In education circles, we pay a lot of attention to key U.S. Supreme Court decisions. But most education law plays out in state courts, where even major rulings can go overlooked. To help make sense of what’s been happening in state courts over the past year on issues ranging from school choice to school spending, I reached out to Derek Black. Derek is the Ernest F. Hollings Chair in Constitutional Law at the University of South Carolina, where he directs the Constitutional Law Center. While we frequently disagree on policy, I find him to be a thoughtful, informed, and incisive legal analyst. Here’s what he had to say.

— Rick Hess

Rick Hess: Derek, while U.S. Supreme Court education rulings garner a lot of attention, state supreme court rulings frequently fly under the radar—even when they’ve got big implications for policy. From school funding to the First Amendment to school choice, state courts have issued some major rulings over the past year. For those of us who don’t follow this stuff closely, what are some of the decisions we should be tracking?

Derek Black: A lot of people fall into the trap of thinking all the action happens in Washington. That may be true on taxes, tariffs, or interest rates, but in education the real action is most often in state legislatures and state supreme courts. For the past half century, state supreme courts have been treating school funding, quality, governance, and choice as issues that implicate state constitutional guarantees regarding education. We can see anywhere from one to five major rulings of this sort each year, and the past 12 months were no exception.

Last summer, the New Hampshire Supreme Court held that the state’s base level of school funding was constitutionally inadequate. Cases like this inevitably raise questions about how far courts can go in ordering legislatures to act. Courts have limited tools available when legislatures refuse to comply with judicial rulings. A recent case in North Carolina offers the clearest example. After two decades of delay in remedying a prior school funding decision, a North Carolina trial court in 2022 felt it had no choice but to order the state treasurer to transfer nearly $2 billion in surplus funds into public education accounts—a remedy no court had previously attempted in school-finance litigation.

The North Carolina Supreme Court initially upheld that remedy. But this spring, the court reversed course, indicating that the lower court had overreached in imposing a statewide funding remedy on the legislature. Though there were factual nuances in that decision, it will surely draw the attention of courts nationwide as they consider the proper scope of judicial remedies in education-funding disputes.

Hess: That’s a lot of activity. What might other state courts take from the New Hampshire and North Carolina decisions? The North Carolina ruling seems like a big shift after decades of courts directing legislatures to spend more. What might it portend for school spending fights going forward?

Black: School funding disputes in North Carolina and New Hampshire have gone to the state supreme court multiple times over the last three decades, with the plaintiffs winning or partially winning on most counts. The New Hampshire Supreme Court issued two seminal decisions in the 1990s, known as the Claremont decisions, that garnered a lot of national attention. But since then, the issues in New Hampshire have been unique enough that they have had less national influence. One takeaway from the recent New Hampshire ruling is that the precedent from those older cases is still solid, and plaintiffs can restart litigation when the state backtracks or fails to keep up with constitutional requirements on school funding.

The North Carolina case has broader significance. The 2022 ruling offered a hopeful example for the rest of the Southeast, whose courts—with the temporary exception of South Carolina—have refused to address public school funding inadequacies. Now that the North Carolina Supreme Court has backtracked, one is tempted to doubt whether any state court can enforce the right to education. But that pessimism is probably too simple.

The deeper story in North Carolina is about judicial politics and institutional change. While some states appoint justices, North Carolina elects them. And while elections were formally nonpartisan from 2004 to 2016 in North Carolina, they became increasingly politicized after the legislature switched them back to partisan contests in 2016. That shift coincided with major changes on the court itself. North Carolina went from issuing some of the country’s most consequential school funding decisions to becoming far more reluctant to press the legislature on educational adequacy. More broadly, the court moved away from an earlier willingness to assert institutional independence from the political branches.

Hess: The school choice landscape has changed dramatically in the past few years, with big gains by Education Savings Accounts and voucher programs. What have we seen in the state courts that speaks to all this?

Derek: State constitutions regularly figure in battles over school choice. The federal constitution addresses whether states may exclude religious schools from voucher or choice programs. But state constitutions determine whether publicly funded school choice programs can exist at all.

This spring, for instance, the Kentucky Supreme Court held that the state’s charter-school law violated the constitution because it diverted money from the “common school fund,” which is reserved for traditional public schools. In contrast, the Idaho Supreme Court upheld a private school tax-credit program, reasoning that the tax credits do not directly implicate public school funding. That decision broke a recent string of losses for voucher advocates in states such as South Carolina and Kentucky, as well as lower-court rulings in Utah, Wyoming, and Ohio. Those lower court decisions are now before the state supreme courts, so the next few months are likely to deliver some new constitutional nuances.

Hess: That’s a lot to digest. Take the Kentucky ruling that charter schools divert money from the “common school fund.” That seems to enable opponents to go after charter funding. Do other state constitutions have that kind of language? If so, why haven’t charter opponents used those provisions to go after charters before?

Derek: That constitutional language is not unusual. In the 1990s, plaintiffs used that language to challenge charter schools in California. The California Supreme Court rejected the challenge, reasoning that “common school” was just another word for public school. Since charters were public schools, the court saw no problem. The Washington Supreme Court went the other way in 2015, finding that “common school” was a term of art with a long history in the state constitution and, since charters are not common schools, they can’t draw on those funds.

My take is that the California Supreme Court just didn’t want to get in the way of reform and experimentation, so it papered over the common school distinction. Washington was willing to read the constitution more textually, which happened to align with the history of common schools. Washington, however, had been the only court to go in that direction until Kentucky. But it is also worth noting that there are technicalities around what counts as “common school funds,” so some states have been able to fund charters through other means without raising concerns.

Hess: You mentioned the Idaho ruling that tax-credit programs don’t utilize public school funds as well as several adverse rulings on vouchers. Read some tea leaves for us. What might these verdicts tell us about the legal landscape for the new federal tax-credit scholarship program?

Black: The open question, which none of the aforementioned cases touch, is how the Federal Scholarship Tax Credit relates to state constitutional prohibitions on vouchers, which are direct restrictions on state dollars.

Those prohibitions do not automatically apply to a state accepting federal tax credits. But a similar rationale got South Carolina into constitutional trouble a couple years ago. The governor used federal Covid relief money to create a voucher program, and the state supreme court struck it down. The court found those federal education funds were still “public funds” under the constitution because, in South Carolina, the state cannot spend those dollars without legislative authorization.

The fact that the new federal program involves tax credits rather than a federal appropriation could prove decisive before state courts inclined to uphold the program. However, the fact that a state’s governor has to opt in to the program could trigger state constitutional limitations.

Hess: Anything else that you think observers should be paying attention to?

Black: Another emerging issue, currently before the West Virginia Supreme Court, is whether legislatures can override the authority of education officials.

West Virginia is one of 36 states whose constitution creates a unique and separate structure of governance for schools. In these states, the legislatures fund public schools and set broad policy goals, but the schools are controlled by state superintendents or state boards of education. These officials don’t work for the governor or the legislature but draw their power from the constitution itself. The original thinking in the 19th century was that this separation of powers would allow education officials to make decisions based on professional judgment rather than politics.

Because most of us grew up thinking of administrative agencies as extensions of governors, we have trouble recognizing these education bodies as constitutionally distinct institutions. But in a moment when branches of government increasingly push against one another’s limits, it is especially important to preserve the constitutional structure surrounding public education and spare schools from the broader political chaos engulfing government.

Rick: Any words of wisdom for those trying to make sense of all this?

Black: Our state and federal founders believed that public education was essential to a republican form of government, so they constitutionalized public education and set up a number of guardrails to protect public schools—from the way we fund and preserve them to the way we manage them. Some of those rules may look like historical oddities when they constrain modern political impulses. But there is wisdom in many of the structures our states set up two centuries ago.

Frederick Hess is director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute and an executive editor of Education Next.

This post originally appeared on Rick Hess Straight Up.

New results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress released on June 10 have offered what may initially appear to be a glimmer of sunshine on an otherwise gloomy landscape of U.S. education. Scores of 9-year-olds tested in 2025 as part of NAEP’s Long-Term Trend assessment ticked upwards from 2022 levels in both reading and math. In reading, the gains were large enough to bring scores back to the level observed just prior to the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.

Yet any enthusiasm with which observers may welcome the latest results must be tempered. Historically, the slightest uptick in scores has been interpreted as a harbinger of long-term educational improvement. As such, it might be tempting to downplay the fact that scores of 13-year-olds, the other age group tested in 2025, were flat compared with 2023 and remain well below pre-pandemic levels.

Critically, a narrow focus on whether students are achieving at pre-pandemic levels obscures the fact that the recent declines in education outcomes among American students began in 2013—well before the pandemic disrupted schooling—and have generally persisted since. That reality complicates the process of calculating the pandemic’s true impact. More importantly, it changes the perspective on remedial policies.

Over the past half century, average student performance has stagnated, and large socioeconomic disparities have continued despite significantly increased resources for schools and a series of reforms, including new instructional programs, attempts to hold schools accountable for their performance, and a push for nationwide standards that came and went. In light of this larger picture, today’s policymakers and educators need to look beyond policies aimed at short-run remediation and consider more fundamental change.

