issue: Education
Kahlenberg in The Assembly: One Critic of Race-Based Admissions Says Colleges Can Still Improve Diversity
Richard Kahlenberg has been enthralled with the multiracial, working-class coalitions envisioned by Robert F. Kennedy and civil rights activist Bayard Rustin since he was an undergraduate student at Harvard University. Decades later, Kahlenberg says those ideals led him to an unexpected alliance with conservatives in their fight to end race-based affirmative action.
Kahlenberg, a policy scholar who is currently director of housing policy at the Progressive Policy Institute, was an expert witness for Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) in its lawsuits against Harvard and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Ultimately, the Supreme Court two years ago struck down race-based affirmative action programs in most college admissions.
In his new book, Class Matters: The Fight to Get Beyond Race Preferences, Reduce Inequality, and Build Real Diversity at America’s Colleges, Kahlenberg explains why he aligned himself with the group.
Kahlenberg in The New York Times: What Happens if ‘Harvard Is Not Harvard’?
“Trump has pulled off something I thought I’d never see, which is he made Harvard look sympathetic,” said Richard D. Kahlenberg, a Harvard critic who supports the idea of giving admissions preferences to students with lower family incomes. […]
Mr. Kahlenberg said his “big fear” was that Harvard might scale back on social mobility efforts and seek to admit more students whose families could pay full freight, nearly $87,000 a year for undergraduates, including room and board.
Read more in The New York Times.
The Union Podcast Episode 2
Weinstein Jr. for Forbes: More Colleges Freeze Hiring And Suspend Salary Increases
Colleges and universities continue to look for ways to cut spending because of the Trump Administration’s policies towards higher education.
One June 2nd, Johns Hopkins University announced a set of policies to prepare for a possible decline in revenue. They join a list of schools including Brown University, Duke University, Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Washington, and the University of California system, that have temporarily paused hiring and vow to hold off on capital spending.
Hopkins has already seen $850 million in grant cuts resulting from the culling of USAID and other program terminations, plus the school has a large number of international students (many who pay full tuition) who may be dissuaded from studying in the U.S. due to the Administration’s more restrictive visa policies.
Keep reading in Forbes.
Manno for Fusion Magazine: A Plan for Prudence
The words “common sense” are central in today’s political lexicon. President Trump’s Inaugural Address called for a “revolution of common sense.” Michael Baharaeen, columnist and chief political analyst for the center-left Liberal Patriot, asked, “Is a common sense faction of Democrats rising?”
Rival claims of common sense reminded me that my parents’ go-to maxim was “Use your common sense.” They directed it at me (and my siblings) when I was old enough to raise questions with them about doing something on my own. On the other hand, “That person doesn’t have any common sense” was the worst thing they could say about another person.
These maxims weren’t particular to my family. Growing up, I heard them repeated by adults to their children throughout our Italian American neighborhood in Cleveland, Ohio. For my part, I found the simplicity of the advice appealing, though I was not always sure how to apply it.
As is often the case with simple truisms, it’s taken me years to understand the complexity and insight behind such timeless maxims. Only recently did I realize that my parents’ guidance was grounded in the virtue of prudence, which I’d learned about during my Catholic school education. This motivated me to re-educate myself on the meaning of this essential and overlooked virtue.
In today’s fast-paced, often chaotic environment, the need for prudence—a virtue that combines foresight, wisdom, and discretion—has never been more critical. Properly understood, “use your common sense” might be a rallying cry for our time.
Keep reading in Fusion Magazine.
Kahlenberg on Reasonably Happy with Paul Ollinger: Has Affirmative Action FAILED?
Has affirmative action failed in America?? In this eye-opening conversation, Richard Kahlenberg—author of Class Matters and a longtime education and housing policy scholar—explains why race-based affirmative action has failed America’s working class and what can be done to fix it. A self-described “liberal maverick,” Kahlenberg dives into his controversial role in the Supreme Court case against Harvard, arguing that socioeconomic-based admissions would promote both racial equity and fairness without alienating the working-class voters Democrats are rapidly losing. From Harvard’s legacy advantages and billionaire endowments to MLK’s and RFK’s forgotten views on class over race, this episode challenges elite institutions, political orthodoxy, and the future of education in America.
Check out all of Richard’s books and appearances: https://www.richardkahlenberg.org/
Watch the full video.
Kahlenberg in CBS News: Colleges are slightly less diverse as admissions officers seek ways to adapt post-affirmative action
Richard Kahlenberg, director of the American Identity Project at the Progressive Policy Institute, said that if schools were to consider socioeconomic status instead of race, they could still increase diversity on campus. Kahlenberg testified on behalf of Students for Fair Admissions in support of the ruling ending affirmative action.
With data obtained through the legal process, he and an economist ran dozens of admissions simulations and found that considering socioeconomic status and ending preferential admissions for legacy students could increase diversity at Harvard and the University of North Carolina while maintaining academic caliber.
“If there were some universities that did not see declines in racial diversity, as we know there were some, then it’s incumbent upon those institutions that saw larger drops to learn what happened,” Kahlenberg said.
He added that universities and colleges have argued that this method would be far more expensive, as it would increase the amount of financial aid the schools have to provide.
“It’s not that race-neutral alternatives are ineffective, it’s that they cost more money,” he said.
Read more in CBS News.
Manno for Forbes: Microschools Go Macro And Provide More Learning Choices For Families
“Microschools aren’t so micro anymore,” writes Linda Jacobson in The 74. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the growth of these K-12 learning models. They became a refuge for families facing school closures and challenges with remote learning. Their expansion is another important development in America’s K-12 education choice landscape.
What Are Microschools?
