Dear colleagues,
This year marked the conclusion of a historic chapter in American public education, in which the federal government spent $189 billion to aid the nation’s students’ recovery from the pandemic that swept the globe in 2020. The unprecedented investment has helped schools win back some of the learning that students lost during the Covid crisis and has spurred some much-needed innovation, including in school staffing, teacher pay, and the scaling of high-quality, in-school tutoring.
But recovery has been uneven and much of the public education landscape is struggling with declining test scores that predated the pandemic, as well as chronic student absenteeism, grade inflation, and persistent inequity. High-achieving students from the wealthiest 20 percent of U.S. families are six times more likely to enroll in advanced programs than high-performing students from the poorest 20 percent. Returning students to pre-pandemic achievement levels is a critical first step, but the challenge facing the education system is much larger.
And the nation is deeply divided on the future course of the education sector. Many on the right—and the incoming Trump administration—are prioritizing public funding of private schooling for all students. Many on the left defend a public education system that serves 90 percent of the nation’s students but fails to educate many of them effectively. And they have backed few reforms. The bipartisan commitment to strengthening public education in recent decades has dissolved.
FutureEd in 2024 sought to help education policymakers and practitioners navigate these challenges by providing non-partisan analysis on key issues and pragmatic, scalable policy solutions aligned to our mission of improving academic opportunities and outcomes for traditionally underserved students.
In all, we produced 75 publications, including eight major reports and more than two dozen commentary pieces. We hosted six webinars, published 20 podcasts, and made more than 50 presentations from the White House to city council chambers.
Here’s a look back at several of our major projects over the past year, many of them highlighting promising new policy designs on topics ranging from gifted education to tutoring and standardized testing.
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FutureEd's January report, authored by Policy Director Liz Cohen in collaboration with Stanford University's National Student Support Accelerator, explores three approaches to scaling and sustaining effective tutoring programs in public schools as federal pandemic-relief funding expires.
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Under Governor Daniel McKee, Rhode Island has developed a statewide coalition involving mayors, business leaders, and hospitals to address student absenteeism using real-time, school-level data. Liz Cohen tells the story of their successful approach and its potential to help other states and localities address the absenteeism crisis.
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Go deeper:
- We authored commentaries for The 74 and Governing magazine highlighting the findings of the Rhode Island report
- We contributed to Principal Magazine with practical strategies from our Attendance Playbook that focus on fostering healthier, more welcoming, and supportive environments to improve student attendance
- We organized a webinar focused on Rhode Island’s approach, featuring Governor Daniel McKee, the state’s commissioner of elementary and secondary education, and the mayor of Providence
- We continued tracking chronic absenteeism rates across states and monitored state-level legislative activity
- Cohen provided testimony to the Council of the District of Columbia on attendance funding and policy in the nation’s capital
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FutureEd's report explores the expansion of universal private-school choice in eight states, where public funding supported K-12 private school tuition and educational expenses for nearly 600,000 students in the 2023-24 school year. Researched and written by Liz Cohen and Policy Analyst Bella DiMarco, the report offers a detailed look at how these programs operate, who participates, and their impact on state and local budgets.
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Go deeper:
- We tracked private-school choice legislation across states, including proposals aimed at expanding choice and efforts by opponents to roll back such initiatives
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FutureEd Senior Fellow Peg Tyre explores the history and current state of gifted education and offers recommendations for reform. The report highlights innovative strategies from three school districts to expand access to advanced programs to a broader range of high-performing students.
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Go deeper:
- We hosted a webinar featuring school leaders from New York City and Arizona who are implementing inclusive advanced-education models, alongside Johns Hopkins University researcher and past president of the National Association of Gifted Children Jonathan Plucker
- We published a commentary in The 74 on how to make gifted education more inclusive
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Too many students remain trapped in remedial education courses that don't earn college credit, increase debt, and lower graduation rates. FutureEd Senior Fellow Anne Kim examines the achievements of the nearly two-decade-old remedial education reform movement, why progress has stalled, and what needs to be done to get it back on track in this FutureEd report.
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Go deeper:
- We authored commentaries for The Chronicle of Higher Education and Washington Monthly on addressing the shortcomings of remedial education and strategies for improvement
- We hosted a webinar with the HEA Group featuring panelists from the Louisiana Board of Regents, Complete College America, and other national experts
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Statewide standardized testing has long been a cornerstone of public education, providing insights into school performance and driving improvement. But federally mandated testing has grown increasingly divisive. FutureEd Director Thomas Toch and Senior Fellow Lynn Olson propose a blueprint for reimagining state testing.
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Go deeper:
- We hosted a webinar on test testing reform with researchers and policy experts
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The Year Ahead
In 2025, we’ll be releasing a variety of new work, including a comprehensive analysis of the ESSER era, a report on innovative ways to increase teacher supply, and a groundbreaking tool for policymakers to promote social mobility. We’ll be examining the micro-credential movement in secondary education and offering a new model for measuring school performance. Our goal is to give education policymakers and practitioners at every level the insights and ideas they need to make the best possible decisions on behalf of the nation’s students. In that spirit, please take a few minutes to complete a short survey we’ve drafted to help us support your work as effectively as possible.
Best wishes for the holiday season,
Tom
Thomas Toch
Director, FutureEd
McCourt School of Public Policy
Georgetown University
[email protected]
@thomas_toch
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