Welcome back. This week had us second-guessing a few things we thought we knew, like which districts are underfunded, what's really driving the gains behind retention policies, and what it takes to get a first grader writing full sentences. The latest numbers are telling a different story.
1️⃣ New Data Links Chronic Absenteeism to Recovery Gaps
A new NWEA analysis of scores across 2,000 districts from 2019 to 2024 finds that districts with chronic absenteeism above 20 percent lagged furthest behind in returning to pre-pandemic achievement. The gap was most pronounced in math, where high-absenteeism districts remained about 50 percent further behind than in reading. The effect was strongest in the highest-poverty districts, and NWEA's Megan Kuhfeld says states should direct additional resources there first. Her team recommends building early warning systems that track attendance and academic data together instead of treating them as separate problems.
2️⃣ AI Policy Is Not Keeping Pace With Classroom Use
RAND found AI use in K-12 classrooms jumped again this year, with 54 percent of students and 53 percent of teachers using it for school, both up more than 15 percentage points. Only 45 percent of principals and 34 percent of teachers report their district has a formal AI policy. Ohio now requires districts to adopt AI policies with FERPA protections by July 2026, and recent vendor breaches at PowerSchool and Canvas show why data privacy needs its own rules, not just acceptable-use language.
3️⃣ Districts Extend Reading Reform Into Writing Instruction
Colorado elementary schools that overhauled reading instruction around the science of reading are now applying the same explicit approach to writing, teaching sentence and paragraph construction directly instead of assuming it develops on its own. One district replaced a patchwork of individual teacher approaches with a single writing framework and trained more than 100 instructional coaches to lead it. State writing scores rose 3 percentage points after the first year, and math scores climbed too as students got better at breaking down problems. The results suggest districts don't just need more writing time. They need a shared instructional approach and real investment in teacher training.
4️⃣ Retention Laws May Help Reading Before Anyone Is Held Back
A new research study tests Ohio's 2013 retention law using scores from more than 500,000 third graders. Students flagged as at-risk for retention outscored similar peers on year-end reading and math tests, and the reading gains held through 7th grade. Eighteen states now have retention laws tied to reading proficiency, often paired with science of reading legislation. Researchers say the driver isn't retention itself, but what the law requires around it, including K-3 progress monitoring, targeted intervention, and school report cards tied to third grade proficiency. For leaders, the finding suggests those systems are worth building even without a retention mandate behind them.
5️⃣ Poorest Districts Have Outspent Wealthiest Ones for Decades
A Brookings analysis of nearly 50 years of Census data finds high-poverty and predominantly non-white school districts have spent more per student on average than wealthier, predominantly white districts, across all 50 states. They've outspent the wealthiest districts outright since the early 2000s, though higher labor costs offset some of that advantage. The finding runs counter to a widely cited 2019 EdBuild report that found white districts received $23 billion more, a gap Brookings attributes largely to methodology since EdBuild excluded federal revenue like Title I, which sends $18.4 billion to high-poverty schools each year. Funding still matters, but fixating on spending levels can miss the more useful question of why some districts get better outcomes than others with similar money.
📤 Found Pulse K-12 helpful? Share it with a colleague so they can keep a pulse on education too.