Charter Schools / School Leadership and Management

Source: Bellwether

Date: 9/19/25

Charter School Board Playbook

Serving on the board of a public charter school is a unique and special opportunity to make a meaningful difference in a community. It’s also a huge responsibility. Students depend on board members to make sure their school is high quality. And collectively, the success of public charter schools depends on every single school having a great board.

 

To be a great board member requires diligence, consistency, decisiveness in the face of complexity - and a lot of time, which is sometimes the hardest part for busy volunteers. The best board members we know bring sound judgment, sensitivity, and courage in service of the students they serve.

 

But no one instinctively knows how to be a great board member. No one majored in charter school governance, it’s no one’s hobby, and frankly, there are no perfect boards to just copy. This kind of governance in public education hasn’t been around that long. There’s barely any research about it. And it’s hard. In our experience, all board members need (and most want) relevant training, useful and straightforward resources, and real-time support to help them figure out what to do.

 

This playbook is designed to get that information to charter school board members and school leaders.

Education and the Workplace

Source: Pioneer Institute

Date: 9/15/25

Expanding Access to Career Vocational Technical Education

Massachusetts’ budget for fiscal 2026 that includes $100 million in grants to create an additional 3,000 career/vocational education (CVTE) seats in the Commonwealth is a good start, but more should be done to eliminate the 8,100-seat shortage of CVTE seats, according to a new study published by Pioneer Institute.

K-12 Education

Source: EdChoice

Date: 9/17/25

2025 Schooling in America

This brief conducts a fiscal analysis of the West Virginia Hope Scholarship Program for FY 2024, the program’s second year in operation. The analysis estimates the net fiscal effects of the program on state and local taxpayers statewide and for each school district. It also provides fiscal context and basic data to help inform the potential financial impact on school districts.

Math Education

Source: CRPE

Date: 9/16/25

The State of the American Student - 2025

Drawing on national assessment data, student voices, practitioner interviews, and a review of recent reforms, we identify both the system-level breakdowns and the bright spots that show what’s possible when it comes to improving math education in the United States.

Tuition Tax Credit

Source: AEI

Date: 9/16/25

One Big Beautiful Step Toward Education Freedom: How the Federal Scholarship Tax Credit Became Law

On July 4, 2025, President Donald Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) into law and, with it, a transformative federal tax credit that could lead to billions of dollars in additional contributions for K-12 scholarships.1 After years of sustained advocacy, the OBBBA marks the largest and most consequential federal victory ever for educational freedom and school choice.

 

But this achievement only marks the beginning of federal school choice policymaking. To secure and subsequently further these wins, it’s imperative that we account for how we got here, what the tax credit entails, and what fights lie just over the horizon. We address all three

Review of Fiscal Factbook: 2025 Edition

Source: Fiscal Research and Education Center (FERC) of EdChoice

Reviewed by: Mark Weber, Rutgers University

As enrollment in school privatization programs grows, right-wing ideological think tanks such as EdChoice have continued to argue that school vouchers and education savings accounts (ESAs) strengthen public school finances. Its Fiscal Factbook purports to find that voucher programs do not harm public school finances. The data presented in the report, however, fail to support its assertion.

In his review of Fiscal Factbook: 2025 Edition, authored by the Fiscal Research and Education Center of EdChoice, Rutgers University lecturer Mark Weber highlights several ways the report falls short of providing credible support for its conclusions.

"American Prosperity at Risk: The Fiscal Impact of Immigration"

By: Pia M. Orrenius, Alan D. Viard, Madeline Zavodny, AEI

From the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think-tank: "Immigrants have an overall positive fiscal impact on the US-an effect driven by high-skilled immigrants. Low-skilled immigrants, like their US-born counterparts, impose a net fiscal cost. However, ecent studies show that the indirect fiscal effects of low-skilled immigration are positive, partly offsetting the negative direct fiscal impact. Moreover, immigrants will help bear the cost of future policy changes required to address the growing national debt. Smaller immigration inflows might reduce fiscal pressure on state and local governments but would increase fiscal pressure on the federal government and slow economic growth."

STUDENT VOICE: What National Endowment for the Humanities cuts mean for high schoolers like me

By: Marium Zahra, The Hechinger Report

"Among the organizations that lost funding was National History Day, a nonprofit that runs a half-century-old competition engaging some 500,000 students annually in original historical research. It also provides teachers with resources and training. For many schools, the annual event is cemented into the social studies curriculum"

A window into America’s high schools slams shut; Trump cancels long-running survey of high schoolers

By: Carmela Guaglianone, APM Reports

"It seems to me that even if you were the most hardcore libertarian who wants the government to regulate almost nothing, collecting national statistics is about the most innocuous and useful thing that a government could do," said Stuart Buck, executive director of the Good Science Project, a group advocating less bureaucracy in science funding. "The idea of a Department of Governmental Efficiency is an excellent idea, and I hope we try it out sometime," he said. But the effort, "as it currently exists, I would argue, is often directly opposed to efficiency. Like, they’re doing the exact opposite."

NEPC Talks Education: Making (Some) Sense of the Moment in K-12 Federal Education Policy

By: Christopher Saldaña, NEPC

"In this month's episode of NEPC Talks Education, Christopher Saldaña explores the dramatic shifts in K-12 federal education policy with Robert Kim, executive director of the Education Law Center, and Kevin Welner, NEPC director and professor emeritus at the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education."

What does the MAHA strategy mean for school meals?

By: Anna Merod, K12Dive

"Schools are already making additional changes to the menu. If we’re expecting them to make more, we really need the funding to support those changes, to invest in more staffing and equipment and ingredients," …

GreatLakesCenter.org