NEPC Press Releases

States Face Charter-School Crossroads as Supreme Court Poised to Protect Faith-Based Discrimination

National Education Policy Center — Fri, 29 May 2026 01:24:02 -0500

BOULDER, CO (May 28, 2026) — Forty-two states plus the District of Columbia may soon confront sweeping changes to their charter-school systems, as the U.S. Supreme Court appears likely to greenlight religious charter schools and to then shield those religious schools from anti-discrimination and other good-governance laws that apply to public schools.

In a new policy brief, Avoiding the Supreme Court’s Religious Charter-School Trap: Governance Change for the New Legal Era, authors Kevin G. Welner (University of Colorado Boulder), Carol C. Burris (Network for Public Education), and Preston C. Green III (University of Connecticut) warn that, without proactive legislative action, this radical transformation of states’ charter sectors could be fully imposed within two years.

The brief describes an upcoming “one-two punch” from the Supreme Court. First, the Court will hear a case next term that is likely to find a free-exercise right for taxpayer-funded private religious schools to engage in faith-based discrimination. Arguments for faith-based exemptions from accountability and transparency rules will follow. Second, the Court is likely to hear a case in the following term, resulting in a decision that prohibits states from excluding religious charter schools—again grounded in the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause.

This charter-school trap, however, is set only for states that structure their laws to place private, independent organizations in the charter-governance role. As the brief explains, if governmental entities retain that governance role, the Court’s free-exercise reasoning does not apply. Instead, the applicable law is the long-standing Establishment Clause bar on religious public schools.

Forty-six states and the District of Columbia permit charter schools. Of these, 42 allow or require independently governed charter schools—the type that the Supreme Court’s ruling might drastically transform. However, nine of those 42 states also allow charter schools to be governed by local school districts, and four states—Alaska, Kansas, Maryland, and Virginia—place all their charters under the governance of publicly elected school boards. This brief argues that these four are already protected from the Supreme Court’s likely decisions.

“State legislators can head off the Court’s radical change by strengthening the fundamental publicness of their charter schools,” Welner explains. “Legislators can protect the charter-school sectors against the imposed transformation by changing how they are governed.”

According to Green, the solution is straightforward: “All charter schools should be created, staffed, and governed by public entities such as local school districts, ensuring they remain fully subject to constitutional and civil rights protections.”

The authors include key provisions for a state statute to guide this shift, offering a clear path for preserving accountability, transparency, and civil rights in an evolving legal landscape.

Bringing charter schools into this legal safe harbor will, according to Burris, have other advantages as well:

District-governed charters also offer practical advantages, including stronger financial oversight and reduced risk of mismanagement and fraud. Communities, via their elected school boards, will have a voice in whether and how to build charter schools that serve the community’s best interests.

Find Avoiding the Supreme Court’s Religious Charter-School Trap: Governance Change for the New Legal Era, by Kevin G. Welner, Carol C. Burris, and Preston C. Green III, at:
https://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/religious-charters

Dubious Claims About Colorado Benefits From Federal Tax-Credit Voucher Program

National Education Policy Center — Thu, 21 May 2026 23:17:47 -0500

BOULDER, CO (May 21, 2026) — The Common Sense Institute recently published a report declaring large potential benefits of the federal education tax-credit voucher program created through President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill. However, the report’s claims about the improvements the program would create for Colorado are unlikely to materialize.

Joydeep Roy of Teachers College, Columbia University explains why in his review of The Economic Impact from Colorado’s Choice to Participate in the “Education Freedom Tax Credit” Provision in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

As part of the legislation passed in July 2025, the federal government established a nationwide tax credit for contributions to so-called scholarship-granting organizations (SGOs) that can fund some K-12 educational expenses. Taxpayers can receive a credit of $1,700 each year for these donations. Although key rules are still being drafted by the Trump administration, eligible families given a voucher by a private SGO will likely be able to use these funds on a range of educational expenses, including private school tuition, tutoring, transportation, instructional materials, and courses offered at either private or public educational institutions.

