Open enrollment in public schools is a form of school choice that allows students to attend schools other than the one assigned to them by their school district. Though often less visible than policies such as charter schools, vouchers, and education savings accounts, K–12 open enrollment is rising in popularity across the nation, and 73 percent of school parents support it. As of 2023, 43 states permit or mandate some degree of open enrollment, but only 16 states have strong open-enrollment laws. Since 2021, 10 states have significantly improved their open-enrollment laws. For example, Idaho’s new law requires all school districts to participate in open enrollment and also establishes better program transparency.

When it comes to open-enrollment data, however, researchers and policymakers are often left in the dark. Only 13 states are required by law to collect data on open enrollment, and only three states publish these figures regularly. As a result, little is known about a key policy that affects students and public schools nationwide.

There are two types of open enrollment: cross-district open enrollment allows students to attend schools outside their school district, while within-district open enrollment lets students attend schools outside their assigned zone but within their own school district. To understand the role these programs play in the school choice landscape, we obtained data from three states—Arizona, Florida, and Wisconsin—that host some of the most robust open-enrollment programs in the nation. Participation is strong; more than 450,000 students in these three states used open enrollment to attend public schools other than their assigned ones during the 2021–22 school year.

Both Arizona and Florida require all school districts to participate in both types of open enrollment if seats are available. Wisconsin only requires its school districts to participate in cross-district open enrollment. Taken together, the latest data from these states provide four key takeaways about open enrollment:

• Open enrollment is one of the most common forms of school choice. On average, about one in 10 students in these states is using open enrollment to attend a school other than the one originally assigned to them.
• Families tend to use cross-district open enrollment to transfer to higher-rated school districts when possible. In fact, 76 percent of students, on average, transferred to a school district rated as A or B in Florida and Arizona.
• School districts routinely reject transfer applicants with disabilities.
• Open enrollment is important to families in rural school districts, not only in cities. Wisconsin’s open-enrollment data showed that more than 52 percent of students using cross-district open enrollment used it to access school districts in rural areas or towns outside the state’s metropolitan areas.

Many students choose schools other than their residentially assigned one. Across the three states, nearly 177,000 students used cross-district open enrollment, while almost 273,000 used the within-district option to choose a different school (see Table 1).

Open enrollment also makes up an important component of these states’ education marketplaces and is one of the most common methods of school selection. When compared with other school choice options in these states—such as charter schools or private school scholarships—open enrollment holds its own, accounting for approximately 36 percent of the 1.3 million students who used public funds to participate in school choice during the 2021–22 school year (see Figure 1).

And these numbers are increasing. According to the Florida Department of Education and the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, open-enrollment participation increased by 4 percent and 3 percent respectively during the 2022–23 school year. (As of this writing, 2022–23 data from Arizona are not yet available.) Open-enrollment participation grew in these states even as more families used publicly funded scholarships to pay for private school tuition.

Students tend to transfer to more highly rated school districts. Earlier research in other states indicates that families turn to open enrollment for a variety of reasons. For example, studies published by the California Legislative Analyst’s Office in 2016 and 2021 found that students in that state used cross-district open enrollment to access specialized programming (such as Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate courses), to escape bullying, to shorten commutes, or to find a school that was a better fit. One consistent research finding is that students tend to transfer to higher-rated school districts when possible. For instance, in Texas, students were more likely to transfer to districts rated as A or B by state accountability rating systems and less likely to transfer to school districts labeled C, D, or F. Other research from Minnesota, Colorado, and Florida found that academic quality was an important factor in families’ decisions to use open enrollment.

The latest data show that these open-enrollment trends are also evident in Florida and Arizona (see Figure 2).

As Figure 2 shows, 80 percent of Arizona’s transfer students and 72 percent of Florida’s chose school districts rated as A or B. Overall, 67 percent of Arizona’s students and 91 percent of Florida’s attend A- or B-rated school districts. Open-enrollment transfers in these states generally avoided school districts rated lower than B.

Wisconsin doesn’t use a letter-grade system to rate its school districts. Instead, the Badger State rates them on a 100-point scale and assigns them to one of four categories: “significantly exceeds expectations,” “exceeds expectations,” “meets expectations,” and “meets few expectations.”

The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction also reports more detailed and nuanced open-enrollment data than Florida and Arizona. Those two states show only how many students transfer into each district. Wisconsin, though, shows the number of students who transfer into and out of each school district, as well as the number who apply to transfer into and out of them. Districts with better ratings experienced net transfer gains, while lower-rated districts lost students on net, as shown in Figure 3.

Despite receiving the lion’s share of transfers, Wisconsin school districts rated as “meets expectations” or lower experienced a net loss of more than 54,000 students. Higher-ranked districts, on the other hand, gained more students than they lost. School districts rated as “significantly exceeds expectations” or “exceeds expectations” increased their enrollments by more than 13,000 students during the 2022–23 school year.

In Wisconsin, the smaller number of transfers to the highest-rated school districts does not necessarily reflect a lack of applications. Not every transfer application is approved, because Wisconsin school districts can reject transfer applications for such reasons as insufficient capacity, a student’s disciplinary record, and insufficient special-education program capacity.

