Happy Holidays, CharterFolk.
2025 marks another year of encouraging progress here at CharterFolk. It’s hard to believe I’m writing my sixth Year in Review. Prior ones can be found below.
2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024
A theme I return to often here is our need to be improving the quality of our schools while growing their quantity. It seems the right vantage point for looking at CharterFolk as well. 2025 is a year when we grew both the quality and quantity of CharterFolk content. This year we published 180 pieces, our most ever, with over 80 people either contributing or being profiled in CharterFolk X columns, again, the most ever.
And that doesn’t count another 15 Folk from our awesome Board of Directors, plus many individual donors, not to mention the nearly 100 Folk who Mollie recognized in her “On the Move” posts over the year.
So it’s fair to say that hundreds of people were involved in the story that played out at CharterFolk in 2025. To you all, I extend again my deepest thanks.
Last year, I said my favorite thing about 2024 had been the return of CharterFolk X, our regular profiling of extraordinary people working in the national charter school movement. This year Larson helped us publish 33 such profiles. We offered a recap for the year last week. If you missed it, I encourage you to check it out.
The Return of Brian’s Voice Awards
Of all the changes that I’m most excited about this year, none surpasses the fact that we were able to resume our Brian’s Voice Awards …
… Contributor Columns that our readers identified as having helped stretch our thinking. Derrell’s piece encouraging us to “Say it Loud,” Brandon’s post about the lessons we should take from recent elections, and Karega’s column about the need for authorizers to balance innovation and accountability were all terrific choices for recognition from our readers.
But the truth is so many Contributor Columns pushed our collective conversation in compelling ways. Let me highlight below 10 particularly noteworthy ones.
- CharterFolk Contributor Greg Richmond — Are Religious Charter Schools a Good Idea? – A piece where Greg showed real courage from his current vantage point arguing wisely against the idea of religious charter schools.
- CharterFolk Contributor Adkeem Jackson – A Recipe for Community Mobilization Success: Building Effective Charter Public School Advocacy – Adkeem, a leader at the Massachusetts association, sharing lessons learned about how associations, schools and advocates must work together in new ways to release our collective voice.
- CharterFolk Contributor Mike Huguelet – My Mother’s Legacy: The Importance of Building Relationships One Person at a Time – Mike sharing one of our most heartfelt pieces of the year about how the loss of his mother informs everything he does in charter school advocacy.
- CharterFolk Contributor Former Michigan Governor John Engler — The Time for Charter School Supporters to Get Our Acts Together is Now – Our first publication from a former governor, this one encouraging the charter school movement to build political capacity in time for the many governor races that are occurring in 2026.
- CharterFolk Contributor Ben Sayeski – Time for An Education Check-Up – Ben does a great job arguing for the importance of academic performance data in a world where so many others would prefer to fly blind.
- CharterFolk Contributor Aida Rodriguez – Swipes to Seats: Parent Power in the Digital Arena – A great piece showing how wise use of technology can amplify the voice of parents in statehouses across the country.
- CharterFolk Contributor Jim Goenner – Kids Don’t Need a Sector. They Need a Movement – Jim makes a compelling case that our success hinges on whether we can resist becoming a sector defending its own parochial interests and can remain, rather, a movement pushing for transformational change for all.
- CharterFolk Contributor Mercy Herrera — El Camino and Its Importance to Latina Charter Leaders – In this great post, Mercy shared with us the latest from LEAL, an organization whose origins can be traced back to the publication of one of our first Contributor Columns.
- CharterFolk Contributor Darryl Cobb – Excellence, Not Just Expansion: How Charter Leaders Are Reclaiming the Movement’s Purpose – In this great piece, Darryl makes the quantity and quality argument as compellingly as anyone, reminding us that we have to maintain excellence while we strive for expansion.
- CharterFolk Contributor Dr. Noemi Donoso – Why I Moved to Baton Rouge: A City That’s Figuring Out How to Work Together – Finally, a piece from Noemi, sharing a great story about how the potential to make an impact in another part of the country was compelling enough to uproot her entire life.
All were just great columns. I can’t wait to publish even more in 2026. If you have ideas for a Contributor Column, please ping me directly at jed@charterfolk.org.
The Return of CharterFolk Chats
Another return that gave me great satisfaction this year was the return of CharterFolk Chats. The conversations afforded CharterFolk listeners to hear from eight of our most compelling leaders in the country.
- Say It Even Louder – A CharterFolk Chat With Derrell Bradford – My conversation with Derrell gave him a chance to amplify his “say it loud” message, one that I believe helped set a tone for additional loudness coming from the entire charter school movement in 2025.
