Yes, but it doesn’t work. Jonathan spoke with “On Balance” last week about Walmart’s diversity training program for its employees. Jonathan explained that workplace diversity trainings are an $8 billion-per-year industry, but a significant body of research finds these trainings are ineffective at changing individual behavior. In fact, some studies have found that the trainings make participants less tolerant and even create negative feelings about diversity. You can watch the clip here.
North Carolina parents customizing their child's education. Earlier this week the Carolina Journal discussed Jonathan's new report on education savings accounts in North Carolina. “More parents customized — that means used their account for more than one educational option or service — in North Carolina than in the first two years of any education savings account program to date,” Jonathan said at an event recently featuring the report.
“We have vouchers and pods and ESAs. All of these things are now starting to overlap and merge together into a landscape that is becoming much more personalized based on the needs of a child,” Butcher said. Read on.
Jonathan also discusses the flexibility afforded North Carolina families through education savings accounts in a new piece for ReImagined this week, in which he explains that an impressive two-thirds of families using an ESA are customizing their child’s education with their accounts.
“Sixty-four percent of account holders used an account to customize their child’s learning experience in North Carolina’s accounts’ first two years — approximately double the share of Arizona families that customized a student’s experience in the first two years of account availability in that state,” Jonathan writes.
Fight against massive spending bill continues. The Biden administration continues its push for massive government preschool and childcare in the “reconciliation” bill making its way through Congress. Our colleague in labor economics Rachel Greszler has an excellent new paper out on the consequences of such a policy.
As she finds, the proposal would disproportionately benefit high-income families in high-cost states. As Rachel explains, it would continue to crowd-out small and in-home providers, which, due in part to regulations, have already seen a 52 percent decline since 2005 (a loss of 92,400 providers). That means fewer choices for families.
The plan would also push preschool programs to match the structure of the public K-12 systems through wage subsidies and degree requirements, plus the added requirement of year-round provision. This would dramatically increase costs. As Rachel writes:
“Providing a similar product with at least three times as many teachers and nearly twice as many hours per year could easily result in childcare costs equaling twice the current per-pupil cost of public K-12 education.”
She also points out that government, center-based childcare runs counter to what most families want. “Providing massive federal subsidies only to families that choose to follow the ideals of certain politicians – for all parents to work full time and send their children to government-approved childcare – could fundamentally alter childcare in the United States.”
