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May 12, 2025

To Improve Student Outcomes, Focus On Classroom Practice, Not Policy

Last week, I had the privilege of delivering keynote remarks at Marquette University Law School’s Lubar Center for a conference focused on redirecting K-12 education reform toward classroom teaching. Inspired by my recent Marquette Today piece, the event—hosted in collaboration with the College of Education—brought together educators, researchers, and policymakers to discuss how improving classroom practice…

May 7, 2025

Workforce Participation for Older Americans: Warning Lights Flashing

Over the past generation, the work trends for older Americans were one of the bright spots in an otherwise decidedly mixed labor force picture. But that is no longer the case. Both employment and labor force participation rates (LFPRs) for the 55-plus contingent in the American workforce fell sharply during the Covid-19 pandemic—but mysteriously, and…

May 6, 2025

What DOGE Flagged as Unemployment Fraud Is Just the Tip of the Iceberg—Most of Which Will Never Be Recovered

The Department of Government Efficiency recently spotlighted unemployment benefits paid to tens of thousands of individuals whose reported birthdates indicated they were either children or dead. One claimant’s birthdate even suggested he or she hadn’t been born yet. As Elon Musk said, “Your tax dollars were going to pay fraudulent unemployment claims for fake people born in the future!” The $382 million DOGE identified that taxpayers lost on the associated improper payments is real money. But it’s also just…

April 28, 2025

House Republicans’ Proposed Repayment Plan Fixes Vexing Student Loan Problem

Congressional Republicans are undertaking a massive budget reconciliation effort involving significant reforms to the federal student loan system. House Republicans introduced their proposal on Monday, which would sweep away the maze of nearly a dozen different loan repayment plans and create just two: a standard repayment plan and an entirely new income-driven repayment (IDR) plan. In addition…

April 17, 2025

Turn Public Service Loan Forgiveness into a State Block Grant

As Congress negotiates a bill to overhaul the federal budget, lawmakers looking to save money should note $30 billion in potential savings hiding in plain sight. The Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program, which fully discharges the student loans of borrowers who work for the government or a nonprofit for 10 years, is one of…

April 9, 2025

Trump’s Tariff Formula Is Still Wrong. Maybe That’s Why No One Will Admit They Created It.

Last Friday, we showed that the Trump Administration’s tariff formula contained an error that made its calculated tariffs up to four times too large. The entire premise of the administration’s approach—that a country’s tariff and non-tariff trade barriers can be derived solely from the bilateral trade balance with that country, and that the goal of…

April 8, 2025

Public Support of Health Insurance Enrollment

Health insurance subsidies, especially as provided by Medicaid, are under scrutiny as Republicans scout for savings to make way for their tax agenda. However, instead of selective cuts, Congress should simplify the enrollment rules, treat individuals with similar incomes more equally regardless of where they get their coverage, and implement reforms which will lower costs…

April 8, 2025

Could A Higher Endowment Tax Pressure Elite Schools To Expand?

Congressional Republicans are considering a significant hike in the excise tax on the endowments of rich universities as part of a broader tax reform effort. Most private universities with more than $500,000 in endowment assets per student are subject to a 1.4 percent excise tax on their net investment income. Some Republicans have proposed raising that tax rate to…

April 4, 2025

President Trump’s Tariff Formula Makes No Economic Sense. It’s Also Based on an Error.

President Trump on Wednesday announced tariffs on practically every foreign country (and some non-countries), ranging from a 10 percent minimum all the way up to 50 percent. The economic fallout has been dramatic, with the stock market losing nine percent of its value (based on the S&P 500 index at the time of writing) and…

March 31, 2025

Reimagining Federal Education R&D: DARPA for Education

Earlier in my professional life, I was the head of the political science department at Stony Brook University. When the chairs of the arts and science met, someone from the physical or life sciences would inevitably argue that the “hard” natural sciences deserved more support than the “soft” social sciences. My rejoinder was one of…