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With AI in schools, local leadership matters more than ever
Credit: Julie Leopo/EdSource

Last week, the Trump administration’s draft executive order to integrate artificial intelligence (AI) into K-12 schools made national headlines. The order, still in flux, would direct federal agencies to embed AI in classrooms and partner with private companies to create new educational programs. The move comes as China, Singapore and other nations ramp up their AI education initiatives, fueling talk of a new “AI space race.” But as the world’s biggest players push for rapid adoption, the real question for American education isn’t whether AI is coming — it’s who will shape its role in our schools, and on whose terms.

AI is not simply the next classroom gadget or software subscription. It represents a fundamentally new kind of disruptor in the education space — one that doesn’t just supplement public education but is increasingly building parallel systems alongside it. These AI-powered platforms, often funded by public dollars through vouchers or direct-to-consumer models, can operate outside the traditional oversight and values of public schools. The stakes are high: AI is already influencing what counts as education, who delivers it and how it is governed.

This transformation is happening fast. For example, in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) the district’s ambitious “AI friend” chatbot project, meant to support students and families, collapsed when its startup partner folded, exposing the risks of investing public funds in untested AI ventures. Meanwhile, major tech firms are pitching AI as a “tutor for every learner and a TA for every teacher,” promising to personalize learning and free up educators’ time. The reality is more complex: AI’s promise is real, but so are its pitfalls, especially when it bypasses local voices and democratic control.

The rise of AI in education is reshaping three core principles: agency, accountability and equity.
- Agency: Traditionally, public education has empowered teachers, students and communities to shape learning. Now, AI platforms — sometimes chosen by parents or delivered through private providers — can shift decision-making from classrooms to opaque algorithms. Teachers may find themselves implementing AI-generated lessons, while students’ learning paths are increasingly set by proprietary systems. If local educators and families aren’t at the table, agency risks becoming fragmented and individualized, eroding the collective mission of public schooling.
- Accountability: In public schools, accountability means clear lines of responsibility and public oversight. But when AI tools misclassify students or private micro-schools underperform, it’s unclear who is answerable: the vendor, the parent, the state, or the algorithm? This diffusion of responsibility can undermine public trust and make it harder to ensure quality and fairness.
- Equity: AI has the potential to personalize learning and expand access, but its benefits often flow unevenly. Wealthier families and districts are more likely to access cutting-edge tools, while under-resourced students risk being left behind. As AI-powered platforms grow outside of traditional systems, the risk is that public funds flow to private, less accountable alternatives, deepening educational divides.
It’s tempting to see AI as an unstoppable force, destined to either save or doom public education. But that narrative misses the most important variable: us. AI is not inherently good or bad. Its impact will depend on how — and by whom — it is implemented.

The U.S. education system’s greatest strength is its tradition of local control and community engagement. As national and global pressures mount, local leaders — school boards, district administrators, teachers, and parents — must drive how AI is used. That means:
- Demanding transparency from vendors about how AI systems work and how data is used.
- Prioritizing investments in teacher training and professional development, so educators can use AI as a tool for empowerment, not replacement.
- Insisting that AI tools align with local values and needs, rather than accepting one-size-fits-all solutions from distant tech companies or federal mandates.
- Building coalitions across districts and states to share expertise and advocate for policies that center agency, accountability, and equity.
As Dallas schools Superintendent Stephanie Elizalde put it, “It’s irresponsible to not teach (AI). We have to. We are preparing kids for their future”. But preparing students for the future doesn’t mean ceding control to algorithms or outside interests. It means harnessing AI’s potential while holding fast to the public values that define American education.

The choices we make now — especially at the local level — will determine whether AI becomes a tool for equity and empowerment, or a force for further privatization and exclusion. Policymakers should focus less on top-down mandates and more on empowering local communities to lead. AI can strengthen public education, but only if we ensure that the people closest to students — teachers, families and local leaders — have the authority and resources to shape its use.

The world is changing fast. Let’s make sure our schools change on our terms.

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Patricia Burch is a professor at the USC Rossier School of Education and author of “Hidden Markets: The New Educational Privatization” (2009, 2020).

The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the author. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.
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14/05/2025
What will it take to implement the English Learner Roadmap in all California schools?

Children complete a grammar worksheet in Spanish at a dual-language immersion program in a Glendale elementary school.

Credit: Lillian Mongeau/EdSource

California published a guide for how districts should serve English learners seven years ago. It’s called the English Learner Roadmap Policy, and it’s largely seen as groundbreaking.

But many districts still haven’t used that road map to change their practices, advocates say.

“It’s not systemic across the state,” said Shelly Spiegel-Coleman, strategic adviser to Californians Together, a coalition of organizations that advocates for English learners. “You can go to school districts and ask teachers, ‘Have you ever heard of the road map?’ And they look at you like you’re from Mars. They’ve never heard of it.”

