A Reason Foundation report uses some superficial comparisons to conclude that there isn’t a consistent relationship between funding growth and outcomes across states. The report contends that, in order to move forward in the aftermath of the pandemic, it is important to understand key pre-pandemic trends, but it offers no arguments as to how those trends provide appropriate context for post-pandemic educational policy. The report is insubstantial and inconclusive and offers no useful new analyses; in fact, it reprises evidence that is already widely available. It does not account for any economic, social, or demographic trends within states or nationally. Its analysis is weak and in some cases nonexistent, resulting in vacuous conclusions.

Suggested Citation: Belfield, C. (2024). NEPC review: Public education at a crossroads: A comprehensive look at K-12 resources and outcomes. Boulder, CO: National Education Policy Center. Retrieved [date], from http://nepc.colorado.edu/review/crossroads

Reason Foundation and EdChoice’s Fiscal Research and Education Center offer a calculator as a tool to assist state policymakers and choice advocates in providing more accurate estimates of the expenses of adopting publicly financed private-school choice (i.e., voucher) programs. While the calculator embeds a reasonable set of assumptions, it fails to solve the central problem state policymakers face: How are they to determine estimates of students who will enroll, and what percentage of them will be students leaving public versus private schools? Along with other shortcomings, the calculator and associated materials provide little guidance to help users devise those estimates, and there is little empirical research available on the topic. What is more reliably clear is that using the calculator can reveal to policymakers the high additional expenditures triggered when large numbers of students already enrolled in private schools accept proffered public subsidies through voucher, education savings account, or tuition tax credit programs.

Suggested Citation: Baker, B.D. (2024). NEPC review: K-12 school choice calculator. Boulder, CO: National Education Policy Center. Retrieved [date] from http://nepc.colorado.edu/review/calculator

This report claims that charter schools get better results on standardized tests even as they receive less in revenues, making them more cost-effective. To support this claim, the report combines its own database of school revenues with results from another think tank that compares charter school students’ academic growth with matched students in public schools. There is substantial reason to question both the fiscal and academic outcome comparisons, but the report makes an additional critical error: When transforming academic outcomes into a common scale, it conflates test scores with academic “growth,” rendering its outcome measure invalid. It then compounds this error by using a simplistic “return on investment” measure that eschews the complexity found in serious research on education cost modeling. The report, consequently, is yet another methodologically flawed document that should be ignored by policymakers and stakeholders.

Suggested Citation: Weber, M. (2023). NEPC review: Still a good investment: Charter school productivity in nine cities. Boulder, CO: National Education Policy Center. Retrieved [date] from: http://nepc.colorado.edu/thinktank/charter-productivity

A report comparing the cost and academic performance of voucher recipients in Wisconsin to public school students concludes that the voucher programs are highly “productive,” achieving better academic outcomes at lower costs than public schools. But the report suffers from methodological shortcomings that undermine its conclusions. It ignores recent literature examining the effectiveness of voucher programs in other states, overlooks important considerations regarding true school funding costs, and fails to assess the voucher program against an appropriate comparison group of students. 

Suggested Citation: Kotok, S. (2023). NEPC review: The cost-effectiveness of Wisconsin’s private school choice programs. Boulder, CO: National Education Policy Center. Retrieved [date] from http://nepc.colorado.edu/review/wisconsin-vouchers

A Heritage Foundation report claims increased competition has improved academic achievement in Arizona’s rural public schools and that similar policies will be good for rural Texas. However, this report overstates the similarities between Arizona and Texas, ignores relevant research literature, and presents simplistic and inaccurate analyses to support its claims. By addressing a narrow set of possible benefits of school choice, it also overlooks issues related to fiscal impacts for district schools, segregation, and exclusionary practices for students who require specialized services in schools. The report is an exercise in advocacy for expanding school choice policies, and its usefulness as a guide for policy and practice is minimal.

Suggested Citation: Potterton, A.U., Rogers, A., & Powers, J.M. (2023). NEPC review: From surviving to thriving: K-12 choice and opportunity for rural Texas students and teachers. Boulder, CO: National Education Policy Center. Retrieved [date] from http://nepc.colorado.edu/review/rural-choice

This systematic review of research literature estimates the impact of class size reduction on reading and math achievement, two of the many possible outcomes of reducing class size. The review surveyed all international research evidence up to 2017 and identified 10 research studies meeting its methodological standards. Beyond these studies, the review provides a comprehensive catalog of research on class size reduction, and a thorough assessment of each study’s methods. However, the study takes an extremely narrow view of what research is valid for determining the impact of reducing class size. Notably, more than 90% of studies relevant to the research question were not included. In addition, while related research has appeared in many countries, only three countries are represented in the body of evidence. The result is a very limited analysis of an already narrowed question.

Suggested Citation: Belfield, C. (2023). NEPC review: Small class sizes for improving student achievement in primary and secondary schools: A systematic review. Boulder, CO: National Education Policy Center. Retrieved [date] from http://nepc.colorado.edu/review/class-size-reduction

School attendance boundaries, like the district boundaries that encompass them, are politically and socially constructed, largely determined by state boards of education or local school boards. Two recent reports address issues associated with inequities that result from such tight coupling of housing and schooling. The first specifically focuses on inequitable school resources and educational outcomes tied to residential and school segregation. The second explores families’ use of an address other than their own to enroll a child in a more desirable school—a practice known as address sharing, punishable by law in many locales. Neither report is sufficiently nuanced to directly shape policy, although both can do much to inform it.

Suggested Citation: Castro, A.J. (2023). NEPC review: Integrating housing and education solutions to reduce segregation and drive school equity and When good parents go to jail: The criminalization of address sharing in public education. Boulder, CO: National Education Policy Center. Retrieved [date] from http://nepc.colorado.edu/review/boundaries

An EdChoice report is billed as an overview of the varied and often contested research on outcomes in school choice programs, which it defines narrowly as vouchers plus voucher-style programs that provide public funding for private schools. The report examines research on student achievement, access, competitive effects, and other topics, purportedly to help policymakers and parents weigh the benefits and costs of these voucher programs. It claims to show that school choice “works,” based on finding more positive than negative studies, yet uses a simplistic, flawed approach that obscures important differences in studies and can create a misleading narrative about the research evidence.

Suggested Citation: Lubienski, C. (2023). NEPC review: The 123s of school choice: What the research says about private school choice programs, 2023 edition. Boulder, CO: National Education Policy Center. Retrieved [date] from http://nepc.colorado.edu/review/school-choice

A report examines the monetary costs and benefits of Georgia’s Qualified Education Expense Tax Credit (QEEC), a type of voucher policy that provides a public subsidy for families to pay for private school tuition. Though the report argues the QEEC provides a net fiscal benefit for the state budget, several methodological challenges limit the report’s usefulness—most notably, a lack of data about how many students per year actually switch from public to private schools because of the vouchers. If most of the vouchers are provided to students already planning to attend a private school, then the policy only subsidizes private school students with funding that could otherwise be returned to taxpayers or invested in the state’s public education system, which is open to all students. Because the report relies on unrealistic assumptions, its suggestion that program benefits outweigh costs is tenuous and risks misleading state education leaders.

Suggested Citation: Knight, D.S. (2023). NEPC review: Qualified education expense tax credit: Economic analysis. Boulder, CO: National Education Policy Center. Retrieved [date] from http://nepc.colorado.edu/review/tax-credit

An NCTQ report evaluates 693 out of the 1,146 elementary teacher preparation programs in the US. It claims to identify how well candidates are prepared to teach elementary reading based on NCTQ’s Reading Foundations standards for scientifically based reading practices. While addressing teacher preparation for initial reading instruction is a high priority as states increasingly adopt new reading legislation grounded in the “science of reading,” this report repeats patterns identified in external reviews of previous NCTQ reports over the past two decades. For instance, this report again relies on flawed research methodology grounded in selective use of evidence to promote NCTQ’s narrow education reform agenda. Policymakers as well as the media are strongly cautioned to view this report as narrowly constructed reform advocacy rather than a valid or scientific analysis of the quality of reading content in elementary teacher preparation programs.

Suggested Citation: Thomas, P.L. (2023, September). NEPC review: Teacher prep review: Strengthening elementary reading instruction. Boulder, CO: National Education Policy Center. Retrieved [date], from https://nepc.colorado.edu/review/teacher-prep

A CREDO report compares charter school students’ learning in reading and math to students in traditional public schools. The report should be approached with caution by policymakers given the nonexperimental design that renders it unable to fully account for the factors that drive families to choose charter schools. In addition, the report presents its findings using an unconventional metric that makes it difficult to understand the policy implications, potentially misleading policymakers. The magnitude of the main findings fails to meet the minimum threshold experts consider to be a meaningful educational intervention.

