Dear Colleagues:
It’s Groundhog Day <[link removed]>!—in July. Over at The Hill <[link removed]> Lindsey Burke and Heritage Foundation visiting fellow Virginia Walden Ford write about the Biden administration's attempts to end the highly successful D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program. President Obama’s administration tried to do the same thing “at nearly every opportunity over two terms,” Lindsey and Virginia explain. "School safety, improved academic attainment, happier students and parents, and massive savings appear to be less persuasive to the Biden administration than the teachers’ unions and their deep pockets <[link removed]>," they said.

The Biden administration wants to cut-off new entrants into the program in 2023. That same year, his administration proposes giving the Department of Education a 41 percent increase in its budget - the largest proposed increase of any federal agency.
Elevator Pitch: For the sake of thousands of D.C. students, it’s once again time to fight for this critically important program.
What Else We’re Working On

Wile E. Coyote and education research. Our senior research fellow Jay Greene explains that rigorous, and updated, research helps inform effective policy ideas. In his latest post <[link removed]> over at jaypgreene.com <[link removed]>, he says, “Assuming that findings hold true across time and place is as hazardous as Wile E. Coyote relying on his ACME blueprints.” For example, he says, “Research on the effects of introducing the original GI Bill are often trotted out to support expanding subsidies for higher education.”

Jay explains the results of a new study that finds “more generous” GI Bill awards in recent years may have slightly increased the educational attainment of
participants, but it came at a significant cost. Researchers actually found a reduction in earnings among those veterans who used this revised college tuition assistance program. Read on <[link removed]>.
Threats to school safety. On Wednesday of this week, I spoke with Max Eden, research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, in a Heritage Foundation Policy Pulse <[link removed]> about keeping children safe at school. The White House has signaled that they want to limit teachers’ abilities to maintain order in their classrooms. Max has researched and testified on the issue of school safety and student discipline, and his book Why Meadow
Died <[link removed]> with Parkland father Andrew Pollack describes the devastating experience of losing a child in a violent incident at school. The entire event will be available here <[link removed]>.

Backpedaling. Writing for the Daily Signal <[link removed]> this week, I describe how the U.S. Department of Education stared into critical race theory’s abyss and blinked. I write, “In April, the agency proposed <[link removed]> prioritizing the theory’s racially discriminatory ideas in a small federal grant program for K-12 schools. But after a ‘significant <[link removed]>’ number of comments to the announcement, the agency demurred earlier this week, saying it would not give a ‘competitive advantage <[link removed]>’ to applicants proposing to use critical race theory.”

For more on how a Marxist philosopher called critical theory an idea “on the edge of an abyss, of nothingness, of absurdity” and why the federal agency’s retreat matters, read on <[link removed]>.
Upcoming Event
 
At the State Policy Network (SPN) annual meeting this year I will speak with Kyle Wingfield, president and CEO of the Georgia Policy Foundation, and Michael Chartier, senior director of
policy initiatives at SPN, about the long-term expectations for learning pods after the pandemic. Will the trend last and what policies are needed to make pods successful? Our session will be held on September 1. You can register for the event here <[link removed]>.
Interested in joining our team? Apply <[link removed]> to be our new Research Associate and Project Coordinator.
Warmly,

Jonathan Butcher
Will Skillman Fellow in Education
Center for Education Policy
Institute for Family, Community, and Opportunity
The Heritage Foundation

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