School Leadership and Management

Source: Fordham Institute

Date: 10/8/25

Who's on Board? School Boards and Political Representation in an Age of Conflict

School boards have become ground zero for America's education culture wars, with fiery debates over race, gender, curriculum, and pandemic policies making national headlines. But beyond the noise, how well do these elected bodies actually represent their communities?

 

To find out, political scientists David Houston and Michael Hartney conducted the largest national survey of school board members in decades, gathering responses from more than 5,000 board members across 3,000 districts. They compared members' political and demographic identities, as well as their views on controversial education issues, to those of the communities they serve.

 

The findings complicate common narratives. While board members' partisanship and ideology largely mirror the American public's-and often align with local voters on hot-button cultural issues-they diverge more on questions of school quality, school choice, and teachers' unions. The report sheds light on the surprising ways representation works, and doesn't work, in one of the country's most important democratic institutions.

School Finance and Funding

Source: Common Sense Institute

Date: 10/9/25

Dollars and Data 2025

Each year, the Colorado Department of Education releases new sets of data on the finances, administration, and performance of Colorado's PreK–12 public education system. This report analyzes those data and shows key trends in how education funding, spending, and outcomes have changed over time.

School Finance and Funding

Source: Bellwether

Date: 10/6/25

Excess Revenue, Unequal Opportunity: Revisiting Basic Aid in the LCFF Era

California's school funding formula for K-12 schools is designed to direct more resources to students with greater need. However, some districts - known as basic aid districts (also called "community-funded" or "excess-tax" districts) - generate more funding from local property taxes than the state calculates they need under the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF). Basic aid districts keep their property tax revenues, often ending up with thousands of dollars more per student than other districts.

...

California's school finance system has been designed with equity in mind, but the resource disparities created by excess advantage districts risk undermining that principle. Policymakers face important choices about whether and how to address the disparities resulting from excess resources so that all students benefit, regardless of where they live. The policy options outlined in this report provide potential pathways to move the system closer to funding fairness.

Student Achievement

Source:AEI

Date: 10/6/25

Absences and Achievement After the Pandemic: Evidence from Maryland and North Carolina

In this report, we use comparable pre- and post- pandemic statewide administrative data from Maryland and North Carolina to estimate the effects of absences on student achievement in each period. Doing so provides the first step in coming to grips with the scale and implications of the post-pandemic chronic absenteeism crisis and the potential for new technologies to mitigate the effects of absences on student achievement throughout the achievement distribution.

Student Attendance

Source: AEI

Date: 10/9/25

Everyone Is Missing More School: How Student Attendance Patterns Have Shifted over Time

This report takes a deeper look at student attendance patterns after COVID-19 and compares these trends with those observed before and during the pandemic. Using statewide longitudinal student-level data from North Carolina, Rhode Island, Texas, and Virginia, I examine not only how attendance and chronic absenteeism rates have changed but also how the distribution of absences has shifted within and across schools. In doing so, I aim to answer a pressing question for school leaders and policymakers: Are the students who are missing school today the same ones who missed before, or has absenteeism become a broader, more systemic issue?

Teacher and Student Absences

Source: AEI

Date: 10/7/25

Teacher and Student Absences Before and After the Pandemic

This report documents the associations between teacher and student absenteeism across grade levels and before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic to understand whether teacher absences represent a lever for change and account for the increase in student absences over time.

Review of Directional Signals: A New Analysis of the Evolving Private School Choice Landscape

Source: FutureEd

Reviewed by: Christopher Lubienski, Indiana University

In recent years, at least a dozen states have created private school choice (aka voucher) programs that are universal-placing few or no restrictions on wealth or other factors that might limit which families can participate. A FutureEd report examines the expansion of such programs, and provides a generally useful, up-to-date compilation of basic facts and trends around universal voucher programs in 10 states.

Indiana University professor and Director of the Center for Evaluation and Education Policy Christopher Lubienski reviewed Directional Signals: A New Analysis of the Evolving Private School Choice Landscape. While noting the report's disregard for relevant existing research, Professor Lubienski nonetheless found it useful for its clear, up-to-date descriptive data.

New Analysis Cautions Governors About Federal Voucher Program

By: Kevin Welner, NEPC

"The 2025 Reconciliation Act, or "One Big Beautiful Bill," creates a federal school choice program offering tax credits for donations to Scholarship Granting Organizations that fund private-school tuition. Though promoted as flexible for states, forthcoming Treasury Department regulations are expected to limit state control and expand largely unregulated voucher programs. This policy memo warns that such programs have historically led to academic declines, inequities, and weakened public schools. It urges governors to either reject participation or condition their involvement on guarantees of state-level control, transparency, and non-discrimination protections."

These Activists Want to Dismantle Public Schools. Now They Run the Education Department.

By: Megan O'Matz and Jennifer Smith Richards, ProPublica

"But the department is not behaving like an agency that is simply winding down. Even as McMahon has shrunk the Department of Education, she's operated in what she calls "a parallel universe" to radically shift how children will learn for years to come. The department's actions and policies reflect a disdain for public schools and a desire to dismantle that system in favor of a range of other options - private, Christian and virtual schools or homeschooling."

What school leaders should expect in the 2025-26 Supreme Court term

By: Naaz Modan, K-12Dive

"With a Title IX case on its docket for this term, Supreme Court justices once again have an opportunity to make a dent on student civil rights issues - and on one that has taken center stage under President Donald Trump's U.S. Department of Education"

New Gallup Poll: 1 in 4 Teachers Don't Have Necessary Resources, Support Staff

By: Amanda Geduld, The 74 Million

"More than 1 in 4 U.S. public school teachers are missing the basic materials or staffing support needed to effectively do their jobs, significantly impacting workplace satisfaction, according to a new Gallup-Walton Family Foundation report."

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