Nivens’ commitment to leadership, communication, professionalism and community involvement helped him achieve the on Thursday at The School Superintendent Association’s national conference in Nashville.

The organization selected Nivens from three other finalists in Maine, Kentucky and Maryland. He’s led a district of nearly 50,000 students west of Houston since 2021, part of his 30 years of education experience that began with teacher and principal roles in Dallas.

“If you’re smart, you realize you don’t get here by yourself,” he said. “It’s a lot of people — 49,000 kids back home, 6,500 staff are working right now doing a phenomenal job. But it’s a tremendous honor.”

Nivens spoke with The 74’s Lauren Wagner on Friday at the conference. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

What initiatives and developments are you most proud of during your tenure at Lamar Consolidated?

We are opening an in-district charter school for kids with autism spectrum disorder. The traditional setting works for some, but not for all. So what can we do to support a group of students who want that support? I sat with a parent back in November, and they were paying $40,000 a year to get their child support outside of school. So we want to try to support kids and families. That’s our purpose. It’s opening in August, but we’ve been planning this for two years.

I would also say we’ve increased the number of students who are thinking about post-secondary [plans]. I secured private funding for a college superintendent trip. So I take two juniors from every high school — 14 kids who are first-time college goers — and I take them out of state. It’s fully funded by private donors. Those kids haven’t even been out of the county. We’ve done it three years in a row now. The first year was Louisiana, last year was Arizona and then North Carolina.

We’re opening a brand new career technical education center in August. Lamar didn’t have a CTE center when I got there — we were partnering with different colleges. I don’t believe kids should have to decide what they’re going to do so early. The system is built where you have to say, ‘Okay, child, you have to choose advanced academics or advanced band or athletics. Pick and choose.’ Give them options. You know, they’re 14 years old. We wanted to make sure everybody had options on what they wanted to do. 

Your district has rapidly grown since you started your role in 2021. What challenges have you dealt with to keep up?

We’ve added about 14,000 kids. There are 49,000 now and when I got there, there were around 36,000. I’ve opened 15 schools in five years, and that takes planning. My chief operations officer and his team do a great job helping me and bringing me data, and we think about where schools would go and when they need to go. 

Another challenge is that since we’re growing so fast, we have to rezone schools. We’ve had a lot of resistance from parents. Finally, I publicly intervened, because we may take students out of one historic school and put them in a brand new campus, and parents are like, ‘No, I went to that school.’ But that’s not fair. I was like, ‘Just because you went there 50 years ago doesn’t mean these kids should still be in that school.’ Our first bond issue in 2022 was $1.5 billion, and the one in 2025 was $1.9 billion. And the community supported it. 

What’s your favorite part about your job?

Definitely campus visits. I love listening to our babies. I taught elementary school and didn’t like it because they were too small — I was a high school guy. But now when I have a tough day, I go to a campus and go see some pre-K babies, some kindergarten babies. They’re the sweetest. And they don’t judge anything. One kid was like, ‘You’re as big as a truck!’ And I said, ‘That’s the laugh I needed today, man.’ By far, that’s my best part of my job.

Did you want to become a superintendent when you first began teaching?

No. I didn’t want to. I wanted to be a head football coach. That was it. I worked with a lot of great people, but I worked with a few who were not good with kids. I would have my [students] call me and say, ‘Coach, I don’t have a ride.’ Or, you know, ‘My mama’s high.’ All kinds of stuff. And I would go pick them up or whatever I needed to do. After school, I would take them home, and I would buy them food. And I didn’t see [some teachers] doing that. And I was like, ‘Why are you in this job if you’re not doing that?’ They always would talk bad about the job and I was like, ‘Do you hate kids?’ So I would go home and talk to my wife about it, and she would say, ‘What are you going to do about it?’ And I said, ‘Well, I’m their peer. I can’t do anything about it.’ She said, ‘Yeah, you can. Become a principal.’

So as a principal, I did all the hiring, and if you didn’t know how to teach math, that was fine. If you’re a good person and you love kids, we could teach you how to teach math, right? Then I started working with other principals who I thought weren’t doing as much as they could for their campuses. So it was kind of the same mindset — you know what, I’ll become a superintendent.

What keeps you up at night right now as a superintendent?

In general it’s the contrast between COVID and now. When COVID hit, all the parents had to teach their own kids and their teachers were heroes, right? Now it’s like the world has forgotten that, and the reverence for the job and for the profession is gone. You know, give teachers an opportunity. It’s an automatic, ‘My son said this.’ And, ‘Why did you do that? I’m going to get you fired.’ It’s a cancel culture. So I talk a lot in my community about grace. We’re all human. The teacher might have done something wrong, and I’m not saying we’re always right, but let’s have a conversation about it. I don’t think anybody has bad intentions, right? But let’s have some grace with each other. Let’s be more kind to each other.

The finalists were asked about top education issues and trends in a Jan. 8 online discussion. Here’s some of what they had to say.

Roosevelt Nivens

Nivens has led Lamar Consolidated Independent School District in south Texas since 2021. The district, which has roughly 49,000 students, has been fast-growing, with 15 schools opening during Nivens’ tenure. 

As an educator with 30 years of experience, Nivens serves on the Texas Association of School Administrators. He has received top superintendent awards in recent years from the National Association of State Boards of Education and the Association of Latino Administrators and Superintendents. Before his current role, Nivens was a teacher and assistant principal in Dallas. He holds degrees from Liberty University and Texas A&M-Commerce.

When asked about artificial intelligence use in schools, Nivens said AI helps teachers “get back to the human side of teaching.” His district is creating policies so educators can utilize AI tools for administrative tasks like lesson planning. 

“We want to help students use it responsibly,” he added. “It’s our job, so they will know exactly what it is and what they should and should not use it for.”

Family engagement is also a popular topic in Nivens’ district. He said Lamar Consolidated not only hosts parent workshops, but the district organizes events at places like apartment complexes to cater to families at their homes

Heather Perry

It’s been a decade since Perry became superintendent of Gorham School District, which serves 2,800 students in southern Maine. Over the past 30 years, she has worked her way up from educational technician, middle school social studies teacher and building principal.

Perry serves on the executive board of the Maine School Superintendents Association. She’s the first district leader in her state to be named a national finalist for Superintendent of the Year. She received degrees from the University of Southern Maine and the University of Maine.

Perry said her district began highlighting post-graduate options besides college roughly eight years ago. She helped create , a K-12 program that exposes students to career pathways. Kindergartners learn about future career goals, while middle schoolers get hands-on experiences in fields like health care, business and technology through community partnerships. High schoolers venture outside the school building to get a head start on their careers with local businesses.

Perry said she would rather see  juniors and seniors traveling to early college classes, internships, apprenticeships and “doing real-life career experiences” than sitting in school.

The program began with 35 students and now is at capacity, with 140. It has grown from five business partners to 90.

“There used to be a stigma attached to students who attended (career technical education) schools,” Perry said. “That stigma is gone now. Students who want to go to MIT or engineering schools see the value of going into a (career technical education) program. We’ve done a nice job in Gorham.”

Demetrus Liggins

Liggins is superintendent of Fayette County Public Schools in Lexington, Kentucky, the state’s second-largest district with more than 42,000 students. He’s been in the education field for 25 years, serving in roles from a dual-language teacher to building principal. He was previously a superintendent of two Texas school districts.

In 2020, Liggins was recognized as a superintendent to watch by the National School Public Relations Association. He holds degrees from the University of Texas, Stephen F. Austin University and California State University.

Liggin’s tenure at Fayette County Public Schools has also been the focus of scrutiny over finances. In September, two Kentucky lawmakers over what they described as budget inconsistencies and . He was also by his budget director, prompting an by the school board. 

While Liggins hasn’t publicly responded to the investigation, he in November that budget inconsistencies were the result of miscommunication.

When it comes to funding, Liggins said, cuts made by the Trump administration have cost the district at least one federal grant, and extra money for Title I, II and III grants is at risk. He’s turning to state legislators to help fill future funding gaps.

With budget shortfalls a top concern, Liggins said he’s increasing his involvement in his own district’s finances. Administrators used to report on the district budget to his deputy superintendent but now come to him directly. He said he’s also attending conferences with his business office to learn more.

“That understanding is very helpful when you go to speak to legislators about the (funding) formula,” he said. “Background knowledge has been very helpful.”

Sonja Santelises

This is Santelises’ 10th year as chief executive officer of Baltimore City Schools, which serves 77,000 students. She was previously the district’s chief academic officer and has held leadership positions in Boston Public Schools, was a lecturer at Harvard University and served as a vice president at The Education Trust.

Santelises is a Carnegie Foundation board member and chair of the Council of the Great City Schools and has been recognized for her leadership at the and levels. Santelises earned degrees from Harvard University and Columbia University.

Baltimore City Schools has been accused of and during Santelises’ tenure. 

The key to attracting talent and preventing teacher burnout is to have high-quality principals, she said. Teachers in Baltimore City tend to stay if they’re placed in schools where their principal understands how to support them. 

“Making sure we’re keeping salaries and benefits competitive (is important) because teaching is hard work,” she said. “Everybody wants to know they are being recognized.”

