issue: Education
26 of this year’s 80 MLB All-Stars are ‘international’
FACT: 26 of this year’s 80 MLB All-Stars are “international”
THE NUMBERS: Home run leaders, morning of September 3, 2025 –
| Raleigh | 51 |
| Schwarber | 49 |
| Ohtani | 46 |
| Judge | 43 |
| Suarez | 42 |
| Caminero | 40 |
| Soto | 37 |
WHAT THEY MEAN:
How “international” is American working life? Some pennant-race season perspective –
Always remembered for Fisk’s 12th-inning, Game 6 home run, the ’75 Series marks its 50th anniversary this fall. That year’s Red Sox roster, with two international players (ace Luis Tiant and middle-reliever Diego Segui, both Cuban-born), exactly mirrored the majors’ 92% U.S./Puerto Rican composition. The Big Red Machine – 20% international, 80% U.S.-born — was more like a 21st-century team, starting Dominican centerfielder Cesar Geronimo, Cuban first baseman Tony Perez, and Venezuelan shortstop Dave Concepcion, with reliever Pedro Borbon in the bullpen and Bahamian Ed Armbrister as a reserve outfielder.
A half-century later, MLB rosters have diversified and internationalized. They’re now 74% U.S.- and Puerto Rican-born, and 26% international. The leagues’ main recruiting spots outside the U.S. are still mainly on the Caribbean littoral — a hundred players from the DR and 63 from Venezuela; 20 from Cuba, 60 from everywhere else — but go deeper into Mexico and Canada, and also draw from Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. A rundown:
| All Opening Day players* | 953 |
| U.S.* | 704 |
| Dominican Republic | 100 |
| Venezuela | 63 |
| Cuba | 26 |
| Mexico | 11 |
| Canada | 13 |
| Japan | 12 |
| Curacao | 4 |
| Korea | 3 |
| 9 other countries | 13 |
* An odd number, as it includes players on the DL.
** Includes 16 Puerto Rican players, puzzlingly termed ‘international’ by MLB.
To pull back a bit: Overall, the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ May Labor Characteristics of the Foreign-Born Workforce release finds 161.3 million people working here in 2024, including 130.9 million “native-born” workers and 30.9 million “foreign-born” workers. (BLS defines ‘foreign-born’ as the total number of “legally-admitted immigrants, refugees, temporary residents such as students and temporary workers, and undocumented immigrants”.) This would mean 19.2% of workers were born abroad. In context, this is slightly below the average for wealthy western countries: the International Labour Organization’s most recent estimate says that as of 2022 in “North America’s” (meaning in ILO geography the U.S. and Canada only), immigrants make up 22.6% of the workforce, a bit less than the 23.3% share in western Europe.
Looked at more closely, BLS’ “foreign-born” stats have immigrant labor shares highest in physically demanding hourly-wage work — construction, groundskeeping, nannies and maids, hired farmhands — and also high in top-end glamor jobs from pro sports to science labs and movie studios. The lowest shares show up in middle- and upper-middle income positions: company managers, health care providers, lawyers and paralegals, teachers, and so on. A sample list, with figures from 2025 or the most recent available year:
| Crop-picking farmworkers | 58% |
| Computer science doctorates | 58% |
| 2025 Oscar nominees | 50% |
| All farm, fishery, and forestry workers | 44% |
| 2024 U.S. Nobelists | 43% |
| Doctoral-level science & tech workers | 40% |
| Construction Workers | 36% |
| MLB | 27% |
| All major-league athletes | 25% |
| Food service | 25% |
| Personal care & services | 22% |
| All science & tech workers (2021) | 19% |
| All U.S. workers | 19% |
| Health care practitioners | 16% |
| Management jobs | 15% |
| Education & training | 12% |
| Lawyers & paralegals | 10% |
| Security services | 9% |
Bureau of Labor Statistics for all workers, National Science Foundation for engineering and science workers; Motion Picture Academy for Oscar nominations (counting individuals rather than groups and collaborations); official stats from MLB, NBA, WNBA, and MLS, plus outside writers on hockey and football for pro athletes.
With this in the background, baseball has evolved in parallel with the U.S. generally. Like their top-of-the-economy peers in Hollywood and science, MLB teams now draw from a larger talent pool — this year’s top-ten home-run list features six Americans, two Dominicans, a Venezuelan, and Babe Ruth-like pitcher/slugger Shohei Ohtani — and probably have a higher overall quality of play. U.S.-born players, on the other hand, faced more competition to get their roster slots. It’s probably a mistake to draw too many big-picture lessons or policy ideas from this, but see below for some data on America’s larger workforce trends, and comparisons from the other five big leagues. Coda first, though, for those who weren’t watching in July:
The 2025 All-Star game ended with a six-player “home run swing-off” tiebreaker pitting the National League’s two Americans and a Venezuelan — Kyle Schwarber, Kyle Stowers, and Suarez — against a Cuban-American-Mexican AL trio. (Arozeranda, Rooker, and Aranda.) Ohio native and Indiana University grad Schwarber won it for the NL with a flawless 3-for-3 — three swings, three home runs — at-bat. Not quite Fisk’s 1975 drama, but still pretty good.
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.
Baseball:
The Opening Day rosters featured 245 international players, making up 26.5% of the 953 players out on the grass in the sun, riding the bench, or gloomily parked on the DL.
… Now: July’s All-Star rosters.
