In the spirit of Easter and Passover, in this holy week, it is perhaps fitting to talk about a different kind of blessing—the potential blessing afforded to hundreds of thousands of students through a unique and, as of late, rare occurrence of bipartisanship.

It began with a provision in the Republican-driven “Big, Beautiful Bill” and was subsequently endorsed by prominent Democrats. Jorge Elorza, head of Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) penned an op-ed alongside former Obama Education Secretary Arne Duncan endorsing the very program Congressional Republicans—and the President—advanced to give children in states that do not typically create choice programs the opportunity to access them through private contributions to scholarship-granting organizations.

Yes, it’s a mouthful—but it’s worth understanding. If this is important enough for Democrats who have traditionally opposed education freedom to go out on a limb—and for Colorado Governor Jared Polis to lead the charge among governors opting in—then it is important enough for the rest of us to pay close attention and consider what comes next.

The political landscape is shifting quickly. In Wisconsin, Governor Tony Evers vetoed a tax-credit scholarship bill this month, blocking access for families. But in Kentucky and North Carolina, legislatures overrode gubernatorial opposition to move forward. Pressure is building in Illinois and New York, where leaders remain divided or hesitant. Meanwhile, Governor Polis was willing to break with most in his party by opting in and opening access for families—even as lawmakers in his own state pushed back.

By contrast, governors in Oregon, New Mexico, and Minnesota—including Tim Walz—have signaled opposition or reluctance, effectively keeping families from accessing the program, at least for now.

These decisions are unfolding in real time, with immediate consequences. What often gets lost in the political debate is this: taxpayers in every state are eligible for the federal tax credit, whether their governor opts in or not. The money will flow. The only question is where.

If a governor declines to opt in, families in that state gain nothing—they simply lose access. Their taxpayers can still contribute and receive the credit, but the resulting scholarships will go to students in states that chose to participate. In other words, opting out does not stop the program. It redirects its benefits elsewhere.

That’s not a policy stance. It’s a transfer—away from a state’s own children and toward others.

That is why the DFER leadership has argued that Democratic governors should opt in:

“It’s a chance to show voters that they’re willing to do what it takes to deliver for students and families, no matter where the ideas originate. By opting in, a governor unlocks these resources for students in their state. Some Democratic leaders have hesitated, however, worried that the program could be seen as undermining public schools, since private scholarships are also eligible.

But that misses the point. Opting in doesn’t take a single dollar from state education budgets. It simply opens the door to new, private donations, at no cost to taxpayers, that can support students in public and nonpublic settings alike. That’s why opting in isn’t just defensible; it’s a no-brainer.”

This is, in many ways, a moment of renewal—of resurrection, even—for an idea that has been debated, delayed, and dismissed for decades, now returning in a form that may finally reach the children it was always meant to serve.

Do Some Governors Hesitate Out of Ignorance?

It’s tempting to assume that when governors hesitate—especially governors like Maryland’s Wes Moore—it’s driven by ambition, politics, or calculation. That’s the easy explanation. It’s also not always the right one.

I had dinner with now-Governor Moore several years ago at an ASU+GSV gathering, not long after he published The Other Wes Moore. We were seated together, and I walked him through what we do. He was genuinely surprised—engaged, curious, even bordering on supportive of education choice. It wasn’t performative. It was real. He followed up. Several times.

Which is why what I’ve heard recently—that there’s “no way” he would ever opt in—doesn’t quite add up.

At the recent National Governors Association meeting, I asked him directly if he was reconsidering. He looked at me, puzzled, and said he had no idea what I was referring to. When I explained the federal tax credit scholarship program, his response was immediate: “That sounds amazing. Who should I talk to?”

I followed up with folks in the know afterward, only to be told, ‘Oh, he was just saying that to you.’ But that doesn’t track. He didn’t know the question I was asking.

Call me naïve, but I don’t think this is cynicism. I think it’s absence—of information, of exposure, and perhaps, intentionally, of perspective. Governors hear what their inner circle puts in front of them. And sometimes, what they’re not hearing matters just as much.

Because much of the hesitation we’re seeing—particularly among Democratic governors—is not rooted in the policy itself. It’s rooted in misunderstanding, in mistrust of who’s delivering the message, and in the political framing surrounding it.

And yet, the decision in front of them is remarkably simple: opt in, or don’t.

Opting in doesn’t require building a new bureaucracy or designing a new program from scratch. It simply means recognizing scholarship-granting organizations and allowing families in their state to access a benefit that already exists.

The complexity is political. The decision is not. Right, Wes?

Politics as Usual

Imagine living in a state where your child is not meeting his potential—Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago—where schools are struggling, enrollment is declining, and closures are becoming routine. And yet your governor refuses to act, not because the policy is flawed, but because Donald Trump supports it and the unions oppose it. That’s the practical absurdity in front of us.

Governors are responsible for all children in their states—not just those aligned with a particular political coalition. Refusing to opt in for political reasons, while taxpayers in your own state can still send resources elsewhere, is not strategy. It’s folly.

The Federal Tax Credit Scholarship is not a niche program. It’s a broad expansion of educational freedom—privately funded, family-directed, and widely accessible. Beginning in 2027, individuals can receive a dollar-for-dollar federal tax credit of up to $1,700—$3,400 for married couples—for contributions to approved scholarship-granting organizations. Nearly every K–12 student could benefit, but the greatest impact will be among families with the fewest options, especially those in traditional public schools. That’s why this debate matters—and why the politics surrounding it must be called out plainly.

There is some good news. Once final regulations are issued—as expected—several Democratic governors may move together rather than alone, opting in in close succession. The interest is there. What’s missing is timing and confidence.

But delay has consequences. Every day a state waits is another day its taxpayers’ dollars can flow elsewhere.

And with 36 governors heading into election cycles, choosing not to bring flexible education funding into their states—funding that can support both public and nonpublic school students—isn’t just a missed opportunity.

It’s political malpractice.

Public School Kids Benefit Most

And it is happening at a moment when nearly all K–12 students could benefit from this kind of flexibility. Traditional public school students, who make up the overwhelming share of the population though less than it used to be in before an increasing pluralist education world—about 76%—have the most to gain, says Invest in Ed’s Peter Murphy. The law allows scholarship-granting organizations significant flexibility in how funds are used, including for a range of education-related expenses that can support students in public schools as well. That is why this is, in many ways, the most expansive and, frankly, most progressive education funding mechanism we have seen, he says. It empowers parents, across sectors, to direct resources toward what their children need.

There are plenty of places to go deeper on the mechanics—including a map from the Invest in Education Foundation, the Parent Power! Index state leadership scores, or ED and Treasury’s fact sheet—but it is worth pausing to resolve the central confusion about what this program is and is not.

What It Actually Is—and Isn’t

The first and most important misunderstanding is the belief that this is some kind of national scholarship program. It is not. This program is state-based.

To make this concrete, imagine a CER scholarship-granting organization established in Washington, D.C. It could raise money from donors anywhere in the country, and those contributors would receive the federal tax credit. But the funds themselves would have to be used to support students in Washington, D.C. The more money these organizations raise, the more scholarships they can provide. It is not $1,700 per child. It is whatever the organization has the capacity to deliver.

Importantly, these organizations are not intended to operate around a single school or a narrow group of students. They are meant to serve students across multiple schools and communities, ensuring that the program expands access rather than concentrating it. That is not a technical detail—it is part of what the rulemaking is designed to ensure, so that what was intended in law is actually carried through in practice.

Another area where confusion has crept in is how the tax credit is actually claimed. This is not a separate system; it is part of your tax filing. You make the qualified contribution in a given year—on or before December 31—and in the following tax year you claim the credit the way you claim any other credit.

Let it Bloom

The bottom line is this program exists to ensure that students who live in places that do not provide choices have those choices, regardless of the political climate in which they live. Isn’t that a marvelous idea—to shield children and their choices and their futures from political bickering?

Remember, as I have always said, state programs matter. How strong charter school laws are, how strong ESA and scholarship programs are, whether full and fair funding follows children—all of that matters more than any of this. But in the absence of those conditions in every state, this is one of the most critical endeavors any policymaker, parent, or civic leader could embrace.

Happy Spring! The beautiful Cherry Blossoms may have peaked—but opportunity is blooming.

Happy Easter, Buona Pasqua, Chag Pesach Sameach…Blessings! - Jeanne

I was honored—and candidly a bit curious—to be invited to the Fostering the Future Together: Global Coalition Summit, hosted by the ever-elegant #FLOTUS, Melania Trump, at the United States Department of State.

What stood out most was not any one presentation, but the opportunity to sit back and listen—to technologists, policymakers, and first spouses from more than 40 countries—discuss how artificial intelligence is already shaping education and what comes next.

As the First Lady said in opening the summit, the purpose is to “cultivate the skills students need to have in this rapidly changing world.” She urged participants to prioritize children above political philosophy and geographic boundaries, noting that progress accelerates when public and private sectors work together.

That framing carried through the day.

Incorporating AI into the Classroom

The First Gentleman of Slovenia reflected on how countries move through cycles of rejecting, ignoring, and eventually adopting new technologies—and said the current challenge is incorporating AI into curriculum. He emphasized the need to use whatever “soft power” is available to support children’s education and growth, and expressed hope that this group of first spouses could form a lasting coalition, potentially even a think tank.

From Serbia came a more direct question: AI is a challenge for humanity as a whole—so how do we incorporate human ethics?

That question—ethics—surfaced repeatedly.

The First Lady of Ukraine spoke about the importance of digital systems in moments of crisis, and how prior investments in digital education platforms enabled continuity in teaching and learning when traditional access was disrupted. The ability to stay connected, share accurate information, and maintain learning proved essential.

That reality connects directly to emerging technologies designed for both connected and disconnected environments.

Leaders from projects such as M50, working with Arizona State University’s Next Lab, described tools that operate independently of the internet—particularly relevant for rural or restricted-access environments. In places like Sudan, ministries are providing localized data and curriculum, with AI systems built to reference and operate within those parameters rather than drawing from global datasets.

At the same time, other models are expanding access through connectivity. Starlink for education is now serving more than 5.5 million students across over 25,000 schools, providing high-speed internet access in remote areas without traditional infrastructure.

Between connected and disconnected solutions, the practical question becomes less about whether access is possible—and more about how it is implemented.

Opportunity and Responsibility

Several leaders focused on how AI intersects with governance, safety, and responsibility.

Ambassador Monica Crowley, Chief of Protocol of the United States, emphasized empowering students to expand their knowledge and use of AI while ensuring strong outcomes.

Linda McMahon, United States Secretary of Education, leading one of the sessions, underscored both the opportunity and the need for guardrails—highlighting the importance of embracing AI tools while ensuring they are used responsibly. She pointed to examples such as Alpha School’s customized AI models as evidence of how these tools can be applied effectively in education.

“Artificial Intelligence is a technological leap on par with the invention of the printing press and the rise of the Internet. It is no longer just a transformative technology, but a foundational one that is already shaping the world around us and education especially, it can serve as a powerful equalizer, opening doors of opportunity for students and expanding access to quality learning.

“Together, we can show how proper use of ed tech tools, including digital assessment programs, immersive simulations and adaptive learning systems, can be an enhancement to not as a replacement for human-centered classroom instruction, while simultaneously equipping students with the digital literacy they will need throughout their lives.”

State’s Deputy Secretary Christopher Landau noted the importance of helping children understand the potential for manipulation and emphasized: “Our job is to build, not just consume—build responsibly, not just consume.”

That distinction—between use and understanding—was a consistent undercurrent.

All Solutions Are Local

From Estonia came a focus on bridging innovation with child protection, with AI viewed through the lens of children’s rights.

Costa Rica framed the issue more simply: the digital world is no longer separate—it is where children live. The question is who guides them, and how they are guided so they are not navigating alone. Costa Rica has already begun implementing national AI policies centered on ethics and human safeguards.

The First Lady of Bangladesh shared that her country is working to make education—and AI tools—free through the postgraduate level.

Lithuania described its position as a leader in AI access within the European Union and emphasized the role of AI in personalizing education and expanding opportunity across social and economic lines. She offered a stark warning:

“Humanity will have no future for teachers if we only teach tech and do not seek to institute high ethical norms across the globe.”

From the Seychelles came a reminder that while technology advances, it should not come at the cost of human connection: devices should not cause us to lose our human touch.

Parent Power, Not Government Regulation

Andrew Ferguson, Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, spoke to the broader purpose of innovation, stating that it is not for its own sake, but to promote the flourishing of people—especially children. He emphasized that regulation cannot replace parents and called for a pro-parent lens in approaching AI policy.

He also pointed to recent federal efforts to protect children online, underscoring the role of leadership in advancing those protections.

Prioritizing Digital Literacy

Across countries—including Kenya, North Macedonia, Israel, and others—there was a consistent focus on digital literacy as a national priority and a shared recognition that AI is already embedded in the lives of young people.

The conversations were practical, immediate, and in many cases already underway.

And while approaches varied, the common themes were clear: access, ethics, literacy, and responsibility.

Guidance and Guardrails

Of course, every time there’s a new technology or new effort—even though this is remarkably different—we have to make sure we understand that just because a product calls itself AI, or responsible, or ethically sound, or focused on literacy, it isn’t necessarily so.

We have to be looking for people and products that actually provide guidance and guardrails to teachers to help evaluate—not to mention ensuring that educators themselves understand and become expert in its use so they can better cultivate and guide students.

This is not just about producers. Producers will naturally be self-interested. And self-interest is not inherently bad—as long as there is a watchdog, and people ensuring that, in the words of the head of the FCC, “we are being very pro-parent and recognizing how easy it [AI] is to manipulate.”

That brings us directly to the issue of school choice.

Because there will be parents who simply don’t trust what is being provided or developed. And in that case, they need options—options that allow them to choose the schools and organizations that can best serve their children and use these tools effectively.

Maybe it’s a Chesterton Schools Network, which deliberately takes a non-tech-focused approach and relies on books and the Socratic method.

Maybe it’s a School House Model that uses a broad range of tools.

Maybe it’s a hybrid microschool model like those catalyzed by KaiPod Learning.

Whatever the choices are, there must be choices.

That’s why the Federal Scholarship Tax Credit seems to be increasing in popularity—which is important—but confusion abounds.

Next week, I’ll share more about what it is—drawing on the organizations that have done so much work to put it in place—and also what it is not. Because even some people in the field seem to think this is a program more about selling products than serving students.

Hope I’ve teased that enough for you to come back next week!

Until then, enjoy these increasingly beautiful spring days - Jeanne

The Long Arc of Charter Schools

More than three and a half decades after the first charter school law passed, charter schools have become one of the most enduring and impactful education reforms in modern American history.

Today, 47 states and the District of Columbia have charter school laws, and more than 3.7 million students attend charter schools nationwide. Tens of thousands more remain on waitlists each year. It’s not enough.

CER’s Parent Power!^® Index, which measures the degree to which states afford parents opportunity and innovation, shows a clear pattern: states that create strong charter school laws expand opportunities for families, while states without them leave parents with far fewer options.

Charter schools were born out of a simple idea: give educators the freedom to innovate and hold them accountable for results.

In thousands of communities across the country, that idea has worked.

Charter schools have opened doors for students who were previously trapped in systems that did not serve them well. They have incubated new models of teaching and learning. They have created opportunities for educators and community leaders to build schools that reflect the needs and aspirations of families.

But the story of charter schools is not just one of growth.