Student Achievement in the 21st Century

Both common sense and complex research tell us that the skills and knowledge acquired through education directly affect the functioning of our democracy, the economic outcomes of individuals, and the power and prestige of the nation. Student scores on tests of academic achievement, such as NAEP, thus offer a preview of what’s to come. Average scores on such tests presage the future skills of the nation’s labor force, while the distribution of scores across student subgroups offers a preview of disparities in outcomes that may require government intervention. The long-term pattern of national-assessment scores can also help us gauge how efforts to improve education outcomes are working.

The Covid-19 pandemic had a far greater impact on our education system than any single event during the postwar period. States and school districts have rightly pursued a range of strategies aimed at remediating the harm to students in the Covid cohort and at preventing economic declines from a fall in their skills. Assessing the impact of these efforts, however, requires placing pandemic-era learning losses in the context of trends in student outcomes over a longer timeframe.

A crude way to judge the impact of the pandemic is to assume that a given cohort—say, the 8th graders in school during the pandemic—would have achieved what those in the same grade before the pandemic would have achieved. But assessing the education system’s performance more comprehensively requires also looking at patterns before and after the pandemic. The Main NAEP testing program conducts regular assessments of reading and math for state-representative samples of 4th and 8th graders. NAEP testing from 2003 to 2024 then provides this wider lens on performance not only for the nation, but also for each of the states.

Declining Average Achievement

The 2019 and 2022 NAEP assessments bracketed the pandemic era, and the national average scores for 8th graders show sharp drops over this time period: by 0.21 standard deviations in math and 0.07 standard deviations in reading (see Figure 1). These declines amount to nearly a full year’s worth of typical learning in math and a bit less than half a year in reading.

These three-year changes, however, are likely to be poor estimates of the pandemic’s true impact. Scores had been trending downward in both reading and math since 2013, with the steepest declines in reading. These trends suggest that part of the drop in scores during the pandemic period might well have occurred even without the disruption.

When we look at the post-pandemic period from 2022 to 2024, we see that the hoped-for recovery did not materialize. The federal government directed $190 billion toward K–12 public education, most of which went directly to schools. But as funds and programs were deployed to address pandemic learning losses, 8th-grade scores did not rise or even hold steady; they declined further. This continuing decay was particularly substantial in reading.

While 72 percent of the total decline in grade 8 math performance since 2013 occurred during the pandemic period between 2019 and 2022, only a quarter of reading decline happened in this window (see Table 1). In fact, the reading decline over the post-pandemic period is almost as large as the falloff that occurred during the pandemic years.

The pattern of NAEP scores for grade 4 echoes that for grade 8. Scores peaked in 2013, fell notably prior to 2019, and continued to decline through the pandemic and post-pandemic periods. The relative drop in scores during the pandemic was larger in math than in reading, where the pre- and post-pandemic losses account for a greater share of the overall decline since 2013.

The Falling Bottom

At the same time average achievement was falling after 2013, the gap between high-achieving and low-achieving students widened. As seen in Figure 2, reading scores of 8th-grade students at the 10th percentile—near the bottom of the test-score distribution—fell compared to those at the top, widening the performance gap and suggesting significant deterioration of the future economic prospects of the most disadvantaged students. Scores fell for high and low achievers alike during the pandemic period, but the losses were again largest for those at the bottom. This phenomenon is evident across all grades and subjects assessed by NAEP. For both math and reading in grades 4 and 8, scores were more widely dispersed in 2024 than in any prior year of NAEP testing.

Student achievement on NAEP is rated against expectations for each grade, with cutoffs established for basic, proficient, and advanced performance levels. Therefore, another way to gauge the progress or regress of low-performing students is to plot the share of test-takers unable to reach the basic, or lowest, performance level. In reading for grade 8, a student at the basic level should demonstrate a literal understanding of what they read and be able to make some interpretations. In math for grade 8, students at the basic level can demonstrate understanding of basic math concepts and apply them in simple situations. These performance levels represent the minimum skills students will commonly need to participate fully in an information-based economy.

The percentage of 8th-grade students failing to reach the basic level of math and reading performance jumped sharply during the pandemic (see Figure 3). But again, the deterioration of skills during the pandemic followed a substantial decline that commenced in 2013 and continued after 2022.

Evidence from Other Tests

These longstanding achievement declines are not an artifact of the grade-based Main NAEP testing program. They appear consistently across other assessments that permit comparisons of representative samples of U.S. students over time.

An alternate version of NAEP called Long-Term Trend, or LTT, has assessed math and reading scores for the nation since the 1970s. While the assessment framework of the Main NAEP has been adjusted over time to match curricular changes, LTT NAEP has kept the same content, thus providing a different perspective on comparisons over time. The same pattern of declining performance on the Main NAEP laid out above is repeated for both the 9- and 13-year-olds who participate in LTT: Scores for both age groups reached their highest level in 2012 and then declined through 2022, with only 9-year-olds noted as showing modest signs of recovery in 2025.

U.S. scores on the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, or TIMSS, follow the same pattern. TIMSS is an international assessment designed to compare performance across countries but, in doing so, it yields data for a representative sample of U.S. students. TIMSS has provided results for math and science at grades 4 and 8 roughly every four years since 1995.

The TIMSS scores of U.S. students in both grades fell significantly between 2019 and 2024. But these declines, too, began earlier. In grade 8, math scores peaked in 2015 and science scores in 2011. Grade 4 math peaked in 2011 and grade 4 science in 2015.

U.S. scores on the Programme for International Student Assessment, or PISA, have followed a slightly different pattern. PISA is also designed for international comparisons, in this case testing representative samples of 15-year-olds in math, reading, and science. Testing has followed a three-year cycle since 2000, with the 2021 test delayed until 2022 because of the pandemic. Scores in each of the tested subjects fell between 2018 and 2022, but this pandemic-era drop-off was smaller than the NAEP decline. Scores on the math assessment peaked in 2009, while reading and science scores peaked in 2018.

State-by-State Achievement Patterns

The clear national pattern of declining achievement over the first quarter of the 21st century masks substantial variation among the states. This variation reflects not only changes in school quality but also demographic shifts, which can be particularly influential at the state level, and other societal influences on student learning. Nonetheless, the burden of ameliorating the declines in learning falls squarely on each state’s schools, not only because of the states’ constitutional responsibility for schooling but also because government policy has its greatest potential leverage on student achievement through schools.

On NAEP, 23 states had already reached their highest level of grade 8 math achievement by 2011, and an additional 16 states did so by 2013 (see Figure 4). Similarly, in grade 8 reading, 9 states had reached peak achievement by 2011, while 25 more states peaked by 2013. Only four states in math and three states in reading were at their highest observed level when they headed into the pandemic.

And where does performance currently stand across the past quarter century? As of the 2024 NAEP tests, grade 8 performance in both math and reading was higher than it was at the beginning of this century in just four states: California, District of Columbia, Hawaii, and Mississippi.

The variation in states’ performance patterns is best illustrated by the amount of decline in student achievement from each state’s peak. The median math decline across states is more than one-third of a standard deviation, but the declines range from 0.11 standard deviations in Tennessee to 0.56 standard deviations in Texas. For reading, the range extends from 0 in the District of Columbia, where performance peaked in 2024, to 0.48 standard deviations in Vermont. Figure 5 shows the change in combined math and reading performance by state. For just three states—Louisiana, District of Columbia, and Mississippi—are declines only as low as 0.1 standard deviations.

For the median state, the combined math and reading losses during the pandemic period accounted for only half of the total decline in scores from the state’s peak. Here again the states differ sharply, however (see Figure 6). Less than one-quarter of Alaska’s aggregate decline of 0.5 standard deviations from its peak occurred during the pandemic period. In Tennessee and Mississippi, on the other hand, a strong post-pandemic recovery between 2022 and 2024 offset much of the decline in scores from the peak, such that the pandemic-period decline between 2019 and 2022 exceeded the total decline from its peak.

Economic Costs of Learning Declines

The falloff in learning over the past decade will have huge economic costs for individual students, for states, and for the United States as a whole. The importance of these changes may be difficult to grasp when expressed in standard deviations, but it is not hard to understand the economic implications of a workforce with lesser skills. Research confirms that, on average, individuals who know more earn more. It also shows that states and nations with a more skilled workforce—those with greater “knowledge capital”—experience faster economic growth in the long run. The substandard skills of pandemic students will thus result in lower earnings when they enter the labor force, and the depressed earnings will follow them throughout their working life. What’s more, the national economy will grow more slowly than it would have had higher achievement levels been sustained.

Based on past patterns of how skills affect rewards, recent students can expect their lifetime earnings, on average, to be lower by almost 8 percent (see Table 2). Importantly, the pandemic-period achievement declines are responsible for just half of this projected loss. And this loss will be much larger for our most disadvantaged students, whose average achievement declines after 2013 exceeded those of their more privileged peers.

For the nation as a whole, the expected aggregate costs of the learning declines are sufficiently large to make most current economic and budget policy discussions appear inconsequential. We can use historical relationships to project the growth rate the U.S. economy would have attained had student achievement stayed at its peak. On average, our gross domestic product (GDP) would be 6 percent higher per year for the rest of the century had we maintained 2013 achievement levels. Evaluated in present value terms, the amount of economic growth lost due to the learning declines is approximately three times our current GDP of $31 trillion. This is vastly larger than the aggregate GDP losses incurred during the Great Recession of 2008 recession and the Covid-induced recession of 2020 combined.

