Education Policy, Religious Education, Diversity and Inclusion in Education,AI Tools

Source: Annenberg Exchange Ed Working Papers

Date: May 2025

Separation of Church and State Curricula? Examining Public and Religious Private School Textbooks

"Curricula impart knowledge, instill values, and shape collective memory. Despite growing public funding for religious schools through U.S. school choice programs, little is known about what they teach. We examine textbooks from public schools, religious private schools, and home schools, applying computational methods -- including the use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools -- to measure the presence and portrayal of people, topics, and values over time. Despite narratives of political polarization, our findings reveal few meaningful differences between public school textbooks from Texas and California. However, religious school textbooks have less female representation, feature lighter-skinned individuals, and portray topics like evolution and religion differently. Over one-third of pages in each collection convey character values, with a higher proportion in religious school textbooks. Important similarities also emerge: all textbook collections rarely include LGBTQIA+ discussion, portray females in more positive but less active or powerful contexts than males, and depict the U.S. founding era and slavery in similar contexts."

Teacher Education, Teaching Profession, Classroom Teaching and Learning

Source: Center for Reinventing Pulbic Education at the Mary Lou Fulton College of Arizona State University

Date: June 2025

Team-Based Staffing, Teacher Authority, and Teacher Turnover

"By addressing both the operational and professional needs of educators, the NEW [Next Education Workforce] model offers a compelling alternative to the conventional classroom. Its potential to reduce turnover and reinvigorate the teaching profession makes it a powerful tool for districts nationwide."

Digital Technologies and Artificial Intelligence in Education

Source: Bellwether

Date: 6/25/25

Learning Systems: Shaping the Role of Artificial Intelligence in Education

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) advancements have prompted both excitement and concern about AI's impact on education.

AI offers a wide range of uses in education, from streamlining administrative tasks to providing personalized academic support for students to reimagining school staffing models. At the same time as education leaders explore applications of AI, they must carefully balance potential benefits with the inherent risks of such a new and rapidly changing technology.

Bellwether's three-part Learning Systems series aims to take a holistic approach to help leaders and policymakers make decisions about incorporating AI in schools

Education Policy and Policymaking / Poverty

Source: Bellwether

Date: 6/25/25

Federal Policy on Students Experiencing Homelessness

The student homeless population is particularly vulnerable, demanding targeted support from local, state, and federal governments. Amid ongoing federal uncertainty, it is more important than ever for state and local leaders to step up and ensure that students experiencing homelessness receive the stability, resources, and educational opportunities they deserve. This memo outlines key policy changes that will impact students experiencing homelessness and options state policymakers should prioritize to support them.

School Choice

Source: EdChoice

Date: 6/25/25

123s of School Choice 2025 Edition

School choice has gained tremendous momentum in recent years, with 19 states now offering programs that are universally available to all students. While we're still waiting on enough data to evaluate many of these new programs, the broader body of school choice research stretches back more than three decades. During that time, around 200 empirical studies have evaluated the impacts of private educational choice programs on students, families, and communities.

To aid navigation of this literature, EdChoice has released a new edition of The 123s of School Choice every year since 2019. This publication reviews the available research on voucher programs, education savings accounts, and tax-credit scholarship programs in the United States and organized the research by eight distinct outcomes.

School Choice

Source: Harvard PEPG

Date: 6/23/25

Supply-Side Responses in School Choice

This paper examines the competitive effects of the Indiana Choice Scholarship Program on public and participating private schools. Using a difference-in-differences design, we find that high exposure public schools witnessed increases in quality, driven by improvements in math. Initially poor performing public schools drive our results, suggesting that the public school quality gap shrank because of the program. Average quality at participating private schools fell following the program's adoption. We also present suggestive evidence that high exposure participating private schools saw larger declines in quality. Policymakers should consider these indirect effects to understand vouchers' total impact on educational outcomes.