It is also a story of unfinished work.

South Dakota Had the Opportunity

This year, South Dakota had the opportunity to join the national charter school movement.

Legislation that would have allowed charter schools to operate in the state was introduced and drew serious attention. Families, educators, and policy leaders across the country were watching closely.

But when the moment came, legislative leadership chose not to move the bill forward.

The effort stalled. Not because the idea lacked merit, and not because families lacked interest, but because the political will to finish the job simply wasn’t there.

Across the country, charter school laws have often required multiple attempts before they finally passed. South Dakota may simply be at that point in the story.

But this year, the opportunity was there — and it slipped away.

Yet, when the door opens, the builders will be ready. Some already are.

Consider Mary Jo Fairhead, founder of Onward Learning, a nationally recognized model serving students whose educational journeys have been disrupted.

Through flexible learning environments, career pathways, and personalized support, Onward Learning has helped students who might otherwise fall through the cracks reconnect with education and graduate with purpose.

In fact, Onward Learning was awarded a $500,000 STOP Award through the Yass Prize because of its success helping students find their way forward.

Models like this are exactly the kind of innovative schools that charter laws make possible.

They are built by entrepreneurs who see problems that traditional systems struggle to solve — and who are willing to build new institutions to solve them.

States that create strong charter laws invite these innovators in.

States that don’t leave them waiting. Governor Larry Rhoden and South Dakota lawmakers: take note.

The Map Is Nearly Full

For many years, the march toward nationwide charter school access moved steadily forward. States across the political spectrum adopted laws allowing communities to create independent public schools designed around innovation and accountability.

Today, only a handful of states remain without charter school laws. These include:

• South Dakota

• Nebraska

• Vermont

Forty-seven states (including North Dakota, which enacted a strong charter school law just last year) have decided that empowering educators and families to create new public schools is worth doing. Only three have not.

Nearly every other state has concluded that empowering educators to build mission-driven public schools — while holding them accountable for results — is worth doing.

The question now is whether the remaining states will give their families the same opportunity.

Strong Laws Matter

Passing a charter school law is important. But enacting a strong law is what truly changes the landscape.

For years, CER has emphasized that the quality of a charter law determines whether innovation can actually take root. The National Charter School Laws and Ranking Scorecard that CER has been putting out since 1996 has consistently shown that states with strong charter school laws create real opportunity for families, while weak laws often result in little growth at all.

Strong laws are laws that:

• Allow multiple independent authorizers, including universities so strong Independent charter schools can thrive without overzealous regulators from traditional government agencies replacing their autonomy with micromanagement.

• Ensure and accelerate growth by having no cap on the number of charter schools permitted.

• Provide real autonomy, giving schools and teachers the freedom to operate and educate students as parents choose.

• Ensure full and fair funding that follows the child, including support for facilities and transportation.

States that incorporate these principles tend to see vibrant ecosystems of schools serving diverse communities. States that do not are weak and often laws in name only. They do not stimulate healthy charter schools that can thrive and grow and attract others. Think Maryland, Virginia, and Kansas to name just a few.

Even states with long-standing charter movements continue to improve their policies.

Just look at Florida, consistently a top performer on the National Charter School law rankings, expanded the authorizing landscape just five years ago to allow higher education institutions to sponsor and start charter schools.

Continuing to innovate, institutions of higher ed are recognizing the important connection between their work and K-12. Under the leadership of Manny Diaz, former state Commissioner of Education, the University of West Florida (UWF) is the latest to become a charter school sponsor.

It is a reminder that passing a charter law is not the finish line; it is the beginning of building a strong ecosystem where innovative schools can thrive.

Iowa Shows What Leadership Looks Like

A powerful example of this is Iowa, where Governor Kim Reynolds took a failing law from 31st to 11th by leading on a few simple but important changes.

First, in 2021 the state established a new law greatly expanding authorizers. In 2024, she led the fight to improve funding parity and facilities access for charter students, and, the latest budget bill equalizes state funding for public charter and ESAs. And now, she is racing to enact even bigger and better opportunities for charter schools to grow and be even more innovative.

Rather than simply checking a policy box, Iowa has worked to create conditions where new schools can emerge and families can access real alternatives. Leadership matters in moments like this.

Governors and legislatures that recognize the importance of educational innovation can open doors that have been closed for decades. Top 10 is within reach!

The Road to 50

With most of the country already embracing charter schools, the question is no longer whether the model works. The evidence is overwhelming. The real question is whether the remaining states will allow their families to access and whether those with weak laws will recognize there is no limit to what educators can do if you give them the opportunity to create their own schools.

History suggests they eventually will. In reality, parent power decides what comes next.

As demand from parents, educators, and community leaders continues to grow, it becomes impossible to ignore, policy tends to follow.

South Dakota’s legislative leadership may have stepped back this year. Parents did not.

Across the country, the expansion of educational opportunity has been driven not only by policy experts or advocacy groups, but by families who insist that their children deserve better options.

That is why the Parent Power!^® Index exists — to measure whether states are empowering families or standing in their way.

And it is why elections matter.

When lawmakers decline to move forward on policies that expand opportunity, voters often decide the issue themselves. The next round of primaries will be critical to whether South Dakota’s leaders align with the families they serve.

Because the story of charter schools in America has always been the same: when parents demand change strongly enough, the map eventually fills in.

And when it does, 50 will not be far behind.

So many issues, so little time. Hope you enjoyed this week’s Forza on charter schools — once the biggest low-hanging fruit in education reform and still a critical piece of the progress we cannot afford to neglect.

A big shout-out to Jonathan and Katie on the CER team for their help pulling it all together today! Until next week — Jeanne

So I begin this week later than usual, with a broken hand, dictating through my friend ChatGPT and hoping I catch every extra flourish it tries to sneak in despite my very clear instructions to give me only what I said, period.

Which is exactly where I want to start — with AI and technology, and the growing concern that we are not coaching or leading students to understand how to use it well.

There are serious people thinking about this. Andy Rotherham at Bellwether is doing important work. My friend Todd Zipper at Axio continues to surface thoughtful conversations in this space. And next month I’ll be in Rome — and who isn’t interested in going to Rome? — for an AI conference hosted by education entrepreneurs who are wrestling with the right questions: How do we use AI for delivery without diluting content? How do we ensure that technology enhances, rather than replaces, the grounded human experience that must remain central to education?

I wrote last week about Alpha Schools. Interestingly, an Alpha student was represented in the First Lady’s box during the State of the Union. Alpha is compelling because it blends self-paced learning with strong teacher and parent engagement. That is how AI should flow — in support of relationships, not in replacement of them.

But even in the strongest models, caution is necessary. Students cannot be left to their own devices — literally — without the interaction that someday allows them to say, “That teacher changed my life.” AI cannot become the substitute for mentorship, challenge, or human connection.

In some ways, AI feels like the next generation of spellcheck. In other ways, it risks becoming the next sweeping fad that reshapes textbook publishing and instructional practice before we’ve fully understood the consequences.

As I dictate this into my chat window, I’m reminded of both its strengths and its limits.

Used well, it can be:

1. A stable assistant — when matched, cautioned, managed, and monitored.

2. A faster way to surface information than I might find sitting alone at a desk.

3. A tool that offers multiple viewpoints or data sources for me to examine and parse through.

When I think about how AI works best, I often think back to doing research in physical libraries. You’d identify the information you were looking for, go to the card catalog, search by subject, and ask the librarian to retrieve the books. Inevitably, she would bring additional volumes she thought might be helpful. You would compare sources, note different interpretations, discover differing opinions, and then write your paper.

When AI functions like that card catalog — surfacing information, offering sources, pointing to perspectives — it can be incredibly useful.

But the more I read the papers, as the old song goes, the less I comprehend how we are training students not to simply type a prompt into ChatGPT and ask it to write the paper for them. (Uncommon’s Northstar Academy in Newark has developed a thoughtful AI literacy course to do just this.)

I’ve caught it several times giving me information I did not say, do not agree with, or that simply was not true. At one point, when I asked it to incorporate the Education Secretary into something I was drafting, it confidently informed me that Linda McMahon was not the Education Secretary. That is a small but telling example.

These are not reasons to reject AI. They are reasons to teach discernment.

And it is something we should be talking about — perhaps even at ASU+GSV this April 12–14.

ASU+GSV: Innovation in Force

We will be at ASU+GSV, as we are every year, representing the innovators in the Yass Prize network and working alongside CER’s expansive community of leaders.

I’ll be on stage discussing educational pluralism — the reality that strong systems are built not through uniformity but through diverse models aligned around shared goals. I’m looking forward to conversations with colleagues across organizations and to seeing so many extraordinary education leaders spotlighted.

We’ll also be conducting live interviews from our booth, highlighting builders who are expanding opportunity in real time.

Stay tuned. I’ll make sure Forza readers know where and when to tune in.

If You’re Not Following Ed Reform in 10, You Should

If you have not subscribed to or are following Ed Reform in 10, now is the time.

True to its name, it’s a concise — roughly ten-minute — conversation series featuring some of the most interesting innovators, researchers, business leaders, and K–20 practitioners in the country. The interviews are conducted by a range of voices, including members of the Yass Prize community, alumni, our team, and occasionally yours truly.

Recent conversations include:

• Pat Brantley of Friendship Public Charter Schools in a terrific exchange with Amy Riker of Panorama Education.

• Sam Cauci of 1Huddle speaking with Caroline Allen about wasted talent and his plan to address it.

• A thoughtful discussion between Cris Gulacy-Worrel and Paul Quinn College President Dr. Michael Sorrell on democratizing work and opportunity in higher education.

• My most recent conversation with Mike Hoque, an entrepreneur who began as a cab driver and now owns his own fleet of cars in Dallas — a modern American Dream story about persistence, risk, and scaling opportunity.

And so much more.

When you’re serious about making great things happen for kids, it pays to stay informed. I always make sure we’re curating the best of the best — so you don’t have to.

Ed Reform in 10 is a partnership with Dash Media, founded by GSV and Michael Moe, and it brings together thoughtful, fast-paced conversations with the people actually building the future of education and opportunity.

Follow along here:
https://www.dashmedia.co/t/edreform-in-10

And share the episodes that resonate with you.

Entrepreneurs in the Room

For more than 33 years, CER’s greatest affinity has been for the people on the ground doing the work.

When I founded the organization, I wanted education to be a mainstream issue — something discussed at dinner tables alongside what was happening in town, who had just moved in, what challenges families were facing. But when I arrived in Washington, I found those conversations replaced by top-down bureaucratic thinking.

So we began bringing entrepreneurs into the room.

Last week, five finalists for the 2025 Yass Prize, including the $1 million winner, Chesterton Schools Network, met with leaders in the executive and legislative branches, as well as members of the media.

They described what actually happens on the ground — military families required to secure new IEPs each time they move despite interstate compacts, residents who lose access to program benefits when relocating, and the disconnect between how school choice programs are debated and how they function in reality for students.

These were not theoretical discussions. They were implementation conversations. And in meeting after meeting, you could see leaders absorbing nuance they simply do not have time to gather on their own.

That is why entrepreneurs must be in the room.

The Army of Normal Folks — Stepping Up for Each Other

Which is why the Army of Normal Folks initiative matters.

Supported by Stand Together, it is built on the same premise: change begins with individuals who step forward. By organizing local service clubs, giving circles, and structured pathways for engagement, it reduces the friction that prevents people from contributing.

While it does not focus exclusively on education, it reinforces something we have long believed — real progress happens when everyday leaders are connected, elevated, and supported.

Entrepreneurs build institutions. Communities sustain them.

The two are complementary.

A Brief Aside on Governors and Imagination

It was encouraging to hear Yo-Yo Ma at the recent gathering of the National Governors Association describe music as “rocket fuel for the imagination.”

That phrase lingers.

Innovation depends on imagination. And imagination must be cultivated intentionally — in classrooms, in communities, and in the civic life of a state.

Governors who understand that alignment between culture, education, and economic growth will shape the next chapter well.

A Final Word

Before the State of the Union, we outlined three education priorities we believed warranted attention: freedom, flexibility, and civic responsibility. The full press release lays them out in detail.

They remain essential — not as commentary on a single speech, but as conditions for the work we are seeing across the country.

If families do not have meaningful access to diverse models, innovation narrows.
If leaders do not have flexibility to use resources responsibly, growth slows.
If civic grounding is neglected, the foundation of self-government weakens.

The entrepreneurs we met with last week are building in real time. The question is whether policy will keep pace.

Wins are temporary. Policymakers change. Momentum must be reinforced deliberately and repeatedly.

I hope this issue helps you think through your next steps with that in mind.

Governors are convening in Washington this week to debate the nation’s most pressing challenges. Budgets. Borders. Energy. Growth.

Here’s one more: education.

Presidents’ Day week is as good a moment as any to issue a simple challenge. The leaders we honor were not merely officeholders. They were builders. They strengthened institutions that would endure.

Which brings us to the Presidents’ Day Proverbial Test: Are today’s leaders strengthening the institutions that secure liberty — especially education?

The Founders built a new structure of self-government grounded in shared principles and hard-won freedom. They protected private enterprise, reinforced civic institutions, and encouraged the founding of universities to prepare citizens for participation in this new experiment.

Education was not peripheral to that work. It was foundational. They understood that liberty requires knowledge — that freedom endures only when citizens are informed and institutions are strong.

That principle remains. The innovations unfolding across the country today — whether mastery-based models, classical curricula, or adaptive technologies — are not departures from our heritage. They are extensions of it. Take a look.

Alpha and the Omega

Across the country, schools are rethinking delivery while keeping the canon front and center. The concern many parents voice is familiar: When technology enters the classroom, do history and civics recede? Does screen-based learning dilute serious study?

Today, kids can learn faster, grow more per year, and feel more rewarded and successful when schools pair high-quality instruction with adaptive, personalized tools — and Alpha School has brought that approach into the spotlight. Alpha uses adaptive software to tailor core academics to each student’s pace and mastery, compressing the traditional academic day into focused blocks while freeing afternoons for projects, communication, and physical pursuits.

In a recent post, Silicon Valley technologist and parent Angus Davis described his family’s experience. At Alpha, students advance only after demonstrating mastery — often at a 90 percent proficiency standard. Seat time does not move them forward. Mastery does. The software keeps students in what he called the 80–90 percent “sweet spot,” stretching them without overwhelming them. Progress is visible. Diagnostic testing is routine, not ceremonial. Growth is measurable, not abstract.

“Today, kids can learn faster, grow more per year, and feel more rewarded and successful by giving them a personalized, adaptive learning tool. Alpha is one school that is pioneering such tools and popularizing them. There is nothing preventing other schools from adopting such tools or following the trail that Alpha has blazed.”

He is right. You do not need Alpha to accomplish that work. Innovation is not always invention. Sometimes it is doing a tried-and-true thing with greater fidelity and clearer expectations.

That was the spirit of the conversation at #POIS25 this past December, when Alpha founder Joe Liemandt joined Capitol Prep founder Dr. Steve Perry, and Steve Grubbs of VictoryXR to discuss delivery, standards, and AI.

The method may vary. The mission should not.

Watch here.

Different Models. Same Mission.

Last week’s Roadshow for Opportunity—when Yass Prize teams visit prior awardees — offered a clear reminder: schools can look very different and still pass the Presidents’ Day Proverbial Test.

The test is simple: Are you building with purpose? Are you strengthening the institution of education in a way that secures learning?

