Category: Uncategorized

Manno for The 74: The College Cost Fog Machine: We Need a New Transparency Compact

Posted on by Max Sherrill

A family shopping for college today knows more about the cost of a mortgage than the real price of a college degree. That confusion isn’t only a technical problem inside financial aid offices. It’s a public trust problem for higher education.

This problem isn’t new. In 1998, the National Commission on the Cost of Higher Education, created by the U.S. Congress, issued a report titled“Straight Talk About College Costs and Prices.” I served as its executive director. It warned that colleges had allowed “a veil of obscurity” to settle over their financial operations. It cautioned that continued inattention would create “a gulf of ill will” between higher education and the public it serves.

More than a quarter-century later, that warning is less a prediction than a diagnosis.

Yes, colleges publish tuitions, offer online calculators and send financial aid letters. Yet too often, the answer to a family’s simplest question about what college will cost arrives late and varies by institution. It’s also wrapped in language that blurs the difference between free money, borrowed money, campus jobs, parent loans and the amount the family must pay.

Read More in The 74

Manno for Merion West: “Only in America”: Civic Memory at 250

Posted on by Max Sherrill

This Fourth of July brings back childhood memories. Every year, my extended immigrant family of more than two dozen relatives would gather to celebrate Independence Day at my grandparents’ Italian tavern, the Golden Gate Inn, on the east side of Cleveland, Ohio. It sat in an Italian-American neighborhood called Collinwood. I have five vivid memories of those gatherings, from when I was very young to the mid-1960s, when I left for college.

The first thing I remember is that it was always hot and humid, with no air conditioning. Eventually, Dad would plug in a big square electric box fan in the kitchen to spew its version of cool air on anyone lucky to be close to it. Sooner or later, we kids gathered in the graveled backyard and sprayed each other with the green garden hose to cool off.

Second, food was everywhere. Most of it was cucina Americana: hot dogs, hamburgers, potato salad, coleslaw, butter pecan ice cream, and lemon meringue pie. Italian homemade favorites abounded, including meatballs and red sauce, sausage and peppers, and Dad’s Italian wine, into which he sliced ripe peaches from the local farmer’s market. Everyone, kids included, had peaches and red wine, the amount depending on age.

Third, there were always fireworks. The afternoon display of rockets, cherry bombs, firecrackers, and sparklers, all illegal, took place up the street by another Italian tavern called Mirabile’s. In the evening, we saw the legal fireworks from the neighboring suburbs, visible from our driveway because no tall buildings blocked the view.

Read More in Merion West

Marshall for The Hill: Democrats Stand for Liberalism, Not Socialism

Posted on by Alex Terr

Should Americans celebrate 250 years of liberal democracy by forsaking it for socialism? Such is the implausible demand of leftwing insurgents trying to take over the Democratic Party in deep blue cities.

Their timing couldn’t be worse. The Trump dreadnought has capsized, thanks to its skipper’s megalomaniacal delusions and ineptitude. Democrats are poised to retake at least one House of Congress in the midterm election. Now come democratic socialists to throw Republicans a political lifeline by associating Democrats with radical postures offensive to working Americans.

The socialists’ urban surge began with last fall’s mayoral victories of Zohran Mamdani in New York and Katie Wilson in Seattle. The streak continued this year with primary victories by Janeese Lewis George in Washington, D.C. and State Rep. Chris Rabb in Philadelphia. Last month, three Mamdani-endorsed congressional candidates in New York — Claire Valdez, Darializa Avila Chevalier and Brad Lander — won primaries in heavily Democratic districts.

Democratic socialists scored again Tuesday in Denver, where Melat Kiros, 29, ousted the very progressive Rep. Diana DeGette in Colorado’s Democratic primary. That seemed less an ideological than a generational shift, however, since DeGette, 74, is no centrist.

Socialist gains thus far have been confined to cities and college towns that already are Democratic bastions. Replacing one Democrat with a leftier one doesn’t help the party build a national majority. That requires picking pragmatic candidates who can win swing districts and states.