The Common Sense Institute report claims significant benefits will emerge for Colorado when—pursuant to the intentions of Gov. Polis—it opts into the program starting in 2027. The report predicts that the tax credits will boost incomes, create jobs, generate additional revenue for public schools, and increase private school enrollment.

However, many of these hypothesized benefits are unlikely. The methods used in the report’s economic impact model leave important questions unanswered, and it relies on speculative assumptions about participation and economic effects. For instance, participation rates in similar scholarship programs have historically been much lower than the report predicts for Colorado, raising doubts about the report’s assumptions and conclusions. (Neither the report nor the review addresses the program’s long-term impact on the health of the state’s public education system.)

Ultimately, Professor Roy concludes, the report provides little value in fostering an informed, evidence-based policy debate about the likely economic effects of the federal education tax credit program in Colorado.

Find the review, written by Joydeep Roy, at:
https://nepc.colorado.edu/review/co-tax-credit

Find The Economic Impact from Colorado’s Choice to Participate in the “Education Freedom Tax Credit” Provision in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, written by Thomas Young and Jimena Sanchez and published by the Common Sense Institute, at: https://www.commonsenseinstituteus.org/colorado/research/education/the-economic-impact-from-colorados-choice-to-participate-in-the-education-freedom-tax-credit-provision-in-the-one-big-beautiful-bill-act

NEPC Talks Education: How Statewide Research Initiatives Can Shape Education Policy

National Education Policy Center — Tue, 19 May 2026 13:46:53 -0500

BOULDER, CO (May 19, 2026) — In this month’s episode of NEPC Talks Education, Christopher Saldaña is joined by Susanna Loeb, professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Education and faculty director of the SCALE Initiative, where she also serves as founder and executive director of the National Student Support Accelerator. Loeb discusses the recent release of Getting Down to Facts 3, a Stanford SCALE Initiative project that brings together more than 100 researchers to give California policymakers, educators, and families a shared, evidence-based picture of the state's public education system from preschool through high school.

Loeb traces the project back nearly 20 years, to a moment when California’s public schools were marked by low achievement, an illogical funding system, an opaque governance structure, and an education code so dense that districts often simply copied their neighbors. The original Getting Down to Facts stepped back to examine the system as a whole rather than one lever at a time, revealing how inequitable funding, governance dysfunction, and accountability gaps were all connected. That shared factual foundation, Loeb explains, helped shape some of California’s biggest reforms, including the Local Control Funding Formula. Getting Down to Facts 2 built on that work, and Getting Down to Facts 3 now asks different questions: Why does the state struggle to sustain and scale the gains it has made? And how can it build a learning system that improves over time and adapts to change?

The conversation focuses on how research actually moves into policy and practice. Loeb candidly explains that rigor alone is never enough. Each round of Getting Down to Facts begins with a listening tour across the state, gathering questions from policymakers, advocates, educators, district leaders, and families so the research speaks to the decisions people are actually trying to make. Findings are then synthesized across dozens of individual studies and translated into formats that different audiences can use, from model policies to checklists to videos. Timing matters as well, Loeb notes; the first round’s most consequential influence came only after the Great Recession eased, when policymakers were ready to act on a comprehensive framework already on the table.

Among the most striking findings in Getting Down to Facts 3 are the depth of administrative burdens facing educators and the fragmentation of state systems of support, alongside pockets of genuinely strong work in tutoring, individualized attention, and high school redesign. Loeb organizes the path forward around what she calls the “ABCs”: Alignment and accountability that provide districts with clear and consistent goals. Balance between state guidance and local flexibility that supports districts' decision-making while saving them time, effort, and money. Finally, capacity-building, which supports districts in high-stakes work like recruiting, hiring, and retaining teachers and principals.

Loeb closes with practical advice for leaders in other states who want a Getting Down to Facts–style effort of their own. The work takes time—roughly two years from start to release—and requires independence for people across the political spectrum to trust the findings. Researchers must carefully choose the scope of the project and approach issues from multiple angles, rather than chasing a single lever or trying to cover everything. Above all, she emphasizes a listening tour, advisory groups, and pre-releases that engage policymakers, educators, and communities throughout the process.