WonderHere

At WonderHere, the name is not branding. It is a model intentionally centered on ensuring children never lose their sense of wonder.

Led by former public school teachers, this Florida school blends Montessori principles, project-based learning, and hands-on exploration. Students move by developmental readiness, not rigid grade levels. The farm is part of the curriculum. Stewardship is lived, not lectured.

Child-centered does not mean content-light. The model is coherent, intentional, and serious about learning.

Read the full recap here.

Chesterton Schools Network

The Chesterton Schools Network, winner of the $1 million Yass Prize, answers the same test in a very different way.

Its intentionally classical, tech-light model is rooted in primary texts, ordered inquiry, and the formation of intellect and character. Students read Shakespeare, the Federalist Papers, and foundational works of philosophy and theology. Truth, goodness, and beauty are not slogans. They structure the day. The model rests on a simple conviction: young people are capable of more than we often assume.

Now nearing 100 schools, the network demonstrates that clarity attracts families.

WonderHere and Chesterton differ in pedagogy, schedule, and structure. But both build with intention. Both align practice with purpose. Both strengthen — rather than drift from — education’s first principles.

Different models. Same mission.

Raising the Bar

The Presidents’ Day Proverbial Test does not apply only to schools. It applies to the standards that shape them.

The assessment sector is undergoing its own reckoning.

For years, the College Board SAT has been diluted, reshaped, and recentered in ways that blur what students actually know. What was once intended to signal academic readiness has too often become an instrument of accommodation — lowering clarity in the name of access.

Recent changes to the ACT only reinforce the concern. When standards drift, something more than cosmetic reform is required.

Enter the Classic Learning Test.

Founded by Jeremy Tate, CLT was built to realign assessment with substance. Its exams draw from primary-source texts in literature, philosophy, history, and theology. Students are not asked to skim fragments. They are asked to reason — to interpret complex arguments and engage enduring ideas.

CLT is expanding rapidly and is now accepted by hundreds of colleges nationwide. That growth signals something important: families and institutions are hungry for clarity.

The Presidents’ Day Proverbial Test applies to states as well: Are they strengthening the institutions that form citizens?

Florida Moves at Scale

The Presidents’ Day Proverbial Test applies to states as well: Are they strengthening the institutions that form citizens?

Florida is answering yes.

Governor Ron DeSantis announced that to date, more than 21,000 teachers have now completed the state’s Civics Seal of Excellence Endorsement Course, each receiving a $3,000 bonus for advanced study in constitutional principles and the founding era.

Through the Civic Literacy Excellence Initiative, Florida has invested tens of millions of dollars in training centered on the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Federalist Papers, and other foundational texts. The Civics Seal of Excellence rewards teachers who complete rigorous coursework, expanding student access to educators grounded in the substance of American government and history.

Many teachers were themselves trained in systems shaped by diluted standards. When what is tested narrows, what is taught narrows. Florida’s effort is a deliberate reversal — raising expectations, strengthening preparation, and restoring civic seriousness at scale.

States, too, can pass the test.

Perhaps no surprise that…

The National Assessment Governing Board is updating the civics framework for the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), with public comment open through March 27.

NAEP measures civics knowledge in grades 4, 8, and 12. What the framework requires influences what gets taught.

If you care about what you have been reading here, now is the time to weigh in.

Please be sure to submit a comment.

I was in the Sunshine State last week and saw firsthand that the entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well — serious about getting education right, from schools to civic leaders to state leadership itself.

They are not alone. Governors in Washington this week have an opportunity — and a responsibility — to keep education near the top of the agenda and to raise the bar in their own states. In the laboratories of democracy, leadership shows up in results. The bar should be high. It should get higher.

As G.K. Chesterton wrote, “Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.”

See you around town,
Jeanne

Texas Parent Power

Yesterday morning at 9:00 a.m., Texas opened the doors to what may become the most consequential school-choice launch in the nation.

In just over 48 hours, 48,000 Texas parents applied for the Lone Star State’s long-anticipated Texas Education Freedom Accounts (TEFA). Backed by a $1 billion investment, TEFA expands parental freedom and flexibility by empowering families to choose the educational environment that best meets their children’s needs—without permission slips from bureaucracy or geography.

TEFA is open to all Texas students, providing up to $10,000 per child, and up to $30,000 for students with disabilities, to support enrollment in the school of their choice.

Texas didn’t stumble into this moment. It required political will, sustained leadership, and the courage to withstand predictable resistance from entrenched interests. Governor Greg Abbott and state leaders carried this effort from vision to reality—proving that when leaders stay focused on children, real parent power is possible.

Kudos to Odyssey, the tech company that built the turn-key system enabling families to qualify quickly, and to the thousands of education providers ready to serve students. TEFA should now serve as a model for states across the country. Not only does it unlock homegrown innovation, it is already attracting proven school models from beyond Texas—including Yass Prize–recognized leaders bringing high-quality options to families who have waited far too long.

Freedom didn’t just arrive in Texas yesterday. But it’s now available for kids, too.

GEM State Victory

Idaho’s Supreme Court has just codified freedom in rejecting a challenge by the usual suspects the BLOB to the Gem State’s $50 million education tax credit law, determining that “nothing in the Idaho Constitution prohibits the legislature —provided it fulfills its constitutional duty to public education — from using tax credits to assist parents who are financing their children’s education outside of that system.” Since January, 9,000 students have applied for scholarships to attend the school of their choice.

Does it bother they-that-will-not-be-named at all that the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld choice programs repeatedly? And yet, they continue to spend tax payer money to sue. There should be a law…

Freedom Has a Long Memory

Moments like Texas don’t appear out of thin air. They are the product of decades of moral argument, lived experience, and people willing to insist—long before it was popular—that parents matter and children deserve real choices.

That throughline brings us, fittingly, to Dr. Howard Fuller.

Just in time for Black History Month, PBS released A Fuller Education, a special tracing the life and work of one of the most consequential architects of modern education reform. It is a reminder of how long these battles have been fought, and by whom.

Long before “school choice” entered board rooms, regular funding cycles and advocacy group lexicons, Howard was asking harder questions: Who is education intended to serve? Whose money is it? Who has power and who doesn’t?

Dr. Howard Fuller would readily admit he had a coalition who helped him make Milwaukee famous for school choice. It didn’t take an army but the patient and strategic resolve to enact, litigate and implement the nation’s first school choice program.

I’m so proud of my friend Howard for his overdue recognition on PBS. Watch and share so you get to know the many so many are proud to know, and who we all have to thank for pioneering parent choice for the underserved.

Autism Parent Power Expands

Just days ago, parent leadership for autism advocacy moved to the national stage when Diana Diaz-Harrison was appointed National Autism Coordinator by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.. The appointment recognizes years of parent-driven leadership that built real schools for children with autism when few options existed.

Few stories capture the arc of courage like Diaz-Harrison’s.

She began her career as a bilingual teacher, later working as a journalist and communicator. Everything changed in 2004 when her son was diagnosed with autism—and she discovered just how few real educational options existed for families like hers. Instead of accepting that reality, she rebuilt it.

In 2013, she founded Arizona Autism Charter Schools. One year later, it opened as Arizona’s first tuition-free, autism-focused charter school. Today, it serves more than 1,000 students and stands as a national model for what is possible when schools are designed around children’s actual needs.

Her work earned national recognition, including the $1 million Yass Prize for innovation, which she used to launch the National Accelerator of Autism Charter Schools. Prior to this post, she served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Special Education at the U.S. Department of Education, and Deputy Commissioner of Disabilities at HHS.

Let Freedom Work in Connecticut

During Black History Month, it’s worth paying attention to who is actually doing the work for Black children—and who isn’t.

Dr. Steve Perry has spent his career building schools that serve primarily African American, low-income students—and delivering results. His charter network, Capital Prep, followed Connecticut law to the letter in seeking approval for a new school in Middletown: top blind score, record public support, and unanimous approval by the State Board of Education.

What followed is now before the courts. Despite funding being appropriated for charter schools, the state denied support to the approved school—raising a narrow but critical legal question about whether Connecticut followed its own statute once approval was complete.

The issue isn’t performance, it’s process—and whether families seeking high-quality options are treated fairly once politics enter the picture. Context matters: according to CER’s Parent Power! Index, Connecticut ranks in the bottom ten nationally on charter funding equity and autonomy.

We laid out the full facts and legal stakes in a recent Forbes op-ed.

Maryland Parents Make Power

Long before curriculum battles made headlines, a group of Maryland parents saw the problem clearly—and decided to act.

More than twenty years ago, Tom Neumark and a small group of Frederick neighbors began pushing back against a system that was neither challenging their children nor respecting families’ voices. Rather than wait for permission, they did what parents across the country have done when institutions fail them: they built something new.

Their efforts helped give rise to Maryland’s charter law—weak and constrained from the start through no fault of their own, but just strong enough to allow the creation of some charter schools, including theirs, the Monocacy Valley Montessori Charter School. The school proved what parents already knew: when families are trusted and educators are empowered, students rise.

But in Maryland, progress has never come easily.

Whether it’s a quest for better curriculum, accountability for results or bureaucratic impediments to exceptional schools, despite resistance, parent advocates have fought.

That same spirit now animates Better Maryland Schools, a parent-led effort insisting on rigorous academics, transparency, and real educational options for all Maryland families. This is what perseverance looks like in education reform: not viral moments, but not giving up—especially when the system hopes you will.

Maryland parents are still standing. And they’re not done. The state’s leadership has rarely supported any kind of parent power—but persistence pays off. Kudos to Tom and his group for their commitment.

Forza means strength—not just in victory, but in persistence. This week showed us both. To more of it! -Jeanne

You gotta give it to President Trump for branding such a great saying, so much so that thousands, including myself, just have to “borrow” it to make a point.

We are just coming out of National School Choice Week, and it was not only big, but beautiful. Most people don’t know how it all started, and it’s important to give credit where credit is due.

Started 16 years ago by leaders of the school choice movement—among them, Lisa Graham Keegan and Robert Enlow, developed, launched, led by Andrew Campanella to this day, and funded by the Gleason Family Foundation, NCSW gets the grassroots excited about celebrating the choices they have, no matter what kind or place. Since 2011, there have been 270,000 events, and thousands this year alone. All of it contributes to the very substance that this Friday Forza is about—Parent Power.

Power in the Hands of Parents Makes Education Powerful

More great news from a state that refused to give up: North Carolina.

For years, lawmakers there kept pushing forward on school choice—even when it was unpopular, even when the pressure was intense. The results are now undeniable. North Carolina ranks near the top of the Parent Power! Index, and its Opportunity Scholarship program offers one of the most effective tools for change: a true voucher, funded by the state, that follows a student from their public school district to the school of their family’s choice. That’s what happens when power is placed where it belongs—with parents.

Longtime parent advocate Lindalyn Kakadelis captured it perfectly:

“Thank you NC General Assembly for pushing school (parental) choice—it helps ALL families. We see it time and time again! Without the competitive school choices we have in NC, I doubt we would EVER have this innovation in little ol’ Haywood County.”

She’s right. The new Haywood Innovative Middle School, opening on a community college campus, exists because competition forced innovation. Even the school’s own principal, Andrew Putnam, said it plainly: “We are in a competitive market… and we’re just trying to provide other options within the public school system.”

And on a personal note—Lindalyn has been here from the beginning. As she reminded me recently: “I still remember the first time we met… I had just been elected to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education—as a mom who had NO idea what I was getting myself into. I was just a parent who cared.” That’s how every real movement starts.

Add to that the Commissioner launching a school choice initiative this week—remarkable in a state where opportunity scholarships were once declared a “state of emergency”—and the picture is clear. Go Tarheels!

Persistence matters. Parents matter.

Power in the hands of parents makes education powerful.

And Right Next Door, Another Win for Parents

Coming off the great news in North Carolina, right next door in South Carolina comes yet another story of parent-powered progress—and this one nearly slipped away.

When South Carolina’s ESA program was struck down, thousands of families suddenly faced losing the schools they had chosen for their children. In that moment of real uncertainty, Palmetto Promise stepped in, led by Wendy Damron, to help hold families together and keep students in stable, supportive learning environments. We were pleased to help secure support for the ESA Families Rescue Fund, which created a critical bridge from crisis to continuity.

The impact since then has been extraordinary. Today, South Carolina’s restored and expanded Education Scholarship Trust Fund is serving 10,000 students statewide. Demand is surging. Just 11 days into this year’s application window, more than 23,000 applications were submitted—8,000 on the very first day—from families across every corner of the state.

Behind those numbers is the hard, often invisible work of implementation. Palmetto Promise is currently the only organization in South Carolina dedicated full-time to helping families and schools navigate and use the ESA program effectively. Their team has traveled statewide to host dozens of in-person information sessions, conducted webinars reaching thousands of families and providers, responded to thousands of emails and hundreds of phone calls, hired a full-time ESA Implementation Coordinator, launched a revamped school choice website, built simple eligibility tools, and worked closely with the Department of Education to ensure accurate information and smooth execution. At the same time, the number of approved education providers has grown sharply, expanding real options for families.

As Wendy wrote to me recently, the support that came together in that crisis moment didn’t just save a program—it preserved opportunity. Quite simply, thousands of South Carolina families have choices today because people acted when it mattered most.

Our hope now is that this momentum continues—and that every family in the Palmetto State will eventually have access to the kinds of life-saving education options that are already changing lives across South Carolina.

But while some states are proving what’s possible when parents are trusted, others reveal what happens when laws are weak, politics intervenes, and power is pulled back from families.

When Even the Best Schools Have to Lawyer Up

Dr. Steve Perry is not a fringe figure in education. He’s a charismatic, nationally known school founder whose Capital Prep schools in Bridgeport and the Bronx have changed the life trajectories of thousands of students. So when his school ends up suing the state just to be funded, something has gone seriously wrong.

Late-stage political maneuvering, influenced by the unions and local school boards, ended the Middleton, CT’s charter school’s opportunity for funding this year. Needless to say, Dr. Perry is battling to get his kids the education they need.

I lay out the full story in my Forbes column. The takeaway here is simpler: when charter laws are weak and vague, politics fills the vacuum—and even exceptional schools led by proven educators like Steve Perry are forced to fight just to exist.

This would be an ideal issue for the current—and likely last—Secretary of Education. Linda McMahon’s pedigree in Connecticut, coupled with the fact that her Department administers the Public Charter School Grant program, which Connecticut applied for and received funds to support high-achieving charter schools, could make this an issue that merits federal attention.

The National Conversation Worth Having

It was striking to see so many U.S. Senators engage seriously—on the record—in a national conversation about education freedom.

Ohio’s Jon Husted has been pressing this issue long before it was politically fashionable, a point underscored in recent coverage detailing how he’s taken the school choice debate to a national stage. Credit is also due to Bill Cassidy for convening a Senate hearing that actually mattered—one that drew strong attendance from members of both parties. While senators such as Bernie Sanders disagreed with the proposed solutions, they nonetheless acknowledged the core problem. Sanders himself stated plainly that schools are doing terribly. Andy Kim echoed that concern, noting his own struggle with the answer while recognizing that far too many schools are failing students. That level of bipartisan candor is a meaningful signal.

The hearing was grounded not just in policy, but in practice. Cris Gulacy-Worrel offered compelling testimony, arguing for education models that meet students where they are and respond to their real needs—an approach that reflects what families and educators have been calling for across the country.