Santelises said her district also prevents turnover by allowing teachers to use a career ladder to change their roles so they spend less time in the classroom and more time coaching other staff.

On Friday, Michigan’s State Superintendent Michael Rice closes the book on a decades-long career as an educator.

Rice, who has been the state’s top education leader since 2019, paving the way for new leadership.

Glenn Maleyko, the current Dearborn Public Schools superintendent, . Until Maleyko starts, Sue Carnell, the chief deputy superintendent at the Michigan Department of Education, .

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Rice led during a difficult time, with the pandemic upending education not even a year into his tenure. Students performed worse on state and national exams, chronic absenteeism surged, and student mental health concerns increased. Academic recovery has been slow, and despite small gains across the board on the Michigan Student Test of Educational Progress this year, third graders posted their worst reading scores in the 11-year history of the exam.

In a recent Chalkbeat interview, Rice talked about some key issues that are critical to improved outcomes for students, including his insistence that Michigan lawmakers must act to stop schools from being able to count seven professional development days as instructional days. He said that flexibility, and others, mean students across Michigan could be receiving far less than the 180 days of instruction that are required by law.

Here are four takeaways from that interview:

The state gives schools too much flexibility to reduce the number of instructional days

Rice has repeatedly asked Michigan lawmakers to change state law to ensure students are receiving 180 days of instruction.

Rice is concerned because in recent years, state lawmakers have added flexibility in the law that allows schools to count up to seven professional development days — days when teachers are training and students are not in school — as instructional days.

Professional development, Rice said, “is immensely important.”

“But prior to the 2019-20 school year, professional development did not compete with instructional time,” he said. “It now does. Children shouldn’t have to pay for professional development of staff with lost instructional days.”

Schools also can shift to online instruction — meaning students are taught virtually — for up to 15 days. While those are technically instructional days, pandemic experience demonstrated that many students struggle with virtual learning.

Meanwhile, classes can be cancelled for reasons beyond the control of administrators, such as snow days and emergencies that close buildings.

It’s unclear to what extent Michigan schools are taking advantage of the flexibility lawmakers have given them for counting professional development as instructional days or going online. There is no requirement schools indicate how many of their instructional days include this flexibility.

But Rice is convinced it’s a problem in part because “we wouldn’t have the challenges of getting it rectified in the state legislature.”

Michigan has some deep educational challenges, but there have been some wins

Michigan student performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as the Nation’s Report Card, has been flat, with little improvement while other states are making significant progress. Literacy, particularly in the early grades, has been a challenge on state and national exams.

There have been some encouraging signs, which Rice easily rattled off during the interview as he discussed progress on the . That initiative outlines eight ambitious goals to improve education in the state and includes expanding early childhood learning, improving early literacy achievement, expanding postsecondary learning opportunities, increasing the percentage of students who graduate from high school, increasing the number of certified teachers in areas of shortages, and providing adequate and equitable school funding.

Rice cited examples of progress toward those goals: Lawmakers have allocated additional funding for some of the most vulnerable children — students from low-income homes, students with disabilities, students who are English language learners — to provide more equitable school funding. Substantially more children are enrolled in Michigan’s free preschool program, and the graduation rate of 82% for high school students is the highest it’s ever been.

But challenges persist, and the state hasn’t fully achieved any of the goals.

“If I could paraphrase Frost, and I like my poets, we have miles to go before we sleep on all of the issues. There’s been progress made … on every goal area, arrival on none,” Rice said.

Michigan can learn from Mississippi’s policies that led to big reading gains

A lot has been said about how the state of Mississippi has seen significant improvement in fourth grade reading on the NAEP, while Michigan’s performance has been flat. Mississippi was ranked ninth in the nation in fourth grade reading this year, up from 49th in 2013.

In Mississippi beginning in 2014, Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling (or LETRS) training was required for teachers in some state schools. LETRS is a professional development program based on the science of reading. The science of reading refers to a body of knowledge that emphasizes phonics along with building vocabulary and background knowledge. (Since 2022, training.) Those schools were also required to hire literacy coaches.

Michigan has provided some funding in the state budget for the LETRS training, and more than 5,000 teachers have completed the training and another 7,000 have begun it, but Rice and the State Board of Education wants Michigan to make it mandatory for K-5 teachers. He has pointed to Mississippi as an example of why that’s important.

“The training was a priority, and it was a fundamental part in our progress toward understanding how our students learn to read through instruction aligned to structured literacy,” said Jean Cook, a spokesperson for the department.

Mississippi paid for training for general education teachers, special education teachers, administrators, speech-language pathologists, and other speech-related personnel, Cook said. As the state efforts grew, Cook said, “the training became strongly suggested rather than required.”

Rice said Mississippi “has been more focused than Michigan has,” and has “leaned into high quality, research based early literacy materials long before Michigan did.” He said they also recognized the value of low class sizes in high-poverty schools in grades K-3.

And just as important, Mississippi hasn’t allowed the incursions into student instructional time that Michigan has.

Michigan, to be sure, has focused efforts on literacy. In 2016, lawmakers passed legislation — the — that required schools to identify and intervene with struggling readers. The law also required schools retain struggling third-grade readers based on their performance on the M-STEP, though the law allowed a number of exemptions. The retention part of the law was rescinded in 2024.

Last fall, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed that require the Michigan Department of Education to identify reading curriculum that align with the science of reading, require schools to screen children to identify those who are struggling with dyslexia, and require teacher preparation programs to include instruction on identifying and addressing dyslexia.

Teacher shortages improving, but it’s not over yet

Michigan investments are paying off in reducing teacher shortages. Rice said that when he became state superintendent, there wasn’t any money in the state budget to address shortages. Since then, the state has invested millions of dollars in a number of efforts, including stipends for student teachers, scholarships for those going into teaching, and funding for “grow your own” programs. There has also been growth in programs aimed at strengthening the current workforce.

Teacher shortages “really had gotten quite acute immediately prior to the pandemic, and then exacerbated during the pandemic. We’re coming out of this,” Rice said.

He said the state went from having 23,000 people preparing for the profession in 2011 down to 9,500 in 2017. But now, he said, “we’re up to 18,000 preparing for the profession annually.”

But shortages are still a problem.

“When you go into the communities that are the most challenged, and you look in the classrooms and when they don’t have shortages, when they don’t have openings, when they have fully credentialed, strong teachers in every classroom, then we can say the shortage is over.”

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at .

Des Moines Public Schools superintendent Ian Roberts has resigned from his position effective immediately, lawyers representing him said Tuesday.

Roberts, who was , had been by the Des Moines School Board Monday after the Iowa Board of Educational Examiners revoked his license. ICE agents had arrested the superintendent, who was born in Guyana, during a “targeted enforcement operation” Friday, and he allegedly evaded arrest. According to an ICE news release, Roberts’ vehicle contained a handgun, hunting knife and $3,000 in cash.

ICE stated Roberts had been given a “final order of removal by an immigration judge” in May 2024. The federal agency stated Roberts was in the country unlawfully, having first come to the U.S. in 1999 on a student visa.

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Attorney Alfredo Parrish, representing Roberts, confirmed that Roberts was a citizen of Guyana and served in the country’s military, but said his office was trying to work on getting more information on the immigration case proceedings that led to his arrest by ICE. In April 2025, a Texas immigration judge had decided not to reopen Roberts’ case in absentia.

Parrish said Roberts had received a letter from the prior attorney for his immigration case in Texas which said “his case had been closed successfully, and he was under the impression that it had been.” Parrish said his firm is in the process of filing a motion to reopen Roberts’ immigration case.

The attorney said it was a “complex case.”

“There are several jurisdictions that are involved, there are several law enforcement entities that are involved,” Parrish said. “… There (are) so many entities involved that we have touched bases with to try to work through this, through the consulate in New York for Guyana, through all the many other entities we’ve been trying to work through this case with. We want you to know that Dr. Roberts’ greatest concern is about his students who he actually loves, and the students who love him back, and his staff.”

While Roberts is resigning from the superintendent position, Parrish said his law firm has filed a request for stay on behalf of Roberts in the Omaha, Nebraska, federal immigration court. Roberts is currently being held at the Woodbury County Jail in Sioux City. Parrish said two of his staff drove to Omaha to file the motion Monday, and that earlier Tuesday, the law firm was in communication with Roberts.

“He understands that he has the support (of the community), and it really gives him inspiration,” Parrish said. “His spirits are high. He was very well-engaged in all our discussions this morning, for about the last two hours.”

District’s hiring procedures questioned

Some of the questions surrounding the case are focused on the Des Moines school district’s vetting process for hiring Roberts. DMPS officials have said Roberts completed the I-9 employment eligibility verification form and submitted the required documentation showing his employment eligibility when hired.

The National School Board Coalition, a conservative K-12 advocacy organization, claimed in a news release the consultant Baker-Eubanks, one of the entities hired by DMPS to perform third-party background checks during Roberts’ hiring process, “admitted that it did not perform a basic I-9 verification.”

This claim is referring to a statement made by Baker-Eubanks CEO Kim Cockerham . Cockerham said the criminal background check performed does not confirm a person’s ability to legally work in the U.S., saying “that’s not even a service that we offer.” Cockerham said, according to the Register.