Lawmakers are now pushing to fully implement the road map, by passing Assembly Bill 2074, introduced by Assemblymembers Al Muratsuchi, D-Torrance, and David Alvarez, D-Chula Vista. If signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, the bill will require the California Department of Education to create a state implementation plan for the English Learner Roadmap with goals and a system to monitor whether those goals are met.

The department will have to first convene an advisory committee, made up of district and county offices of education, teachers, parents of English learners and nonprofit organizations with experience implementing the English Learner Roadmap Policy. The department will have to submit the final implementation plan to the Legislature by Nov. 1, 2026, and begin reporting on which districts, county offices of education and charter schools are implementing the plan by Jan. 1, 2027.

A lack of funding changed the scope of the bill. An earlier version would have also created three positions in the state Department of Education to develop, plan and then support districts to implement the English Learner Roadmap Policy. However, those positions were cut from the bill by the Senate Appropriations Committee due to costs. A separate bill that would have created a grant program to implement the road map, Assembly Bill 2071, failed to pass the Senate Appropriations Committee, because there was no money allocated in the budget.

You can go to school districts and ask teachers, ‘Have you ever heard of the road map?’ And they look at you like you’re from Mars. They’ve never heard of it.

Shelly Spiegel-Coleman, strategic adviser, Californians Together

The California English Learner Roadmap Policy was first approved by the California State Board of Education in 2017 as a guide for school districts, county offices of education and charter schools to better support English learners.

For many, the road map represented a pivotal change in the state’s approach to teaching English learners. It was adopted just months after voters passed Proposition 58 in 2016, which eliminated restrictions on bilingual education put in place by Proposition 227 in 1998. In stark contrast to the English-only policies in place under Proposition 227, the road map emphasizes the importance of bilingual education and bilingualism and of recognizing the assets of students who speak other languages, in addition to emphasizing teaching that “fosters high levels of English proficiency.”

Anya Hurwitz, executive director of SEAL, a nonprofit organization that trains teachers and district leaders and promotes bilingual education, called the English Learner Roadmap a “comprehensive, visionary, research-based policy.”

“It’s aspirational. It’s very much written for a future state, when California can center the student population that is so much at the core of who we are as a state and yet has this history of being treated as an afterthought or a box at the end of a curriculum,” said Hurwitz. “And nonetheless the state needs an implementation plan. Things don’t get done unless we have methodical plans.”

The Legislature has twice created grant programs for districts to get help implementing the English Learner Roadmap Policy. In 2020, the California Department of Education (CDE) awarded $10 million to two grantees, Californians Together and the California Association for Bilingual Education, each of which worked with other organizations, county offices of education and school districts. In 2023, the department awarded another $10 million to four county offices of education, in Sacramento, Los Angeles, San Bernardino and Orange counties.

These programs, however, were optional, and not all districts participated in the training or assistance.

“We feel it’s really necessary for CDE to be very vocal and in the center of stating how important the English Learner Roadmap is, and how important it is to implement,” said Martha Hernandez, executive director of Californians Together. “When CDE says the road map is a priority, it begins to filter down to the districts. But we’re not really hearing that it’s that important from CDE.”

Graciela García-Torres, director of multilingual education for the Sacramento County Office of Education, said the English Learner Roadmap brings her hope, as a former English learner herself and as a parent.

“As a parent, I also see that it supports me in my endeavor to have children that grow up bilingually, knowing their culture and language is just as beautiful and important as English,” García-Torres said.

García-Torres said the Sacramento County Office of Education has worked hard to help districts implement the road map, but a state implementation plan and more funding are needed.

“I’m afraid that without another grant or an implementation plan, it may go back to being pretty words on the page,” García-Torres said.

Debra Duardo, Los Angeles County superintendent of schools, said the English Learner Roadmap has made a big difference in some districts.

“Some of the things I’ve seen changing is the philosophy around English language learners and really moving from this deficit mentality, of ‘these are children who can’t speak English,’ to really celebrating the fact that they’re speaking multiple languages,” said Duardo.

She said having clear goals and requiring districts to report how they’re implementing the plan will be crucial, so that the state can see where districts are struggling and how CDE can help them.

“There are always going to people who feel like this is one more thing that you’re placing on us and it doesn’t come with funding attached to it,” said Duardo. “Districts are struggling. They don’t have their extra pandemic dollars, they didn’t have a very big COLA, and just finding the resources to implement anything can be a challenge.”

Megan Hopkins, professor and chair of UC San Diego’s department of education studies, said many states struggle with implementation of guidance around English learners. She said a statewide plan for implementing the road map is needed, in part because many teachers and administrators don’t think English learner education applies to them.

