Restoring Education Freedom in America

As Americans celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Heritage commemorates a founding generation that understood that an educated citizenry is indispensable for self-government. As Thomas Jefferson observed, “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.” The Founders did not entrust education policy to a distant federal bureaucracy. They relied on a pluralistic, decentralized, and largely privatized patchwork of schools, academies, tutors, and church-based institutions—an arrangement that reflected their conviction that the formation of citizens was too important, and too local, a matter to be administered from the top down.

Two and a half centuries later, as the U.S. Department of Education winds down its operations and the federal government’s grip on K–12 schooling loosens, states have a historic opportunity to reclaim the role the Founders always intended them to play.

That opportunity comes with real responsibility. The retreat of federal oversight is not, by itself, an education policy. It is an invitation—one that states must answer with a clear and affirmative vision. The Heritage Foundation’s Education Freedom Report Card exists to help states to meet that moment, measuring performance across the five pillars that define a genuinely excellent state education system.

The first is education choice. Parents are the primary educators of their children. States should adopt policies that empower parents to choose the learning environments that align with their values and work best for their children. The explosion of K–12 education savings accounts policies in recent years reflects growing recognition that when funding follows students rather than systems, outcomes improve and innovation flourishes. The best education choice policies are available to all students, have a reliable funding mechanism, and are free from burdensome regulations (such as testing mandates, price controls, or accreditation requirements) that would undermine the diversity that makes education choice meaningful.

The second is teacher freedom. Great schools require great teachers, and states erect far too many barriers to bringing talented people into the classroom. Burdensome licensure requirements, mandatory Praxis exams with little predictive value, the absence of reciprocity for teachers certified in other states, and ideological chief diversity officers who enforce intellectual conformity all discourage capable educators and constrain the professional autonomy of those already teaching. States that lower these barriers—expanding alternative certification pathways, granting full reciprocity to out-of-state teachers, and resisting the spread of so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) bureaucracy in school districts—will be better positioned to attract and retain the teachers their students deserve.

The third is transparency. Parents cannot exercise meaningful oversight of their children’s education without access to honest information about what is being taught, how schools are performing, and how public dollars are being spent. States should ensure that this information is readily available and that parents have real recourse when schools fail to deliver.

The fourth is return on investment. K–12 spending has quadrupled in real terms since 1960 with no meaningful gains in academic achievement, while administrative jobs have grown at three times the rate of enrollment. Taxpayers deserve better, and the states that deliver better deserve recognition.

The fifth is civics education. Only 22 percent of eighth-graders are proficient in civics—a crisis that threatens the republic’s very capacity for self-government. The Founders built their case for independence on a shared inheritance of political ideas and ideals; states must ensure that today’s students understand and can defend that inheritance. High school students should be required, as a condition of graduation, to either pass a full-year course on civics or the U.S. government, or earn a passing grade on the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services naturalization test, or an equivalent. States should also adopt policies that foster the growth of schools, such as classical education schools, that provide students with a solid grounding in the history, texts, and traditions of Western civilization in general and America in particular.

As the federal government steps aside, some states have begun to reassert their constitutional authority over education. The U.S. Department of Education’s July 2025 Dear Colleague letter invited states to seek waivers from federal statutory and regulatory requirements. Iowa was the first to act, receiving approval in January 2026 for its Returning Education to the States Waiver—freeing nearly $8 million from compliance costs and redirecting it to classrooms. In May 2026, the department approved Louisiana’s waiver request, freeing more than $18 million in compliance costs. Since then, Indiana, Vermont, Arkansas, and South Dakota have also been granted waivers. Every state should be asking which federal requirements it can shed, and how that newfound autonomy can be channeled into broader parental choice, greater freedom for teachers, more transparent schools, better civic education, and a stronger return on every taxpayer dollar.

The semiquincentennial is a fitting moment to measure how far American education has drifted from the Founders’ vision—and to chart the course back to an educated and civic-minded citizenry.