Beginning his career in education as a state policy analyst, Hirsch has led the nonprofit — which takes an independent, Consumer Reports approach to reviewing instructional materials — since its founding in 2014. He previously spent years surveying teachers on to learn more about what made them want to stay in their careers, and in a similar way, aimed to elevate the role of teachers in what is often an “opaque” industry, he said.  

The organization’s initial reports were not well received and drew “nasty letters,” from publishers, Hirsch said. More than 1,100 reviews later, many states and districts consider EdReports the leading authority when deciding on new materials.

“One of the things about … leading something as big, impactful and important as EdReports is this is an idea that’s bigger than me. It’s about the impact we’ve had,” he said. “I hope the job is as exciting to someone else as it has been to me. It’s just time for me not to be the one doing that job.”

Hirsch, who said he’s not sure what he wants to do next, will leave at the end of the school year while the board conducts a search for a new chief. 

Hirsch’s departure comes at a time of change for the organization. Last year, it revised its scoring process in response to feedback from experts and educators. In June, the organization expanded to review pre-K materials, influenced by a 2024 showing that curricula for 3- and 4-year-olds often “fall short” and don’t provide enough support for multilingual learners. 

have also taken a larger role in determining which materials districts select, with several to use EdReports reviews as guides. But with the growing attention to the role of high-quality materials in student learning, the organization has faced increased criticism.

Some argued the review process was slow to emphasize the science of reading. Reviewers gave its to programs that still encouraged students to guess words based on pictures or the rest of a sentence while also giving lower, yellow ratings to programs found to boost student achievement.

“I think we’ve caught up in terms of the criteria,” said Courtney Allison, EdReports’ chief academic officer. “Now we’re working on … just making sure that we can provide as much information as possible about as many programs as possible.”

Other critics say EdReports’ review system overemphasizes whether materials address the . Hirsch acknowledged many of the concerns, and the released in November placed a greater focus on phonics, fluency and phonemic awareness while “still considering standards where they’re useful,” said spokeswoman Janna Chan.

Additional organizations, like and the , have also launched as alternatives. Hirsch said he’s never viewed them as competitors, and Allison said additional “partners” can provide helpful signals to district leaders. The risk, she said, is that there’s so much “noise” that leaders picking curriculum “throw up their hands and say, ‘Never mind, it’s too much.’ ”

Devon Gadow, a partner with TNTP, a nonprofit consulting organization, said she appreciated Hirsch’s confidence in EdReports’ mission. 

“They could have gone in 15 different directions, and certainly there are other organizations that have popped up over the years that are now reviewing materials,” she said. But Hirsch’s “singular focus” on the connection between curriculum and standards “allowed states and educators to demand better quality materials.” 

In looking for a new leader, EdReports needs someone who understands the intersection of artificial intelligence and curriculum, both as a real-time , but also as a guide for teachers on how to present a lesson to students who might be working below grade level, Gadow said. With more schools incorporating tutoring and intervention groups into the school day, she said teachers also need more support in connecting their primary curriculum to additional materials.

With all the emphasis on high-quality materials, Hirsch noted growing research showing that simply adopting a strong curriculum isn’t enough. A from the Rand Corp. showed there’s often a mismatch between curriculum, teacher training and assessment. Teachers are using more curriculum materials than ever, but often “water it down” to their students’ level, wrote David Steiner, executive director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy. 

An released last month showed that most districts don’t pilot materials before adopting them districtwide and don’t have their own process for measuring whether the materials they choose are effective.

“Why hasn’t the needle moved on student achievement more?” Hirsch asked. “We’re starting to think the next decade has some really important questions that build off all we’ve done.”

In the 2021-22 school year, more than one in four U.S. public school students missed at least 10% of school days. Before the pandemic, it was closer to one in seven, the Associated Press , relying on data from 40 states and the District of Columbia. 

In New York City, the nation’s largest district, chronic absenteeism , according to district officials, meaning some 375,000 students were regularly absent. In Washington, D.C., it . In Detroit, .