“English learners are often sort of viewed as separate from, or an add-on, to core instructional programs. I think what happens is people are like, ‘Oh, that’s nice, but it’s not related to what I do over here in math education,’ when in fact it is,” said Hopkins.

Aleyda Barrera-Cruz, executive director for multilingual learner services at the San Mateo-Foster City School District, south of San Francisco, said she has attended professional development sessions on the English Learner Roadmap Policy with EL RISE!, the coalition led by Californians Together, and read through every guidance document they’ve written about the road map.

“Where it gets tricky is sometimes things are written in a way that are not very implementation friendly. They’re written in a very theoretical way like, ‘These are the recommendations,’ so we as districts have to decide what that would look like in our district. There’s a lot of room for interpretation,” Barrera-Cruz said.

She said principals and teachers sometimes interpret the guidelines in different ways at different schools. She would like to see CDE make it very clear how to do things like teaching English language development (teaching English to children who do not know the language), including examples of lesson plans and videos of best practices in the classroom.

“I’m working with a very diverse group of educators. Some have learned this in their teaching credential program; some have not,” Barrera-Cruz said.

Elodia Ortega-Lampkin, superintendent of Woodland Joint Unified School District, near Sacramento, said superintendents and school board members need training to understand why the English Learner Roadmap is needed.

“People watch what you value and the message you send,” Ortega-Lampkin said. “It’s very hard for a principal to do this on their own without the district support. It’s got to come down from the top, including the board.”

She said Woodland Joint Unified required all administrators and teachers to attend training about the English Learner Roadmap. They also have to use the road map when writing their mandatory annual school plans for student achievement.

“It was not an option. It was an expectation. If we have English learners in Woodland and we’re serious about helping them succeed, we need to use a framework that is research-based and provides support for districts. Instead of piecemealing, it’s all in one to help guide those conversations in our schools,” Ortega-Lampkin said.

Before training with the English Learner Roadmap, Ortega-Lampkin said not everyone understood how to teach English language development, often referred to as ELD.

“It was hard to get everyone to buy in and teach ELD. We don’t have that anymore. It’s not a discussion. People just know that ELD needs to happen. I think it’s helped change the mindset and build a better understanding,” Ortega-Lampkin said.

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14/05/2025
NEA: Trump Slashes Education Budget, Encourages Privatization of Public Schools

The National Education Association analyzed Trump ‘s proposed budget and finds that it contains deep cuts and massive support for privatization by promoting vouchers and charter schools. The proposal mirrors Project 2025 by turning Titl 1 for low-income students and IDEA funding into block grants that can be converted to vouchers. The overall goal is to undermine public schools and cut funding.

FY2026 Budget Request Slashes Education Funding, Shortchanges Students

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President Trump’s FY2026 “skinny” budget request to Congress, released on May 2, cuts non-defense domestic spending by 22.6%. The Department of Education sustains a $12 billion reduction, a cut of approximately 15.3%.

! Since the President’s budget does not list specific funding requests for every federal program, the 46-page document is a “skinny” budget. Congress ultimately has the power of the purse, but the proposal is a clear signal of the White House’s priorities: a massive 24 percent cut to U.S. domestic spending, and, privitazing our nation’s public education system.

 The narrative says the budget “maintains full funding for Title I,” but the numbers tell a different story. Title I and 18 unidentified programs are combined to create a single block grant, dubbed the “K-12 Simplified Funding Program,” then that block fund is cut by $4.535 billion cut.

 All seven Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) programs are combined to create a single block grant called the “Special Education Simplified Funding Program.” The approach perpetuates the current shortfall—the federal government now covers 13% of special education costs, far short of the 40% Congress promised when the law was passed.

 Programs slated for elimination include English Language Acquisition (Title III) and the Teacher Quality Partnership, which addresses the teacher shortage through deep clinical practice.

 The budget shifts costs to states and institutions of higher education to reduce the federal investment in today’s students—our nation’s future leaders and workforce—as much as possible.

 Regrouping specific, separate programs into block grants, in theory gives states more flexibility on how the money is spent. In reality, block grants usually lead to less funding and less accountability for our most vulnerable students. As the strings attached to the funding are cut, many states could maneuver block grant funds over to private school voucher programs.

 Amidst these cuts, the proposal calls for investing $500 million, an increase of $60 million, to expand the number of charter schools across the country. Charter schools, along with private school vouchers, drain scarce resources for traditional public schools.

May 2025

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14/05/2025
LAUSD board passes resolution vowing to support parent employees
Credit: Julie Leopo/EdSource
Top Takeaways

The Los Angeles Unified School District school board passed a resolution to support parent employees.

The district will gather data to help understand employees’ needs and what it will take to fulfill them.

