The Thomas B. Fordham Institute

Ohio’s Teacher Union Strength Profile

Mon, 06/22/2026 - 10:12

This profile is one of 51 state profiles accompanying Fordham’s report, A Crowded Table: Teacher Union Strength in 2026, which updates Fordham’s 2012 rankings of state teacher union strength. Drawing on the latest publicly available data and a new survey of K–12 stakeholders in all fifty states and the District of Columbia, researchers Melissa Arnold Lyon, Sandy Frost Waldron, and Rebecca Jacobsen find that the education policy landscape has become increasingly crowded and contested over the… Read More

Ohio lawmakers just passed a sweeping math reform bill. Here’s what’s in it.

Mon, 06/22/2026 - 09:56

More than a year after it was first introduced, Senate Bill 19 has finally crossed the finish line. The legislation’s path to the governor’s desk has been a winding one, marked by plenty of additions and subtractions, but the final bill is one that lawmakers should be proud of. Let’s take a closer look at what it should accomplish once it becomes law. 1. Help for struggling students. When students take Ohio’s state exams, their results fall into one of five performance levels: limited,… Read More

West Virginia’s Teacher Union Strength Profile

Mon, 06/22/2026 - 09:46

North Dakota’s Teacher Union Strength Profile

Mon, 06/22/2026 - 09:38

Gadfly Bites 6/22/26—The urban/rural non-divide

Mon, 06/22/2026 - 09:32

News stories featured in Gadfly Bites may require a paid subscription to read in full. You have been warned. The question of whether Cleveland Metropolitan School District (and a couple other rapidly-shrinking urban districts across the state) is flouting Ohio law by not offering their closed and underutilized buildings to charter and private schools goes decently high-profile in this piece. The critics arguing CMSD is not following the spirit (and probably the letter) of the law include a… Read More

South Carolina’s Teacher Union Strength Profile

Mon, 06/22/2026 - 09:31

Connecticut’s Teacher Union Strength Profile

Mon, 06/22/2026 - 09:12

Creating more pathways isn’t enough. They need to work, too.

Thu, 06/18/2026 - 11:43

For several decades, K–12 ed-reformers and policy leaders have pushed to expand public school options and pathways. This has led to the creation of such alternatives as magnet and charter schools, microschools and learning pods, as well as dual enrollment, course choice, beefed-up Advanced Placement, and the importing into high schools of industry credentials and youth apprenticeships. A new analysis from the University of California, Berkeley Center for Studies in Higher Education underscores… Read More

Why is Gen Z unprepared for the workforce?

Thu, 06/18/2026 - 11:38

Editor’s note: This is the final post in a three-part series written by Elainah Elkins and Jill Hoppe, born in 1999 and 2000, respectively. There is growing discourse surrounding Gen Z, but the voices of Gen Zers themselves are often missing from the conversation. This is their response. Read part 1 here and part 2 here. Perhaps no discussion about Gen Z stereotypes is more pervasive than the debate over how this generation performs in the workforce. Headlines and workplace anecdotes… Read More

The Education Freedom Tax Credit could blow up in our faces

Thu, 06/18/2026 - 00:06

They say don’t bury the lede, so here goes: The Education Freedom Tax Credit (EFTC) could be an utter disaster. The EFTC is a new federal program that passed through the reconciliation bill last year. It allows donors to provide a $1,700 donation to a scholarship-granting organization (SGO) and receive that money back through a tax credit. Those SGOs can then provide scholarships to students to pay for various educational goods and services: after-school tutoring, tuition at private schools,… Read More

The case for including early childhood education in education choice programs

Thu, 06/18/2026 - 00:05

Lately there has been a lot of discussion about whether states should opt in to the federal “Education Freedom Tax Credit”—a dollar-for-dollar federal tax credit for individual contributions to nonprofit scholarship granting organizations that distribute funds to eligible K–12 students. This conversation comes at a time when many states are expanding support for their own educational choice investments, including through the use of education savings accounts (ESAs)—which last year received $10.… Read More

Instructionally-aligned tutoring and student literacy outcomes

Thu, 06/18/2026 - 00:04

While we are now several years removed from the pandemic, work continues to remediate its inadequate substitutes for in-person teaching and learning. Tutoring emerged as a favored response from schools. But the type, amount, and quality matter if academic outcomes are going to rebound. A recent study focuses on a specific aspect of tutoring quality to determine its value to students: the instructional and curricular alignment between tutoring and the classroom. Researchers Cara Jackson and… Read More

The “science of learning” is less controversial than it used to be

Thu, 06/18/2026 - 00:03

More than a decade ago, I reviewed the The Science of Learning, a slim report published by the then-new advocacy group Deans for Impact. At the time, it felt like an intervention, nearly an epiphany. Teacher preparation had long been dominated by progressive education theory and pedagogy, and many of the report’s core claims—that memorization matters, prior knowledge shapes learning, practice improves retention, and “skills” like critical thinking depend on what you know—were far from… Read More

Gadfly Bites 6/17/26—Nothing can bring back the hour of splendour in the grass

Wed, 06/17/2026 - 09:47

News stories featured in Gadfly Bites may require a paid subscription to read in full. You have been warned. A couple of interesting points in this piece, covering discussion items from the most recent meeting of Columbus City Schools’ elected board. First: It seems that the General Assembly has finally hit upon an “underused school facilities” bill that districts can’t see a way to circumvent. “If Senate Bill 311 goes through unchanged,” Chief of Strategy and Performance Russell Brown told… Read More

Gadfly Bites 6/15/26—From squishy emotion to cold hard contractual obligation

Mon, 06/15/2026 - 09:22

News stories featured in Gadfly Bites may require a paid subscription to read in full. You have been warned. Last week we discussed for the first time the potential for building closures in Akron City Schools, which, like most other urban districts, has been losing students steadily for decades. We noted two particular aspects of the debate then: The potential “emotional toll” of seeing any school close and the fact that fact that the district had continued such a robust building program… Read More

Alaska's Teacher Union Strength Profile

Fri, 06/12/2026 - 17:08

Kansas's Teacher Union Strength Profile

Fri, 06/12/2026 - 17:02

Arizona's Teacher Union Strength Profile

Fri, 06/12/2026 - 16:49

Florida's Teacher Union Strength Profile

Fri, 06/12/2026 - 16:42

Colorado's Teacher Union Strength Profile

Fri, 06/12/2026 - 16:37