Disagreement on solutions remains. But agreement on the problem—and a willingness to say so publicly—is progress.

A Big, Beautiful Step for Parents — and the Work Ahead

The Educational Choice for Children Act (ECCA) is one of the most significant federal school-choice advances in decades. At its core, ECCA creates a national, voluntary framework that allows states to expand education opportunity by enabling scholarships that support a wide range of options—public, private, charter, and more—while respecting state leadership and local control.

Why it matters is simple: ECCA helps close gaps where state systems have fallen short, giving families access to choices that better meet their children’s needs. It is a powerful accelerant for parent power—and the momentum is real.

So far, 27 states have opted in, thanks to an extraordinary patchwork of advocates, organizations, and leaders across the country who worked state by state to secure gubernatorial support. That’s no small feat. But there is more to do.

As part of the so-called Big Beautiful Bill, ECCA gives parents a big, beautiful choice. This week, the White House convened education choice advocates and practitioners—many of whom have been active at various points over the last three decades building the school-choice movement. The administration also launched a new website highlighting which states have opted in, making it clear where families and organizations are eligible to participate—and calling out those states that have not. You can learn more about it all through the Invest in Education Coalition.

All of this is exciting—and important. But it’s also critical to be clear-eyed. ECCA is necessary, but it is not sufficient. States cannot rely indefinitely on privately funded, tax-credit scholarships to do the work of states that control the lion’s share of public funding necessary to see a thousand flowers bloom and millions of children benefit.

Every state must ultimately commit to full and fair funding that follows the child.

As David Hardy, founder of Boys’ Latin, has famously said: “It’s public money and it belongs to the kids.”

That’s the next frontier. And it’s the one we should all be fighting for.

Move Over Snow, You’ve Got Nothing on the Grass….. Roots, That Is

I’m grateful to all of them—all of you—who get up every day and move mountains for kids, even when it would be easier, and warmer, to stay home and watch the next episode of whatever it may be you watch.

At the Center for Education Reform, we’ve been talking about parent power for thirty years and provide the only parent-friendly and interactive platform to help parents understand what power their state affords them—and if they don’t, what to do to get it. It has sparked parent revolutions, policymaker competition, and secured policy implementation. Bookmark the Parent Power! Index and share!

Signing off from snowy DC - Jeanne

The Next Chapter of American Leadership

Christmas is over. It’s January. And with the noise of a new year comes something else: thousands of people across the country looking to set the tone, frame the vision, and define the direction of 2026.

Consider this: in 2026 there will be 39 gubernatorial elections. According to the National Governors Association (NGA)— now chaired by the thoughtful and steady Governor of Oklahoma, Kevin Stitt — 18 incumbent governors are running for reelection, while 21 more are either term-limited or choosing not to run again. That is an extraordinary level of transition in the nation’s most powerful domestic leadership class.

In February, governors from across the country will descend on Washington — Republicans and Democrats separately, and then together through the NGA — to meet with one another, with national influencers, and with members of Congress. These are the real laboratories of democracy. Some governors still remember that their states are sovereign and independent. Others would prefer Washington to fund and force. But make no mistake: most of the next wave of domestic policy, especially education policy, will be written first in the states.

It is already happening.

It has been encouraging to watch thoughtful governors put partisanship aside for kids. Colorado Governor Jared Polis’s recent announcement that his blue state will opt into participation in the Big Beautiful Bill’s education tax credit — known as the ECCA — is a prime example. Virginia and several Republican-led states moved early as well. The program is not yet operational; rules still must be finalized and the framework formally launched. But getting ahead of the curve matters, and Polis’s leadership will undoubtedly influence others — just as the likable and principled Kevin Stitt continues to do among his colleagues, sharing why education freedom and great workforce opportunities go hand in hand.

Speaking of which, my recent panel with US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Anthony Brock from Valiant Cross Academy and philanthropist Jeff Yass, Advancing School Choice from DC to the States, offers great insights on how the economy, the workforce and education opportunity all connect. But I digress..

Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Education continues its complicated dance with federal limits. It has now approved elements of Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds’s education waiver request and is still considering Indiana’s. There is only so much any education secretary can do without formal changes in federal law, and that process is never fast. At the same time, the department has been forced by the courts to rehire dozens of civil rights office staffers whose positions had been terminated.

All of it is a powerful reminder of something our system was designed to protect: state sovereignty still matters.

And that brings us — remarkably — to this moment in American history.

Common Sense, 250 Years Later

Much of what follows here is inspired by a beautiful reflection by historian Jonathan Horn in The Free Press this week, as the country marks the 250th anniversary of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, first published on January 10, 1776.

Common Sense was one of the first serious works of political philosophy I ever read in college. It hooked me. Not because it was polite or cautious, but because it was fearless. Paine wrote in what he called the Age of Reason, and he did what few dared: he said plainly that America must sever ties with Great Britain.

As Horn quotes: “There is something absurd,” Paine wrote, “in supposing a continent to be perpetually governed by an island… The blood of the slain, the weeping voice of nature cries, ’TIS TIME TO PART.”

I remember being struck by the notion that what seems like a simple exercise - publishing what amounted to a grassroots pamphlet became the bestselling publication of the American Revolution. As Horn explains, it was read in homes, taverns, and town squares. It shaped not only public opinion, but leadership itself.

Paine believed the American cause was not merely national, but human:

“Freedom hath been hunted round the globe… O! receive the fugitive, and prepare in time an asylum for mankind.”

There is nothing “common” about that kind of courage.

Paine believed that free people must speak plainly, think boldly, and tell uncomfortable truths in moments of consequence.

And here we are, 250 years later, facing another moment that demands exactly that.

Why Knowledge Still Matters

On one of my morning walks, that thought followed me — especially as I slowed down for my precious lab Bella, who’s nine now. We’re nearly the same age. Do the math.

The call to action for anyone involved in education could not be clearer: we must use this moment to teach, to talk, and to show the long arc of history — the generations of conflict and hardship that did not begin with this one.

And knowledge matters. More than ever.

A growing body of research confirms what educators have long believed: while knowledge and intelligence are not the same thing, acquiring knowledge strengthens intelligence itself. A major meta-analysis published by the National Institutes of Health found that each additional year of education increases IQ by one to four points. Reading and expanding vocabulary improves the verbal components of intelligence. A 2025 study from the University of Bath found that people with higher IQs make more realistic predictions and exercise more consistent judgment — hallmarks of better decision-making.

This is exactly the case being made by the Knowledge Matters Campaign, which champions the critical role that content knowledge plays in both the science of reading and learning. Their new History Matters Podcast makes the point beautifully: high-quality history instruction builds knowledge, accelerates literacy, and prepares students to participate fully in civic life — starting in the earliest grades.

Even the origin of the word museum reminds us why this matters. It comes from the Greek Mouseion — the seat of the Muses — a place where art, music, literature, and learning were meant to live together under one roof. Civilization itself was built on the assumption that what we know shapes who we become.

Looking Back to Hold Us Together

As we approach America’s 250th birthday, I keep returning to the importance of resources that reconnect us with the long arc of who we are — not just our conflicts, but our character.

The America 250 work emerging from so many groups remind us not just where we have been, but what has always held us together.

John Dickinson’s fingerprints on our founding.

Thomas Paine’s moral courage.

The enduring architecture of liberty.

This is what real leadership as Americans looks like: not performance, not outrage, not tribal noise — but thoughtful courage anchored in knowledge and responsibility.

That’s why for our part, we are relaunching our popular “Why America?” Initiative to support and trumpet those who join us in wanting to inspire civic understanding, celebrate our founding and educate the next generation of Americans. We’re grateful to all who are doing just that—especially through education—and can’t wait to share more!

What We Need More Of

At a time when everything feels accelerated, amplified, and endlessly reactive, the choices we make about how we speak, what we consume, and what we model for our children and communities matter more than ever.

Somewhere along the way, we began confusing instant information with actual understanding, and reaction with reflection — a shift our children are watching closely.

We need:

Wisdom over WhatsApp.

Dialogue over reckless rhetoric.

Community over collectivism.

Purpose and service over fighting at any price.

If you want more voices from other eras when the world felt just as fractured and the stakes just as high (beyond our obvious Founding), read C.S. Lewis. Read J.R.R. Tolkien and G.K. Chesterton. Read Martin Luther King, Jr. Read the great books. Study the moments in history when societies were tested and thoughtful writers reminded us of what values, character, and integrity truly mean.

Those reminders are not nostalgic.

They are necessary. As is the understanding that voting is the greatest power you have to effect change.

Join me in committing to forge a more flourishing people in 2026 — especially those who make up our nation’s youth. To Common Sense! —Jeanne

“No child should have their future determined by their zip code…”

Yes—that was Rod Paige. And it was 2003.

In fact, it was at the Center for Education Reform’s 10th anniversary when we honored Secretary Paige that he helped cement what has since become that near-sacred principle of education policy—one we now take for granted: that money should follow the child, not the other way around.

A few years later—now twenty years ago—Rod Paige left the traditional education world aghast by publishing a book whose subtitle said exactly what few people in public life were willing to talk about: “How Teachers’ Unions Hurt Children, Hinder Teachers, and Endanger Public Education.”

Once taboo and dismissed in all but policy circles, this truth is now fodder for kitchen table conversation, spurring a new generation of educators and parents starting their own schools, making his book even more indispensable to families nationwide.

I remain deeply flattered that he attributes part of his decision to speak plainly—and publicly—to an exchange we had years before. In The War Against Hope, Paige recounts the moment when our paths first crossed—an exchange he chose to place at the very front of his book. He describes a packed Milken National Education Conference, a panel of distinguished experts, and a wide-ranging discussion about teacher quality. As the session drew to a close, one final question was allowed. He recounts my question in his book’s preface, The Elephant in the Room:

I am Jeanne Allen from the Center for Education Reform. You’ve all provided an incredible amount of depth and breadth to both the problems and the solutions, and I commend you for doing it really comprehensively. But with all due respect, Lowell, there’s an elephant in the room that hasn’t been mentioned.

Before the 1960s, there were associations that supported, defended, and held to high expectations educators all across the country. Somewhere in the 1960s there was a transition where those associations stopped coming to the fore and actually became professional unions. Now they’re just unions, not even professional, as some would argue.

What happened? Where is that in the discussion?

He says the room went silent. He responded, and later writes:

The behavior of the big, all-powerful teachers’ unions is unquestionably the most significant determinant of the success or failure of most education reform efforts. But we had just spent two hours discussing education reform without even mentioning them. That in itself is a major statement about where we are in terms of improving America’s system of education.

Why don’t we talk more openly about teachers’ unions and their influence? Why do we avoid speaking honestly about what they do (or don’t do) to influence school reform efforts, and what they need to do differently? One possible explanation is that we have come to accept their actions against reform as inevitable—as a fact of life. But another logical reason for this absence of discussion is that the nation isn’t fully aware of the destructive impact that many teachers’ unions are having on the education of America’s children.

The conversation that day made me realize more than ever just how urgently this book is needed, and I redoubled my efforts to finish writing it. I wanted to shine a bright light on teachers’ union behavior and increase the probability that, in conferences such as the one I just described, we can begin to openly discuss and debate the influence of these massive organizations and consider how they must change in order to support and spur reform in our public education system.

This book should be required reading for anyone involved in education policy today and among all parents—especially because it validates their advocacy, underscores the importance of what they have learned the hard way, the longevity of the issue.

Rod Paige knew that because of the unions, merit gives way to uniformity, excellence is treated as inequity, and teachers themselves are shortchanged while unions grow richer, more political, and further removed from classrooms.

He also once famously stated to reporters—to huge outcries— that the National Education Association (NEA) was a terrorist organization. He was making a statement about their use of intimidation, coercion, and fear to block reforms aimed at helping America’s most vulnerable students. He wasn’t wrong.

Paige spoke not as a political actor, but as someone who had lived every level of the system: teacher, coach, principal, superintendent, and ultimately Secretary of Education.

Why would someone so prominent take such a risk, to absorb personal and political cost?

Because Dr. Roderick R. Paige was a principled leader. Born in Monticello, Mississippi—the son of a public-school principal and a librarian—education was not an abstract policy concern for him; it was a lived inheritance. After earning degrees from Jackson State University and Indiana University, Paige began his career in the reality of classrooms, on athletic fields, and in schools that served communities with substantial challenges.

He went on to serve as dean of the College of Education at Texas Southern University, where he founded the Center for Excellence in Urban Education—work that helped shape national conversations about instructional quality and school leadership. As superintendent of the Houston Independent School District, Paige led reforms that became known as the “Houston Miracle,” decentralizing authority, strengthening literacy instruction, expanding charter options, and tying leadership performance to student achievement.

In 2001, Paige was confirmed as the seventh U.S. Secretary of Education becoming both the first former superintendent and the first African American to hold the post.

Secretary Paige was in a Sarasota, Florida classroom with President George W. Bush when the Twin Towers were hit.

Perhaps that’s what gave him the additional firepower to fight, to not take anything for granted. Even as the nation was still reeling from its most vicious attack and searching for renewal and resolve, he oversaw the implementation of the most ambitious overhaul of federal education law in modern history—No Child Left Behind—designed to bring higher expectations for students, real accountability to systems, meaningful support to teachers, and greater agency to parents.

That NCLB is commonly dismissed as a failure is a subject for another essay. It wasn’t. It was sabotaged—by forces unwilling to use transparency and accountability to deliver better education. Today’s bipartisan embrace of the Science of Reading traces directly back to NCLB, as does the insistence that parents must be respected, outcomes matter and that children cannot be endlessly excused into oblivion.

Despite leading one of the nation’s largest urban districts, Paige was also an early and unapologetic champion of education choice—long before it was fashionable. (It was cool then, too—just not “super cool.”) He listened—to rank-and-file educators, parents, and advocates—and repeated often that education is a civil right, and where a child is born should not determine what that child can become.

His refusal to look away helped inspire not just his continued work over time but a movement of millions of parents and teachers who knew something was wrong but had been told not to say so.

We still wallow in low expectations.

Which raises the question we should be asking now—aside from the obvious success of increased opportunities and innovation throughout the whole of U.S. education, where has the public fire gone to distinguish that soft bigotry of low expectations, that seemingly unapologetic action of zoning children by zip code and frankly, declaring victory over a paltry two- to three point achievement gains when we’re dozens from excellence?

Friends—it’s a New Year. Together, advocates from vastly different backgrounds and sectors have forged millions of new meaningful education opportunities for students. But it’s not enough.

Dedicated public officials like the late Rod Paige helped to set the stage for an increasing number of leaders who stand with students and parents over bureaucracy. And yet, it’s cyclical and they are still far too few.

The solution? The best path for the cause of freedom and for the future of our country is to remember people like Rod Paige, understand the history of where we’ve been so we can chart where we are going, and to seek to rekindle in ourselves the drive, courage, and perseverance people like him embody wherever they go.

He was, as colleagues said upon his passing, unsatisfied with the status quo. Are you?

Rod devoted his life to ensuring that where a child is born does not determine whether that child can succeed.

And whether you knew him, or ever heard of him, that should be our charge. Requiescat in pace, dear friend.

Throwback

Okay so in the midst of doing research for this piece, I came across this crazy 2002 video from a US Department of Education–sponsored town hall convened under Secretary Rod Paige and led by then–Deputy Secretary Gene Hickok. It’s a striking reminder not just about my great hair and youth once upon a time 😎 but of how long the debates over school choice, parent power, and accountability have been underway. Watching this now feels like a time capsule: substantive, thoughtful, and a little like deja vu all over again.