Read more in The Hill

Michigan’s Net-Zero Deadlines Threaten Reliability and Manufacturing Jobs, PPI Finds

Posted on by Alex Terr

WASHINGTON (July 2, 2026) — The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) this week released a new report, “Michigan’s Climate Goals at a Crossroads,” warning that the state’s 100% clean energy mandate is on a collision course with rising electricity demand and could jeopardize grid reliability and the state’s manufacturing base unless paired with firm, carbon-free power. Authored by Neel Brown, Managing Director at PPI, and John Kemp, an internationally recognized expert on energy markets and systems, the report calls on policymakers to shift from rigid fuel-mix mandates to a pragmatic, outcomes-based approach centered on emissions per capita.

Michigan’s Clean Energy Future Plan, signed into law in 2023, mandates 60% renewables by 2030 and 100% clean generation by 2040. But renewables currently supply just 7% to 11% of the state’s power, and the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) has warned of insufficient regional generation capacity as soon as 2028. Motor vehicle and parts manufacturing accounts for nearly two-fifths of Michigan’s GDP, making the state especially exposed to reliability disruptions or price spikes from premature retirement of firm gas generation.

The report finds Michigan has cut carbon emissions by two-thirds since 2005, faster than the national average, largely by switching from coal to natural gas. Per-capita emissions now sit at 14 metric tons, slightly below the U.S. average, and total energy spending per person is 11% below the national average. The planned 2026 restart of the Palisades nuclear power plant is expected to add 800 megawatts of firm, carbon-free generation, while the state’s EV mandate of 2 million vehicles by 2030 remains far out of reach, with just under 121,000 registered as of November 2025.

To sustain Michigan’s emissions progress without risking reliability or industrial competitiveness, the report recommends three priorities:

  • Maintain natural gas generation for critical reliability rather than retiring efficient plants ahead of adequate replacement capacity
  • Leverage firm baseload power, including the Palisades restart and development of small modular reactors, to support continued renewable growth
  • Re-evaluate the EV mandate timeline to align with actual adoption while sustaining investment in charging infrastructure

“Michigan has real climate progress to show for the last two decades, but holding onto mandates the grid cannot support is a recipe for blackouts, higher bills, and job losses,” said Brown. “The state has a legislative off-ramp available, and pragmatic policymakers should use it.”

Read and download the report here.

Founded in 1989, PPI is a catalyst for policy innovation and political reform based in Washington, D.C. Its mission is to create radically pragmatic ideas for moving America beyond ideological and partisan deadlock. Find an expert and learn more about PPI by visiting progressivepolicy.org. Follow us at @ppi.

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Media Contact: Ian O’Keefe – iokeefe@ppionline.org

Manno for The Fordham Institute: Reorganizing the Education Department requires more than moving programs

Posted on by Max Sherrill

The Trump administration is in the midst of a sweeping reorganization of the U.S. Department of Education. Its stated goal is to “return education to the states.” But the more immediate question is whether the new structure will make the federal education system clearer and more accountable—or leave states, schools, and families facing a maze of agencies and unclear lines of responsibility.

The administration is carrying out the overhaul through 14 interagency agreements that move at least 148 K–12 and higher education programs to six other federal agencies. Some transfers could place programs within agencies better equipped to manage them. Others—especially those involving special education and civil rights—could make it harder to determine who is responsible when services are delayed, rights are violated, or problems arise.

Interagency agreements are typically used to share services or funds without duplicating work. Here, they are being used to redistribute much of the ED’s Congressionally-assigned work across the federal government. The department is not being abolished in one stroke, as some had feared. Rather, it is being rewired and shrunk, agreement by agreement.

Read More in the Fordham Institute

Willett for News Healthcare Journal: In Massachusetts, The ‘Nicotine-Free Generation’ Meets an Old Problem: Prohibition

Posted on by Max Sherrill

[…]

In Massachusetts, more than 20 communities have adopted an age-based version of prohibition known as “Nicotine-Free Generation” (NFG) policies. It’s a lifetime ban on the purchase of all nicotine products for people born after a specific date.

For example, Brookline, Mass., the first community to pass an age-based lifetime ban, forbids selling cigarettes, vapes or pouches to anyone born on or after January 1, 2000. Unlike traditional age restrictions, NFG prohibitions do not expire when a person turns 21. A resident born in 2001 will never be able to legally buy tobacco in Brookline, whether at age 25, 45 or 65.

