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.
Lindsey M. Burke, PhD, is Director of the Center for Education Policy, and Mark A. Kolokotrones Fellow in Education at The Heritage Foundation.
Jason Bedrick is Research Fellow in the Center for Education Policy.
Jonathan Butcher is Will Skillman Senior Fellow in Education 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 is a Senior Research Associate 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.
As director of the Center for Education Policy at The Heritage Foundation, Lindsey Burke oversees Heritage’s research and policy on issues pertaining to preschool, K–12, and higher-education reform. Burke’s research has been presented at academic conferences and published in peer-reviewed journals, including Social Science Quarterly, Educational Research and Evaluation, and the Journal of School Choice, and her commentary and op-eds have appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers. She is a frequent guest on radio and television shows and speaks on education reform across the country and internationally. She has written evaluations of education choice options for public policy foundations across the country and has done extensive work shaping and evaluating education savings account (ESA) policies.
In 2021, Burke was tapped to join Governor-elect Glenn Youngkin’s transition steering committee and was also appointed to serve on the Youngkin landing team for education. Burke was appointed by Governor Youngkin to serve on the Board of Visitors for George Mason University. Her term runs from July 1, 2022, to June 30, 2026.
Burke also serves as a fellow at EdChoice, the namesake foundation of Milton and Rose Friedman; on the national advisory board of Learn4Life, a network of public charter schools serving “opportunity youth”; on the board of the Educational Freedom Institute; on the advisory board of the Independent Women’s Forum’s Education Freedom Center; and as a Trustee of Choice Media.
In 2015, Burke won Heritage’s prestigious W. Glenn and Rita Ricardo Campbell Award in recognition of her work fighting for expanded education choice. The award is given annually to a policy expert who has made “an outstanding contribution to the analysis and promotion of a free society.”
Burke holds a bachelor’s degree in politics from Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia, and a master’s of teaching degree in foreign language education from the University of Virginia. She earned her PhD in education policy from George Mason University, where she examined the intersection of education choice and institutional theory.
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.
Jonathan Butcher is the Will Skillman Senior Fellow in Education 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.
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 is a Senior Research Associate for Heritage’s Center for Education Policy.
Prior to joining Heritage, Madison served for three years on Capitol Hill as a Staff Assistant and Legislative Correspondent for Congressman Brian Babin, where she managed the pro-life and religious freedom portfolio, among other issues. She earned her bachelor’s degree in economics and finance from Lamar University in Beaumont, TX.