A new NEPC Talks Education podcast episode will be released each month from September through May.

Don’t worry if you miss a month. All episodes are archived on the NEPC website and can be found here.

NEPC podcast episodes are also available on Apple Podcasts under the title NEPC Talks Education. Subscribe and follow!

Report on Wisconsin Achievement Gaps Oversimplifies Causes, Ignores Systemic Inequalities

National Education Policy Center — Tue, 12 May 2026 21:25:12 -0500

BOULDER, CO (May 12, 2026) — A recent report from the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL) highlights stark achievement gaps between White and Black students in Wisconsin, particularly in elementary-level English language arts and reading. While the report deserves credit for bringing attention to this important issue, its analysis is incomplete and misleading.

In his review of Beyond Race: What Really Drives Wisconsin’s Achievement Gap, University at Buffalo distinguished professor Jaekyung Lee finds that the report offers an overly simplistic account of the causes of these disparities, attributing them to factors framed as separate from race. Professor Lee is the author of the book, The Anatomy of Achievement Gaps: Why and How American Education is Losing (But Can Still Win) the War on Underachievement.

The WILL report contends that policymakers have misdiagnosed the achievement gap as a product of systemic racism, contending instead that poverty, disability, and family instability—presented as race-neutral mediation factors—explain the disparity. However, this framing reflects a fundamental misdiagnosis. These factors are not “beyond race” but are deeply intertwined with it due to longstanding structural inequalities. Those other factors therefore cannot be understood in isolation. The report further fails to acknowledge well-documented racial inequities in educational opportunity within schools, and it overlooks racial differences in the interaction between family and school learning environments.

Moreover, the report’s endorsement of the Science of Reading phonics-based approach, based on what is known as the “Mississippi Miracle,” is unwarranted. Although improved phonics instruction is likely among the factors driving Mississippi’s gains on the Grade 4 NAEP reading exam, those higher scores stem from a combination of factors. Further, those gains largely disappear by eighth grade.

Professor Lee concludes that, beyond encouraging renewed attention to persistent achievement gaps, the report offers policymakers limited practical guidance. Addressing these disparities will require multifaceted, evidence-based solutions.

Find the review, written by Jaekyung Lee, at:
https://nepc.colorado.edu/review/beyond-race

Find Beyond Race: What Really Drives Wisconsin’s Achievement Gap, written by Will Flanders and published by the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, at: https://will-law.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/RaceAchievementStudy-web.pdf

NEPC Talks Education: The Past, Present, and Future of K-12 School Finance Adequacy

National Education Policy Center — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 20:56:07 -0500

BOULDER, CO (April 23, 2026) — In this month’s episode of NEPC Talks Education, Christopher Saldaña is joined by Michael Rebell, a leading expert in civic education and school finance litigation and a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, and Luisa Sanchez, a student at Boyle County High School in Kentucky. Sanchez is a member of the Kentucky Student Voice Team and a plaintiff in Kentucky Student Voice Team v. Commonwealth of Kentucky, a case challenging the state to deliver on its constitutional obligation to provide an adequate education for all students. Together, she and Rebell walk listeners through the Kentucky case and situate it within the longer history of school finance adequacy litigation in the United States.

Rebell traces a 50-year movement in which advocates have turned to state courts to challenge funding systems built on unequal property taxes. Plaintiffs have since filed adequacy cases in 48 states, and Kentucky sits at the heart of that history. Its 1989 Rose decision defined what an adequate education requires and prompted a sweeping overhaul of the state’s schools in the 1990s. Rebell notes that since the 2008 recession, Kentucky’s legislature has steadily chipped away at both funding and enforcement of the educational standard outlined by the Kentucky Supreme Court, leaving today’s students without the education Rose once promised.

Sanchez brings that long history into the present. She immigrated to the United States at age seven, moved from a well-resourced New York school to a rural Kentucky one, and joined the Kentucky Student Voice Team in 2023. Now a named plaintiff in the case, she has helped lead intergenerational forums across the state alongside Harvard law students, gathering testimony from young people, educators, and community members about what an adequate education should look like. In their case, she and her peers ask not only for stronger funding but also for lasting structures that give students a voice in the policy decisions shaping their schools.