Or as Dr. Jeff Willett with the Project to End Smoking at the Progressive Policy Institute puts it, “This is the gradual implementation of adult prohibition.”

Willett made his comments at an InsideSources public health roundtable in Boston on the NFG policy.

Willett’s objection is that the goal of public policy should be to get as many smokers as possible off cigarettes, and to do so right away. Age-based bans “abandon people who smoke,” Willett said.

“There’s a huge unmet population of people who want to quit and have been unable to do so. We should be creating opportunities for them to switch to a significantly lower-risk nicotine product.”

[…]

Read More in News Healthcare Journal

FDA’s Modified Risk Tobacco Product Authorization: What Policymakers Need to Know

Posted on by Alex Terr

Policymakers are seeing a growing number of proposals — on taxation, retail access, and product regulation — that involve tobacco products the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has authorized as Modified Risk Tobacco Products (MRTPs). As the nicotine marketplace continues to diversify, the number of products seeking and receiving MRTP authorization is likely to increase.

Policymakers are receiving sharply different advocacy accounts of what MRTP authorization means. This brief explains what the MRTP pathway is, why Congress created it, what evidentiary standards are required for an MRTP authorization, and why policymakers should give the FDA’s MRTP determinations serious weight when evaluating tobacco-related legislation.

Read the full publication

Ainsley on Moral Maze: Are America’s founding ideals a reality or a myth?

Posted on by Alex Terr

In 1776, Thomas Jefferson wrote that all men are created equal, endowed with unalienable rights… life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. During his lifetime Jefferson owned more than 620 slaves. As America marks 250 years since the Declaration, that contradiction is impossible to look past: a document of universal liberty, written by men who denied it to the women in their households, the people they enslaved, and the nations whose land they were settling.

One reading says this was hypocrisy – that “all men” never meant all men, that the rhetoric of equality was cover for the interests of rich, white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants, and that the centuries of struggle since have been a slow correction of a lie dressed up as a promise. Another reading says something genuinely radical was set loose that day – a principle larger than its authors, one that would eventually demand Abolition, Enfranchisement and the end of Segregation, precisely because the words of the Declaration meant more than the men who put their names to it could envisage. On this account, the Founding Fathers endorsed an ideal and left their descendants to grow into it.

That same split runs through America today. The current presidency has departed from constitutional norms everyone had assumed were solid – over courts, elections, the press and the limits of executive power. One view says this is a crisis the Republic will survive: a serious one, but a blip in the two and a half centuries during which American institutions have weathered civil war, economic depression, and social upheaval, and during which the founding ideals have always held firm. The soul of America gets shaken, but it holds. The other view says the Republic was never held together by Constitutional Law – it was held together by a myth – a shared belief, perhaps deluded, that Americans would behave decently and that the norms would prevail. Once a leader has tested every one of those boundaries and paid no price, the myth shatters, and there is nothing to stop the next leader from going further. On this view, the current administration is a distorted reflection of what America truly is.

Listen to the podcast

‘Global-economy’ debates are not new

Posted on by Alex Terr

FACT: ‘Global-economy’ debates are not new.

THE NUMBERS: Merchandise trade/U.S. GDP ratio* –

 

2025 18.20%
2016 19.50%
2008 23.30%
2000 19.70%
1980 16.60%
1790                 22.3%?

* Modern GDP and goods trade figures from BEA and Census. 1790 GDP estimates and trade from measuringworth.com and Almanac of Statistical Abstracts.

WHAT THEY MEAN: 

Two of the Declaration’s 27 grievances relate to tariffs and trade:

16. “For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world;
17. “For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:”

The abstract question of taxation and representation aside, the Continental Congress delegates and their successors in early-republic government had lots of practical reasons to think about these things. Data illustrate:

Nobody really knows how large America’s early economy was; www.measuringworth.com, a Virginia-based economic history project, makes an admirable try. They believe that in 1790, the 13 states and 3.9 million Americans combined to produce a GDP of $193 million. Alexander Hamilton’s 119 newly hired Customs agents counted $23 million in imports and $20 million in exports that year. Assuming the GDP estimate is reasonable, the early republic’s trade-to-GDP ratio would have been 22 percent, about equal to the 23% modern-era peak in 2008. (We’re a bit lower now: the Bureau of Economic Analysis put U.S. GDP at $30.8 trillion in 2025 while Census reported $3.4 trillion in goods imports and $2.2 trillion in exports, for an 18.2% ratio.)