In fact, 43 percent of Wisconsin school districts rejected at least one out of five transfer applicants. The most common reason for rejection, cited more than 6,300 times, was insufficient capacity. However, definitions of maximum capacity can be capricious and vary by school district. This means that even if school districts have the physical space to accommodate transfer applicants, they can reject them, citing an arbitrary definition of capacity.

Transfer applicants with disabilities are often rejected. Similarly, more than 2,000 Wisconsin students were rejected because they had disabilities. Although federal law prohibits school districts from denying services to students with disabilities who live within their boundaries, they routinely reject transfer applications from students with disabilities at a higher rate than their peers without disabilities.

Wisconsin Watch reported in 2023 that “schools rejected about 40 percent of applications” from students with disabilities, “with lack of special education space as the most common reason for the denials. By comparison, school districts rejected only 14 percent of applications from students without disabilities.” This scenario is not unique to Wisconsin. Reports from Arizona, Oklahoma, and Colorado indicate that similar disparities are common in other states.

Open enrollment is important to rural students and school districts. Students living in more densely populated areas are more likely to benefit from open enrollment than their peers living in small towns or rural areas. However, that does not mean that open enrollment isn’t important to rural school districts. A 2021 report by the California Legislative Analyst’s Office found that some small and rural school districts relied on open-enrollment transfer students to remain fiscally solvent. In other words, open enrollment can be a lifeline to school districts whose enrollments are declining.

By combining open-enrollment data provided by state education agencies with data from the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) that classify school districts by location (city, suburb, town, and rural), it’s possible to examine open-enrollment participation by school-district locale. Together, these data provide insight into how different regions in these states are impacted by open enrollment (see Figure 4).

Overall, these data showed that, in Arizona and Florida, most students used open enrollment to transfer to urban and suburban school districts. However, in Wisconsin, rural school districts attracted the second-largest share of transfer students when compared to other locales in the state. This is partly because Wisconsin’s school districts are generally smaller and more numerous, making them more accessible to out-of-district students than is the case in Arizona or Florida. Despite the state’s smaller size, Wisconsin has about twice as many school districts as Arizona and six times as many as Florida.

Across all three states, rural school districts bolstered their enrollments with more than 29,000 transfer students (see Figure 5). Rural school districts are further broken into three categories: Rural fringe districts are those nearest to both urbanized areas and towns; rural distant districts are farther from urbanized areas but are closer to towns; and rural remote districts are those farthest from both towns and urbanized areas.

Overall, rural fringe districts benefited more from open enrollment than other types of rural school districts. This makes sense because rural fringe school districts are the nearest non-urban transfer options for many suburban families.

Policy Implications

Policymakers have three key issues to consider as more students take advantage of open-enrollment opportunities.

First, traditional methods of school transportation, such as the large yellow school bus, are no longer efficient because many transfer students, especially rural ones, don’t live along designated bus routes. Getting to school is often a challenge for students using open enrollment because 44 states, including those discussed here, do not require the receiving school districts to provide transportation to cross-district transfer students. In some states, school districts can even stop other districts from transporting transfer students across district boundaries, often disproportionately affecting students from low-income families. While families and receiving school districts can establish designated bus pick-up locations just over district boundaries, this option is only available to students whose families can drive them to those locations.

These transportation challenges combined with long commutes mean that open-enrollment participation in rural areas or small towns will generally be lower than in urban and suburban districts. However, state policymakers can modify regulations that needlessly impede students from transferring. For instance, they can stop allowing school districts to prevent other districts from transporting transfer students across district boundaries.

State policymakers could also take note of Arizona’s recent transportation reforms, which let school districts use passenger vans that seat 11 to 15 people instead of the traditional yellow school bus. This sort of innovation can lower the costs of transporting small groups of transfer students. Such policies can be key to helping students access schooling options that are the right fit, even if they don’t live nearby.

Policymakers might also do well to reconsider how to fund capital projects. While local levies often paid for these projects in the past, school districts will have a harder time convincing local taxpayers to approve new bonds when their children don’t attend their residentially assigned school.

For instance, Arizona’s Queen Creek Unified School District has failed to gain voter approval for bond funding for three years in a row. In fact, only 40 percent of voters supported the bond in November 2023. Part of the reason the bond has failed is that many of the students living inside the district’s boundaries don’t attend the district’s schools, opting instead for charter schools or schools in other districts. In fact, nearly 20 percent of Queen Creek’s students came from other districts during the 2021–22 school year. This district’s situation isn’t atypical; 30 percent of Arizona students don’t attend public schools in their assigned district. This illustrates that policymakers in states with robust school choice policies need to rethink how capital projects are funded.

Finally, policymakers can hold school districts’ admissions practices to a higher standard by stopping them from rejecting transfer applicants with disabilities. Many school districts are quick to cap the number of transfer applicants with disabilities based on the program capacity of their special education courses, often citing insufficient staffing. However, this practice unfairly limits schooling options for students with disabilities. It also means that traditional public schools’ admittance procedures operate at a lower bar than public charter schools’ admittance procedures, which require that all applicants be admitted, assuming seats are available. Accordingly, policymakers could take a closer look at school districts’ admissions processes to ensure that district schools are open to all students.

In a Nutshell

Open enrollment is the most common form of school choice in Wisconsin and the second-most common in Arizona and Florida. Students tend to transfer to school districts with higher rankings. While open-enrollment participation is often concentrated in urban and suburban regions, it is also beneficial to students in rural areas or smaller towns. However, the playing field isn’t level for all students, because those with disabilities tend to be rejected at higher rates, and districts can and do reject applicants for dubious capacity reasons.