It is unlikely that skill deficits for students who have left K‒12 schools will go away because neither postsecondary schools nor businesses have a track record of effective remediation. In other words, the over 50 million students who have left secondary schools since 2013 with varying skill losses are likely to face lifetime income losses.

Because student achievement declines began well before the pandemic, simply returning to immediate pre-pandemic levels would only halve these projected economic losses. That would still leave enormous losses with dramatic implications for individual wellbeing, for government fiscal capacity, and for the global position of the United States. Interestingly, in the early months after the beginning of the pandemic, much of the discussion revolved around the need not just to return to the status quo of pre-pandemic schools but also to make schools better. Indeed, if students only returned to their prior pace of learning, many would be unable to recover unless the length of their schooling were dramatically extended.

Looking to the Past

Concerns about the performance of U.S. students are not new, but the pandemic brought them into high relief. Over the years, educators and policymakers have fielded many public calls for improvement. Perhaps the strongest and most enduring was the 1983 publication of A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform. This report, commissioned by the U.S. Department of Education during the Reagan era and filled with hyperbolic language, was built on an observation that sounds remarkably apt for today: “The time is long past when America’s destiny was assured simply by an abundance of natural resources and inexhaustible human enthusiasm, and by our relative isolation from the malignant problems of older civilizations.” Few would dispute this observation or assert that our schools do not need reform today.

Over the four decades since the publication of A Nation at Risk, policymakers and educators have tried a wide array of strategies to meet the challenges it described. These reforms have included expanded graduation requirements, increased pay for teachers, reduced class sizes, consequential school accountability, expanded preschool opportunities, new curricula and new technologies, alternative governance structures, charter schools and other parental choice options, wraparound services for students, and substantially increased funding. The results have been underwhelming.

A few things stand out in reviewing the policy approaches deployed since A Nation at Risk. First, a majority of the reforms were incremental and isolated, changing one part of the system with little concern about other parts or other reforms. Second, even policy approaches that showed promise were rarely implemented broadly and instead have been allowed to die out or have been sidelined by new reforms.

Third, and most importantly, these reforms have not worked. The math performance of 13-year-olds on Long-Term Trend NAEP did increase by 0.3 standard deviations between the early 1980s and 2012—but this gain was almost entirely reversed by the decline since. Comparable 13-year-old reading scores grew by 0.2 standard deviations as of 2012 but fell back to 1975 levels by 2023 and remained just as low in 2025. Four decades of broad reform efforts buoyed by a more than doubling of inflation-adjusted expenditure per pupil find us still confronting the challenges cited in 1983.

What’s more, these efforts have not succeeded at narrowing performance gaps between disadvantaged students and their more affluent peers. Even before A Nation at Risk, President Lyndon Johnson had launched his War on Poverty, singling out education as the long-term solution to socioeconomic disadvantage—a way to address the underlying causes of poverty and not just its symptoms. Achievement gaps by socioeconomic status, when traced from the War on Poverty to the beginning of the pandemic, show no closing. And these gaps have widened further since.

The post-pandemic policy response to this education crisis has focused almost exclusively on the achievement declines that happened during the pandemic, with the implicit assumption that the real challenge lies in helping students get back to the achievement levels of 2019. Many efforts have focused on simply compensating for the instructional time lost during the pandemic and on the disproportionate impacts on low-achieving and disadvantaged students. But the performance data indicate quite clearly that these efforts have fallen short. The headline policies of lengthened school days and years, high-dosage tutoring, and added technological support have either been implemented ineffectively or, when effective, have not been broadly adopted. By most indicators, performance has declined since 2022 despite these efforts.

A Different Perspective

Instead of continuing to tinker within the current structure, we need to rethink how we operate our schools. Education reform efforts over the past half century have aimed to enhance or improve various aspects of the public education system while retaining the essence of its institutional structure. These reforms have included add-ons of various types, regulatory constraints designed to prevent poor outcomes, and expansions of existing operations that, even when viewed as promising, have failed to yield the expected or hoped-for results. Their collective failure accentuates the need to look at the problem differently and to pursue fundamental institutional change.

The dynamics of education policy development further illustrate the problem. Even when a school policy succeeds at scale, with validated performance outcomes, states and school districts have not rushed to adopt it. Consider the incentive-based teacher compensation systems introduced in Washington, D.C., in 2009 and Dallas, Texas, in 2013. These reforms show that when teachers are evaluated and paid based on their classroom effectiveness, student scores increase significantly. Yet, because these innovative incentive systems are alien to the way most districts write contracts and operate, few districts have copied their approaches. It is not that teachers and principals do not want higher achievement but that competing priorities appear to supersede any quest for improved achievement.

Efforts to introduce significant teacher and administrator incentives into schools face strong headwinds, but at times these efforts prevail. The attempt to do so under the U.S. Department of Education’s Race to the Top program, launched in 2009, led to strong backlash and was explicitly prohibited by subsequent legislation. Yet the intense fight to introduce performance pay in D.C. eventually succeeded, leading to strong student-achievement gains—and it has remained in effect under a series of new superintendents. The introduction of altered evaluation and pay systems in Dallas took years of planning and preparation but has also survived multiple new superintendents. Dallas-like systems have in fact expanded in Texas because of grants enabled by the Texas legislature to support any district willing to change its evaluation and pay systems. By 2025, 809 districts—approximately two-thirds of all Texas districts—had applied to participate. Following state takeover, Houston, the largest district in Texas, and several others are moving rapidly to follow.

A structure that incentivizes and more consistently promotes higher achievement will require altered roles for both state and federal policymakers. A recent proposal from the Hoover Institution’s Education Futures Council, for which I was an adviser, provides one example of how the public school system might change. The council’s report highlights the importance of maintaining a focus on student outcomes, incorporating incentives for the desired outcomes, and recognizing that local capacity and local demands vary so much that broad-based mandates and regulations from above thwart innovation. Because schooling is locally administered, the federal role should center on support, not control, including activities such as data collection, research, and incentives to promote innovation and improvement instead of mandates and regulations. States, in turn, should strive to enable local implementation without treating all districts the same. For example, a state could give wide operational latitude to districts that demonstrate high performance while deploying closer constraints and stricter guidance for less successful districts.

If policymakers do choose to revamp our education system, they will have many alternatives available to them, but history suggests that they should favor a new, outcome-based design over small tweaks to our current stagnant system.

Looking Forward

The pandemic has absorbed most of the attention afforded to school policy of late, drawing focus away from the student performance declines that happened earlier but less dramatically. In 2022 the U.S. ranked 34th among participating nations on the math portion of PISA. This places the nation below the OECD average, edging out the Slovak Republic but falling behind Malta. Our economy has performed well for reasons other than the state of our education system. The basic structure of the economy provides a great advantage, and the ability to attract and employ highly educated immigrants, particularly in STEM fields, has significantly strengthened our labor force. But there’s no guarantee that these advantages will continue. Without them, the nation would have to depend on the quality of the labor force it produces, beginning in the public schools.

Improving the performance of our education system will require fundamental changes. A half century’s collection of highly touted marginal changes simply has not worked. We are now in a decade-long decline that, while exacerbated by the pandemic, has been driven by systemic issues.

It is time that we learn from these decades of failed add-ons to a resistant system. Do we really believe that the next minor change will transform it?

Eric A. Hanushek is the Hanna Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.

Suggested citation format:

Hanushek, E. A. (2026). “Putting Pandemic Learning Loss in Perspective: Broad achievement declines in 21st-century America demand new policy approaches.” Education Next, 26(2), 11 June 2026.

The policy debate over time in school has focused on the four-day school week. It is an arrangement formally adopted in approximately 850 districts, where schools operate for four slightly longer days per week instead of the traditional five, providing regular three-day weekends to students and teachers.

When a district makes the decision to shutter its school doors every Friday or Monday, everyone recognizes that a consequential choice has been made. Researchers study its effects. Parents debate its burdens. School boards are asked to justify the tradeoffs.

But there is another, quieter policy in play that is reducing students’ regular access to school. Districts keep the label of a traditional five-day calendar while repeatedly closing schools to students on otherwise ordinary weekdays. Districts use various terms to describe these closures, including teacher workdays, professional development days, and clerical days, among other terms of art. But they all mean the same thing for parents: a day their child won’t receive instruction and will instead need to be cared for outside of school.

Unlike the healthy debate that accompanies the switch to a four-day school week, this kind of school calendar fragmentation has received little national attention. It deserves more.

Time Matters

In the American Educational Research Journal, Matthew Kraft and Sarah Novicoff systematically review 74 rigorous studies on the role of time in student learning, concluding that additional time in school generally improves student achievement and that disparities in instructional time across public schools are an overlooked form of educational inequality.

Kraft and Novicoff document that the typical American public school is in session for about 179 days and 1,231 total hours each year. Yet students attending schools at the 90th percentile of annual time receive nearly 200 more hours of school per year than students at the 10th percentile—a difference equivalent to more than two additional years of school over the course of a child’s K–12 education (see “Time for School,” research, Winter 2025).