Similar circumstances can elicit similar thoughts. So, for this July 4th weekend, three post-Independence perspectives on “globalization”:

1. Alexander Hamilton’s Report on Manufactures (1791): In the first U.S. government paper on trade policy and “competitiveness,” Hamilton — then in his third year as Treasury Secretary — patiently refutes claims that low-wage foreign competition (from Industrial Revolution Britain and continental Europe) makes it impossible for American manufacturing to succeed:

“While in the article of wages the comparison certainly turns against the United States … the degree of disparity is diminished in proportion to the use which can be made of machinery. To illustrate this last idea: let it be supposed that the difference in price in two countries of a given quantity of manual labor requisite to the fabrication of a given article is as ten, and that some mechanic power is introduced into both countries which, performing half the necessary labor, leaves only half to be done by hand, it is evident that the difference in the cost of the fabrication of the article in question, as far as it is connected with the price of labor, will be reduced from ten to five.”
The balance of the Report calls for a battery of “industrial strategies” to encourage manufacturing: Hamilton pitches import of labor-saving machines, a patent law, incentives for high-skilled immigration and cash prizes for innovative factories, public investment in roads and ports, and an infant-industry trade protection scheme using temporary tariffs or subsidies for products ranging from starched wigs, bell-metal, and glue to whiskey, whale-oil, pewter cups and bowls, furniture, chocolate, rifles, and books. Samples: he suggested tariff rates of 7.5% on iron or steel tools, 7.5% on cotton clothes, and 10% on copper, and thought the existing 12.5% tariff on glass was high enough. Hamilton’s 1787 Federalist Papers partner James Madison was by then the opposition leader in the House of Representatives, and made sure the program mostly got nowhere.

2. Thomas Jefferson’s Report on Foreign Commerce (1793): Jefferson’s alternative to Hamilton’s ideas came two years later. His “Report on Foreign Commerce,” the first U.S. government catalog of foreign trade barriers, is a lot like the “National Trade Estimate Report” the U.S. Trade Representative Office has published since 1985. It tallies trade barriers — tariff rates, product exclusions, state trading monopolies, and shipping (“navigation”) restrictions — in Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands, and their various western-hemisphere colonial possessions, and advocates a “reciprocity” program based on FTA relationships when possible, and when not, matching U.S. tariff rates and port practices to those of other countries.

“Instead of embarrassing commerce under piles of regulating laws, duties, and prohibitions, could it be relieved from all its shackles in all parts of the world, could every country be employed in producing that which nature has best fitted it to produce, and each be free to exchange with others mutual surplusses for mutual wants, the greatest mass possible would then be produced of those things which contribute to human life and human happiness; the numbers of mankind would be increased, and their condition bettered. Would even a single nation begin with the United States this system of free commerce, it would be advisable to begin it with that nation; since it is one by one only that it can be extended to all. … But should any nation, contrary to our wishes, suppose it may better find its advantage by continuing its system of prohibitions, duties and regulations, it behooves us to protect our citizens, their commerce and navigation, by counter prohibitions, duties and regulations, also. Free commerce and navigation are not to be given in exchange for restrictions and vexations; nor are they likely to produce a relaxation of them.”

Sample findings:

“Our bread stuff is at most times under prohibitory duties in England, and considerably dutied on re-exportation from Spain to her colonies. Our tobaccoes are heavily dutied in England, Sweden and France, and prohibited in Spain and Portugal. Our rice is heavily dutied in England and Sweden, and prohibited in Portugal. Our fish and salted provisions are prohibited in England, and under prohibitory duties in France. Our whale oils are prohibited in England and Portugal. And our vessels are denied naturalization in England, and of late in France. … Spain and Portugal refuse, to all those parts of America which they govern, all direct intercourse with any people but themselves. … We can carry no article, not of our own production, to the British ports in Europe, nor even our own produce to her American possessions.”

3. Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man (1790): From a non-government, dissenting-
intellectual perspective, Common Sense author Paine argues that international trade helps deter war and strengthen peace:

“I have been an advocate for commerce, because I am a friend to its effects. It is a pacific system, operating to cordialise mankind, by rendering nations, as well as individuals, useful to each other. If commerce were permitted to act to the universal extent it is capable, it would extirpate the system of war, and produce a revolution in the uncivilised state of governments. … Commerce is no other than the traffic of two individuals, multiplied on a scale of numbers; and by the same rule that nature intended for the intercourse of two, she intended that of all. For this purpose she has distributed the materials of manufactures and commerce, in various and distant parts of a nation and of the world; and as they cannot be procured by war so cheaply or so commodiously as by commerce, she has rendered the latter the means of extirpating the former.”

Cautionary note: Those looking to enlist the Founders as allies in modern global- economy debates should do so with care. As first-generation policymakers, they were learning on the job and often changed their minds. Hamilton’s arguments supporting the 1794 “Jay Treaty” with the U.K. — the first post-Constitution U.S. trade agreement — diverge radically from those in the Report on Manufactures. Jefferson likewise took at least three irreconcilable positions in 30 years in government: first Paine-like unilateral free trade as Minister to France in the 1780s; then “reciprocity” as Secretary of State in the Report on Foreign Commerce a decade later; finally, enthusiasm (ill-advised, as it turned out) for trade sanctions as a foreign policy tool as President in the 1800s. Paine remained consistent throughout, though maybe in part since, as an independent intellectual, he didn’t have to put his ideas into real-world practice.

We wish readers and friends, whatever their views, a happy and reflective 4th of July.

FURTHER READING

PPI’s four principles for response to tariffs and economic isolationism:

  • Defend the Constitution and oppose rule by decree;
  • Connect tariff policy to growth, work, prices and family budgets, and living standards;
  • Stand by America’s neighbors and allies;
  • Offer a positive alternative.

Happy 250th:

The National Archives’ official Declaration transcript.

PPI’s newly launched American Identity Project, led by Richard Kahlenberg, expresses faith in a common American identity and seeks a “deep and healthy sense of reflective patriotism.”

… and joins the Center for New Liberalism to publish three prize-winning 2026 essays by young Americans on “what it means to be an American.” They respond through the lenses of immigrant experience and individual liberty, America seen from abroad, and family.

Some classics:

Hamilton’s Report on Manufactures (1791)

Jefferson’s 7-country Report on Foreign Commerce (1793)

And Paine’s Rights of Man, 1790; passage on commerce in chapter 5.

Then & now:

Census (1970) reprints colonial-era and early republic trade data.

“Measuring Worth” estimates GDP, per capita income, etc. for the U.S., Australia, the U.K., and Spain from the 1790s forward.

BEA’s modern GDP data.

Census’s trade data.

ABOUT ED

Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.

Ed returns to PPI after working for the think tank from 2001-2011. He most recently served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In this position, he led USTR’s economic research unit from 2015-2021, and chaired the 21-agency Trade Policy Staff Committee.

Ed began his career on Capitol Hill before serving USTR as Policy Advisor to USTR Charlene Barshefsky from 1998 to 2001. He then led PPI’s Trade and Global Markets Project from 2001 to 2011. After PPI, he co-founded and directed the independent think tank ProgressiveEconomy until rejoining USTR in 2015. In 2013, the Washington International Trade Association presented him with its Lighthouse Award, awarded annually to an individual or group for significant contributions to trade policy.

Ed is the author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy (2007). He has published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and his research has been cited by leading academics and international organizations including the WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. He is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia Universities and a certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.

Read the full email and sign up for the Trade Fact of the Week.

Democrats Should Learn From Colorado’s 20-Plus-Year Winning Streak, Not One Victory in Deep-Blue Denver

Posted on by Alex Terr

WASHINGTON (July 1, 2026) — Today, Will Marshall, President of the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), issued the following statement on Tuesday’s Colorado primary elections:

“Melat Kiros’s win over Diana DeGette in Colorado’s First District will be celebrated by the party’s left flank as proof that the socialist insurgency is unstoppable. It’s proof of something more narrow: that voters are in an anti-incumbent mood. The outcome also says more about generational than ideological change, since DeGette is the most progressive member of the Colorado delegation.

“The election result sits oddly with the state that produced it. In 2025, PPI chose Colorado to launch our latest renewal effort because Democrats there have built a two-decade winning streak built on a strategy of radically pragmatic policymaking.