Laura Zorc, chair of the National School Board Coalition, said Roberts’ hiring process “reveals a critical oversight” in schools boards hiring search firms to fill school administration positions.

“If advising the Des Moines school board, NSBC would recommend working with their board attorney to review their contract agreement with consultants JQ Consultants and Baker-Eubanks for potential recourse, including seeking a full refund, legal, staff time, and covering the costs of rehiring a new superintendent if the contract was breached,” Zorc said in the release.

Board President Jackie Norris said Monday that the board asked Roberts’ attorney to provide documentation and verification of his citizenship status by 12 p.m. Tuesday, with plans to meet at 7:30 p.m. that day to discuss ending Roberts’ employment contract. Parrish said the letter of resignation was being sent to school officials Tuesday.

U.S. Rep. Zach Nunn said late Monday the U.S. Department of Justice confirmed with the U.S. Department of Justice through a Freedom of Information Act and formal inquiry that Roberts was subject to a final removal order under the Immigration and Nationality Act. He also said in a statement it was “unacceptable that someone under a final order of deportation and without legal work authorization was allowed to lead Iowa’s largest public school system.”

“Every parent should be able to trust that school leaders are fully vetted, legally employed, and held to the highest standards of accountability,” Nunn said. “I want to thank our federal agencies for their timely response and commitment to transparency as we work to protect our communities.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Iowa Capital Dispatch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Kathie Obradovich for questions: info@iowacapitaldispatch.com.

He once called Oklahoma’s teachers union a “terrorist organization.” Now state Superintendent Ryan Walters is threatening to “destroy” teachers unions nationwide.

A former small-town history teacher who waged a culture war against educators over issues such as sexually explicit books and criticism of President Donald Trump, Walters announced his resignation to become CEO of the , an anti-union initiative of the , a conservative think tank. 

“We will build an army of teachers to defeat the teachers unions once and for all,” he told Fox News. “This fight is going national and we will get our schools back.”

Walters was expected to run in the Republican primary for . But he had increasingly alienated “pretty much everyone” in state leadership, said Deven Carlson, a political science professor at the University of Oklahoma. “I do think there was still some grassroots support in pockets of the state, but it wasn’t clear how that was going to translate to the things you might need to win, say, the 2026 governor’s election.”

First as education secretary to Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt and then as the state’s elected schools chief for nearly three years, Walters established a reputation for a headline-grabbing and at times even outlandish brand of Christian nationalism. Even before his election in 2022, Walters singled out teachers he considered too “woke” for Oklahoma schools. Once in office, he moved quickly to revoke the teaching certificates of educators accused of violating laws against so-called “divisive concepts.”

With little initial opposition from the state’s GOP majority, he made news almost daily for controversial actions such as threatening to take over the Tulsa schools and mandating Trump-endorsed classroom Bibles. As recently as this week, he announced that every high school in Oklahoma would have a , the youth-focused conservative organization Charlie Kirk founded in 2012. Most of the Wednesday’s Fox news show Walters joined focused on the growth of the organization since Kirk was killed Sept. 10 in Utah.

“We’ve never seen a national movement like this of so many kids, so many parents so willing to step up and say, ‘Listen, we have got to get the country back on track.’ ” he said. “We’ve got to turn away from this radical leftism.” 

As Walters kept a of appearances on right-wing media, at home, Republican lawmakers began criticizing the state chief for , like delaying funds to schools for security upgrades. Former state officials said he failed to communicate about . He promoted stronger literacy instruction, recently launching , but his divisive manner overshadowed his efforts to focus on learning. 

One Republican who repeatedly questioned Walters’ competence for the job and supported investigations into whether he should be impeached said the superintendent’s departure is a “very positive move for Oklahoma.”

Former state Rep. Mark McBride said he hopes the person Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt appoints as an interim replacement has “no agenda other than working with students and teachers to improve outcomes.” McBride, who led an education subcommittee in the House, said he would also “love to serve Oklahoma in this capacity,” but had not yet spoken with the governor about the possibility.

Walters was an early advocate of the Freedom Foundation’s efforts to weaken the teachers unions. He appeared at the group’s and Teacher Freedom Summits. 

“They’re about power and they’re about money,” he said of the unions at last year’s event. “They could care less about student test scores.”

When the foundation launched the new Alliance earlier this year, Walters issued a endorsing the initiative, which prompted a state lawmaker to ask Oklahoma’s attorney general to investigate its legality.

Corey DeAngelis, a school choice advocate and outspoken union critic, said Walters is the right person for the job. 

“Ryan Walters has the tenacity needed to take the unions head on,” said DeAngelis, a senior fellow with the American Culture Project, an effort to mobilize independent voters around issues such as school choice and tax relief. “His fearless advocacy against the status quo is exactly what we need to lead a mass exodus from the teachers union cartel.”

An enthusiastic MAGA supporter, Walters frequently voiced his admiration for President Trump, even directing schools last year to of him praying for the president. 

But the administration hasn’t always reciprocated. 

Education Secretary Linda McMahon during an August stop to the state. Carlson suggested the Education Department likely coordinated the visit with Stitt’s office and, with “little love lost” between the two men, “Walters didn’t make the itinerary.”

Department officials have also been critical so far of his proposal to eliminate federal testing requirements in the state and said to suggest McMahon would likely approve it.

While Stitt, current chair of the National Governor’s Association, initially supported Walters’ political aspirations, the two were no longer “on the same page,” Carlson said. “I think the governor became frustrated with the effects that Walters initiatives were having on his economic development agenda.”

The state, for example, received negative attention for being 50th in education in .

Not long before Walters jumped into politics, he was an award-winning history teacher in the McAlester school district, not far from the Arkansas state line. Former students saw him as fair and inclusive, not the anti-LGBTQ firebrand he later became as state superintendent. His love for teaching impressed McBride when the two first met in 2018. 

Despite a string of scandals, Walters always bounced back. A probe into his management of state funds last year found no misconduct or missing money. Most recently, he was cleared of any criminal charges following into why a movie with nude scenes, Jackie Chan’s 1985 action film “The Protector,” was playing on a TV in his office during a state school board meeting. Oklahoma County District Attorney Vicki Behenna said she found insufficient evidence that he had broken the law.

‘Constant distraction’

The episode was one of many that kept Walters in the news. Education advocates, who Walters frequently accused of indoctrinating students with left-wing ideas, largely expressed relief Wednesday night.

“We can get back to the true focus of teaching without the constant distraction and headlines from the  state superintendent,” said Jami Jackson-Cole, a teacher who moderates a Facebook group of Oklahoma educators and advocates. 

As Walters departs next month, they’re wondering who will take his seat, not just for the remaining 15 months of his term, but in the 2026 election. 

Along with McBride, others rumored to be possible candidates for interim superintendent include , Stitt’s education secretary. A former member of a charter board, she voted in favor of approving the nation’s first religious charter school. Earlier this year, the U.S. Supreme Court split 4-4 on whether the school violated the First Amendment, allowing the state supreme court’s decision prohibiting tax dollars from funding the school to stand.

Regardless of who completes the rest of Walters’ term, advocates are also beginning to examine the records of those . Republican candidates include Rob Miller and John Cox, two superintendents. Two former Tulsa board members, Democrat Jennettie Marshall and independent Jerry Griffin, have also filed paperwork to enter the race.

With Walters “being out of the picture, maybe Oklahomans who are serious about public education can now get to work turning this ship around,” said Erika Wright, an education organizer for Oklahoma Appleseed, a nonprofit law firm.  

She’s been working with a coalition of organizations to develop a for the state’s schools that focuses on the teaching profession, student performance, funding for education and school safety. 

“The possibilities that lie before us are really exciting,” she said, “but the work is not done.”

Leadership changed hands in 114 of those districts — 23% — within the past year, a jump from 20% the year before, according to data, shared exclusively with The 74, by the  from ILO Group, a consulting firm. The project — the only current publicly available resource on leadership turnover in the 500 largest districts — listed about 15% of districts replacing their superintendents prior to the pandemic.

One surprise outcome of that turnover is an increase in female superintendents: Women now represent a third of district chiefs, up from 30% last year. Of the 114 new chiefs, 44 were women.

But even with those gains, it would take another 30 years for women to reach parity with men in district leadership, the authors said.

To Julia Rafal-Baer,  CEO of ILO Group, this year’s results offer a mixed picture, coming just days after the latest scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress. The results showed declines in reading for 12th grade girls and in science for all 8th graders.

“There is a continued destabilizing of leaders at a time when we really need to have a coherent agenda that is driving instruction,” said Rafal-Baer, also a member of the National Assessment Governing Board, which oversees the NAEP program.

Even so, she was pleased with the gains for women.  “I’m encouraged by the fact that we’re starting to see some meaningful progress.” 

Superintendent turnover happens for myriad reasons — from stagnant student performance to disagreements over salary. But it’s clear that COVID and the cultural debates that followed — embroiling districts in disputes over mask mandates, “anti-racist” curriculum and sexually explicit books —  transformed the nature of the position. 