Both guests are candid about what this work demands. Sanchez describes balancing school, family, and public advocacy, while Rebell points to the slow grind of litigation and the state’s technical appeals. Their advice to others is direct. Sanchez tells adults in power not to underestimate young people, and to build real channels for student voice inside the institutions that serve them. Rebell urges lawyers and advocates to keep turning to state courts, which he finds closer to the people and more responsive about education than the federal bench has been in recent years. Sanchez also points listeners to the team’s new book, Why Kentucky Students Are Suing the State: Classroom, Courts, and the Constitution, which lays out the case in plain language and reflects the youth-led, intergenerational spirit behind it.

A new NEPC Talks Education podcast episode, hosted by Christopher Saldaña, will be released each month from September through May.

Don’t worry if you miss a month. All episodes are archived on the NEPC website and can be found here.

NEPC podcast episodes are also available on Apple Podcasts under the title NEPC Talks Education. Subscribe and follow!

Trump Administration’s First Year Marks Sweeping Shift in Federal Education Policy

National Education Policy Center — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 20:58:06 -0500

BOULDER, CO (April 21, 2026) — The first year of the second Trump administration has seen a radical break from six decades of federal education policy, discarding the longstanding vision of equal access and human capital development in favor of a new, and as yet undefined, approach to American educational governance.

In a new policy brief, Studying the First Year of Trump’s Second Term: The Renewed Importance of Participatory Governance, Dr. Derek Gottlieb, a leading scholar of education policy, examines the educational purposes that administration officials have publicly articulated across a variety of platforms, along with the actions that the federal government has taken over the past year to achieve its goals.

Citing the supposed need to align education policy with “Presidential priorities,” the administration has expanded executive authority over federal spending and legal rules. Meeting little resistance from either Congress or the Supreme Court, it has altered antidiscrimination enforcement, redirected congressionally approved funding, and revised university research contracts.

Yet no single unifying vision has emerged. Instead, a patchwork agenda includes expanding parental choice through charter funding and a federal tax-credit scholarship, curbing grade inflation and campus activism, and reducing federal capacity for research and data.

Much of these changes have at their core a sweeping reinterpretation of Equal Protection and Title VI and IX enforcement. The administration has applied these interpretations to limit initiatives supporting minoritized and vulnerable populations, while also targeting what it characterizes as ideological “indoctrination” in schools. At the same time, it has advanced a definition of “merit” that excludes consideration of structural inequality.

Among the results are that educational institutions face heightened uncertainty, inclusionary practices risk federal investigation, funding streams have become less predictable, and public resources are increasingly diluted across both public and private sectors. More broadly, the executive branch now exerts unprecedented influence over institutional decision-making.

Because educational institutions are operating under increasingly arbitrary rule, protecting mission-driven work will require stronger engagement with local constituencies – from civil-society and business groups to voters. Although federal authority rests on funding and enforcement, it has historically been constrained by state and local resistance. In this context, Dr. Gottlieb suggests that education leaders must build public trust through strategies such as participatory budgeting and stakeholder engagement to sustain institutional missions and navigate ongoing federal pressure.

Find Studying the First Year of Trump’s Second Term: The Renewed Importance of Participatory Governance, by Derek Gottlieb, at:
https://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/policy-review

New Report Surveying School Board Members Offers Nuanced Snapshot but Falls Short on Guidance

National Education Policy Center — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 03:07:00 -0500

BOULDER, CO (March 26, 2026) — A recent Fordham Institute report surveys more than 5,000 school board members across over 3,000 districts, finding they are disproportionately White, college educated, and often current or former teachers, with politics and beliefs that largely mirror both the U.S. public and their local communities.

In their review of Who’s on Board? School Boards and Political Representation in an Age of Conflict, Arizona State University professors Carrie Sampson and Jeanne M. Powers find the report offers a useful snapshot of board composition, political orientation, and perceptions.

