TOP TASKS

Take note of the progress being made in the South

The Tennessee and Georgia legislative sessions are in full swing and Executive Directors Chelsea Crawford and Michael O’Sullivan and their teams are running up and down hallways in the Capitol. In both states, progress is being made on a host of bills across the Believe in Better framework.

“I cannot underscore enough just how frustrated I was at the misuse of Covid-19 recovery funds,” Chelsea says, explaining the motivation behind the Better Spending, Better Schools bill that she’s been championing this legislative session. “Parents deserve to know how their tax dollars are being spent. Transparency should never be a fight.” She points to last month’s release of the Educational Opportunity survey, which found that nearly half of parents in Tennessee said they were unfamiliar with how budget decisions were made in their child’s school and less than one in four said they were very confident they understood these decisions.

Thus far, it appears that legislators in Tennessee agree. With Chelsea’s advocacy, the bill has fought through both a House and Senate committee and is being scheduled for a floor vote in both chambers. “What’s been most appealing to legislators, in my eyes, has been the idea that fiscal transparency will let us gauge the return-on-investment of the many reforms that we’re pushing at once. There’s a collective sense that the best decisions rely on excellent information,” Chelsea reflected.

Financial transparency is just the start of TennesseeCAN’s plans in 2026. They’re also working on expanding last year’s Education Freedom Scholarship so that another 40,000 waiting families have access. “The Governor has issued a call that we need to serve these families who have been waiting, and that’s a call that’s being seriously considered,” Chelsea explained. The 50CAN survey found that the work so far is paying off: the percentage of Tennessee families who say they feel like they have a choice in what school their child attends increased six points since 2024. This additional ESA expansion cleared the Senate Education Committee on a 7-2 vote and awaits a committee vote in the House, which is the chamber to watch for this bill.

On the other side of the Blue Ridge Mountains, the team at GeorgiaCAN is in the midst of a legislative juggling act. “I wish everyone who reads the Roundup could see Michael O’Sullivan in action,” State Outreach Director Steven Quinn says, “This is the largest number of bills that we’ve worked on in a single session, and somehow he’s driving everything forward at once.”

Among those bills are a financing mechanism to support charter schools with facilities costs, an evaluation system of teacher preparation programs in state colleges and universities, and a furthering of the Top State for Talent Act that has already passed both chambers and is on the way to the Governor’s desk. “These are all critical bills for advancing our agenda, from career pathways to choice,” Michael explains, “But I’m most encouraged this year by the traction we’re making on building a stronger high school experience for students.”

One is the Math Matters Act, which passed through the Senate Education Committee and will increase instructional time for foundational math in elementary school, provide better training on math instruction and adds Georgia to the growing number of states that automatically enrolls students in advanced high school math courses when they’ve demonstrated readiness in middle school. Another is the Distraction-Free School Act, which will extend to high school last year’s K-8 law restricting cell phones during the school day. The 50CAN survey found that Georgia students’ social media use was the 7th highest in the nation and their AI use was the 2nd highest in the nation. After securing widespread support in both the House and the Senate, this bill is heading to the Governor as well.

“I think that the Distraction-Free School Act is going to be a real game changer,” Steven Quinn tells us, “We have so many parent advocates who have expressed concerns over screens and social media.” Another bill Steven is working hard on this session is GeorgiaCAN’s charter facilities funding legislation, which removes one of the biggest barrier to giving parents more school options.

Double down on literacy in the Northeast

Next, we’re heading north out of the Piedmont and up to the Tri-State area, where JerseyCAN’s Paula White and ConnCAN’s Steven Hernández are digging in on literacy.

“The first thing to understand is that New Jersey has a pretty unique legislative calendar among the states, we’re two months into a two-year session that will run through the end of 2027. And so right now, we’re working with the Governor’s team to ensure that coaches are a major part of the allocation of state literacy dollars,” Paula shares, also noting that the next phase of quality implementation is going to be in narrowing the scope of curriculum to the highest-quality instructional materials. “We’ve made some progress here but, as is often the case with implementation, we’ve realized we need to go further. Right now, it’s about finding the right vehicle: we could do this with legislation, we could do this with regulation. We’re looking at other states and gathering coalition partners to find the best path forward.”

Paula recently attended a meeting of the Democratic Governors in Washington DC, where she huddled with both Colorado’s Governor Polis and Massachusetts’ Governor Healey to talk literacy. “There’s a lot of great ideas coming out of Colorado on literacy,” Paula shared, “And Massachusetts wants to go even further, especially on curriculum.”

On the other side of Long Island Sound, Steve Hernández shared a new update from the capitol’s foyer. “I actually just stepped out of the Education Committee hearing for SB220, which is our literacy bill that mandates support for students in grades 4-6 who are behind in reading. A recent report found that those students numbered over 50,000 in Connecticut.” That bill passed out of the Education Committee and is now heading to Appropriations to determine the funding allocation.

In addition to literacy, the ConnCAN team is working on strengthening funding and streamlining the approval process for new charter schools. Steven also collaborated with ConnCAN board member Deepa Javeri on a pair of phone-free schools bills to invest partners and broaden the coalition of support. The policy idea itself, however, is one that worked its way across the 50CAN network after GeorgiaCAN’s win last year. “I shared what Georgia did last year with partners across the state, and I was a little surprised at the depth of interest. Michael and his team definitely inspired our work on this, and helped to prove the appetite was there,” Steven says.

Key Resources

Urban Institutelooks at the impact of a $100 million state investment in Pennsylvania for student mental health, finding that the sustained funding allowed more than 500 schools to hire counselors, social workers and psychologists.

A research study published at EdWorkingPapers researchers found that prolonged exposure to school shutdowns had a lasting impact on students’ chronic absenteeism rates.

Students’advancement through increasingly challenging math coursework was disrupted by prolonged school shutdowns, with advancement rates lower the longer school buildings were closed down, according to new research published at EdWorkingPapers.

Education Next tells the story of North Carolina’s Central Wake High School, a “second chance” high school that has tripled in population by offering flexibility to students on everything but high academic standards.