Wisconsin is currently the only state that fully shows how open-enrollment transfers affect school districts. If more states were to emulate that state’s transparent reporting practices, families could learn which districts are in high demand, gain more understanding of open-enrollment programs, and make informed decisions about this choice option.

Jude Schwalbach is a senior policy analyst at Reason Foundation.

An Amazon box was on the porch the other day. (I get sent a lot of books. It’s a cool perk.) I pulled out five colorful, oversized paperbacks. Great Battles for Boys: The Korean War. Great Battles for Boys: The American Revolution. Great Battles for Boys: WW2 in Europe. And two more. I found the titles delightfully countercultural.

I mean, who writes about military strategy today? Who unabashedly markets stuff to boys? The books, all published between 2014 and 2022, are authored by history teacher Joe Giorello. They all run about 150 to 250 pages with straightforward text, anecdotes, pictures, maps, and suggestions for further reading.

Having never heard of the series, I was curious how these books were faring in the larger world. The answer? Very well. On Amazon, at the time of this writing, Giorello’s volume on WWII in Europe ranked #2 in “Children’s American History of 1900s.” His volume on the Civil War was #1 in “Children’s American Civil War Era History Books.” His book on the Revolutionary War was #1 in “Children’s American Revolution History.” There are thousands of enthusiastic, five-star reviews.

And yet, like I said, I’d never heard of Giorello. I couldn’t find a single mention of him when I searched School Library Journal, Education Week, the National Council for the Social Studies, or the National Council for History Education. As best I can tell, he’s self-published. The stories are interesting, but the narrative is pretty rote, with no gimmickry or multimedia pizzazz. It’s just workmanlike, accessible history. For instance, the chapter on “The Battle of Britain” in WW2 in Europe begins:

By June 1940, Germany had achieved a victory in Norway, but the win came at a steep cost. The battle had damaged or sunk over half of Germany’s warships.

This loss was crucial. Hitler desperately wanted to conquer Great Britain, but with half his fleet out of commission, the German navy was no match for the powerful British Royal Navy.

Hitler decided he would conquer Britain by air.

So, what’s going on? Why have these books been such a silent success? The most salient explanation may be the frank, unapologetic decision to offer books about “great battles for boys” in an era when that’s largely absent from classrooms. This may simply be the kind of history that a lot of boys are eager to read about. Of course, even penning that sentence can feel remarkably risqué nowadays, which may be a big part of the problem.

It got me thinking. My elementary-age kids have brought home or been assigned a number of children’s books on history. Most are focused intently on social and cultural history. I’ll be honest. Even as someone who’s always been an avid reader, I find a lot of that stuff pretty tedious. As a kid, I found books about the Battle of Midway or D-Day vastly more interesting than grim tales of teen angst, and I don’t think that makes me unusual. Moreover, it surprises no one (except the occasional ideologue) to learn that girls generally appear more interested in fiction than boys—or that boys tend to prefer reading about sports, war, comedy, and science fiction, while girls favor narratives about friendship, animals, and romance.

Today, when I peruse classroom libraries, recommended book lists, or stuff like the summer reading suggestions from the American Library Association, I don’t see much that seems calculated to appeal to boys.

One reason that boys read less than girls may be that we’re not introducing them to the kinds of books they may like. There was a time when schools really did devote too much time to generals and famous battles, but we’ve massively overcorrected. Indeed, I find that too many “diverse, inclusive” reading lists feature authors who may vary by race and gender but overwhelmingly tend to write introspective, therapeutic tales that read like an adaptation of an especially heavy-handed afterschool special.

Now, my point is not that kids should read this rather than that. Schools should be exposing all students to more fiction and nonfiction, with varied topics and themes. If that requires assigning more reading, well, good.

Then there are the well-meaning educators and advocates who approach book selection as an extension of social and emotional learning. Heck, while writing this column, I got an email promoting the nonprofit I Would Rather Be Reading, which uses “trauma responsive literacy support and social-emotional learning to help children.” I’m sure it’s a lovely organization, but I’d be shocked if any of the books in question feature stoic virtues or manly courage. After all, the therapy/SEL set has worked assiduously to define traditional masculinity as “toxic.” And all this can alienate kids who find the therapy-talk unduly precious or rife with adult pathologies.

I hear from plenty of educators who say they’re reluctant to talk about the needs of boys for fear of being labeled reactionary. But more boys might develop a taste for reading if they encountered more of the kinds of books they’d like to read. I’d take more seriously those who talk about inclusive reading lists if their passion extended to the well-being of those students bored by social justice-themed tracts and if they truly seemed more invested in turning every kid into an avid reader, which requires a diverse mix of books available—including those about “great battles for boys.”

Frederick Hess is an executive editor of Education Next and the author of the blog “Old School with Rick Hess.”

Chad Aldeman, the founder of Read Not Guess, joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss how teachers are paid, and how recent demands by the Chicago Teachers Union could impact the teacher salary landscape.

Watch Aldeman’s panel from “A Modern Teaching Profession,” a conference hosted by the Program on Education Policy and Governance, here:

Follow The Education Exchange on Soundcloud, Apple Podcasts, or here on Education Next.