“Kiros’s primary campaign ran against nearly every plank of that playbook. In a D+29 district, this race tested little about swing voters. The same night, John Hickenlooper defeated a socialist primary challenger by 14 points, a result that required winning votes across an entire state rather than a single safe district.

“Today, a record 58% of Americans think Democrats are too liberal, and the working-class voters the party needs lean moderate to conservative on immigration, crime, and cultural issues. If national Democrats treat Kiros as the model instead of the past two-plus-decades of pragmatic politics in Colorado that actually beat Trumpism, they will win more Denvers and fewer majorities.”

Founded in 1989, PPI is a catalyst for policy innovation and political reform based in Washington, D.C. Its mission is to create radically pragmatic ideas for moving America beyond ideological and partisan deadlock. Find an expert and learn more about PPI by visiting progressivepolicy.org. Follow us at @PPI.

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Media Contact: Ian O’Keefe – iokeefe@ppionline.org

Michigan Climate Goals at a Crossroads

Posted on by Alex Terr

Many states have had great early success in cutting their carbon emissions since enacting ambitious net-zero targets at the start of the 2020s. The declines occurred thanks mostly to the switch from coal to natural gas, though heavy investments in solar, driven by Biden-era tax credits, also played a role.

Today, those states are now grappling with rising demand, rising prices, and the Trump administration’s hostility to renewable development. This is necessitating a fresh look at the climate goals set in a much different economic and political time.

Passed and signed into law at the end of 2023, Michigan’s Clean Energy Future Plan mandates 100% clean energy by 2040. This aggressive timeline in the face of increasing load demand and rising costs now risks energy reliability and economic repercussions in a state whose energy-intensive automotive manufacturing industry makes up two-fifths of the state’s GDP. 

By switching from coal to gas generation, Michigan has cut carbon emissions by two-thirds since 2005. This rate was faster (1.6% per year) than across the country as a whole (1.2% per year). Cool summers increase residential efficiency, lowering the state’s per capita energy consumption to 9% below the national average. Michigan’s total per capita energy spending is 11% below the national average. 

Michigan is the country’s eleventh-largest electricity generator and exports surplus power to neighboring states. Fossil fuels accounted for 67% of in-state generation in 2023, and the proportion had decreased only slightly from 70% in 2005. Coal-fired generation has been cut by two-thirds, mostly replaced by gas, which has increased fourfold. Non-fossil generation comes mostly from nuclear, but the share from wind and solar has grown fast. Nuclear generation has fallen in recent years following the shutdown of the Palisades nuclear power plant for decommissioning in 2022. But plans to re-open Palisades are at an advanced stage. The facility has received new fuel assemblies, and the main turbine generator and cooling systems are being refurbished. Reopening the Palisades nuclear power plant, targeted for 2026, promises 800MW of new, carbon-free firm generation.

Despite these positive developments, Michigan faces a looming supply-demand collision. As demand grows through data center development and policy-driven electrification efforts for EVs and heat pumps, firm supply must keep pace with the growth. Advocates of closing firm and efficient natural gas generation in the face of rising demand are ignoring the looming economic and climate ramifications. 

Policies that accelerate reductions in firm generation without replacements make energy more expensive, threatening the core manufacturing base of the state. This is neither economically nor politically wise. Driving jobs from the state to areas with more affordable energy is a recipe for disaster for the climate and for the economy.

Fortunately, there is an off-ramp. The Clean Energy Plan offers a mechanism to delay closures of needed generation if it is required to meet demand. Michigan can take this offramp while continuing to reduce carbon emissions through coal-to-gas switching and accelerating renewable development. To ignore this opportunity risks political blowback that only worsens the likelihood of reducing emissions. 

Read the full report.

Canter in Leadership Launchpad: What Can Mississippi Teach Us About Lasting Change

Posted on by Alex Terr

[…]

At first, a “miracle” sounds like a compliment, and I’m sure whoever first used the term thought of it like that and probably enjoyed the alliteration of “Mississippi Miracle.” But the implication of “miracle” is that it is something no human could have achieved through their own efforts, and then it begins to look very suspicious to people inured to too-good-to-be-true educational success stories.

