Dear Colleagues:
We have a new home on Twitter <[link removed]>! Please follow us @HeritageOnEd!
Engage in the discussion. Instead of having to wait until every Thursday at 2pm, you can follow us on Twitter and stay up to date with all our work. You can also engage in discussions for education freedom with us. We will still send out a newsletter for those who don’t use twitter on the first Thursday of every month.
  
Start here. A good place to start is this Twitter thread <[link removed]> which summarizes Jay Greene’s recent essay <[link removed]> with coauthor Albert Cheng in National Affairs. They make a strong argument that, “instead of civic education understood as the provision of information, what we need is civic education understood as virtue formation.” Here’s a slice:
  
No matter how sound the knowledge it instills or how energetic the advocacy it encourages… civic education will struggle to mold students into citizens who love justice... until it is courageous enough to address the question of ends and assert the importance of virtue.
  
…Simply redoubling efforts of providing information, whether in the form of policing alleged misinformation or disseminating the right information, will not produce the tempered citizens we long for. Nor will improving human capital by expanding people's stock of technical skills be sufficient to that end. At the heart of forming good citizens is cultivating character and virtue.
  
New year, new options. Writing for reimaginED <[link removed]> this week, Jonathan Butcher starts the year on a hopeful note. He explains that the U.S. Supreme Court has the chance to rule in favor of families participating in a private school scholarship program in Maine. This ruling could affect the way states around the country design private learning options. And after the tremendous success in creating new public and private learning options across states last year, lawmakers should follow the effective designs of some of these new private options, including West Virginia's expansive new education savings accounts.
  
Finally, policymakers and other public officials are well aware of the $200 billion that federal taxpayers have sent to public schools around the U.S. If schools, especially schools in urban areas, continue with an on-again, off-again re-opening schedule, then lawmakers should waste no time in creating more private learning opportunities for students and families. Read on <[link removed]>.
  
Revisiting a Reaganesque Approach. Déjà vu: public schools across the country are closing their doors to in-person learning, and parents are still infuriated with the lack of accountability from their local government-run schools. This week, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said that “enough is enough <[link removed]>.” Almost exactly a year ago, Lindsey Burke made the argument <[link removed]> for how Chicago and other cities could look to Ronald Reagan for a model to address unionized teachers refusing to do their jobs. Given how tragic school closures are for students, “it’s past time for decisive action.”
  
Pre-k and childcare. While the Build Back Better bill is off the table for now, universal pre-k and childcare subsidies might have federal support in the future. In a recent piece, John and coauthor Teresa Schuster explain that government preschool and care is bad policy for a variety of reasons, including that it would exacerbate a sector already overburdened by regulations. Instead of increasing regulatory barriers, states should reduce current regulatory barriers and allow parents to choose from a wide variety of affordable, flexible options that aren’t artificially expensive. Read it here <[link removed]>.
Sincerely,
John Schoof
 
Research Associate and Project Coordinator
Center for Education Policy
Institute for Family, Community, and Opportunity
The Heritage Foundation

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