This resolution is just the beginning — and a more detailed plan is expected in November.
The Los Angeles Unified School District’s school board unanimously approved at Tuesday’s meeting a resolution to support employees who are parents.

Currently, many LAUSD employees fail to qualify for California’s state-paid family leave, according to the resolution. During public comments at Tuesday’s meeting, several teachers and community members said they did not feel adequately supported by Los Angeles Unified when they had children.

“I’ve met countless educators, school staff members, who have had challenges with the whole parental package, with healthcare, with child care, with parental leave. And so this really, this resolution, really bore out of those stories and the opportunities to change L.A. Unified to be that employer of choice for parents,” said Ortiz Franklin, who introduced the resolution, alongside board members Karla Griego and Kelly Gonez.

“We have a big vision in this district for our kids to achieve at really high levels. And, we know that our staff needs to be well to be able to do that — and this is going to support them in their journey, to support our kids.”

The resolution — “Parental Package: LAUSD as an Equitable Employer of Choice for Thriving Families” — addresses various stages of parenthood, including family planning, pregnancy and parental leave and childcare.

It also aims to boost employee retention in a female-dominated field and make LAUSD a model for other districts across the nation.

Tuesday’s resolution is just the beginning of a longer process.

It calls for data collection on various factors, including employee demographics, the amount of time employees take off, the number of employees who have children enrolled in Los Angeles Unified’s early education programs, healthcare plan coverage and any financial impacts of providing over 12 weeks of family leave.

The district will also conduct a study to gauge employees’ interest in having children, family planning needs, access to LAUSD’s provided reproductive support, healthcare benefits, obstacles employees encounter in taking time off, information about childcare and the nature of employees’ current children’s education.

Based on their findings, the Los Angeles Unified School District will have to come up with a plan by November. And in the meantime, the district will be expected to work toward providing adequate lactation spaces, identify liaisons to support parent employees and find affordable childcare providers to consult on an as-needed basis.

“After the birth of my first daughter, I returned to the classroom happily, excited. I nursed my baby and during my unpaid lunch break, that was fine, until it wasn’t,” said Tanya Reyes, a veteran teacher with LAUSD, who created a support group within United Teachers Los Angeles, the district’s teacher’s union, to support other working moms. “After the disagreement with my administrator, I was told my daughter was a liability. My pay was docked. Not once. Not twice — but three times.”

“Mothers need paid leave — not sick time, not borrowed time. Paid leave,” Reyes added during public comment at Tuesday’s board meeting. “Families need policies that protect us, and those policies must be enforced.”
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14/05/2025
We can care for each other — and our schools can teach us how

Credit: Allison Shelley/The Verbatim Agency/EDUimages

The start of the school year can be anxiety-producing. We get the anxiety. Believe us, we do. Between the three of us, we parent a kindergartner, a ninth grader and a freshman in college. We know how scary it is to feel like your child is falling behind in a game with life-shaping stakes. But, as this new school year gets started, we’re trying to worry less about our own kids and put our energy into a broader, collective educational enterprise.

To understand what that collective enterprise might look like, it helps to step back and think about the goals that motivate public education. Contemporary schools serve at least three crucial social goals: helping individuals flourish, sorting students into roles in our highly differentiated economy, and creating a broader sense of solidarity.

As we settle into our fall routines, we often focus on the first two goals at the expense of the third. Because we know that education shapes our children’s life chances, we want our kids to get into the advanced math class, make the honor roll, and claim the high-status educational positions that clear the way to high-status positions in the broader world. We start to see the whole educational system as a vast tournament, where students compete for access to learning opportunities that provide access to more advanced learning opportunities that, ultimately, open the way to elite positions in the adult world.

No wonder we’re all so stressed out. We’ve turned education into a zero-sum game and invested that game with high stakes. We once talked about education as a pathway to the middle class. But today, as educational debt loads rise and machine intelligences fuel job insecurity, that pathway feels like a tightrope without a net. And that’s just part of the story. In a meritocratic culture that sees educational success as a marker of worth, we feel like our children need to excel in order to prove they matter.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

In fact, America’s new favorite social studies teacher and high school football coach shows us how different schools can be. As a long-serving public school teacher, Tim Walz recognized the way sports can bring a community together and how school leaders can channel that community toward inclusion and belonging for all students. In the classroom, he developed learning experiences that challenged students to understand the recurring sources of conflict and genocide, helping them see connections between communities across the globe. As a politician, he resisted school choice policies that allow families to wall themselves off from one another and championed a vision of schools as places where everyone — regardless of their family income — can come together around a meal.

You don’t have to be a teacher, coach or policymaker to advance this vision.