Suggested Citation: Ferrare, J.J. (2023). NEPC review: As a matter of fact: National charter school study III 2023. Boulder, CO: National Education Policy Center. Retrieved [date] from http:// nepc.colorado.edu/review/charter-study

A Fordham report claims that the problems of inequality and inadequacy of public school funding have largely been solved. Relying on national funding averages that can mask the shortchanging of districts serving vulnerable student populations, the report’s analysis is too coarse-grained to inform state-level policy, where inequities and inadequacies persist despite the report’s assertion otherwise. The report's other arguments ignore a vast literature on analyzing education costs while allowing for reasonable calculation of funding necessary to provide all students with genuinely equal educational opportunity. Overall, it lacks a sound evidentiary base and provides no reliable or useful guidance for policymakers.

Suggested Citation: Baker, B.D. (2023). NEPC review: Think again: Is education funding in America still unequal? Boulder, CO: National Education Policy Center. Retrieved [date] from http://nepc.colorado.edu/review/education-funding

A Fordham report examines whether charter schools impact traditional public schools' finances and efficiency. The report finds mixed impacts on district finances, but suggests that traditional public schools improve efficiency over time when faced with charter competition. However, the report's claims and policy recommendations are untested empirically and unwarranted based on research. It fails to consider other possible explanations for higher expenditures in a charter environment, and downplays the negative impact of public school closures resulting from competition. While the report identifies relevant studies, its unsupported claims and recommendations limit its usefulness to policymakers.

Suggested Citation: Jabbar, H. (2023). NEPC review: Think again: Do charter schools drain resources from traditional public schools? Boulder, CO: National Education Policy Center. Retrieved [date] from http://nepc.colorado.edu/review/think-again

A Manhattan Institute report presents results of a survey of U.S. adults aged 18-20 to determine the extent to which eight concepts the report equates with “critical social justice” (CSJ) theory—which the report frowns upon—are taught in schools. Because these CSJ concepts are being taught beyond public schools, the report argues that school choice is an ineffective option for shielding children. Given that the report's methods do not adequately isolate exposure in school from the many other sources in which young people encounter these eight concepts, and that no causal relationships are established, there is no support for the report’s highly intrusive policy recommendations.

Suggested Citation: Sleeter, C. & Garcia, D.R. (2023). NEPC review: School choice is not enough: The impact of critical social justice ideology in American education. Boulder, CO: National Education Policy Center. Retrieved [date] from http://nepc.colorado.edu/review/csj

A report analyzes equity patterns of school capital investment, relying primarily on school district annual capital outlay data reported in the U.S. Department of Education’s Common Core of Data. It also examines which state policies may promote more progressive investment patterns. Confirming other studies, it finds that school district capital expenditures vary from year to year and from state to state, each state has a unique approach and mix of policies governing state support for local capital outlay, and capital outlay is rarely equal or progressive. The report also finds that states with policies that aim to equalize capital spending are more likely to provide more or equal capital outlay for students from low-income backgrounds. These findings are all well-supported, and the report’s recommendations provide useful insights for state and federal policy that will promote more progressive capital spending.

Suggested Citation: Vincent, J.M. (2023). NEPC review: Assessing the national landscape of capital expenditures for public school districts. Boulder, CO: National Education Policy Center. Retrieved [date] from http://nepc.colorado.edu/thinktank/capital

The report advocates for the increased “portability” of school revenues, allowing for “money to follow the students” and, therefore, the expansion of interdistrict choice programs. It attempts to show that many current features of state-level school funding formulas inhibit such portability. While there are sound policy reasons to facilitate greater interdistrict choice, this report’s prescriptions are not sound, in large part because they betray a lack of understanding of a core principle of school finance: Different students in different districts have different costs to achieve educational outcomes. The funding portability systems touted by the report do not account for many factors that determine student costs, and thus the report's recommendations should be avoided.

Suggested Citation: Weber, M. (2023). NEPC review: Public education funding without boundaries: How to get K-12 dollars to follow open enrollment students. Boulder, CO: National Education Policy Center. Retrieved [date] from: http://nepc.colorado.edu/thinktank/portability

A study looked at Teach for America (TFA) teacher turnover and contributions to fourth through eighth grade student achievement in New York City public schools between 2012 and 2019. The study finds that, after six years of teaching, TFA teachers continue to improve their contributions to students’ standardized test scores at higher rates than their non-TFA colleagues. The report’s broader conclusions overreach, however. Specifically, it concludes that “the performance of the TFA workforce is strong enough to offset turnover,” and that the “TFA performance advantage is large enough to offset turnover costs.” Unfortunately, the report fails to define the “costs” of turnover or to account for the broader effects of the instability of the labor market on schools and districts—including negative effects on school climate, financial costs to districts, and the disproportionate placement of inexperienced TFA teachers in under-resourced schools.

A report calculates the future economic burden that the pandemic has imposed through reduced student achievement levels. Under a set of assumptions about the link between achievement and earnings, this economic burden is projected to be very large, persistent, and variable across states. From there, the report contends that—to offset this achievement gap—schools need to be “made better” even as the report is silent on how schools can improve or if more funding is needed. Setting aside this exhortation, however, the report actually falls short of a full accounting of the total loss in children’s human capital from the pandemic. It focuses only on achievement deficits, failing to consider the other dimensions of human—and social—capital. Unfortunately, without a full reckoning or understanding of the damage the pandemic imposed on schoolchildren, it is unlikely that any policy responses will be adequate, efficient, or equitable.

A report oversimplifies important equity issues as problems of school zone boundaries. Despite noting mixed research results on how school choice affects housing patterns, the report assumes that eliminating school zone boundaries will necessarily result in wealthy families voluntarily relocating into poorer neighborhoods—ignoring the documented reality that many parents work to ensure that school district boundaries replicate segregation and inequity. In addition, the report offers no solutions to such concurrent problems as transportation for students choosing distant schools or housing for residents displaced by gentrification. The report’s illogical assumptions, lack of evidence, sleight of hand, and improbable leaps of logic make its advice to policymakers useless.

A report considers the chief concerns associated with Ohio’s voucher program: the harm to public school student outcomes through competition, the affect on district financial resources, and increased racial segregation. Finding that Ohio vouchers have had few such harmful impacts, the report concludes that it has effectively dismissed the primary concerns of voucher critics. Yet, while the report is broadly methodologically sound for the narrow questions it poses, the questions it asks are out-of-date with respect to current issues raised by voucher critics, which focus on substantially decreased student achievement among students using vouchers. Thus, the report does little to assuage the primary concerns of those dedicated to serving children through community-based public education.

The fair and adequate funding of schools is at the center of reports from Education Trust and Bellwether. The Education Trust reports focus on the extent to which states and local districts target sufficient resources fairly to students by race, language status and poverty. Policymakers can use these publications to understand which states (and which districts within those states) have the most work to do to improve racial inequality in education funding. In contrast, the Bellwether report focuses on how state finance systems rely on and regulate local property taxes. It contains a collection of state school funding profiles from six states; however, it lacks empirical analyses that link its recommended property tax policies to improved school funding equity or revenue stability. Lacking such analyses, the Bellwether report can provide no useful, validated guidance for policymakers.

This report analyzes changes in academic performance as measured by test scores and graduation rates in the Denver Public Schools versus comparable schools in Colorado over 11 years of the district’s experimenting with the “portfolio” approach to school district management. This approach includes central-office oversight of different school types (such as charter schools, innovation schools, and district-run schools), with widespread parental choice under a single enrollment system. The reported academic gains are dramatic and worth drawing attention to, but attributing them specifically to the portfolio reforms seems premature and thus not useful in showing how other districts could replicate that success.

A report presents data on early care and education trends in Wisconsin and concludes that government regulations have had the effects of limiting supply, decreasing parental choice in providers, and increasing costs. The report recommends increasing regulatory freedom, consolidating state agencies, and increasing parental rights over use of government childcare subsidies. The report should be applauded for continuing to spotlight the need for quality childcare and education. But because of significant methodological flaws and omission of important literature, its recommendations should be treated with extreme caution, if not avoided altogether.

