Community Schools

Source: Learning Policy Institute

Date:February 2025

New Mexico Community Schools: Improving Student Opportunities and Outcomes

"This brief highlights lessons learned from New Mexico's investment in community schools. Drawing on profiles of three sites that received state implementation grants, we find that community schools implementing the key practices at the center of New Mexico's community schools framework are seeing improvement across a range of indicators, including growth in test scores, increased graduation rates, reduced chronic absence, increased student engagement and connectedness, improved school climate, greater access to mental and physical health care, and stronger family engagement. Key to achieving these outcomes were state investments to support hiring school coordinators and to provide professional development and technical assistance. These findings suggest ways that New Mexico can sustain this new model and improve implementation in the future."

Politics, Policy, and School Practices

Source: Center of the American Experiment

Date: 2/20/2025

MDE's Ethnic Studies: Framework for Implementation

The Walz administration and the Minnesota Legislature have entrenched an extremist ideology known as "Liberated Ethnic Studies" in our state's K-12 public school system. Ethnic Studies will teach students to view the world through the lens of race, power and "resistance," in every grade and subject ... Now Ethnic Studies is about to become a reality in K-12 classrooms. In September 2024, MDE's "Ethnic Studies Working Group" of hand-picked advisors completed its Framework for statewide implementation, which recommends course guidelines, teacher training and instructional resources...The Framework's content explains MDE's reluctance: The document lays out a multi-faceted ground plan to transform our schools' mission from providing students with academic knowledge and skills to creating political activists.

Review of Fiscal Effects of School Choice: The Costs and Savings of Private School Choice Programs in America Through FY 2022

Source: EdChoice

Reviewed by: Mark Weber, Rutgers University

The expansion of voucher programs, which provide taxpayer-financed subsidies for families enrolling students in private schools, has prompted a debate about their fiscal impact. A recent EdChoice report argues that these programs do not negatively affect public school finances and actually save taxpayers substantial sums of money. Today's review explains how this argument rings hollow.

In his review of Fiscal Effects of School Choice: The Costs and Savings of Private School Choice Programs in America Through FY 2022, Mark Weber of Rutgers University and the New Jersey Policy Perspective walks readers though the report's simplistic and unvalidated methods, showing how they lead to the invalid conclusion that the programs result in taxpayer savings.

Tracking Trump: His actions on education

By: The Hechinger Report

The Hechinger Report has started what is to be a regularly updated, comprehensive tracker of Trump's actions on education. "We've compiled these actions below and will update this list as Trump's second term unfolds. Let us know how the effects of these executive actions are unfolding in your communities, child care centers, schools and colleges. Email us: editor@hechingerreport.org."

How a tribe won a legal battle against the federal Bureau of Indian Education - and still lost

By: Neal Morton, The Hechinger Report

A much-touted federal reform effort, and a tribal lawsuit, sought to improve outcomes for BIE students. Now the Trump administration's efforts to slash government threaten what little progress the agency has made

Trump Order Boosts School Choice, But There's Little Evidence Vouchers Lead to Smarter Students, Better Educational Outcomes

By: Charles J. Russo & Suzanne Eckes, The74

"We are professors who focus on education law, with special interests in educational equity and school choice programs. While proponents of school choice claim it leads to academic gains, we don't see much evidence to support this view – but we do see the negative impact they sometimes have on public schools."

How Education Funding Matters: Lessons From NAEP, the Pandemic, and Recovery Efforts

By: Linda Darling-Hammond, Jonathan Kaplan, Michael A. DiNapoli Jr., Learning Policy Institute

This post was originally published on February 25, 2025 by Forbes, and is part of the blog series, Money Matters, which explores research on the role of school funding in advancing equitable opportunities and outcomes for all students and elevating evidence-based policy and practice solutions.

Concerns mount over potential loss of Medicaid funds for schools

By: Kara Arundel, K-12Dive

Efforts in the federal government to reduce spending would put school-based health services in jeopardy, advocates say.

U.S. Department of Education launched EndDEI.Ed.Gov

By: U.S. Department of Education

This is very disturbing, but it's important that our leaders know what is being done by the current adminstration that will impact our stakeholders. "The U.S. Department of Education launched EndDEI.Ed.Gov, a public portal for parents, students, teachers, and the broader community to submit reports of discrimination based on race or sex in publicly-funded K-12 schools."

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