Parents, you can choose to send your child to the most diverse public school available to them; leave the packed lunch at home and encourage your child to eat in the cafeteria; praise your child for encouraging a peer who is struggling to fit in; organize parents from throughout your school’s community to get involved; and advocate for policies that provide public schools with the resources they need to ensure that all kids thrive; and vote for leaders who will make those policies a reality.

This fall, as we post back-to-school photos to social media, we’d do well to remember — and celebrate — that school is the place where we learn how to play well with others. This key lesson in social solidarity requires a curriculum far more complicated than Calculus and more nuanced than AP Literature. School teaches us to see ourselves as individuals embedded in a complex set of relationships with others. It teaches us to respect those around us, to observe them with care and empathy in order to identify, and adjust to the intricacies of any given interaction.

Taking these lessons seriously opens us — and our children — up to a deep humility and a profound sense of responsibility. When we are aware of our connections to others, we can’t help but remember that each of the people we run into has an inner life every bit as rich as our own. That we are just one of 8 billion other humans — and countless other organisms — on this planet, each of which shares the same will to survive.

This sense of solidarity is a badly needed antidote to the preening and divisive rhetoric that will dominate the news this election season. Solidarity allows us to step back and gain some perspective on our grievances, reminding us to consider our own wants in light of the wants and needs of others.

If we don’t want the divisiveness that defines our politics to define our society, we need to work together to turn away from educational competition and build schools that create solidarity.

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Emily K. Penner, Ph.D., is associate professor of education in the school of education at the University of California, Irvine. Her research focuses on K-12 education policy and considers the ways that districts, schools, teachers and families contribute to and ameliorate educational inequality.

Thurston Domina is associate dean for academic affairs and director of graduate studies at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill School of Education.

Andrew Penner is a professor in the sociology department at the University of California, Irvine and director of the Center for Administrative Data Analysis.

They recently co-authored the book, Schooled & Sorted: How Educational Categories Create Inequality.

The opinions in this commentary are those of the authors. We welcome guest commentaries with diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.

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14/05/2025
NEA: The Purpose of Block Grants is to Diminish Federal Responsibility for Education

Project 2025’s section on education proposes that the U.S. Department of Education’s largest funding streams for K-12 schools be turned into block grants to the states with minimal oversight. The two big programs are Title 1 for poor kids and the funding for students with disabilities (IDEA).

The states would be free to convert these funds into vouchers, instead of spending them on low-income students or students with disabilities.

The National Education Association explains here:

Block Grant Overview

Typically, the deal between the federal government and states when specific program funds are block-granted is that the federal government will provide less funding in return for less regulation and requirements. With less regulation, the assumption is that states should be able to do as much or more with less money. While it may be appealing initially to those who administer federal grants at the state and local level, in reality, fewer dollars mean fewer programs and services. States and school districts may have more flexibility in using federal funds but it comes at the expense of the students the federal grant program was designed to help in the first place.

Many states already underfund their commitment to public education. If states and districts don’t cover the shortfall, students receiving Title I and IDEA services will suffer. Furthermore, both Title I and IDEA have maintenance of effort and supplement, not supplant requirements to ensure states and districts hold up their levels of spending when receiving federal funds. Those requirements will fall away, too, and, most likely, so will the funding commitments by states and districts.

Title I of the ESEA and IDEA were created to ensure all students have equal access to an education, regardless of family income or disability. Many states were failing to adequately educate students in these populations, if at all. The federal role here was clear: where a student lived or their circumstances should not determine the quality of their education. ESEA and IDEA enshrined this principle and attached specific conditions and requirements that states must follow, in return for federal financial assistance, to ensure that students from lower-income families and communities and those with disabilities have the same opportunity to learn as any other student. “No-strings-attached” block grant funding turns the clock back 60 years on education policy and progress, and turns its back on our nation’s commitment to educating all students. While one would like to think that we can trust states to do the right thing on behalf of all students, history tells us differently.

Providing states with federal aid and fewer requirements leaves the door open for states to do as they wish. Title I of ESEA and IDEA include important requirements and protections for students and families precisely because they were lacking previously. At its core, the Department of Education is a civil rights agency, providing dollars, regulations, requirements, guidance, technical assistance, research, monitoring, and compliance enforcement to preserve and protect students’ access to a free and appropriate education. Strip it away, and you strip away the rights of certain students to a meaningful education.

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13/05/2025
A policy analyst forecasts how the May state budget revision will impact school funding

Transcript

Every year, by May 15, the governor has to revise his proposed budget, and this is when the budget season really kicks off.

So, just as individuals are concerned about personal finances, retirements, the impacts of inflation, and uncertainty about government services, the state is facing those same sorts of uncertainties. And in this case, uncertainty really rolls downhill. There’s national uncertainty, which is causing state revenue uncertainty and budget uncertainty, which then impacts the state’s education budget decisions, that will then impact what school districts are facing as they head into adopting their budgets by the end of June.

