The Cycle of Disinvestment in Public Schools: How Public School Criticism Drives Policy and Disinvestment

GRAND RAPIDS, MI (MARCH 3, 2026) - Critiques of public education have intensified in recent years. While public schools do indeed have real areas in need of growth and improvement, many of today’s attacks are generated and amplified by organizations seeking to manufacture crises. These narratives often ignore counterevidence, and they use deceptive language to portray the system as broadly failing, even hopeless.

To examine these destructive critiques, Huriya Jabbar and Daniel Espinoza of the University of Southern California authored a policy brief, The Cycle of Disinvestment in Public Schools: How Public School Criticism Drives Policy and Disinvestment , released today by NEPC. The brief identifies five core narratives used to portray a failing education system: claims of underachievement, inefficiency, inequality, lack of school choice, and indoctrination.

The brief warns that overstated crisis narratives fuel a cycle of disinvestment: Eroding public confidence leads to reduced funding and enrollment, which strains schools and invites further criticism. This cycle weakens the public system while advancing privatization of what has long been considered a public good.

Each of the five core narratives is poorly grounded, according to Jabbar and Espinoza.

The "achievement" attack rests on disappointing test scores while downplaying the powerful influence of poverty and inequality on student performance. Polling consistently shows that parents rate their own public schools highly, even as they accept the broader myth that public schools nationwide are failing, revealing a gap between lived experience and manufactured narrative.

Charges of inefficiency similarly rely on narrow test score measures and attacks on unions, despite evidence that increased funding improves student achievement, especially for low-income students.

Claims that public schools exacerbate inequality ignore research showing that inequitable funding and broader social conditions drive disparities, and that public education remains essential to addressing them.

Advocates of vouchers and expanded school choice argue that families lack options, yet recent research finds large-scale voucher programs tend to lower student outcomes and increase segregation.

Allegations of indoctrination depend on sensationalized examples that ignore the largely uncontroversial, inclusive nature of most classroom instruction.

Amid COVID-19 disruptions, culture wars, rapid voucher expansion, immigration enforcement in schools, and federal policy and funding threats, the danger to public education is acute. Without correction, manufactured crises will continue to justify underinvestment, deepen inequality, and roll back hard-won gains in equity and student outcomes. Jabbar and Espinoza call on policymakers to counter manufactured narratives with evidence and to work toward reversing prior disinvestment by promoting equitable funding of instruction and facilities.

Find The Cycle of Disinvestment in Public Schools: How Public School Criticism Drives Policy and Disinvestment , by Huriya Jabbar and Daniel Espinoza, at: https://greatlakescenter.org

This policy brief was made possible in part by the support of the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice ( greatlakescenter.org ).

The National Education Policy Center (NEPC), a university research center housed at the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education, sponsors research, produces policy briefs, and publishes expert third-party reviews of think tank reports. NEPC publications are written in accessible language and are intended for a broad audience that includes academic experts, policymakers, the media, and the general public. Our mission is to provide high-quality information in support of democratic deliberation about education policy. We are guided by the belief that the democratic governance of public education is strengthened when policies are based on sound evidence and support a multiracial society that is inclusive, kind, and just. Visit us at: http://nepc.colorado.edu

The mission of the Great Lakes Center for Education Research & Practice is to support and disseminate high-quality research and reviews of research for the purpose of informing education policy and to develop research-based resources for use by those who advocate for education reform.

Visit the Great Lakes Center website at GreatLakesCenter.org

Contacts

Michelle Renee Valladares

Huriya Jabbar