That variation is not merely a matter of when schools start and finish each day or whether districts formally adopt four-day school weeks. It can also arise through the less-visible accumulation of student-free weekdays inside calendars that are still labeled “traditional.”

School Weeks Interrupted

This concern over excessive weekday closures is not limited to one district or one state. In Fairfax County, Virginia, parents recently objected after the district added eight early-release days for elementary students for professional development and planning. According to Education Week, when those early-release days were included with holidays and other staff-development days, students were scheduled to receive full, five-day instructional weeks only a little more than half the time. The Fairfax County controversy reflects a broader reality: families increasingly experience the school week as fragmented, even in districts that are formally open five days a week.

North Carolina offers another useful case study. State law requires districts to provide either 185 instructional days or 1,025 instructional hours across at least nine calendar months. The hours-based option permits districts to schedule fewer than 185 school days, provided that instructional hours satisfy the state requirement.

Consider Wake County Public School System, the largest school district in North Carolina and the 14th largest in the United States. The 2026–27 traditional school calendar schedules 177 days when students will attend school and 17 teacher workdays. Five of those workdays occur before students arrive in August, and two are scheduled after students leave in June. The remaining 10 interrupt the instructional term, closing schools to students on six Mondays, three Tuesdays, and one Wednesday.

That structure is not accidental. When Wake moved from 180 to 177 student days in 2019–20, district leaders described the change as a way to create more full teacher workdays while still meeting the state’s minimum instructional-hours requirement. Reporting at the time indicated that teachers and members of the superintendent’s teacher advisory council had urged the district to replace early-release days with full workdays, which they saw as more useful for planning, collaboration, and grading. Whether that allocation represents a necessary investment in instructional quality or an avoidable reduction in students’ regular access to school is worth examining.

It is worth noting that three of Wake’s in-term teacher workdays coincide with major religious observances: Yom Kippur on September 21, Eid al-Fitr on March 10, and Eid al-Adha on May 17. School calendars in diverse communities may reasonably incorporate major religious observances, even when those days are not formally designated as holidays. But the overlap does not explain the broader pattern of repeated student-free weekdays. It remains a policy choice for which the families of Wake County Public School System deserve an accounting.

To put those numbers in perspective, I compared Wake’s calendar with the posted 2026–27 calendars of the five largest school districts in the country (see Table 1). The terminology and use of student-free days varies across districts—“teacher workday,” “professional development day,” “teacher planning day,” “clerical day,” and “pupil-free day” are not perfectly interchangeable. But each category captures a closely related choice: a full weekday set aside for staff purposes when students do not receive their regular instruction.

Wake’s 177 days of instruction are not what distinguishes the district; New York City and Chicago public schools provide comparable totals. The more revealing comparison is the number of full weekdays during the instructional term when Wake students are out of school for staff-facing purposes. On that measure, Wake stands apart.

Wake County itself tells families that when students attend school every day, they build “strong habits, relationships, and learning momentum,” and that missing just a few days each month can make it harder to keep up. The district is now reinforcing that message by launching an Attendance Task Force and planning a community campaign to promote regular attendance. These are worthwhile efforts. But instructional continuity should not be treated as essential when families make attendance decisions and incidental when school systems design calendars.

Closed Schools and Open Questions

Professional development is not incidental to school quality, and full-day in-service time is not uncommon. A recent nationally representative Education Week survey found that 72 percent of educators reported their district or school uses full-day in-service days during the school year; when asked when they would most prefer to receive professional development, educators selected that option more often than any other. But accepting the value of professional time does not settle how much student-free time should be scheduled, where it should fall on the calendar, or whether a district’s allocation is acceptable (much less optimal). Seventeen teacher workdays is a choice that merits debate. Like every education policy decision, there are trade-offs to be weighed, such as possible benefits to teacher practice exchanged for lost instructional continuity and disrupted family routines.

What exactly is accomplished on teacher workdays? How much is devoted to mandatory training, collaborative planning, grading, or parent communication? What evidence suggests that closing schools to students on 10 weekdays during the instructional term produces benefits sufficient to justify the lost continuity and family disruption? Why does Wake require substantially more such days than the five largest school systems in the country? These are the type of questions we routinely ask about other education policies that affect students’ opportunity to learn.

The burden these calendar choices place on families is not abstract. As of May 2026, Care.com reported the average starting wage of a babysitter in Raleigh, North Carolina, was about $19 per hour. For a seven-hour school day, that amounts to at least $134 per child. Accounting for Wake’s 10 in-term teacher workdays, a family relying on paid care could spend more than $1,300 per child. Many families simply cannot afford that expense. Instead, parents miss shifts, use scarce leave, rely on relatives, trade favors with neighbors, or seek out one-day camps, where prices range from $55 to $99 per day. Families with kindergarten-aged children or children with disabilities may find their options particularly limited.

An informal infrastructure has emerged to help families manage the mismatch between school calendars and work calendars. On WhatsApp, parents circulate links to spreadsheets of camps and one-day programs, while providers market coverage for scattered weekdays when school is closed but workplaces are open. These arrangements may solve a practical problem for individual families, but their necessity underscores the broader consequence of repeated student-free weekdays during the instructional term.

“School is not childcare” is the familiar response. Of course it is not. School is far more important than childcare. And its predictable operation is one of the public goods it provides. A reliable and predictable school week allows children to develop routines, parents to remain employed, and families to organize their lives around a stable institution. A calendar that repeatedly shuts out students from school on ordinary weekdays is not just an administrative decision. It is education policy, family policy, and labor-market policy, and it hasn’t been given the opportunity for public input that it merits.

About Time to Care About Time

This is an especially peculiar moment to be incurious about time in school. A recent analysis of pandemic recovery efforts notes North Carolina’s chronic absenteeism rate remains 10 percentage points above pre-pandemic levels. In 2025, a quarter of the state’s students were missing 10 percent of the school year. State leaders emphasize, correctly, that chronic absence threatens student learning and that schools must rebuild consistent attendance habits after the pandemic.

And North Carolina students remain behind academically. In math, the average student is performing about 0.41 grade equivalents below 2019 levels. In reading, the average student is 0.69 grade equivalents below 2019 levels.

An individual teacher workday is not the same as a student deciding to skip school. But Wake’s own argument about attendance rests on the cumulative value of ordinary school days: habits, relationships, and learning momentum. If those things matter when a family schedules a vacation, they should matter when a district constructs its calendar.

The cumulative loss and fragmentation of regular school access is rarely treated as a policy outcome in its own right. We count formal four-day-week districts. We track chronic absenteeism. We study pandemic learning loss. Individual district calendars may make student-free weekdays visible to families who know where to look. But states do not routinely compile and report comparable measures of how many full weekdays districts close schools to students for staff-facing purposes or how those numbers compare across districts. They should, and researchers should study this quieter form of calendar fragmentation and its implications for students and families.

The five-day school week is a commitment to regular access to instruction, teachers, routines, meals, peers, and opportunity. Yet in Wake County’s 2026–27 calendar, students will experience only two uninterrupted five-day instructional weeks in each of four months of the school year: September, November, December, and March. That inconsistency should raise a larger question for education policymakers everywhere: How much student learning is lost, one ordinary weekday at a time, by district policies that intentionally disrupt instruction?

Anna J. Egalite is a professor of educational evaluation and policy analysis at North Carolina State University and a visiting fellow at the Institute for Governance and Civics at Florida State University.

I’m old-fashioned about public spending. I think we should pay our bills, that deficits are bad, and those spending taxpayer funds are obligated to do so wisely and well. This is how I’ve always approached education spending, especially in Washington. After all, it’s our students who’re going to get stuck with the tab for our borrowing today that subsidizes padded payrolls, bloated bureaucracies, and outsized employee benefits.

When presidents Clinton and Obama championed new ed spending as a smart, sleek investment, I was dubious. Though learned economists argued that such spending would boost future productivity, I feared it would do more (as it almost always does) to produce red tape and excuse bad habits than improve outcomes. For decades, I’ve argued this in books like Common Sense School Reform and Stretching the School Dollar.

But these are tough times for an education budget hawk. Why? Because it’s damn hard to look unsympathetically at future-oriented outlays in education while politicians shovel borrowed cash at the over-65 set.

The temptation to live beyond our means may be eternal, but things weren’t always this bad. In the early 1980s, the bipartisan Greenspan Commission crafted a package of Social Security reforms that extended the program’s solvency by decades. In the 1990s, a Democratic White House and Republican Congress ran actual budget surpluses. By 2001, Federal Reserve chair Alan Greenspan, who led that eponymous 1980s commission, was even fretting about the headaches that would result if Washington paid off the national debt.

Greenspan needn’t have worried. Between the Iraq War, the Great Recession, and the Covid-19 pandemic, policymakers justified big tax cuts and massive new outlays. The result: enormous structural deficits and a federal debt that quadrupled from $9 trillion in 2007 to $36 trillion in 2025. Last year, the federal government spent $7.1 trillion, of which $4.4 trillion was spent on benefits for individuals, with 62 percent going to those aged 65 and over (mostly for Social Security and health care). For every six dollars spent on seniors, a single dollar went to those under age 26 (mostly for Medicaid, food stamps, and education).

Oldsters get free stuff; youngsters get stuck with the bill.