“It’s always been political, but it’s never been so partisan,” said Gustavo Balderas, superintendent of the Beaverton School District in Oregon. Since 2011, he has led five districts in the Pacific Northwest and will leave next year to become of the Puget Sound Educational Service District, a regional agency in Washington.

On top of local concerns, today’s superintendents have the added weight of responding to threats of funding cuts and policy shifts from Washington, Balderas said. “I was just visiting a school … that had a family deported.”

‘Worn out’

Researchers who focus on the superintendency and school board politics echoed Balderas’ view. Rebecca Jacobsen, an education policy professor at Michigan State University, said district leaders are “worn out.”

“I think that the toll of the past few years continues to ripple and really push people out,” she said. Several faced personal attacks, including , from angry members of their communities. “For many who entered education 15-20 years ago, this is not the landscape that one envisioned.”

The skills superintendents bring to the position sometimes don’t match the demands of the job, added Rachel White, an associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin and founder of the Superintendent Lab, a source of research and data on district leaders. Most were teachers and principals before moving to the central office and spent years overseeing instruction, finance or teacher development. 

Now they’re responding to social media, and the “proliferation of misinformation and disinformation campaigns often rooted in ideology,” White said. “This has shifted what superintendents are increasingly spending their time on — debunking stories being told about what is happening in their schools and classrooms that simply are not true.”

As was the case in 2022, some of the turnover is due to school boards firing superintendents before their contracts expire. Since January, the in Georgia, the district in Tennessee and the district in Florida have fired their chiefs.

Most leaders, however, leave on their , sometimes because they’re seeking a new challenge.

Mary Elizabeth Davis spent nearly seven years as superintendent of Georgia’s Henry County Schools, overseeing the suburban-Atlanta district during a period of growth in both and . She eliminated a $12 million deficit and built teams to support instruction, facility planning and operations.

Last year, she started over in Cherokee County, another metro Atlanta district, where she aims to keep board meetings more focused on core academic issues rather than  just building projects and the budget. They still need to keep the public informed about finances, but “it is no longer the only thing,” she said. 

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In Davis’ part of the country, women are still the least likely to be superintendents, the data shows. Twenty-two percent of chiefs in the Southeast are women, while the Northeast has the highest percentage of female district leaders — 46%, or 17 of the 37 districts on the list. 

This year’s report also delves into the routes leaders take to the top job. 

In 2018, when ILO began collecting the data, fewer than half of superintendents were internal hires. Last year, the majority, 58%, were hired from within, and about 40% had served as an interim superintendent in their district before the board officially gave them the job. Moving up within the same school district is slightly more common for women than men, 55% compared to 50%. 

Over a 20-year period, Cliff Jones worked his way up from teacher to of the Fulton County Schools in Atlanta. Once he entered the central office, he said he “took notes” during a time of leadership turnover and learned the importance of communication in making relationships work with the board.

“The more successful superintendents that I saw were trying to be out in front, trying to create proactive communication,” he said.  

Newly hired as the superintendent in Horry County, South Carolina — with an unusually large 12-member board — he has work to do. He said he doesn’t want to just be a “911 guy,” contacting members when there’s an emergency. 

‘Priorities and values’

Not all candidates spend that much time in a deputy or other cabinet position, which Balderas said is likely one reason why turnover remains high. He calls it “leadership compression.”

Among the 500 districts in ILO’s analysis, 10 male leaders skipped straight from principal to superintendent. They include , named interim superintendent of Texas’ Conroe Independent School District in May, and , who took over in February as acting chief of the South Bend Community School Corporation in Indiana.

“People are just bypassing roles” instead of serving four to six years in a mid-level role where they might tackle some of the same challenges as the superintendent, Balderas said. Maybe, they’re “less prepared to understand the political navigation that’s needed” to stay in the position long enough to make lasting improvements. 

After leading multiple districts, Balderas said it’s possible to work with a politically divided board. He tried to build connections with members by taking on other responsibilities in the community outside of the education sector, from the local chamber of commerce to the Rotary club.

People active in those groups “see that you care about your community,” he said. That word “gets back to your board in one way or another.”

Despite division among board members, districts can stay focused on academic improvement, said Davis, who was hired in Cherokee on 4-3 vote. 

“I think that when you start from that position, you have a lot of work to do to understand the priorities and values of individuals,” she said. She met with each board member, hearing concerns over teachers spending their own money on supplies and a desire for more presentations on student data. 

Having a divided board was familiar for Davis. The Henry County board hired her on a 3-2 vote. During her tenure, public meetings turned into over a mask mandate and a in 2023 that kept students locked out of the internet for nearly a month. 

But she had plenty to celebrate. The majority-Black district saw enough to come off the state’s list of failing school systems and a 9% increase in students scoring at the proficient level or above in .

“I’ve never seen harmony as a requirement for effectiveness,” Davis said. 

Michigan’s top education leader is urging the Trump administration to release nearly $7 billion in funding the federal government is withholding from schools nationwide.

In Michigan, that includes nearly $160 million.

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The funding, approved by Congress earlier this year as part of a continuing budget resolution signed by President Donald Trump in March, was supposed to be distributed Tuesday. But the Trump administration said Monday it would not release the funds, .

“These federal dollars support some of our most economically disadvantaged and vulnerable students,” Michigan State Superintendent Michael Rice said in a statement Wednesday. “The U.S. Department of Education should provide the approved funding immediately.”

The money funds programs that support migrant education ($5.4 million), services for English learners ($12.8 million), staff professional development ($63.7 million), before- and after-school programs ($36.7 million), and academic enrichment ($38.3 million), Rice said.

Rice said that based on past practice, “local school districts were rightly counting on this approved funding by July 1.”

He said the Michigan Department of Education, which he oversees, “is working with colleagues across the country and with legal counsel to reflect upon the adverse impact to students, staff, and schools of this withholding.”

It was unclear Wednesday afternoon if the department is considering legal action.

A spokesperson for the White House Office of Management and Budget, said Wednesday that the move to withhold the funding was part of an ongoing programmatic review of education funding, and that no decisions had been made yet.

Initial findings, the spokesperson said, “have shown that many of these grant programs have been grossly misused to subsidize a radical leftwing agenda.”

This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. Sign up for their newsletters at .

Only she wasn’t.

But before the day was over, that innocent mistake reached the ears of Lee’s supervisor in her West Virginia district. Lee had just taken on the challenge of consolidating two struggling schools serving high-need students, and her boss was less than congratulatory. 

“She told me there was no way that I could handle those expectations if I had a baby,” Lee remembered. After that encounter, she never considered having another child for fear she would be overlooked for promotions. “It is a regret I carry,” she acknowledged.

Sixteen years later, Lee is a deputy superintendent in Beaufort, South Carolina, and jokes with her now-22-year-old son that it’s his fault he’s an only child. But her story demonstrates what many women give up to advance in the education sector. In a new , three-fourths of women superintendents and other top female district and state leaders said they make sacrifices that men in the same jobs don’t have to endure. 

Julia Rafal-Baer, founder and CEO of Women Leading Ed, which conducted the survey, called the results “a reality check.”

“Across the country, women are shaping the future of America’s schools. They’re making high-stakes decisions, driving results and shaping the future for tens of millions of students,” she said. But the survey, from leaders in 37 states, shows women are “second-guessed more, scrutinized for their style instead of their strategy, and expected to ‘overcome’ being women.”

The results, shared exclusively with The 74, also show that 86% of respondents feel expectations to dress, speak or behave a certain way because they are women in senior leadership positions — a 4 percentage point increase over last year. 

“No one will take you seriously with a ponytail. No one will take you seriously if you aren’t wearing a suit,” Candace Standberry-Robertson, executive director of system-wide programming for NOLA Public Schools in New Orleans, wrote. Sometimes casual attire is more appropriate for the tasks that come with her position, she said. “Who wants to be all dolled up and sweaty while delivering boxes of instructional materials to schools?”

Others said they’ve faced questions from hiring managers or school board members about balancing work and family life. One superintendent wrote that when interviewing for the top post in a small district, the school board president asked her: “How can you manage being a mom while being a campus leader? We have never hired a lady before.”

And sometimes they don’t, regardless of qualifications.

Over half of respondents said they’ve been passed over for leadership positions that later went to men, and over 70% of the women surveyed reported feeling pressure to earn a doctoral degree in order to be considered for a leadership position. show 45% of superintendents have a doctorate, with women more likely than men to earn the advanced degree.

“Female superintendent candidates won’t apply until they know they’re 110% ready, and male superintendent candidates apply when they’re like 55% ready,” said David Schuler, executive director of AASA, the School Superintendents Association. There’s been progress in districts hiring more women over the past 20 years, but he added, “We need more female superintendents, hands down.”

Not a ‘great look’

Data shows that about in the top 500 districts are women, even though women make up of the teacher workforce — an imbalance that some leaders say robs young educators of strong role models. 

“The people actually doing the work are women, and the people telling them what to do are men,” said Julia Drake, an assistant superintendent in the Katonah-Lewisboro School District, north of New York City. “I don’t think that’s a great look.”

