BOULDER, CO (January 29, 2026) — A recent New America report argues that states can advance educational equity by redrawing school district boundaries to reduce within-state fiscal and demographic disparities. While the analysis has some methodological limitations, it offers policymakers a useful framework for understanding how existing district lines shape unequal access to resources. Christopher Cleveland and Joshua Almes of Brown University reviewed Redrawing the Lines: How Purposeful School System Redistricting Can Increase Funding Fairness and Decrease Segregation. Their review assesses how well the report meets its goals, and it identifies areas where additional research could strengthen the discussion. The report models three redistricting strategies: a “blank-slate” approach that creates new districts from Census tracts, a county-aligned approach that uses county boundaries, and targeted mergers of existing districts. Compared with current district maps, all three models increase equity in access to local property tax revenue and improve racial and economic integration, with the blank-slate approach producing the largest gains. Cleveland and Almes do point to the need for further analysis, particularly to incorporate real-world constraints and to compare redistricting with other equity-focused reforms. Yet they conclude that the report successfully positions district boundaries as a meaningful policy lever and prompts informed discussion of strategies to advance educational equity. Find the review, written by Christopher Cleveland and Joshua Almes, at: https://nepc.colorado.edu/review/redistricting Find Redrawing the Lines: How Purposeful School System Redistricting Can Increase Funding Fairness and Decrease Segregation, authored by Zahava Stadler and Jordan Abbott and published by New America, at: https://www.newamerica.org/education-policy/reports/redrawing-the-lines-school-system-redistricting-increase-funding-fairness-decrease-segregation/  

BOULDER, CO (January 22, 2026) — While special education in the United States has advanced civil rights and educational equity, persistent concerns about inequity, labeling, and segregation remain. A recent Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) report proposes a dramatic restructuring of special education, arguing that rising identification rates and persistent achievement gaps stem from a general education system built for uniformity rather than diversity. However, in his review of Outmatched: Special Education Can’t Solve Problems Rooted in the Education Delivery System, University of Illinois Chicago professor Federico Waitoller warns that the report moves prematurely toward solutions without establishing a sufficiently evidence-based understanding of the underlying problems—or those proposed solutions. The report argues that because general education is insufficiently responsive to diverse student needs, special education has become a default solution for unmet instructional challenges. It therefore calls for replacing the dual general–special education structure with a unified, needs-based system. The analysis, however, has significant weaknesses. Its claims rest on broad assertions about systemic design flaws, supported by only limited descriptive data and selective use of research. Although the report identifies real and well-documented problems, such as reliance on psychological evaluations and inequitable access to services, it provides no empirical evidence linking these features to rising identification rates or widening achievement gaps. The report also overlooks decades of scholarship on disability identification, disproportionality, and system design, and it does not engage with counterarguments that defend special education as a necessary specialized system. While the recommendations are ambitious, they are not empirically grounded. Key questions about legal protections, expertise, accountability, and instructional quality for students with disabilities remain unanswered. As such, Prof. Waitoller concludes, policymakers are left with little direct guidance for reforms that would reliably safeguard the rights and learning needs of students with disabilities. Find the review, written by Federico R. Waitoller, at: https://nepc.colorado.edu/review/outmatched Find Outmatched: Special Education Can’t Solve Problems Rooted in the Education Delivery System, authored by Ashley Jochim and Alexander Kurz and published by the Center on Reinventing Public Education, at: https://crpe.org/outmatched-special-education-cant-solve-problems-rooted-in-the-education-delivery-system/  