So, we know that the revenue outlook for the current year that ends June 30 looks pretty good, so will that protect us?

I’d sort of hoped that they would, but the short answer is no, and that’s because of some nuances in how Prop 98 works. A lot of those extra revenues that have come in are actually going to count against last year, the 2023–24 fiscal year. And in that year, the Legislature actually suspended the constitutional guarantee for a year. So even though there are extra revenues, none of those revenues will go to schools.

As we look to the future, to the 2025–26 school year, the forecasts are looking much more pessimistic. The Legislative Analyst’s Office just came out with a projection of revenues for next year being down around $8 billion. That would trickle down to schools getting about $3.5 billion less compared to what their current programs receive.

I would expect schools to get the program that’s in place for the current year, plus a cost-of-living adjustment (COLA), which is currently expected to be about 2.3%. That probably seems pretty low to most folks, especially given some of the costs districts might face—salary increases that have already happened due to inflation, the rising costs teachers are facing, plus pensions and other obligations. So, the costs districts are facing may be going up more than the 2.3% COLA they’re getting.

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13/05/2025
State aid for religious schools? Bad idea for faiths and taxpayers

U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C.

Credit: Stephen Talas / Unsplash

Your tax dollars could soon lift a rainbow of religious educators — from Christian academies to pro-Palestinian classrooms — as the U.S. Supreme Court teeters on forcing states to aid sectarian schools.

In oral arguments last month, the high court’s conservatives voiced eagerness to reverse an Oklahoma ruling that blocked public funding for a virtual charter school infused with Catholic teachings, an online scheme designed by the Tulsa diocese.

Oklahoma’s far-from-woke Supreme Court agreed with the state attorney general in Drummond v. Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board that taxpayer funding for religious web-based classes would violate America’s sacred separation of church and state. This key element of our Constitution insulates all faiths from state intrusion, while vesting shared civic duties, like education, within a tolerant and secular government.

But muddled logic ruled this day in the high court among jurists like Samuel Alito, a self-described “practical originalist,” long insisting that judges must abide by the Constitution’s original intent. Alito at one point attacked Oklahoma’s Republican attorney general, Gentner Drummond, claiming that he “reeks of hostility towards Islam.”

This odd allegation stemmed from Drummond’s point that “while many Oklahomans undoubtedly support charter schools sponsored by various Christian faiths, the precedent … will compel approval of similar applications by all faiths.” Alito mangled the argument, alleging that Drummond is “motivated by hostility toward particular religions.”

Alito dodged the bedrock question of whether taxpayer support of religion is permitted by the nation’s founding covenants. Instead, his tortured reasoning claimed that public programs cannot “discriminate” against religious schools.

California hosts more charter schools than any other state. In districts like Los Angeles Unified, one-fifth of all students attend a charter school, which did help lift student achievement for two decades before the pandemic. Still, Alito is not alone in negotiating the shifting ideologies and ironic surprises that mark the charter school movement.

These publicly funded but independently run campuses were first authorized by Minnesota’s Legislature in 1991, founded on the rather Christian yearning for fairness, allowing poor families to escape mediocre public schools and shop for effective teachers. California’s charter law, approved one year later, emphasized how these small hot-houses of innovation would hurry reform of regular public schools.

But few advocates foresaw how the rapid spread of charters would drive religious schools into the ground. Why pay even modest tuition for parochial school when a free charter has opened nearby? Enrollment in Catholic schools has fallen by one-third nationwide since the advent of charter schools; more than one thousand campuses have closed. Small Christian schools have taken a hit as well, with nearly one hundred shuttered in Los Angeles alone.

So, the pushback by religious educators is understandable, with some (not all) sects eager to tap into public funding. If the Supreme Court now rules that states must subsidize faith-filled charter schools, Alito could realize his apparent wish for more Catholic or Confucian schools.

But do spiritual leaders desire a messy entanglement with government? States typically require local school boards, when chartering independent educators, to ensure safe buildings, enforce shared curricular goals, and demonstrate that schools elevate student learning. Conservative jurists may well invite the state to squash evangelical charters that exclude Jewish kids, or protect the errant Presbyterian pupil who refuses to chant from the Quran.

The high court has already permitted limited public financing of religious schools. This includes taxpayer-financed vouchers in select states that help parents pay tuition for sectarian schools, along with tax credits that mostly benefit affluent families enrolling children in private schools. (Los Angeles Unified recently settled with the Catholic archdiocese, reimbursing the church $3 million to cover Title I services required by related court decisions.)