— Education Next

The Oklahoma Supreme Court on June 25 delivered its eagerly anticipated decision on whether the state could authorize an explicitly religious charter school. The court said no, resolving for now the issue in Oklahoma. But its inscrutable reasoning on the First Amendment’s establishment and free exercise clauses indicate that the U.S. Supreme Court will have to take up the issue—in either this case or one that will inevitably arise in another state.

Following the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling in Carson v. Makin that excluding religious schools from Maine’s voucher program was unconstitutional, the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and Diocese of Tulsa applied to Oklahoma’s Charter School Board to establish St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School. The board approved in a decision backed by state Attorney General John O’Connor, who cited the Supreme Court’s reasoning in the trilogy of Makin, Espinoza v. Montana (2020), and Trinity Lutheran v. Comer (2017) to justify his support. Oklahoma’s charter school law allowed other private organizations to operate charter schools, so preventing religious ones from doing so would violate the free exercise clause’s requirement that religious entities not be excluded from an “otherwise generally available public benefit.”

After 2022, however, a new attorney general, Gentner Drummond, assumed office. He promptly rejected his predecessor’s opinion and asked the board to rescind its approval. When it did not, Drummond asked the state Supreme Court to intervene. He argued that, among a parade of horribles that would result from the charter board’s action, allowing a Catholic charter school would require Oklahoma to fund a Muslim school or even “the blasphemous tenets of the Church of Satan.” In Drummond v. Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board, a 6–2 majority of the court agreed.

Their reasoning had an inauspicious start. It held that the charter school violated Article II Section 5 of Oklahoma’s state constitution, which reads: “No public money or property shall ever be appropriated, applied, donated, or used, directly or indirectly, for the use, benefit, or support of any sect, church, denomination, or system of religion, or for the use, benefit, or support of any priest, preacher, minister, or other religious teacher or dignitary, or sectarian institution as such.” This is also known as the state’s Blaine Amendment. But the U.S. Supreme Court effectively ruled Blaine Amendments unconstitutional in Comer and Espinoza.

The court then pointed out that the state’s charter school law also requires that charter schools be nonsectarian. But no one disagreed with that. The issue was whether that requirement violates the U.S. Constitution. The court also held that the school would be a “state actor” and therefore subject to the same requirements as traditional public schools. Whether that matters though hinges on whether the First Amendment is implicated. It is on this topic that the opinion becomes difficult to reconcile with recent Supreme Court decisions.

On the establishment clause, the court cited the Supreme Court’s 1947 ruling in Everson v. Board of Education that the government cannot pass laws “which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another.” This citation was peculiar since it is this “no aid” line of reasoning that led to the infamous “Lemon test” the Supreme Court killed and buried in Kennedy v. Bremerton (2022). The court held in that case that the establishment clause must instead “be interpreted by ‘reference to historical practices and understandings’.” This “history and tradition test” emphasizes how those closest to a clause’s enactment understood its meaning.

It is not at all clear from the famously strained opinion in Everson—the court cited Thomas Jefferson as an authority on the clause’s meaning when he had nothing to do with its writing or ratification—that the decision could fit with the history and tradition test. It is possible that it could, but the Oklahoma Supreme Court did not even reference the new test. Instead, it briefly mentioned Bremerton and then cited an earlier series of cases involving school prayer that could well end up being circumscribed. Even if the prayer cases end up not being curtailed, they raise completely different questions because charter schools are, by definition, schools of choice. No one would ever be compelled to participate in a charter school’s religious activities.

Even more puzzling was the court’s free exercise clause analysis. The majority argued that the Makin, Espinoza, and Comer trilogy did not apply because they involved private entities, and this case involved the “State’s creation and funding of a new religious institution.” Their reasoning, however, ignored the fact that most charter schools are operated by private corporations. That these corporations, and indeed any corporation, cannot exist without a state charter does not mean that they are state actors. Simply being authorized to operate by the state is not the same thing as being created by the state.

One could imagine, and certainly would have hoped for, a more clearly reasoned decision, but the Oklahoma court did not provide it. Even if no appeal is made in this case or if the Supreme Court declines to hear one, the thorny issues that the majority elided will come up again and need to be resolved.

In short, this decision represents at most the opening salvo on religious charter schools, not the final word.

Joshua Dunn is executive director of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville’s Institute of American Civics at the Baker School of Public Policy and Public Affairs.

Greg Richmond, the superintendent of schools for the Archdiocese of Chicago, joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss the challenges Catholic schools have faced through the years, and how they are navigating the current school choice landscape.

Follow The Education Exchange on Soundcloud, Apple Podcasts, or here on Education Next.

— Education Next

Earlier this month I exposed the critical flaw in a recent Brookings Institution report that purported to show that Arizona families participating in the state’s K–12 education savings accounts (ESA) policy are disproportionately wealthy.

The Brookings researchers had failed to consider Arizona’s popular and longstanding tax-credit scholarship (TCS) policy, which works in tandem with Arizona’s ESA policy and disproportionately benefits low-income families. Considering the two policies together paints a very different picture of who benefits from education choice policies in Arizona.

The researchers, Jon Valant and Nicholas Zerbino, responded to my and several other critiques or contrary analyses, which they dismiss as “baseless, misleading, or just kind of odd.” Others can defend their own work, but their response to my critique is entirely unpersuasive. Once again, they fail to provide readers with key information they need to understand how Arizona’s ESA and TCS programs operate.