BOULDER, CO (January 15, 2026) — As AI-powered technologies rapidly proliferate across classrooms, educators and policymakers are grappling with urgent questions about how to assess their impact on teaching and learning. Bellwether’s recent report seeks to guide that effort by promoting logic models as a framework. Logic models, the report argues, will move us beyond superficial metrics and toward more robust, evidence-based educational outcomes. Bradley Robinson of Texas State University reviewed Measuring Artificial Intelligence in Education. He found it flawed in its overarching bias that AI integration in education is both inevitable and beneficial. Also, the report only rarely uses existing research to support its claims. The logic models promoted by the report focus on four foundational components: inputs, activities, outputs, and outcomes. The report argues that such models can help stakeholders better understand how AI tools may influence instructional practices and student learning. However, significant limitations of these models are not addressed in the report. By assuming from the outset that AI should be integrated into education, the report positions logic models as a value-neutral mechanism for ensuring that AI achieves its presumed potential. This framing obscures how logic-model approaches can simplify or ignore contextual complexity and overlook the risk of unintended harms. Rather than providing critical guidance for evaluating AI’s role in schools, the report ultimately offers methodological cover for predetermined conclusions about AI’s inevitability and desirability. At a time when policymakers urgently need rigorous, balanced, evidence-based approaches, Bellwether’s report provides little support. Instead, Professor Robinson asserts, it serves more as a promotional document rather than as a critical examination of AI’s place in education. Find the review, by Bradley Robinson, at: https://nepc.colorado.edu/review/measuring-ai Find Measuring Artificial Intelligence in Education, written by Michelle Croft, Amy Chen Kulesa, Marisa Mission, and Mary K. Wells and published by Bellwether, at: https://bellwether.org/publications/measuring-ai-in-education/  

BOULDER, CO (January 13, 2026) — In this month's episode of NEPC Talks Education, Christopher Saldaña speaks with Roseann Liu and David Backer about their approaches to K-12 school finance research and why understanding the human dimensions of education funding is essential for achieving equity. Liu, a professor of educational studies and Asian American studies at Swarthmore College, is an anthropologist. Her recent book, Designed to Fail: Why Racial Equity in School Funding Is So Hard to Achieve, uses ethnographic methods to make visible what she calls the story behind the numbers. Backer, a professor of Education Policy at the College of Human Development, Culture and Media at Seton Hall University, draws on philosophy and critical theory in his new book, As Public As Possible, to offer a witty and provocative treatise on the financial policies we'll need to make our public schools work for all children. Despite their different disciplinary backgrounds, both scholars share the view that school funding is not primarily a technical problem requiring a technical fix. They argue that American school funding reflects the impact of a fundamental racial and political problem; i.e., U.S. society does not assign the same value to all children’s lives. As a result, not all children receive school funding adequate to meet their needs based on those values. In this month’s episode, we discuss how both scholars bring humans to the forefront of their school finance research. Liu's ethnographic work traces the small and seemingly insignificant decisions that end up maintaining racial inequities in school funding, revealing the alliances, betrayals, and political maneuvering that shape how money gets distributed. Backer approaches school finance with a novelist's eye for narrative, finding drama and tension in bond statements and funding formulas. Both scholars highlight Pennsylvania and Philadelphia as instructive cases for understanding school finance nationally. Backer describes Philadelphia as the canary in the coal mine for school infrastructure, where toxic buildings with asbestos, lead in the water, and crumbling ceilings reveal the deadly consequences of a failure to invest in those schools. Similarly, Liu's research in Pennsylvania found mechanisms of inequity in state funding policy design and implementation that resonate across other states, suggesting these patterns are not unique but rather reflect broader systemic failures. Both scholars stress the importance of scholars and activists understanding that both vision and stamina are needed to sustain themselves in what will be a lifelong struggle to expose the values and dismantle the structures that have embedded inequity at the heart of educational finance. Lui encourages advocates to move beyond transactional hope and exercise radical imagination about what schools deserve, rather than accepting myths of false scarcity when billions sit in state coffers. Backer argues for making public education as public as possible through innovative approaches like green fiscal mutualism, which would use teacher pensions and green banks to create virtuous cycles of public investment in school infrastructure without relying on traditional Wall Street financing. A new NEPC Talks Education podcast episode, hosted by Christopher Saldaña, will be released each month from September through May.  Don’t worry if you miss a month. All episodes are archived on the NEPC website and can be found here. NEPC podcast episodes are also available on Apple Podcasts under the title NEPC Talks Education. Subscribe and follow!  

