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Dear Colleagues:

In The Hill, education scholars Rob Maranto and Ben Scafidi wrote about how the Biden Administration’s proposed education reforms, which would vastly increase federal education spending, make the same errors as previous federal efforts. The programs and spending from the past century have resulted in greater bureaucracy and stagnant education performance.

The three coronavirus emergency relief packages double down on this failure. “Spending more money to increase bureaucracy/paperwork/meetings has kept teacher pay stagnant and failed students for decades. Instead, states should follow the leads of Arizona, Florida and now West Virginia and let parents make decisions to find the best educational settings for their children through more school choice,” the authors wrote.

The problems with the American Families Plan don’t stop there. This week, Lindsey Burke and Jonathan Butcher, along with other Heritage scholars, released an analysis of the massive $1.8 trillion plan. As they explain, “Under this plan, the federal government takes more of Americans’ incomes and then redistributes the money in the form of benefits that politicians—not families—create, approve, and control. This would leave families with fewer opportunities and less control over their circumstances while failing to address the real problems in child care, education, family leave, and health care.” The plan is particularly heavy on bad education policy, including:

$225 billion on a new federal child care program that preferences center-based care over family and in-home provider care;
$200 billion on “free” universal preschool for all three-year-old and four-year-old children;
$9 billion for a teacher training program “to train, equip and diversify American teachers;”
Another expansion of the school meals program, making children from wealthier families eligible for these services;
$109 billion for “free” community college;
$62 billion to community colleges to increase retention and completion; and
$80 billion for the federal Pell Grant program (nearly tripling spending, which currently stands at $29 billion).

As Lindsey points out, in all, inclusive of the childcare spending, the American Families Plan would spend $748 billion on education. That’s 10 times the annual budget of the entire department of education. And it comes on top of the $260 billion in education spending in the first “infrastructure” plan, and on top of the $282 billion already spent through the three COVID spending packages.

Elevator pitch: There are few aspects of family life that this plan doesn’t try to replace with government services.

What We’re Working on

The Pioneer Institute, a free market research institution based in Boston, Mass., featured Jonathan this week on their "Learning Curve" podcast. Jonathan talked about his research on learning pods and how state regulations could limit student learning options. Jonathan and hosts Carla Crandal (Excelined) and Gerard Robinson (American Enterprise Institute), also discussed the threats to parents' influence on their child's school from President Joe Biden's plan to expand the federal footprint in K-12 schools across the U.S. Listen here.