But these earlier rulings “involved fairly discrete state involvement,” Chief Justice John Roberts said during oral arguments, while warning that Oklahoma’s potential oversight of religious schools “does strike me as much more comprehensive involvement.” His vote will likely decide whether public dollars flow to religious schools.

Perhaps it’s reassuring that right-wing judges like Alito remain so protective of religious liberty, sniffing out unlikely opponents of Islam or the Vatican. But telling states and taxpayers we must subsidize sectarian schools, then inviting government inside churches, synagogues and mosques, will only fracture the once common cause of public schools.

•••

Bruce Fuller is an emeritus professor of education and public policy at UC Berkeley and author of “When Schools Work.”

The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the author. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.

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13/05/2025
Coming Soon: Knowledge-Rich, Book-Centered High School Reading Curriculum

As many readers probably know, we have written and published a middle school reading curriculum built around the science of reading.

And now we’re writing a high school curriculum as well!

We think this is a hugely important project. There’s very little high-quality curriculum out there for high school English teachers that supports them with knowledge-rich and adaptable lessons to ensure deep study of important books.

Having been working on this project for a year or so, we’re excited to share some of the work we’ve done.

Let us start by telling you about two foundations of the high school curriculum—both of which will be familiar to those who know our middle school work.

First, our HS curriculum is book based. Statistics show that the amount of time kids spend reading at home doesn’t amount to the time they should be reading to develop and maintain their reading comprehension, according to research. To address this, we seek to build students’ love of books by centering units on full texts, not excerpts or selections, so students have time to engage deeply with the protagonist’s plight and with an author’s writing style. Additionally, we build students’ fluency by ensuring that class time (even in high school!) includes shared reading, so students read aloud and hear text pages come to life.

Second, the curriculum is knowledge-driven. As research shows, reading comprehension is directly tied to knowledge, so knowledge is infused throughout the unit where it most supports comprehension. Thinking well requires facts, and nonfiction readings and explicitly-taught vocabulary words help students unlock the deeper meanings in the anchor text. As in our middle school curriculum, dedicated retrieval practice helps students encode vocabulary, text details, and unit knowledge to strengthen their analysis of the text.

emphasis on books and knowledge is crucial for students across all grades, we recognize that there are some specific needs of high school students as they develop maturity and independence. And so a few aspects of our high school curriculum are new and different.

One hallmark of maturity is the ability to grapple with “big ideas,” those questions and issues that have reverberated through time, so in addition to daily discussion questions, the high school curriculum also includes opportunities for more extended and student-driven discussions. We’ve designed specific lesson plan formats that help teachers confidently run extended Discussion Seminars over the course of the unit, and developed and included supporting documents for teachers and students that outline the purpose and some best practices for leading and participating in discussions.

All that rich thinking and learning from discussion needs to be captured–so our curriculum supports teachers and students in intentional note taking, using the Cornell notes method. Lesson plans include spaces throughout the lesson where students can pause to recap class discussion or reflect on their learning in ways that intentionally support note taking and using notes more effectively.

Our first unit, John Steinbeck’s Mice and Men, is ready for purchase, and we’ll keep you informed as additional units are planned. In the meantime email us at ReadingCurriculum@teachlikeachampion.org if you’d like to know more or see a sample.

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13/05/2025
Is creativity a superpower in early education?

Credit: Zaidee Stavely/EdSource

Singing the ABC song. Learning the days of the week from a nursery rhyme. Making a finger-painted collage of little handprints.

Arts education has always been center stage in early education because little children are naturally creative, filled with wonder and the burning desire to express themselves. Arts and crafts not only help nurture a child’s natural imagination, they also boost small motor skills, sharpen hand-eye coordination and feed the insatiable need to play.

“Children don’t just play, they learn fundamental skills through play,” said Daniel Mendoza, a Placer County-based visual artist and specialist in early childhood education art practices. “Children are in a creative mindset all the time.”

While this may well be as true for teenagers as it is for toddlers, there is far more time and space allotted for playfulness in the early grades, when the crucial role of play in particular and creativity in general has long been a matter of common sense.

“Really, I’m just a common-sense professor, and somehow it became rogue,” said Kathryn Hirsh-Pasek, a professor of psychology at Temple University and an expert in the key role of play in learning. “What if we taught children the way we know the brain learns?”

Bringing joy back into the classroom is also what motivates Cindy Hoisington, an early childhood expert who specializes in reaching out to children from historically marginalized communities at the Education Development Center (EDC), a national education nonprofit.

“This is not anything new, knowing that play is so critical to children, whether it’s dramatic play, building play, creative arts play or physical play,” said Hoisington, a STEM expert who taught preschool for decades. “But as soon as they hit kindergarten and first grade, there’s this dichotomy that sets in. Play is something you get to do after you do the learning when, in fact, we know that play is an incredible vehicle for learning.”

