September 18, 2023
Students’ Lack of Basic Knowledge of US History and Civics Remains a National Embarrassment
A new study from a pair of Penn State researchers finds that passing the US Citizenship Test as a high school graduation requirement does nothing to improve youth voter turnout. Within the last decade more than a third of US states have adopted and implemented a version of the “Civics Education Initiative” (CEI), but according to study…
August 14, 2023
The Narcissism of Small Diffidences
Catherine, a mother living in the New York City suburbs, has a son who flunked out of college. Her story is one of the cautionary tales offered up in Jennifer Breheny Wallace’s Never Enough: When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic—And What We Can Do About It. Catherine left the workforce to raise her two children. The…
July 31, 2023
Biden’s Under-the-Radar Budget Bomb: A New Student Loan Repayment Plan
The Biden administration hasn’t been shy about spending money, and spending on higher education policy has been no exception. The most obvious channel for (attempted) spending was the illegal plan to cancel $10,000 to $20,000 in student debt for most borrowers that was halted by the Supreme Court. But there’s another plan in the works…
July 12, 2023
Rethinking the Impact of the Lockdowns
We are only beginning to make sense of the COVID-19 pandemic and the implications of the lockdowns that forced people to stay home. It is an endeavor that will take years to flesh out. Eszter Hargittai’s Connected in Isolation is one of the first large-scale attempts to do just that and looks at how the United States…
July 6, 2023
The End of Affirmative Action Calls for a Renewed Conservatism of Opportunity
Only about 40 percent of adults in their late 20s have a bachelor’s degree, and that’s true of only 25 to 30 percent of blacks and Latinos in that age range. Just 20 to 25 percent of black and Latino men ages 25 to 29 have a bachelor’s degree. Most college graduates attend schools that are minimally selective. All…
June 14, 2023
The Best Argument for School Choice
A new study from the Texas Public Policy Foundation is a reminder that the most persuasive argument in favor of school choice is not the promise of higher test scores, the beneficial effects of competition, or even an escape hatch from failing public schools—it’s the power of choice to make a more satisfying range of school cultures…