State Of The States Governors And Pk 12 Education Policy

Leo Migdal

-Dec 3, 2025, 3:52 AM

state of the states governors and pk 12 education policy

Raquel Muñiz , Andrés Castro Samayoa, Shane Dunn As state legislative sessions get underway across the country, governors have outlined their K-12 education priorities in State of the State addresses, inaugural speeches and budget proposals. Their remarks provide critical insights into the policies likely to shape the future of education in 2025. This post summarizes and organizes governors’ student-centered K-12 education policy priorities, including literacy, math, funding, school accountability, public and private school choice, strengthening the teacher pipeline, college and career pathways and distraction-free school policies. Here’s a breakdown of the education policy priorities governors are focused on this year. Early literacy remains a top priority across multiple states, with governors recognizing the importance of ensuring students are proficient in reading by the third grade.

With growing bipartisan support for evidence-based reading policies, states are likely to continue prioritizing reforms that improve reading outcomes. The United States has no single national education system. Instead, 50 distinct state systems operate with different priorities, funding mechanisms, and success measures. This arrangement stems from the U.S. Constitution, which grants states primary authority over public education. The Education Commission of the States was formed in 1965 to help states navigate their responsibilities and serve as a strategic consortium for policymakers.

Its creation responded to growing federal influence, strengthening state capacity to lead on education policy. For years, the No Child Left Behind Act imposed prescriptive federal mandates requiring states to meet nationally defined accountability standards. The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) in 2015 marked a shift, returning substantial authority to states. ESSA dismantled many rigid requirements and let state leaders design their own systems for measuring school performance, identifying struggling schools, and setting educational goals. This renewed state control amplified existing differences. States now diverge on nearly every major policy aspect.

They use vastly different funding models, creating wide resource disparities. They’ve built unique accountability systems reflecting specific values, measuring everything from college readiness to chronic absenteeism. States take widely varied approaches to academic standards, school choice, teacher workforce policies, and what is taught in the classroom. School finance methods determine resources available to students and reflect fundamental decisions about equity and local control. Investment in a child’s education varies dramatically by zip code. Education Commission of the States is the trusted source for comprehensive knowledge and unbiased resources on education policy issues ranging from early learning through postsecondary education.

Subscribe to our publications and stay informed. Need more information? Contact one of our policy experts. In a critical year for state education policy, State of the State addresses offer time for new and incumbent governors to outline policy priorities and elevate successes. For the past 20 years, we’ve tracked, analyzed and identified education policy trends in governors’ State of the State addresses to help you understand trending education issues across states. This year’s Special Report includes 49 addresses and a detailed look at the top seven trends we found across state education-related proposals.

We’ve also included an extra emerging trend that 17 governors mentioned in their address this year. Governors are leading efforts across the country to ensure that students in their states graduate prepared to succeed in postsecondary, the workforce, and life. The NGA K-12 Education Team supports Governors in these efforts by regularly bringing together Governors’ education policy advisors to connect with and learn from each other and national and state experts in the field;... Governors’ Education Policy Advisor Convenings The NGA K-12 Education Team plans to host a national convening of Governors’ education policy advisors in September 2024 to support gubernatorial efforts on key K-12 policies and priorities, including academic growth, student well-being... The convening will also provide Governors’ education policy advisors with an opportunity to connect with their peers from across the country.

See recaps of similar meetings in May 2023 and October 2023. In addition to ongoing responsive support, the NGA K-12 Education Team is currently supporting a bipartisan mix of nine Governors’ offices (four Republican, five Democratic) through the 2023-2024 Academic Supports and Student and School... NGA’s K-12 Education Team regularly produces informative briefings, podcasts, and webinars featuring subject matter experts in the field, Governors’ staff and state education leaders. The team’s webinar series spotlights State Strategies for Addressing K-12 Student Needs from state budgets to parent, family, and community engagement and supporting students with unique needs. The State Snapshots for Strengthening the Educator Workforce podcast series covers a range of topics related to teacher and principal recruitment and retention. As governors delivered their 2025 State of the State addresses, they outlined a range of strategies to improve their schools, from increasing K-12 funding and expanding educational choice to investing in early childhood programs...