BOULDER, CO (December 16, 2025) — In this month's episode of NEPC Talks Education, Christopher Saldaña speaks with Jarvis Givens, professor of education and African and African American Studies at Harvard University, about his new book. American Grammar: Race, Education and The Building of a Nation centers the experiences of Black and Native Americans in the origin story of American education. Givens challenges the familiar narrative of American public education as "the great equalizer." He argues that this conception rests on historical narratives focused solely on white experiences while ignoring how common schooling was structurally developed through the subjugation of Black and Indigenous peoples. He points, for instance, to the Land Ordinance of 1785, which facilitated the founding of public schools through the dispossession of Native lands. He also notes that early school funds were invested in banks that profited from the slave trade. Givens explains his use of "grammar" in the book's title as a way of thinking structurally about how law and policy create conditions determining who fits, and who does not, within American education. He also draws a crucial distinction between "exclusion" and "domination," arguing that the traditional framing of racial injustice as exclusion is inadequate. Black and Native peoples were never truly excluded from the story of American education, he contends; rather, American schooling developed directly through their subjugation. When asked what he hopes readers take away from the book, Givens says he wants to shatter the idea that education has ever been a benign institution. Education has always been political, he emphasizes, and the choices educators, students, and community members make inevitably carry political implications. A new NEPC Talks Education podcast episode, hosted by Christopher Saldaña, will be released each month from September through May.  Don’t worry if you miss a month. All episodes are archived on the NEPC website and can be found here. NEPC podcast episodes are also available on Apple Podcasts under the title NEPC Talks Education. Subscribe and follow!  

BOULDER, CO (December 11, 2025) — A large and growing body of high-quality research shows that increased school funding positively affects student outcomes. Yet, as compared to the effect of school funding reported in an authoritative meta-analysis, a new Brookings Institution report examining this relationship finds a much smaller (although still positive) effect. In his review of A State-Level Perspective on School Spending and Educational Outcomes, Rutgers University lecturer and school finance expert Mark Weber explains how the report’s reliance on overly simplistic methods prevents it from credibly estimating the true relationship between funding and student outcomes. As Dr. Weber shows, the report uses comparisons of statewide averages for spending and outcomes (comparing states to states), which masks substantial variations within states that are central to understanding how school resources affect students. The consensus that more funding leads to better outcomes for students is built on a foundation of high-quality, rigorous evidence. That consensus can and should be tested regularly by ongoing research, using appropriate data and methodologies. It cannot, however, be credibly challenged by a few simplistic correlational analyses, like those applied in the Brookings report. Consequently, Dr. Weber concludes, little meaningful guidance is offered by the recent report for policymakers seeking to reform school funding policies. Find the review, by Mark Weber, at: https://nepc.colorado.edu/review/state-funding Find A State-Level Perspective on School Spending and Educational Outcomes, authored by Sarah Reber and Gabriela Goodman and published by The Brookings Institution, at: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/a-state-level-perspective-on-school-spending-and-educational-outcomes/  

BOULDER, CO (December 4, 2025) — A recent report from the Common Sense Institute (CSI) addresses two important policy questions about Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) program: 1) how much the ESA program will cost in the upcoming year, and 2) what the demographic characteristics of ESA users are by household income and race/ethnicity. David Garcia of Arizona State University reviewed ESA’s in Arizona: Q3 2025 Report. He determined that, given the limited data available about the program’s volatility, policymakers should not be lulled into thinking that the major financial hits to the state’s budget are in the past. This view runs contrary to the report’s conclusion that the ESA program is now “essentially fully subscribed,” meaning the rapid, runaway growth in students and costs observed over the past two years is not expected to continue. The report further reasons that, at this point in the policy’s implementation, ESA costs are largely offset by declines in public school enrollment. Again, Prof. Garcia explains that the situation is too volatile to reliably make such predictions. On student demographics, the report finds that the typical ESA student comes from a middle-income Arizona household and that ESA users generally resemble the state’s overall K-12 population by race and ethnicity. Yet the report’s own analysis shows that ESA students are considerably more white than Arizona’s public-school students, complicating the narrative that the program fully reflects the state’s diversity. This new report follows three earlier quarterly CSI analyses released over the past year, each addressing essentially the same questions about cost and user characteristics. While the Q3 report does not break new ground relative to the prior versions, the frequency of these reports underscores both the urgency surrounding Arizona’s ESA program and the ongoing uneasiness about its future fiscal impact. Prof. Garcia concludes that, despite its efforts to suggest that the dust has settled following the universal expansion and subsequent runaway growth of the program, the report is ultimately constrained by limited data, and policymakers should not assume that Arizona has weathered all the significant budget impacts. Find the review, by David R. Garcia, at: https://nepc.colorado.edu/review/az-esas Find ESA’s in Arizona: Q3 2025 Report, written by Glenn Farley and published by Common Sense Institute Arizona, at: https://www.commonsenseinstituteus.org/arizona/research/education/esas-in-arizona-q3-2025-report  