Teacher Employment and Retention

Source: CRPE

Date: 6/23/25

Team-Based Staffing, Teacher Authority, and Teacher Turnover

As schools across the nation struggle with teacher shortages, a new study from Richard Ingersoll, Lennon Audrain, and Mary Laski points to a promising solution: redesigning the structure of classrooms and the role of teachers.

 

Conducted by ASU's Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College in collaboration with the Center on Reinventing Public Education, the study evaluates the Next Education Workforce™ (NEW) initiative-a model that replaces the traditional one-teacher classroom with teams of educators who share students, collaborate on planning, and have clearly defined roles. These teams also benefit from professional development, the inclusion of student and beginning teachers, and expanded decision-making influence.

Review of Apples to Apples: The Definitive Look at School Test Scores in Milwaukee and Wisconsin for 2024

Source: Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty

Reviewed by: Benjamin Shear, University of Colorado Boulder

A recent report from the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) examines publicly available test score data from Spring 2024 in Wisconsin to investigate the relative effectiveness and cost of school choice programs.

The report claims to provide evidence that private schools participating in the state's voucher programs and charter schools yield better academic results as compared with traditional public schools, but Benjamin Shear of the University of Colorado Boulder identifies several critical limitations in the data and analyses behind those claims. NEPC today published Professor Shear's review of WILL's Apples to Apples: The Definitive Look at School Test Scores in Milwaukee and Wisconsin for 2024.

At Least One-Third of School Districts Have Experienced Funding Cuts Due to Growing Pension Costs

By: Equable

"The analysis, based on a survey of over 1,000 school district leaders and board members nationwide, finds that at least one-third of school districts have cut or deferred spending due to rising pension costs over the past five years. In states where legislatures pay pension costs directly, half of school leaders believe those expenses have led to lower state funding for public education."

New research explores how private equity firms profit from outsourcing in K-12 education

By: Sam Garin, Private Equity Stakeholder Project

"A new report from the Private Equity Stakeholder Project (PESP) analyzes the role of private equity-owned companies in outsourcing public school jobs across the U.S. As federal investment in public education continues to decline and the Trump administration seeks to dismantle the Department of Education, private equity is betting big on investments in the education sector."

Education Department reinstates some research and data activities

By: Jill Barshay, The Hechinger Report

"The U.S. Department of Education has reinstated some critical research and data activities cut by DOGE. "More than half of the reversals will restart 10 regional education laboratories that the Trump administration had said were engaged in 'wasteful and ideologically driven spending,' but had been very popular with state education leaders. The reinstatements also include an international assessment, a study of how to help struggling readers, and Datalab, a web-based data analysis tool for the public.""

Federal judge orders OCR to reinstate laid-off employees - for now

By: Naaz Modan, K12Dive

"A federal judge has ordered the U.S. Education Department to reinstate all laid-off Office for Civil Rights employees for now, saying the layoffs and shuttering of seven regional offices had rendered the remaining staff "incapable of addressing the vast majority of OCR complaints." "

Private School Choice Is the Wrong Choice for Kids With Disabilities, Like Mine

By: Jennifer Coco, The74

"Now, with the rise of private school choice, lawmakers are on the verge of further eroding their commitments to students and families. Instead of fully investing in IDEA and embracing its promises of ensuring all children can access and receive the services they need - something America has never done - Congress is considering passing the so-called "One Big Beautiful Bill" (H.R. 1), which would only further undermine the rights and opportunities of students with disabilities."

Which Party Really Has the Edge on Education?

By: Caitlin Peartree, Education Next

"When it comes to handling education issues, voters have consistently placed more confidence in Democrats than Republicans, according to surveys conducted by The Winston Group since 1999. Our latest survey on education issue handling, administered to 1,000 registered voters earlier this month, shows this trend continues. Democrats have a 14-point advantage on education issues: 50 percent of respondents have more confidence in the party on education, compared to just 36 percent who prefer the Republican Party."

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