Toch v Barone on Dems & ed reform

Can Team Blue get its act together on schools? Plus Senator Mark Kelly attacks Trump’s education tax credit, Margaret Spellings calls for bipartisan ed reform, and more.

A few weeks ago, Education Next published a great take by Charlie Barone, “How Democrats Lost the Plot on Schools—and How to Get It Back.” I summarized his recommendations in SCHOOLED:

1. Strike a grand bargain. Democrats must come to an understanding with teachers unions and white progressives that unconditional opposition to innovation, accountability, and public school choice is a political and moral dead end…

2. Broaden the labor coalition. Teachers unions don’t represent everyone in labor affected by education failure. Far from it. SEIU and other unions represent parents and students, too…

3. Align with parents. Democrats have spent years talking around parents instead of to them—and sometimes worse, treating them as a problem to be managed rather than partners to be respected…

4. Elevate rank-and-file teachers. Groups like Educators for Excellence and Teach Plus show that classroom teachers are often far more reform-minded than union leadership.... Their efforts need support, and their voices need amplification…

5. Professionalize teaching—for real. Every high-status profession eventually modernizes training, compensation, and expectations. That hasn’t happened in teaching. I believe it will—and Democrats should lead that transformation, not resist it.

Then, last week, Tom Toch took to the Washington Monthly to explain “How Democrats Can Win on Education Again.” Notice a pattern? Tom argues:

Democrats…have an opportunity to rejuvenate public education and, in the process, strengthen ties with Black, Latino, and suburban women—voting blocs that care deeply about school quality. But Democrats are at war with themselves on education.

Centrists have long supported the high standards, assessments, and accountability paradigms, as well as charter schools and other forms of parental choice in public education. Teachers unions and their progressive allies have largely rejected that agenda, arguing that more funding and efforts to address the causes and consequences of poverty are the keys to student success. The two factions rarely communicate. When they do, it’s usually to hurl insults….

The irony is that progressive and centrist Democrats both have contributions to make on education. Public education desperately needs strengthening, but policymakers must address root causes by addressing the many hurdles in students’ lives that compound their challenges in classrooms. Centrists and progressives champion policies that, if combined, would raise student achievement, fortify public education, and win votes. But joining forces would require each to compromise and embrace elements of the other’s agenda they don’t like.

That agenda, according to Tom, would include promoting public school choice, backing the basics, championing more advanced classes, championing a national tutoring corps, promoting a new picture of school performance, and supporting Communities in Schools.

I asked Charlie and Tom to comment on each other’s articles. Here goes:

Charlie Barone

One of the key progressive policies Tom champions is a broader range of school success metrics, which I would argue is already embodied in ESSA, which, at the end, both centrists and progressives supported. I would point out that the ESSA model does not seem, systematically, to be driving improved student achievement. Quite the opposite. I think there’s a way a multiple indicator model can work to produce better results but that’s a longer conversation.

A second progressive policy Tom supports, as do I, is Communities in Schools. Tom argues, “But many centrist Democrats haven’t embraced the [Communities in Schools] strategy. Schools should stay in their lane, they argue, and work on the academic side of student success.” I’m not aware of many centrists who quite say that, and Tom doesn’t cite any. Mainly there is worry that focusing on non-school factors could be an effort at distraction from academics, but if it’s not that, if it’s “both/and,” I think there is pretty broad support.

So on these two at least I see less of a divide than Tom does.

I see three main things that Tom did not emphasize that are important:

1. There is a power dynamic that needs to be dealt with. There is no need for progressives, yoked to a union agenda, to reach agreement with so-called centrists (I’m saying so-called because I don’t think accountability and public school choice are inherently or exclusively centrist; as Tom points out, two liberal lions, Kennedy and Miller, led Congressional action on the most robust, albeit imperfect, accountability system to date, and Democrat progressives were some of the most visible flying the reform flag during the ESSA debate) because the so-called centrists are scattered and are not working together. That has to change. That was a key point in my piece.
   

2. I didn’t say it explicitly, but the progressive agenda leans very hard on the need for more resources, and that has to be part of any deal. That’s where there is most energy on the left. Sometimes it’s attached to things like “universal K or pre-K” and sometimes it’s more generic. But that’s a key part of any “deal,” i.e., resources plus reform. That’s why Obama had to embed $5 billion for Race to the Top within a package that had roughly $100 billion total in it for education. I think Tom underemphasized that, and I think it’s a deal most “centrists” would be happy to make.
   
