Reflections and Highlights from the 2025 ExcelinEd Summit
This past week, I was fortunate enough to attend the National Summit on Education, hosted by the Foundation for Excellence in Education (ExcelinEd). This conference is the preeminent collection of education policy experts in the country, with nearly every state represented by some number of policymakers, advocates, and education vendors. This year, about 1,500 people attended – so many that hundreds of people watched some sessions from an adjoining ballroom because the 25,000 square foot main room was not nearly enough for everyone. While at the conference, I listened to a number of sessions across a wide variety of topics and was able to network with ExcelinEd staff, experts and advocates from across the country, and several key South Carolina education leaders. I’ve summarized a few of my favorite sessions below.
Day 1: Microschool Tour, Networking, and Warming Up
The first day of the conference started slow, with the welcome reception beginning later in the evening. For those in town early though, they could attend a tour of a local microschool hosted by Stand Together Trust – a philanthropic organization that works to ensure that everyone is afforded the opportunity to realize their full potential. There were four different groups that each went to different microschools – my group went to the Logos Academy, a classical Christian school in the outskirts of New Orleans.
The school is co-located with a church, but is a separate entity from the church. They intentionally limit their class sizes to no more than 12 students in each grade, and are preparing to graduate their first high school seniors later this year. The students wear uniforms and are in class no more often than Monday through Thursday, with homework to do on Fridays for the next week. Their parents pay tuition – ranging from a low of $3,600 for the year for younger children and $5,200 for 7th – 12th graders. The school has also opted to be entirely screen-free – there was not a single computer in sight throughout our visit.
A few things stood out to me about this school. First and foremost, being a classical school, they begin teaching their students Latin in 2nd grade, and by 12th grade they are able to read Virgil in Latin. To accommodate an ever-increasing need for complex Latin as students progress through the grades, their teachers have adopted a rolling learning process: a teacher learns year 1 Latin, and then teaches it the next year. While they teach year 1 Latin, they are learning year 2 Latin and will teach it the next year. Then while they teach year 2 Latin, they will learn year 3, etc., with new teachers backfilling lower levels of Latin instruction. This way, over time, every teacher will be able to teach any level of Latin and can maintain their classical style of instruction.
The education regulatory landscape in Louisiana could be best described as “the wild, wild west.” The school operates as a type of in-person homeschool, similar in concept to South Carolina’s Option 3 homeschooling, where a student joins a homeschool association and attends classes in person (this is commonly known as a “homeschool co-op”). However, Louisiana’s law is far less strict – there is no requirement that the students that a parent registers to homeschool are their own child. Logos Academy students are, legally speaking, homeschooled, despite their regular in-person attendance and uniform requirements. The school takes full advantage of this regulatory gap, and provides a viable alternative to the local traditional public schools for nearly 100 students.
I had a radical shift in what I thought a microschool was during our visit to Logos Academy. In my mind, a microschool was structured more like a traditional one-room schoolhouse, where there were no real defined classrooms or separate spaces for different grades and the students learned at their own pace using technology. At Logos Academy, we saw a small school. Grades were separated into their own rooms, there was space for lunch and a gym for recess, and even a small space separated out as a teachers’ lounge. They choose to forego the modern niceties of technology, opting instead for paper and pencil. They are not a wealthy school by any means, but what they lack in resources they more than make up for in passion for education. The Headmistress of Logos Academy, Dr. Fiona Barker, said during our visit that parents must choose to make sacrifices for their children’s education, and that was a choice that she had made for her children. We met a sweet lady named Mrs. Boudreaux, who is an 89-year-old “jack of all trades” for the school, generally making sure that things run smoothly with the children as they move around the building. The staff of Logos Academy clearly care about their students and should serve as a role model for other schools when it comes to prioritizing children and their education.
Day 2 – The Wonk-ening
The second day of the conference is the “meat and potatoes” of the event, with educational sessions planned almost nonstop for a full 8 hours. My first session of the day focused on highlighting best practices for states to improve their college and career pathways, as well as the official unveiling of PathwaysMatter.org, a new ExcelinEd resource that contains state-by-state analyses of 45 individual policies that make up an effective college and career pathways ecosystem. South Carolina’s report (carefully researched by yours truly in a past life, and validated by the relevant state agencies) shows that there is still room for improvement – especially as it relates to outcomes-based funding for post-secondary degrees, certain types of financial aid for students, and credit articulation policies.