A Heritage Foundation report compares the amount of “wokeness” terminology in parent/student handbooks in charter schools with the level of charter school regulation in their states, and concludes that while charters represent a safe space away from “woke indoctrination” in public schools, further deregulation and less bureaucracy will allow that sector to truly respond to parent desires to avoid “leftist” curriculum. While apparently intended to tap into current turmoil, the report has at least five significant weaknesses. It assumes that parent/student handbooks are good proxies for curriculum; it completely ignores the diversity of parents and relevant research about what large proportions of parents actually want; it conflates correlation with causation; it relies on undefined conceptions of what constitutes “wokeness;” and it possibly uses cherry-picked data and methods that suit ideological bias. These shortcomings render the report useless for understanding or developing policy. 

The Progressive Policy Institute published a report highlighting the emergence of widespread teacher staffing shortages. It describes contemporary “autonomous” school initiatives, which all fall under the umbrella of positioning teachers with greater decision-making responsibilities and authority. It then suggests that such initiatives are effective strategies to remedy shortages because increased autonomy produces greater job satisfaction for teachers. However, supporting evidence for the claims in the report is thin and relies primarily not on empirical literature, but on popular contemporary readings and descriptive surveys. Policymakers and other readers should be aware that what is ignored in this report is far more important to informed policy than what it contains.

A Thomas B. Fordham Institute report examines academic outcomes in Ohio’s nonprofit and for-profit charter schools; in addition, it explores whether differences in contracted services in for-profits appear to correlate with differences in their outcomes. Despite the report's claims, it offers little evidence to remove skepticism from the debate over for-profit status. In addition, the report is limited in its focus on only Ohio, which has substantially more transparency than many states require for school choice options. As a result, the report offers little to inform policy and practice in dissimilar or nationwide contexts.

A Buckeye Institute report recommends sweeping policy reforms in response to COVID-19 academic disruptions and what the report asserts to be declining confidence in public schools. The report recommends the state rapidly expand three types of school choice or voucher-like policies—education savings accounts, public school choice, and tax credits for private school scholarship programs—combined with fiscal transparency. The report does not support its recommendations with evidence or consider potential unintended consequences, such as reduced student achievement, increased racial segregation, and reduced funding for public schools, instead relying on tenuous assumptions about predicted impacts of policy reforms.

A report from Bellwether details what the authors call, “assembly-based education,” a hypothetical ecosystem that removes schools as a central education component. Instead, the plan proposes giving families the ability and funding to choose among varied learning opportunities. The approach is presented as helping to remove some barriers for lower-income families and to facilitate new communities based on shared interests rather than geography. The report also argues that the approach is timely and practical, pointing to the recent growth of school choice and supplemental learning. The concept, however, undermines societal investment in neighborhood schools and therefore runs counter to research demonstrating that many families, youth, and communities work hard to protect and improve their neighborhood schools, especially in marginalized communities. As such, this approach fails to genuinely center equity and educational excellence and instead elevates choice as the greatest good in an education system.

Families across the U.S. experimented during the COVID-19 pandemic with new educational models in response to school closures. This review examines the Center on Reinventing Public Education’s two recent reports on two related strategies that exemplify such experimentation: microschools and learning pods. The first report analyzes engagement patterns and success rates of a digital platform used at one microschool in Nevada. The second report praises learning pods’ staffing features and argues that these approaches might be adopted in traditional schools. Both reports paint the new strategies in positive light, but both have methodological and analytical shortcomings that limit their utility for policymakers. 

A report claims that the Michigan Student Opportunity Scholarship neovoucher program has the potential to create fiscal benefits for the state of Michigan and its school districts. It comes as state policymakers consider both the impact of school neovouchers on student achievement and the financial cost of a neovoucher system. However, the report is more misleading than it is useful, relying overwhelmingly on problematic reports and approaches produced by think tanks that regularly advocate for school choice.

In light of the pandemic which has likely resulted in rampant teacher absences and widespread teacher shortages, a TNTP report offers leaders clearly articulated employment goals and numerous recommendations for short- and long-term staffing plans. Although reliable evidence on the extent of teacher shortages is mixed, the report does provide leaders confronting staffing issues with some helpful questions and potentially useful recommendations. Despite these positive elements, however, the report has several research-related weaknesses. Accordingly, while school and district leaders may find in this report some useful ideas to consider, they should read additional research and reports to independently determine whether recommendations of interest are evidence-based and how local context might affect implementation.

Summit Public Schools reports that its alumni graduated from college at nearly double the national average and self-reported high levels of well-being, fulfillment, and workplace satisfaction. It also reports that alumni from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds now make more than $60,000 per year on average working full time. Although the study may provide some information useful to Summit’s internal decision-making, its serious methodological issues prevent it from having any implications for practice or policymaking in general.

A Mackinac Center report recommends changes to the state’s current approach to financing public and charter schools, to move toward a system where more funding follows the student to either public, charter, or private schools—or to other service providers. The report provides some useful, albeit insufficiently researched, guidance on shifting categorical funding into core funding and modifying the state’s approach to financing programs for children with disabilities. However, several key elements of the report and its proposals are built on false promises and assumptions and are not helpful for policymakers.

An Urban Institute report asserts that private fundraising, which is more likely to exist in advantaged schools, increases educational inequality. The report recommends that state and district policymakers track private fundraising and consider strategies for resource sharing and equalization. While the report’s claims are consistent with other research, problems with the analysis and presentation of the data severely undercut its validity, making it hard to know how much these patterns exist in Illinois schools. Nonetheless, the report’s approach of calculating per-pupil spending to estimate the magnitude of spending by private fundraising organizations could be useful to scholars and policymakers interested in understanding the potential impact of school-specific fundraising organizations. 

Advocates for increased privatization of public schools have long contended that private schools could provide equal or better outcomes at lesser costs. To bolster that argument, this EdChoice report asserts that voucher and voucher-like (tax credit scholarship and education savings account) programs have saved state and local treasuries some $12.4 to $28.3 billion dollars as student “switchers” use those programs to leave public schools and enter private schools. However, the report’s findings do not provide a sound base for policy decisions. Included in this review are suggestions for more detailed accounting procedures and more nuanced methodologies for calculating reliable variable student costs.

A Bellwether report attempts to examine the availability of low-income rental units in school districts to understand whether districts in the largest 200 metropolitan areas are accessible to families in poverty. While the report’s focus on the intersection of housing and education policy for students’ opportunities is commendable, it suffers from significant methodological shortcomings. One problem is that the report’s approach is disconnected from federal housing policy and research. In addition, and particularly problematic, the report is silent on how race and racism relate to housing access and educational opportunity. These concerns and others severely limit the report’s utility for informing social policy.

A report contends that the rise in Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) has led schools to assume powers and responsibilities beyond their core mission of focusing on academic skills, and it claims that teachers are unprepared to take on “therapeutic” responsibilities. In reaching these conclusions, however, the report ignores the empirical evidence documenting the positive influence that SEL has on students’ well-being, academic achievement, and sense of citizenship. Relying instead on a misrepresentation of SEL, the result is a one-sided discussion that does not make an evidence-based contribution and thus is not useful for informing policies.

A policy brief from the Beacon Center of Tennessee describes the state’s K-12 finance formula and makes recommendations for reform. The report asserts that Tennessee should replace its “resource-based” formula with a “student-based” formula more closely resembling the approach used in some other states. However, there is little if any peer-reviewed research to support the report's claims. While the report is commendable in its call to action and emphasis on equity and transparency, it provides limited actionable information. Policymakers should thus read this report with caution and pair their reading with materials that provide more nuanced perspectives.

Schools are currently the center of controversy over whose voices, knowledge, and perspectives should drive curriculum. A New America report argues that curriculum materials have the potential to engage minoritized students academically and teach everyone about America’s diverse peoples. The report provides helpful resources, although it has several limitations. However, taken as a whole, it draws needed attention to the importance of cultural relevance of curriculum materials.

A report from the Heritage Foundation objects to the increasing number of Chief Diversity Officers (CDOs) emerging on public school districts’ administrative teams, and claims that districts with CDOs have failed to close student achievement gaps in standardized testing outcomes. The report also promotes test-driven accountability at the expense of the learning needs of pre-K-12 public school students. The conclusions drawn by the report are based on flawed research, and thus it fails to provide valuable guidance for policy or add to the research base on closing achievement gaps or on diversity, equity, and inclusion in K-12 settings.