   I won’t go into detail here, but I think there are many things that don’t fit neatly into “centrist” versus “progressive” boxes. Class size reduction is a good example. The left champions it because unions want it (for both policy and political reasons) and parents like it, but, as we are seeing in New York, it can be incredibly regressive from both a monetary and policy (teacher quality) perspective.
   

3. I also dedicated a lot of space to advocating for evidence-aligned policy. Is that inherently centrist? Hard to say. Perhaps it falls to the centrists because the unions have been in many cases working against it in, for example, right to read fights, so progressives are less likely to lead. But progressives, on the other hand, generally tout themselves as pro-science. Encouragingly, in Massachusetts at least, there’s unanimous agreement thus far among Democrats on the need to do something, and my understanding is that the legislation being negotiated now is sound so far.

Tom Toch

Charlie’s article in Education Next is a super helpful contribution to the important question of where Democrats should go next on K–12 education. I tried to answer a somewhat different question in my piece in The Washington Monthly. I started with an acknowledgment that Democrats are deeply divided on education policy and that they would have to address that divide if the party hoped to leverage the education issue to its advantage in the 2026 and 2028 elections. What are the elements of an education agenda that might achieve that goal, that might help centrist and progressive Democrats to find common ground on the education issue, enabling them to speak in a unified voice to key voter groups on the issue? I suggested several potential elements of such an agenda. There are no doubt others.

Importantly, I didn’t write the piece as a partisan exercise. I was trying to give Democrats a self-interested reason to take on the improvement of public education because student achievement is lagging nationally, 90 percent of the nation’s students attend public schools, and Republican leaders in Washington have largely sidestepped the problem. A strong public education improvement agenda would help Democrats appeal to Blacks, Latinos, and suburban women—voting blocs that care deeply about school quality. Democratic politicians have an opportunity to help themselves by helping students.

Finding common ground among Democrats would require considerable compromise. Centrists and progressives in the party are far apart on some key issues. One is how best to measure school performance.

I suggested a new model for measuring schools that would maintain a substantial role for achievement test scores but reduce their primacy and elevate student growth and other measures known to drive school improvement. It would give both centrists and progressives some of what they want on the issue.

Centrists are right to insist that test scores play a key role in school measurement. As Rachel Canter of the Progressive Policy Institute writes in a new report on Mississippi’s improving educational systems, we can’t expect student performance to rise if we can’t be honest about how much children know compared to what we expect them to know.

But measuring school performance should be seen as a means to an end, not as an end in itself; it’s the first step in improving school performance. But test scores don’t give schools a reform agenda. If, on the other hand, states gave meaningful weight in rating schools to the rigor of schools’ curricula, teacher quality, school climate, and other features that research has found to drive student success, they would give schools specific things to work on. It would drive more school improvement, I wrote, because schools pay attention to what’s measured.

The new measurement model would maintain a commitment to student test scores while putting greater emphasis on school improvement, nodding to both centrists and progressives.

As Charlie notes, Congress gave states a green light to use the broader metrics a decade ago. And he’s right to point out that the federal law approving the step hasn’t produced much school improvement. But that’s not because states are measuring a wider range of school features. Most states are not doing that. They have overwhelmingly continued to prioritize proficiency rates on standardized tests in their school measurement formulas, and many have been ineffective in helping schools with poor test scores improve.

Charlies writes that “there’s a way a multiple indicator model can work to produce better results but that’s a longer conversation.” That’s exactly the conversation Democrats should be having now.

My apologies if you were expecting a slugfest. That’s how a polite policy debate is had, folks! But what do you think? Where do Tom and Charlie get it right—and wrong—on where Democrats should go on education? And are they correct to dismiss Republicans as obsessed with nothing but school choice and culture wars? Respond to this newsletter or email SCHOOLED [at] fordhaminstitute [dot] org to weigh in.

