It is only through the contributions of a great many people that a publication like the Education Freedom Report Card is possible. Among them, a few special contributors have that extra talent, work ethic, and willingness to go the extra mile that make the Report Card a remarkable and uniquely special undertaking.
Heritage Experts
Kevin Roberts, PhD, is President of The Heritage Foundation.
Jonathan Butcher is the Acting Director of the Center for Education Policy and Will Skillman Senior Research Fellow in Education Policy at The Heritage Foundation.
Jason Bedrick is Research Fellow in the Center for Education Policy.
Jay P. Greene, PhD, is Senior Research Fellow in the Center for Education Policy.
Matthew Ladner is a Senior Advisor for education policy implementation in the Center for Education Policy.
Madison Marino Doan is a Policy Analyst in the Center for Education Policy.
Design and Development
John Fleming is the Manager of Data Graphics Services for Policy Publications at The Heritage Foundation.
Jay Simon is the Manager of Web Development and Print Production for Policy Publications.
About the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Education Policy
The mission of the Center for Education Policy is to expand education freedom for all families by allowing parents to choose the learning environment that best meets the needs of their children and aligns with their values, and to advance K–12 and higher-education policies that prepare students to inherit the blessings and liberties of a free society.
Jonathan Butcher is the Acting Director of the Center for Education Policy and Will Skillman Senior Research Fellow in Education Policy at The Heritage Foundation. He is the author of Splintered: Critical Race Theory and the Progressive War on Truth (Bombardier Books, April 2022). He co-edited and wrote chapters for The Critical Classroom (The Heritage Foundation, 2022), discussing the racial prejudice that comes from the application of critical race theory in K–12 schools. In 2021, South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster nominated Butcher to serve on the board of the South Carolina Public Charter School District, a statewide charter school authorizer. He has researched and testified on education policy before state legislatures around the U.S.
Butcher co-edited and wrote chapters for The Not-So-Great Society, which provides conservative solutions to the problems created by the ever-expanding federal footprint in preschool, K–12 schools, and higher education.
In 2018, the Federal Commission on School Safety cited comments from his testimony in the commission’s final report. He has appeared on local and national TV outlets, including C-SPAN, Fox News, and HBO’s Vice News Tonight, and he has been a guest on many radio programs. His commentary has appeared nationally in The Wall Street Journal, Education Week, National Review, Newsweek, Forbes, and FoxNews.com, along with newspapers around the country.
In 2017, Butcher was a co-recipient of the State Policy Network’s Bob Williams Award for Most Influential Research for a proposal to protect free speech on campus, alongside Stanley Kurtz of the Ethics and Public Policy Center and Jim Manley of the Goldwater Institute.
Butcher previously served as the education director at the Goldwater Institute, where he remains a senior fellow. He was a member of the Arizona Department of Education’s first Steering Committee for Empowerment Scholarship Accounts, the nation’s first education savings account program. He is also a senior fellow with The Beacon Center of Tennessee, a nonpartisan research organization, and a contributing scholar at the Georgia Center for Opportunity.
Prior to joining the Goldwater Institute, Butcher was the director of accountability for the South Carolina Public Charter School District. Butcher previously studied education policy at the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas and worked with the School Choice Demonstration Project, the research team that evaluated voucher programs in Washington, DC, and Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Butcher holds a B.A. in English from Furman University and an M.A. in economics from the University of Arkansas.
Jason Bedrick is a research fellow in the Center for Education Policy at The Heritage Foundation, where he focuses on policies that promote education freedom and choice, religious liberty, classical education, and restoring the primary role of families in education.
Bedrick is co-editor and co-author of two books—Educational Freedom: Remembering Andrew Coulson, Debating His Ideas, and Religious Liberty and Education: A Case Study of Yeshivas vs. New York. He has also authored chapters in three books, including The Heritage Foundation’s The Not-So-Great Society, which provides conservative solutions to the problems created by the ever-expanding federal footprint in preschool, K–12 schools, and higher education.
His research on education policy has been published by numerous national and state-level think tanks, including The Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, the American Enterprise Institute, EdChoice, the Heartland Institute, the Pioneer Institute, and the Show-Me Institute, among others. His writings have also appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, FoxNews.com, Politico, the New York Post, National Review, National Affairs, the Washington Examiner, the Journal of School Choice, the Library of Law and Liberty, and Education Next among many other publications.
Bedrick is a fellow at EdChoice, a nonprofit founded by Milton and Rose Friedman to advance education freedom and choice, where he previously served as the director of policy. He is also an adjunct scholar with the Cato Institute, where he once served as a policy analyst with the Center for Educational Freedom. Bedrick currently serves on the boards of directors for the Education Freedom Institute and Chalkboard Media.
Bedrick previously served as a legislator in the New Hampshire House of Representatives and was an education policy research fellow at the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy in New Hampshire.
Bedrick received his master’s degree in public policy, with a focus on education policy, from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, where he was a fellow at the Taubman Center for State and Local Government. Bedrick resides in Phoenix with his wife and five children.
Jay P. Greene is a senior research fellow in the Center for Education Policy at The Heritage Foundation. At Heritage, Greene conducts and disseminates research on the key issues facing education today, including the cultural, civic, and economic implications of how education systems are designed and implemented.
He is one of the country’s leading experts on education policy, with highly influential research on a broad range of topics—from the effects of expanding school choice and how education shapes character and values to the misuse of social science research in policy debates. In addition to authoring dozens of publications in peer-reviewed journals and writing or editing four books, including the best-selling Education Myths, Greene’s research on school choice was cited four times in the Supreme Court’s landmark case Zelman v. Simmons–Harris.
Greene comes to Heritage from the University of Arkansas, where he served as distinguished professor and chair of the Department of Education Reform, which he founded and led for 16 years.
Greene received his B.A. in history from Tufts University and earned his PhD in government from Harvard University.
Matthew Ladner is a Senior Advisor for education policy implementation in the Center for Education Policy. He is a well-renowned scholar on education policy, Ladner has written numerous studies on education choice, charter schools, and special education reform. He joins Heritage after serving as the director of the Arizona Center for Student Opportunity at the Arizona Charter School Association.
Previously, Ladner served as senior research fellow at the Charles Koch Institute and senior advisor for research and policy at Excel in Ed as well as vice president of research at the Goldwater Institute. Ladner has decades of experience testifying before Congress, state legislatures, and the United States Commission on Civil Rights.
Madison Marino Doan is a Policy Analyst for Heritage’s Center for Education Policy. Her work focuses on higher education reform regarding affordability and accountability. She also writes on K-12 education choice initiatives.
Doan is also a visiting fellow with the Maryland Family Institute, where she writes and comments on issues related to education choice, parental rights, and local education.
Before this, she served in multiple roles for U.S. Congressman Brian Babin (TX-36), most recently as Legislative Correspondent, and managed his religious freedom and values portfolio.
Her work may be found in Fox News, Washington Examiner, Washington Times, The Daily Signal, the Educational Freedom Institute, and more. She graduated summa cum laude from Lamar University with a double major in Economics and Finance and has a certificate in Humanizing Education Policy from the Pepperdine School of Public Policy.