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Dear John,

It's week 274 and we are thinking about how hard decisions get pushed down the road in the absence of strong advocacy and courageous public servants.

“Chicago Public Schools operates more than 500 schools and spends about $18,700 per student to run buildings that it considers well-utilized,” write ([link removed]) Mila Koumpilova and Jennifer Smith Richards in a joint investigation by Chalkbeat and ProPublica. “At the DuSable schools, the cost is closer to $50,000 a student. The DuSable schools are emblematic of an unyielding predicament facing the district. Enrollment has shrunk. Three of every 10 of its schools sit at least half-empty … there are 47 schools, including those inside DuSable, operating at less than one-third capacity, by the district’s measure. That’s almost twice as many severely underenrolled buildings as Chicago had in 2013 … The most extreme example is Frederick Douglass Academy High School, which has 28 students this year and a per-student cost of $93,000.”

You read that right: $93,000 per pupil.

That’s about 50% more than the cost of tuition at America’s most exclusive private schools, like DC’s Sidwell Friends ($59,920) and NYC's Dalton ($67,480). What are they getting for all that money? A worse education: “Students in the city’s smallest schools have fewer courses to choose from and often miss out on clubs, extracurricular activities, and sports. Chicago’s underenrolled high schools are more likely to have lower graduation and college enrollment rates. They tend to struggle with chronic truancy and higher dropout rates.”

Why doesn’t the school district do anything about it? The short answer: politics. The long answer: “The teachers union and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, who used to be an organizer and legislative liaison for the union, are quick to shut down discussion of downsizing. Widespread anger over the 2013 closures helped fuel the union’s rise to political power over the past decade; the union has also wielded the radioactive closure issue to undermine opponents, notably outgoing district CEO Pedro Martinez.”

What is happening in Chicago is a preview of what’s to come: “With public school enrollment declining across the country, a growing number of cities — Milwaukee; Denver; Flint, Michigan; Boston; San Francisco; Philadelphia — are grappling with the issue of underenrollment.” The big question is: can we learn from Chicago’s mistakes?

Last time ([link removed]) in the New Reality Roundup, we took note of new polling showing parents are hungry for the Believe in Better ([link removed]) policy agenda and looked at areas of improvement for states in providing families with open-enrollment data. This week, we visit Connecticut and Louisiana–the most recent states in the network to close out their legislative sessions–to dive into hard-fought progress.

And we’ve got not one, not two, but three top tasks for you today: 50CAN Builder and Education Civil Rights Now Founder Ben Austin has a new opinion piece ([link removed]) in The Hill that’s a must-read for Democrats.

Best,

Marc Porter Magee, PhD
50CAN Founder and CEO

@marcportermagee ([link removed])

Fight for kids to the very last hour of session

“People tend to think of legislative wins as the conclusion of a story,” Kelli Bottger reflects in the dog days of Louisiana’s legislative session which wrapped up last Thursday. “But I think what seasoned advocacy leaders know is that far more often, a legislative win is just the beginning of the story.”

For much of the past two months, Kelli and her team have been fighting daily to ensure that the major victories that have passed over the past two years–from science of reading legislation to their universal tutoring program and universal ESA–remain funded to continue to grow opportunities for students. Collectively, the programs were facing headwinds in the form of an austere approach to budgeting, ESSER dollars running out and intra-party political disputes between the Governor and Senate. Specifically:
* Ensuring that the Louisiana GATOR Scholarship Program would continue to have the funds necessary to serve students.
* Ensuring that the state’s first-in-the-nation universal tutoring program would continue to be funded.
* Replicating the success of the state’s literacy initiatives by plotting a similar course in math.

For the GATOR Scholarship, which has exploded in popularity since it launched, Kelli and a number of legislators were fighting for full funding of $93.5 million and were running into significant headwinds from the Senate. “I never mind legitimate policy debate,” Kelli reflected, “But when political issues cut off opportunities for kids, it’s heartbreaking.”