Before Rafal-Baer founded Women Leading Ed in 2021, Drake attempted to figure out why bias against women was so pervasive in the field. She grew intrigued by the topic as a young principal in New York City. When her assistant principal went on maternity leave, Drake recalled, her male supervisor commented, “Don’t expect her to come back as productive as she was when she left.”

She focused her on the issue, compiling a sample of over 500 female leaders from 41 states. 

One top finding was that people viewed ambitious women in education as “bossy,” but ambitious men as strong-minded. Respondents also felt that staff members were less comfortable being supervised by women. 

“I think women are very capable, but also very empathetic and can really bring people together,” she said. “What is sometimes seen as weaknesses is actually a leadership asset.” 

Suits, heels, makeup

Examining this year’s data, Emily Hartnett, executive director of Women Leading Ed, pointed to differences in results by age. Leaders under 50 are more likely to say they delayed having children for the sake of their career. They also feel more pressure to conform to a certain image — 93% compared with 78% of leaders over 50. 

“I once had a supervisor encourage me to get my nails done,” one woman wrote.

Several said they are expected to wear suits, heels and makeup, even when male counterparts wore golf shirts and sneakers to work. 

“When I first started wearing my natural hair, I was told by a mentor that I should reconsider because where I was interviewing to be a principal may not accept ‘that much of my ethnicity,’ ” one district official said. “Of course, I wore my new afro to every interview.”

In response to a new question this year, more than half of the superintendent respondents said board members often second-guess their expertise or undercut their decisions.

One particular example sticks with Dana Arreola, who became superintendent of the Bessemer, Alabama, schools in 2023. The district was about to undertake an $8 million capital improvement project, with new roofs, paint and lighting at several schools. In advance of a presentation to the school board, she reviewed the bid process, fully vetted the architects and conducted a deep dive on facility needs.

But that wasn’t good enough. The members first wanted to hear from a state education official, who happened to be a man. 

“My male counterpart ultimately did a great job of reaffirming the information I had already presented,” she said. 

A year later, a few board members sent messages to say they initially underestimated her and that her hard work was paying off.  

“I began to question my own confidence,” Arreola said. “Receiving notes from my board members felt incredibly validating.”

Community backlash is mounting ahead of a pivotal decision this month on the fate of Memphis-Shelby County Schools Superintendent Marie Feagins.

The Shelby County Commission is set Wednesday to discuss whether to vote Jan. 13 for a resolution of “no confidence” in the school board after several members , who began in the role April 1 after a prolonged search.

A second resolution on the commission’s agenda would place a 90-day hold on the county’s recent $33 million allocation toward building a long-anticipated high school in the city’s Frayser community.

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A parent advocacy group, meanwhile, , while a prominent Memphis lawmaker says he is pursuing his own meeting with the board to “reset the conversation.”

The activity comes ahead of a Jan. 15 school board work session in which the board will revisit the case against Feagins, which Chair Joyce Dorse-Coleman laid out in a resolution to terminate Feagins’ contract.

Feagins has forcefully denied any wrongdoing, and was expected to submit written responses to the board on Monday. Any vote to oust Feagins would need to happen at a board business meeting. The next one is set for Jan. 21.

At its December meeting, the board on Feagins to this month. Dorse-Coleman cast the deciding vote, saying she wanted to “keep it fair” and allow more time to review the facts.

The resolution contends that Feagins has been dishonest and difficult to communicate with, and that she mishandled or misrepresented district finances on three occasions.

Conflict draws in state officials

The drama in Memphis-Shelby County Schools has gotten the attention of state officials, too.

Rep. Mark White, longtime chairman of a House education committee in the state legislature, is seeking to meet this week with the entire school board and several other state lawmakers from Memphis.

“We need to dial down the temperature,” said the Memphis Republican. “There’s a lot of people in our community who are very upset by this situation.”

White said poor working relationships between Feagins and certain board members are distracting all of them from more important academic challenges facing Tennessee’s largest school system, such as low reading scores, chronic absenteeism, a high dropout rate, and a critical need for stronger workforce development in the Mid-South.

He said he’s not ready to introduce legislation that he drafted last year to give Gov. Bill Lee’s administration the to the nine-member Memphis board. However, that avenue remains an option, White said.

“It took 18 months to find this superintendent, and now some board members want to let her go while she’s still trying to learn the ropes and drinking from a fire hose,” White said. “You don’t disrupt an entire community and call a meeting to dismiss your superintendent without a clear definition of the grievances.”

Feagins has hired Memphis lawyer Alan Crone to represent her in the dispute, while the board has retained Robert Spence, another local attorney.

Nearly a year ago, the board away from a leadership position at the Detroit Public Schools Community District, making her the first outside leader to direct Tennessee’s largest school system since it was created through a merger a decade ago.

According to her contract, she must be paid a severance of $487,500 if the board terminates her contract without cause. However, Dorse-Coleman has said the claims by her and several other board members justify a termination, meaning that Feagins would not receive a severance package.

Funding for new Frayser high school at risk

The “no confidence” resolution before the county body that oversees local funding for public schools is co-sponsored by Commissioners Amber Mills and Erika Sugarman. Mills is the sole sponsor so far of the second resolution, to withhold millions of dollars approved on Dec. 16 toward the $112 million cost of building a new high school.

“Firing a superintendent, no matter who they are, at the beginning of a critical project leaves the County Commissioners with no confidence … regarding the new construction of the Frayser High School and other actions,”

Mills said the resolutions are her attempt to make the school board think deeply before moving ahead with an ouster attempt that she said has “blindsided our whole community.” Freezing funding for a new Frayser school, she added, would be “just a pause” as the commission seeks “clear direction and accountability from school district leaders.”

“A lot of people love Dr. Feagins and are happy that she’s making changes,” Mills said.

School board member Stephanie Love, who voted against postponing the termination vote, said Monday she’s disappointed that the county commission has gotten involved. She said Mills, whose district overlaps Love’s, has not contacted her to discuss the matter.

“It’s unfortunate that another elected body would consider holding off on building a new school in my district,” she told Chalkbeat. “Kids are the most important thing to me.”

Love added: “I will vote my conscience (on Feagins’ future). We are not going to make everybody happy. The public is unaware of the things we have to deal with behind closed doors.”

Dorse-Coleman, the board chair, did not respond Monday to Chalkbeat’s questions about community backlash. But in a Dec. 26 statement, she said she and other board members have tried sharing their concerns with Feagins privately without success.

“She has a pattern and practice of not providing critical information and instead misinforming the Board Members,” Dorse-Coleman said. “I don’t think this is something we can overcome.”

This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. Sign up for their newsletters at .

Maurice “Mo” Green,  a retired leader of a progressive foundation who was recruited by Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper to run for state superintendent, defeated Michele Morrow 51% to 49%.

“The work does not end here. It’s now upon us to put forth and implement our bold vision, direction, and plan for [North Carolina] public schools,” Green said in a statement. “Our children and the future of our state depend on it.”

The race boiled down to both candidates accusing each other of extremism. Morrow, a former nurse who focused her campaign on school safety, portrayed Green as a left-wing radical who isn’t tough on student discipline. Green, meanwhile, reminded voters of Morrow’s derogatory statements about public schools and her calls for violence against Democrats on social media, including a that she wanted to see former President Barack Obama before a firing squad  —  comments that she said were blown out of proportion. In the final weeks of the campaign, Obama at a campaign rally in Charlotte, noting that someone “saying just crazy stuff” shouldn’t be in charge of decisions about textbooks and funding for schools.

In a statement, Morrow, who unexpectedly ousted incumbent Superintendent Catherine Truitt in the Republican primary, blamed “smear messaging” for her defeat and said the fact that the race was so close was evidence that a lot of voters agreed with her message. 

“We nearly overcame incredible odds,” she said. “Between Mo Green’s campaign funding and the support of his special interest groups, we were outspent nearly 300  to one.”

Morrow ran as an outsider, frequently criticizing public schools as “indoctrination centers” pushing liberal ideas about race and gender.  She considered her years teaching science and Spanish to homeschooled students, including her own, as adequate qualifications for the position.

Green, a lawyer, held a top spot in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools and then led the 68,000-student Guilford district from 2008 to 2015. He plans to advocate for more funding for public schools. While he supports public school choice, he has been critical of the state’s voucher program. With lawmakers poised to approve a that would fully fund private school vouchers and eliminate a waiting list of more than 50,000 students, Green said during with Morrow, that resources are “being drained away from our public schools.”

While he used Morrow’s past social media posts to his advantage, his background in public schools appeared to make the difference for education advocates.

“Her lack of experience in the public education sphere was glaring,” said Marcus Brandon, who leads CarolinaCAN, part of a network of policy and advocacy groups. “Mo Green, being a former superintendent, made the case [that] he knew public education, and that literally is the job.”

Over the last several months, The 74 has taken a look at some of the biggest education issues at play during the 2024 election cycle. Here’s an overview of the federal, state and local races and ballot measures that are poised to impact students, teachers and families the most. 

The White House 

In the first presidential debate of this election season between former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden, the candidates were asked a question that was top of mind for parents and child advocates:

“In your second term, what would you do to make child care more affordable?” asked Trump during that June debate. 

