If you want to understand what’s actually happening in Idaho’s schools, there’s one place to start: Idaho Education News. Founded in 2013 by Jennifer Swindell, a Boise native and former journalist who served as the first female sports editor in the country before turning her attention to education, Idaho Ed News has become the definitive resource for parents, policymakers, and anyone trying to make sense of the state’s K-12 and higher education landscape. On the latest Ever Onward Podcast, Swindell joined host Tommy Ahlquist and co-host Roger Quarrels, the Albertson Foundation executive director who first hired her at the Caldwell School District and later helped launch Idaho Ed News, for an honest conversation about where Idaho education stands, what’s improving, and what remains genuinely hard.

What Idaho Education News Actually Does

The mission is simple and a little unusual: hold lawmakers and educators accountable for taxpayer dollars and student achievement. No paywall, no advertising, no editorial agenda. The J.A. and Katherine Albertson Foundation funds it, and Quarrels was emphatic that in over a decade of that relationship, he has never once had a conversation with Swindell about what to write or how to cover a story.

The result is a journalism organization that reaches roughly a million readers and two million page views annually in a state of two million people. The site covers the Idaho legislature with two reporters every single day during session, tracks academic performance data for every school in the state, and just published school rankings from one to 762. It was built, Swindell said, specifically for parents trying to navigate an increasingly complex set of choices.

“We’ll spend more time shopping for a new vehicle than we will on the best environment for our children,” she noted. “Because there are so many choices now, not all kids are going to be successful in the same environment.”

For parents new to Idaho or trying to evaluate options, idahoednews.org is the starting point. The data section alone includes enrollment figures, graduation rates, attendance, academic performance, and financial information organized in a way that’s genuinely searchable and usable.

School Choice Is Reshaping the Conversation

The biggest structural shift in Idaho education in recent years has been the expansion of school choice. Open enrollment is now a reality statewide. Tax credits for private school tuition have arrived. Charter schools have proliferated, with roughly 75 operating across the state. And the effects are rippling through the system in ways that are both challenging and, Swindell argued, ultimately productive.

Traditional public schools that are losing students to charters and private options face real financial pressure. Fewer students means less funding. But the flip side, she suggested, is that competition creates an incentive to improve that didn’t exist when families had no alternative to their neighborhood school.

West Ada superintendent Derek Bub came up as a model for how to respond. Rather than resisting the shift, he created what he calls “schools of choice” within the district itself, essentially charter-style programs with specialized focuses operating inside the public school framework. West Ada now posts some of the strongest test results among large Idaho districts.

The criticism of school choice that Ahlquist raised is a real one: it works best for families who have the resources, awareness, and bandwidth to take advantage of it. For kids in lower-income households, in rural communities with no charter options, or in families without the capacity to navigate the system, the expansion of choice doesn’t automatically translate into better outcomes. That tension isn’t resolved, and Swindell was honest about it. The goal, she said, has to be serving all kids, including what she called “the forgotten 50 percent” who were never going to do well in a one-size-fits-all system regardless of what funding level it operated at.

Idaho’s Funding Reality Is More Complicated Than It Looks

Idaho consistently ranks near the bottom nationally in per-pupil education spending, and that number gets cited frequently as evidence that the state isn’t investing in its schools. The fuller picture is more nuanced. Idaho directs more than half of all state tax collections to K-12 public education. Add in higher education and the figure approaches 60 percent. By percentage of budget allocated, Idaho ranks third in the nation.

The catch, as Quarrels explained, is that Idaho’s overall tax base is simply smaller than states with major industrial or tech economies. Washington can pay teachers $15,000 to $20,000 more per year than Idaho not because it prioritizes education more, but because its economic pie is much larger. Wyoming’s small population sits on top of massive oil, gas, and coal revenue. The commitment in Idaho is real. The resources available to fulfill it are constrained by the size of the economy generating them.

What Quarrels found more troubling than the raw numbers is the return on investment. Education funding in Idaho has increased by roughly 25 percent over the last eight years, and academic outcomes have remained largely flat. That’s not an argument against teachers or against investment. It’s an argument that money alone isn’t the variable that moves the needle, and that the harder conversation is about what does.

His answer, and Swindell’s, comes back to leadership. The primary driver of effective school districts, she said without hesitation, is the quality of leadership at the superintendent and school board level. Districts that are doing well tend to have leaders who are data-driven, competitive, and genuinely committed to improvement. Districts that are struggling often have leadership turnover, a three-year average tenure for Idaho superintendents, and school board members who were elected without any required background or training in running what amounts to the largest employer in many communities.

The Rural Reality Is Different

Most of the policy conversation about Idaho education centers on the Treasure Valley, but most of Idaho’s 115 school districts are rural, and the dynamics there are fundamentally different. Charter schools are largely absent outside the major population centers. Private school options barely exist. The school is often the community’s largest employer, its social center, and the primary source of local identity, which makes any conversation about consolidation politically radioactive almost immediately.

The financial math in some of these districts is genuinely unsustainable. Small enrollment, aging facilities, administrative overhead that doesn’t scale down proportionally, and a population that isn’t growing. Ahlquist described a meeting with four small districts in eastern Idaho where the conversation started constructively and ended with everyone defending their turf. The breakthrough, he suggested, would have to come from financial reality rather than voluntary collaboration.

Swindell’s observation was pointed: if anyone started from zero-based budgeting, they wouldn’t fund schools the way they currently do. But the roots in these communities go deep. Quarrels cited research suggesting that around 90 percent of Idaho teachers teach within six to ten miles of where they went to school themselves. That kind of community embeddedness is both a strength and a structural constraint on change.

What Parents Can Do Right Now

The conversation ended on a practical note. Swindell travels around Idaho doing a simple exercise with whatever audience she’s in front of: she asks people to write down how many state lawmakers Idaho has, what district they live in, and who their school board members are. The results are almost universally humbling.

School board members, she pointed out, have more direct control over local school funding and educational decisions than any state or federal official. And most people couldn’t name a single one. Knowing who they are, attending meetings, asking the right questions of school leaders, and being an informed voter in the May primary are the immediate actions any parent or community member can take.

For parents evaluating school options, the resource is idahoednews.org. The school rankings, data tools, and legislative coverage are free, comprehensive, and built specifically to help families make informed decisions rather than defaulting to whatever school happens to be closest.

As Swindell put it: the best school in Idaho depends entirely on how your child learns best, and figuring that out is now, more than ever, the parent’s responsibility.