There was a point earlier this month, where Kelli wondered if GATOR would continue at all, given the intra-party dynamics at play. Along with her partners at Americans For Prosperity and the office of the Governor, Kelli worked to marshall further support, including bringing GATOR family recipients to meet with legislators. In the end, the tactics helped avoid full cancellation of the program and the GATOR emerged funded at $43.5 million. “I don’t believe in ‘better than nothing’,” Kelli shared. “We’ll keep fighting, but leaders are going to need to answer to families who are concerned their schooling options will be limited moving forward.”

Meanwhile, despite the success of the program, the House initially eliminated funding for the tutoring program, citing an inability to find the funds to continue it. That led to a whirlwind final week of session for Kelli and her team, where dozens of meetings with legislative staff eventually resulted in $30 million in funding to ensure the program continued.

For math, after some eleventh hour legislative acrobatics, the team successfully passed a bill mandating that all math teachers in grades K-3 are trained on math concepts. This builds on last year’s win of a universal math screener for early elementary students and is another step forward in Louisiana Kids Matter’s efforts to surround students with high-quality instruction.
* The task this week is to analyze recent wins and determine which are most at risk of losing funding in a more austere environment.

Take note of ConnCAN’s wins on tutoring and charter funding
With federal pandemic relief dollars gone, the team at ConnCAN has spent much of the past legislative session, which ended earlier this month, working to keep effective programs running, securing a pair of victories that commits a combined 10 million dollars to continue a highly effective tutoring program and fund new charter schools.

Tutoring Continues in Connecticut

Back in 2023, ConnCAN was instrumental in helping schools turn around lagging math performance by establishing an $11 million fund for middle-school math tutoring in grades 6-9. The program was a hallmark of Governor Lamont’s commitment to addressing learning loss and showed strong results ([link removed]) across 46 districts after only a year of implementation.

The tutoring program was stood up, however, through the use of ESSER funds and those dollars ran out at the end of 2024, leaving the statewide tutoring program in limbo. “Middle-school students participating in the Connecticut HDT Program experienced increases in math proficiency ([link removed]) rates in 2024 and over 85 percent of educators rated the program as highly or slightly effective in improving math confidence, achievement, and engagement,” John Sciamatto, the head of the program at the state’s Department of Education told ([link removed]) the CT Mirror.

While all signs pointed to the program ending this year, a energetic campaign from ConnCAN and an endorsement from the Governor resulted in a new $5 million matching grant commitment in the budget, with the state matching investments by both local agencies and philanthropy to get the program to full funding. The budget language establishes that participating students will receive tutoring in groups of no more than four, three days a week for at least thirty minutes a session, ensuring that the program is grounded in the principles of effective tutoring.

New charters can draw upon new funds to open

With thousands of Connecticut students still on charter school waiting lists, the ConnCAN team also fought and won additional funding to open two new charter schools. The state will provide a total of $5 million over the 2026 and 2027 fiscal years to open the Stamford Big Picture Learning Academy and Taino CoLAB New Haven, two operators that the ConnCAN team has worked closely with over the past several years. ConnCAN Executive Director Steven Hernández will continue that support by serving as a founding board member for Taino CoLAB.

“This is a new era for the charter movement in the State of Connecticut where unlikely partners are coming together to expand and deepen access to a high-quality education throughout the system,” Steven tells us. “We’re creating an ecosystem that weaves together traditional and innovative education across the state.”

Steven is quick to note, however, that the work isn’t finished. “While it’s great to see these two schools funded and on track to open, these are only two of the five charters that were approved. The three remaining deserve to open as well, and the ConnCAN team will continue fighting to make sure they have the resources to do so.”
* The task this week is to take inspiration from ConnCAN in securing commitments to continue and expand what’s working now that ESSER dollars are gone.

Read Ben Austin’s critique of the Democratic Party’s educational drift
“The same crowd that covered up President Biden’s cognitive decline crafted his education policy,” writes Ben Austin in a new op-ed ([link removed]) for The Hill. “If we don’t change course, we’re going to lose the next generation of kids — along with the next election, and maybe our democracy along with it. That’s why the time is now for a new generation of Democratic Party change agents to lead and win.”