But rather than focus on children, many critics said the two candidates behaved like them.

Even after Biden dropped out of the race and Vice President Kamala Harris stepped in as the Democratic party’s presidential nominee and tapped Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, a former public high school teacher, as her pick for the vice presidential candidate – education and child care still did not make it to the center stage of election season conversations.

Instead, most clues about Trump’s education policy have come from The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, an ambitious Republican agenda to transform the federal bureaucracy under a second Trump presidency. While Trump has denied any involvement in the creation of Project 2025, experts say the plan reflects many of the ideologies held by the former president and, if enacted, would have considerable fallout in the world of education. 

Project 2025’s chapter on education, for example, offers prescriptions for eliminating Title I grants to high-poverty schools, revising accreditation requirements under the Higher Education Act and dismantling the Department of Education, among other things. Overall, the plan seeks to reimagine the US government as a guardian of parents’ rights and supports school choice. 

Publicly, Trump has also said that he would pull funding from any schools that teach critical race theory or support transgender rights. 

Meanwhile, Harris has not offered much in terms of her education policy. She has made it clear that she thinks Trump’s plan to eliminate the Department of Education would be a terrible idea and has criticized his attacks on curricula taught in schools.

One item that could be on the table during a Harris presidency is a pay hike for teachers. Few may remember it now, but Harris took the biggest swing on education policy of any Democrat in the 2020 presidential primary: a $315 billion to raise teacher pay and overhaul the profession. The American Federation of Teachers, the nation’s second largest teachers union, was the first group to voice their support of Harris as a presidential candidate this summer. 

While the two candidates have vastly different aims when it comes to education, there is one area both camps seem to (mostly) agree on: Expanding the Child Tax Credit. Both the Harris and Trump campaigns have embraced proposals to expand the program, which offers relief to parents of kids under 17 years old. Depending on the election outcome, neither party may hold enough power to enact its vision, however. 

National Issues

Bible teachings in public schools: Republicans have spent a lot of energy getting the Bible into public schools. Much of the spotlight has been on Oklahoma state Superintendent Ryan Walters, who mandated that schools stock classrooms with Bibles. Louisiana passed a law requiring schools to post the 10 Commandments in classrooms, the subject of , while the Texas Education Agency has proposed a Bible-infused reading curriculum that includes stories from the Old and New testaments. 

Whether those ideas will resonate with Christian voters is harder to answer. One recent poll suggests it won’t. On a long list of concerns influencing churchgoers’ views in this election, public schools ranked near the bottom as a reason why they would pick a presidential candidate. Instead, the economy and border security topped the list. 

School boards: Moms for Liberty, the conservative advocacy group, hasn’t been able to repeat its success at the polls since 2022, when its school board candidates were scoring victories across the country. Some say voters are clearly tired of what one researcher called the “politics of disruption.” Others believe the group’s leaders are more focused on adding members and mobilizing voters for Trump than winning local races. There have also been efforts to recruit moderates to run against conservative candidates like those from Moms for Liberty. 

A good indicator of who will win school board seats is whether the candidate has the endorsement of a teachers’ union. According to research out of Ohio State University and Boston College, a union endorsement increases support for candidates by as much as 20 percentage points among various voting blocs, with the effects particularly concentrated among Democrats and those who favor organized labor. Almost no group, including Republicans, responds negatively to the endorsements, the authors found.

School choice: A high-stakes political battle is brewing around school choice. GOP groups are funneling millions of dollars into state races to defeat critics of education savings accounts. In Texas, observers say, the victories by pro-ESA candidates could lead to a more conservative legislature or a potential Democratic backlash. 

It’s worth noting that voters have a history of rejecting private school choice measures at the ballot box. Recent voucher proposals garnered less than a . But advocates in three states are hoping to break that trend on Election Day. In , voters will decide whether to preserve or overturn 2023 legislation that created a private school scholarship program. Initiatives in and , if approved, could pave the way for lawmakers to create vouchers or education savings accounts in the future.

State and local races and ballot measures 

Arizona: The outcome of Arizona’s legislative races could upend what has been one of America’s most welcoming environments for school choice. Democrats, who already hold the governorship, could take control of both legislative chambers by flipping just four seats, which would make Arizona voters the first in the nation to hand over governance of an ESA program to its opponents. 

California: A single, heated school board race in Los Angeles could help decide the fate of the nation’s largest charter school sector and the LA Unified School District. Upstart vows to bring a pro-charter voice to LA Unified’s board, but faces stiff opposition from union-backed incumbent . 

Delaware: With at least eight high-level reports over the last 25 years calling for a wholesale overhaul of a Jim Crow-era school funding formula that gives more state aid to wealthy districts and shortchanges disadvantaged kids, whoever wins Delaware’s governor race will have their work cut out for them. 

Illinois: October was already destined to be a tumultuous chapter in Chicago politics, as voters prepared for the first school board elections in the city’s history. But the abrupt resignation of the city’s existing school board, and the related crisis of governance over the country’s fourth-largest school system, has magnified local divisions over finance and the role of the powerhouse Chicago Teachers Union. Now locals are wondering if the mayor can keep the district solvent — and his own administration afloat. 

Indiana: In Indiana’s governor race, GOP U.S. Senator Mike Braun, who’s been endorsed by Donald Trump, wants to expand the state’s school choice voucher program. If elected, Braun and his running mate, far-right , have pledged universal school choice for every Indiana family while focusing on parental rights and school safety. His opponent, former state schools chief Jennifer McCormick, who has the backing of the state teachers union, seeks to expand affordable child care, fight what she believes is excessive state-mandated testing and call for an equitable school funding formula. 

Massachusetts: In Massachusetts, Ballot Question 2 asks voters to decide if the MCAS exam should remain a high school graduation requirement. If it passes, Massachusetts would have no statewide graduation requirements, making it an outlier nationally. Instead, its some 300 districts would determine requirements locally. Those in favor of repealing the requirement — largely backed by the state teachers union — argue it narrows curriculum and harms students with disabilities and English language learners. Those who want to keep the test, including Gov. Maura Healey, say it’s an important accountability measure. 

Minnesota: If Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are elected in November, Minnesota’s lieutenant governor Peggy Flanagan, will become the first Indigenous woman governor in U.S. history. The daughter of a Hubert H. Humphrey campaign strategist and an Ojibwe land-rights activist — Flanagan was the youngest person elected to the Minneapolis School Board. She has promoted free school lunch and Indigenous curriculum.

North Carolina: North Carolina’s race for governor has been marked by scandal. In September, that Republican nominee Mark Robinson called himself a “Black Nazi” and posted “slavery is not bad” anonymously on a porn site. Beyond the controversies, Robinson has kept education debates centered on eradicating the presence of “politics” and “indoctrination” in schools, and . His challenger, Democratic candidate Josh Stein, told that his top priority as governor would be to improve public education. He has also supported to address the youth mental health crisis, and wants to expand access to community colleges and Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Whoever is elected as the state’s leader will appoint individuals for , subject to confirmation by the assembly. 

Another pivotal race in North Carolina will be for superintendent. Republican candidate Michele Morrow, a homeschooler who rallied outside the U.S. Capitol on Jan 6, has a history of disparaging public schools with choice words like “indoctrination centers.” She faces Democrat Maurice “Mo” Green, a lawyer and former district superintendent. Whoever wins will be responsible for more than 2,700 schools and a $13 billion education budget. 

Rhode Island: Providence, Rhode Island’s school board has been appointed by the mayor for decades, but voters will be able to pick board members again this election. The catch is that state control of the district was just extended to 2027, limiting what the new board can do. New members will still have to navigate their way out of state control as well as handle challenges with low test scores, falling enrollments, school closures and demand for more charter schools. 

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She’s been homeschooling her children for over a decade, participated in the “Stop the Steal” rally that preceded the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the , and has used choice words like “indoctrination centers” to describe public schools. And then there’s the 2020 tweet she said the media won’t let her forget — the one in which she called for a of former President Barack Obama. 

In an interview with The 74, Morrow, who has about her past tweets, downplayed the comments. “Did I say things in jest? Absolutely,” she said. The former nurse unexpectedly ousted Republican incumbent Catherine Truitt in the primary and now faces Maurice “Mo” Green, a former district superintendent, in the general election. She brushes off her as just “a political thing.” 

“That’s between adults,” she said. “That’s not what I think should be happening in our classrooms.”

Morrow isn’t the only Jan. 6 participant vying for office this November. for a , and an of the rally is running for the Texas House. But if elected, Morrow would become the only protester responsible for more than 2,700 schools and a $13 billion education budget.

She counts her nine years teaching science and Spanish for a homeschool co-op as her primary qualification for the job and said that after six years talking to parents and educators, she has a “clear understanding” of what voters are looking for in a state schools chief, starting with a strong focus on academics and character development. Green, meanwhile, is trumpeting his experience leading an education agency and advocating for increased education funding at a time when Republican lawmakers are . 

In interviews, Morrow espouses policies — like a scientific approach to and in math — that could bridge the partisan divide in a state with a Democratic governor and Republican-controlled House and Senate. But her past actions and occasionally extreme language are alienating would-be allies.