Yet few focused directly on arguably the most pressing issue: declining student achievement. FutureEd analyzed speeches from 41 governors to identify states’ education agendas for the coming year, highlighting common themes, bipartisan commitments and partisan divides. Across party lines, governors remained committed to investing in public education, with many proposing increased K-12 funding and efforts to modernize school finance formulas to better support high-need students. Alongside these general financial commitments, governors prioritized strengthening the teaching profession, addressing youth mental health, restricting cellphone use and expanding career pathways for high schoolers. Still, few governors proposed new steps to directly improve student learning. Some emphasized efforts to raise academic standards and strengthen accountability, topics absent in recent years.

But this year’s speeches largely sidelined new curriculum initiatives, perhaps because many states have enacted reforms in that area — particularly in literacy — in recent years. Mentions of academic acceleration programs that were widely supported during the pandemic but now face an uncertain future as federal ESSER funds expire were also rare. These include high-dosage tutoring, afterschool and summer enrichment. Some governors argued that their school choice initiatives would improve student outcomes. School choice remained a key point of division, with several Republican governors advocating for more private options that Democrats opposed. Ideological divides also resurfaced on race and gender — topics largely absent from speeches in recent years — as a few Republicans called for banning diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, restricting transgender participation...

Here is a summary of the major education proposals in the governors’ addresses (click on each state in the interactive maps below): Idaho Gov. Brad Little made a big announcement on Jan. 8 during his annual State of the State address: He’s proposing a $2 billion investment, the largest in state history, to renovate and modernize the state’s school buildings. The announcement was notable for several reasons. Idaho was recently the subject of a series of investigative articles by ProPublica and the Idaho Statesman that exposed dismal and even unsafe conditions in many of the state’s schools.

The Gem State, the news organizations reported, spends less per student on school infrastructure than any other state. Little’s proposed investment in the state’s school buildings would be significant. But it comes as federal COVID relief aid dries up and state tax revenues are projected to fall, limiting the available resources for major school facility investments. This tool from the Education Commission of the States provides a national overview of state education governance, clarifying how policymaking roles are structured and interact across K–12 systems. It outlines the constitutional and statutory authority of governors, legislatures, chief state school officers, executive-level secretaries, state boards of education, and local school boards. Users can explore 50-state comparisons, individual state profiles, and key data points such as constitutional provisions, funding language, and appointment authority.

The resource highlights variations across states—for example, how chief state school officers are selected, the formal authority of state boards, and the role of executive-level secretaries. By making complex governance systems more accessible, this tool can help policymakers, educators, and researchers better understand decision-making authority, identify similarities and differences across states, and consider implications for policy design, implementation, and reform. Today, Reason Foundation published our 2025 K-12 Education Spending Spotlight, which brings together over two decades of school finance data for all 50 states. With nationwide funding approaching $1 trillion and outcomes declining—nearly 40% of 4th graders aren’t reading at a basic level on the National Assessment of Educational Progress— it’s critical to examine how dollars are spent... Reason Foundation’s interactive tool, which includes data on expenditures, staffing, teacher salaries, debt, and student outcomes, can help answer those questions and is available here. There are five key trends to know, but here’s the big takeaway: despite record funding, K-12 finance faces structural problems that undermine student achievement.

Between 2002 and 2023, public school funding rose by 35.8% from $14,969 per student to $20,322 per student after adjusting for inflation. New York now spends $36,976 per student followed by New Jersey at $30,267 per student, and funding now exceeds $25,000 per student in eight states, including: Vermont ($29,169 per student), Connecticut ($28,975), Pennsylvania ($26,242),... Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the largest increase in per-student spending has occurred in California, rising 31.5% from $19,724 in 2020 to $25,941 in 2023.

State Of The States Governors And Pk 12 Education Policy

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