Charter School Funding: Dispelling Myths about EMOs, Expenditure Patterns, & Nonpublic Dollars is the latest in a series of reports from the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas that purports to show charter schools are inequitably funded compared to public district schools. The report relies on a proprietary dataset to make its claims; however, the data conflict with publicly reported figures, and the methods used to create the dataset are not documented. The report’s analysis ignores several basics of school finance: Differences in student characteristics and school programming are not accounted for, categorical spending is conflated with potential profit taking from charter management organizations, and philanthropic giving is inadequately evaluated. The sparse documentation of the report’s methods, combined with basic flaws in its analysis frameworks, render it useless in guiding charter school funding policy.

The Manhattan Institute’s How to Regulate Critical Race Theory in Schools: A Primer and Model Legislation manufactures a case against Critical Race Theory (CRT), building on a foundation of right-wing talking points. The report offers model legislation to counter the purported CRT-inspired indoctrination in schools. This review examines some of the ways that the report mischaracterizes CRT. The review also explains how and why the model legislation might, if adopted, lead to anti-discrimination lawsuits. For these reasons, the Manhattan report does not provide serious guidance to lawmakers interested in understanding or legislating about issues related to race in schools.

A report suggests a relationship between school suspension rates and students’ perceptions of safety in Milwaukee schools. Specifically, it finds that following an agreement with the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights, lower suspension rates for African American students predicted higher numbers of students feeling unsafe in schools. The report asserts that “reduced suspension rates for African American students resulted in lower reports of safety.” Thus, the report erroneously communicates to readers that decreases in suspensions of African American students are causing decreased feelings of student safety, and that the Department of Education agreement harms, rather than helps, African American students. This review of the report finds numerous concerns, including unsupported claims, misleading interpretations, conflation of correlation with causation, and the use of racially criminalizing stereotypes of African American students. The report is therefore not useful to policymakers as a basis for policy decisions about school discipline.

A report from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute examines the achievement growth of Ohio’s “early high achievers,” some of whom are identified as gifted and talented (GT). After tracking their academic performance from fourth grade to enrollment in college, the report finds that Black, Hispanic, and low-income, early high-achieving students tend to perform worse than White, non-disadvantaged peers in various educational outcomes. In addition, Black, Hispanic, and economically disadvantaged early high-achieving students are less likely to be identified as GT than their White, Asian/Pacific Islander, and non-disadvantaged peers. Finally, the report finds that GT identification improves the academic performance of early high achievers, especially for Black students and students in high-minority but low-poverty schools. Based on these findings, the report concludes that closing the “gifted identification gap” can help to close the “excellence gap.” However, given the data limitations and key assumptions in its research design, this study does not support the causal inference on the effectiveness of GT identification.

A report released by the Manhattan Institute addresses the question of how private school voucher programs should be regulated. That is, if private schools are to receive public funds, what accountability mechanisms can fairly and reasonably safeguard taxpayer dollars? The report advocates for relaxing accountability mechanisms that presently constrain some voucher programs, asserting that “more and better” private schools will participate in response, benefitting students academically. Such claims, however, are supported by a selective reading and intentional misreading of educational research. Insofar as that is the case, the report merely repeats well-worn ideological positions and neither advances what we know about the challenge of regulating private schools nor offers useful information for policy decisions.

The Manhattan Institute’s report promotes Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) by demonstrating that taxpayer expense would fall if the program motivated families to move children from public schools funded by the state to private schools funded primarily by families. However, the report conveniently fails to note a large body of recent, rigorous research demonstrating that similar private school choice, or “voucher,” programs have had significant negative effects on student outcomes. In addition, the report overstates short-term reductions that local districts can achieve, and it sidesteps potential long-term harm to adequate funding for them. Thus, the report provides little or no useful guidance on the broader question of whether an ESA policy is desirable or would be good policy for New York State’s children or taxpayers. 

A report from the University of Arkansas Department of Education Reform asserts that charter schools, despite serving only marginally fewer children with disabilities than traditional public schools, are significantly shortchanged of funding for those children, in addition to being significantly shortchanged on funding in general. This assertion is erroneous because the report ignores substantial differences in the classifications, needs, and costs of children with disabilities in district-operated versus charter schools. To reach its incorrect conclusions, the report exclusively self-cites deeply flawed, self-published evidence of a general charter school funding gap, ignoring more rigorous studies yielding contradictory findings. The report adds no value to legitimate debate over the comparability or adequacy of general or special education funding of charter schools.

As an increasing number of states adopt or expand choice programs in the form of charter schools, vouchers, tuition tax-credit scholarships, and education savings accounts, questions grow about their efficacy. This review analyzes a recent report from Kentucky’s Bluegrass Institute for Public Policy Solutions claiming that NAEP score trends for Florida and Kentucky from the 1990s to 2019 exhibit sufficient evidence that choice programs catalyze significant educational improvement. This review rejects that determination for two reasons. First, the report overlooks the intensity of Florida’s focus on preparing students for annual state exams in reading and math since the implementation of its A+ Accountability Plan in 1999, which appears to have had a substantial impact on the state’s NAEP scores. Second, in focusing on Florida, the report fails to acknowledge that the majority of the top 10 states with choice programs (as measured by percentage of students enrolled in charter schools) fell short of Kentucky in posting gains on NAEP over this time period.

A report published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis examines the potential effects of amending the education clauses contained in states’ constitutions. The apparent intent of this report is to provide an empirical justification for amending the education clause of Minnesota’s constitution. Specifically, the report lays out four independent empirical analyses in an attempt to advance a theory of action for improving education quality. Unfortunately, the analyses use methods and models that exceed the capacity and quality of the data. In addition, these methods and models are inadequately linked to one another or to the theory of action. Ultimately, the report provides little evidentiary basis for the proposed theory of action or for the current campaign to amend the Minnesota constitution.

A School Choice Demonstration Project report ranks states based on their expansion of market-oriented school policies such as vouchers, charters, homeschooling, and inter-district choice. It then compares this “education freedom” ranking to National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) scores, finding a positive correlation between “freedom” and these scores, and hints at a causal relationship between “education freedom” and student learning. However, the report ignores relevant peer-reviewed research that has found negative consequences of school choice reforms, and significant methodological flaws cast doubt on its findings. These shortcomings and others undermine the report’s conclusions and render it useless for purposes of guiding policymaking.

With universal pre-K and child care back on the national political agenda, increased scrutiny of these proposals is expected and welcome. A Manhattan Institute policy brief reviews evidence relating to both means-tested and universal early childhood care and education programs. However, the complexity of early care and education does not lend itself to simple policy prescriptions. A more meticulous review of the literature relying on fewer preconceptions might have led to more nuanced conclusions. 

New America recently published a report, Harnessing Micro-Credentials for Teacher Growth, that champions ways that micro-credentials have been used to allow teachers to move up the career ladder, receive higher pay, or renew their licenses. The report makes ambitious claims about the problems with traditional professional development and about how micro-credentials could address these shortfalls. However, the evidence to support these claims remains scarce. Since micro-credentials on their own cannot provide opportunities for teacher growth and require the existence of effective professional development systems to work, the report’s title and guidelines are misleading. Even if implemented, the report’s plan for expanding the use of micro-credentials could not deliver on its promises.

Update: Melissa Tooley and Joseph Hood, the report's authors, have posted a response to the review. The response can be found immediately below Aydarova's original review of their report.

Elena Aydarova's rejoinder to the authors' response to her review is posted immediately below the authors' response.

Youth engagement allows young people to participate in decision-making processes about programs and policies that affect them. Drawing on data from the federal Promise Neighborhood initiative, the Urban Institute has published the report, Youth Engagement in Collective Impact Initiatives: Lessons from Promise Neighborhoods. The strengths and challenges presented in the report do align with previous research regarding the contexts that enable and constrain youth engagement, but the report fails to make these connections explicit. Overall, while championing youth engagement, the report misses an opportunity to influence future policy and practice.

The 1619 Project of the New York Times re-examines United States history with the experiences of Black Americans at the center. The 1619 Project has elicited a significant backlash, culminating recently in the efforts of multiple state legislatures to ban the use of its curricular materials. Consistent with those efforts, this Heritage Foundation report seeks to disqualify the 1619 Project curricular materials as insufficiently celebratory of American capitalism. The report asserts that the 1619 Project overstates slavery’s importance to U.S. economic history. However, the report is less concerned with potential students’ content knowledge about slavery than with their receptivity to the libertarian policy preferences of the Heritage Foundation. Disconnected from the current scholarly literature on both American slavery and history pedagogy, the report commits the exact sin with which it besmirches the 1619 Project: substituting ideology and political motives for an accurate engagement with the past.

