Enrollment

Source: Bellwether

Date: 7/23/26

How Student Enrollment Declines Are Affecting Education Budgets, Explained in 10 Figures

"This analysis illustrates current and projected trends in public school enrollment in 10 figures. It also offers recommendations for district and state leaders confronting enrollment-related budgetary pressures, including suggestions and strategies for engaging communities in difficult budget decisions, aligning staffing and funding policies with enrollment trends, and ensuring all students have access to high-quality learning opportunities. "

Legal Issues

Source: EdChoice

Date: 7/23/26

Legal Landscape - 2026 Edition

"Legal Landscape discusses major court decisions affecting school choice and explains why state appellate and supreme courts and the U.S. Supreme Court continue to uphold school choice as constitutional. Legal Landscape also wades into current and emerging legal issues. This year’s edition is newly revamped with more details about the cases and an analysis of each state’s current legal landscape. "

School Finance and Funding / School Choice

Source: EdChoice

Date: 7/23/26

Fiscal Factbook - 2026 Edition

"Fiscal Factbook provides clear, data-driven insights into K-12 education funding and educational choice programs. Key facts, figures, and findings dispel common myths, highlight important trends, and support informed decision-making, using historical context and current data. Fiscal Factbook is meant to foster a deeper understanding of how public school funding operates, how educational choice programs affect state and district finances, and how funding reforms can better serve students and families. This year’s edition contains new sections on Arizona’s ESA expansion and the long-term fiscal effects of school choice programs. "

School Leadership and Management

Source: CRPE

Date: 7/21/26

The Transformation Gap: Why Motivated District Leaders Pursue Incremental Change

"School districts are struggling to create both equitable and fundamentally different outcomes for young people through incremental improvements. The alternative is transformational systems change, when school districts redefine their purpose and operations through a coherent strategy to ensure every school is a high-quality, empowering place for all students to thrive-but this remains rare.

 

With support from the Barr Foundation, CRPE studied where and how school districts in New England are pursuing this kind of change. Drawing on a region-wide survey of 307 superintendents across all six New England states and 47 in-depth interviews, this report examines what district-level change efforts are underway, and what shapes leaders’ decisions about which changes to pursue."

School Choice

Source: EdChoice

Date: 7/23/26

Friedman Index - 2026 Edition

"The Friedman Index measures how much educational choice families really have in each state, and scores each state from 0 to 100. To achieve a score of 100, a given state must meet each of the following three criteria: “All Students,” meaning 100% of the students in the state are eligible and funding is available for all, “All Options,” meaning students are able to participate in an education savings-style program (ESA) and families have the opportunity to use the taxpayer funds in their child’s account for tuition as well as educational goods and services outside of schools, and “All Dollars,” meaning choice students receive the same amount of funding as public school students (sans federal funding), on average. "

Review of Inside the Mississippi Marathon

Source: Progressive Policy Institute

Reviewed by: Gregory Camilli, Professor Emeritus at Rutgers University

The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) recently published a report offering an insider account of how Mississippi's K-3 education system has evolved over roughly two decades.

In his review of Inside the Mississippi Marathon, Gregory Camilli, professor emeritus at Rutgers University, focuses on just a slice of the report: its description of the state's performance in fourth-grade reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The state's improvement on that exam has been called the "Mississippi Miracle." The PPI report rejects that characterization, opting instead to use a "marathon" metaphor.

Google Search: AI Overview & AI Mode

By: Common Sense Media

Common Sense Media rates the Google Search engine as an unacceptable risk, "because they create unacceptable risks for kids and teens. They performed poorly on seven of our eight established AI Principles, and specifically failed all of our tested severe-harm Red Lines."

School Starter Checklist Rankings

By: EdChoice

This is an EdChoice compendium of regulations on private schools in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. You can download the report and see page 7 for a quick table.

State Regulation of Private and Home Schools

By: U.S. Department of Education

This is an up to date resource from the US Department of Education where you can click on a state to see information about accreditation, registration, licensing, and other state legal requirements that apply to K-12 private and home schools in that state.

The case for tripling union membership

By: Heidi Shierholz, Celine McNicholas, Josh Bivens, Jennifer Sherer, Ben Zipperer, and Margaret Poydock, Economic Policy Institute

"Union membership in the U.S. ticked up in 2025, breaking a decades-long trend of declining unionization. But today’s unionization rate doesn’t reflect the tens of millions of workers who want a union but can’t get one. This report examines what we stand to gain if we triple current union membership to 30%-restoring it to 1950s levels, when union strength delivered rising wages, narrowing racial wage gaps, and a thriving middle class."

Schools try to block kids from accessing dangerous content and games online. Little kids are outsmarting them

By: Jackie Mader, Heckinger Report

"... parents and teachers say even the youngest students are finding ways past any blocks adults try to put on school devices to play games, watch videos and message friends on school-issued devices."

GreatLakesCenter.org