It’s not like Washington can afford any of this. The U.S. borrowed $1.8 trillion last year, will borrow another $2 trillion this year, and is looking at steadily growing debt as far as the eye can see. Last year, at a 10-year cost of $245 billion, Republicans wedged President Trump’s tax breaks for auto loans, tips, overtime, and seniors into the reconciliation bill. Now, pols on both sides of the aisle are proposing new tax breaks for teachers, veterans, police, renters, and seniors.

As ever, The Dispatch’s Kevin Williamson brings an acerbic clarity to the numbers:

U.S. government debt has crossed a red line: Debt held by the public now exceeds 100 percent of GDP . . . On top of the $31.3 trillion in federal debt per se, there’s another $88 trillion or so (some estimates are higher) in unfunded liabilities for major entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare . . . Call it $120 trillion in the hole just to keep the number simple. That is just a little bit more than the total economic output of the entire human race in 2025.

Where’s all this money going? Williamson explains:

This debt is not driven by incontinent spending on a selection of boutique federal programs that you and your friends don’t like. The main drivers of our debt are Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other medical entitlements, national security, and interest on debt already incurred . . . At present, Social Security by itself accounts for 22 percent of all federal spending; interest payments are 14 percent; non-Medicare health spending is 14 percent; [and] Medicare is another 14 percent.

In short, two-thirds of federal spending is for Social Security, health care (mostly for seniors), and interest on all the money we’ve borrowed. The U.S. will spend more than $1 trillion next year just in interest on the debt; interest on the debt is due to top $2 trillion a year by 2035.

Meanwhile, in last year’s reconciliation bill (the infelicitously named “One Big Beautiful Bill Act”), Republicans took a budgetary process designed to help Congress balance the books and added more than $4 trillion in debt. With gas prices up due to the Iran War, President Trump is urging Congress to suspend the gas tax, potentially adding billions to the debt. Then there are the smaller exercises in plunder, like the $1.8 billion federal slush fund that Trump’s Department of Justice has devised for allies who claim they were targeted by the Biden administration.

Again, it all adds up to more free stuff for grown-ups and more debt for kids.

This puts me in a quandary. I just can’t muster much enthusiasm for trimming outlays on education data collection or Title I when those savings look like rounding errors compared to new tax breaks or monthly outlays for Medicare.

Look, I’ve spent a quarter-century railing against ineffectual education spending. I’m appalled that New York City spends $40,000 a kid to deliver dismal results, that $200 billion in Covid relief funds didn’t do much for students, and that taxpayers heavily subsidize enrollment at colleges that charge tens of thousands of dollars for eight courses and a dorm room. I’ve warned that bailouts enable bad spending choices and endorsed aggressive efforts to downsize the federal education apparatus.

But how can I decry spending on federal ed programs that nominally target those under 26, when these kids will inherit the tab for the self-dealing indiscipline of their elders? It’d be one thing if policymakers were cutting spending and raising taxes across the board in an all-hands push to get our affairs in order. But it’s nonsensical to give entitlements a pass and then pursue symbolic savings in education, one of the few outlays that are plausibly an investment in more than next week.

Nowhere does this register more clearly than with the new Federal Scholarship Tax Credit. By rights, I should be exasperated by yet one more unfunded tax cut, potentially exacerbating the federal deficit by billions each year. But how the hell can I question a program that’ll fund student scholarships when the same legislation carved out much larger new tax breaks for seniors and car buyers?

I can’t. I’m foursquare for the scholarship tax credits, whatever the fiscal consequences. A decade ago, I’d have called that hypocrisy. Today, I think it’s the only defensible stance in a capital that has embraced irresponsibility.

This spring, the Trump administration released a half-baked budget. It was laughably incomplete and envisioned massive deficits as far as the eye can see. But the education headline was clear: “Trump budget proposal would cut $2.3 billion for education in 2027.” Once, I’d have cheered this as a demonstration of fiscal discipline. In this case, I can’t. I can’t because the sums are trivial compared to our staggering mountain of untamed debt. In a world where the administration is busy widening a $1.8 trillion deficit, this feels more like picking on the kids than an exercise in fiscal responsibility.

Open the Books recently reported that Secretary of Education Linda McMahon has dramatically shrunk expenditures at ED. Payroll was cut by $170 million a year, from $560 to $390 million. Hotel spending was slashed from $796,000 in fiscal 2024 to $1,100 in fiscal 2025 (nope, that’s not a typo). Spending on PR plunged from $17.3 million to $6,800 (again, not a typo). These are real wins. I’m glad to see these cuts.

But it’s hard to get excited about $170 million in annual savings when that doesn’t even cover 1/100th of what we’re spending this week in interest on the debt. Tough times for a budget hawk, indeed.

A final point, one which I trust will offend all the big-spending education advocates who’ve been nodding along.

It’s this: I’m sick and tired of hearing about our “precious kiddos” from those of you who are simultaneously burying those same kids in debt. You care about our kids? Demand that policymakers tackle Social Security and control health care spending. Insist that they pay for their new initiatives. Otherwise, chatter about equitable opportunity is just the soundtrack masking the grinding gears of intergenerational plunder.

Frederick Hess is an executive editor of Education Next and the author of the blog “Old School with Rick Hess.”

David Figlio, the Gordon Fyfe Professor of Economics and Education at the University of Rochester, joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss Figlio’s recent article in Education Next, “Can Banning Cellphones Save Student Learning? Evidence from Florida, home of the first statewide mandate,” co-written with Umut Özek.

Follow The Education Exchange on Soundcloud, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or here on Education Next.

— Education Next

Joe is a 15-year-old who has been feeling “off” for several months. A tough quiz or an awkward social moment turns into something that he obsessively replays. He has trouble falling asleep and often wakes up at 3 a.m. worrying about the upcoming day. His score on the GAD-7, a clinical measure of anxiety, is 12; his pediatrician tells his mom that qualifies as “moderately anxious.”

Mom decides to act. The pediatrician gives her a referral for therapy and tells her to check Psychology Today’s online directory of providers. Mom finds several nearby professionals. One describes herself as a specialist in cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT. Another claims to be an expert in an “eclectic” therapy. Still another uses something called dialectical behavioral therapy. She is choosing, she believes, among methods. The CBT description sounds the most sensible to her, so she goes with that. The waiting time is eight weeks.

What she doesn’t yet realize is that the person she gets for Joe will matter far more than the method. Behind one door is a CBT therapist who will leave Joe slightly worse, drifting up from 12 to 13 on the GAD-7. Behind another is a CBT therapist who will bring meaningful relief, moving him down to 8. And behind a third is an amazing CBT therapist who will produce something like remission, reducing Joe to a score of 4.

Which is which? Joe’s mom cannot tell from Psychology Today.

Research shows that different types of treatment for teen mental health concerns often produce roughly equivalent outcomes. The difference between Joe scoring 13 or 4 is much more likely to reflect the therapist than the method.

In short: Some therapists are much more effective than others. Treatment type accounts for at most one percent of the variance in patient outcomes. Therapist identity accounts for five to eight percent. The gap between a 90th-percentile therapist and a 50th-percentile therapist is meaningful, but the mental health care system doesn’t particularly want to know or act upon that information.

“There is no other profession where your performance is so ignored.”

Bruce Wampold is emeritus professor of counseling psychology at the University of Wisconsin and director of the Research Institute at Modum Bad Psychiatric Center in Norway. He has spent much of his career establishing, repeatedly, that who the therapist is matters more than what kind of therapy they use.

Wampold is direct. “There is no other profession where your performance is so ignored as psychotherapy,” he noted in a recent interview. On the research literature itself: “There have been 10,000 to 15,000 clinical trials of different psychotherapies. There have been maybe 20 studies of therapists. Amazing, isn’t it, when you think about the money spent?” Indeed, when Wampold sought funding from the National Institute of Mental Health to study individual therapists, he was denied.

The medical system relies on therapists’ credentials as proxies for quality. Are they predictive of results? No. Advanced degrees and additional certifications are weak predictors of patient outcomes—a result that will not surprise Education Next readers who have lived through analogous discussions about teachers.

What about experience? A longitudinal study following 170 therapists over up to 18 years found that therapist effectiveness drifted slightly downward as experience accumulated.

But maybe the scholars are mismeasuring therapists? After all, some deal with much tougher cases than others. An important study by David Saxon and Michael Barkham used statistical methods to control for case severity and patient risk. They wanted to test whether apparent therapist quality was just a reflection of caseload difficulty. The therapist effects persisted. Good ones still looked good. Struggling ones still looked bad. This is the same issue that methods to estimate “value-added” revealed for teachers.

A Familiar Reckoning: Therapist Quality and Teacher Quality

The Widget Effect, a 2009 report by The New Teacher Project, argued that schools were treating teachers as interchangeable parts, as though one were the same as any other. Everyone was rated satisfactory.

The report hit at a moment of political opportunity. President Obama’s Race to the Top grant program made improving teacher quality a top priority. The Gates Foundation had launched the Measures of Effective Teaching project, which aimed to develop a fair and reliable way of distinguishing teacher quality. The technocratic stuff went reasonably well, as Thomas Kane reported: “We showed that if you combine data from three different sources, you can identify teachers who cause greater learning to happen.”

But the politics?

