Jefferson Forum

An Idea Whose Time Has Come Derrick Max | October 28, 2026 (Jefferson Forum) — For nearly two decades, Chris Braunlich and the Jefferson Forum’s predecessor, the Thomas Jefferson Institute, have advocated for replacing Virginia’s complicated, resource-driven Standards of Quality (SOQ) school funding formula with a system of Weighted Student Funding. So it was encouraging

Derrick Max | August 20, 2026 (Jefferson Forum) — Scholars Ian Rowe and Brad Wilcox, writing recently in The Wall Street Journal, identified a factor routinely omitted from discussions of student achievement: family structure. When disparities appear in test scores, graduation rates or college admissions, policymakers typically blame school funding, teacher quality, poverty or, more recently,