Data are just beginning to emerge for the most recent school year, but a few snapshots present a troubling picture:

• In Oakland, Calif., district officials said were chronically absent in the 2022-23 school year; 
• In Providence, R.I., the district in September said of students missed at least 10 percent last year;
• And in suburban , near Washington, D.C., about 27% of students were chronically absent last year, up from 20% four years earlier. As elsewhere, high school students were more likely to be chronically absent. 

While many policymakers have cited disconnection from school as a key reason for the problem, others say it has different causes unique to the times we’re in — causes that educators have rarely had to deal with so fully until now, from the death of caregivers to rising teacher absences and even, for older students, a more attractive labor market. 

Here, according to researchers, school officials and parents’ organizations, among others, are six hidden (and not-so-hidden) reasons that chronic absenteeism rates remain high.

1. Worsening mental health

In a by the National Center for Education Statistics, 70% of public schools reported an increase in the percentage of students seeking mental health services at school since the start of the pandemic; 76% reported an increase in staff voicing concerns about students with symptoms of depression, anxiety and trauma.

And after modest declines in 2019 and 2020, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported during the pandemic. Suicides are rising fastest among young people, among other groups.

“We’re in the middle of a mental health crisis for kids,” said , president of the National Parents Union. She said mental health support, both in our public education system and larger health care system, is inadequate to deal with the crisis.

“Kids are literally refusing to go [to school]. That is a major issue that I hear from parents every day. ‘I can’t get my kid up. They do not want to go.’”

For many students, school has lost its value, she said, “because there’s not a lot of meat on the bone,” either because instruction has worsened or because many students feel they can do what’s required from home. 

2. Death of caregivers

As many as in the U.S. have lost one or both parents to the pandemic, researchers now estimate, with about 359,000 losing a primary or secondary caregiver, including a grandparent.

Those losses hit hardest in multigenerational, low-income households, since many grandparents and other relatives were playing caregiving roles, said , a research professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Education. “It now falls to the teenagers,” he said. Even those who don’t care for younger siblings may now need to do so for surviving parents or even grandparents, making school less of a priority.

3. Teacher absences 

Among the most politically charged storylines to emerge from the pandemic was the that of teachers and other school staff pushing to ensure their safety, often by keeping schools operating remotely or demanding generous COVID-related sick-day policies.

The result has been an explosion of teacher absenteeism alongside that of students. In Illinois, just 66% of teachers had fewer than 10 absences in 2022. In west of Chicago, it was even lower at just 54% of teachers.

A May 2022 found that chronic teacher absenteeism during the 2021-22 school year had increased in 72% of schools, compared to a typical pre-pandemic school year. In 37% of schools, teacher absenteeism increased “a lot.”  

Simultaneously, it found, 60% of schools nationwide found it harder to find substitute teachers. And when subs couldn’t be found, 73% of schools brought in administrators to cover classes.

That makes school a lot less valuable for students, said Rodrigues. “What we saw in COVID is how little instruction many of our kids are actually getting,” she said. “And so it’s very hard as a parent to make the argument: ‘No, you’ve got to go. This is important for your future,’ when all you’re doing there is sitting and watching a movie because you have a sub again and again and again.”

4. Remote assignments

While many students struggled to keep up with schoolwork during the pandemic, the experience revolutionized schools’ thinking about remote learning. Most significantly, it gave students the ability to complete classwork entirely at home, without stepping into the school building. In many districts, schools have continued to allow students to, in essence, work from home like their parents.

Combined with looser rules around sick-day attendance, observers say, this has resulted in millions of students — and their parents — deciding that five-day-a-week school attendance is no longer mandatory. 

“Kids don’t see why they can’t ,” said Tim Daly, former president of TNTP and co-founder of the consulting firm . In a recent issue of his newsletter, Daly noted that when students miss a day of school, “all the work is available online in real-time, making it simple for a student to complete it all from home before the day is even done.”

Given the low quality of instruction that many parents saw during the pandemic, he said, parents now are less likely to worry if their child is missing a day. “Sitting in a desk for six hours a day,” he wrote, “is for suckers.”

Student testimonials bear that out, said Montgomery County’s Neff.

Students in focus groups now tell administrators that five-day-a-week attendance now seems optional, he said. “They’ve told us repeatedly, ‘We got so used to a year-and-a-half or more taking classes, sitting on our bed in our pajamas on our computer.’ And many of them are continuing a struggle to get back into school regularly.”

