Charter Schools Win a Washington Battle 

Congratulations are in order to thousands of public charter-school parents, educators and advocates who lifted their voices in opposition to the U.S. Education Department’s proposed changes to the federal Charter School Program. Thanks to their relentless advocacy, the finalized rules adopted recently are more rational and slightly less burdensome than the bull-in-a-china-shop scheme the department unveiled in March.

Congress established the CSP in 1994 to provide federal support for children who are poorly served by traditional public schools. The CSP benefited from the support of every presidential administration since—until Joe Biden. Although the program represents a minuscule fraction of the federal education budget, the returns on that investment have been high: The millions of dollars in grants the CSP awards each year enable thousands of new public charter schools to open or to add additional campuses. The vast majority of these schools are located in urban centers, where they serve mostly low-income and minority children.

The department’s proposed rules would have required a public charter school seeking a CSP grant to form a partnership with a traditional public school—in other words, with a competitor. The grant-seeking public charter school would also have had to prove the “need” for a new school based solely on enrollment levels in the traditional schools in the district—ignoring that charter schools serve many purposes beyond the relief of overcrowding. The school also would have had to prove its student population would be “diverse.” Never mind that many traditional schools aren’t. This last demand overlooks both the realities of the U.S. housing market and the desire of some minority communities, such as Native Americans, to establish culturally relevant schools that serve specific student populations with unique needs.

Don't Miss PPI's Investment Heroes 2022 Report 

Green dreams collide with energy crisis reality 

Today’s surging oil and gas prices confront progressive climate activists with a discomfiting truth: Their campaign to vilify and suppress fossil fuel production has crashed headlong into Americans’ urgent appetite for affordable energy.  

The green left is not happy with President Biden, who is pulling out all the stops to give Americans some temporary relief from punishingly high fuel prices. That includes jawboning U.S. oil companies to drill more, a widely panned proposal to suspend the federal gas tax and Thursday’s controversial visit to Saudi Arabia, whose leaders the White House has implored to boost production to stabilize world oil markets. 

It’s true that high fuel prices are heightening the contradiction at the heart of the Biden administration’s climate and energy policies. If your overriding aim is to drive down consumption of fossil fuels, high prices are a good thing. But that’s a hard sell to working families struggling with $5 a gallon gas and soaring utility bills. 
 

With the midterm elections looming, activists shouldn’t be too quick to pillory Biden — especially since it’s their premature if not utopian demands to abolish fossil fuels as soon as possible that have landed him and his party in this predicament. 

While Republicans cower before MAGA climate deniers, Democrats take climate science seriously and favor decarbonizing the economy. But party leaders – lobbied intensely by a potent network of young activists, old environmental groups jockeying for fresh relevance, liberal foundations and donors, and media elites – too often convey a misleading impression of how fast and frictionless that transition will be.