A key strength of the report is its use of nationally representative and enrollment-based weighting, yielding a relatively nuanced picture. These data show modest differences between board members and the public on perceptions of school quality, school choice, and teachers’ unions. The report flags these gaps, along with the underrepresentation of Black and Hispanic Americans, as concerns.

Yet the report offers no guidance for addressing them. It also suffers from some leading and ambiguous question wording, raising concerns on findings about charter schools and school quality.

The reviewers caution that the main body of the report is accompanied by an especially problematic Foreword, which misrepresents the study and advances unsubstantiated claims using partisan language, overstating some findings, and ignoring others. For instance, the Foreword frames board members’ relatively lower support for charter schools under a heading asking whether boards are “the most anti-charter groups in the country.”

Overall, Sampson and Powers conclude the results are informative but offer little for policymakers, in large part because the report lacks clear recommendations.

Find the review, written by Carrie Sampson and Jeanne M. Powers, at:
https://nepc.colorado.edu/review/school-board

Find Who’s on Board? School Boards and Political Representation in an Age of Conflict, written by David M. Houston and Michael T. Hartney and published by the Fordham Institute, at: https://fordhaminstitute.org/national/research/whos-board-school-boards-and-political-representation-age-conflict

NEPC Talks Education: Building and Sustaining Equity-Centered Principal Pipelines

National Education Policy Center — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 23:32:53 -0500

BOULDER, CO (March 19, 2026) — In this month’s episode of NEPC Talks Education, Christopher Saldaña interviews Dr. Ain Grooms, professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison; Dr. Joshua Childs, professor at the University of Texas at Austin; and Dr. April Peters, professor at the University of Houston. Their joint research examines the design and implementation of equity-centered principal pipelines. In this month’s podcast, they offer insights into building and sustaining educational leadership systems that genuinely center equity.

All three researchers emphasize that developing equitable principal pipelines requires districts to reflect deeply on their local histories and use that knowledge to design leadership development systems that advance student outcomes, particularly for students of color, students from low-income backgrounds, and English language learners. Peters notes that especially because principals substantially influence student outcomes, districts must actively support them. She invites districts pursuing equity-centered principal pipeline design and implementation to think carefully about who is responsible for supporting school leaders, what those support structures look like, and how they connect to the broader goal of student success.

Childs emphasizes that principals cannot be understood apart from the larger ecosystem in which they work, which includes students, families, community members, and central office divisions. He identifies several significant challenges facing school leaders today, including a shortage of experienced administrators, the emotional and mental health toll of leadership, and the lasting erosion of community trust in schools that began during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Peters and Grooms address the shifting political context that has complicated equity-centered work in recent years. Facing budget cuts, heightened scrutiny, and hostile policy environments, districts have had to become increasingly flexible about how they pursue equity goals. Grooms describes how some partnering districts are responding by reimagining their community engagement plans, and actively bringing in voices that are otherwise rarely included when decisions are made about hiring principals, setting budgets, or closing schools.

All three guests offer encouragement and practical guidance for educational leaders looking to pursue the work of creating equity-centered principal pipelines. Peters counsels leaders not to go it alone, to plan proactively for political opposition, and to hire people with genuine equity commitments at their core. Grooms reminds listeners that equity work is a long, ongoing process. Throughout, the researchers express genuine optimism, pointing to the resilience of equity-committed scholars, the dedication of practitioners they have observed across districts, and the promise that well-designed principal pipelines will ultimately benefit the students and families those systems are built to serve.

A new NEPC Talks Education podcast episode, hosted by Christopher Saldaña, will be released each month from September through May.

Don’t worry if you miss a month. All episodes are archived on the NEPC website and can be found here.

NEPC podcast episodes are also available on Apple Podcasts under the title NEPC Talks Education. Subscribe and follow!

Cautionary Brookings Report Attempts to Weigh Opportunities and Risks of Generative AI in Education

National Education Policy Center — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 02:53:09 -0500

BOULDER, CO (March 12, 2026) — A recent Brookings Institution report synthesizes findings from a year-long study of generative artificial intelligence (AI) in education, concluding that its potential harms to young people’s learning and development currently outweigh its benefits.