Even at a U.S. Department of Education that has since proven its limits—and is now in the midst of being dismantled—it’s a reminder that leadership from Washington still matters. Today’s 13th, and potentially last, Education Secretary, Linda McMahon, is following a path Rod Paige carved nobly: talking to and visiting with the people who matter most, saying the hard things repeatedly, and leading boldly. That is what shapes culture over time.

I’m in the midst of finishing my second book and am channeling the extraordinary examples I’ve had the privilege to learn from over these many years. I’ll be back soon, time permitting. Happy New Year, and may God bless America—especially in this all-important year. -Jeanne

Back by Popular Demand…

…but new and improved, is last week’s jolly take on the traditional Christmas masterpiece. With a week full of fear and not enough cheer (there I go again!), it’s hard for many to see how all the education stuff can really make a difference. It’s up to us to set the record straight.

So why do we do what we do? Read below. This is a small look at what happens when dedicated and committed people come together around a shared belief: that education, done right, is still the most powerful force for good in a free society. What follows isn’t a recap of a Summit you may already have heard about — it’s a reminder of why this work matters now, what it asks of us, and what becomes possible when we refuse to settle for less than our children deserve.

’Twas The Summit Before Christmas…

’Twas the Summit before Christmas, and all through the dwelling,
Attendees were riveted, the presenters compelling.

The air was alive with anticipation and care,
Knowing that soon the Yass Prize was there.

But first came the program, to engage and enthrall;
On workforce and content, education rules and all.

From AI to civics, from health to the states,
Serious ideas. Urgent debates.

There were leaders and builders, reformers and friends,
Old hands and new voices, all pushing the bends.

The Mikes from the coasts, the women in EdTech,
It’s hard to imagine a more brilliant deck.

Then came the surprises — not one, but a stream,
Not one prize, not two, but four — plus eighteen.

For Mimosa and Emily, Jeff and Tiffany, too,
For Mercedes and others with bold work to do!

Microschools and classics, therapeutic care,
Models built on trust, not bureaucratic air.

To reach thousands more children who need something better,
With Janine and Jeff Yass backing courage with treasure.

Now weeks later still, the momentum remains,
These innovators press on through challenge and strain.

Their work, just a moment in time since that night,
Is more urgent than ever — and growing in might.

For with tragedy stirring and unrest unfurled,
It is children’s young minds that will shape our world.

We must free them from screens for communication,
And restore human learning, attention, and one nation.

That lives under God and follows His Way
To use our talents to learn, love, and pray,

As Santa brings cheer and the rooftops all clatter,
It’s the homes beneath them — our children — that matter.

Let’s loosen the grip of the devices and noise,
And give kids the chance to become grounded girls and boys.

Focused on learning, determined and kind,
Ready to build with both heart and mind.

To those on the frontlines, we shout loud and clear:
Keep going. Keep pushing. Your work matters here.

Let Christmas unite the heart and mind,
While we take precious time to unwind.

Let’s prepare a New Year of what’s worthy and true —
And a future rebuilt by the best we can do.

Hats Off To You..

Those that show up every day, act, and keep charging ahead. You inspire us every day.

Wishing you the best of Holidays. - Jeanne

Grab a drink or an eggnog — you’ll want to read every word!

It’s the season of Advent, when “we are called to vigilance, hope, and readiness for the coming of the Lord… to invite reflection on the material blessings of our life.” We return to familiar stories and traditions, both sacred and secular, not out of habit but as a way of preparing ourselves for what is to come.

It struck me this week how fitting it was that our most important work of the year unfolded during this season. Because Advent is not only about waiting; it is about readiness. Renewal. Recommitment. And the Power of Innovation Summit became exactly that — a collective act of preparation for the future of our children and our country.

And in that Advent spirit — and with a little fun — I begin with a short poem…

’Twas The Summit Before Christmas…

’Twas the Summit before Christmas, and all through the dwelling,
Attendees were riveted, the presenters compelling.

The air was alive with anticipation and care,
Knowing that soon, the Yass Prize would be there.

But first came the program, to engage and enthrall—
On workforce and content, education rules and all.

There were Nick and Diana D., Kirsten Baesler and Treasury Sec. B,
As well as Portia, Keith, and Pat from D.C.

The Mikes from the coasts, the ladies from Ed Tech—
It’s hard to imagine a more brilliant deck.

So many more to mention before cocktails flowed;
All will be reported out soon, although…

The awards themselves were filled with surprise,
And not an eye in the house stayed dry after the prize.

Not one and not two, but four plus eighteen,

For Mimosa and Em, Jeff and Tiffany.
Mercedes with her military microschools to boot—
They and the others now launch a bold new pursuit.

To expand to thousands more children in need,
With Jeff and Janine’s largesse, they’ll succeed.

It brought smiles and joy to hundreds last week;
We’re just getting started, and Christmas is peak.

So read on and learn a little bit more
Of the work—and the people—you cannot ignore.

A Holiday Feast

It was like a feast… but instead of food we were full with energy and info and themes that I need to call out to you before the full CER report gets issued in the New Year.

From workforce shifts and AI to student wellness, civics, and the rapidly shifting dynamics of school choice funding, the Summit revealed what must take priority in the year ahead. Equally powerful were the frontline stories that underscored why families need access to schools that truly work for their children.

The responsibility of America’s 250th anniversary — to prepare students not just for careers, but for citizenship — came through clearly. Everyone in the room recommitted to what they can and should do to deliver great teaching, content, and knowledge to students through their schools, companies, and organizations.

There was also clear urgency around aligning education with the workforce realities our country now faces — and the many ways — through policy and practice — that new approaches can finally bridge the education–work gap.

And threaded through it all were reminders of the diverse needs of every child: neurodivergent and neurotypical, artistic and analytical, the confident and the overlooked, the struggling and the misunderstood. Committing to making children healthy again needs to be a key priority.

But nothing captured the spirit of the Summit more deeply than the spotlight that followed.

The Woman Transforming The Pine Ridge Reservation

We were all captivated by her five-minute spotlight, the story of why and how Mary Jo Fairhead, founder of 2024 finalist Onward Learning from South Dakota, does what she does to serve students whose life risks are higher than any other group of students across the country. You will have to watch it when the video is out, but her mother, who also happens to be a state legislator wrote this later, and it says more about both the person as well as the preparation and confidence the Yass Prize experience has instilled:

“Mary Jo walked into a room full of nationally recognized leaders, innovators, philanthropists, and advocates… and somehow, within minutes, she had them completely still — frozen in the kind of silence that only truth creates. By the time she finished, the entire room sat in tears.

“As a mother, I stood there in awe. As a legislator, I was shaken. If one young woman from the poorest area in the country can walk into a summit and bring leaders to tears, then how have we allowed our education system to fall so devastatingly short?

“I’ve never liked the phrase ‘School Choice.’ After listening last night, I finally understood: it’s not School Choice — it’s Parents’ Choice.

“Because no one knows a child better than their parent. Not a bureaucracy. Not an agency. Not a committee of experts who’ve never set foot in our communities. Parents should have the authority to shape their child’s education and the power to demand results. “And if there’s one message every parent needs to hear, it’s this: Never give up. Your child must always come first.”

It captured everything this movement stands for — and everything it must continue to deliver.

Later That Night

It was a veritable who’s who of leaders giving challenging ideas - from ensuring that the full faith and credit of the federal government is behind education freedom, to provoking a legal assault on state laws that deny student fair and full funding, to how AI can coexist with direct, human-led, content rich instruction. You’ll see it all soon!

“Our goal is to transform the US education system into an engine of economic dynamism. But to achieve that goal, we need the perspective, ideas and support of the innovators in this room. The future belongs to the heterodox thinkers who challenge old models and commit to building something new. It belongs to people like you.”

Honorable Scott Bessent, U.S. Treasury Secretary

The Opening I Didn’t Get To Deliver

Fortunately, I can improvise. I had to; my notes never fully made it to the confidence monitor!

I had hoped to open the evening by naming the moment we’re living in: a time when Washington, D.C. — for all its contradictions — still represents the promise of American freedom, and when the work being done by the people in that room has begun to accelerate in extraordinary ways.

Policies have shifted. Public support has surged. The national conversation has changed. And parents, innovators, educators, and entrepreneurs are now firmly in what I described as “the driver’s seat of the education Uber.” They are charting the route, defining the destination, and refusing to accept yesterday’s boundaries as tomorrow’s limits.

It’s a result of the many national and state leaders (many of whom were there, Cabinet officials, the state leaders, the philanthropists, the reform pioneers, and the business leaders present) — people reshaping systems, communities, and entire states. But I also wanted to make clear that the heart of the night belonged to our 23 Yass Prize contenders.

They had spent weeks in an intense Accelerator — learning, refining, challenging assumptions, and supporting one another. Many told us they already felt like winners before the night began. Their story pitches are captivating, captured here in just a couple of minutes.

When you watch, I want you to think: This is what innovation looks like. This is what freedom looks like. This is what the future must look like.

The Original

We were especially blessed that Dr. Howard Fuller, the OG, was with us. He is the man who kicked off generations of new opportunities for students. He made Milwaukee famous — and unlike the beer, it was a first of its kind. The battle for the Milwaukee choice program after his post as schools superintendent, was waged alongside a small but mighty kitchen-table group that included a major strategist, a lawyer, a governor, and a state lawmaker who believed in her community and in the power of low-income parents to direct the education of their own children.

True to form, Howard credited that very woman, the late Rep. Polly Williams with the success when he accepted the surprise Chairman’s Award, named for our mutual friend and CER’s longtime leader and Friendship Public Charter Schools founder, Donald Hense. Talk about icons and examples for today’s battles! When you understand the struggle and fights men like Howard and Donald endured to deliver great education for kids, you understand that no setback today compares to the battles they waged.

Howard reminds everyone that the battles of today were first fought by those who refused to accept the status quo decades ago. His voice — steady, uncompromising, grounded in justice — is part of the DNA of this movement. His book, No Struggle, No Progress, could not be more fitting. Howard has lived that truth. And the new generation of innovators gathered last week are the inheritors of that struggle. Seeing him recognized was more than symbolic — it was a reminder that movements endure when they honor their roots.

Funders Who Fuel The Future

From the roots to the branches, Janine and Jeff Yass are fueling the education freedom movement forward with extraordinary conviction. As I shared that evening, No two people in this space have done more to unleash bold education innovation in this country than Janine and Jeff Yass. Their belief in the power of people over systems has changed the lives of countless students.

They believe this remains the best thing they have ever done with their philanthropy. But it’s equally about changing the policy as it is about distributing money. I worked for years to convince funders and philanthropists to ‘break china’ when needed — to engage directly, to understand the landscape they were supporting personally - not through layers of staff and process but seeing what has happened, what can happen, and how changes in law and policy can affect both.

Janine and Jeff dig in - they get to know the movement that bears the name. That’s real leadership.

And the best way to understand the Yass’ impact is simply to look at the people they champion. This year’s Yass Prize honorees demonstrate why this movement is accelerating—and why their work deserves both recognition and replication.

2025 Yass Prize Honorees

Learn all about the grand prize winner and four finalists for the Yass Prize, whose work most exemplify the STOP principles:

$1 Million Prize — Chesterton Schools Network
A national network of classical, parent-led high schools that empowers communities to create rigorous, joyful environments where students are known, challenged, and formed in mind, character, and spirit.

The Finalists ($250,000 STOP Awards):

For Sustainable Education: Pepin Academies
Pepin pairs academics with real-time therapeutic supports for students with learning disabilities, making the education box bigger, not confining exceptional students to traditional silos.

For Transformational Education: The School House
A multi-methodology school uniting five evidence-based approaches in one vertically aligned curriculum, where mixed-age learners build real skills—from entrepreneurship to civic engagement.

For Outstanding Education: WonderHere
A child-centered microschool network bringing wonder back to learning through blending project-based, play-driven, and personalized learning to restore curiosity and authentic work to children’s daily experience.

For Permissionless Education: Path of Life Learning
Path of Life brings stability and belonging to highly mobile, military-connected children through campuses designed around continuity and personalized support.

And 18 additional contenders were named semifinalists, receiving $100,000 STOP Awards, rounding out one of the most diverse, dynamic, and forward-looking cohorts to date—organizations proving what is possible when people, not systems, are trusted to lead.

Renewed, Refreshed And Ready To Roll

That sentiment strikes fear in the chorus of anti-innovation, anti-entrepreneur, anti-freedom advocates who cling to an old system and energize a group who is still talking about renewing the fight for great education—no matter the obstacles. They’ll break bread with anyone who has earnest interest in pursuing solutions, and the media would do well to watch and follow, rather than wait for the next crisis to cover the evolution of a new, un-STOP-able movement of great education leaders.

Great education leaders do not wait for systems to change. They are building their own systems and models — challenging assumptions and expanding opportunity across multiple pathways, with multiple approaches.

May this Advent bring clarity, hope, and joyful expectation to you, your families and the children we serve.

With gratitude and Forza,
Jeanne

It’s that time of year again—Thanksgiving. I waited until the end of a busy week, as a prelude to our only national holiday celebrated by everyone, to write to you. Prodded by some dear colleagues to share, I’ve pulled together my thankful list.

For me, the exercise is far better than New Year’s resolutions. I once had an associate (you know who you are) express gratitude for every item or task he handled, as a constant reminder of what thanks is really about.

But that’s not what this holiday is only about. It’s really about freedom—the unprecedented freedom represented by our nation, a great nation—for which we owe gratitude to both God and the millions who created it, fought for it, and defend it still today (cue Lee Greenwood).

If you, like I, are watching The American Revolution—the new Ken Burns documentary — you’ll be reminded of the sacrifices a nascent union made…the horrific conditions of wars fought to be free, the countless examples of bravery from women, men, and children; the struggles of enslaved people who endured and suffered even more consequences of being unfree; the unimaginable loss of property, resources, and life; and yet the sweet victory that survives, almost 250 years later, because of it all.

The prelude to that, of course, is the arrival of our first Pilgrims, which led to the first Thanksgiving. Too many children go through school without that knowledge now—tarnished by a string of misguided revisionist history that makes it a near federal offense to let pre-schoolers dress up like the Indians and Pilgrims who celebrated together, as my kids once did — or even to examine the truth behind the complex relationships between Native American tribes and the new settlers that led to it.

The great news is it’s all documented—and has been updated thanks to William Bradford’s own diary and subsequent research. I’ll be writing more about that and sharing it with friends and followers next week. But back to my thankful list. I’d love to know yours!

What I am thankful for during this Thanksgiving time…

For our God-given natural rights—life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness among them.

For the gift of being able to write about, speak about, and advocate for those rights.

For a community of givers (Adam Grant’s book is illustrative of who they are) who consistently do that and more — offering themselves and their work to the needs of the most vulnerable, particularly our children.

I am thankful when God, in His innumerable ways, asks me to speak up for what is best — and to stand down when calmer approaches should prevail, and

That I know and can use words like “innumerable.”

And for the understanding of others when I don’t understand.

I’m thankful for…

An education I’ve been privileged to have, which helps me discern these many things.

And finally, for the education we are delivering more and more every day to our youth—and helping our adults in need achieve—through the many transformational acts that abound across this great nation.

I end with my favorite kid art at this time of year, courtesy of my youngest, some 30 years ago.