“I’m fearful of the rhetoric,” said Marcus Brandon, who leads CarolinaCAN, part of a network of policy and advocacy groups that support school choice. He pushed for expansion of the state’s voucher program, and said while Morrow is “good for my issue on paper,” he thinks Green is more qualified. A former lawyer, Green led the Guilford County Schools, which includes Greensboro, for seven years.

“We need a strong public school system,” Brandon said. “Seventy-five percent of our kids are going to go there.” 

Following her surprise victory in the March primary, Morrow’s campaign attracted a from North Carolina’s business community. But she lags behind Green in fundraising. At the Green had over $578,000 on hand to Morrow’s $50,600. 

Whoever wins faces a system with critical challenges, like record-setting and flat funding. According to the Education Law Center’s most recent , North Carolina ranks 48th in per-student funding, almost $5,000 below the national average of $16,131. Morrow argues there’s already plenty of money for education and districts just need to “triage.” 

“We need someone who can lead us in a way that prioritizes students,” said Lauren Fox, senior director of policy and research at the Public School Forum of North Carolina, a think tank that supports public schools. She hopes the next superintendent will continue Truitt’s practice of appointing a at a time when teachers currently feel “ and that their voices aren’t being heard.” 

Green agrees and often the public that Morrow, during some of her Facebook live posts early in the pandemic, used words like “cesspool of evil and lies” to describe public schools. Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, the Republican candidate for governor, has made similar disparaging remarks, calling teachers “wicked people” in last year. 

“Our educators are being disrespected,” Green told The 74. The state ranks 42nd in starting teacher pay, according to the latest National Education Association . “It’s especially challenging to bring folks into this really important profession when you’re not paying them well enough.” 

During his tenure, from 2008 to 2015, Guilford saw graduation rates climb nearly 10 percentage points to over 89% and rising scores on college entrance exam. 

Recruited to run by outgoing Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, Green said he’s better positioned to press for state spending increases while helping districts adjust to tighter budgets as federal relief funds dry up. He took over the Guilford district at the start of the Great Recession and said one of his first tasks was to return money to the state so officials could balance the budget.

After leaving Guilford, Green led the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, a philanthropy that funds of education, social and environmental causes. In Guilford, he supported charter schools and encouraged choice within the district. But he said, “We can’t have great choices in our public schools when you don’t provide even close to adequate resources for them.”

His point in a state where a group of poor districts sued in 1994 to get enough funding to provide students with a basic education. The foundation he led funded efforts to determine how much the state should provide for programs like pre-K and teacher preparation. The conservative state Supreme Court, however, is now deciding whether to overturn a 2022 opinion directing North Carolina to spend $800 million to improve education in the poorest parts of the state.

Green called the foundation “an organization that certainly tries to lift up marginalized communities.” 

But Morrow has seized on Green’s ties to the association to label him and extremist. She points to the organization’s financing of who push for reducing the presence of school resource officers to curb the school-to-prison pipeline.

She said she’s watching out for teachers by making student discipline the centerpiece of her platform. She cited showing almost 1,500 assaults by students on public school employees during the 2022-23 school year and attended a recent in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, to address school safety. 

Morrow thinks she’s been by educators in the public system and insists she only decided to homeschool when her oldest daughter, who had learning disabilities, wasn’t making progress. 

“She was having math tutoring every day, and she still wasn’t learning math facts,” she said. 

She eventually homeschooled her other four children, but stressed that she doesn’t think all public schools are bad. As an example, she pointed to her local Wake County district’s . 

“This whole idea that because your children are not in public school, that means you hate public school — nothing could be further from the truth,” she said.

Morrow described any past online vitriol as “rhetorical hyperbole” that wasn’t “bothering anybody” until the media focused on it.

But at a June conservative gathering called America Day, south of Greensboro, some of had a familiar ring. 

“The greatest threat to the constitutional Republic that we call home is the indoctrination happening in our public school system today,” she said. In other interviews, she has voiced to discussions of race and gender in the classroom.

Morrow said she holds a monthly Zoom meeting with teachers, but has twice to share the stage with her Democratic opponent. 

“She is running for office by running against the current system,” said Christopher Cooper, a political science professor at Western Carolina University. If Green wants to draw the spotlight away from her, Cooper said he must “raise the salience” of the office.

“The superintendent of public instruction is not, in normal circumstances, an office that voters know a lot about,” he said. And most statewide races “do not draw attention outside of the borders of North Carolina,” making this chief’s race unique. 

But ultimately, the outcome in a purple state will likely rest not on either candidate’s platform, he said, but on whether Robinson, the GOP candidate for governor, and former President Donald Trump prevail on election night.

“If Morrow does win,” he said, “it will likely be on the backs of a larger number of Republican wins in North Carolina.”

Five days after the Maryland State Board of Education unanimously voted to appoint as the state’s permanent superintendent of schools, she held a news conference on Monday to announce the creation of a task force to assess academic achievement.

Wright said members of this group will include local superintendents, principals and higher education representatives to provide recommendations on how to better assess how students are doing in the classroom. The group will be led by the Center for Assessment, a national education nonprofit that designs, implements and evaluates accountability systems to see how students are learning.

Part of this initiative stems from the  (MCAP), which measures a student’s proficiency in math, English and science.

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The uses a rating system from one to five stars to measure overall school performance such as graduation rates, attendance and academic performance.

MCAP results are among the factors that determine the state’s report card and school star rating system.

Although 76% of Maryland schools received at least three out of five stars on the state’s report card released in December, only 47% of all students in third to eighth grades scored on a proficient level in English language arts. The percentage was even lower in math, at nearly 25% proficiency.

“That’s doesn’t ring true,” Wright said. “You can’t have three quarters of your schools being rated as excellent, if you will, and then not seeing student achievement, almost commensurate with that.”

The task force, which will meet about twice a month, will begin its work Thursday and provide recommendations by December to the state Board of Education. Because this accountability system to assess student achievement is in state statute, any proposed changes would need to be done before the Maryland General Assembly convenes for its 90-day legislative session in January.

There’s also a plan to update the online report card to make it easier for parents, guardians and students to comprehend.

“The report card website needs to be a lot more accessible for folks to understand and be able to access data for their schools in their districts,” said Joshua Michael, vice president of the school board. “So delighted that Dr. Wright will be leading that portion of the accountability [measure].”

Wright, who will begin her tenure without the interim title July 1, said conversations “have to start now” on trying to diversify the state’s teacher workforce.

That’s part of the priorities in the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future education reform plan, but some have documented challenges in hiring and retaining qualified teachers, and even recruiting teachers of color.

Although Maryland is one of the most diverse states in the nation, a September 2023 report from noted that 70% of the teachers in the state were white in 2022. In comparison, about 19% were Black and 4% were Latino.

The percentages of the student population at the time: About 40% white, 33% Black and 21% Latino.

Wright recalled a program in place while she was schools superintendent in Mississippi that she would like to replicate in Maryland.

During her nine-year tenure in Mississippi, which ended with her retirement in 2022, the to launch a state-run residency teacher program to fill teaching positions and lack of diverse teachers.

“I think we need to do a better job of campaigning and outreach,” Wright said Monday about boosting Maryland’s teacher workforce. “It’s looking to see how we are helping districts recruit at specific areas. Children need to see somebody that looks like them standing in front of the classroom.”

This was originally published in Maryland Matters.

She’s staying put.

The interim title will be removed from Carey Wright’s name after the Maryland Board of Education’s unanimous vote Wednesday to make her the permanent state superintendent of public schools.

Wright began as , replacing Mohammed Choudhury, who resigned days prior to become senior adviser for the state school board with a base salary of $310,000 until his contract expires June 30.

Wright, a Maryland native who received a $350,000 salary that was prorated for the remainder of her term until June 30, led several initiatives during her half-year leading the state school system of nearly 890,000 students.

She will begin her term as the state’s permanent leader July 1 until June 30, 2028, at an annual salary of $360,500.

Wright, who began in the education profession as a teacher in the Prince George’s County public schools in September 1972, thanked the board and said one of her goals is to listen to all stakeholders to improve public education.

“We want all of our children to be as successful as they can possibly be and it’s our job to support them to get there,” she said. “I am committed and determined to make Maryland the education destination.”

In December, the state school board retained Hazard, Young, Attea & Associates (HYA) of Illinois to help conduct a nationwide search. The firm that has conducted searches for various school systems in Maryland worked alongside the school board’s search committee to help recruit and vet qualified candidates.

At the end of the application deadline on March 1, nearly 40 people expressed interest with 26 “fully completing” applications.

The board announced a special meeting April 13, but went into an executive session. On that day, the board interviewed semi-finalists and narrowed it down to the final candidates.

On Wednesday, the board voted to retain Wright.

“We looked all across the country and you came to us as one of the top national leaders and our thorough search found that,” said board Vice President Joshua Michael, who chaired the board’s search committee. “You have both the experience and knowledge of being a Marylander and of Maryland schools and the disposition, experience and skill set to lead the reform and the improvement in public schools.”

Wright began working on statewide priorities such as incorporating the science of reading in all 24 school systems starting in the 2024-25 school year. The program, which Wright led during , focuses on teaching students based on phonics instructions sound, comprehension and vocabulary.

