Matthew Ladner

Phoenix

Executive Editor at reimaginED

🍎 and 🚜

Featured in: Favicon

reimaginedonline.org Favicon

msn.com

wsj.com

newsweek.com Favicon

yahoo.com

tandfonline.com Favicon

azcentral.com Favicon

nationalreview.com Favicon

detroitnews.com Favicon

washingtonexaminer.com + 45 more

Articles

We don’t need no Klanducation; We don’t need no thought control

4 days ago | nextstepsblog.org | Matthew Ladner

June 1, 2025, marked the 100th anniversary of the United States Supreme Court’s ruling in Pierce v. Society of Sisters– effectively the first victory of America’s school choice movement. In 1922, the voters of Oregon had passed a ballot proposition, Measure 6, which required public school attendance for school age students, creating fines and jail sentences for non-compliance. Supported by the Ku Klux Klan and other nativist groups, the measure passed by a margin of 53% in favor, 47% opposed.
Thumbs up for Roosevelt students

1 week ago | nextstepsblog.org | Matthew Ladner

Jason Bedrick and I published a piece at the Daily Signal about the Roosevelt Elementary School District in South Phoenix. The Roosevelt district has experienced enrollment loss for decades, and the school board of the district has announced plans to close five schools. I first learned of Roosevelt Elementary School district some 20 years ago when a Roosevelt student brutally assaulted a co-worker’s child.
Don’t Blame School Choice for Arizona School Closures—Blame School Leaders

2 weeks ago | dailysignal.com | Jason Bedrick |Matthew Ladner

School choice opponents have long predicted that policies like Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Account program would destroy the public school system. For years, Gov. Katie Hobbs has warned that it would “decimate” the state budget and “bankrupt” the state, yet the program has a history of surplus and savings.
Get thee behind me, Bootlegger!

2 weeks ago | nextstepsblog.org | Matthew Ladner

Longtime NextSteps readers know that your humble author has been holding forth on the Baptist and Bootlegger problem that helped throttle the growth of the charter school movement. The term “Baptists and Bootleggers” comes from economics and references prohibition, which Baptists supported out of religious conviction, and bootleggers supported to limit competition in their manufacture and sale of alcohol.
Teachers give anti-ESA propaganda a failing grade

3 weeks ago | nextstepsblog.org | Matthew Ladner

Opponents of education freedom, facing a series of legislative defeats, have responded by going off the deep end with conspiracy theories and crackpot fables. The formula works something like this: start with tortured and incomplete reading of the research on school choice which ignores a large majority of the findings and studies.
Oklahoma should avoid the example of Vercingetorix

1 month ago | nextstepsblog.org | Matthew Ladner

Julius Caesar led Roman forces to victory in the decisive battle of the conquest of Gaul at Alesia. Having pursued the Gauls to a fortified city, Caesar first surrounded the city with a wall (to keep the Gauls trapped in Alesia) and then a second wall (to keep Roman forces protected from a relief army). Having completed these and other siegeworks, Caesar began the process of starving a surrender out of Alesia.
Arizona districts should lower the velvet rope for students with disabilities

1 month ago | nextstepsblog.org | Matthew Ladner

Tim DeRoche featured the tale of an Arizona boy named Brayden in a Time Magazine piece on the shortcomings of open enrollment practice and law for students with disabilities:“In May 2022, an Arizona mom named Karrie got a heartbreaking message from the local public school: Her son Brayden wouldn’t be allowed to return as a second-grader in the fall. The reason?
The inevitable is always certain but not always punctual: self-driving school carpools

1 month ago | nextstepsblog.org | Matthew Ladner

Back in 2017, techno-optimist Jason Bedrick made the skeptical Robert Pondiscio a bet on the adoption rate for self-driving cars in the Phoenix area:“Robert and I are putting our money where our mouths are. Although I expect that in five years, few people will be sending their kids to school in autonomous vehicles, I predict that at least 25 percent of children in the Phoenix area will get to school via a self-driving car by the 2022-23 school year.
Texas choice triumph calls for celebration and a shift for the movement

1 month ago | nextstepsblog.org | Matthew Ladner

Texas school choice opponents are strong. I recall going to look up the number of lobbyists on retainer by groups opposed to choice during the 2013 legislative session, and the number was well over 100.
Lessons from SNAP wargames

1 month ago | nextstepsblog.org | Matthew Ladner

On Dec. 16, 2017, the U.S. House Committee on Agriculture held a committee hearing on “Pros and Cons of Restricting SNAP Purchases.” SNAP is a federally financed food assistance program that faces many of the same dilemmas policymakers face over education savings accounts.