Not so good, as Chad Aldeman’s careful postmortem here in Education Next demonstrates. Aldeman points to research by Matthew Kraft, who compiled ratings across the 24 states that had built new evaluation systems and found that in the vast majority of them, fewer than one percent of teachers landed in the lowest category.

The systems had nominally changed, but to little practical impact. Why? “No amount of investment in new evaluation systems would ever make teachers comfortable with consequential decisions flowing from those systems,” Aldeman wrote.

Today’s therapists are in a similar position. From their point of view, there are already several built-in forms of accountability. Patients can choose not to show up in the first place or not to return. A practice manager can fire them. In cases of serious misconduct, a licensing board can dismiss them.

How would they react to a new idea: measuring them based on outcomes, controlling for all the proper externalities, celebrating and rewarding the best, and at least notifying and offering help to those with consistently bad outcomes, followed by the possibility of counseling them out after months or years with no improvement in outcomes? They would not react well. They entered a profession with one understanding of accountability already in place. Politically, it is implausible to change that understanding retroactively. Let’s not try.

An Opening

Here is where the teacher and therapist evaluation stories depart, and where there might be an opportunity to address the teen mental health challenge.

Put simply, we need a lot more mental health providers. Schools have teacher shortages in some places, but nothing comparable to this. Six in ten psychologists aren’t taking new patients. The average wait for care is 48 days, and longer if you’re in a rural area, where a family often can’t find anyone who treats teenagers at all. While there are over a million behavioral health providers in the U.S., they are unevenly distributed. More than half of Americans (169 million) live somewhere the federal government has formally designated a “Mental Health Professional Shortage Area.”

There’s a policy opportunity here, and a few states have started to take it. California has created Certified Wellness Coaches, a new provider role with lighter credentialing, and Georgia has built a youth peer specialist model staffed by young adults with lived experience. Most state activity, though, has gone toward hiring more of the existing licensed workforce rather than testing new kinds of help.

We think this is a mistake. Three categories of alternative providers show promise, each resting on an encouraging evidence base. They could “enter fresh,” with little incumbent expectation of being treated like interchangeable widgets and no settled bargain to protect. That is the opening. With alternative providers, we could focus on patient outcomes, not inputs. We could trade low barriers to entry in exchange for accountability for patient improvement. Leave the traditional clinicians alone but measure the newcomers on their results.

Paraprofessionals. The evidence that formal clinical training produces better therapy is surprisingly thin, and it has been contested since Joseph Durlak first raised the question in 1979. In the most recent and most careful synthesis, a 2024 review by Smith, Hall, and Verona found that licensed professionals do not hold an edge in the treatment of children and adolescents. Paraprofessionals do their best work when they are trained in a structured intervention; behavioral activation, for example, produced strong results when delivered by unlicensed providers.

Chatbots. A 2026 meta-analysis pooled 39 randomized trials of chatbots and found moderate reductions in depression and anxiety. Therabot, a generative AI chatbot out of Dartmouth, was found to reduce users’ depressive symptoms by 51 percent in a New England Journal of Medicine study. Patients also rated their bond with the bot about the same as they would with a human. Of course, using these with teenagers would require a careful rollout; hundreds of bills to limit minors’ interactions with chatbots are pending in state legislatures in 2026.

Peer and Near-Peer Support. This approach rests on a simple intuition and has a growing evidence base. A 17-year-old may more readily connect with a “near-peer,” someone close enough to her own life to recognize what she’s going through, than with a 54 year-old licensed clinician. A 2025 JAMA Psychiatry viewpoint makes the case for integrating peers into care to ease the workforce shortage, and a 2025 review found some encouraging effects, particularly for eating disorders.

* * *

What if we invested in all these new provider types at once—and made outcome tracking a condition of the funding from the very start? We’d build the evidence we’re missing and likely get help to teens who can’t find any right now. Earlier we argued why outcome measurement collapsed for teachers, who objected to terms imposed on them years into the job. These providers would be different, because measurement is simply part of the bargain they sign up for on day one.

We could study this new cohort of providers and learn. Therapy, in turn, gets its Doug Lemov moment, a rigorous blueprint for what excellent providers do that others don’t. The National Institute of Mental Health could fund the evaluation infrastructure for which Wampold has advocated for over 30 years.

Joe and his mom? They’re no longer browsing Psychology Today and crossing their fingers. They now have much more varied choice. Maybe they still opt for the licensed CBT provider, or perhaps they try the new local practice that just opened, the one with young paraprofessionals trained in behavioral activation. Or maybe Joe uses a large language model to ease into seeing a provider as he waits for the right fit.

Open the door to new kinds of providers and measure their results from the start. In doing so, we can work on supply and quality at the same time.

Sean Geraghty and Mike Goldstein are the co-founders of the Center For Teen Flourishing.

In April, Yale University released a report on the state of public trust in higher education. A year in the making, the report is a comprehensive document analyzing why trust in institutions of higher education has declined so precipitously and how Yale, as one such institution, should combat it. It identifies three factors behind this erosion of trust: the price of higher education, an opaque admissions system, and the campus environment for free speech. Underlying all of these is “widespread uncertainty about the fundamental purpose and mission of higher education,” a much more fundamental challenge. “Trust,” the report says, “is earned by doing what you say you’re going to do—and ideally, doing it well.”

What is it that colleges and universities are supposed to be doing? For most students (not to mention the families and taxpayers who often subsidize their education) the answer is preparing them for a good career that ideally makes the time and money spent in study worth the investment. Yet the report’s authors acknowledge that, “for many students, the economic return on higher education has become uncertain at best.” Combine the questionable ROI and uncertain job prospects with campus controversies and the larger political environment, and it is a recipe that sooner or later will turn the public perception of higher education sour.

Questioning the return on investment for a college degree is certainly something we’ve encountered in our own research. In a survey conducted last May, we found that 76 percent of voters said colleges and universities charge more than what a degree is worth. More recently, a 54 percent majority of voters said they did not believe most college graduates today are ready to enter the workforce (only 36 percent did). Baked into voters’ concerns about the cost are the job graduates can get after college, the salary it commands relative to what they have to pay for the degree, and the earnings lost by attending college rather than entering the workforce.

At first glance, the Yale report does not really address this half of the cost equation. It does not talk about ensuring its graduates are ready for the workforce, creating employment pipelines, or aligning its course offerings with employer needs. In large part, it doesn’t have to. College Scorecard data indicates that the median yearly earnings for Yale graduates are $112,971—more than double the median earnings of graduates who attended other four-year institutions. Yale’s Office of Career Strategy reports that over 95 percent of the class of 2025 was employed or in graduate school six months after graduation. Sixty-four percent reported starting salaries exceeding $70,000. As the report itself notes, “an Ivy League education also opens doors to prestigious careers and opportunities.” On balance, the Yale grads are likely going to be OK.

But as stated in the report, employment and earnings are not all that matter. “Educational value cannot be reduced to a future paycheck. The value of higher education also includes the public contributions of graduates in public health, nonprofit administration, secondary teaching, the arts, local journalism, government service, and basic scientific research, among other fields.” What’s more, the impact of technological changes on the job market means it will be impossible to identify which discrete skills will be the most lucrative or employable. As the report argues:

The evolving nature of the job market is also an argument for the broad, flexible, and time-tested form of education known as the liberal arts. A liberal arts education—which includes the sciences and social sciences as well as the arts and humanities—equips students with foundational wisdom and critical skills that will serve them throughout their lives. (emphasis added)

This is an incredibly important concept the report surfaces. A broad-based education—a liberal arts education—equips students with high-order cognitive skills like critical thinking that are indispensable for leading a rich, full life.

Critical thinking is the prized outcome of a good education. It is the ability not just to solve problems but to identify them, especially in situations where others might simply accept problematic circumstances as the nature of things.

As American Enterprise Institute scholar Robert Pondiscio has described, critical thinking is often mistaken for a discrete skill that can be explicitly taught. In reality, “thinking itself is inextricably linked to the content of thought. A robust foundation of knowledge is not merely the raw material for thought, it is the scaffolding that makes higher-order thinking possible.” (emphasis added). Critical thinking cannot happen in a vacuum. The ability to think critically is the outcome of sustained study over a full breadth of subjects—exactly the broad-based, liberal arts education that Yale describes. Put another way, critical thinking is the ability to see meaningful relationships between pieces of knowledge—a way of connecting the dots.

One example of an outcome that results from seeing a relationship others might miss comes from science. CRISPR—clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats—is the technology behind a revolutionary gene editing technique that allows scientists to modify the DNA of living things. It gives them the ability to correct gene mutations that can lead to diseases like sickle cell anemia, or potentially even cancer. CRISPR is not a human invention. Bacteria have been using the technique as a way to defend against invading viruses for hundreds of thousands of years. But our understanding of the technique is new. As Time senior health correspondent Alice Park summarized in her 2016 essay about the scientists pioneering CRISPR as a disease therapy in humans, the initial spark of insight required making the connection between biology and a dairy product:

[I]t wasn’t until the early 2000s that food scientists at a Danish yogurt company realized just how clever the bacterial system was when they noticed that their cultures were turning too sour. They discovered that the cultures were CRISPRing invaders, altering the taste considerably. It made for bad dairy, but the scientific discovery was immediately recognized as a big one.