BOULDER, CO (December 4, 2025) — A recent report from the Common Sense Institute (CSI) addresses two important policy questions about Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) program: 1) how much the ESA program will cost in the upcoming year, and 2) what the demographic characteristics of ESA users are by household income and race/ethnicity. David Garcia of Arizona State University reviewed ESA’s in Arizona: Q3 2025 Report. He determined that, given the limited data available about the program’s volatility, policymakers should not be lulled into thinking that the major financial hits to the state’s budget are in the past. This view runs contrary to the report’s conclusion that the ESA program is now “essentially fully subscribed,” meaning the rapid, runaway growth in students and costs observed over the past two years is not expected to continue. The report further reasons that, at this point in the policy’s implementation, ESA costs are largely offset by declines in public school enrollment. Again, Prof. Garcia explains that the situation is too volatile to reliably make such predictions. On student demographics, the report finds that the typical ESA student comes from a middle-income Arizona household and that ESA users generally resemble the state’s overall K-12 population by race and ethnicity. Yet the report’s own analysis shows that ESA students are considerably more white than Arizona’s public-school students, complicating the narrative that the program fully reflects the state’s diversity. This new report follows three earlier quarterly CSI analyses released over the past year, each addressing essentially the same questions about cost and user characteristics. While the Q3 report does not break new ground relative to the prior versions, the frequency of these reports underscores both the urgency surrounding Arizona’s ESA program and the ongoing uneasiness about its future fiscal impact. Prof. Garcia concludes that, despite its efforts to suggest that the dust has settled following the universal expansion and subsequent runaway growth of the program, the report is ultimately constrained by limited data, and policymakers should not assume that Arizona has weathered all the significant budget impacts. Find the review, by David R. Garcia, at: https://nepc.colorado.edu/review/az-esas Find ESA’s in Arizona: Q3 2025 Report, written by Glenn Farley and published by Common Sense Institute Arizona, at: https://www.commonsenseinstituteus.org/arizona/research/education/esas-in-arizona-q3-2025-report  

BOULDER, CO (November 18, 2025) — In this month's episode of NEPC Talks Education, Christopher Saldaña speaks with Julie Marsh, professor at USC's Rossier School of Education and Sol Price School of Public Policy, and James Bridgeforth, assistant professor at the University of Delaware's School of Education, about the unprecedented challenges facing California school board members and how they navigate today's complex political landscape. Marsh and Bridgeforth explain that school boards have always been political, but today's environment presents unique challenges. Politicization has expanded beyond urban and rural areas into suburbs, disagreements increasingly fall along party lines, and conflicts have intensified. Tensions accelerated during the pandemic with debates over masks, vaccines, and in-person learning, and persist in current controversies over curriculum, book bans, and transgender athletes. The conversation explores how board members conceptualize their roles through four primary orientations: as change makers (questioning the status quo), champions (supporting and promoting district goals), rule followers (adhering to standing policies and procedures), and representatives (voicing constituent concerns). These orientations are dynamic and not mutually exclusive, as board members may shift between roles depending on the issue or context. Marsh and Bridgeforth note that board members now devote 20-40+ hours per week on board work during busy periods, oftentimes while maintaining full-time jobs and family responsibilities. Many face personal attacks, strategic misinformation campaigns, and threats of recall—stresses they never anticipated when choosing to serve. This emotional toll has led many to reconsider running for reelection. The discussion also addresses the paradox of increasing demands with minimal compensation. While California recently passed legislation allowing increased board compensation and requiring more financial training, tensions remain when districts facing declining enrollment must balance board pay with potential teacher layoffs. Board members express clear needs for support in interpreting data, evaluating curricula, navigating political tensions, understanding rapidly changing legal guidance, and building peer networks. Marsh and Bridgeforth emphasize the importance of mentorship programs and networking opportunities with other board members, and training specifically geared to today's challenges. Above all, they stress that if we are to realize the promise of local democratic governance in education, we must find ways to support board members in navigating these divided times. A new NEPC Talks Education podcast episode, hosted by Christopher Saldaña, will be released each month from September through May.  Don’t worry if you miss a month. All episodes are archived on the NEPC website and can be found here. NEPC podcast episodes are also available on Apple Podcasts under the title NEPC Talks Education. Subscribe and follow!