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March 7, 2024

Proven Results: Highlighting the Benefits of Charter Schools for Students and Families

In 2002, I became a fifth-grade teacher at the lowest-performing public school in the South Bronx, New York City’s lowest-performing school district. A mere 16 percent of PS 277 students could read at grade level. The first charter schools were just opening up in the neighborhood back then; there were virtually no alternatives to the…

By Robert Pondiscio

March 7, 2024

Growing Congressional Dysfunction Will Worsen Our Fiscal Problems

Few were surprised when deposed House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) retired in December. While Republican leaders tend to exit quickly after losing committee gavels or leadership posts, the additional departure of other respected senior lawmakers in both parties is damaging legislative capacity on the Hill. Congress is losing the sort of policy-making veterans it needs to craft and pass important legislation. Their reasons for leaving vary and often include Congress’s general inability to pass needed legislation. That dysfunction is evident…

By Matt Weidinger

March 6, 2024

College or Trade School? How About Both?

For too long, our debates on post-secondary education have taken a binary form: either “college for everyone” or “learn a trade.” But in an era when career trajectories are no longer linear, and when technology is rapidly and unpredictably evolving, the ability to adapt and acquire new skills is essential. What we need instead is a…

By Brent Orrell

March 6, 2024

It’s Time to Scrap the Federal Student Loan Program

It may come as a surprise, but the Biden administration has effectively abolished the federal student loan program. Well, at least if a “student loan program” is understood as one in which students borrow money and then eventually repay it. That program has been replaced by a perverse entitlement in which students borrow taxpayer funds,…

By Frederick M. Hess

March 6, 2024

Caitlin Clark and Civil Society

When Larry Bird won his first National Basketball Association championship with the Boston Celtics in 1982, he made one of the best locker room interview comments ever.  Between puffs of a victory cigar, he said, “This one’s for Terre Haute.” He was literally referring to the Indiana city which had supported his Indiana State college team—but…

By Howard Husock

March 5, 2024

The Societal Cost of the Marriage Decline

Marriage rates are plummeting. More young people are delaying or avoiding dating altogether. Pew Research recently found that 1 in 4 40-year-old American adults have never been married. Parenthood is viewed with much greater apprehension among young people than it once was. Young women express growing reservations about starting families, and many believe marriage benefits them less than it…

By Daniel A. Cox

March 5, 2024

A Conservative Vision for Education Reform

For two guys who just published a book about the need for a conservative vision for education policy, San Francisco has been a gift that keeps on giving. When we were writing the book, the school board, which adamantly refused to reopen schools for nearly a year, instead (unsuccessfully) devoted its energies to renaming dozens of schools — including those named for…

By Frederick M. Hess | Michael Q. McShane

March 4, 2024

Exploring America’s Social Safety Net And The Political Fights Around It

View the full video here. Our new series, “America’s Safety Net,” is focused on the complex web of programs meant to help Americans in need. Over the coming weeks, we’ll take an in-depth look at the different forms of welfare in the U.S. Up first, Geoff Bennett and producer Sam Lane spend some time explaining…

By Matt Weidinger

March 4, 2024

Social conservatives who care about marriage should think twice about a “per-child” refundable Child Tax Credit

The United States Senate is currently debating H.R. 7024, a House-passed bill that would modify the Child Tax Credit (CTC) in several ways. One of the most consequential changes would increase the rate at which the refundable portion of the credit phases in, from the current 15% rate applied to all families to 15% times…

By Kevin Corinth

March 4, 2024

Teen Suicide and the Limits of Sociology

“No one, it appears, was free to just parent as they wanted to parent—free of the web of social ties that both gave their lives meaning and set firm constraints around expected behaviors.” This observation from a new book about the town of Poplar Grove—the fictional name for a real, wealthy community where there have…

By Naomi Schaefer Riley