Think Twice Weekly Report

JANUARY 4 - JANUARY 10, 2025

The Think Twice Weekly Report compiles public education-related policy reports, research and articles of interest to policymakers, educators and stakeholders. This list is not exhaustive but is meant to highlight recent reports that may be used to support or undermine the work of our subscribers in supporting public schools. We encourage you to take a moment to scan these reports and determine if they may be used by policy makers to assist or erode your mission.



Policy Reports


Early Childhood Education

Source: Center for Americn Progress
Date: 1/6/2025
States Seek To Improve Early Childhood Outcomes Through Consolidated Governance Structures

Child care, preschool, early intervention, home visiting, and other early childhood programs are some of the most important initiatives focused on aiding young children's development in order to set them on a trajectory for better outcomes in school and life.1 But because the early childhood system in the United States is largely fragmented, so, too, are the administrative systems that oversee it. While federal oversight exists for many early childhood programs, state governance structures vary widely in how they administer those programs, with services often siloed and scattered across a number of state agencies.

...

The authors of this report conducted a scan of all 50 states and the District of Columbia to identify the overseeing agency for a selected set of eight early childhood services that best represent a holistic model of early childhood programming.

Education Policy and Policymaking

Source: Bellwether
Date:1/8/2025
From Policy to Impact: A State Education Agency's Guide to Implementation

State governments enact hundreds of well-intentioned policies every year with the potential to improve outcomes for students.

But enacting policy is only half the battle: implementation matters just as much, if not more, in determining whether policies deliver on their goals. State education agencies (SEAs) are on the front lines of policy implementation, which demands careful planning, coordination, and execution across multiple levels of the education system. From Policy to Impact offers a framework and three case studies to help SEA leaders and staff strategically approach the many facets of implementation. This series highlights the way that SEA leaders can strengthen six distinct phases of implementation by focusing on four continuous activities throughout the implementation cycle.

School Choice

Source: Brookings
Date:1/8/2025
How The Buckeye Institute Expanded School Choice to Every Child in Every Family in Every Community in Ohio

Since 1989, The Buckeye Institute has focused on empowering parents, expanding school choice, and reforming the state's education bureaucracy to hold schools accountable for student achievement. To achieve these goals, The Buckeye Institute worked with lawmakers to launch the first school choice program in the nation-the Cleveland Scholarship Program-and then built upon that inaugural program's success to expand school choice to all Ohio families. The result of Buckeye's tireless work on this issue is that every child in every family in every community in Ohio now has access to the education setting that best meets their needs. To further the gains won, Buckeye continues to conduct cutting-edge policy research on school choice and education reform and advocates effectively for policies that ensure Ohio's students can meet the challenges of college and career.

Student Engagement

Source: Brookings
Date:1/6/2025
The disengagement gap: Why student engagement isn't what parents expect

The goal of this report is to elevate student engagement as an important indicator to not only combat chronic absenteeism but to help young people thrive in school. By sharing insights on both students' and parents' perspectives on their learning experiences, we aim to help focus the education conversation on how parents and educators can better understand student engagement, more accurately assess students' engagement in school, and ultimately help improve it.

One of the best ways to understand students' experiences and engagement is to ask them. In this report, we share what we have learned from children in the U.S. about their engagement and experiences of school through a survey of over 65,000 third through twelfth grade students. We also share what parents' perspectives are on their own children's schooling experiences from a survey of almost 2,000 parents who have children between third and twelfth grade. Both surveys are nationally representative by age, gender, SES, and race/ethnicity.

Reports Reviewed


GLC seeks to ensure that policy briefs impacting education reform are based on sound, credible academic research. Below are reviews conducted with GLC support.



Review of School Segregation on School Report Cards: Who Are We Grading Anyway?

Source: Urban Institute
Reviewed by: James Noonan, Salem State University

A recent Urban Institute report examines proposed legislation in North Carolina that would add a "proportionality score" to the state accountability system, measuring how closely a school's racial demographics match those of the surrounding county. James Noonan of Salem State University reviewed School Segregation on School Report Cards: Who Are We Grading Anyway? and found it to be logical but somewhat under-explained.

Using publicly available data, the report examines how scores would vary depending on the population to which schools are compared. This "what if" exercise highlights the control policymakers have over what is measured and how, showing how small changes to formulas can shift the story data tell about schools. While the report does not recommend the best formulas, it raises important questions for policymakers to consider when evaluating trade-offs.



What We're Reading


Research and articles that we want to highlight for subscribers as potential resources:



Principal, administrator unions rising steadily since COVID

By: Anna Merod, K-12Dive

As more school leaders are joining unions for the first time, some in large school systems like LAUSD are looking to strengthen bargaining power.


Arizona Regulators Closed a Failing Charter School. It Reopened as a Private Religious School Funded by Taxpayers.

By: Eli Hager, ProPulica

Arizona does no vetting of new voucher schools. Not even if the school or the online school "provider" has already failed, or was founded yesterday, or is operating out of a strip mall or a living room or a garage, or offers just a half hour of instruction per morning. (If you're an individual tutor in Arizona, all you need in order to register to start accepting voucher cash is a high school diploma.)


How vouchers harm public schools

By: Hilary Wething, Economic Policy Institue

EPI economist Hilary Wething provides an analysis of the extra costs that school districts face when a voucher program causes students to leave the public school system. Importantly, the report includes a downloadable excel file that allows users to tailor projections across a range of scenarios for every school district in the country.


New Arizona charter school will use AI in place of human teachers

By: Nate Engle, 91.5 KJZZ Phoenix

Unbound Academy, which also operates in Texas and Florida under the name Alpha Schools, claims that kids can learn twice as much using a two-hour learning plan that gets customized by an AI program instead of a traditional human teacher in front of a classroom.


K-12 School Shooting Database

By: K-12 School Schooting Database

The K-12 SSDB includes detailed information about every school shooting, a reliability score that quantifies the dependability of the information, and the verified primary source citation(s) (e.g., newspaper article, court records, interviews, police reports) to allow for further academic research. The scope is widely inclusive to allow for a comprehensive analysis of school shooting data. Through the inclusion, rather than exclusion, of criteria that are cross-referenced, unfiltered, and agnostic, users can conduct more detailed analyses of gun violence in schools within their areas of interest from which to make better informed decisions about school safety.