Education policy

Priced Out of Public Schools

Public schools are designed to provide every student with an equal opportunity to achieve the American dream. In reality, that ideal is removed from the lives of millions of K-12 schoolchildren. Geographic school district boundaries and the rental housing market limit options for students with the highest needs while benefiting more affluent families in far too many communities across the country.

Supporting a Diverse Choice Ecosystem From the Bottom Up

I outline out a vision for fostering choice and enabling a diversity of educational approaches, by seeding consortia of assessments, similar to Advanced Placement, that ensure the quality but not the homogeneity of options.

School Crossing

In our report, “School Crossing - Student Transportation Safety on the Bus and Beyond,” we examine historical changes in how students get to school and the safety concerns of each mode of student transportation. We present a menu of recommendations for how individual communities, whether rural or urban, can improve student transportation safety. Many of these actions require leadership from and collaboration among different parts of a school community, including families, school and district leaders, local governments, and state policymakers.

Teacher pay, community income, and sickouts

Do teachers in Kentucky earn more or less than the median household in the communities they serve?1 The most recent data from the American Community Survey show that the Median Household Income (MHI) in Kentucky is $46,535. In the 2018-19 school year, data from the Kentucky Department of Education show that the average certified salary for Kentucky teachers was $57,819 - a difference of $11,284. However, household income and teacher salaries vary across communities in Kentucky.