America Can't Be Great without Good Schools: Here's How Policymakers Can Create More of Them

Center on Reinventing Public Education. Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Arizona State University. H.B. Farmer Education Building, 1050 S Forest Mall, Tempe, AZ 85281. e-mail: crpe@uw.edu; Web site: https://crpe.org/

Y

11

Policymakers

Educational Change; Public Education; Educational Policy; Accountability; Political Influences; Cultural Influences; School Safety; Literacy

Schools are crying out for a robust policy agenda that takes lessons from prior efforts, aligns with what is known about how to improve schools, and keeps partisan controversies out of the classroom. Real education reform progress is possible if the focus is on strengthening public education's capability to deliver what families and communities need the most: providing children, no matter their circumstances, a springboard to the future they actually want. Delivering on this aspiration requires policymakers to close the gap between what students and families want from public schools, what public schools have historically made available to them, and what policymakers spend their time and energy addressing. Today, this gap is larger than ever, thanks to the influence of interest groups and partisan elites whose policy priorities often diverge dramatically from the needs of children and families--public education's core users and beneficiaries. This report provides policymakers an agenda to close that gap, including concrete steps to: (1) take a reasonable middle ground in the culture wars; (2) invest in systems that keep students safe; (3) support schools to provide the academic preparation children need; and (4) use accountability systems to benchmark results and protect against educational neglect. Any effort to improve public education hinges on the support of educators who work on the front lines, and the outlined policy agenda makes teaching more attractive and ensures public schools are places where teachers want to work.

ERIC

2025

ED674622