Students who learned reasonably well at home, he said, now wonder, “‘Why are you telling me now I have to sit in seven periods a day for five days a week?’ 

At one of the nation’s most renowned suburban high schools, New Trier High School near Chicago, the percentage of chronically absent students rose to more than 25% last winter, the Chicago Tribune . Absenteeism rose as students got older, officials noted, with rates of just over 14% for freshmen but nearly 38% for seniors.

By late May, even the student editors of the school newspaper declared that they : “While this trend isn’t unique to New Trier,” they wrote in an editorial, “it’s also not acceptable. We believe that both the school and students need to do more.”

Jean Hahn, a New Trier board member, last spring pointed out that many adults now work remotely. “So many of us don’t have to be at our desk 9-5 Monday through Friday anymore,” Hahn told attendees at a board meeting. “It’s challenging for parents to explain to our young people why they do.”

5. A higher minimum wage

Over the past few years, more than half of the 50 states have been in a kind of arms race to raise their minimum wage, tempting teens to trim their school hours or drop out altogether to help their families get by.

While the federal minimum wage since 2009 has remained $7.25, 30 states have set theirs higher, according to the left-leaning . While just four states and the District of Columbia now guarantee a minimum wage at or above $15, eight states are on pace to get there by 2026 or sooner.

In states offering $15 an hour, said Hopkins’ Balfanz, this likely made the absentee problem worse. 

“That’s real money to a 17-year-old,” he said, offering them both a bit of personal agency and the opportunity to help out their families. “Things that did not make sense at $6 an hour do make sense, then, at $15.”

Steven Neff, director of pupil personnel and attendance services for Montgomery County Public Schools, the suburban D.C. district, said students “are telling us that there is great value in being able to have a job that is paying reasonably well.” Minimum wage work, he said, now “has even greater financial enticements than when I think about minimum wage when I was their age.” 

6. Better record-keeping

One reason why chronic absenteeism seems to be spreading may have less to do with actual attendance and more with better record-keeping by districts and states.

Until recently, researchers found that the problem was often confined mostly to high-poverty neighborhoods. 

But here’s the thing: A decade ago, few schools even kept track of chronic absenteeism. Most states didn’t actively track it until 2016, when new flexibility under the federal allowed them to choose indicators of school quality according to their own desired outcomes. That’s when about 30 states made it an indicator in their accountability systems — and on school report cards.

Before that, Balfanz said, school districts typically measured average daily attendance, which could actually mask high chronic absenteeism that lurked around the edges. It’s mathematically possible, he said, to have an average daily attendance of 92% “but still have a fifth of your kids missing a month of school. Different kids on different days are making up that 92%.”

So by 2020, when the pandemic hit, schools had only been tracking it for a few years and had few good strategies to address it, Balfanz said. “It’s relatively new. And then the pandemic spread it everywhere.”

Where do we go from here?

At New Trier, student pressure eventually paid off, resulting in a new plan this fall: In preparation for the 2023-24 school year, a school committee recommended for absences, including just five “mental health days” per year. It also bans students from participating in extracurriculars if they’re not in class that day. They’ll get an email by 3:15 p.m. notifying them not to show up to sports or other activities.

Simple interventions can also help: A found that offering parents personalized nudges by mail about their kids’ absences reduced chronic absenteeism by 10% or more, partly by correcting parents’ incorrect beliefs that their kids hadn’t missed as much school as they actually had — research shows that both parents and students underestimate it by nearly 50%.

That’s probably preferable to how many schools attack the problem, via “supportive” phone calls home, said Hopkins’ Balfanz. “Who’s going to make 150 phone calls a day in a school?” he said. “If you have that one person assigned to it, they literally would be spending the whole day calling.”

EdNavigator’s Daly says schools should reset the discussion around attendance, urging parents to let their kids miss school as rarely as possible and communicate honestly about absentee rates.

Neff, the Montgomery County attendance services director, said transparency “increases the urgency in all of us” and is essential if schools want to get parents on board.

