In Washington, presidents and lawmakers come and go, but special interests dig in and never leave. They love to burrow into the sprawling federal bureaucracy, where they can stealthily wreak havoc on laws they don’t like.

If you want to catch these bureaucratic gremlins at work, take a look at the U.S. Education Department (ED). On March 14, ED proposed new regulations aimed at retarding the spread of public charter schools, despite growing public demand for them. During the pandemic, enrollment has declined in conventional K-12 schools, while charter schools have long waiting lists — around 50,000 children in New York City alone.

The target of this bureaucratic sabotage is one of President Clinton’s trademark innovations, the 1994 Federal Charter School Program (CSP). While state and local governments are chiefly responsible for operating elementary and secondary schools, CSP acknowledges a vital national interest in ensuring that all of America’s children, regardless of their socioeconomic status, have access to a world-class public education.

Unfortunately, that’s not the case today. The nation’s poor communities have too many substandard schools, as reflected in stubborn achievement gaps by race and ethnicity. Judging by U.S. students’ underwhelming performance on international reading, math and science tests, mediocrity also abounds in many of our suburban schools.

The $440 million Charter School Program invests in public school innovation. Its start-up grants have been a prime catalyst of America’s public school choice movement, which has made high-quality public schools available to millions of low-income and minority families whose children too often are consigned to low-performing schools.
 

Bureaucratic gremlins attack charter schools
By Will Marshall
for the The Hill

The U.S. Education Department's proposed rules, if adopted, inevitably will stall the growth of charter and other kinds of innovative public schools springing up in communities where they are urgently needed. We urge the White House to intervene to stop the Education Department's bureaucratic attack on the federal CSP and, by extension, on parents who want to be able to choose the public schools that best fit their children’s needs.

NEW PPI REPORT:
COVID-19 retrospective: What have we learned and how can we better prepare for future pandemics? 

By Arielle Kane, PPI's Director of Health Care

The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) released a new paper today urging lawmakers to invest in better pandemic preparedness infrastructure ahead of the next global pandemic. While legislation has been introduced in Congress, it has not yet been approved. Legislation should address the needed domestic manufacturing, data collection, and whole-of-government response another pandemic would require. The report is titled, “COVID-19 retrospective: What have we learned and how can we better prepare for future pandemics?” and is authored by Arielle Kane, Director of Health Care for the Progressive Policy Institute. 

The legislation lawmakers have introduced to address the weaknesses in the United States’ pandemic preparedness is a good first step. The U.S. needs more resilient infrastructure, nimble manufacturing, and much faster responding government. The government needs to plan strategically to prepare for the next pandemic rather than just reacting to COVID-19. With so much uncertainty surrounding pandemics, it will be paramount that the government works to partner with industry to be more agile in evolving situations,” writes report author Arielle Kane. “The next pandemic is unlikely to look like COVID-19. This is why it is important that the government invest in strategies and infrastructure that will allow for a more nimble response.

The Progressive Policy Institute’s report looks back at the U.S. response to COVID-19, examining the shortcomings and successes of the national response. It also provides a series of six recommendations policymakers can take now to help the U.S. be better prepared and more resilient to pandemic, health, or biological threats in the future. These recommendations include: Better communication and coordination across government; bolstering U.S. supply chain manufacturing; improving data infrastructure; investing in R&D and pandemic preparedness; supporting broader population health; and developing infrastructure that includes genomic surveillance, like wastewater and air quality testing.

On this episode of RAS Reports, Tressa Pankovits, Co-Director of the Reinventing America's Schools Project sits down with New Mexico State Senator Siah Correa Hemphill and Representative Joy Garratt to talk about a bill they successfully sponsored and passed into law this legislative session. New Mexico House Bill 43 creates a revolving facility fund that charter schools can access in order to provide high quality buildings for their students. In today's highly polarized environment, with many many lawmakers turning their backs on charters at the behest of the teachers unions, these two Democrats are standing for charter schools and their students and families.

PPI's trade guru Ed Gresser joins the show to talk about the economic sanctions on Russia. What impact will they have on Russia and on us? Will Russia's economy collapse? Will this cause inflation in the United States? Can Europe survive without Russian oil and gas? Listen to find out!