Happy Thanksgiving Week, my friends. Grateful for you! Jeanne

IICYMI — Innovation Rising in Oklahoma

Earlier this week — fittingly, on Veterans Day — I looked down at the Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial, a powerful reminder of resilience and renewal, and a humbling testament to why we must always honor those who protect our nation and safeguard our freedoms.

That commitment to strength and purpose is woven into the DNA of the state. And nowhere was it clearer than in my conversations with FuelEd OKC’s visionary Brent Bushy and a cross-section of Oklahoma’s business and civic leadership. What’s happening there isn’t incremental change — it’s a deliberate strategy to build the human infrastructure powering the state’s next era of growth.

Across the metro, education, workforce, and industry are being aligned to meet the needs of a rapidly expanding economy — including tech, aviation, aerospace, defense, energy, and the advanced manufacturing sectors that are reshaping the region. OKC isn’t just keeping pace with national demands; it’s positioning itself to set the pace.

The Oklahoma City metro area — spanning dozens of districts and communities — is becoming a national model for how civic leadership and industry can collaborate to create opportunity. City and state leaders are working intentionally to ensure that families have a reason to stay and thrive in the urban core, rather than being pushed outward. It’s a vision of community renewal powered equally by innovation and purpose.

And at the center of it all is Governor Kevin Stitt, whose business acumen and policy instincts have helped Oklahoma evolve from a state once associated mainly with cattle and crops into a hub of entrepreneurship, aviation, workforce development, and education reform. As chair of the National Governors Association, he’s elevating workforce development as a bipartisan priority — one even the most reluctant governors can’t afford to ignore. His term may end next year, but the movement he’s catalyzed is just beginning.

I’ll share more in the months ahead, but I can’t help feeling a bit nostalgic. My earliest work in Oklahoma was alongside the formidable Dr. Janet Barresi — once “just” a parent turned activist and later State Superintendent — and Sandy Garrett, the Democratic State Superintendent at the time. Together, we persuaded legislators to enact the state’s first charter school law — the opening act in a long series of efforts to expand opportunity for students. From those early days to the forward-looking work underway now, the Sooner State has always embodied a spirit of possibility — the wind that still comes sweeping down the plains.

The Power of Innovation

It’s innovation that’s fueling Oklahoma’s progress — and innovation that’s fueling ours.

In just a few short weeks, on December 4th in Washington, D.C. CER, in partnership with Forbes, will once again host the Power of Innovation Summit and 2025 Yass Prize Award, where the nation’s leading education entrepreneurs, governors, and policy trailblazers will gather to challenge the status quo and shape the next era of opportunity.

This year’s lineup features an extraordinary mix of leaders from education, business and the administration, including Cabinet Secretary Scott Bessent and other senior figures who are bringing new energy to national education and workforce priorities.

So… are you coming?

A surprising number of friends in education reform have told me they “didn’t know when it was.” (You know who you are!) Maybe your spam filters are too good — or maybe you just need this little nudge.

Because when you can spend time face-to-face with hundreds of education trailblazers — not thousands lost in breakout rooms and hallway hunts for “Room 18B or C” — you’ll find the experience transformational.

When you walk away with two new relationships that change your work, or realize that a single, meaningful conversation replaced weeks of unanswered emails, you’ll know why this gathering matters.

We’re nearly at capacity, but we’ve extended a special Forza-reader discount for a limited time — check your email for the code — then run, don’t walk, and click here to secure your spot. It’s always the most electric gathering of the year — when Yass Prize awardees, allies, and visionaries collide in one space, creating the kind of synergy, energy, and purpose that moves entire movements forward.

Notes and Asides

Mamdami Wins NYC

Yes, Zohran Mamdani — a fierce opponent of school choice and loyal ally of the teachers unions — won. No friend to charters, he offers no real plan for students, and families are responding by walking away — from public schools and, increasingly, from the city itself.

Reports say a majority of women under 31 voted for him. (Yes, that includes the daughters of many of our friends.) That’s the same demographic that’s seen the steepest NAEP score declines in reading, history, and civics. Coincidence? Or a symptom of what happens when the teaching profession loses standards of excellence? If we don’t educate young people in the principles that sustain our republic, we shouldn’t be surprised when they vote for those who disregard them.

New Faces in the Arena

As for Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey, and Abigail Spanberger of Virginia, I’m not especially alarmed by their early anti–parent power rhetoric. Both are strong, accomplished women who bring intelligence and experience to the job. Each comes from a state with stagnant education reform records and weak or average charter laws, but both could surprise us.

If advocates for educational opportunity and innovation take the time to educate and engage them, they may yet become allies for meaningful change.

I’ve always believed in the art of persuasion — and the American political system still allows for it. Politics, after all, is my favorite sport, and in this game, upsets and Hail Marys happen all the time. And parent power is indeed a powerful thing.

The Closing Word

I’m an unabashed believer in limited government, entrepreneurial solutions, and the power of conversation to change outcomes. We live in the only nation on earth where those outcomes can shift in a heartbeat — because of people willing to listen, engage, and lead.

Here’s to those brave enough to run, bold enough to serve, and wise enough to know when to change course.

And most of all — to our Veterans, whose courage and sacrifice make all of this possible.

Thank you for defending our great nation and ensuring that the rest of us — advocates, quarterbacks, and policymakers alike — can do our work in freedom.

With gratitude and faith,
Jeanne

By the time you receive this, I’ll be about 12 hours out from Oklahoma City — fittingly, on Veterans Day. My morning began high above the Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial, a powerful reminder of resilience and renewal.

That spirit defines this place. With insights from Fuel OKC’s visionary Brent Bushy and a cross-section of Oklahoma’s business and policy leaders, it’s clear the state is intentionally building the human infrastructure that drives economic growth. Across the metro, new developments are aligning education and workforce to meet the needs of thriving industries in tech, aerospace, defense, and energy.

The Oklahoma City metro area, which spans dozens of districts and communities, is rapidly becoming a model for how civic leadership, education, and industry can align to create opportunity. City and state leaders are intentionally ensuring that families have a reason to stay and thrive in the urban core rather than being pushed to the suburbs. It’s a vision of community renewal powered by both innovation and purpose.

At the center of it all stands Governor Kevin Stitt, whose business acumen and policy instincts have helped Oklahoma evolve from a state once defined by cattle and crops into a national hub of entrepreneurship, workforce development, and education reform. As he chairs the National Governors Association, Stitt is making workforce development a bipartisan cause — one that even the most resistant state leaders will find hard to ignore. His term may end next year, but the movement he’s ignited is just getting started.

I’ll share more in the months ahead, but I can’t help being a little nostalgic — remembering my own early visits to Oklahoma, where I first worked with the formidable Dr. Janet Barresi — “once ‘just’ a parent turned activist and later State Superintendent — State Superintendent Sandy Garrett, a Democrat, to persuade legislators to enact a charter school law, the first of many efforts to expand opportunity for students. From that early fight to today’s forward-looking work, the Sooner State has always embodied the spirit of possibility — the wind that still comes sweeping down the plains.

The Power of Innovation

It’s innovation that’s fueling Oklahoma’s progress — and innovation that’s fueling ours.

In just a few short weeks, on December 4th in Washington, D.C. CER, in partnership with Forbes, will once again host the Power of Innovation Summit and 2025 Yass Prize Award, where the nation’s leading education entrepreneurs, governors, and policy trailblazers will gather to challenge the status quo and shape the next era of opportunity.

This year’s lineup features an extraordinary mix of leaders from education, business and the administration, including Cabinet Secretary Scott Bessent and other senior figures who are bringing new energy to national education and workforce priorities.

So… are you coming?

A surprising number of friends in education reform have told me they “didn’t know when it was.” (You know who you are!) Maybe your spam filters are too good — or maybe you just need this little nudge.

Because when you can spend time face-to-face with hundreds of education trailblazers — not thousands lost in breakout rooms and hallway hunts for “Room 18B or C” — you’ll find the experience transformational.

When you walk away with two new relationships that change your work, or realize that a single, meaningful conversation replaced weeks of unanswered emails, you’ll know why this gathering matters.

We’re nearly at capacity, but we’ve extended a special Forza-reader discount for a limited time — check your email for the code — then run, don’t walk, and click here to secure your spot. It’s always the most electric gathering of the year — when Yass Prize awardees, allies, and visionaries collide in one space, creating the kind of synergy, energy, and purpose that moves entire movements forward.

Notes and Asides

Mamdami Wins NYC

Yes, Zohran Mamdani — a fierce opponent of school choice and loyal ally of the teachers unions — won. No friend to charters, he offers no real plan for students, and families are responding by walking away — from public schools and, increasingly, from the city itself.

Reports say a majority of women under 31 voted for him. (Yes, that includes the daughters of many of our friends.) That’s the same demographic that’s seen the steepest NAEP score declines in reading, history, and civics. Coincidence? Or a symptom of what happens when the teaching profession loses standards of excellence? If we don’t educate young people in the principles that sustain our republic, we shouldn’t be surprised when they vote for those who disregard them.

New Faces in the Arena

As for Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey, and Abigail Spanberger of Virginia, I’m not especially alarmed by their early anti–parent power rhetoric. Both are strong, accomplished women who bring intelligence and experience to the job. Each comes from a state with stagnant education reform records and weak or average charter laws, but both could surprise us.

If advocates for educational opportunity and innovation take the time to educate and engage them, they may yet become allies for meaningful change.

I’ve always believed in the art of persuasion — and the American political system still allows for it. Politics, after all, is my favorite sport, and in this game, upsets and Hail Marys happen all the time. And parent power is indeed a powerful thing.

The Closing Word

I’m an unabashed believer in limited government, entrepreneurial solutions, and the power of conversation to change outcomes. We live in the only nation on earth where those outcomes can shift in a heartbeat — because of people willing to listen, engage, and lead.

Here’s to those brave enough to run, bold enough to serve, and wise enough to know when to change course.

And most of all — to our Veterans, whose courage and sacrifice make all of this possible.

Thank you for defending our great nation and ensuring that the rest of us — advocates, quarterbacks, and policymakers alike — can do our work in freedom.

With gratitude and faith,
Jeanne

Our younger audiences may not get the pun, but the title of the 2012 movie To Rome, With Love felt fitting for this Forza, written just days after a whirlwind trip that took me to some of the most inspiring education gatherings I’ve experienced in a long time.

I may have been in Rome, but the commitment of thousands of people from different cultures made clear that what we do in the U.S. has powerful repercussions far beyond our borders. The drive to expand opportunity through education isn’t confined by geography—it’s a shared pursuit that connects and inspires people everywhere.

The Jubilee for Education

It was the Giubileo del Mondo Educativo—the Jubilee for the Educational World—as students, teachers, and leaders from across the globe converged on Rome, and specifically on Vatican City, to celebrate the human calling for education.

The week opened with the signing by Pope Leo XIV of the Apostolic Letter Drawing New Maps of Hope (must read!) and a Holy Mass at St. Peter’s Basilica, which I had the privilege to attend. The document commemorated the 60th anniversary of Gravissimum Educationis, the Vatican’s historic declaration on education, and renewed the call for a renaissance of learning that speaks to “the hearts of the younger generations,” reuniting knowledge and meaning, competence and responsibility, faith and life.

In his homily that day, the Holy Father reminded students that education is meant to lift the human gaze:

“When human beings are incapable of seeing beyond themselves, beyond their own experiences, ideas and convictions, beyond their own projects, then they remain imprisoned, enslaved and incapable of forming mature judgments.”

He invited all present to strive for “the grace of an overall vision—a gaze capable of grasping the horizon, of going beyond.”

A Great Act of Love

He also warned of a new challenge of our time—“hyper-digitalisation, fragmentation of attention, social insecurity, the need for interior life and wise use of technology”—and reminded educators that “teaching is a great act of love … sharing knowledge is not enough for teaching: love is needed.”

That love was evident throughout the week’s gatherings. On October 31, in a special audience with educators, the Pope urged them to lead with “unity, love, and joy,” emphasizing that “truth does not spread through sounds, walls and corridors … but in the profound encounter between people—without which any educational endeavour is doomed to fail.”

The Human Side of Innovation

That same spirit of encounter and balance between humanity and innovation was alive beyond the Vatican’s walls as well. While in Rome, I explored two remarkable institutions deeply committed to students’ humanity, even as they embrace technology.

First, Ingenium Education—and its newest venture, the Acorn International School—sits on a spacious campus amid ancient olive groves once tended by the Etruscans. Students from every country participate in a dual Italian-UK curriculum and an IB programme. Acorn describes itself as a school rooted in the whole person: with wide open spaces, expansive windows, and gathering spots larger than traditional classrooms, all designed to emphasize that education happens not only through exposure to great works but through one another—echoing the Holy Father’s very words. Their technology stance reflects this ethos: Ingenium has developed an AI-companion for teachers that helps deploy real-time assessments while freeing them to focus on the relational, human side of education.

On the other side of the Tiber, in Trastevere, the American-founded John Cabot University offers both U.S. and Italian students higher education in the cradle of Western civilization. As it has grown, it has forged a distinctive approach to business, entrepreneurship, and the study of AI in education and enterprise. These two are just examples of many Italian institutions striving to balance technology with human connection—allowing the digital to serve the human, never the reverse.

The Global —and Moral Weight—of Catholic Education

What is striking, and likely unknown to many Americans, is the sheer scope of Catholic education worldwide. According to data from the Central Statistical Office of the Holy See, the Catholic system encompasses more than 231,000 schools and universities across 171 countries, serving over 72 million students. Africa remains the beating heart of this network, with the highest number of enrollments—a vivid reminder that faith-based education is not a relic of the past but one of the most powerful and compassionate engines for human development in the world.

In the words of the late Pope Francis, whose teachings Pope Leo XIV continues to echo, “The education of the poor, for the Christian faith, is not a favor, but a duty.”

Education, he said, is one of the highest expressions of Christian charity.

From 1965 to Today—The Universal Right to Education

Sixty years earlier, the Second Vatican Council’s Gravissimum Educationis declared that “all men of every race, condition and age, since they enjoy the dignity of a human being, have an inalienable right to an education.” It recognized parents as the first and natural educators, whose rights “must be proclaimed and protected,” and it called upon both Church and society to ensure that every child has access to learning that forms the whole person—intellect, heart, and soul.

That universal right—the right to an education grounded in human dignity and exercised through parental freedom—is the moral cornerstone of authentic education reform and the foundation for the global movement we now call education choice. It affirms that every family, regardless of income or geography, deserves not merely access to schooling, but the freedom to choose the kind of education that helps their children see beyond themselves—toward truth, purpose, and the horizon of hope the Holy Father so beautifully described.

A Personal Benediction

And then, there was the most unexpected grace of all—our own encounter with the Holy Father, who paused to hold the baby I love most, my newest grandson. The love and wonder in his eyes were palpable; the crowd around us wept and rejoiced as if it were their own child. In that brief embrace, Heaven met earth—a reminder that education, like faith, begins with love. It’s my hope that we can all reflect that same gaze, that same tenderness, toward the children we serve.

There is so much more to say and share, but suffice to say we are creating an opportunity for more to gather next spring in the Eternal City, to explore more deeply how humanity and AI can co-cultivate progress. Bookmark this idea and plan to join us!

