The long campaign to raise standards in the nation’s public schools may be out of fashion in school reform circles. But Mike Cohen and Laura Slover, two of the most influential voices in the movement, think there’s an important next chapter to be written. They outline it in a new essay for FutureEd.
Covid-Relief Spending
Our latest analysis of Covid-relief spending released this morning looks at trends for school districts in Republican-leaning red states and Democratic-leaning blue states. What we found my might surprise you. We've also added several new pieces using spending plans for more than 5,000 school districts and charter organizations educating three-fourths of the nation’s public school students. The new work includes:
An opinion piece for The Hill about proposals to spend the federal aid to harden schools.
A look at how local education agencies are spending federal dollars to bring mental health professionals into schools and how Medicaid can sustain staffing increases.
A state-by-state review of how districts are spending Covid aid to promote summer learning.
An interview with a Dallas administrator about the district’s bold experiment with a longer school year.
An analysis of how nearly $10 billion in local spending earmarked for ventilation improvements could impact student learning.
I discussed the spending trends with Fordham’s Mike Petrilli on his Education Gadfly podcast. The FutureEd work has been featured by The Atlantic, NBC News, Axios, TIME, U.S. News and World Report, Politico, The 74, Education Week, and other publications.
The Serious Side of the Florida Textbook Debate
In the wake of the Florida governor’s attempt to find what he declared to be wokeness in the state’s math textbooks, FutureEd Senior Fellow Morgan Polikoff explores the potential longer-term consequences for the nation’s classrooms of the culture war campaign in the Sunshine State. Relatedly, we have been following state legislation on curriculum controversies and parents’ rights in an interactive tracker. So far, seven bills have cleared state legislatures and six have been signed into law.
The latest podcasts from FutureU explore the future of the college workforce, lay presidents at Jesuit institutions, and the potential impact of learning loss among K-12 students on higher education.
We continue to chronicle leadership changes throughout the education sector in The Churn and we post upcoming in-person and virtual education policy events in The Horizon. Send your events and leadership news to [email protected], and we’ll be happy to post them.
Thanks and best wishes for a restful, rejuvenating summer break. Everyone in the education sector has earned it….
Tom
Thomas Toch
Director, FutureEd
McCourt School of Public Policy
Georgetown University [email protected]
@thomas_toch