Our NAEP data clearly show a long, slow climb from the bottom to the national average in fourth grade reading and fourth grade math, and a significant closure of the gap in eighth grade math. When adjusting for demographics, we led the nation on the 2024 NAEP in those grades and subjects. Our eighth grade reading NAEP data isn’t as stellar, but we have made progress, and when adjusting for demographics, we ranked fourth in eighth grade reading in 2024.

I want people to appreciate just how much hard, focused work we did as a state for a really long time to get those gains. Just because the country seems to have heard about us yesterday does not mean that this happened overnight. When people call it a miracle, they dismiss all of our effort, including the sustained hard work of teachers and students and families. They also dismiss the possibility that other states could run the same playbook and get the same results.

[…]

Read more in Leadership Launchpad

Manno for Community College Daily: The dawn of the Workforce Pell era needs a credential transparency compact

Posted on by Max Sherrill

The Workforce Pell program, launching on July 1, faces a serious implementation problem. The accountability infrastructure it needs to distinguish between programs that open doors and programs that merely collect tuition doesn’t yet exist at scale.

The U.S. Department of Education estimatesthat federal government program costs over the next decade will total $3.2 billion. So that scale of new money entering a marketplace that can’t yet say which programs build careers could be a gamble, not an investment.

Two new tools, the Certificate Earnings Explorer from The HEA Group and Open Campus, and the Credential Value Index from the Burning Glass Institute, point toward what that infrastructure could look like. Together, they suggest the terms of a transparency compact to guide this work.

Read more in Community College Daily.

 

Kahlenberg on Radically Pragmatic Substack: Trump’s Wrongheaded War On Economic Affirmative Action

Posted on by Alyssa Brown

The Justice Department now says giving poor kids an edge in university admissions amounts to racial discrimination by “proxy.” Its position is absurd.

The Trump administration has launched the next big fight over affirmative action. In doing so, it is not only rejecting decades of conservative orthodoxy, but is also taking the Republican party from a position of great political and legal strength to one of vulnerability.

Earlier this month, the Justice Department issued a 12-page letter finding that the University of California Davis Medical School has engaged in illegal “proxy” discrimination, favoring Black and Hispanic applicants by giving a leg up in admissions to students of all races who come from less privileged backgrounds.

The complaint focuses on the medical school’s “Davis Scale,” which provides a “continuous measure of socioeconomic disadvantage,” including“parental income and education,” and “growing up in a medically underserved area.” The DOJ claims that because this policy is especially helpful to minority applicants, who tend to be poorer, and because Davis values racial diversity, the practice is tantamount to the kind of explicit racial preferences the Supreme Court struck down in 2023.

That the administration would go after economic affirmative action at U.C. Davis is a story layered with ironies.

U.C. Davis Medical School was the defendant in the famous 1978 Bakke case in which the Supreme Court banned the use of explicit racial quotas in university admissions. The school had set aside 16 of 100 seats for racial minorities, which the court concluded violated the Constitution and the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

The justices in Bakke allowed racial preferences to survive, as long as race was one of many factors. But for decades, conservatives (along with a few liberals like me) argued that economic affirmative action would be the fairest way to achieve racial and economic diversity.

Continue reading on Substack.

Moss in Deadline: What Comcast-NBCUniversal Split Faces On D.C.’s Trump-Influenced Regulatory Road

Posted on by Max Sherrill

[…]

If there is some kind of future deal, there could be some antitrust issues, more so if NBCU is not the buyer but the entity being sold. Diana Moss, vice president and director of competition policy at the Progressive Policy Institute, wrote via email, “If it is a bigger player, then the question is whether that creates higher concentration in streaming. Who they sell to is more complicated than most would think.”

As for Comcast, she wrote that there may be issues with a combination in an industry that already has seen the proposed merger of Charter with Cox. She wrote, “There is pretty high concentration in cable and digital broadcast satellite multi-video programming distribution. Some past cable mergers have been controversial for that reason.” She wrote that she would expect “political intervention by Trump” and other regulators. “Sad…,” she wrote.

For now, Comcast is dismissing M&A talk, but there also is the matter of timing. If a Democrat is elected to the White House in 2028, the pressure on the new president could be on to take an overall hard line against mergers, creating something of a scramble to get deals through even in a Trump-influenced environment.

[…]

Read More in Deadline