In his review of A New Direction for Students in an AI World: Prosper, Prepare, Protect, University of Colorado Boulder professor William R. Penuel found it to be a useful tool to anticipate potential benefits and harms of AI but found it weaker in offering any clear blueprint for changing the trajectory of AI in education.

The report identifies three focus areas for action: promoting AI tools that support evidence-informed pedagogies; developing holistic AI literacy; and advancing trustworthy AI tool design, governance, and guidelines that prioritize safety, privacy, and healthy development.

The report’s strength lies in its breadth of perspectives and research. It provides decision makers with a wide range of ideas. But it offers little help in selecting and evaluating options for ensuring that AI is used to benefit rather than harm young people’s well-being. Also, it does not systematically weigh evidence by quality or type, leaving readers to draw divergent conclusions. More concerning, decision makers are presented with numerous recommendations but minimal guidance on how to evaluate or implement them, including little clarity about which stakeholders should carry out its 12 proposed actions.

Ultimately, Professor Penuel concludes, the report serves as a useful overview of the complex issues surrounding generative AI in education, though its impact is constrained by a reluctance to decisively assess whether future benefits can meaningfully outweigh current risks.

Find the review, written by William R. Penuel, at:
https://nepc.colorado.edu/review/generative-ai

Find A New Direction for Students in an AI World: Prosper, Prepare, Protect, written by Mary Burns, Rebecca Winthrop, Natasha Luther, Emma Venetis, and Rida Karim and published by the Brookings Institution, at: https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/A-New-Direction-for-Students-in-an-AI-World-FULL-REPORT.pdf

Public Education Threatened by Decades of Manufactured Crises

National Education Policy Center — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 02:08:49 -0600

BOULDER, CO (March 3, 2026) — Critiques of public education have intensified in recent years. While public schools do indeed have real areas in need of growth and improvement, many of today’s attacks are generated and amplified by organizations seeking to manufacture crises. These narratives often ignore counterevidence, and they use deceptive language to portray the system as broadly failing, even hopeless.

To examine these destructive critiques, Huriya Jabbar and Daniel Espinoza of the University of Southern California authored a policy brief, The Cycle of Disinvestment in Public Schools: How Public School Criticism Drives Policy and Disinvestment, released today by NEPC. The brief identifies five core narratives used to portray a failing education system: claims of underachievement, inefficiency, inequality, lack of school choice, and indoctrination.

The brief warns that overstated crisis narratives fuel a cycle of disinvestment: Eroding public confidence leads to reduced funding and enrollment, which strains schools and invites further criticism. This cycle weakens the public system while advancing privatization of what has long been considered a public good.

Each of the five core narratives is poorly grounded, according to Jabbar and Espinoza.

The “achievement” attack rests on disappointing test scores while downplaying the powerful influence of poverty and inequality on student performance. Polling consistently shows that parents rate their own public schools highly, even as they accept the broader myth that public schools nationwide are failing, revealing a gap between lived experience and manufactured narrative.

Charges of inefficiency similarly rely on narrow test score measures and attacks on unions, despite evidence that increased funding improves student achievement, especially for low-income students.

Claims that public schools exacerbate inequality ignore research showing that inequitable funding and broader social conditions drive disparities, and that public education remains essential to addressing them.

Advocates of vouchers and expanded school choice argue that families lack options, yet recent research finds large-scale voucher programs tend to lower student outcomes and increase segregation.

Allegations of indoctrination depend on sensationalized examples that ignore the largely uncontroversial, inclusive nature of most classroom instruction.

Amid COVID-19 disruptions, culture wars, rapid voucher expansion, immigration enforcement in schools, and federal policy and funding threats, the danger to public education is acute. Without correction, manufactured crises will continue to justify underinvestment, deepen inequality, and roll back hard-won gains in equity and student outcomes. Jabbar and Espinoza call on policymakers to counter manufactured narratives with evidence and to work toward reversing prior disinvestment by promoting equitable funding of instruction and facilities.

Find The Cycle of Disinvestment in Public Schools: How Public School Criticism Drives Policy and Disinvestment, by Huriya Jabbar and Daniel Espinoza, at:
http://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/disinvestment