“In order to fully have them understand the gravity of the situation, we needed to show them: ‘Here is our data. Here is where it was, here is where it is and where it is for certain groups. We need your help to fix this.’ ”

But something feels different this time around. The groundswell of interest and support, from the schoolhouse to the statehouse, suggests this is a true inflection point. Perhaps it is a once-in-a-generation moment to broadly come together, make lasting change around how reading is taught and set educators and their students up for success. The urgency could not be clearer: more than a third of fourth graders, disproportionately students of color, are scoring below basic on NAEP, and the pandemic has only exacerbated our nation’s literacy crisis. 

As of July 2023, 32 states and the District of Columbia have taken the first, important step in championing the science of reading: prioritizing evidence-based research and instructional practice and signaling the importance of these practices through legislation and funding. But in ’s work with more than 300 school systems nationwide, we know that without support for the real-world classroom implementation of these laws and instructional materials, they won’t have their intended impact on young people’s reading ability. 

Simply sending teachers to a training on the theory and handing them a set of materials won’t get the job done. Across the country, a clear implementation gap is playing out in real time, as districts rush to enact important changes mandated by law without ensuring that educators can make necessary and practical connections to the unique learners who sit in their classroom every day and the theory they’ve learned in their state-mandated science of reading training.

It’s not enough for educators to learn that the 26 letters of the alphabet can be combined to create 44 sounds; they have to learn how to teach and reinforce those patterns and how to respond when individual students don’t grasp the letter patterns after the first few attempts. Without ongoing from their schools and districts to overcome these gaps, many teachers struggle to connect theory and practice, and often revert to familiar — but less effective — methods.

While improving educators’ knowledge of reading research is critical, that alone doesn’t shift student achievement or reading proficiency. To see measurable results, district and school leaders must ensure the right policies, structures and resources are in place to help educators confidently do the challenging work that teaching students to read requires.

Both teachers and the leaders who support them must know how that research connects to the instructional expectations and measures they are held to and is mirrored in the materials and standards they use in their classrooms and schools. This is why we and so many other partners nationwide design and implement professional development that integrates this theory into classroom-level practices that teachers can use every day. 

We developed an online course to enhance educators’ knowledge of the evidence base for science of reading and paired it with expert-facilitated learning and practice, allowing educators to apply their knowledge through the curriculum they use in their classrooms. 

We launched this work in partnership with Tennessee’s Department of Education, where teachers participated in an online, 20- to 30-hour science of reading course and, perhaps more importantly, came together for five days of in-person professional development. There, they reviewed the content of the online course, had a chance to see what that theory looked like in their instructional materials, and practiced delivering those lessons and routines. 

Positive results are already emerging. Our work with the department was part of a statewide, multi-year, K-3 literacy strategy centered on concrete application of instructional practices and materials in everyday classrooms. This year, Tennessee , including the largest single-year increase in third graders meeting or exceeding expectations in English and the largest percentage scoring in the top performance category in over 10 years. 

Educators are hungry for this type of practical implementation support. In Washington County, Maryland, the initial year of TNTP’s support was intended to reach 300 educators. Through word of mouth, nearly 1,000 teachers and all elementary principals signed up for a science of reading professional learning course, which included discussion groups and collaborative practice sessions. This hands-on approach contributed to the successful adoption of high-quality instructional materials for literacy instruction throughout the county. Data from DIBELS, a series of short tests that assess K-8 literacy, showed significant growth in reading foundational skills for K-1 students, and kindergarten readiness data showed an 11 percentage-point increase over the year prior.

These examples make clear that states and school systems have an opportunity to get the science of reading right from the get-go. Succeeding at scale requires going beyond theoretical training and strong materials. States must invest in closing the implementation gap by providing the time, resources and support for educators to bring the science of reading to life in every classroom. Nothing matters more for educators on the front lines and for their students, who have a right to literacy and the power that comes with it.

Offered the job by then-Mayor Bill de Blasio, Carvalho in private, then presided over a televised school board meeting that featured three hours of supporters all but begging him to stay. In the end, Carvalho remained.

greeted the move in Miami, but it didn’t go over so well in New York, home to the nation’s largest school district: Eric Phillips, de Blasio’s press secretary, , “Who would ever hire this guy again?”