- The Noble Journey – A CharterFolk Chat With Brenda Cora, CEO of Noble Public Schools – Having the chance to speak with Brenda right as she took the reins at one of our marquee organizations put in perspective the mix of academic and advocacy challenges and opportunities that the charter school movement confronts.
- The Huge Opportunity We Have Amid Great Disruption — A CharterFolk Chat With Marlon Marshall – My conversation with Marlon was particularly enjoyable, creating an opportunity for listeners to get to know Marlon better and to hear from him why we should stay focused on the opportunity to make progress that exists within this era of tumult.
- 35 Years In and Still Picking Up Steam: A CharterFolk Chat with Kevin Hall – A great discussion revealing what keeps Kevin as passionate about the growth of great charter schools as he’s ever been across the better part of four decades working in the movement.
- Taking the Opportunity, Winning the Future: A CharterFolk Chat with Starlee Coleman – A terrific chance to check in with Starlee about the National Alliance’s defense of the movement amid the SCOTUS case, and her observations about how funder and advocate alignment on strategy may never have been tighter than it currently is.
- Why the Charter School Movement is Getting Its Swagger Back – A CharterFolk Chat With New Charter School Hall of Fame Inductee Chris Barbic – A really fun conversation with Chris soon after his induction where he encourages us all to take our work on with a greater sense of moxie and enthusiasm.
- The Courageous Charter School Advocate – A CharterFolk Chat With The Mind Trust CEO Brandon Brown – One of our most viewed chats ever wherein Brandon laid bare the stakes that CharterFolk confront when they unapologetically attempt to advance bold policy proposals in support of charter schools.
- The Price You Pay to Make Social Change – A Thanksgiving CharterFolk Chat with Howard Fuller – Perhaps my favorite ever, one where Howard uses Brandon’s specific experience to make general points about the difficult personal questions we must all consider if we are serious about making a difference.
Meanwhile WonkyFolk Keeps Wonking
In addition to my one-on-ones with CharterFolk Chats, I remain grateful to Andy for continuing to share the hosting of conversations about a wider range of topics at WonkyFolk. A few I would highlight as particularly interesting this year include:
- WonkyFolk Vol 23 — LIVE in DC: Crazy Times Call For a Stiff Whiskey (Folk) – Our in-person discussion in DC was great both in terms of discussion and consumption.
- WonkyFolk Vol 29 – CREDO on Ice? A Conversation With Macke Raymond About Education And Her Next Project – It was a particularly good moment to hear from Macke as she charts out her next chapter of work.
- Vol 28 – Breaking Down The New Federal School Choice Program With Shaka Mitchell – This one gave us the chance to break down the new tax credit program with a national leader who could give listeners a backstage pass into how the breakthrough really happened.
Look forward to many new WonkyFolk recordings this year, including a return to DC this spring to do another in-person recording.
The Return of Our North Star
In terms of my own posts, I wrote 81 this year, which is a higher number than I’ve done in recent years. About half were “Mid-Week Whip-Arounds,” which are shorter posts meant to help keep CharterFolk readers up to speed on news happening in our world. The other half were my regular longer form articles on the weekends.
For my longer form writing, for many years now, I have been broken-recording that we need a new North Star to give us all a compelling shared goal to strive toward. It led to readers asking me to define what I consider to be a North Star. That led to this piece:
A few weeks later, I wrote this piece about the Indianapolis charter school community helping us achieve our first North Star in decades.
Looking back, I see nearly a fifth of the posts I wrote last year contained the term “North Star.” A couple include:
- The New and Improved Charter School BHAG – Serving A Third of Kids Everywhere – My first post of the year when I showed that recent research showing that all boats rise and gaps close as charter schools grow to serve 30% of students provides a compelling rationale for why we should be trying to grow even faster.
- Who Should be Learning from Whom – The Difference Between Innovation and Innovation-In-Name-Only – This post talks about the policy differences for innovation schools in different states and argues that we must be crisp in our advocacy if we want to arrive at a new North Star.
National Observations
As is typical, 2025 was a year when I wrote a lot about changes happening at a national level. This is probably the piece that best summarized my view of the entire national landscape, one where we see policy makers in both red and blue contexts losing policy coherence.
A big theme through the year was Blues having completely lost their way on education policy. That included the Biden Administration giving us a parting shot …
… and the utter vacuousness of Dems’ “abundance agenda” as it related to education policy.
But I haven’t been sheepish about offering my critique of Reds …
… including when a recent gathering of ed reformers in New Orleans hardly mentioned the stunning progress that the city’s charter schools have made since the storm.