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Speaking of education policy and politics, Matt Barnum writes up a recent event hosted by the Bipartisan Policy Center to promote its new workforce commission report (covered by SCHOOLED here). With insights from Margaret Spellings, Andy Rotherham, Tom Kane, and Katie Jenner, Matt offers three reasons why bipartisan ed reform could make a comeback:

1. There really is a learning crisis.

2. The aspiring reformers are driving the mainstream media narrative about education.

3. Both parties may have political incentives for moving to the center on education.

As well as three obstacles:

1. Reformers don’t have a clear bumper sticker.

2. There is little clear grassroots demand for this sort of reform.

3. Bipartisan reform may require presidential leadership.

I view it as a good sign that Matt’s article—and the growing interest in getting the ed-reform gang together back again—caught the attention of Diane Ravitch. She, of course, is unhappy about this development. One of her many spurious arguments is that reform doesn’t work—even quoting me to support her case. Except reform did work, until we stopped doing it, as I argued here, and not just as measured by test scores. As I wrote back in October:

• The percentage of young Americans with a two-year degree or higher shot up from 37 percent (class of 1997) to 51 percent (class of 2016). A majority of young Americans now have a college degree of some sort.

• The percentage of young Black Americans with at least a two-year degree shot up from 27 to 42 percent; for young Hispanic Americans it more than doubled, from 17 percent to 36 percent.

• The percentage of young women with at least a two-year degree rose from 41 percent to a remarkable 57 percent.

Long live bipartisan education reform!

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Smack dab in the middle of bipartisan education reform is the charter schools movement, long supported by advocates and educators from left, right, and center. Jed Wallace’s latest post proposes three policies that would accelerate the growth of the sector. “They are ideas tailored to three realities of the present moment,” Jed argues, namely:

1. Public education is now in a period of profound enrollment decline and fiscal stress.

2. In many cities, charter schools already serve 30 to 50 percent of students, which means that future growth will increasingly be harder to achieve through simple new-school startup alone.

3. Many charter organizations are now far more mature than they were a generation ago. They have the capacity, the experience, and the operational strength to grow in new ways.

So what are his three ideas?

1. Resource parity between charter schools and district schools.

2. Smart conversion laws that let school communities go independent or join existing charter organizations.

3. Financial transparency that shows school communities when conversion is in their interest.

I like ‘em! How about you?

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Private school choice, on the other hand, remains a point of contention between the parties—save for a few outliers like Jorge Elorza. In fact, a potential presidential contender, Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, is now leading an effort to repeal President Trump’s Education Freedom Tax Credit. Senator Kelly writes:

Arizona’s experiment with universal school vouchers should be a cautionary tale for my Republican colleagues. It is busting our state budget and threatens to close public schools and make it harder for working class kids to get a good education. We should not take Arizona’s failed experiment national, but that is exactly what most Congressional Republicans and the Trump administration did in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

He continues with a parade of horribles about Arizona’s private school choice programs—the particulars of which I’m sure our friends in the school choice movement will find fault in—especially Kelly’s dubious claim that 20 percent of expenses charged to the state’s education savings accounts were found to be “unallowed.” (No, that was just for expenses already flagged as high-risk.) Nevertheless, Kelly says:

We have an opportunity to fix this by passing the Keep Public Funds in Public Schools Act, which I introduced April 15. This bill, endorsed by more than 160 education and disability rights organizations, would repeal the federal tax credit voucher program, halting one of the major wrecking balls the Trump administration has taken to public education.

So is this bad for bipartisan education reform? Not necessarily, IMO, if it creates more space for Democrats to embrace charter schools and other items on Charlie Barone’s and Tom Toch’s wish list. But your mileage may vary…

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We talk a lot around here about graduation standards, and how it’s probably never been easier in America to “earn” a high school diploma. Now Josiah Padley is making the case that the Land of 10,000 Lakes (by which I mean the state of Minnesota, not the brand of butter) needs to raise the bar for graduation, grading, and more by adopting three “structural changes”:

1. Policymakers should consider returning an updated version of the Minnesota Graduation Required Assessment for Diploma (GRAD) exit exam, which was jettisoned in 2013.... The mere presence of a graduation requirement can kickstart the entire system, pushing educators, parents, and students towards achievement....
   

2. Systemic guards against grade inflation should be implemented.... There are many potential avenues for grade inflation reform. For example, external checks on grades, like end-of-course exams, can be incredibly helpful. Transparent final report cards are essential; even if classroom grades remain inflated, printing a child’s standardized test results alongside their grade level proficiency can clue parents in.... Additionally, Minnesota’s districts should avoid faddish, potentially inflationary grading reform schemes such as equity-based grading, which can be disastrous if not implemented thoughtfully.
   

