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Center for Education Policy |
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Dear Colleague,
Welcome back. We are excited to share the latest from The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Education Policy.
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Casper Star Tribune, Jason Bedrick and Matthew Ladner
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The Wyoming legislature will soon consider a proposal to give families greater freedom to choose learning environments that align with their values and meet their children’s individual learning needs. Jason Bedrick and Matthew Ladner of the Arizona Center for Student Opportunity at the Arizona Charter School Association write, "Families in rural areas have access to more education options than ever before."
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DC Journal, Jonathan Butcher and Preston Brashers
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Teacher unions have never been known to stay in their lane. Conflict in the Middle East, so-called "climate change," and abortion are just a few of the policies outside education on which the American Federation of Teachers and their locals take a position. "No surprise, then, that an AFT campaign has been resurrected by activists to try to steer state lawmakers on tax policy. But what they get may be the opposite of what they intended," Jonathan Butcher and Preston Brashers argue.
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Washington Times, Jonathan Butcher
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College admissions officers who use racial preferences when approving applications are “minimizing the very nature of what we send our children to postsecondary education for,” says Stephen Gilchrist, a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. "Most Americans agree with Mr. Gilchrist’s opposition to racial preferences. According to a new poll, 62% of respondents said they do not think admissions officers should consider applicants’ race when selecting the next incoming class," Jonathan Butcher explains.
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Wall Street Journal, Jason Bedrick and Corey DeAngelis
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Arizona’s then-Gov. Doug Ducey signed a law last year establishing America’s most expansive school-choice program. Mr. Ducey’s successor, Katie Hobbs, is seeking to undo that progress. "Last year’s law abolished eligibility limits and made ESAs available to all K-12 students in the state. Ms. Hobbs’s proposed budget would undo the expansion," Jason Bedrick and Corey DeAngelis of the American Federation for Children write.
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The Daily Signal, Jason Bedrick
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Two years ago, 2021 was declared "The Year of Education Choice" when 19 states enacted 32 new or expanded education choice policies. This year could be even bigger as more states consider making choice policies available to all K-12 students. "Parents are clamoring for policies that allow them to choose the learning environments that align with their values and work best for their children," Jason Bedrick explains.
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State lawmakers are often slow to act, but they can move quickly when voters make them feel the heat. Consider Iowa, where Gov. Kim Reynolds recently signed the nation’s third publicly funded education choice program for all K-12 students, following West Virginia and Arizona. "The Students First Act will provide Iowa families education savings accounts (ESAs) that they can use for private school tuition, tutoring, textbooks, curricular materials, and a variety of other education expenses," Jason Bedrick argues.
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Washington Examiner, Jay Greene
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Gov. Ron DeSantis has a plan for freeing public universities from the stranglehold of their diversity, equity, and inclusion bureaucracies. Before DeSantis launched this effort, it was widely believed, even among those who recognized the dangers of DEI, that there was really nothing public officials could do about the problem. Jay Greene explains, "DeSantis is about to reveal how quickly he can loosen the grip that DEI has had on higher education. Other governors will soon follow suit."
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The Times and Democrat, Jason Bedrick and Matthew Ladner
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The South Carolina legislature is currently considering a proposal to give families greater freedom to choose learning environments that align with their values and meet their children’s individual learning needs. "By embracing education choice policies, South Carolina lawmakers can ensure that all children have access to the learning environment that best meets their individual needs and helps them to achieve their full God-given potential," Jason Bedrick and Matthew Ladner of the Arizona Center for Student Opportunity at the Arizona Charter School Association write.
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Fox News, Lindsey Burke and Preston Cooper
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The federal government’s reverse Midas Touch is on full display with the Biden administration’s newly proposed rule on student loans. While the administration’s push for student loan debt amnesty is caught up in the courts, President Joe Biden is trying another back-door attempt to have you pay off someone else’s debt. "The Education Department expects the scheme to cost taxpayers $138 billion over the next ten years. But that is almost certainly an underestimate," Lindsey Burke and Preston Cooper of the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity explain.
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reimaginED, Jonathan Butcher
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All education committee hearings in South Carolina should open with staff placing flags on a map marking the states that adopted new choices in K-12 education since the last meeting. It likely would add a sense of urgency to lawmakers’ deliberations. "Every child deserves the chance for a great education, so every South Carolinian should be concerned with these results," Jonathan Butcher argues.
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National Review, Jay Greene and Jason Bedrick
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After making incremental progress for three decades, the school-choice movement is now rapidly achieving massive victories across the country. "A key factor in this sudden success is the adoption of a new strategy to highlight the gap between the values that parents espouse and what’s going on in public schools," Jay Greene and Jason Bedrick argue.
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Idaho Freedom Foundation, Jonathan Butcher
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In a New York Times/Siena Poll released in September, 70% of registered voters were strongly or somewhat opposed to teaching elementary school children about gender identity and sexual orientation. More than half were opposed to teaching middle school students about this topic, and 42% were opposed to teaching it to high school students. "The idea that a young child has a gender identity contrary to his or her biological sex is widely unpopular," Jonathan Butcher writes.
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Heritage Expert Reports:
Giving School Names That Sound Like Herbal Teas and Day Spas—Rather Than Like Abraham Lincoln
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Heritage experts Jay Greene and Ian Kingsbury of the Educational Freedom Institute, explain that while Americans, in general, have not abandoned patriotism, school boards have become much more reluctant to give schools traditional patriotic names.
Read the full report here.
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Protecting Parents' Rights with the Given Name Act
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Heritage experts Jason Bedrick and Jonathan Butcher, argue that schools should not make potentially life-altering decisions for a child behind parents’ backs. Lawmakers can support parental rights by enacting legislation, such as the Given Name Act, proposed by The Heritage Foundation.
Read the full report here.
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Policymakers Should Use Supreme Court Cases on Racial Preferences to Launch Reform of College Accreditation
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Heritage expert Jonathan Butcher explains that state and federal lawmakers should restructure their college accreditation processes to give schools more autonomy in choosing the organizations that accredit their institutions, thereby weakening the federal accreditation cartel.
Read the full report here.
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