NCTQ’s 2020 Teacher Prep Review focuses on two areas of teacher preparation: clinical practice and classroom management. The report uses an approach that is now familiar to readers of NCTQ publications: asserting a set of preferred practices and then applying those criteria to teacher education programs. Although NCTQ reports have been critiqued for their limited use of research and highly questionable research methodology, this report employs the same approaches as earlier NCTQ reports. Rather than analyzing the characteristics of successful programs preparing teachers for a wide range of contexts, the report is based exclusively on adherence to or compliance with NCTQ internal standards that are neither widely accepted nor evidence-based. Thus, the report’s value is diminished and is unlikely to transform teacher preparation.

A study from Bellwether Education Partners establishes the need to focus on the mathematics education of young Dual Language Learners (DLLs). It presents lessons from research and practice on engaging families of DLLs in early mathematics learning. Unfortunately, the report omits major studies that are key to advancing our understanding of the capacity of young DLLs to engage in rigorous mathematical concepts when given opportunities to do so. Also, in its recommendations for teacher education/professional development, the report misses the opportunity to address what early childhood educators need to know about how young DLLs develop languages. Nonetheless, this report can inform policymakers and other stakeholders as they build asset-based programs that can support families and communities in engaging young DLLs in mathematics learning.  

The RAND Corporation released a report based on a national survey of school district superintendents and charter management organization directors about their experiences navigating the COVID-19 pandemic. The survey asks non-biased questions about how school districts and charter schools have responded to the pandemic and about their greatest educational needs. But some issues arise with the report’s reporting of results and with one of its two recommendations. The report’s first recommendation does follow from the respondents’ need for more funding to address inequities and socio-emotional learning. But the other recommendation, for more funding to support remote learning, does not appear to align with needs expressed by district leaders. The report also combines two different types of local education agencies (school districts and CMOs), so it is unclear how much of the resulting answers are driven by each type. Readers are encouraged to go beyond the title and read deeper to get a complete picture of the challenges, needs, and future of education from district leaders’ perspectives.

A report from the Hoover Institution argues that state and federal officials should retain results-oriented accountability systems that use standardized assessments of students followed by consequences for not meeting performance goals. The report is problematic for a number of reasons. It ignores a plethora of literature on the deleterious impact of test-based accountability on outcomes that could provide a more nuanced understanding of these systems. It fails to explain why these systems should be extended to include more testing at more grades. It also provides no evidence on the efficacy of its preferred reform strategies for low-performing schools, which include combining external interventions with market-driven consequences. Rather than evidence, the report relies on unsupported theories of accountability and market-driven reform to provide a rationale for its conclusions and recommendations. For these reasons, policymakers, educators, and state education administrators should not rely on this report for guidance as they consider strategies for assisting low-performing schools and districts.

A report from the Hoover Institution seeks to offer evidence-based guidance for policymakers in shaping more equitable outcomes from school choice programs. This review examines the report's claims, its representation of the research, and its use of research in forming those recommendations. The review finds that although the report is useful as a snapshot of the current status of choice programs in the United States, its use of research is often problematic. Some of the research is misrepresented, many claims are made without citations to evidence, and some of the recommendations bear no connection to the evidence provided in the report. As such, the report is, as intended, a political guidebook for conservative policymakers that fails to offer evidence-based guidance on making choice more equitable.

The Manhattan Institute’s recent report concludes that the Supreme Court’s 2020 decision in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue requires states to grant charters to religious organizations, including those that intend to deliver an explicitly religious curriculum that teaches religion as truth. While Espinoza involved a publicly financed private school tuition (voucher-like) program, the report reasons that its logic applies in full force to charter schools as well. Although this report does raise an important question and identifies the key issues for answering it, it excludes key federal and state case law necessary to fully and fairly analyze the issues. Similarly, it fails to acknowledge extensive key expert analysis on matters left unresolved by courts. The result is a one-sided analysis of the issue that is not a reliable basis for state action.

A report from The Progressive Policy Institute is a “how-to” guide for entities seeking to develop innovation schools in urban communities.  The guide highlights case examples of states and localities that have “successfully” implemented innovation schools, with a focus on test score data and student demographics. It argues that equitable educational opportunity is achievable when schools have complete autonomy and strong accountability to increase academic performance, adopt diverse learning models, and expand school choice. However, many of this convoluted guide’s long list of 53 detailed recommendations are improbable and overlook potential disadvantages of innovation schools. These recommendations are highly complicated, largely unexamined, and likely infeasible, especially if a district’s goal is to serve all students and their families equitably.

In the wake of the 2018 reauthorization of the Perkins Career and Technical Education Act, the Center for American Progress published a report articulating ideal components of middle school career and technical education (CTE) programs. Creating Strong Building Blocks for Every Student documents inequitable access to high-quality pathways that integrate challenging academics and CTE.  While the report's recommendations are appealing, they come up short in addressing the key challenge. Accordingly, the report is helpful but incomplete and could lead states, districts, and schools to implementation strategies and practices that fall into familiar routines that maintain the harmful status quo for students from marginalized backgrounds.  

The Program on Education Policy and Governance (PEPG) at Harvard University published a research study titled Changes in the Performance of Students in Charter and District Sectors of U.S. Education: An Analysis of Nationwide Trends. Due to limitations explained in this review, the study fails to advance our knowledge of charter school effectiveness and offers no solid base for policy recommendations regarding whether charters merit more or less investment, nor any insight into what practices and changes might benefit the charter sector.

School closings and the ever-increasing number of deaths provide the backdrop for a proposal by the Center for American Progress (CAP) to deny waivers of the federally mandated administration of standardized tests in spring 2021. Further, the federal government proposes to add to those assessments in ways that CAP argues would make the test results more useful. In its recent report, CAP sides with the Department of Education’s policy of denying such requests for waivers, and it calls for additional assessments that “capture multiple aspects of student well-being, including social-emotional needs, engagement, and conditions for learning” as well as supplementary gathering of student information. The reviewers find the CAP proposal to be ill-timed, unrealistic, and inappropriate for dealing with the exigencies arising from the pandemic.

The primary goal of the report Unleashing Educational Opportunity: The Untapped Potential of Tax Credit Scholarships in Pennsylvania, is to argue that expanding vouchers or tuition tax credits for private schooling can lead to large economic gains for the state. Such gains would result from two purported benefits: increased lifetime earnings for those attending private schools on vouchers, and reduced social costs associated with crime. These assertions are based on the claim that a vast body of rigorous research shows higher academic achievement among voucher recipients and shows that these voucher recipients are more likely to attend and graduate college and less likely to commit felonies. The report fails to support its thesis and misapplies its findings, and thus is of no practical use to policymakers and others.

Bellwether Education Partners’ four-part series on accountability reviews the historical roots, theory of change, and impact on student outcomes of school accountability systems, as well as the effect of COVID-related school closures on testing and accountability. The series notes that state accountability systems have not improved student achievement or closed achievement gaps over the last decade. Despite this conclusion, the series insists state testing and accountability systems must be reinstated in 2020-21 and must focus on schools with the lowest performance levels. In addition to this perplexing inconsistency, the reports are problematic for a number of reasons. Policymakers are advised to ignore this series and access more nuanced reviews and recommendations regarding school accountability in the coming years.

A brief published by ExcelinED provides recommendations to education policy leaders for the delivery of special education services during the COVID-19 school closures. The recommendations, however, assume that current knowledge among school professionals is sufficient to make the desired special education and technological leaps. In fact, the necessary knowledge and capacity are barely emerging. Meanwhile, the recommendations do little to address the unequal distribution of resources in schools, which include access to well-prepared teachers and related services personnel qualified to teach students with disabilities, particularly using distance learning approaches. Given these concerns, coupled with the lack of research anchoring its recommendations, the brief offers little to policymakers or practitioners currently struggling to make distance learning work during the pandemic.

Tandem papers by researchers based at the Reason Foundation ask, respectively, whether levels of student misbehavior range lower in Pennsylvania charter schools compared with traditional public schools, and whether the competitive threat from new charters alters how public school principals in Texas allocate campus budgets. Overall, the authors pose provocative questions about the possible advantages of charter schools, worth testing empirically, while falling short in building evidence to back their claims.

A report from EdChoice, working with Hanover Research, identifies and reviews studies that use Randomized Control Trials (RCTs) to determine student achievement or educational attainment outcomes of nine broad “education reform” areas. The report presents counts of studies with positive, negative, and neutral findings across these areas. RCTs are presented in the report as “gold standard” studies for determining effects of specific treatments on measured outcomes. The main concern with this report is that the casual reader will take the table presenting the tallies out of context and use it to argue that charter schools and vouchers for private schools have been studied most (because they are most important) and that most of these studies find positive effects. If, however, the report is not misused in such a way, it offers a limited contribution for readers wanting to get an initial feel for the RCT research in these areas.  