This was the critical insight that led to a revolutionary way to fight disease: a conception of the body not just as hardware—bones, muscles, and tissues to be repaired when something went wrong—but also as software whose problems could be fixed simply by adjusting their code. But in order to connect the dots between sour yogurt and treating genetic diseases, everyone involved needed a deep understanding of subject-specific knowledge: DNA and RNA and the mechanisms by which our genetic code is written; how bacteria differ from viruses and how the former defends itself against the latter; what it means when a yogurt is too sour.

This is not to say that students can only develop critical thinking skills at schools like Yale, or only within a traditional, liberal, liberal arts curriculum. Nor is it to downplay the importance of employment-oriented postsecondary education. Critical thinking can be, and quite often is, gained in the deep study and practice of applied knowledge just as much as it is in the liberal arts. But it is to point out that the breadth of the liberal arts is what makes it such a good training ground for gaining the high-order cognitive skills students will use on the job and throughout their careers—to give students a generous breadth of “dots” from across a wide variety of subjects to be able to see meaningful connections. Yet the connection between the liberal arts and critical thinking is opaque for many Americans. Arguably, it is the responsibility of institutions like Yale, which are largely buffered from concerns about graduates’ employability, to explain and defend the importance of a traditional liberal arts education. The brief nod given in the Yale report is a good start, but more work is needed to produce a full-throated defense of—and explanation for—the value of the liberal arts.

Caitlin Peartree is vice president for policy research for The Winston Group, a strategic planning, consulting, and survey research firm based in Washington, DC, where David Winston is president.

White House transcript of President Donald J. Trump’s remarks to Oakmont Middle School 8th graders during class trip to the White House to commemorate America’s 250th birthday, June 1, 2026.

Good morning, children. Wow. Look at all these kids. Incredible, incredible. Are you Trump voters? I don’t see many red hats. That’s okay. My Secret Service let you in anyway.

You’re very lucky to be here with the First Lady and me today. It’s a tremendous time to be here. You should be very honored. We’re celebrating the White House’s 250th birthday. That’s right. It was right here, 250 years ago, that George Washington made America great.

He did it first. But I’ve made America great again. That’s a very important word, children. Again. He did it once. I’ve already done it two times. That’s why people say Trump is the best president. Two times better than Washington.

Washington bombed England and chopped down a huge cherry tree. The people used that tree to make him new teeth and a very nice house. They built him this house and a big monument and they put his face on money. Very respectful. They knew how to show respect back then. But his wife wasn’t much to look at, not like Melania.

The White House is a good house, very historic. But everyone says it needs work. That’s my second job. If you ask the best people who should fix a famous building, they all say, “Sir, you’re the only one who can do it. You have the expertise and the industry contacts to get the best materials at the best prices.” It’s true.

We’re making the White House great again, kids. The lamestream media will tell you the golden ballroom and astroturf and burger bar are about me. They lie. That’s what they do. I’m making it better so you can be proud of a White House that has gold and turf and burgers. I’ve got my building guys painting the Lincoln swimming pool the bluest, most beautiful blue. It’s hard work, but I don’t mind. I bet you kids will want to swim in it, won’t you? That’s because Trump is making it beautiful, not dirty like under Hussein Obama. Your president is working hard for you kids. Nobody talks about that. Now, the best people keep saying, “Sir, you should stay another term and enjoy all this hard work you’re doing. You deserve it.” Wouldn’t that be great? I’m thinking about it. I am.

So, you’re in 8th grade, huh—8th grade. I was tremendous at 8th grade, the best. All the girls asked to be my girlfriend. They’d all say, “Sir, you’re so handsome. Can I be your girlfriend, please?” But I was too busy being the best student. The teachers gave me trophies and awards. They kept saying, “You’re the best at everything, sir, can we please give you another prize?” I think that’s a very good lesson for you. I’m not your teacher, so I can’t say for sure. But that’s what I think.

Your very nice headmaster or ruler or principal, I don’t know, he wanted to speak with me earlier. He shook my hand and said, “It’s an honor, sir. You’re the best president of my lifetime.” Isn’t that nice? But I had to correct him, you know. “I’m the best president of everyone’s lifetime.” He agreed and he laughed and he thanked me. Very respectful. Even principals get historical facts wrong sometimes.

He said you almost went to Disney World instead of the White House. You’re lucky. Very lucky. Disney is run by the people who pay very unfunny Jimmy Kimmel, the guy who tried to get me killed. He also tried to kill Melania, I hear. Terrible people. Just terrible. With very bad rides. The roller coasters are so slow, like they’re for babies. The worst. I told my guy who runs the FCC, “Just shut them down. Putin would already have them in jail. Why is this idiot still on the air?” This is a great country, the freest, but that doesn’t mean you can tell terrible lies about the president on TV. It’s good no one watches him. Very low ratings. You don’t watch him. Way past your bedtime.

You know, Disney is in a state run by a very dumb governor. Meatball Ron ran against me, even after I told him not to. If you see him, he’ll tell you he didn’t want to be Attorney General. But he begged and begged. He said, “Sir, I’d work very hard for you.” I laughed at him and put Pam Bondi in there. Hah! He hated that. You should’ve seen his face.

Looking at you kids, I can tell you’re very smart. But there are a lot of very dumb people out there, like Tucker Carlson or Marjorie Taylor Greene. They’re the worst. They say conquering the queen of Iran isn’t MAGA. Don’t listen to them. They don’t know what MAGA is. I do. I invented it. It’s whatever I say it is. That’s why I’ve never talked to them. It’s why I don’t even know what they say. You’re lucky I’m president, even if Tucker says I’m the devil.

I’m the one who sent those big, beautiful bombers to blow up Iran. That’s why people say I’m the bravest president we’ve had. If I hadn’t, we wouldn’t be here right now. Iran would have nuclear weapons. The Middle East would be gone. Israel would be gone. Your parents would be ashes in an ashtray. Poof. You’d have bombs falling on your heads at bedtime. They’re sickos. They’re lunatics. Nobody should let a sicko lunatic have nuclear weapons. Trust me.

This 250th birthday is very, very special. We’ve got a tremendous celebration planned. The hugest. You 8th graders will love it. We’re going to celebrate American greatness by racing cars. Those racing guys love Trump. Very patriotic. And we’re hosting a fantastic UFC championship right here at the White House. All the best arenas and resorts wanted it. It’s like Derrick Lewis told me, “I’m glad I don’t have to fight you for the heavyweight title, sir. Because you’re the real champ.” That was very nice. Very respectful.

People say a lot of nice things about Lincoln and Jefferson and the Roosevelt brothers, and not very nice things about Trump. But I’m the one with the UFC fights. Wouldn’t it be great to see JD and Marco fight? Who would win? Little Marco? I like JD’s chances. He has crazy eyes. And a beard. But Cubans are good at boxing. It would be very, very interesting.

Did you visit the Supreme Court? That’s the place I should tear down. It’s full of fools and RINO lapdogs. Very stupid. Very disloyal to the Constitution. I went to watch them discuss my beautiful tariffs. They didn’t bow or even offer me a Diet Coke. I said to JD, “Putin would know how to make these disloyal judges behave.” Maybe I should put them in the Octagon. What do you think, kids? Do you want to see Gorsuch versus Barrett in a cage match? Or maybe Hegseth can fight them both. Heggy’s got tattoos. I call him my tough guy. He might bite their ears off, like Tyson. They’d have to stop judging if they couldn’t hear, right? I’d like to see Pete versus the pope, who is a squish and very overrated. I’d bet a lot of cypto on Heggy in that one.

Do you kids have Trump crypto? Ask your parents. If you buy $100 of Trump crypto on your way out today, JD will hand you a beautiful, shiny Trump quarter. These are better than gold, believe me. School is fine, but money is better. You don’t need school if you’ve got money. Money is more important than knowing some dead guy or the capital of Beijing. Use your Trump crypto to buy Trump t-shirts and hats, very reasonably priced at our gift shop. We have the best anniversary merch, with the highest thread counts, at the best crypto prices.

You ever notice on America’s money it says “In God We Trust”? No one ever noticed that until I pointed it out. Then the money people said, “That’s so true, sir.” Do you know who God is, kids? Some people say he’s a very old man who lives in the clouds. That’s probably why it isn’t worth much. Money would be worth more if it said Trump, not some old man who’s always wet. And God is very weak on crime and immigration, like the pope. God used to be good on crime, very tough. He’d say, “Take out that guy’s eye.” But then he met Jesus and turned very low energy, very soft on law and order. Very unpatriotic.

Did you know they built a very nice gold statue of me down in Florida? I bet God would like one. Some people are saying it should be put in front of the White House. Do you think so? I don’t know. But they say, “Sir, it would be so good for the country. It would inspire presidents to do their best.” They say we should make the White House a Trump property. That it would become a big, beautiful landmark. Much more popular and respected. People would come from all over to see it.

My people are telling me I need to go to a very important meeting with very important people. But here’s what I want you remember about this 250th birthday: I’ve ended nine wars and only started one, so I’m plus-eight. And Iran’s not a war. And Heggy told me we already won, so I’m really plus-nine. I’ve stopped inflation and made America great again. That’s right, we’re all winning. I even won the PGA championship last month. I shot a 59 on Sunday. The best players all said, “Sir, that was the most amazing round anyone ever shot.” They’re right. This country was built for winners, and people say I’m the biggest winner they’ve ever seen. That’s why everyone wants to put my name on things. And they should do it. It’s very respectful.