Wright in Annapolis, urging lawmakers to fully fund public education and to continue to support the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future education reform.

The 10-year, multi-billion-dollar Blueprint plan is overseen by the Accountability and Implementation Board (AIB), which Wright supports.

However, the Blueprint mandates continue to vex local school officials, who have outlined in  their challenges in hiring new teachers amid a shortage in the profession, expanding prekindergarten to include 3- and 4-year-old children and incorporating college and career readiness programs into the curriculum.

Wright is leading other education initiatives such as sending literacy expert teams to visit schools and the release of a statewide literacy plan later this year. In addition, she is creating strategies to boost math test scores and has established a joint committee with representatives from the state Higher Education Commission and University System of Maryland to assess educator programs.

The state Department of Education released a in January to highlight agency strengths and challenges, which was based on 564 interviews and surveys with various state, regional and local agencies and organizations, parents and students.

Some of the strengths, according to the report, include the push for education reform, continued support of the Blueprint and collaboration between the state board, department officials and staff and other stakeholders.

The challenges include ensuring equitable experiences for all students, the challenges of the state superintendent working in collaboration with both the state board and the AIB, and state officials trying to encourage Blueprint “buy in” with some local school officials.

One challenge mentioned several times is how to improve relationships between the department, local school systems and the community.

“Transparency between the State Superintendent and all stakeholder groups was mentioned in interviews and focus groups as a significant challenge that developed under the previous administration,” according to the report. “While there has been positive momentum in recent months, the challenge to continue to provide transparent communications in order to rebuild trust with stakeholder groups is something on which the new superintendent will need to focus.”

When Wright arrived last fall, she was praised for work in Mississippi and for being a native Marylander. She received her bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees at the University of Maryland, College Park.

“Dr. Carey Wright’s distinguished career as an educator, administrator, and leader in public education has uniquely prepared her to meet this moment as Maryland’s State Superintendent,” Gov. Wes Moore (D) said in a statement. “She is a champion for students, and I’m confident that she is the leader we need to fulfill the promise of creating a world-class public education system for Maryland.”

Cheryl Bost, president of the Maryland State Education Association, said in a statement she’s appreciated the working relationship with Wright during her tenure as interim superintendent.

“As superintendent, we hope that she will prioritize ensuring that educator voices are at the table in helping to make decisions that impact our schools, students, and critical issues like ending the educator shortage and implementing the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future,” Bost said.

This was originally published in Maryland Matters.

During the campaign, Searcy, a former state representative who supports school choice, touted her ability to work across the aisle. But with Republicans prevailing in other statewide races, her message apparently didn’t break through.

In the wake of recent results on the National Assessment of Educational Progress — showing flat performance in Georgia since 2019, but a sharp in eighth-grade math — Woods told The 74 he plans to “stabilize and improve student academic performance as we move out of the pandemic” and to “bolster and support our teacher workforce.”

With Woods looking to hold onto his seat, the state education department would continue its shift away from Common Core standards, long associated with the Obama administration despite their origin in the states. Georgia is in the process of implementing new math and English language arts . Observers suggest it will also join other states in emphasizing evidence-based literacy instruction.

“I have seen some encouraging signs that literacy is emerging as a focus,” said Ken Zeff, executive director of Learn4Life, a nonprofit working to improve education in the metro Atlanta area. “That could help reverse not just the latest NAEP results, but generations of students struggling with literacy.”

During the campaign, Woods emphasized his efforts to reduce testing and teacher evaluation visits. He said Searcy’s lack of experience as a classroom teacher made her unprepared to lead the education department. 

Searcy criticized Woods’s support for a state law restricting how teachers can discuss some , which she said ties teachers’ hands and undermines their professionalism.

A charter schools supporter, Searcy served as superintendent of a small, all-girls charter network before leaving to work as an educational consultant. Her advocacy for school choice, however, lost her the endorsement of the Georgia Association of Educators, the state affiliate of the National Education Association.

The race was largely overshadowed by other high-profile match-ups on the ballot, namely former football star Herschel Walker’s bid to oust Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Stacey Abrams’s second attempt to defeat Republican Gov. Brian Kemp. Kemp was re-elected with almost 54% of the vote, but the Walker/Warnock race is still too close to call.

The two-term incumbent’s support of a controversial that restricts what teachers can say about race and diversity in the classroom was apparently less worrisome to the union than the platform of Alisha Thomas Searcy, his Democratic challenger. 

“His opponent, regrettably, has a long history of advocating for taxpayer funding of private schools that we cannot overlook,” President Lisa Morgan said when announcing the union’s slate of candidates.

Searcy was elected to the state House at just 23 and consistently advocated for school choice legislation during her 12 years in office. She co-authored a law that allows students to transfer to other schools within their district, voted in favor of the state’s and championed a constitutional amendment creating the State Charter Schools Commission. Groups seeking to start a new charter school can apply directly to the commission instead of their local district. 

“It’s opening up opportunities within public education for literally hundreds of thousands of children,” Searcy said, noting that her views are likely to earn her some Republican votes. “I have a track record of working across the aisle and having bipartisan relationships.”

Woods also supports charter schools, but expanding choice has not been the focus of his campaign.

The match-up between Woods and Searcy is occuring in the shadows of two high-profile Georgia contests — between Republican Gov. Brian Kemp and voting rights advocate Stacey Abrams, and the between Democratic incumbent Rev. Raphael Warnock and former football star Republican Herschel Walker. But with growing concerns over using federal relief funds to boost student achievement and supporting a beleaguered , the state’s schools face a critical moment. 

The candidates “don’t have traditional platforms that align with what you would expect,” said Mikayla Arciaga, a former Atlanta Public Schools teacher and education advocate. “This is a true test of voter education and whether people really weigh what is most important.”

Searcy won the primary with 57% of the vote, avoiding a runoff. She complained recently that Abrams and Democratic groups have shunned her, likely because of her focus on school choice. But she told The 74 that she thinks those groups have since “changed course.”

“There may have been a problem with the establishment, not with voters,” she said. “I’m optimistic about being included on everything and moving forward.”

‘Can’t ride the middle’ 

Both Woods and Searcy have pledged to increase support for teachers. A former teacher and administrator, Woods has reduced the number of annual teacher evaluations and cut back on standardized testing. Now he’d like the federal government to only require testing every other year and for districts to pare down local assessments.

Woods also called for a report on teacher burnout — of recommendations for protecting teachers’ planning and teaching time, removing “unrealistic expectations” and increasing mental health support. Hailing from a county in central Georgia, Woods could appeal to rural voters who often from laws and policies dictated from Atlanta.

“He has done things that have helped, but you can’t unequivocally say he’s a champion for teachers,” Arciaga said. “He can’t ride the middle anymore.”

During a recent hosted by the Georgia Partnership for Excellence in Education and Learn4Life, Searcy took a shot at Woods’s record on teachers, contrasting it with her own experience as a former superintendent of a small all-girls .

“I didn’t just listen and produce a report. I took action because that’s what strong superintendents do,” she said. She said she ensured teachers had enough classroom supplies, gave them $500 for training opportunities and held celebrations when teachers signed contracts to return the next year. During her tenure at Ivy Preparatory Academy, from 2015 to 2018, she said she increased teacher retention from 25% to 75%.

Searcy, who lost in a Democratic primary for state superintendent in 2014, argued that the incumbent hasn’t done enough to push for higher teacher pay. According to the National Education Association, for teachers in the state, $38,692, ranks 35th, and the average pay of $60,553 ranks 21st. 

Professional respect

The election also comes as the state implements a new “divisive concepts” law that many argue is vaguely worded and undermines teachers’ professionalism. Some have balked at adopting local policies that would allow parents or others to file complaints about a teacher’s comments. The school board in the DeKalb County district initially resisted for two months, but then reversed course, passing its policy . 

Searcy said she supports those districts’ positions on the issue and if she’s elected, would make sure the guidance for teachers is clear and protects them from consequences as long as they’re teaching state standards.

“Teachers are concerned the state doesn’t respect them as professionals to know what to teach and how to teach it,” she said.

A former history teacher, Woods told The 74 there was nothing in the law “that would prevent me from being a great teacher.” But he said districts that don’t pass a complaint policy could risk their accreditation or status as “charter” districts immune from some state regulations.

For voters, the decision may come down to their experience. Woods said his 25 years in K-12 schools give him an advantage over Searcy, who has not been a teacher. 

But some of her supporters say it’s time for a fresh perspective.

“We need a leader who has experience in 21st century schools,” said Jason B. Allen, an educator who served on Ivy Prep’s board and ran unsuccessfully last year for the Atlanta school board. 

Ultimately, voters may make their decisions based on who they support for governor, said Charles Bullock, a political science professor at the University of Georgia. In that case, Democrats opposed to expanding school choice could be surprised if they choose Searcy, he said. 

He added that some of the dissatisfaction at local school board meetings over the past year hasn’t reached the state level enough to attract more interest in the superintendent’s race.
“Even if one of these candidates wins the lottery,” he said, “there’s so much noise over the Senate and gubernatorial contests, it’s hard to get people’s attention.”