Ciao… and Forza! - Jeanne

Every day, educators, school leaders, and brave policymakers are trying to keep the lights on — figuratively and sometimes literally — in a time of unrest, political stalemate, and government shutdowns. They do so because they believe that amid chaos, education can still create order, meaning, and hope.

As author Andy Crouch reminded a new cohort of Yass Prize contenders this week, now is the time for more connection than ever before. Flourishing, he says, doesn’t come from efficiency or technology, but from relationship — from “households” and “canopies of trust” where no one can be missing without everyone noticing.

It made me think: is this what our founders envisioned as we head toward America’s 250th? How do we, as citizens and teachers and parents, communicate about our differences in a world that’s forgotten how to listen?

When Marches Had Meaning

Just days ago, I walked right into a “No Kings” protest in New York City. I stopped and watched, trying to make sense of it. If I were from another planet — or hadn’t watched the news — I wouldn’t have known what they were marching for.

When Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and thousands of Americans marched from Selma to Montgomery in 1965, it wasn’t chaos or catharsis — it was conviction. Peaceful, purposeful, and anchored in a moral vision larger than any one person, the Selma march embodied the very essence of human flourishing: meaning and purpose, character and virtue. It was about issues, not individuals; about the right to participate in democracy itself.

That same spirit surfaced decades later in another, very different march — when students, parents, and educators crossed the Brooklyn Bridge to demand the right to attend schools that served them. Twice in the past decade, tens of thousands of families from New York City’s public charter schools have filled the streets wearing bright yellow shirts and carrying banners that read “Don’t Steal Possible.” They weren’t attacking anyone — they were defending opportunity. It was a march for something, not against someone.

Both movements — one for civil rights, the other for educational rights — were grounded in what the Harvard Human Flourishing Program defines as the pillars of a good life: meaning and purpose, happiness, character, and virtue. When those elements are missing from public protest or civic engagement, we risk losing the very thing that propels human progress.

The Science of Flourishing

The much-cited insights about the primacy of connection in human flourishing aren’t just philosophical — they’re backed by robust, global research. The Human Flourishing Program at Harvard University, founded in 2016, unites scholars across disciplines to answer one question: What makes life go well?

Their flagship Global Flourishing Study, launched with Baylor University and the Institute for the Studies of Religion, includes over 200,000 participants in 22 countries — the largest longitudinal study of its kind. It measures six domains of well-being:

• Happiness and life satisfaction

• Physical and mental health

• Meaning and purpose

• Character and virtue

• Close social relationships

• Financial and material stability

The results are striking: connection — to family, faith, community, and purpose — consistently predicts flourishing more strongly than income, wealth, or academic achievement.

As researcher Tyler J. VanderWeele put it,

“Flourishing is a state in which all aspects of a person’s life are good.”

And as The New York Times summarized Harvard’s research,

“Good relationships keep us happier and healthier. Period.”

Education, the Harvard team notes, is one of the key pathways to flourishing, alongside family, work, and faith. Schools that foster belonging, meaning, and joy may contribute more to lifelong well-being than those focused solely on performance metrics.

Flourishing, then, is not an abstraction. It’s measurable, observable, and deeply human.

The Canopy of Trust

That truth came to life in our recent conversation with Andy Crouch, author of The Life We’re Looking For. Crouch argues that flourishing depends on communities where people are truly known — what he calls “canopies of trust.” In education, that looks like schools as households: places “where no one can be missing without everyone noticing.”

He also reminded us that flourishing isn’t just about happiness; it’s about formation.

“Devices get things done without forming us. Tools form us as we use them.”

His now-famous metaphor captured it perfectly:

“Using AI to do your work is like bringing a forklift to the gym. It lifts the weight for you, but it doesn’t make you strong.”

And perhaps his most powerful reminder:

“If every additional year of schooling reflects less joy, something’s wrong. We should be assessing joy.”

That’s the challenge — and the invitation — for everyone working to transform education today: to restore joy, purpose, and formation to the center of learning.

Technology, Tools, and the Human Touch

This theme runs through the work of the 2025 Yass Prize Contenders — 23 remarkable innovators who will vie for the $1 million prize through an intensive accelerator and final pitch in Miami in November. Each is advancing Sustainable, Transformational, Outstanding, and Permissionless education.

I am hoping they will also help us explore how to strike a balance between what I call Luddite learning and AI-empowered delivery.

To me, the value of AI is in expanding the reach of great content — not replacing it. As several members of our Yass Prize community have written in their recent Forbes essays, AI should enhance the reach of great teachers — supplement, supplant inane tasks, help redefine their role.

Used wisely, AI helps educators meet students where they are, making instruction truly competency-based, something our friends at Axio.ai work hard to make possible. It provides powerful analytics that highlight strengths and learning gaps, customizing instruction more efficiently than traditional models. But it must be built on a foundation of great human teaching, purposeful content, and relationships that make learning stick.

As Crouch argues, like the hammer or the pencil, what we do manually — reading, writing, thinking slowly — builds not just skill but character. If we can find that balance between human formation and AI-fueled delivery, we’ll have the best of both worlds.

These are the challenges we face — and the ones I’m hopeful we can solve as we deploy this year’s Yass Prize Contenders to light up the education world with their incredible diversity of passions, approaches, and ideas.

In the News

• We Can’t Afford to Wait to Teach Our Children How to Think — Mike Piscal, College Achieve Public Charter Schools, 2023 Yass Prize Semifinalist
  A powerful reminder that teaching thinking — not compliance — is the core of American education.

• Use AI to Keep Great Teachers in the Classroom - Keeanna Warren, Purdue Polytechnic High Schools, 2022 Yass Prize Semifinalist
  How AI can become an ally to teachers, not a replacement.

• The Economic Power of Teachers — Cornell Ellis, Brothers Liberating Our Communities, 2023 Yass Prize Semifinalist
  On the deep connection between identity, representation, and student success.

• Education’s Special Problem: How Standardized Tests Fail Students Who Learn Differently — By Yours Truly and Team
  Why normalizing assessment for students with special needs misses the point — and how connection, not conformity, drives growth.

To Action — and To Flourishing

If we’re to answer the question — What is human flourishing, how do we get it, and what must we give up to reach it? — the answer is as much moral as it is practical.

We must give up our fixation on systems for systems’ sake.
Our dependence on technology for technology’s sake.
Our impulse to say yes to our kids just because everyone else does.
And our habit of letting others do the hard work of thinking through these big questions daily.

We can do better — together.

We’ll be delving into all of this and more at the 2025 Power of Innovation Summit,
December 4th in Washington, DC.

Look for your private invitation soon, or drop me a line to get on the list.

And please send along any thoughts or ideas about how to work across these issues I’ve outlined here today.

Have a great week — and here’s to flourishing, for all of us. - Jeanne

This week, the Center for Education Reform turned 32.

It’s a humbling milestone — not because of the number, but because of the meaning.

I launched CER from my husband’s conference table in 1993, driven by the belief that education excellence and opportunity should belong to every child, not just those lucky enough to live in the right zip code. My first public announcement was to a few hundred people from policy, media, the grassroots, and Capitol Hill. That fall, we held a modest reception at our “offices” on K Street, and by November, mailed CER’s first Monthly Letter to Friends.

We started with no budget, no blueprint, and no patience for bureaucracy. We were a small but spunky band — as Newsweek once described us — determined to challenge the old order of education. From those early days came the blueprint for nearly every innovation that followed: the first and best charter laws, accountability standards, and ultimately, the early stirrings of Parent Power.

Over the years, we’ve marked milestones — our 5th, 10th, 13th (yes, on Friday the 13th), 18th, 20th, 25th, and 30th anniversaries — each time honoring those who dared to break the mold. Our story is not one of comfort, but of conviction.

Mission & DNA: Urgency, Persistence, Parent Power

From day one, we’ve lived by three words: urgency, consistency, relentlessness.

When politics turned against choice, we refused to retreat — we sharpened our strategy, rallied communities, and held leaders accountable. When crises hit — Katrina, COVID — we didn’t freeze; we forged ahead.

During Katrina, we pushed for legislation and pressed the federal government to release $20 million in unused charter funds, launched a family hotline to match displaced students with schools across nine states, and stood up for parents who refused to let disaster dictate their children’s future.

When COVID struck, we again didn’t skip a beat. Within days, we rallied the innovators who kept teaching, built an “essential database” for families suddenly schooling on their own, and pushed states to fund families, not failure.

Those months reawakened a movement. For years, reform had grown cautious — comfortable, even. Some traded conviction for approval, appeasing the establishment we set out to challenge. But the pandemic stripped away the illusions. Parents, educators, and entrepreneurs saw firsthand what bureaucracy protects, and what it costs children.

A movement once thought to be fading found its soul again.

Parents rose up, policymakers took notice, and new leaders emerged. In a single year, 14 new choice programs were enacted — the boldest expansion since the late 1990s. Families are voting with their feet. Traditional systems have lost nearly 10 percent of expected enrollment, while microschools, pods, and hybrid models are flourishing.

Growing the Movement, State by State

Our work has always lived where change is real — in the states. CER’s Charter Law Rankings remain a bellwether for what’s working and what’s not: states that let money follow students, grant real autonomy, and protect innovation continue to lead in outcomes.

But law is only the beginning. Power must rest with parents. That’s why we created the Parent Power! Index — the nation’s most comprehensive measure of how states empower families to make decisions about their children’s learning.

The Index tracks not just whether parents can choose, but whether they can influence. Whether they can trigger change, start a school, or shape curriculum. Whether funding is accessible and transparent. In short: whether the system belongs to them.

And now, with decisions like Espinoza v. Montana, the Supreme Court has affirmed that choice is constitutional. Working with former Solicitor General Paul Clement, CER has built a legal strategy to help states dismantle the old Blaine Amendments that restrict families’ rights — opening the door to full education freedom.

Parent power isn’t rhetoric. It’s law, it’s leverage, and it’s life-changing.

The Yass Prize Era

That renewed energy also inspired us to build a platform that doesn’t just advocate for innovation — it rewards it.

In 2021, in partnership with visionary philanthropists Janine and Jeff Yass, CER launched the STOP Awards, now the Yass Prize — the $1 million award and multi-faceted initiative recognizing education providers whose work is Sustainable, Transformative, Outstanding, and Permissionless. Now in its fifth year, more than $55 million has been awarded to over 220 education providers who STOP for Education, and for the more than 15 million students they serve.

With Forbes as our media partner, we’ve elevated hundreds of groundbreaking educators and entrepreneurs, from microschool founders and traditional school leaders to virtual learning pioneers. The Yass Prize has become both a megaphone and an accelerator — building a national ecosystem of innovators changing the way America learns.

Through the Yass Prize Initiative, we’re not just helping philanthropists — we’re learning by doing and bringing opportunity directly to families who had been left out for generations.

Innovation, in real time. Parent power, in practice.

The Human Stakes

Would you ever send your child to a school with an F — one that fails, year after year?

In the film Won’t Back Down, a mother is told, “Everybody can’t rise to the top.” Her answer:

“You know those mothers who lift one-ton trucks off their babies? They’re nothing compared to me.”

That’s the spirit that drives this work.

Behind every statute and policy victory are parents who refused to accept mediocrity, teachers who risked careers to innovate, and leaders who challenged their own institutions. CER was built for them — and because of them.

We have learned that education reform is not episodic. It’s generational. Movements that succeed do so because they never mistake early progress for lasting change.

What Must Change

As we enter our 33rd year, our mission sharpens:

Be Permissionless — the freedom to choose and innovate requires no permission in law or practice.
Full and Fair Funding Follows the Child — because opportunity without equality is an illusion.
Entrepreneurs are Welcome — they are kind of like 22nd century school marms.
Scale and Fusion — small or large, K–12 to careers; it’s all about “higher” education.

And always ask, as we did in Won’t Back Down:

Would you ever send your child to a school with an F?

Voice, Visibility & Velocity

Among the many ways CER advances innovation, few have captured the spirit of open exchange like our media platforms.

In Piazza, launched in 2021, was conceived as a modern homage to the Italian piazzas of old — open-air forums where ideas, commerce, and courage collided to shape the future. It quickly became a gathering place for changemakers — from Netflix founder Reed Hastings and former Speaker Paul Ryan to author and educator Ian Rowe and Girls With Impact CEO Jennifer Openshaw — each exploring how innovation, leadership, and human potential intersect.

Later this year, In Piazza will relaunch with a new twist and new guests — a revitalized space for the next generation of disruptors and thinkers who are remaking education and opportunity itself.

And now, we’ve added another voice to the movement: #EdReformIn10, our rapid-fire podcast that captures big ideas in ten minutes or less. Designed for today’s busy reformers, it spotlights the educators, entrepreneurs, and policymakers building the engines of change — and celebrates the courage it takes to do so.

Together, In Piazza and #EdReformIn10 are part of CER’s expanding network of platforms designed to amplify those who dare to act, innovate, and lead.

Because movements don’t just need policy — they need voice, visibility, and velocity.

Forza — and Forward

Thirty-two years may feel like a long run for a “new” organization — but it’s barely a breath in the long fight for freedom.

We’re proud to have helped launch a movement.
We’re prouder still to see new generations carrying it forward.

From Newsweek to the nation’s airwaves, from research reports that shaped laws to rallies that reshaped hearts, CER has been everywhere the fight for opportunity demanded — in state capitols, on the steps of courthouses, in classrooms, and in the press. We’ve been in the thick of it for 32 years and we — alongside of our incredible partners — are just getting started.

Forza — and forward.

Because the best is yet to come. Andiamo! Jeanne

The underdogs and disrupters of history always have something to teach us.

Relatively few people know that this week in 1571, one of the most decisive naval battles in Western civilization took place: the Battle of Lepanto. More than 400 warships faced off in the Gulf of Patras as the Christian “Holy League” fought to defend Europe from the Ottoman Empire, which hadn’t lost a major battle in nearly a century.

Outnumbered and out-equipped, the sailors of the West prayed the Rosary the night before. Against all odds, they prevailed. That victory is why October 7 is celebrated as the Feast of the Holy Rosary—a reminder that courage, conviction, and faith can upend even the most entrenched powers.

From Galleys to Classrooms

Fast-forward more than four centuries. The late Clayton Christensen, the Harvard Business School giant, described this same phenomenon—without the swords and sails—as disruptive innovation. His Innovator’s Dilemma explained why incumbents rarely see the upstarts coming: they’re too focused on incremental improvements, while the disruptors reinvent the game entirely.

Education has its own Lepanto moments. In the 1990s, charter schools burst onto the scene as the insurgents of public education—publicly funded, independently operated, and focused on students rather than systems. Their very existence challenged the monopoly mindset of district schools, creating room for new ideas and new players.

Traditional systems optimized for predictability; charters optimized for possibility. And the ripple effect was unmistakable: higher expectations, new accountability models, and a proof point that innovation could thrive inside the public sphere.

Today’s Disrupters

Now, a new generation is rewriting the rules again.

Take Alpha Schools, the AI-driven micro-model featured recently on CBS News, where students advance through mastery-based learning at their own pace, guided by coaches instead of traditional teachers. Founder MacKenzie Price, who discovered through her own child what personalized learning really requires, has built one of the most powerful examples of what education freedom can look like in practice.

Or look to the Yass Prize community, whose innovators are launching hybrid academies, microschools, and programs that let families customize learning like never before. These are the modern underdogs—fighting not with galleys, but with grit, imagination, and the belief that every child deserves something better than the status quo.