Thank you. Praise be to Allah on this very special anniversary, my young amigos.

Frederick Hess is an executive editor of Education Next and the author of the blog “Old School with Rick Hess.”

Michael Henderson, associate professor at Louisiana State University, joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss Henderson’s paper, “Blowback or Buy-In: Public Opinion in Response to Charter School Penetration,” which was presented at “School Choice: Impacts on Participants, Non-Participants, Educators, and Entrepreneurs,” a conference hosted by the Harvard Kennedy School’s Program on Education Policy and Governance on May 7 and 8, 2026.

Follow The Education Exchange on Soundcloud, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or here on Education Next.

— Education Next

Two topics that have gotten a lot of attention over the past year are civics instruction and the role of “high-quality” instructional materials. But how can district leaders and classroom teachers actually identify “high-quality” materials for history and civics? Well, Knowledge Matters has launched an initiative intended to help on that count. As an old civics teacher, I was curious to hear more about it. I recently had the chance to chat with Matthew Levey, who helped launch the History Matters Campaign and is an unabashed champion of content-rich curricula and civic education. Here’s what he had to say.

— Rick Hess

Rick Hess: Matthew, so what is the Knowledge Matters Campaign?

Matthew Levey: The Knowledge Matters Campaign advocates content-rich, high-quality curriculum and instruction based on the sciences of reading and learning. It grew out of years spent visiting classrooms and studying what actually improves reading comprehension and critical thinking. Students understand texts better when they have knowledge about the world—the classic example is that kids get more out of reading a story about baseball if they are familiar with the game. Yet for decades, our schools have steadily reduced time and resources for subjects that build knowledge like history, geography, and civics. The campaign highlights schools and states that are taking a different approach.

Hess: How’d you get involved in this work?

Levey: It all started at a back-to-school night for my daughter’s public school in New York City. That was when I realized the depth of the challenge with bad history curricula. Her history teacher gave an awful description of the materials they were using and froze in fear when my wife asked whether the class would be discussing the ongoing presidential race between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. I’d long discussed my concerns about the state of history and civics curriculum with my friend Robert Pondiscio, who would joke, “The last thing I’d ever do is start a school, but maybe you should!” It was with that dare in the back of my head that I applied to open the International Charter School in New York, where we used the sort of history curriculum I wished my daughter had experienced. That brought me to Knowledge Matters, which advocates for high-quality history and literacy curricula at every school, for every kid.

Hess: You recently launched a new History Matters Review Tool. Tell me about it.

Levey: The History Matters Review Tool is a curriculum review rubric designed to help districts, educators, and parents answer a simple question: Does this curriculum actually help students learn history? The tool sets a vision for great history instruction and provides practical evaluation criteria grounded in classroom experience and learning science. It looks at whether a curriculum presents history as a coherent story, whether knowledge builds from grade to grade, and whether teachers are supported with strong guidance and sources. We were inspired by some of the great history lessons we’ve witnessed on the Knowledge Matters School Tour. In Louisiana, I visited a classroom where 3rd graders were debating why the early colonies’ economies developed differently—for instance, why shipbuilding and fishing became important in New England, while the hotter climate meant Southern farms could grow cotton. They had the vocabulary and historical context to do so because their curriculum, called Bayou Bridges, had built that knowledge step by step.

Hess: Who designed the tool?

Levey: It was created by historians, curriculum experts, classroom teachers, and researchers who study how students learn. Sue Pimentel, a co-founder of StandardsWork, had spent years examining curriculum in schools across the country while working on literacy improvement efforts. That work led us to produce an English/language arts review tool in 2023. It was well received and led us to see the challenges and opportunity with history materials.

Hess: Who’s the intended audience?

Levey: The tool is designed primarily for state and district leaders choosing curricula, but teachers and parents can use it as well. Parents often ask thoughtful questions about what their children are learning in school but struggle to get specific information. The tool helps everyone look closely at the materials students encounter in class.

Hess: How do you expect teachers or education officials to use it when choosing curricula?

Levey: State and district leaders often face dozens of curriculum options. The tool can help them focus on what matters most: whether the materials present coherent historical narratives, build knowledge across grades, and support teachers with strong guidance. For teachers, the benefit is slightly different. In many classrooms, teachers spend evenings searching for additional materials because the curriculum feels thin or disconnected. Visiting Louisiana after the state adopted content-rich curriculum, we heard teachers say their biggest relief was not having to invent lessons from scratch. The curriculum provided the historical story and the sources. That allowed teachers to focus on helping students think and discuss.

Hess: Today, how do school or system leaders assess the quality of history materials?

Levey: In many places, the evaluation process involves leaders looking at sample lessons and relies heavily on publisher presentations. Sometimes, decisions are influenced by how visually appealing the materials appear or how many activities are included. What often receives less attention is the structure of the historical content being taught. The review tool helps leaders focus on the deeper questions and, we hope, demand more of publishers.

Hess: One of the Knowledge Matters Campaign’s guiding principles is that “history is a story and, for young students, should be taught as such.” What’s that mean in practice?

Levey: Cognitive psychology tells us that humans learn effectively through stories. We remember information more easily when it is tied to a narrative with characters and a beginning, middle, and end. History is naturally suited to this kind of learning. Students need to understand a sequence of events and a cast of characters involved in a historical period. In practice, that means presenting history as a connected narrative rather than a series of isolated topics. A 5th grade teacher in Arizona recounted that when she discusses the impact of the War of 1812, she can remind her kids, “Didn’t you read about that in 2nd grade?” Strong curriculum builds that narrative foundation across grades so that by the time students reach middle and high school they can analyze primary sources and debate historical interpretations with real understanding.

Hess: The National Assessment of Educational Progress has made clear that civics and history performance is abysmal. Any thoughts on why?

Levey: For decades, schools have steadily reduced the time spent on history and civics instruction, especially in elementary school. I saw this trend firsthand in all three of my kids’ schools going back two decades now. Their “curriculum” was a hodgepodge of materials that rarely connected from one year to the next. The schools offered little to no professional development to help teachers prepare. And in their understandable obsession with test results, the principals saw little reason to emphasize history. Education research tells us that when those subjects disappear in the early grades, students reach middle and high school without the foundation of knowledge needed to understand complex texts or civic ideas. The national assessment results reflect that long buildup.

Hess: History and civics education have been rife with concerns about ideological slant. Where does your tool fit in?

Levey: As you know, Rick, these disagreements are not new. The debate over what it means to be American is baked into our founding. We will probably never solve that. But by shifting the conversation toward substance, we hope the review tool can identify common ground. It asks whether a curriculum presents accurate narratives, draws on primary sources, and introduces students to the major people and events that shaped the country and the world. Those are questions we can agree on. Polling consistently shows that parents across the political spectrum want students to learn about difficult topics like slavery and civil rights. The disagreement is often about how those topics are framed and taught. The tool gives everyone a shared framework so those conversations can focus on the quality of learning.

Hess: Lots of history and civics initiatives have been launched over time, many with little impact. Why do you think that is, and what makes you hopeful this will be different?

Levey: Scolding students and teachers for not knowing the names of the nine Supreme Court justices or whether the phrase “checks and balances” appears in the Constitution is not an effective way to teach civics. Moreover, many prior civics initiatives were disparaged as “just politics.” What makes our initiative different is that it is driven by research demonstrating the instrumental impact of history and civics instruction on reading results. The idealistic view of the value of American history that you and I share is beautiful and admirable. I want kids to appreciate the boldness of the American experiment and understand where we have fallen short of our ideals. But I believe that presenting history and civics instruction as a solution to a practical problem—our kids’ declining literacy scores—makes our initiative more likely to succeed.

Hess: Your website posits that “civics is best learned through history.” This is in tension with the many existing civics curricula that emphasize current events. Why do you think history is so central?

Levey: Civics becomes meaningful when students understand how institutions and ideas developed over time. Concepts such as representative government or constitutional rights did not suddenly appear. They emerged through debates, conflicts, and compromises that unfolded across centuries. When students learn those stories, civics stops feeling abstract. They can see why certain institutions exist and how citizens have shaped them. Teaching civics through current events without historical context can drift into propagandizing, particularly in the youngest grades. History provides the foundation that allows students to understand our present debates in light of the past. Students who grasp that historical development are far better prepared to participate thoughtfully in democratic life.

Hess: For educators, what’s one piece of advice on how to better identify rich, rigorous history curricula?

Levey: Look closely at what students will read and discuss over the course of a year. Strong curricula present a clear sequence of events and ideas that build from lesson to lesson. Students encounter meaningful narratives and related primary sources that help them understand how the past unfolded. When that structure is present, classrooms feel different. Students begin asking what happened next and how one event led to another. When that structure is missing, history can feel like a random tour through disconnected topics. So, my advice is to focus on whether the curriculum provides a coherent story. Those are the materials that support deep historical learning.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Frederick Hess is director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute and an executive editor of Education Next.

This post originally appeared on Rick Hess Straight Up.