Four years later, Phillips has his answer: Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation’s second-largest school system.

The drama of the hire was underscored by Pedro Noguera, dean of the University of Southern California Rossier School of Education, who likened the move to “LeBron coming to the Lakers.” But Los Angeles offers only the most recent example of an oversize personality with huge ambitions taking over a district’s top job. Right now, all three of the nation’s largest school systems are run by energetic reformers, a rarity even in big-city schools circles.

All of them greet Spring 2022 full of promise — and problems. Over the next few years, they’ll enjoy unprecedented funding as taxpayers throw billions of dollars at schools to scrub away deficits caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

But all three districts are rapidly losing students. And unions, emboldened by 2021 victories around remote instruction and, in recent years, high-profile strikes, could be formidable obstacles to their priorities. In Chicago, new schools CEO has already faced down a citywide teacher walkout.

In addition to Carvalho and Martinez, who are both immigrants, New York City Mayor Eric Adams in December named , the founder of a small network of public boys’ schools, as the new school chancellor. Banks’s schools have stood out for, among other reasons, employing many male teachers of color.

All three “definitely seem reform minded, which I think is super exciting and a real breath of fresh air,” said , superintendent of the Catholic independent Partnership Schools network. 

“I think it really speaks to the moment we’re at as we’re coming out of COVID,” she said. The pandemic “provided an uncomfortable reminder” of the need for leaders who will put children’s needs first. 

Billions in new funding … until 2024

Martinez, Chicago’s new schools CEO, is of Chiefs for Change, a group that advocates for increased school choice, effective teacher preparation, and standards-aligned curricula. But it also rails against “onerous bureaucracy” in schools. That credo will certainly be challenged by the sheer scale of federal intervention: some in COVID-related relief since 2020.

In New York, state lawmakers in 2021 increased funding to New York City by nearly half a billion dollars. By next year, a lawsuit settled last year to equalize urban school funding could bring that to $1 billion, said president of Bank Street College and New York City’s former senior deputy chancellor. “So there is a significant infusion of new dollars into the school system that can be used to dig into systemic issues. And that’s very rare.”

As in districts large and small elsewhere, the three leaders are “all drinking from a firehose” of funding, said of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. But that also places extra responsibility on them: “No one can blame lack of funding as their excuse for not getting things done,” she said.

But unless Congress acts, all that extra funding will run out in 2024. None of the three new leaders agreed to be interviewed for this piece.

, who leads the AASA, the nation’s school superintendent’s association, said many leaders are using the cash to upgrade facilities. But spending it on generous raises or new instructional positions could actually put them at odds with unions, since those jobs won’t be sustainable.

“The financial cliff is only two years away,” he said.

A ‘friend of charters back at the helm’

A product of New York City’s public schools, Banks cut his teeth founding and the network of five unionized Eagle Academy public schools in New York City and Newark.

While the schools aren’t charters, Banks has said he supports charter schools. He told in December that families “are desperate for quality seats, quality schools … And if the traditional public schools were offering that, you wouldn’t see such a mass rush to the charter schools.”

Banks created the Eagle Academy schools to serve academically struggling boys of color in grades six through 12 who often face harsh discipline. As chancellor, he said, his first priorities are to expand early childhood education, improve career pathways for older students, and to combat students’ trauma.

, president of the United Federation of Teachers, the city’s union, has known Banks for years. “I’ve been at his schools and I found them to be quite well-run,” he said. All the same, running the largest school district in the nation will force him to tame the city schools’ “mammoth bureaucracy.” 

The last two mayors have restructured the school system six times, Mulgrew said. “And every time, all they did was add another layer.”

In his , Banks on March 2 acknowledged that many families have “decided to vote with their feet, and to say, ‘We’re going to find other alternatives and other choices for our children.’” 

He promised an overhaul of the bureaucracy, including requiring district superintendents to reapply for their jobs. And he took direct aim at the way many schools teach reading, criticizing a method developed by a Columbia University Teachers College professor that “has not worked” with many children. He promised to shift to a method that emphasizes explicit phonics instruction, among other changes.