A Heritage Foundation report argues that special interest groups are pushing for excessive federal relief. Such spending, the report suggests, will come at the immediate expense of priorities like national defense. It recommends that instead of increasing spending, policy leaders should renegotiate teacher contracts, trim administrative “bloat,” and give schools more discretion over how to spend their reduced budgets. But the report’s findings and recommendations are poorly grounded, and its selective use of data presents a misleading picture of the school funding landscape. 

A report from the Reason Foundation walks the reader through a calculation of Arizona’s complex school finance formula, pointing out a number of funding inequities. The report provides 16 far-ranging policy recommendations that its author argues will improve the “transparency, equity, and effectiveness of Arizona’s school finance system." As a whole, the policy recommendations amount to a fundamental overhaul of Arizona’s school finance system. Yet the report is not a credible policy document because it does not provide any assessment of the impact of any of the recommendations. The report’s usefulness is also undermined by the lack of coordination among the multitude of policy recommendations, which may entice legislators to pick and choose which recommendations to implement and which to ignore, lending itself to the exact type of piecemeal approach that created Arizona’s inequitable school finance formula in the first place.

A short report from the Mercatus Center argues that, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, education budgets should be reallocated toward investments in virtual schools. It also describes the pandemic as presenting Americans with the opportunity to see the benefits of virtual schooling, which “could change education content delivery forever, making instruction more flexible and suited to the needs of each individual student.” While this is the first report we have seen that makes this argument, it is unlikely to be the last. While immediate crisis responses may reasonably involve such partnerships, the report’s broader call for this response to lead to a long-term shift to virtual schooling is not supported by the report. In fact, this recommendation runs counter to a solid body of evidence documenting the shortcomings of this online approach. The result is an uncompelling plea for policymakers to use this crisis to embrace an educational approach that the author sees as beneficial, notwithstanding the clear evidence of its limitations and problems.

A report from the Heartland Institute argues for a Child Safety Accounts (CSA) program that makes it easier for parents with a child who feels unsafe in school to transfer to another school (be it public, private, magnet, charter, homeschool, etc.). The CSA program is a version of the education savings account programs that began in Arizona in 2011. The report does not explain how the new policy will be funded, nor does it provide criteria that must be met to access the CSA. The report also lacks any research to substantiate its policy recommendations. While the report’s discussion about school bullying and other forms of abuse is timely, it fails to provide a clear set of steps to bring about change, opting instead to simply advocate for this form of taxpayer-funded vouchers. Accordingly, it is of little use to policymakers concerned about either school safety or school choice.

Charter Schools in Newark: The Effect on Student Test Scores, published by the Manhattan Institute, attempts to estimate the effects of charter school enrollment on student test scores. The report exploits a random component of Newark’s school enrollment system to isolate the effect of charter schools on outcomes. This method credibly creates a natural experiment that compares outcomes between students who were offered charter seats and those who were not. However, the students who apply to charter schools differ significantly from the greater Newark student population, in that they are less likely to be English language learners or have special education needs. But the report never addresses this core issue of external validity. It also fails to note that teachers in the studied charter schools are less likely to remain in their jobs more than a few years, and fails to address a critical policy question: Can these charter schools’ financial models be sustained as they expand and enroll a different student population? While this report confirms previous work showing a positive charter effect on test scores in Newark, it fails to address these and other critical issues stakeholders must understand to formulate good charter school policy in New Jersey and elsewhere.

A report from the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty claims a chain of benefits will purportedly follow if the current cap on voucher enrollment for the state of Wisconsin is increased from four percent to 20%. The resulting improvement in graduation rates will, the report asserts, result in the employment of more people at higher wages, leading to increased personal wealth and government income of $3.2 billion over 20 years.The obvious failing of this logic is how this projected “ripple effect” will occur. Causal links are weakly explained and lack support. The claims cannot be verified because the methods are not described and, in key areas, the numbers literally do not add up. Other prominent unaddressed issues include social stratification, inequitable selection effects, the cost of running two school systems, and the effects on learning. With a large number of relevant variables at play and the study’s apparent reliance on descriptive methods, interpretations of the data are subjective and untrustworthy, and ultimately, the report offers no assistance to policymakers or others.

An Urban Institute report highlights how legislative changes have led to the steady decline of the use of participation in the free- and reduced-price lunch (FRPL) program as a measure of student poverty. The Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) of the federal Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act mandates that schools enrolled in CEP have at least 40% of their students eligible for a free or reduced-price lunch in the year before enrolling. CEP schools provide free breakfasts and lunches to all students regardless of any given student’s household income or enrollment in safety net programs. Thus FRPL participation is 100% in a school and can no longer be sensibly used as a poverty measure. In looking at how states now make poverty-related determinations for school funding and accountability purposes, the report provides an important snapshot of the crazy quilt pattern of enrollment in safety net programs. However, the report does not take a clear position on a question that should significantly influence its methods, conclusions, and impact: Is it sufficient to rely on enrollment in safety net programs to define and measure student poverty, or is a change needed in its definition and measurement? 

School Sector and Satisfaction: Evidence from a Nationally Representative Sample, a report published by the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University, argues that private and charter schools have a strong effect on parents’ reported satisfaction with their children’s education. It explains this effect by pointing to competitive pressures and the importance of reducing the monopoly power of the traditional public school system. The report’s analyses are based on a nationally representative sample from the National Household Education Surveys Program (NHES). However, the report suffers from two major flaws. First, it saturates the important analyses with over 230 covariates. This amounts to a “garbage can” regression modeling approach that obscures more than it illuminates; variables are misspecified and results are sensitive to the oversaturation of the regression model. A reader versed in statistical modeling will have no confidence in the substance of the findings. Second, and even more importantly, the report’s decision to focus on just the “very satisfied” overstates the effect of private and charter schools on parent satisfaction. Almost 90% of public school parents are satisfied with their child’s education, and the report’s decision to focus on just the “very satisfied” appears to be a deliberate modeling choice to greatly overstate the purported effects of private and charter schools on parent satisfaction. This appearance is confirmed by the report’s problematic use of past research literature, again suggesting an interest in findings that will support advocacy for curtailing the supply of public education. For each of these reasons, the report is of little or no use to policymakers and others with an interest in understanding parent satisfaction associated with school choice.

A Fordham report highlights the historic academic progress of Black and Hispanic groups over the past two decades, at the elementary school level, on the NAEP exam. From this, the report offers the major claim, based on its author’s eyeball test, that the academic progress of students of color is attributable “mostly” to poverty reduction. The report, however, also acknowledges that correlation is not causation and calls for systematic statistical analysis to test the author’s proposition. This review responds to that call by examining the validity of the report’s arguments around progress and causes, looking to expanded data sources, including both family income and school expenditures. The review notes uneven patterns of achievement among grade levels and refutes the report’s claim that flat achievement trends among twelfth graders are a result of dropout reductions. 

Commercial Cash: How NY Schools Can Raise Extra Money Without Raising Taxes gets it half right. This issue brief makes the persuasive legal case that current policy and legal guidance from New York state education officials severely restricts the ability of school districts to allow any form of commercial advertising, making it difficult to raise revenues—without raising taxes—from advertising, sponsorships, and naming rights deals. The brief calls on lawmakers to “free school districts from the current regulatory quagmire by eliminating legal barriers and permitting local decision-making.” But that argument addresses only the revenue half of the equation. The other half, which the brief largely ignores, involves the significant costs of commercial advertising in schools. Those costs include the potential psychological harms stemming from corporate advertising; health-related harms that might flow from promoting foods and drinks with little nutritional value; educational harms coming from the schools’ and educators’ implicit endorsement of commercial culture and even the products themselves; and the emerging harm to privacy presented by digital data collection and targeted digital marketing.

The Thomas B. Fordham Institute published a report, A Rising Tide: Charter School Market Share and Student Achievement, examining the relationship between average achievement in a school district and the “market share” of charter schools. Using longitudinal national district-level data, the study finds that overall higher charter market share is associated with significant increases in average reading achievement but not math achievement. Further, some positive relationships exist for specific racial subgroups in districts of certain sizes and geographic locations.  The report concludes that charter schools are “a rising tide” that “lifts all education boats.” However, one should interpret the findings and conclusions with extreme caution because of major issues surrounding the data and methods, including the measure of charter market share, the sample selection criteria, and the overreliance on results based on a small number of districts, especially the ones with over 95th percentile of charter market share. Overall, the findings have little use to policymakers because of these issues with data and methods and because the report does not probe beneath the surface. 