Microschools are often described as today’s version of the one-room schoolhouse. They typically consist of small, mixed-age student groups. They operate in traditional school buildings, homes, churches, and commercial spaces. They emphasize customized curricula, experiential learning, and a focus on mastery of content over standardized testing.
They take different organizational forms, including learning centers that follow a state’s homeschooling rules, private schools that charge tuition, a single charter school or a member of a charter network, or a traditional public school. Their learning calendars vary from being open year-round to part-time to following a typical academic year.
Read more in Forbes.
The Union Podcast Episode 1
PPI Statement: Supreme Court Decision is a Victory for Public Education
Washington, D.C. — Today, Will Marshall, President of the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), issued the following statement in response to yesterday’s Supreme Court decision about religious charter schools:
“Yesterday’s Supreme Court deadlock is a welcome outcome that upholds the Oklahoma Supreme Court’s decision: Charter schools cannot be religious institutions. This result preserves the integrity of the public school choice movement and reaffirms a foundational American principle — that the government should not fund religious proselytizing. Upholding this principle has helped the United States avoid the sectarian strife that has marred the politics of many other nations.
“Charter schools are showing the way forward because they offer a powerful formula: autonomy for schools, accountability for results, and parental choice among diverse educational models tailored to the unique learning styles of children. Yesterday’s decision ensures that this innovative public school model remains focused on serving all students, not advancing religious doctrine.”
Preparing Tomorrow’s Workforce, ft. Hans Meeder
On this episode of Radically Pragmatic, PPI’s Senior Advisor and Director of the What Works Lab, Bruno Manno is joined by Hans Meeder, Principal Consultant of Blue Crab Talent Strategy and Senior Fellow for Education and Workforce Innovation at YouScience
The two discuss Meeder’s new book, “Preparing Tomorrow’s Workforce: How to help every young person navigate their personal career path.” He explores how today’s youth can develop the critical Career Navigation Skills necessary to thrive in an evolving workforce shaped by AI, robotics, and automation.. By fostering these abilities, the book aims to help schools and communities create pathways for student success and long-term workforce readiness.
Meeder’s book can be ordered here.
Listen to the full episode.
Kahlenberg for American Affairs: Renewing the Democratic Party
The Democratic Party has lost its way. A party whose very purpose has been to fight for working families has forfeited their trust and confidence. The losses are most obvious among white working-class voters. In 1960, John F. Kennedy won white working-class (noncollege) voters but lost white college graduates by two to one. In 2024, Kamala Harris lost white working-class voters by over two to one (67 percent to 31 percent) while winning white college graduates solidly
The self-flattering story Democrats have told themselves is that rising white racism explains the defection of white working-class voters. But that simple story was always undercut by data showing white racism has declined, not increased, in recent decades. And the fable was further undermined in the 2024 election by the defection of many Hispanic, Asian, and black working-class voters as well. The Democratic advantage among nonwhite working-class voters has declined sharply by 37 points since 2012. In 2024, the only net increase for Democrats compared to 2020 was among whites.
The party has sunk so low that it cannot beat the man who infamously inspired his followers to attack the U.S. Capitol, sat by while they created mayhem, and would, once back in office, pardon the attackers. Republicans have had a higher identification rate among voters than Democrats for the last three years, something that hasn’t been true for almost a century. Only 29 percent of Americans view the Democrats favorably according to CNN, the lowest rate since CNN began asking the question more than thirty years ago.
What went wrong for the Democrats, and what can be done about it? There are many answers to the first question, but fundamentally, much of it boils down to this: at a time when the life prospects of Americans are increasingly shaped by economic class, not skin color or gender, Democrats have moved in the opposite direction and time and time again prioritized racial and gender identity. Restoring the primacy of working-class priorities, on issues of culture as well as economics, provides the central path forward for a Democratic Party that wants to build a durable majority and restore its identity as the party of working people.
Read more in American Affairs.
Manno for Forbes: How Are Teachers Today Thinking About Education?
America’s K-12 teachers have experienced a notable upswing in morale but have serious concerns about K-12 schools. That’s the central message about what teachers are thinking from two polls of public school teachers from Education Week and the Pew Research Center and one poll of public and private school teachers from EdChoice/Morning Consult.
These one-point-in-time snapshots help us understand teachers’ views of their profession and K-12 education. As the school year draws to a close and we observe National Teacher Appreciation Week, it’s valuable to hear the voices of teachers, as challenging and unsettling as some of their perspectives may be.
Read more in Forbes.
Kahlenberg Q&A with Bloomberg: Liberals Should Focus on Class, Not Race
Race-based affirmative action no longer has a place in college admissions after the Supreme Court in 2023 eliminated what had been an attempt by universities to create multiracial campuses. In Class Matters: The Fight To Get Beyond Race Preferences, Reduce Inequality, and Build Real Diversity at America’s Colleges , Richard D. Kahlenberg, a liberal who testified for the conservatives who brought those cases against Harvard University and the University of North Carolina, lays out his decades-long push for university admissions, and Democrats, to focus on class rather than race. Kahlenberg is director of the American Identity Project at the Progressive Policy Institute and teaches at George Washington University.
Read the interview in Bloomberg.
Weinstein Jr. for Forbes: College Closures (And Mergers) Will Accelerate Under President Trump
America’s colleges and universities are under duress. At least 76 public or nonprofit colleges have closed or merged since March 2020, and some experts believe more are on the way.
A big reason for this trend is the “enrollment cliff.” This year, the number of high school graduates will peak at around 3.9 million and then begin a gradual descent that will result in about 13% fewer by 2041.
In response, many institutions of higher learning have recruited students from overseas to backfill the declining domestic enrollments. In the 2023-24 academic year, a record number of international students attended U.S. colleges and universities, marking a 7% increase from the previous year. Altogether, international student enrollment contributed $43.8 billion to the U.S. economy last year.