As I noted previously, low-income families can receive tax-credit scholarships that cover a greater amount of tuition than the typical ESA. Since the TCS and ESA programs work in tandem, and participation in one precludes participation in the other, it’s impossible to study their effects in isolation.

The Brookings researchers concede that the TCS programs exist alongside the ESA, and implicitly they concede that their omission would compromise their analysis if the TCS programs were substantial enough. But they argue that the TCS programs “are small relative to a large-and-growing universal ESA program” (emphasis in the original). They also observe that “most TCS dollars are going to recipients above 185% of the federal poverty level—the threshold for reduced-price lunch eligibility.” To illustrate this point, they provide this handy—but misleading—chart:

The Brookings researchers then conclude that my critique doesn’t “point to context that meaningfully changes the interpretation of our data.”

But their presentation of the data misleads readers in two ways. First, it inappropriately separates the TCS programs (which function as one program), and second, it does not distinguish spending on students with special needs (which is almost entirely in the ESA program). These misrepresentations make the TCS programs look smaller relative to the ESA than they really are for those whose children are not in need of special education.

Comparing Arizona’s education savings accounts and tax-credit scholarships

To demonstrate the relative sizes of the ESA and TCS programs, the Brookings researchers present data on their relative funding. At first glance, that is an odd choice, as the most relevant comparison would be ESA and TCS recipients. However, given that students may receive multiple scholarships, it’s not entirely clear how many scholarship recipients there are, so the programs’ relative funding might seem like a reasonable proxy.

However, it doesn’t make sense to break the scholarship programs into the separate categories Brookings employs. When a family applies for a scholarship from a scholarship organization in Arizona, they can receive funding from all four programs if they meet the eligibility criteria. Indeed, having spoken with dozens of Arizona scholarship families, I can attest that they often don’t even realize that there are technically four different programs. All they know is that the scholarship organizations ask them for certain information (e.g., household income, whether their child had previously attended a public school, and their foster care or disability status), and that, after verifying that information, they receive a scholarship. Rather than being represented by four separate bars in a chart, the TCS funds should be combined into a single, much higher bar to portray its magnitude accurately.

Moreover, the ESA funding data are heavily affected by spending on students with special needs, who account for 18% of ESA students and 41% of ESA funding. Whereas the median ESA student receives about $7,400 annually, students with special needs can receive considerably higher funding, depending on the funding weight accorded to their disability under Arizona law. According to the Arizona Department of Education’s quarter 2 ESA report for 2024, 6,261 ESA students with disabilities received more than $30,000 each. Given that they can receive so much more money from the ESA, nearly all the families of students with special needs use the ESA instead of the TCS.

Brookings failed to account for how families of students with special needs cluster in the ESA program, just as they had failed to account for how low-income families cluster in the TCS program.

If students with special needs are considered separately, and the three TCS policies that aren’t limited to students with special needs are combined, then the ESA program is spending about $434 million for students without disabilities, compared with $200 million of tax-credit scholarship funding, as shown in Figure 1. (Note that “Lexie’s Law for Disabled and Displaced Students” also serves foster students who do not have special needs, but I have separated the entire tax credit from the other three since it is impossible to tell how much money is going to students in each category, though it is likely that the vast majority goes to students without special needs.)

Figure 1

Sources: Arizona Department of Education and Arizona Department of Revenue’s School Tuition Organization Income Tax Credits 2023 annual report.

In other words, contrary to the Brookings researchers’ portrayal, the TCS program is not “small” relative to the ESA.

Tax-Credit Scholarships disproportionately benefit low- and middle-income families

The Brookings chart only distinguishes between TCS funding on students from families earning above and below 185% of the federal poverty level. About a third of Arizona families with school-aged children fall below that level. However, the Arizona Department of Revenue also reports how much funding goes to families earning between 185% and 342.25% of the federal poverty level, which is the eligibility threshold for Arizona’s corporate-funded TCS program. About a third of Arizona families fall in that category as well.

In other words, Brookings is comparing the bottom third of families against the top two. But what if we looked at the three categories separately? In that case, as shown in Figure 2, it becomes clear that low- and middle-income families disproportionately benefit from Arizona’s TCS program relative to higher-income families.

Figure 2

Sources: Arizona Department of Revenue’s School Tuition Organization Income Tax Credits 2023 annual report; U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey (2022).

According to the U.S. Census, 32% of Arizona families with school-aged children earn less than 185% of the federal poverty level, and scholarship families in that income range receive 42% of TCS funding. Likewise, those earning between 185% and 342% of the federal poverty level represent 33% of Arizona families with school-aged children but 35% of TCS funding. Meanwhile, 35% of Arizona families earn more than 342% of the federal poverty level, but they receive only 23% of TCS funding.

Brookings characterizes this distribution by stating that “most TCS dollars are going to recipients above 185% of the federal poverty level.” One could also say that most TCS dollars are going to low- and middle-income families, and that low-income families disproportionately benefit the most. Readers can decide which statement more accurately captures the reality of who benefits from tax-credit scholarships in Arizona.

