This edition of The Hoover Institution Briefing on Reforming K‒12 Education looks at Hoover’s annual education summit, focusing on how to explore new ways of thinking about US K–12 education reform amid current and emerging challenges. The summit saw educators, Hoover scholars and education leaders discuss ways to challenge conventional thinking in schools and improve results, access and accountability.
Featured Analysis
Hoover Education Summit Asks When Students Will Become Focus of Public Schools
Teachers, education scholars, and policymakers gathered at the Hoover Institution on January 9–10 to explore new ways of thinking about US K–12 education reform amid current and emerging challenges.
Distinguished Research Fellow Macke Raymond convened participants, challenging them to think outside the box.
“How is it that a sector devoted to learning can’t seem to learn anything to make itself better?” asked Raymond to open the fourth annual conference.
Guiding the discussion was a new report from Hoover’s Education Futures Council that urges teachers and school administrators to place student achievement at the forefront of their efforts. Ours to Solve, Once—and for All emphasizes allowing individual public schools—instead of districts, states, or the federal government—to be the focus of the education system, and for principals and teachers to have agency and latitude to make decisions themselves to support student learning.
Read more here.
Watch the summit here.
Making Student Achievement the North Star of Our Education System
In an essay for the Education Futures Council, Hoover Fellow Michael T. Hartney writes about how he sees school districts are often too concerned with “adult politics” to do what they know is best for student achievement. He writes that the public education system insufficiently incentivizes its leaders to prioritize student academic achievement.
In his view, school districts should not wait for “dynamic hero leaders” to come and take charge, and should instead play “a long game,” where they incrementally give teachers and principals more autonomy to make decisions that favor student achievement over all else.
He also says school districts need to hone in on their core mission and perhaps focus on a limited set of tasks and subjects to drive student achievement forward.
Read more here.
Highlights
The Human Authority Needed for Good Schools
Lawyer Philip K. Howard contributes an essay to Hoover’s Education Futures Council, outlining his recommendations on how to instill a less bureaucratic, rigid culture in America’s public schools. He blames union collective bargaining agreements and widening government mandates for squeezing teachers’ and principals’ individual autonomy to a point where they cannot make improvements easily. The rigidity in many US school districts breeds mistrust, Howard argues. “Good cultures in turn are impossible unless teachers have agency—specifically, the authority to draw on their perceptions and personalities when interacting with students, parents, and other teachers,” Howard writes. “Teachers must feel the pride of making a difference.”
Read more here.
The Battle of Houston: Rescuing a Floundering District from a Broken System
Mike Miles, superintendent of schools for the Houston Independent School District, joins Senior Fellow Paul E. Peterson on The Education Exchange podcast to discuss Miles’s efforts to turn around Houston’s schools. Miles, who began his tenure in 2023, tells Peterson that most Houston teachers, parents, and principals were against his arrival, which came as part of a state takeover of the district. “I hadn’t done a thing, and there was already all of this pushback—that is a challenge,” Miles says in the interview.
Miles says the 274 schools in the Houston district had a lot of autonomy when he arrived, but that wasn’t helping them perform. When he started, more than a third of the schools in the district were performing significantly below Houston’s standards. Attempting wholescale systemic reform, Miles said, the district has rolled out a new curriculum to nearly all of Houston’s schools, and the number of struggling schools has already fallen by two-thirds.
Listen to the conversation here.
Spotlight
National Panel of Unheard Voices
The National Panel of Unheard Voices includes more than 4,000 community members—elected leaders, business leaders, community-based organization leaders, and parents—who will share their knowledge, opinions, and voices through participation in five surveys conducted between 2022 and 2025. It takes only ten minutes to complete a survey. That ten minutes will make a true difference in the lives of children and communities, showing the priorities, dreams, and challenges across K–12 schooling in communities nationwide.
Read more here.
For more insight on important education issues visit:
https://www.hoover.org/focus-areas/reforming-k-12-education