Play, some experts suggest, may be the superpower of the young. A growing body of research suggests that play may even be a way to help close achievement gaps. One report, analyzing 26 studies from 18 countries, found that in communities from Rwanda to Ethiopia, children got higher learning boosts in literacy, motor skills and social-emotional development when attending child care centers that use a mix of instruction and free play as opposed to those focused solely on academics.

“Children are so naturally, intuitively ready with their curiosity, their motivation to explore the world and everything in it, to the point where that’s why the twos are so terrible, because you’re constantly chasing after them,” said Hoisington, who helps evaluate digital media for PBS. “Science, for instance, tends to have a bad rap as this dry body of knowledge that we have to learn, but really it’s a process of exploration that is very much integral with play.”

Tapping into that spirit of discovery with hands-on experiences is often best, experts say. Curiosity burns brightest in the early years, so letting kids loose to investigate the world is part of building a rich, play-based learning environment.

“Where young children are free to investigate by observing, touching and acting on the objects in their world,” said Deborah Stipek, an expert in early childhood at Stanford University. “This is how they learn about the world — for example, that some objects float and some sink. Through their own experimentation and observation, they may even arrive at hypotheses about the qualities that differentiate the two.”

From “The Wheels on the Bus” to “Baby Shark,” kiddos love to sing and love to learn, so why not teach through music? Singing the “Old MacDonald had a Farm” song can be educational, experts say, as well as a ritual for community building. Children can take turns deciding on which animal to pick, which builds vocabulary as well as sharing skills.

“Young children learn best by doing,” said Stipek. “Counting objects is better than counting dots on a worksheet because they can move the objects to help them keep track of how many they have counted. Worksheets are not all bad. They can provide opportunities to practice and consolidate skills. But children don’t develop new skills doing worksheets, and they are typically not nearly as engaging and fun.”

Tracing the alphabet in shaving cream or making tin-foil sculptures may seem like basic exercises, but they often teach sophisticated concepts. Playing make-believe games can teach numerous skills at once. Pretend restaurants need someone to write a menu, calculate a bill and greet diners, fostering literacy, numeracy and special-emotional learning all in one game, Hoisington notes.

Songs are a clever way to remember stuff because they make memorization easy and fun for little ones. Melodies and rhymes make the most of our limited working memory to help children embed basic facts into their long-term memory, bolstering depth of cognition.

“I still sing the ABC song in my head sometimes, if I want to know which letter comes before which letter,” admits Hoisington.

What’s often missed in the discussion of the role of play is that older children also need time for creativity and free play, as well as the arts. While there is much talk about the need to engage students, there is little focus on low-hanging fruit like increasing time for arts, sports and recess. Putting too much emphasis on academic skills in isolation undercuts the love of learning, some warn.

“Kids try to buck it, but certainly by first grade we’ve started to ruin them,” said Hirsh-Pasek. “We pound the curiosity right out of kids.”

Mendoza firmly believes teachers should be guides to adventure instead of taskmasters.

“You don’t have to be a dictator,” as he puts it, “you can be a Sherpa.”

So, why doesn’t the role of play get more respect in education? Why do we emphasize test scores over deep learning?

“We got to this place because people are scared,” said Hirsh-Pasek. “They’re feeling like they’re losing control, and they want to make sure their kid is ahead. We push it younger and younger and younger, and as we do that, we’re creating a situation where our kids are anxious wrecks and the parents are anxious wrecks.”

Some experts suggest that children need more time for play and creativity in the wake of the pandemic, not less. Credit: Lillian Mongeau / EdSource

Too few teachers and parents are aware that play helps build the architecture of the growing brain, experts say.

“Play is not frivolous; it enhances brain structure and function and promotes executive function (i.e., the process of learning, rather than the content), which allow us to pursue goals and ignore distractions,” as an American Academy of Pediatrics report put it. “When play and safe, stable, nurturing relationships are missing in a child’s life, toxic stress can disrupt the development of executive function and the learning of prosocial behavior; in the presence of childhood adversity, play becomes even more important.”

Some experts fear that the laser focus on falling test scores in recent years has led to a decrease in playful learning. They suggest that children need more time for play in the wake of the pandemic, not less. Amid the crisis of chronic absenteeism, engaging students on a compelling level may be more vital than ever.

Creativity is the secret formula, experts say, in a world where machines will always compute faster than humans. Drill and kill won’t help children master high-level intellectual inquiry and conceptual analysis.

“You have to ask yourself, what’s it going to take to outsmart the robots?” as Hirsh-Pasek put it. “We need kids who don’t just memorize and take tests well, which AI will do better than our kids ever will. We need kids to be explorers and problem solvers.”

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13/05/2025