Banks has also said he’d like to transform city schools from the bottom up by handing to “principals who know what they’re doing,” according to the speech. He also wants to tweak how standardized tests are used, allowing students to show they’ve mastered content in other ways.

His ascendance stands in contrast to previous leaders who have looked suspiciously on the charter sector. New York actually caps the number of charter schools statewide at 460, with just 290 allowed for nearly 1 million students in New York City. While it’d take a state-level change to allow more, choice advocates said Banks can eloquently make the case.

“It feels to me like this is the moment where we can really see that there is a friend of charters back at the helm of New York City schools, which I think is really great to see, and I know is probably sending some shockwaves,” said Porter-Magee.

So far, at least, Banks hasn’t forcefully pushed to lift the cap, in December, “We want to scale excellence. So if that means opening a few more charter schools, that’s what we’re going to do … if we can get the state to approve it.” But he said he’s also encouraging the philanthropic community “to lean in on the traditional public school system, because at the end of the day, most of our children will continue to go to our traditional public schools.”

Enrollment downturns

Carvalho, who led Miami-Dade schools for 14 years, has been able to compete with charters by creating centralized data systems that allowed him to keep track of students’ academic progress better than most big-city leaders during the pandemic, Rees said. 

A Portuguese immigrant, Carvalho grew up in Miami and worked restaurant and construction jobs early on. He came up through the ranks in Miami-Dade, starting out as a high school science teacher and becoming a new breed of area leader: one who sticks around. Before he took the top job in 2008, Miami-Dade “was a revolving door for superintendents coming and going,” Domenech said.

Sticking around paid off. In 2012, the district won the coveted $1 million Broad Prize for Urban Education, which recognizes school districts that have shown academic improvement while narrowing the achievement gap. More recent findings from the district’s Office of Academics and Transformation paint a : While Black students’ graduation rates rose from 62.4 percent in 2011 to 85.6 percent in 2020, just 40 percent of Black students in 2019 were proficient in reading; 44 percent were proficient in math. 

With parents clamoring to remediate lost instructional time during the pandemic, Domenech said Carvalho brought in “a very creative” program that contracted with camps to provide summer school.

Carvalho’s long tenure — the average big-city leader sticks around — is “a testament to his savvy in terms of the politics, in dealing with the board, in dealing with the community, in dealing with employee groups,” Domenech said.

He’ll need that savvy in Los Angeles, which also has recently featured a revolving door of superintendents, a strong union and an outspoken, ever-shifting school board — it currently has three seats open in the next election. In Los Angeles, Carvalho will work at the pleasure of the school board. Meanwhile, Banks and Martinez will work for the mayors of their respective cities.

During his second week at LAUSD, Carvalho unveiled a that includes expanded preschool, year-round learning and a “Parent Academy” offering coursework to help parents understand their children’s education. He’d also lengthen the school year and offer teachers more professional development. He acknowledged that he’d have to negotiate with the city’s teachers union about those last two ideas.

Carvalho last month told The 74 the district must expand school choice if it wants to keep from “bleeding out students” from a system that, while much bigger than Miami, has fewer than one-third as many school choice options.

Los Angeles students, he said, basically have two choices at the moment: magnet schools and charter schools. “Whoever decided to restrict choice on the basis of those parameters?” he asked. “Where are the programs in L.A. where we see long waiting lists of parents? Why aren’t we expanding more of those programs to where the demand is?”

He has the district consider an “explosion of offerings” for students, including dual-enrollment programs, International Baccalaureate programs, fine and performing arts magnet schools, and single-gender schools, among others. “I’m less concerned about the dynamic of dialogue that usually separates people into two camps: charter versus non-charter. I’m more interested in programmatic offerings that benefit kids — period.”

Carvalho suggested that the district analyze which programs motivate students to travel long distances from their neighborhoods and offer more of these. “I can fill an entire wall with a repertoire of options for parents. Why aren’t we offering all of that?”

Throughout the pandemic, all three cities have struggled to retain and, in some cases, even find their students. All have seen in .

of the California Charter Schools Association said a crashing birth rate across California is a cause for concern. And net migration has actually dipped “into the negatives” as home due to anti-immigration policies and economic uncertainty.

