Think Twice Weekly Report
MARCH 8 - MARCH 14, 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
School Funding
Source: In The Public Interest
Date: March 2025
Efficiency: Effective or Extractive?
A new brief from In the Public Interest breaks down the difference between "extractive" and "effective" efficiency strategies. It brings timely and much-needed perspective on what truly creates government efficiency.
Assessment
Source: AEI
Date: 3/10/2025
Many Children Left Behind: The 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress Results Indicate a Five-Alarm Fire
Key Points The 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores underline a continuing decline in educational achievement in the United States.
The Institute of Education Sciences' tendency to favor scattered, "one-off" research projects over a unified, coordinated approach has hindered its ability to explain this decline.
Rather than dismiss 2024 NAEP scores as an aberration, state leaders must understand the scope of this crisis and improve their schools' teaching and learning practices.
School Finance and Funding
Source: Bellwether
Date: 3/11/2025
Splitting the Bill: A Bellwether Series on Education Finance Equity
Education finance sets the foundation for what is possible in every school in the country. Education finance equity is critical to leveling the playing field for underserved students in under-resourced schools. But in too many states, the education funding system remains inequitable, inadequate, and opaque to all but a few. Even state school finance systems designed to reflect strong principles around equity can be rife with technical pitfalls or loopholes that jeopardize the realization of those principles for students and schools.
How can states make school funding formulas work more effectively to provide the necessary resources for all students?
Splitting the Bill: A Bellwether Series on Education Finance Equity gives advocates, state policymakers, and other stakeholders a crash course in the fundamentals of education finance and in key questions to ask in their states and communities. First published in 2021, we are adding new briefs to the series on an ongoing basis.
Student Achievement
Source: CRPE
Date: 3/13/2025
Unfinished Business: What Must Come Next for Public Education, Five Years After Pandemic Shutdowns
The Current Crisis - Five years after the pandemic disrupted education, public schools are still struggling to recover. Achievement gaps have widened, student performance is in decline, and many schools have reverted to an outdated, ineffective system that fails to meet today's challenges.
Teacher Employment and Retention
Source: NCTQ
Date: 3/14/2025
From Patchwork to Precision: Strengthening Teacher Data Systems
Despite enacting well-intentioned policies to improve teacher recruitment and retention, many states continue to face significant staffing challenges, particularly in high-need schools and hard-to-staff subjects such as math, science, and special education. Better state teacher workforce data systems can help address these persistent challenges.
This brief outlines key findings regarding state teacher data systems and provides recommendations for enhancing them. These improvements should help states allocate resources more effectively and make better policy decisions, ultimately equipping states to better meet the goal of an effective teacher in every classroom.
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 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.
What We're Reading
Research and articles that we want to highlight for subscribers as potential resources:
Freedom Foundation Launches Anti-Union Network for Teachers
By: Juliana Broad and David Armiak, Center for Media and Democracy
"The Freedom Foundation, a notorious anti-union advocacy group, has launched a new organization, the Teacher Freedom Alliance, which the foundation's CEO describes as "an alternative for pro-America educators who seek to restore traditional values in the classroom and provide students with the high-quality education they deserve - free from political influence and union control."
The Strange Bedfellows Fighting School Vouchers
By: Jennifer Berkshire, In These Times
"The movement opposing vouchers has now changed. Today, resistance to school voucher programs is also coming from a patchwork coalition of conservative groups and activists - including many who have long disparaged public schools as "government schools" - that has emerged to block what they now characterize as "government school choice."
Resources for standing up to federal attacks in the states
By: EARN aggregating Education Policy Institute
Education Policy Institute has released a lot of products over the last few weeks aimed at helping folks understand, describe, and respond to the actions being taken at the federal level. EARN is aggregating all these resources in this google doc, which will continue to update regularly.
How a Republican plan to cut universal free school meals could affect 12 million students
By: Kalyn Belsha, Chalkbeat
"Republican lawmakers are considering a trio of proposals to help offset tax cuts sought by President Donald Trump that would be "devastating" to children and schools, said Erin Hysom, the senior child nutrition policy analyst for the nonprofit Food Research & Action Center."
Misinformation is flooding school communities. Here are 3 strategies to combat it.
By: Roger Riddell, K-12Dive
"Consistency, simplicity and thorough planning are essential to help stakeholders cut through the noise, panelists at AASA's annual conference said."
About the Think Twice think tank review project
The goal of the Think Twice project is to provide the public, policymakers and the press with timely academically sound reviews of selected think tank publications. The Think Twice project is funded by the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice. The reviews that are part of this project are expert third-party reviews produced by the National Education Policy Center.
About the Great Lakes Center for Education Research & Practice
The Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice is an independent nonprofit organization supported by education stakeholders across the country. The mission of the Great Lakes Center is to support and disseminate high quality research and review of research for the purpose of informing education policy and to develop research-based resources for us by those who advocate for education reform.