The Free Press: A Disruptor’s Playbook

Disruption, of course, isn’t limited to education. Look at The Free Press, founded by the indomitable Bari Weiss. In just two years, it has become one of the most trusted—and controversial—media voices in America. Weiss took the best of traditional journalism—substance, storytelling, and standards—and paired it with the independence and transparency legacy media long ago abandoned.

From Honestly, her provocative podcast, to in-depth investigations that challenge orthodoxy across the spectrum, The Free Press has done what all great disrupters do: building something better, not just shouting at what’s broken.

And now, with its acquisition by CBS, The Free Press enters a fascinating new chapter in the cycle of disruption. It’s further proof of how innovations can upend the old order—and, if not careful, be absorbed by it. The challenge, as Clayton Christensen taught, is to keep transforming without becoming what you set out to replace. Education reformers often forget this lesson, mistaking institutional permanence for progress. The best innovators never do—they stay restless, principled, and ready to reinvent. We’ll be watching with admiration—and curiosity—to see how Weiss and her team navigate that balance, and what lessons all of us working to transform education can take from it.

From Classrooms to Campuses

The same spirit is reshaping higher education. Just last week, the Texas Education Freedom Awards convened at the University of Austin (UATX)—the higher-ed institution founded to restore truth and rigor to learning. “Dare to Think” screams the website in bold letters, as if a concept so foundational to civilization should be disruptive.

UATX is reimagining what a university can be: reading the classics, learning from original sources, and equipping students to think fearlessly rather than follow formulas. It’s higher education, rebooted—and proof that freedom and excellence can coexist.

The event brought together Governor Greg Abbott, state legislative leaders, Joe Lonsdale, Jeff Yass, and others who share a knack for creative disruption in their fields, to celebrate 11 education organizations expanding to meet the needs of students across Texas as the state’s new Education Freedom Accounts take shape. It was a vibrant display of what happens when policy meets purpose—and when innovators have permission to scale.

Next Up: Live from Forbes

And if you think you’ve seen disruptors, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

This Friday, October 10, at noon ET, live from Forbes, Chief Program Officer Caroline Allen and past Yass Prize winners will announce the latest contenders for the 2025 $1 million Yass Prize—live-streamed at YassPrize.org.

The Yass Prize continues to be the nation’s highest-profile celebration of permissionless innovation in education—fueling the underdogs who are transforming learning for students everywhere.

The Takeaway

Whether in battle, boardroom, or classroom, progress comes from the bold few willing to stand against the tide. From Lepanto to Alpha to UATX and the Yass Prize network, history favors the courageous—and the creative.

So here’s to the underdogs, the risk-takers, and the disrupters who remind us that faith and ingenuity still change the world.

Forza,
Jeanne

The End of the School District as We Know It

At #RISE last week, I said something that startled a few people: districts are done.

Not education. Not schools. Not even public schools. But the district—the centralized bureaucracy that dictates what schools can and can’t do, that exists mainly to capture funds and shield itself from parents—is becoming irrelevant in places where families have real choice.

See, you have to understand. When you’ve spent as much time as I have going to schools that are untethered from a district, like the one in the lead picture - Miami’s Mater Brickell Academy by Academica - you understand what matters in student advancement, and what does not.

Districts were originally created to manage logistics and ensure equity. Over time, they turned into top-heavy organizations that put parents last and special interests first. They micromanage teachers, block innovation, and insulate themselves from accountability. That model cannot and should not survive in an era where funding follows the child.

Florida proves the point. Like the charter school market before it, in a market with education savings accounts available to every student, parents are customizing their children’s learning like never before. And what’s happening to districts? They’re scrambling to adapt. Just a year ago, only one district contracted with Step Up for Students to serve ESA families. Today, nearly 30 do—and more are applying. Why? Because families want access to AP classes, robotics labs, CTE courses, and other “extras.” Districts that open their doors find a new revenue stream. Districts that resist are left behind.

Public education doesn’t die when families choose differently. It thrives when schools adapt. Districts that reinvent themselves as service providers—offering transportation, HR, finance, or administration—may still have a role. But they will be one option among many, not the gatekeeper. Families and schools will decide whether to buy their services, just as charters and Catholic schools already do.

The lesson is simple: when parents are empowered, everyone must adapt. Those who innovate will flourish. Those who cling to the old monopoly model will fade into history.

See related piece below: “The Florida Effect: How Choice Changes Behavior” — an on-the-ground look at what happens when parents direct their dollars and districts learn to compete.

Parents Were Never Fringe — They Were Always First

At the same panel on this era we are in of parent voice, the exceptional moderator — and rare media talent — Greg Toppo asked us to respond to someone’s remark that parent-driven education is no longer fringe but rather “the fringe is becoming the cloth.” I had to chuckle. Parents were never fringe in the first place — they’ve always been ahead, pressing for change long before policymakers or pundits caught up.

Back in 1994, Time magazine ran a cover story on parents daring to create their own schools, painting them as outsiders. I remember taking calls from parents who said their neighbors thought they were crazy for questioning the local district. What they didn’t realize was that thousands of families across the country were hearing the same thing. That so-called “fringe” was actually the vanguard. Parents knew long before policymakers or pundits — and long before Covid — that something wasn’t working.

Every time the system has reached a breaking point, parents have been ready. During Goals 2000. During Race to the Top. Most dramatically, during COVID. They didn’t wait for the experts—they acted. They built schools, demanded new laws, pushed governors to move. In Iowa, Governor Kim Reynolds took a state with virtually no choice and turned it into one of the boldest universal ESA states in the country. Parents were already there, waiting for someone to open the door.

So let’s stop pretending parent power is fringe (though unions would have you believe otherwise). Parents have been ahead of us the whole time. The real challenge now is ensuring full and fair funding follows every child. A $7,500 scholarship or ESA is a start, but not when the traditional system next door spends $18,000 per student. Real empowerment requires equity in funding, not crumbs from the table.

The future of education isn’t about defending outdated systems. It’s about listening to parents—especially those with the fewest resources—who already know when their children aren’t learning and are determined to find a better way. The more freedom and funding we give them, the more innovative, pluralistic, and responsive education becomes.

Parents aren’t fringe. They’re the center of gravity. The rest of us are just catching up.

The Florida Effect

Some talk about the Mississippi Miracle, the laudable progress that once-sleeper state made in catapulting reading achievement from near bottom, to almost the top. The Florida Effect is what I call the other phenomenon making headlines: when parents are given real options in education, something remarkable happens: schools change.

Florida offers the clearest example. Thanks to its universal ESA law and strong choice policies, families are free to use their education dollars on what matters most for their children — whether that’s a robotics class, AP history, or a microschool tailored to their needs. With funding following students, public schools that once resisted choice are now adapting, competing, and even innovating to win families back.

The results speak volumes. Just a year ago, only one district was contracting with Step Up for Students to serve scholarship families. Today, 27 districts are on board and 10 more are applying. Superintendents across the state, from Miami-Dade to Lafayette, are welcoming scholarship students into their “cool stuff” — robotics labs, performing arts, CTE courses, dual enrollment.

Why the shift? Because when parents have power, districts must respond. Complaints give way to creativity, resistance to receptivity. Leaders are realizing that public education doesn’t die when families choose differently — it thrives when schools adapt. In fact, some districts are now exploring microschools of their own because they see families flocking to them.

It’s not just about Florida. This is what happens when choice and competition are real: families customize, schools diversify, and the old zero-sum “us vs. them” mentality dissolves. Parents are no longer passive consumers of a single system. They are active partners, assembling the education that works best for their children.

That’s why Florida ranks #1 on CER’s Parent Power Index. Other states take note: when you unleash parents with choice and ESAs, you don’t weaken public schools — you make them stronger, more responsive, and more relevant than ever.

Read all about it on the Step up for Students blog and kudos to Keith Jacobs and the team there for continuing to shed light on how choice works for all schools and students.

Standing Tall for America 250

Last week, I promised to share more about the meetings I attended around America’s 250th birthday — and I’m thrilled to report back.

The new coalition to promote education centered on civics in honor of the nation’s 250th was an inspiring gathering of more than 40 organizations (brilliantly organized by the America First Policy Institute) all committed to ensuring every student learns the essentials of our founding — and, just as importantly, develops a love of country that comes from understanding why we stand on the shoulders of giants.

The coalition’s mission? In the words of Education Secretary Linda McMahon: “Renew patriotism, strengthen civic knowledge, and advance a shared understanding of America’s founding principles.”

It was a remarkable day of collaboration, full of practical plans to equip students and teachers nationwide. As Hillsdale College President Larry Arnn reminded us, echoing his institution’s founding president: “Freedom and learning go together, and ignorance and slavery go together.”

As he urges us all: “Read the Declaration of Independence…one of the most consequential and beautiful documents of all history. Read it again and again. It proclaims the rights of us all.”

That’s why Hillsdale is partnering with the White House on the new Story of America video series. As the White House describes it:

“This history series tells the remarkable story of American independence. It highlights the characters and events that led a rag-tag army to defeat the mightiest empire in the world and establish the greatest republic ever to exist. This is the story of America. This is our shared heritage — and our proud destiny.”

Check it out.

Federal Policy Can Amplify Civics Learning...

…In more ways than one. More on this point in the future, like the upcoming grants for such efforts, but for now, I want to spotlight some timely thought leadership from Vicki Murray at the Washington Policy Center, who zeroed in on how the new ECCA can strengthen civics education across all types of schools.

She writes:

“What if there was a way to help all schools—public and private—strengthen civics education? This summer, Congress created exactly that opportunity by enacting the country’s first-ever federal tax-credit scholarship program.

“This groundbreaking program makes virtually all K-12 students eligible for scholarships covering educational expenses—but only if Governor Ferguson opts Washington state in. Here’s how it works: taxpayers receive dollar-for-dollar credits worth up to $1,700 against their federal income taxes for scholarship donations. These scholarships could fund civics curricula and supplies, as well as tutoring, transportation, special education services, after-school programs, private school tuition, and more.

“It’s a real win-win scenario. Parents gain access to educational resources that best serve their children’s needs, while generous federal tax credits help make our state more affordable—at no additional cost to Washington taxpayers.”

Her words get to the heart of the opportunity. Federal policy has opened a door — and if states choose to walk through it, civics learning could expand in ways we’ve never seen before. Imagine every school, public and private, with the resources to bring history alive through better curricula, programs, and supports for students.

Some may think we talk too much about Florida, or choice, or civics. But the old saying applies: “Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.” If we don’t teach history well, we risk repeating its failures — and missing its lessons of freedom and resilience.

The path is clear. With federal tools like this tax-credit scholarship program, and state leaders bold enough to seize them, we can help ensure that every student learns not just the story of America, but why it still matters.

We are in the middle of a movement. From civics to choice, from federal innovation to grassroots parent power, history isn’t just something to be studied — it’s something to be made.

So let’s seize the day. And as always, have a great week. - Jeanne

👉 This begins a series of Forza notes that will, over the coming months, spotlight tools, stories, and initiatives to prepare us for America’s 250th anniversary.

You Cannot Love What You Do Not Know

There’s a direct line between a self-governing society and the knowledge its citizens hold about that society. Without it, neither liberty nor order can endure.

Politics and political affiliation aside, being dedicated to the principles that inspired our nation’s founders, that sent into battle millions of troops since its inception to defend it, and made it the envy of the world, is a uniquely American trait. It’s what Alexis de Tocqueville observed about America’s uniqueness: that its people connected liberty with responsibility, and knowledge with self-governance.

But who is Tocqueville—and how many Americans today know why he was fundamental to our story? How many can answer the question, Why America? As I’ve often written, quoting the late historian David McCullough, one cannot love what they do not know. And one cannot effectively support, debate, defend, or participate in what they do not love.

That is what patriotism is all about. Presidents over our history have often spoken about their love of country. That, too, is patriotism.

• Barack Obama, in the midst of the 2008 campaign, paused to reflect on the meaning of patriotism—honoring the first patriots and those then serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. He reminded us that love of country is not partisan, but binding.

• George H.W. Bush believed patriotism meant civic duty, sacrifice, and community service—values he embodied through decades of public life.

• Ronald Reagan gave us the lasting image of America as a “Shining City on a Hill,” urging us to defend and advance freedom “with every fiber of our being.”

Reagan put it best:

“These were not just images of a bicentennial; they were reminders of our birthright of freedom—and of generous, fervent patriotism that burns in America.”

As the 250th anniversary of our nation approaches, can we rekindle that same commitment to knowledge and patriotism?

Most of our presidents could, because they were steeped in civics and history. They knew the Declaration, the Constitution, the preamble, and what those words meant for their office and their country. Today, too few of our students are given that same grounding.

“Igniting a Flickering Spark”

Speaking of the optimistic 40th president, the annual Reagan Institute Summit on Education (RISE) kicks off tomorrow, “guided by President Reagan’s enduring belief in the power of education to ‘ignite the flickering spark of knowledge,’ this year’s theme and focus is rightly centered on taking a bold approach to solving our most pressing issues - from the states, where they belong and where state leaders should know our votes and scrutiny will be governed by their action on their biggest financial ticket - education.

I’ll be talking about how we help get there, starting with parents.

You can register virtually here.

Big Announcement Today

Education Secretary Linda McMahon is convening the inaugural meeting of the America 250 Civics Education Coalition, and I’m heading there shortly. Led by the America First Policy Institute, the Coalition’s goal is simple but profound: to restore teaching of the founding principles—the Judeo-Christian values of equality and liberty that have sustained this Republic. These should not be controversial. They are the heart of the American promise: that all men are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.

Subsequently, the Department of Education will make grants available to help schools and educators restore fundamentals to the classroom—knowledge many of us once learned, but which for most has long been forgotten.

Also today, for the first time in decades at the National Archives, the entire United States Constitution will begin to be on display to commemorate 250 years of American freedom. Educators and leaders from around the nation will gather to see:

• The original four-page Constitution and the Bill of Rights

• Seventeen Constitutional amendments displayed in the Rotunda

• The rarely seen fifth page of the Constitution, signed by George Washington

The National Archives is the official keeper of the nation’s founding documents. Accessible online, it holds the Declaration, Constitution, Bill of Rights, and countless records that every American should know firsthand. Who can forget our own archive of freedom? You can go online, but honestly, if you haven’t been to the National Archives lately or ever, book your trip now. This is one opportunity no citizen, and particularly no educator, and no student, should miss.

3 Powerful Resources

Information is power. Just sharing these sources with your friends, colleagues, family, students, etcetera can wield a ton of benefit to our fragile nation. Get going. Take two minutes. Just cut and paste these, or forward Forza today and just dig in to some pretty extraordinary resources that others have spent collective years developing and providing, all for our benefit:

Constitution 101 – A free online course created by the National Constitution Center and Khan Academy, featuring leaders across the spectrum who explain our nation’s founding documents.

The Bill of Rights Institute – A hub of open resources that helps educators and students alike understand and practice the skills of citizenship.

The Jack Miller Center – Offering research, teaching resources, and gatherings such as its National Summit on Civic Education, it equips leaders and educators at every level to strengthen civic understanding.

There are so many more that I will highlight in the coming weeks and months In the weeks leading up to America 250, because, well, I’m a geek about those kinds of things, and because our nation needs to know itself better.

On this Constitution Day, let’s resolve not to treat civics as optional, or patriotism as outdated. Let’s instead commit to knowledge, responsibility, and excellence — and make it a teaching moment, not a lost cause.

My very best to you - Jeanne