Extended Learning Time Explainer, Catholic Schools Leader Speaks

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Dear Colleagues,

Welcome to the latest edition of the FutureEd newsletter.

As part of our work exploring strategies to strengthen the nation’s schools and colleges, we began partnering several years ago with the national non-profit 50CAN on a project called AdvocacyLabs, an effort to put the best research on effective advocacy in the hands of organizations working to improve educational opportunities and outcomes for traditionally underserved students. Our latest AdvocacyLabs report, The Action Is the Reaction: Community Organizing for Local Change, explores how to use community organizing in that work. Please join us for a webinar tomorrow featuring the report’s author, 50CAN Chief Executive Marc Porter Magee, and education advocacy leaders in three states. Register for the webinar here.

First Results: Arkansas’ Universal Private School Choice Program

In March 2023, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed legislation creating a universal education savings account program that permits every family to spend public monies on private education expenses—adding Arkansas to a growing list of states that have adopted the radical policy. The Arkansas Department of Education recently released its first analysis of the state’s Education Freedom Accounts and we assembled a graphic that captures who’s using the program, how much money it’s costing taxpayers, and other key information. See the graphic here.

Analyzing Extending Learning Time

With millions of students struggling academically in the wake of the pandemic, the prospect of increasing student learning time remains on the front burner in education policy. FutureEd Policy Analyst Bella DiMarco has assembled key research and examples from the field into a new FutureEd explainer outlining the potential of extended learning time to promote student success and the challenges states and school districts have faced in extending learning time via longer school days and school years, summer schooling, tutoring, and other strategies.

Read the Explainer

Catholic Schools

FutureEd Senior Fellow Greg Richmond brings a unique lens to his current work as superintendent of the 154-school Archdiocese of Chicago school system: his experience in Chicago’s public school system and in the charter school sector. FutureEd Editorial Director Maureen Kelleher spoke with Richmond recently about the parallels between innovating in Catholic and charter schools, the future of private-school choice, and the impact of political polarization on education. Read the Q&A here.

School Capital Spending

Yale School of Management labor economist Barbara Biasi and two colleagues recently published a paper on the impact of school bond votes on student test scores and the real estate market. Their innovative analysis offers new insights into the long-standing debate over the relationship between school spending and student achievement. Among them: school capital projects that boost test scores don’t always raise community property values. To learn why this is so, read FutureEd Policy Director Liz Cohen’s conversation with Biasi, here.

Other Work

Chronic student absenteeism remains a severe problem for schools across the country, though many states are now recording slight reductions in absences from pandemic levels. Follow our tracker for the latest, 2022-23 state absenteeism data, now available from 23 states.

We also keep up with the latest research in the education field. A new longitudinal study of the landmark Perry Preschool Program shows quality preschool not only directly benefited the children who attended into adulthood, but also had spillover effects on their siblings and children.

Follow our regular website feature, The Churn, for all the latest leadership moves among senior Congressional leadership staff, foundations, and national media. Send your leadership news as well as upcoming in-person and virtual events to [email protected], and we’ll be happy to post them.

Best wishes for the upcoming holidays,

Tom

Thomas Toch
Director, FutureEd
McCourt School of Public Policy
Georgetown University
[email protected]
@thomas_toch

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