In the sharply-written piece, which traces Ben’s twenty years as a Democratic campaign staffer and White House aide from President Clinton to Vice President Harris, he urges Democrats to insist on more from their standard barriers: “Clinton’s education record is a quaint memory in the wake of Vice President Harris’ losing presidential campaign. She talked about ‘choice’ and ‘freedom’ in every speech, but never about schools.” Instead Ben urges Democratic leaders to acknowledge “that the Biden/Harris school closures represented a tragic policy failure” and move “beyond defending status quo institutions to driving an abundant education agenda focused on results.”
* The task this week is to read Ben’s piece and share it with the Democratic leaders in your network.


The 74’s Lauren Wagner reports ([link removed]) on Nevada’s first statewide open-enrollment law, passed earlier this month with help from our partners at Opportunity 180, 50CAN National Voices Fellow Anahit Baghshetsyan, and 50CAN President Derrell Bradford. The measure lets students transfer across district lines when seats are available, funds transportation for those leaving low-performing schools and requires districts to publish vacancy data and run priority lotteries once capacity is reached. Originally sponsored by Assemblymember Erica Mosca, a legislator and former member of the 50CAN Action Fund’s Policymakers Fellowship, the new law provides greater choice and opportunity for Nevada families.

After New Mexico was ranked last in child well-being in the 2025 Kids Count ([link removed]) report, NewMexicoKidsCAN Executive Director Amanda Aragon called for the state to move toward high-quality instruction in math and reading, to establish safety nets in the form of tutoring and to bring increased accountability and support for schools. “New Mexicans have to understand it does not have to be like this, we can do better for our kids and if we started today, then two years from now we'll see seeds of progress, but ten years from now, we'll be so far from 50th we won't even remember what it's like,” Amanda told ([link removed]) local KOAT-7 News.
Congratulations to the 11th cohort of GeorgiaCAN’s EPIC parent advocacy fellowship, which has now celebrated the graduations of over 500 parent advocates who are working across the state to mobilize their communities to affect change including, most recently, the launch ([link removed].) of a new Tapestry Public Charter School campus, the first locally-approved charter school in the state in seven years.

Transform Education Now held a parent leadership summit with charter network leaders and legislators, including Jennifer Bacon, the Assistant Majority Leader. Parents learned community organizing tactics, advocacy and storytelling from participants and will take those lessons learned into local advocacy campaigns that the TEN team is helping to support and guide.

And last, but not least, congratulations to 50CAN President Derrell Bradford for being selected as one of CharterFolk's 2025 Brian Voice Award recipients for his piece, "Say It Loud ([link removed]) ."
[link removed]

Anna Egalite at Education Nextanalyzes ([link removed]) a 16-state dataset and finds that the outcome of school board elections is rarely driven by student outcomes: most races are uncontested, turnout hovers below 10 percent and union endorsements dominate.

A new study published by Ed Working Papers evaluates ([link removed]) 10,000 participating students enrolled in Zearn Math in 64 Texas elementary schools. The results “were positive but not statistically significant; equivalent to raising a control group student from the median to the 53rd or 54th percentile.”

Chalkbeat Colorado highlights ([link removed]) the state’s recent achievement test results, finding that 4th and 8th graders still have not returned to the level of ELA achievement set in 2019. In math the results were split: 4th graders are doing better than 2019 while 8th graders are doing worse.

A new Fordham Institute brief by Linda Darling-Hammond and Anne Podolskyexamines ([link removed]) whether gains from teacher experience really tapers off. The authors show student achievement continues to climb, albeit more slowly, past year five.


School is out for summer in most states across the country and that means families are hungry for summer programming, whether that’s Bloomberg Philanthropies’ SummerBoost or Change Summer’s commitment to getting low-income students engaged in summer opportunities. In Lubbock, Texas, educators have partnered ([link removed]) with Covenant Health, a nonprofit regional healthcare system, for a summer camp that lets students get hands-on experience across 22 different fields.

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