Dear Colleagues:
The $3.5 trillion reconciliation package <[link removed]> continues to make its way through Congress. The proposal contains unprecedented new federal education spending - $450 billion for federal preschool and childcare, $82 billion for school infrastructure, and $111 billion for “free” community college – among other spending. All of this would come on top of the $282 billion in additional federal education spending already allocated through three Covid spending packages since 2020. And all of it would grow federal intervention in education while continuing a trend of untenable spending from Washington.
 
What We’ve Been Working On
 
Does school choice need bipartisan legislative support? Yesterday, Senior Research Fellow Jay Greene along with co-author James Paul of the Education Freedom Institute released a major new study examining whether adoption of school choice programs required bipartisan legislative support over the years. In Does School Choice Need Bipartisan Support? An Empirical Analysis of the Legislative Record <[link removed]>, Jay and James find that only three school choice programs (out of 70) have needed any Democratic votes to get over the adoption threshold. This has major policy implication for school choice proponents. As Jay and James explain in their report published by the American Enterprise Institute:
 
“Although private school choice has historically been a Republican priority, education reform organizations often use strategies intended to appeal to Democratic lawmakers and interest groups…
 
In general, the bipartisan strategy has favored the Democratic Party’s priorities and produced small choice programs. Participating students are required to take standardized tests so scholarship recipients face the same regulatory regime to which public systems are subjected. Scholarship amounts are kept low and the number of participants capped to prevent traditional public schools from being drained of resources.”
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Staff Bloat at Mr. Jefferson’s University. Jay and James Paul also continue to highlight the growth of the “diversity industrial complex,” this time at the University of Virginia. As they found, UVA has 94 staff with formal responsibility for promoting DEI – second only to the University of Michigan. As Jay and James write in the Free-Lance Star <[link removed]>:
 
“State legislators, boards of trustees, tuition-paying parents, and other stakeholders should demand accountability for these symbolic hiring sprees. They should insist that universities produce evidence of the effectiveness of maintaining an army of DEI staff or cut those headcounts to lower university costs.”
 
Peace of mind. Writing for reimaginED this week, Research Fellow Jonathan Butcher profiled Space of Mind, a school that its founder says is "like a school, but better."
 
“Everything is collaborative and creative, and very much personalized to the students,” said Ali Kaufman, who created the unique K-12 learning institution in Florida. Jonathan explains that Space of Mind attracts homeschool students, private school students, former public school students, even students from learning pods. Read on <[link removed]> to learn more about what sets Space of Mind apart.
 
Education savings accounts help children succeed in school and in life in North Carolina. The John Locke Foundation featured Jonathan's new paper on education savings accounts in North Carolina in a webinar this week. Notably, 64 percent of account holders in North Carolina used their account for more than one education product or service--significantly more than the share of account holders in Arizona and Florida who used accounts for more than one learning option in the first years of those account systems.
 
Jonathan spoke alongside Liz Bradford, the mother of Libby, a student using an account who Jonathan featured in one of his chapters in the Heritage Foundation volume the Not-So-Great Society <[link removed]>. You can watch the webinar here <[link removed]> and get a copy of Jonathan's report here <[link removed]>.
What We’ve Been Reading
 
Be sure to check-out this informative discussion on how schools should think about teaching slavery in EducationNext. Among others, contributors include Princeton professor and Heritage visiting fellow Allen Guelzo, University of Arkansas Professor Robert Maranto, and the American Enterprise Institute’s Ian Rowe. In his contribution to the forum, Rowe writes:
 
“What [Martin Luther] King so eloquently revealed was that slavery, far from being a particular American atrocity, was an accepted, grotesque feature at the center of a world ordered around the normalcy of human bondage. Yet it was America’s Enlightenment principles that allowed it to “uproot a social order” and liberate millions of enslaved people in recognition of their inherent and individual human dignity.”
 
The full forum discussion <[link removed]> is worth your time.
 
Sincerely,
Lindsey Burke
 
Director, Center for Education Policy and Mark A. Kolokotrones Fellow in Education
Institute for Family, Community, and Opportunity
The Heritage Foundation

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