3. Creative overhauls of the entire diploma system might be in order.... Almost half of America’s states offer multiple pathways to graduation. Some states, like Louisiana, have addressed this issue by providing students in tenth grade with a choice to either attain a university pathway diploma or a technical pathway diploma. Others, like New York, Ohio, and Texas) have “honors” diplomas, designed for students that plan to attend a university. For Minnesota, bifurcating diplomas into a career and a collegiate pathway (like Louisiana) seems both effective and elegant.…

Josiah’s first proposal—exit exams—is a tough sell, but end-of-course exams can bring many of the same benefits. So with that friendly amendment, I say: “You betcha!“

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Jessika Harkay shares an uplifting look at Connecticut’s lowest-funded school district, where elementary school students are beating the odds on reading proficiency scores. Behind their success are dedicated teachers supporting each other, hands-on oversight and accountability, and innovative efforts to improve student outcomes. The district is scaling successful school-level efforts, including small shifts to the school day schedule—building in transition times and reteach days for difficult units—and bigger changes like a departmentalized third grade schedule where students rotate between classrooms. —The 74

Pennsylvania created high school graduation pathways to bypass standardized testing requirements. Now, popular credentials include one in “ladder safety,” which, as Rebecca Redelmeier notes, has “little value or relevance to students after graduation,” and finds that “no one at the state or district level is analyzing which credentials students submit to meet graduation requirements.”

Pushing students to develop technical skills via industry-recognized credentials isn’t an inherently flawed idea, but the details matter. In a recent report for Fordham, Jay Plasman dug into how credentials earned in high school impact college and workforce outcomes in Ohio, where a “career experience and technical skill” pathway also allows underperforming high schoolers to earn credentials in fields unlikely to yield the long-term opportunities that come with basic math and English proficiency. Pennsylvania’s leaders may want to take note.

In Education Next, Alan Gottlieb, Maya Lagana, and Van Schoales share how rural districts in Colorado do “deeply relational work while fighting a regulatory architecture built for districts 10 to 50 times their size.” They describe district leaders in tune with their community needs, while frustrated by the burdens of state-mandated reporting and a disregard for the needs and capacities of rural districts across the state.

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Rachel Canter’s great article in the Atlantic on the Mississippi Marathon—and her longer PPI report on the same topic—continues to generate responses. First up is Robert Pondiscio—from his post writing up Rachel’s report and previewing an AEI event about lessons from the Magnolia State:

Mississippi uncomfortably challenges my priors because is it suggests something I’d prefer not to concede so easily: that accountability, under the right conditions, may not just measure performance—it may help create it. When it’s part of a coherent system aligned with instruction, support, and clear expectations, it may play a more constructive role than its critics, myself included, sometimes imagine.

Next is a take from Jill Pinsky:

Hi Mike,

I enjoyed today’s roundup on accountability and the Mississippi discussion—it’s a debate I care a lot about, given Watershed’s work supporting state education agencies on measurement systems. I’m sure your email is busy (everyone loves to talk about accountability!) but I wanted to offer a perspective that I think is missing from the conversation.

What Mississippi and Louisiana actually did was pair high-stakes accountability with transparency and clear directives on what to do. It’s the combination of these things—not one or the other—that produced results.

When we talk about “accountability,” the conversation almost always collapses to ratings and consequences. But accountability is really a system: assessments that connect to what students are learning in the classroom, ratings that accurately measure what matters for student success, reporting that gives educators and families transparent and actionable information, and school improvement strategies that tell struggling schools specifically what to do—not just that they need to do better.

Mississippi didn’t just slap letter grades on schools and hope for the best. The state paired its accountability system with early reading screening that reached parents, literacy coaches trained in the science of reading deployed to low-performing schools, and a third-grade retention policy that changed adult behavior. In Louisiana, we went even further, connecting its accountability results to specific, evidence-based interventions like high-quality instructional materials and aligned professional development, and making it easy for schools to access those supports through a unified planning and funding process.

Karen raises a fair point about curriculum transparency—Mississippi doesn’t publish district-level curriculum data, and that’s a real gap. But that actually reinforces the argument: Transparency and reporting are essential parts of the measurement system, and there’s still room for Mississippi (and most states) to strengthen that lever.

The bottom line: Accountability without direction is just pressure. Direction without accountability lacks urgency. The states seeing real results are doing both—and doing it through a coherent measurement system, not just a rating scheme.

Grateful as always that you elevate these questions and conversations!

See ya next week, friends!

Mike

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