Homeschooling and Educational Freedom, a report from the Cato Institute, argues that homeschoolers should support school choice proposals because greater educational freedom empowers parents to provide richer learning opportunities for their children. Drawing on four states with expansive education choice programs, the report’s rationale is grounded on a purported chain of causation from robust school choice policies to homeschooling growth to educational innovation. These causal contentions are purely speculative and are not borne out by the broader state-level data. In fact, at least half of all states lack reliable data. Among states with data, some that do show dramatic homeschooling growth have regulatory environments more favorable to school choice, but enough counterexamples exist to make even simple conclusions uncertain. While these problems compromise the usefulness of this new report, nothing here should be read to question the report’s contention that homeschooling is a context in which educational innovation can indeed flourish. Such innovations are not the sole province of homeschoolers, since we find compelling examples in all sectors of schooling. But the flexibility of homeschooling provides ample room for learning experiences that can meet the needs of individual students. With modest state oversight to protect children’s basic educational interests while preserving freedom for parents and their delegates to tailor the learning experience, homeschooling serves as one potentially effective option for a good education.

A report, Beyond the Mirage: How Pragmatic Stewardship Could Transform Learning Outcomes in International Education Systems, prescribes a shift in the leadership role of education ministers – from providers and guarantors of education to pragmatic stewards of education systems. Focusing on the organization of education sectors in the Global South, the report contends that this shift will address the need for higher quality education, rather than simply providing access to education. The “pragmatic stewardship” advocated in the report involves strategies that increasingly incorporate private actors. Accordingly, the report draws on four case studies of different types of private-sector involvement in education as examples of a broader shift by education ministers. However, each case contains limitations – some discussed, others not – that undermine their suitability as successful examples of divesting public education systems of their primary role as guarantors and providers of education. While the report claims to be “non-ideological” and “beyond the mirage” of the education privatization debate, the funders of the report (no publisher is listed) have a material stake in a main program cited as evidence, raising concerns about conflicts of interest. The use of questionable evidence and the conflicts of interest combine to render the report’s recommendations unsubstantiated.

A report from the Manhattan Institute argues that public funding for education in the United States should be divided between traditional district public schools, charter schools, and private schools, with funding decisions based on student enrollment. The Case for Educational Pluralism in the U.S. asserts that expanding public funding to private (secular and religious) schools will result in greater choice for all students, improve the quality of education, reduce the achievement gap, and strengthen democratic institutions by increasing civic engagement. The report’s central argument stems from a combination of (a) conceptual perspectives rather than empirical research; (b) empirical studies drawn primarily from religious and school choice advocacy groups; and (c) well-designed and peer-reviewed studies that lead to conclusions only loosely tied or entirely unrelated to public funding of private schools. The report may prove useful for those who seek a rhetorical appeal for public funding of private school education. But because of lack of evidence, flawed logic, and failure to consider differences in national policy contexts, this report offers little useful to policymakers intent on improving access to quality schools. 

A report by the Urban Institute, The Effects of Means-Tested Private School Choice Programs on College Enrollment and Graduation, compares certain outcomes of three school voucher programs to traditional public school programs. It finds that students using vouchers to attend private schools sometimes have higher rates of college enrollment and completion than their public school counterparts. These findings, however, arise from comparisons of apples to oranges, because the two case studies showing some voucher benefits do not sufficiently account for pivotal differences between choosers and non-choosers. Only in the third case study, which uses random assignment and thus avoids these selection effects, do we see no voucher benefits. Two other concerns are important to note. First, the literature review places an unbalanced reliance on non-peer-reviewed sources. Second, the report attempts to “move the goalposts” away from the test-score outcomes that have been the center of voucher advocacy and debate for decades—coinciding with recent voucher studies finding null or negative effects on test scores. These shortcomings render the report of limited value for evaluating voucher policies.

In March 2019, the Florida Department of Education published a report titled Student Achievement in Florida’s Charter Schools. The report consists almost entirely of simple graphs comparing achievement levels, achievement gaps, and achievement gains on statewide tests among charter school students to those among traditional public school students. Beyond the odd exercise of counting the number of comparisons that appear favorable to charter schools, the report offers no discussion. The comparisons are not even explained. The fact that the report merely presents comparisons required by law without putting any policy “spin” on them might be considered a virtue. The danger is that the report might encourage erroneous conclusions. The simple comparisons reveal very little about the relative effectiveness of charter schools and still less about other policy questions. At the very least, the report should have clarified the purposes of its comparisons and cautioned the reader against drawing unwarranted conclusions. 

An annual report from EdChoice is designed to provide a yearly updated list and synthesis of empirical studies exploring the impacts of school vouchers across a set of outcomes. EdChoice presents itself as a clearinghouse of “evidence” that school vouchers “work” and that school choice is an effective and efficient reform. Along those lines, the report showcases the purported personal and community benefits that arise from voucher implementation, such as an increase in test scores, educational attainment, parental satisfaction, increased civic values, improvements in racial segregation, and fiscal benefits through governmental cost savings. However, the report is a limited collection of cherry-picked studies chosen from an “overwhelming” number, largely from sources that are not peer-reviewed and primarily authored by voucher advocates. For these reasons, the report is so misleading that it is not useful for decision-making or research purposes.

The Center on Reinventing Public Education recently released a series of three policy briefs on the financial impact of charter schools on nearby school districts in California. The briefs are intended to inform ongoing debates over charter school financing and expansion in the state of California. This review finds that the briefs fail to accurately or fully apply the relevant research and data. They are useful only in pointing to some important issues that policymakers should consider; their analyses of those issues are, however, generally superficial and misleading.

A Mackinac Center for Public Policy report, The Michigan Context and Performance Report Card: High Schools 2018, seeks to measure and publicize high school performance by ranking schools according to their test scores. Although this has been done previously in many contexts, this publication touts as its major contribution taking socioeconomic status into account in its school rankings. While the stated goal of the report is laudable, the reality falls far short due to several shortcomings, detailed in this review. Given these shortcomings, the rankings presented in this report should be given no weight in any discussions of policy or practice. In fact, this report does a disservice by introducing questionable information in an easily readable form that is not substantiated by any credible analysis.

Update: Ben DeGrow and Michael Van Beek posted a response to the review in a blog post at: https://www.mackinac.org/critique-of-cap-report-card-fires-blanks.

John T. Yun’s response to the blog is posted immediately below the review. There is a corresponding newsletter at:
https://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/newsletter-yun-response-050219.

A report from the Brookings Institution makes the case for the importance of 21st century skills as goals for education systems and provides international examples. It focuses specifically on the development of new assessment methods as a primary means to help countries integrate 21st century skills – such as critical thinking, problem solving, collaboration, and communication – into curricular reforms. The report is a review of research and a policy analysis rather than an empirical study. Its main contributions are (a) the identification of three challenges to implementing a 21st century skills agenda, and (b) the organization of key ideas and research to possibly address those challenges. Policymakers should find the report useful as an overview highlighting the importance of 21st century skills internationally, although the report’s omission of discipline-specific considerations makes it less helpful as a guide for local curricular and pedagogical reforms. 

This Urban Institute research report is aimed at assessing the impact of the Florida Tax Credit (FTC) scholarship program on college enrollment and graduation. Through matched comparisons, the study finds consistently positive effects of the program for both two-year and four-year colleges, with relatively stronger effects for four-year private college enrollment and for students who stayed in the program longer. This review acknowledges the study’s contributions, using expanded data tracking to inform school voucher policy debates, but the review also raises three critical questions about the validity of some methods, findings and conclusions. These concerns call into question the use and misuse of this study by voucher advocates; proper use of the study begins with an understanding of its limitations and of the need for confirmatory research and future exploration of potential mechanisms driving any increased college attainment.

A report from Bellwether Education Partners contends that more funding should be given for charter school facilities. Focusing on a series of case studies in Idaho, the report argues that charter schools are unfairly denied funding for the construction and renovation of their school buildings. The examples the report relies on, however, are not “apples-to-apples” comparisons, and this makes any statewide generalizations suspect. Further, the report’s calculation of “costs-per-seat” ignores the reality that different students have different needs. Consequently, public district schools, which enroll proportionally more English language learners and students with disabilities, will likely have greater facilities expenses per pupil than charter schools. The report bemoans the fact that charter school facilities are not part of local school districts’ bonds and tax levies, yet it does not acknowledge that charter facilities are often owned by private entities. Mandating that local taxpayers support charter facilities would, therefore, force them to pay for buildings they would not own. Given these limitations, the report provides little guidance for policymakers and other stakeholders at a time when Idaho is working to overhaul its school funding system.