As I stated before, it’s impossible to assess whether Arizona’s education choice policies are “addressing inequities in school access,” as Brookings sought to do, without including Arizona’s popular and longstanding tax-credit scholarship policy in the analysis. Brookings has failed to present any compelling arguments or data to justify their omission.

Jason Bedrick is a Research Fellow at The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Education Policy.

As is typical for edtech hype, the initial burst of enthusiasm for artificial intelligence in education focused on student-facing applications. Products like IXL, Zearn, and Khan Academy’s chatbot Khanmigo could take on the heavy lifting and personalize instruction for every kid! Who needs tutors, or even teachers, when kids can learn from machines?

Thankfully, the real-life limits of AI instruction surfaced quickly, given how hard it is for non-humanoids to motivate children and teens to pay attention and persist through hard work for any length of time (for example, see “The 5 Percent Problem,” features, Fall 2024). The apps are still popular, but it’s not clear that AI will crowd out live human instruction anytime soon.

If AI can’t replace teachers, maybe it can help them get better at their jobs. Multiple companies are pairing AI with inexpensive, ubiquitous video technology to provide feedback to educators through asynchronous, offsite observation. It’s an appealing idea, especially given the promise and popularity of instructional coaching, as well as the challenge of scaling it effectively (see “Taking Teacher Coaching To Scale,” research, Fall 2018).

While these efforts seem tailor-made for teachers looking to improve, there are clear applications across the spectrum of effectiveness. Like bodycams worn by police, video recordings and attendant AI tools could open a window into every classroom, exposing poor performers to scrutiny and helping to keep bad behavior in check.

Apps for observations

Video-based observations are not new. The underlying, pre-AI idea is for teachers to record themselves providing instruction, choose some of their best samples, and upload those clips to a platform where an instructional coach or principal can watch and provide feedback. Indeed, this model was an important innovation of the Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) project launched in 2009 by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (see “Lights, Camera, Action!” What Next, Spring 2011).

Edthena is one company that has built out a coaching-via-video-feedback service. Its founder, Adam Geller, started as a science teacher in St. Louis before moving on to the national strategy team at Teach For America. At the time, the organization was looking for a way to provide more frequent feedback to its corps members, given growing evidence that the best professional learning comes from educators regularly reviewing, discussing, and critiquing instructional practice together. It’s hard for instructional coaches or principals to visit every teacher’s classroom with much frequency, but recorded lessons allow anyone to observe and deliver feedback anytime from anywhere. That gave Geller an idea, which he later turned into Edthena.

For more than a decade, Geller claims, his platform has narrowed the “feedback gap” dramatically. Research studies find that video coaching via Edthena can improve teacher retention, competence, and confidence. Still, it is a large investment in staff resources. After all, coaches or administrators must find time to watch the videos and offer feedback, and there are only so many hours in the day.

Enter AI. Edthena is now offering an “AI Coach” chatbot that offers teachers specific prompts as they privately watch recordings of their lessons. The chatbot is designed to help teachers view their practice relative to common professional goals and to develop action plans to improve.

To be sure, an AI coach is no replacement for human coaching. An analogy might be the growing number of mental health chatbots on the market, many of them based on cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), which can help patients reflect on their own thoughts and feelings and help them see things in a more constructive way. In the same way, Edthena’s AI Coach is helping teachers engage in “deep reflection about the classroom teaching,” Geller says. And because the AI tool is responding to teachers’ own self-evaluations, and not the lessons themselves, it’s relatively straightforward to train.

Gathering data for self-improvement

If Edthena is about “deep reflection,” then TeachFX is about hardcore data. The app captures audio recordings from the classroom and uses voice recognition AI to differentiate between teacher and student speech during lessons. Teachers receive visualizations of class time spent on teacher talk, student talk, group talk, and wait time to assess student engagement, as well as more sophisticated analyses of verbal exchanges during class. It’s like a Fitbit for instruction.

TeachFX founder Jamie Poskin, a former high school teacher, got the idea while interviewing a school principal as a Stanford University graduate student. They discussed the challenge of providing feedback to teachers, especially new ones. Recording lessons was intriguing, they agreed, but when could principals find the time to watch the videos? The principal wondered, what if AI could be trained to look for the indicators of good practice—the teacher “moves” that are universally applicable regardless of grade level or subject matter?

The first version of TeachFX focused on a single metric: teacher talk versus student talk, based on voluminous research evidence that the more kids talk during direct instruction, the more they tend to learn. And though classrooms can be cacophonous (especially elementary ones), the technology could readily distinguish between teacher and student voices. Not only were such analyses doable, according to internal company data, but also just turning on the TeachFX app helped teachers more than double the amount of student talk during class. According to the company, almost 80 percent of teachers in a typical implementation use the tool on a recurring basis.

Over time, as the technology has improved, the platform added more metrics aligned with evidence-based best practices. For example: What proportion of a teacher’s questions are open-ended? How long is she waiting for students to answer? A study by Dorottya Demszky and colleagues published in 2023 found that teachers receiving feedback from TeachFX increased their use of “focusing questions,” which prompt students to reflect on and explain their thinking, by 20 percent.

A role for AI in evaluation?

It’s one thing to use AI to provide constructive, no-stakes feedback to teachers about their instructional practice. But what about incorporating it into formal performance evaluations?

Nobody I talked to liked that idea.

