Education Policy and Policymaking

Source: Brookings

Date: 11/21/25

Prioritizing student voice in education system decision making and transformation

The Center for Universal Education (CUE) at the Brookings Institution has been collaborating with students, families, and educators around the world to understand how to build student consultation and intergenerational partnerships into decision making, and how to ensure education systems better serve students' learning, development, and well-being. As part of ongoing work on youth agency in and through education, this policy brief makes a case for why student engagement is critical to policy and decision making in education systems and institutions. Three key findings were developed through the analysis of the policies on student voice in policy development and school governance in 10 countries, as well as mixed-methods research directly with students, their parents/ caregivers, and their educators. The audience for this policy brief is policymakers and education leaders across different levels-national, subnational, and school-who oversee student engagement in decision making. Another critical audience is civil society organizations that work in collaboration with schools and student and parent/caregiver councils. This policy brief complements a series of other briefs where the role of family, school, and community engagement in national education systems is analyzed across country contexts.

School Finance and Funding

Source: Reason Foundation

Date: 11/20/25

K-12 Education Spending Spotlight 2025: Annual public school spending nears $1 trillion

This decade could go down as one of the most consequential in the history of U.S. public education. Between COVID-19 school closures, historic declines in public school enrollment, and the rise in school choice policies, the decisions made by state lawmakers in the coming years will help shape generations to come.

 

Policymakers must have the best data possible to inform their public education decisions. The following analysis from Reason Foundation's K-12 Education Spending Spotlight brings together the latest figures from the U.S. Census Bureau and National Center for Education Statistics and highlights five key insights from our tool and their implications for state policymakers and other stakeholders.

 

These critical insights include examining and ranking every state's total K-12 and per student public school funding, the public school enrollment levels in every state and how states continue to hire more non-teaching staff even as they lose students, how and why teachers' salaries are failing to keep up with inflation in nearly every state, how much public school funding is increasingly being shifted to cover pension debt, and the disappointing student scores on key standardized tests since the pandemic.

School Finance and Funding

Source: Bellwether

Date: 11/21/25

Under Pressure: The Factors Squeezing K-12 Budgets - and How States and Advocates Can Respond

After a decade of rising K-12 revenues, the education funding outlook is shifting across the country. In recent years, increased state and federal investments - much of it through temporary COVID-19 pandemic relief aid that has now expired - enabled states to launch new programs and expand student supports. That period of growth is giving way to tighter budgets and fiscal trade-offs, even as many schools still face a long climb in the academic recovery from the pandemic and in addressing long-standing opportunity gaps for students.

 

This report examines the major factors exerting pressure on K-12 education funding, including federal retrenchment, state budget constraints, and district and school dynamics in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and U.S. territories (Note: for the purposes of this report, these are referred to as "states"). It also analyzes every state's education funding situation against six risk indicators, finding that 47 states are high risk in at least one indicator and 30 states are at high risk in at least two indicators. State leaders and advocates can use the Under Pressure data tool to view a snapshot of their state's fiscal position and identify where pressures on education funding may be most acute.

Review of Wisconsin's Most Cost-Effective K-12 Program

Source: School Choice Wisconsin

Reviewed by: Bruce Baker, University of Miami

As one of the nation's longest-running private school voucher initiatives, Wisconsin's program has drawn decades of research interest. A recent report from a think tank called School Choice Wisconsin considers the cost-effectiveness of voucher-receiving schools in Racine, Milwaukee, and across the state.

University of Miami professor Bruce Baker reviewed Wisconsin's Most Cost-Effective K-12 Program, which claims that Wisconsin's voucher-receiving schools are far more cost effective than public district schools. Baker found the report's conclusions to be not just flawed, but completely wrong.

Public workers could be denied loan forgiveness if cities defy Trump, lawsuit alleges

By: Cory Turner, NPR

"The cities of Albuquerque, N.M., Boston, Chicago and San Francisco are suing the Trump administration over changes it plans to make to the popular Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, or PSLF. The lawsuit, which also includes the nation's two largest teachers unions and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, comes less than a week after the U.S. Department of Education published a rule change to PSLF."

Education Department offloads programs to other agencies as Trump accelerates plan for its closure

By: Collin Binkley, PBS

"The U.S. Education Department is handing off some of its biggest grant programs to other federal agencies as the Trump administration accelerates its plan to shut down the department. It represents a major step forward for the administration's dismantling of the department, which has mainly involved cutting jobs since President Donald Trump called for its elimination with an executive action in March."

U.S. Department of Education Announces Six New Agency Partnerships to Break Up Federal Bureaucracy

By: U.S. Department of Education

Secretary McMahon has stated "We are doing what I call some testing. We are not permanently tranferring programs to different agencies because Congress does have to approve of that. So what we are doing is almost like contracting with other agencies." (CBS news https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmF9uh8OUZ0 at 5:31 in, you can also hear her evade a questiona about accountability for charter schools)

Re-Examining 529 Plans: Stopping State Subsidies to Private Schools After New Trump Tax Law

By: Miles Trinidad, Nick Johnson, ITEP

"...states are not required to provide state tax breaks on top of federal tax breaks for private school tuition. By decoupling from this aspect of federal tax law, states can forgo an inefficient subsidy for private schools and can help steer the use of 529 savings accounts back toward their original purpose."

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