One of the major topics of this panel surrounded the topic of conducting return-on-investment analyses (ROI) for post-secondary degrees. Fortunately, ROI analyses are going to be required for postsecondary degrees under the federal One Big Beautiful Bill starting in 2026. Until then, states have to take the initiative to conduct their own ROI analyses. Arkansas Secretary of Education Jacob Oliva, one of the panelists, discussed the ROI analysis that they had conducted in years past. They found that some degrees, like computer science, paid for themselves relatively quickly, while others never did. In those cases, he said “You would have been better off never going to college, never taking debt, and just entering the workforce.”
Ohio Director of Education Stephen Dackin, another panelist, highlighted the importance of including “soft skills” into our kids’ schooling because, as he said, “We hire kids for hard skills, but fire them for soft skills.” Conceptually, this makes sense – we have all had a coworker who knows the job inside and out but is difficult to work with, does not take constructive criticism well, shows up late and leaves early, etc. These “soft skills” are very much as important as the credentials and experience that a potential employee brings to the table, and their school should be a sort of practice ground for them. Students have to show up on time, be respectful in class, develop strategies for interacting constructively with their peers – all critical skills for the workforce.
I also attended a session on improving educator preparation programs (EPPs). A lot of time and energy is spent on ensuring that schools are not using three-cueing to teach kids how to read or ensuring that cell phones are kept out of the classroom, but ensuring that educator preparation programs are equipping teachers to succeed in the classroom is essential – a teacher needs to know how to use the instructional materials and strategies being presented to them. According to Heather Peske, president of the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) and a panelist, much of teacher burnout is driven by inexperience and uncertainty in the classroom – teachers are not adequately prepared to teach, get overwhelmed in the classroom, and end up leaving the profession entirely.
The panel also discussed conditional approval of EPPs. In order to be authorized to issue teaching licenses, postsecondary institutions need to get their EPPs authorized by the state. Susana Cordova, Commissioner of Education for Colorado, discussed their efforts to conditionally approve EPPs by ensuring that they meet certain base standards. If EPPs are not adequately preparing educators for the classroom, their authorization could be at risk. Ms. Peske highlighted a few data points in support of conditional authorization, specifically the marked improvements in EPPs in Indiana. According to a study NCTQ conducted in 2023, just 28% of EPPs nationally adequately addressed all five components of the science of reading (phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension), and 20% of EPPs did not address the science of reading at all in their curriculum. However, after Indiana passed their science of reading law, 77% of their EPPs are fully aligned with the science of reading.
Ultimately, the key to improving EPPs in any state, but especially in South Carolina, is the willingness on behalf of the institutions offering EPPs to share data and allow the state to develop a report card detailing their performance. South Carolina already has school report cards, and these would be very similar. These report cards would serve as an accountability and support tools – evaluating EPPs and highlighting what each does well and where they additional support to improve.
Day 3 – Winding Down
The conference ended just after lunchtime, leaving space for just a few sessions that morning. I attended a panel discussion discussing the future of school choice – a particularly relevant discussion in South Carolina given the ever-increasing momentum behind the school choice movement. Two key points stood out to me – first and foremost, we cannot let perfection get in the way of the good. In other words, we must avoid “paralysis by analysis” – no program is going to be perfect in its first iteration, and that is perfectly acceptable. To paraphrase Helmuth von Moltke, a mid-19th century Prussian field marshal, “No plan survives first contact with the enemy,” and the same is true when creating new programs – no plan will work perfectly when it comes time to implement it. Being bold enough to be willing to make mistakes, learn from them, and fixing them is key to developing functioning choice programs.
Second, families want customizable choice. It does not matter whether the family is affluent or low-income, families across the country want choice, and poll after poll reaffirms that fact. We must allow the free market to work – families need to have the freedom to “shop around” for the school choice option that works best for their child and, failing to find one, they should be allowed to create those options. Parents are a proven method of accountability – they will not keep their students in programs that are ineffective or do not serve their children’s needs, and policymakers should be cognizant of that fact and keep a close eye on shifts in the market. Ultimately, the question when evaluating the effectiveness of these policies is whether more students are learning at a higher level – if the answer is “Yes,” then the programs are effective.
My Takeaways
I thoroughly enjoyed my time at the National Summit. For anyone considering attending in the future, I cannot recommend it enough. Nowhere else will you have so many people working toward improving education in such a wholistic manner – there were sessions on literacy, math instruction, teacher preparation, cell phones bans, AI in the classroom, school funding and choice, public charter schools and their innovative practices, and more. There is something for everyone at the National Summit, and the conference is sure to be better next year.
