes—says the spending reduction reflects “an achievable plan that better serves both our students and our teachers.” —Alex Zimmerman and Michael Elsen-Rooney, Chalkbeat New York
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Meanwhile, “Cleveland Metropolitan School District leaders made the case for why tough decisions on layoffs and building closures are necessary,” writes Conor Morris. Cheers to Cleveland officials for not only aggressively closing schools, but also showing leadership on the issue by communicating, communicating, communicating. —Ideastream Public Media
“The pandemic was the mudslide that had followed seven years of steady erosion in achievement,” Thomas Kane tells reporters covering the newly-released Education Scorecard. The results are indeed sobering, showing widespread reading declines across the country. Still, a few bright spots remain: math scores and absenteeism are improving post-pandemic. Chalkbeat’s Lily Altavena follows up with a look into how Detroit is outpacing similar districts through targeted reading interventions and building a culture of academic accountability.
“Roughly 76,000 fewer students enrolled in Texas public schools this academic year—the first non-pandemic decline in nearly four decades,” writes Jaden Edison in The Texas Tribune, with Hispanic students accounting for 81 percent of the drop. “What stands out in the data is that public school enrollment is falling even as Texas continues to grow,” said Carlo Castillo of Texas 2036. “In many parts of the state, population gains are no longer translating into public school enrollment growth. That points to a broader structural shift policymakers and district leaders will need to plan for.”
The Texas decline reflects nationwide demographic changes already driving budget shortfalls, layoffs, and school closures around the country, as reported in The New York Times last week. It’s time to follow Cleveland’s lead and prepare communities for the challenges ahead.
See you next week!
-Mike
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