Thomas Kane of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, who ran the MET project, said, “AI could make it easier for teachers to get more frequent feedback, without the taint of a supervisory relationship.” But introduce that “supervisory relationship,” and you lose teachers’ willingness to give these technologies a try.

Indeed, neither company founder I spoke with was eager to see their tech used for teacher evaluations. As TeachFX’s Poskin told me, “You want teachers to learn and grow.” The more often teachers upload recordings to the platform, the better. Yet formal evaluations usually only happen every few years. They are the antithesis of constructive feedback.

That said, leaders of both companies welcome teachers’ deciding to use their recordings, or the data and “reflection logs” derived from them, in coaching sessions or formal evaluations. In all cases, the key is leaving those decisions to teachers and letting them keep control of the process and data.

To me, these apps sound like great tools for conscientious teachers eager to improve—as Geller and Poskin no doubt were. But it strikes me that teacher motivation to use them as intended must be an issue, just as it is for students. Teachers are crazy-busy, and apps like these are, ultimately, extra work.

To their credit, some districts provide incentives, such as counting the time teachers spend using the apps against professional learning requirements or allowing recordings to stand in for weekly classroom walkthroughs. Those are steps in the right direction—but we shouldn’t expect uptake to be universal. To me, it seems likely that the worst teachers, who arguably would have the most to gain, are the least likely to engage with these sorts of technologies.

From bodycams to classroom cams

I don’t think it would be crazy, then, for someone to develop a version of this idea that is less about helping well-meaning teachers get better, and more about holding the small number of ineffective teachers accountable. Our schools have long faced the “street-level bureaucrat” problem, coined by political scientist Michael Lipsky in 1969. The idea is that some government services depend so much on the judgment and discretion of people on the ground that it’s hard to evaluate their work or hold them accountable. Teaching is one of those fields; policing is another.

In the world of law enforcement, dash cams and bodycams have changed the equation by providing a clear record of police officers’ interactions with the public, for good or ill. No doubt this has spurred all manner of questions and challenges, such as when to release footage, how to interpret it, and what is admissible in court. Bodycam mandates have garnered some support along with serious concerns about privacy and reliability. But there’s little doubt that police brutality and misconduct face greater scrutiny now than in the past.

So why not bring the same line of thinking into public schools? Put cameras and microphones in every classroom. Turn them on and keep them on. Send the recordings to the cloud and let machine learning do its thing (with strict privacy and security protocols in place, of course). If AI already can differentiate between good and bad questions, surely it can tell principals or department chairs if a teacher starts instruction late and ends it early, or shows movies every Friday, or allows kids to roam the hallways, or makes no effort to stop them from cheating on tests. If such technology could stop the most egregious forms of bad teaching, it might provide a significant boost to student achievement.

Alas, given education politics, that will probably remain just one wonk’s dream. In the meantime, let’s use AI to help as many motivated teachers as possible go from good to great.

Michael J. Petrilli is president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, visiting fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, and an executive editor of Education Next.

Earlier this year, I shared my fear that a glitchy chatbot had seized control of a major education research journal. The editors’ torrent of inhuman gibberish made it hard to imagine that real people were still pulling the strings.

Well, recently, I got a worrisome signal that this same shady AI (or one of its cousins) had seized the presidency of the American Education Research Association (AERA), an outfit that bills itself as the world’s largest organization of education researchers. I know this is a bold claim, so I dusted off my modified Turing Test and interrogated the (very) extensive description of the presidential program. By pulling verbatim takes, we’ll try to determine whether the prose reads like the product of humans . . . or glitchy AI. (To quote Dave Barry, “I’m not making this up.” Really.)

It’s got to be AI, right? The punch-list rambling, disinterest in actual learning, rote invocation of ideological tropes, and fascination with oppression are so tritely optimized that it feels artificial. And yet, reading back through this transcript, it bothers me that I can’t confidently distinguish autopilot AI from earnest edu-babble. Perhaps my AI fears are overblown. After all, I guess it’s possible that this detached unintelligibility and politicized liturgy are just the mundane culmination of what gets practiced daily in ed school corridors and conferences.

Frederick Hess is an executive editor of Education Next and the author of the blog “Old School with Rick Hess.”

David Houston, an Assistant Professor at George Mason University, joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss Houston’s latest research, which investgiates what happens to public opinion when prominent partisan officials intervene in education policy debates.

Houston’s working paper, “How the Engagement of High-Profile Partisan Officials Affects Education Politics, Public Opinion, and Polarization,” co-written with Alyssa Barone, is available now.

Follow The Education Exchange on Soundcloud, Apple Podcasts, or here on Education Next.

— Education Next

“Campus Thuggery Is No Way to Cultivate Citizens.” Hear, hear! We couldn’t agree more with this statement from Rick Hess in a recent Education Next blog post. So we were surprised to see Hess describe an essay we wrote in the Chronicle of Higher Education as a “defense” of “campus disorder.” In our essay—written in part in response to a prior Hess piece—what we actually defended was the right of students to participate in peaceful protests. We also argued that preparing students to be engaged citizens has been central to the mission of higher education for more than a century, and that political activism can help students develop important citizenship skills.

Hess describes us as “chaos apologists” who “appear oddly indifferent to the value of what happens in their classrooms.” This is a case of mistaken identity, a misapprehension that fails to take into account one of our essay’s most consequential points: There is no single, unifying set of rules for campus speech. Different regulations and norms apply in different campus contexts.

