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Dear colleagues,

It has been a tempestuous year in American education, with Washington dominating the headlines. Disappointing results on national assessments of reading and math prompted demands for school improvement. Neither Republican nor Democratic national leaders rose to the challenge. The Trump administration sought to hand the mantle of education reform to the states and set about disassembling the U.S. Department of Education, while championing a new law making all but the wealthiest American families eligible to use federal tax monies to pay for private schooling. In higher education, it leveraged the power of the federal purse to promote conservative policy priorities at leading universities.

FutureEd has sought to help educators and education policymakers navigate the maelstrom by providing nonpartisan, evidence-based analysis of emerging developments in the education sector and strategies for strengthening opportunities and outcomes for the nation’s students.

Over the course of the year, we examined:
* Governors' 2025 education agendas ([link removed])
* The latest results from the National Assessment of Education Progress ([link removed])
* Public school enrollment declines ([link removed]) and their fiscal and policy consequences
* The consequences of layoffs ([link removed]) in federal education agencies
* New research on the impact of school cell phone policies ([link removed])
* The impact of Medicaid cuts ([link removed]) on school-based health services, and
* The emerging micro-credential movement ([link removed]) in the nation’s high schools

Comprehensive Coverage
We produced extensive work on several key K–12 issues, including:


** School Measurement
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report


** Quality Check: The New, Best Way to Measure School Performance ([link removed])
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We worked with the Keystone Policy Center to identify the features of elementary and secondary schools that produce the greatest student success in school and beyond. We then studied the best way to measures those features. The result was a practical framework ([link removed]) for policymakers to rethink accountability systems and drive school improvement.
We also:
* Authored commentaries in The 74 ([link removed]) and Education Week ([link removed]) on the value of building school-measurement systems based on what research shows to be the most powerful drivers of student success
* Hosted webinars ([link removed]) on the future of school measurement ([link removed]) with leading researchers, practitioners, and policymakers, including Colorado Governor Jared Polis and former U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings
* Joined the Education Gadfly Show podcast ([link removed]) to discuss the implications of the Quality Check report for federal and state policymakers
* Published an Education Next ([link removed]) essay by FutureEd Director Thomas Toch and Senior Fellow Lynn Olson making the case for a new model of statewide standardized testing


** School Choice
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report


** Directional Signals: A New Analysis of the Evolving Private School Choice Landscape ([link removed])
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FutureEd Senior Policy Analyst Bella DiMarco studied emerging universal private school choice programs ([link removed]) in 10 states, revealing who’s participating in the programs, the cost to taxpayers, early achievement results, and implications for public schools—offering valuable insights into the potential consequences of the federal universal choice program when it debuts in 2027.

We also:
* Hosted a webinar ([link removed]) on the impact of the new federal private school choice program on students, families, and schools
* Published a commentary in The 74 ([link removed]) on what states’ experiences with universal choice programs can teach policymakers implementing the federal program
* Released a report ([link removed]) on the lessons from the transformation of the New Orleans school district into a charter school system in the wake of Hurricane Katrina two decades ago
* Published an article in Governing magazine ([link removed]) on the New Orleans experience
* Tracked states’ legislative activity ([link removed]) on private school choice


** Social Mobility
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report


** How Inequality Works: The Public Policy Barriers to Social Mobility in Urban America ([link removed])
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FutureEd launched an initiative in 2025 to help elected officials, philanthropists, and civic leaders nationwide explore comprehensive strategies to catalyze greater social mobility for students and their families.
The initiative’s first report ([link removed]) , authored by Senior Fellow Josh Anderson, explains in striking detail how policy barriers across education, health care, housing, and other social sectors combine to limit upward mobility and compound disadvantage over time.


** Chronic Absenteeism
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Attendance rates plummeted after students returned to classrooms in the wake of the pandemic, devastating schools’ efforts to help students to catch up after the Covid school closings. And strikingly high rates of chronic absenteeism continue to undermine schools’ productivity. We sought in 2025 to help policymakers understand the depth, breadth, and sources of the post-pandemic absenteeism crisis.

Our work included:
* Compiling states’ latest absenteeism data ([link removed])
* Analyzing grade-level patterns ([link removed]) in chronic absenteeism rates
* Examining the relationship between absenteeism and student achievement ([link removed])
* Publishing commentaries on the post-pandemic drivers of chronic absenteeism ([link removed]) , the role of parents ([link removed]) and out-of-school time programs ([link removed]) in reducing absenteeism, and how definitions of attendance ([link removed]) are shifting in the post-pandemic era


** Tutoring
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The spread of high-quality tutoring in the wake of the pandemic was a rare educational silver lining to the Covid crisis. The need to catch students up academically and an abundance of federal funding brought into public schools an effective teaching tool that affluent families had long purchased privately. Our work in 2025 focused on helping policymakers perpetuate strong public-school tutoring programs.

It included:
* Writing in the Washington Monthly ([link removed]) about why both Democrats and Republicans should support tutoring
* Outlining in a commentary in The 74 ([link removed]) why Congress should maintain funding for U.S. Department of Education programs that support tutoring in public schools
* Tracking state legislative efforts ([link removed]) to fund tutoring in public schools
* Publishing a commentary in Education Next ([link removed]) and hosting a webinar ([link removed]) on the potential of schools of education to enhance the supply of tutors

In all, we produced 85 publications in 2025, including 5 major reports and more than 25 commentaries and analyses. We hosted 4 webinars, made 15 presentations, and published more than 30 podcasts.

We also continued to track leadership changes ([link removed]) across the K-12 education sector, compile a comprehensive calendar ([link removed]) of education events and conferences, highlight the latest, most important education research through our Research Notes ([link removed]) series, and elevate important conversations in higher education through the FutureU podcast. ([link removed])


** Staffing Updates
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We welcomed several new team members this year, including Associate Director Maureen Tracey-Mooney ([link removed]) , who has worked in both traditional and charter public school systems and most recently led K-12 policy development at the White House Domestic Policy Council in the Biden administration and served as a senior advisor at the U.S. Department of Education.

Policy Analyst Tara Moon ([link removed]) joined us from Teach for America. And Research Associate Giana Loretta ([link removed]) taught in Bulgaria as a Fulbright Scholar.

And we were pleased to welcome three new members of our network in 2025. Frances Messano ([link removed]) , the chief executive of NewSchools Venture Fund and a former Teach for America executive, is a new FutureEd senior fellow. As is Christina Grant ([link removed]) , executive director of the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard, a member of the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, and a former District of Columbia state superintendent of education.

Anna Egalite ([link removed]) , a professor of educational evaluation and policy analysis at North Carolina State University and a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, joined our research advisor board. She is an expert on school choice and the teaching profession.
The Year Ahead

We’ll continue to provide the education sector with non-partisan, solution-oriented policy analysis in 2026. Among other work, we plan to release a comprehensive analysis of the unprecedented, $189 billion federal investment in pandemic recovery in the nation’s schools and continue analyzing the fast-expanding private-school-choice landscape, including the new federal tax-credit scholarship program. And we will be launching new work under our social mobility initiative to support policymakers seeking to expand opportunity and promote upward mobility for children nationwide.

Please share your thoughts on the work we have done and work that you think we should do. We’re eager to get your insights.

Best wishes for the holidays and a productive 2026 from the FutureEd team.

Tom

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

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