For over a quarter-century, researchers and others have vigorously investigated and debated the impact of school vouchers and voucher-like programs (such as education savings accounts and tuition tax credits/deductions). The result is a developed and sophisticated research literature on different aspects of these programs. But a report from the Institute for Justice does not take advantage of this body of research, instead offering little more than a simplistic and one-sided treatment of the empirical record. Setting out 12 “myths” about vouchers, the report then proceeds to systematically dismiss each “myth” in turn by presenting only evidence—much of it highly questionable—on the advantages of vouchers. Based largely on previous reports from other advocacy groups that curated evidence in order to present vouchers in a most positive light, the report then repeats many of those claims, even when flaws in those reports have already been publicly explained. In doing so, the report makes claims that are not supported, and in fact sometimes contradicted, by evidence in the sources it cites. The report provides a textbook case of echo-chamber advocacy, drawing primarily on reports from other voucher advocates. Consequently, it offers nothing useful in furthering our understanding of school vouchers. 

A TNTP report aims to expose what it labels the “opportunity myth” in American education: that while schools purport to prepare students well, they don’t deliver. It paints a dramatic picture of American students being misled by false promises of opportunity, when they could make significant learning gains if they experienced grade-level content, strong instruction, deep engagement, and high expectations. The report contends that these negative experiences are primarily the result of educators’ daily decisions and are magnified for students of color and low-income students. Though the report presents an array of qualitative and quantitative data, some of its particular claims are not fully supported by evidence, and it is unclear how key constructs are measured. Importantly, in describing educators’ decisions, the report does not sufficiently account for larger systemic and societal impediments to opportunity that serve to establish and maintain many of the obstacles and problematic patterns the report observes. 

Public Agenda compiled public opinion surveys to show where the American public stands on education issues. Their report notes the importance of gauging current public understanding of education in the nation, particularly given the three major policy changes in the past 10 years: Race to the Top, the Common Core State Standards, and the Every Student Succeeds Act. While this publication makes a unique contribution in its gathering of many surveys into a single report and its inclusion of interviews with employers, the lack of clarity in its methods makes many of its conclusions questionable. The report is inconsistent in how it addresses disaggregated data and respondents from different demographic groups (e.g., race, class, political affiliation), resulting in an inability to generalize to the population or to any subgroup. Therefore, the conclusions are cursory and incomplete, requiring further study and research. 

A report from the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) highlights six teacher evaluation systems claimed to be “yielding substantial benefits.” This comes at the end of a decade when reformed teacher evaluation systems that link teacher performance to measures of student growth have been at the center of educational debate. Disagreements range from the theoretical (e.g., is teacher quality fundamentally related to inequalities in student outcomes?) to technical (e.g., which measures should be included and how should they be defined?) to practical (e.g., how should ratings be used for personnel decisions?). Overall, the research regarding teacher evaluation is mixed, at best. Most notably, a recent multi-year RAND report suggests that a $500 million investment in teacher evaluation that heavily weighted student growth measures, with considerable funding from the Gates Foundation, did not improve student outcomes and, in some cases, exacerbated unequal access to effective teachers for low-income students and students of color. The NCTQ report, while clearly promoting such teacher evaluation, does not seriously counter the groundswell of academic literature critiquing these systems. It does not address the relevant literature, present a compelling justification for its site selection or the inclusion criteria for evidence, or adequately consider disconfirming or contradictory evidence. These methodological flaws limit the validity of the report’s findings and conclusions, which ultimately diminishes the usefulness of the report for policy and practice. 

The libertarian Reason Foundation recently published a policy brief that offers an alternative ranking of states’ education systems. The brief is based on a working paper from the Department of Finance and Managerial Economics at the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD). These two reports begin with the presumption that high average test scores combined with lower school spending should be the basis for state rankings, which are reasonable premises, depending upon how the analyses are approached. But the reports then head off the rails. Offering a ‘corrected’ representation of student outcomes and a crude analysis asserting that spending has no relation to those outcomes, the reports declare states such as New Jersey and Vermont to be poor-performing, highly inefficient systems by comparison to states like Texas. The reports then estimate a regression model to confidently assert that the higher performing states are those with a) weaker teachers’ unions and b) more children in charter schools. However, the reports’ corrected outcome measures, weighting significantly unbalanced racial groups as equal and treating racial groups as equated across states without regard for economic status, are specious at best. Regressing multiple, highly related, interdependent measures against a specious outcome measure leads to even more suspect findings, and would only mislead policymakers. 

The cost and productivity of schools is hotly debated across the nation. Left-leaning groups argue for equitable funding and equality of opportunity. Right-leaning organizations contend that costs are too high and money is unwisely used. The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL) joins this debate with Money for Nothing, which claims that Wisconsin does not get a good return on its educational investment. The report is based on three analyses: (a) of the ratio of non-teachers to teachers, (b) of per-pupil spending, and (c) of teacher pay. The report suggests there are too many non-teachers, per-pupil spending is not linked to higher outcomes, and teacher pay makes no difference in test scores. But critical errors in study design fundamentally negate these conclusions. The report flounders in arguing causality from correlation and misinterpreting statistical significance as representing meaningful policy effects. While “statistically significant” in many cases, the results are minuscule. This leads to false or unsupported conclusions clouded by the omission of critical details that prevent replication or confirmation. Rife with undocumented policy claims, the results run contrary to the literature on spending, administrator effects, and teacher effects. Unfortunately, no literature review is provided. The report fails to address the efficacy of interventions such as class size and early high-quality childhood education. The off-point theoretical base, flawed assumptions and meager findings shows the report earned its title, “money for nothing,” which could leave unsuspecting policymakers in dire straits. 

A paper by two researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology examines the consequences that follow from an expansion in the number of charter school places available for enrollment. The study uses data from Massachusetts, where charter school growth has been carefully managed and where there was significant excess demand for charter school places. In 2011, the state increased the cap on charter school enrollments in districts with low test scores, resulting in a large increase in charter school enrollment in some of these districts. The paper analyzes three outcomes: (a) changes across charter and non-charter public schools in funding (how much resource was available per student), (b) resource allocation (how schools spent their funds), and (c) achievement (how well students performed on academic tests). 

Amid burgeoning participation in AP coursework, a report by the Education Trust uses a case study of two exemplary high schools to address the question of how schools might support access to and success in AP programs by low-income students and students of color. It contends that a variety of interventions help promote access and success, including teacher support and development, analysis of class composition, careful scheduling, and provision of during- and after-school academic support. The report’s qualitative approach is well-suited to describing ways that schools can address the complex and deeply rooted problem of inequitable access to academic opportunity within secondary education. Encouraging underrepresented students to enroll in AP courses and then helping them succeed requires schools to engage in multilevel, holistic interventions that are not easily analyzed or described quantitatively. The report suffers, however, from lack of rigor in its description of methods and analysis. The scant detail on participants and data collection methods and the lack of discussion of how data were analyzed and used in the report weaken links between claims and evidence. The report, which focuses on two schools that enroll primarily Latinx students, would have also benefited from case studies of schools enrolling Black and Native American students—the groups that are most underrepresented in national AP enrollment and success rates. 

Overall, while the report provides some inspiring examples, more detailed and rigorous description of methods and analysis would make a stronger case for the highlighted interventions. 

A policy paper from ExcelinEd and Texas Public Policy Foundation examines the charter-school authorizing process in Texas. After surveying past Texas authorizing policies, the study claims Texas had been a leader in creating high-performing charter schools and that a low barrier of entry into the market was a contributing factor to this success. The study then contends that a 2013 legislative policy change has made the authorization process too restrictive, thus reducing the number of applicants and stifling innovation. The paper concludes with recommendations to create an easier authorization process to increase the number of charters granted and thereby to foster innovation. While the report is billed as a case study, it does not employ case study methodology. Moreover, the report fails to review or cite relevant research; it instead relies on unsubstantiated claims, anecdotes, misleading statements, and even demonstrably false statements to advance a particular viewpoint. In short, this paper is an ideological advocacy paper masquerading as a case study. Policymakers would be well advised to skip this paper and look for a more evidence-based review of the Texas charter authorizing process.