As professors at a small liberal arts college, we are deeply committed to teaching. The classroom is the nerve center of campus life. It’s a space devoted to the dissemination of knowledge and the development of critical thinking skills. As such, shouting, personal attacks and political sloganeering have no place in the classroom. Civil discourse is the name of the game. And the game is governed by the rules of academic freedom where expertise, evidence, and reason should prevail over gut feelings and grandstanding.

The quad, however, is more akin to a public square than to a seminar room. (It really is a public square at public universities where the First Amendment pertains.) We must tolerate a much wider range of speech on the campus green than in the classroom. Some of it will be misinformed, intemperate, or offensive, especially when it comes to student protests. It isn’t possible to stake out a public position on highly contentious issues such as Israel-Palestine without causing a stir and ticking people off. But that’s a price college leaders must be willing to pay if they are genuinely committed to free expression. As the Chicago Principles explain, “concerns about civility and mutual respect can never be used as a justification for closing off discussion of ideas, however offensive or disagreeable those ideas may be to some members of our community.”

Hess has a hard time imagining how protesting students can draw attention to their cause while also following basic ground rules. He seems to believe that allowing room for passion and provocation inexorably leads to chaos, disorder, and illiberalism. His characterization of the Gaza protest movement is one-sided and unrelentingly bleak. “As practiced today,” Hess writes, “campus protests feature a lot of appetite, id, and ego.” He goes on:

[T]hey’re histrionic affairs rather than considered ones. They’re about spectacle rather than contemplation. Indeed, they seem calculated to stymie reasoned discourse and serious inquiry, which makes them rather a poor fit for serious institutions of higher education.

“Historically,” Hess concludes, “learning to be a part of a masked, faceless mob has been a recipe not for cultivating democrats but for producing jack-booted thugs.”

Have we seen adolescent histrionics at some of the student protests? Yes. Protesters are college students after all. Have there been deplorable, antisemitic outbursts? Yes. And they should be taken seriously and publicly condemned. What about broken windows and other property damage? In a handful of cases, yes. And the perpetrators should be punished, accordingly.

But the vast majority of demonstrations have been peaceful. To the extent that protests have been marred by violence, almost all of it has been inflicted by police (as was the case at UT Austin, Indiana University, City College of New York, Dartmouth, and many other schools) and by counter-protesters (as was the case at UCLA). The heavy-handed responses on the part of college leaders have been shameful. Too many administrators have been too quick to abandon dialogue and negotiation in favor of riot police, pepper spray, rubber bullets and zip ties.

Students can and have made their presence known—through marches, demonstrations, and encampments—without disrupting essential college operations. On almost all of the campuses where there have been pro-Palestinian protests, dorms, cafeterias, libraries, and academic buildings have remained open and accessible. Classrooms have not been overtaken by unruly mobs. Students have done all the usual academic things: attending classes, writing papers, and taking exams. On May 23, hundreds of students walked out of Harvard’s commencement. They chanted, waved Palestinian flags, expressed their views, and were gone after a matter of minutes. They didn’t shout anyone down or derail the ceremony.

A few weeks ago, students on our own campus set up an encampment on the lawn next to the college chapel. It has drawn attention but has not interfered with the daily work of the college. One of us (Amna) has visited the encampment several times with her young children and can attest to the peaceful, welcoming atmosphere. Along with the tents and the placards, there is a mini-library with books about the Israel-Palestine conflict. Students have organized teach-ins and engaged in respectful dialogue with critics from inside and outside the college. They have not only educated themselves about the Middle East but have also learned a great deal about higher education, from what trustees do to how endowments are managed. They are taking the knowledge from this crash course in navigating institutional bureaucracies to try and make a difference in the world. Whether you agree with their politics, students are practicing the kinds of citizenship skills that are essential to democratic life.

Hess appears to believe that student activism is incompatible with the academic mission of colleges and universities. But this position disregards the fact that classrooms and quads are distinctive spaces governed by different rules. Classrooms are sites of learning and inquiry where civil discourse and evidence-based argumentation take precedence. They hold pride of place on campuses, and their basic integrity should be fiercely protected. Campus greens, in contrast, are public spaces where speech is not subject to the same constraints. Here, students can learn how to join the civic arena, which for better or worse, is often fraught and contentious.

Citizenship in the United States is a big tent that requires lots of different skills in different contexts. Political protest is just one of its many aspects. There’s a time for listening, discussion and considered deliberation. There’s also a time when the “fierce urgency of now,” in Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s memorable words, calls for “direct action” like marches and sit-ins.

As long as protesters are not targeting classroom instruction and directly hampering the learning of their peers, their actions are squarely within the realm of exercising their civic rights. If colleges and universities are to remain true to their dual mission of training thinkers and citizens, the space for non-violent political activism on campus must be protected. As legal scholars John Inazu and Bert Neuborne have noted, “the freedom to assemble peaceably remains integral to what Justice Robert Jackson once called ‘the right to differ.’” If there is one place where “the right to differ” should be protected, it’s institutions of higher education, where disagreement and debate ought to be the coin of the realm.

Amna Khalid is an associate professor of history at Carleton College. Jeffrey Aaron Snyder is an associate professor in the department of educational studies at Carleton College.