Advocacy Imperatives
As ever, I keep highlighting the need for better advocacy in CharterLand, which requires that all of us do our parts.
- Help Really Matters in LA | Plant Your Feet, Son! The Movement’s New Stance – One of my early posts from the year argued that more effective advocacy requires planting two feet. The first is better advocacy organizational infrastructure, and the second is having improved policy agendas to have those organizations working toward.
- When Districts Won’t Renew Motherhood and Apple Pie – How We Get Over the Free Rider Challenge in Charter School Advocacy – This piece both highlighted the new level of challenge that will come against charter schools as school districts struggle even more during an era of declining enrollment. In the end, our success will hinge on whether all our schools become dues paying members of their associations so that collective power can be amassed.
- The Biggest Thing We’ve Ever Taken for Granted – And Why It’s Time We Fix It – This one grew out of my conversation with Howard Fuller wherein he lamented that our movement is not doing enough to induct our newcomers such that they are beginning to take for granted the movement itself.
- Why CharterFolk Supported the Filing of an Amicus Brief on the Religious Charter Schools Case – CharterFolk doesn’t itself get involved much in advocacy efforts, but in this case, we were asked to support the filing of an Amicus Brief on the SCOTUS case. I felt it was important for our readers to know why we had done so.
The SCOTUS Case
Of course, the SCOTUS case was a big focus in the first half of the year. I wrote about it often.
- Separating Signal From Noise — The Tip of the Iceberg this Titanic Supreme Court Case Approaches – Before the case was even accepted by the court, I attempted to get our world keyed in to how big an issue it was.
- The Latest on CSP | Call Me a Heretic: Why I’m Agnostic on Religious Charter Schools – This one I took some heat on, but I thought then and continue to think now that our right entry point to the case is not about separation of church and state, but rather, that the overall regulatory scheme for charter schools is such that, should states be required to allow religious charter schools, it would lead to charter schools experiencing irreparable harm in many parts of the country.
- Of Wood Chips, All Fours, and Audible Gasps: What Was Really Left Dangling at the Supreme Court This Week – In this one, I deconstructed the arguments made before the court.
- The Ongoing Attempted Railroading of the Charter School Movement | The Next Era of Getting Students Where They Want to Go – In this one, I highlight how ridiculous it is that religious liberty advocates argue that charter schools should be forced to have the same governance as our national railroad.
- A Movement Still on Track — Seven Aha’s to Take from this Week’s SCOTUS Decision – In this final post about the case, I thank the National Alliance for great work on the case, and I highlight what is likely to come in the future as additional parties continue to push their ideas about religious charter schools.
Personals
2025 also saw me write my share of posts that use personal experiences as a launching point for discussion of different aspects of our work.
- Neither Chicken Little Nor Plain Chicken: The Day I Got Kicked Out of an Office and What It Teaches Us About the SCOTUS Charter School Case – I have only been kicked out of a policy maker’s office once. It happened when I made an argument that was identical to one embedded in the SCOTUS case.
- New Milestones/Aunt Que/Many Thanks/Green Dot at 25/Dues Not Yet/Learning from Mistakes – In this one, I shared a story about the passing of my Aunt Kay.
- A View from the Passenger Seat – What We’re Getting Wrong and Right About College Costs – Early last summer, I needed to make an unexpected drive across country with my son back to his college. Hours in the passenger seat gave me time to write a long piece I had been meaning to publish about the bad policy making that has resulted in such ridiculously high college costs in our country.
- The Blueprints We Can Bring to Life – and the Blueprints We Can’t – A reunion in San Diego afforded me a chance to look back at heroic efforts to reform the school district there, as well as to realize what is changeable and not changeable in public education given the brokenness of the status quo system.
- A Movement in Harmony With Its Purpose — The Teacher y Su Maestro Revisited – A pleasure this year was being invited to Harmony’s 25th Anniversary. As it so happens, a former student of mine was enrolling his kindergartner into a Harmony school.
- What Sustains Us and What Ultimately Defines the Difference That We Make – Finally, I highlight a reunion of students and teachers I got to know during my years in the classroom. It’s what this work is all about.
Looking Forward – The Blazing Constellation of 2026
It’s been a great year. And yet, the CharterFolk board meeting we had in December makes me realize you ain’t seen nothing yet. I look forward to making next year our best ever, one where our single North Star of 2025 becomes a full, blazing constellation in 2026.
To all of you who have helped put CharterFolk in a position to chart the night sky, I offer one more heartfelt thanks.
On we go, CharterFolk.