"... student characteristics explain the vast majority of variation in student attendance and ... districts have only minor effects on attendance. These results imply that school funding systems based on ADA may unfairly penalize high-poverty school districts." edworkingpapers.com/ai26-1436

This is a wild misunderstanding of the NYC public school system. The averages are 40k because there are big disparities, but he misses so many things that NYC does for students that other cities do not. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

You should be glad @mpolikoff.bsky.social read the Piper piece, which apparently was pickled. More importantly, the observations he makes are valuable in and of themselves.

The Knicks were supposed to make me feel better while the world is burning down and my sector is being torn apart. Instead they’re just adding to the misery. Brunson included.

I guess this is kinda progress? You could actually, I don’t know, try to implement the funding formula! Not good enough. Also, ELs are not “non-English speakers”. www.detroitnews.com/story/news/l...

A lot of folks were approvingly sharing Kelsey Piper's post about the problems of educational research. Here's my take. // Ill-Informed Essays About Education Research are Weak and Sloppy. Why? edpolicyhub.substack.com/p/ill-inform...

A year after DOGE, former federal employees are still looking for work

“At the beginning of April, the conservative-dominated North Carolina Supreme Court put the final nail in the coffin of equitable education funding in the state.” www.liberalcurrents.com/equal-on-pap...

This is so disrespectful and just misleading: www.theargumentmag.com/p/education-...

YOU CAN'T JUST CUT PROGRAMS THAT ARE WRITTEN INTO LEGISLATION!!! OTOH apparently he can; he's done so already and shows no signs of stopping. It's just such a stupid waste of money. Some of these programs were already cancelled and resurrected through the courts. www.k12dive.com/news/trumps-...

Means-testing also makes programs cost more than they would under a universal model, because so much money gets wasted on verification, surveillance, and compliance.

Interesting paper! My extremely hot take- if you were to unpack the mechanisms/causes of why Special Education improved outcomes, you’d find boring answers such as lower pupil:teacher ratios, related services, and transportation.

🚨New working paper alert! 🚨 The US spends huge $ on special education services for students with disabilities. Is that spending effective? Today we released a working paper suggesting it is. "Special Education Substantially Improves Learning: Evidence from Three States" Let me explain...

really striking how race science freaks seem to spend their every moment crowing about how superior they are versus actually doing anything socially useful that would demonstrate it.

Here's a gift link to a very cool story. Whenever Dr. Goldin would like like to help me with salary negotiations, I'm all ears! Gift link www.wsj.com/economy/wnba...

Harvard economist Claudia Goldin helped WNBA players win a nearly 400% pay raise.

Good post about the historical origins of Plyler vs. Doe. This isn’t an economics issue, it’s a fight for the values of the country: www.nytimes.com/2026/03/28/o...

NEWS— The Trump administration has made more progress than previously known chipping away at Plyler v. Doe, the decision guaranteeing public education access to undocumented students. www.chalkbeat.org/2026/03/27/t...

ed policy folks will remember Tony Tata as the former super of Wake County, NC. he initiated a program to end school assignment and drastically reduced the number of high-performing schools in the district, just so white kids in Cary didn't have to go to other schools.

Awful: Stephen Miller is privately urging Texas lawmakers to restrict funding for the public education of undocumented kids. This has long been a right-wing dream: They want to get SCOTUS to reverse Plyler v Doe and further chip away at 14th Amendment. New from me: newrepublic.com/article/2081...

So, I built a little BETA "Tinder meets ESA" application in which you can swipe left and right on Arizona ESA purchases that were part of the state's recent sample, and see if they were allowed or unallowed. Enjoy! You can play two rounds right now. Comments welcome.

Is Your State Shortchanging Public Schools? @schoolfinance101.bsky.social @mattdicarlo.bsky.social @jerseyjazzman.bsky.social bit.ly/4t2t5M7

I lost my job, oil is six dollars a gallon, my kids have measles, and secret police roam the streets, killing and imprisoning people at random. But at least now students at schools I've never heard of aren't heckling conservative speakers that I've never heard of.

Notably, this op-ed from DFER contains not one single idea for improving education -- just warmed-over centrist scolding of Democrats for not supporting the Republican school privatization agenda plus stale COVID grief. wapo.st/4t0yh3h

Matthew Yglesias is doing incredible public service work producing “identify the flaw in this argument” exercises for education policy students. And for professors, he offers free exam questions with no cognitive offloading, prompting, or energy use. Bless his heart.

why isn't the Muslim mayor taking this opportunity to talk about how all Muslims are bad?

1) There are states other than California and Mississippi. 2) There are nationwide tests that measure things other than Grade 4 reading. 3) There are measurable education outcomes other than test scores.

New/Update for 2026 www.schoolfinancedata.org/the-adequacy...

Who among us hasn't subsidized a European vacation, or visited Petra, on the state of Arizona's taxpayers? Two different account holders. This is outrageous, and fully allowable under Arizona's ESA policy. [Dates are dates submitted, not dates on which expense happened.]

My extremely hot take- this will reduce funding available for education in Mississippi and not help with the “Mississippi Miracle” of 4th grade reading scores

I always wondered when this exact scenario would happen with a voucher program. Curious what the legal scholars think.

A few new slides - and why the future is brighter in California than in Florida - diverging approaches on education investment (not to mention ideological bs in FL)

This is beyond evil villain behavior. Just deeply inhumane and cruel.

Storytime - for those who seem to want to push some "southern" miracle in public schooling - using Mississippi as their exemplar, but implying "red state" strategies are the policy solution - First - Mississippi doesn't catch Mass or NJ - but states like AZ & FL fall to or below Mississippi:

Another quick story time - About those unsustainable "huge" staffing increases while public schools bleed enrollments. First - those enrollments (overall)

I am not being snarky. I need my colleagues who wrote on covid school lockdowns to engage with this. To be as loud as they have been about prior "learning loss." Hell, you can cite Tom & Mark's AERJ paper so you feel better that there's some econ somewhere in your argument.

This is really excellent, glad to see you given the space to go big with this @jamellebouie.net www.nytimes.com/video/opinio...

“It’s going horrendously. I don’t mean there have been a few minor speed bumps; I mean the bus is pancaked, Wile E. Coyote–style, against the side of the mountain.“ www.theringer.com/2026/01/21/m...

New article with @schoolfinance101.bsky.social rethinking cause and consequence in U.S. school funding inequality, highlighting how an emphasis on consequences has sidelined deeper, historical causes, and why QuantCrit offers a path forward. Please read/share! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

more americans than ever say that ICE should be abolished www.gelliottmorris.com/p/support-fo...

These barbarians are destroying everything that makes society work. Kids can't go to school, patients can't go to the hospital. We are, in effect, paying them to wreck the basic infrastructure of the country

My kitchen table issue is “don’t shoot people at their kitchen tables”

This @schoolfinance101.bsky.social post on reforms for Florida makes a good point relevant to #ncpol efforts to limit property taxes: "The most effective form of property tax relief is increased state aid" schoolfinance101.com/2025/12/29/s...

I talked to him a while back for My Worst Moment and he talked about how comfortable he was improvising and that he improvised that super extra-long version of “shiiiiit” on “The Wire” Gift 🔗

A really important piece. The times when we have opened our country to talented people from around the world are among the moments when America has been truly great. Trump is destroying that legacy and fomenting unconscionable racism. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/29/o...

The people who profited most from the cancel culture/free speech panic were less interested in actual freedom of speech than establishing their own control over public discourse. You don't even have to take my word for it. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/1...

Oh good lord.

No it didn't, that isn't true.

In a terrible year, the Knicks are giving me some joy and hope.