“This is not about ‘The affluent went to Tahoe during the pandemic to hunker down,’” she said. “This is real and it’s permanent and it’s creating challenges across the state.”

An ‘innovative and data-informed’ school integration experiment

Born in Mexico, Martinez emigrated to the U.S. with his family when he was 5. He is in a family of 12 children with deep ties to Chicago’s public school system — three of his sisters and some 28 nieces and nephews attend local public schools. 

Martinez was working in finance for the Archdiocese of Chicago in 2003 when then-Chicago Public Schools Superintendent Arne Duncan hired him as chief financial officer. He remained there until 2009 — Duncan moved on to serve as U.S. Education Secretary under President Obama. Martinez made a name for himself leading the San Antonio Independent School District through a redesign, beginning in 2015, that The 74 dubbed “one of America’s most innovative and data-informed school integration experiments.”

Using family income data, he mapped poverty levels for each city block. Then he integrated schools not by race but by income and, among other factors, by parents’ education levels. Three years later, San Antonio’s 90 schools and 47,000 students were among the fastest-improving in Texas.

In Chicago, he faces something entirely different: a 330,000-student system that’s as families leave the city. Recent enrollment data show that while 43,500 new students enrolled for the first time this year, 54,000 left between the last school year and this one.

On the job in Chicago for seven months, Martinez has already his first major crisis: the city’s teachers in early January voted to not show up for work until COVID-19 safety demands were met. 

Martinez proposed a host of measures, including building-level testing to determine when to close schools. But the union, with memories of an that ended with millions in extra spending, insisted on more strict measures, including negative PCR tests for all staff, students, and volunteers in order to keep schools open. 

The strike lasted just under a week after the district agreed to increase testing options, allow remote learning on a case-by-case basis, and secure more KN95 masks. Despite the agreement, union Vice President Stacy Davis Gates Mayor Lori Lightfoot as “unfit to lead our city. She’s on a one-woman kamikaze mission to destroy our public schools.”

‘This is the moment that unions should be at their strongest’

, a school consultant and occasional columnist for The 74, said the political climate in all three cities reflects a desire by voters more broadly and parents specifically, to pull back from “super-progressive” policies, such as the Defund the Police movement, to more centrist strategies that simply ensure a solid education for all. Parents “just want a school system they can count on, that’s reliable, that is just serving their kids.”

, president of the education advocacy group 50CAN, said Adams, the New York mayor, campaigned on not just a return to moderation but normalcy: “The schools are open, the subways are safe. The restaurants work. People are back in their offices. That’s almost nostalgia now, and people crave that. And I think these candidates got that. And their education choices reflect that too.”

At the same time, unions are on the ascent. With their to in-person instruction amid COVID-19 spikes and a handful of recent in recent years, they’ve seen their and influence grow after years of declining membership. 

“This is the moment that unions should be at their strongest,” said , a resident senior fellow at the R Street Institute, a libertarian Washington, D.C., think tank. “This is a health crisis, and unions are designed to make sure that they’re protecting the health and safety of their members.”

But over the past few years, he said, unions in many places have “overplayed their hands” by demanding that instruction stay remote. The arrival of these new leaders may signal something different altogether: The new leaders are by no means union supporters, even if voters in each of their solidly blue cities are.

Rees, of the charter schools group, noted that Banks hired Dan Weisberg as first deputy chancellor. Since 2015, Weisberg has served as , a national nonprofit (formerly called The New Teacher Project) that has trained thousands of teachers outside of traditional teachers colleges. Since its founding in 1997, it has had a complicated relationship with unions. 

In 2018, after the U.S. Supreme Court dealt unions a blow by making a portion of members’ dues optional, Weisberg wrote that he disagreed with the decision, calling it “a matter of basic fairness that teachers who reap the benefits of collective bargaining should also share in the costs.”

But Weisberg also called the decision “a blessing in disguise” for unions, which he said “are now forced to finally confront an existential threat that’s been brewing for years: They’re losing touch with more and more of their members.”

Rees said Weisberg’s hiring “gives us confidence that there’s a new sheriff in town and that things are going to be a little bit different, or at least that the reform community and the charter school community will have a seat at the table.”