… Then: MLB’s ’75 Series retrospective, plus the Baseball Almanac’s count of that year’s international players.
… Tomorrow: The Dominican Summer League’s next-generation talent.
And the Society for American Baseball Research has a backstory on Cuban and Dominican baseball.
Some more close-ups:
Hollywood’s 2025 Oscar nominees.
The 2024 Nobel Prizes.
USDA’s look at America’s 1.17 million hired farmworkers.
And the National Science Foundation on the sci/tech workforce.
Worldwide perspective:
The International Labor Organization estimates 155.6 million “international migrant” workers as of 2022. That would be 4.7%, or one in every 20, of the world’s 3.3 billion workers. The lowest foreign-born rates are 0.7% in North Africa and 3.7% in East Asia; the highest, in the Persian Gulf monarchies, are above 50%. As above, the U.S.’ 19.2% appears to be a bit below the Canadian and European figures.
American big picture:
The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ most recent Labor Characteristics of the Foreign-Born Workforce brief, out last May, with figures for 2024.
A trawl through this report’s back issues (available online to 2003) finds two big trends. One, the “foreign-born” worker share has been rising over time and especially fast in recent years – from the 14.5% share of in 2004, to 16.6% a decade later in 2014, 17.2% in 2021, and last year’s 19.2% – both through both high levels of immigration and the aging of the native-born workforce. (About 4 million Americans retire each year.) And two, foreign-born workers have grown relatively more educated over time — 56% now have “some college” or “BA or higher,” as against 37% in 2004 — meaning the “smile” curve may be flattening out. The Trump administration’s deportation campaign has very likely slowed the first trend — fewer foreign-born maids, groundskeepers, construction crews, and farm hands — and accelerated the second.
And around the leagues:
NBA: If MLB’s scouts spend their road time on Caribbean beaches or in Japan, their basketball counterparts draw more from a more global pool with a European focus. The National Basketball Association’s 2024-2025 season was 28.0% international with 21 Canadian players, 14 French, 13 Australians, 6 Serbs, and a record 5 from Cameroon.
WNBA: The Women’s National Basketball Association, meanwhile, features 41 international players on this season’s 173 roster spots, for a slightly lower 23.6%. DC’s Mystics play Australian guards Georgia Amoore and Jade Melbourne, along with forwards Sika Kone and Aaliyah Edwards, who are respectively from Mali and Canada.
MLS: Majority-international Major League Soccer has so much available foreign talent that it has an “International Rule” capping international players at 241 of the league’s 852 slots. Kind of a squishy rule, though, as it declares Canadians “domestic” to get a North American 50.1% majority player share.
NFL: The least “international” among the big leagues, the National Football League also seems to be the least analyst-friendly, as we haven’t found an up-to-date list of international players. Their 2023 list reported 88 international players with “at least one snap” in 2022. Much like MLB dubiously counts Puerto Ricans as “international,” the NFL’s “international list” includes 7 U.S. citizens from American Samoa. (They also recruit in the independent Republic of Samoa.) The other top sources are 22 Canadians, 19 Nigerians, and 7 Australians.
NHL: The “nation” in National Hockey League is not the U.S. but Canada, even if most of the rinks are now south of the 49th Parallel and won’t freeze even in March without artificial help. The NHL’s 712 players last year included 291 Canadians, 204 Americans, 216 Europeans (topped by Swedes, with Russia and Finland next), and one Aussie.
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.
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Manno for Forbes: Rethinking College Rankings: Colleges That Provide Value
At a time when college enrollment is shrinking and public faith in higher education is faltering, the question of how we measure college value has never been more urgent. Against this backdrop, the just-released 2025 College Rankings from Washington Monthly offer a way to measure higher education’s value.
In an introduction to the issue, editor in chief Paul Glastris and editor Rob Wolfe write: “Instead of rewarding colleges for their wealth, prestige, and exclusivity, we measure how much they help ordinary middle- and working-class students get ahead, encourage democratic participation and service to the country, and produce the scholars and scholarship that drive economic growth and human flourishing. These, we think, are what most Americans want from their investments in the higher ed system.”
Read more in Forbes.
Capitol Hill Briefing: A New Compact for Educational Excellence
Katrina 20: The Future of Education in New Orleans
The Union Podcast Episode 9: Education Reform in New Orleans on Katrina’s 20th Anniversary
Manno for Washington Monthly: Why AI Could Be a Boon for Workers
A recent article in the New York Times seemed to signal an AI-fueled apocalypse for job seekers. The article profiled the plight of recent college graduates who’d expected six-figure jobs with their computer science degrees but were now scrapping for shifts at Chipotle. According to one expert quoted in the Times, the jobs “most likely to be automated are the entry-level positions that [recent graduates] would be seeking.”
Recent research shows that AI is replacing entry-level jobs, similar to how mechanical automation eliminated low-skill manufacturing roles in past decades. However, this expanding definition of “expertise” will eventually create new jobs and pathways for workers to gain skills necessary to stay competitive in a post-AI era. The outcome could be the democratization of expertise and wider opportunities for upward mobility.
Read more in Washington Monthly.
New Orleans’ 20-Year Transformation Offers National Lessons on School Reform
WASHINGTON — Two decades after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, a new report from the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) reveals how the city’s complete overhaul of its public education system yielded unprecedented academic gains, offering a blueprint to transform struggling school districts nationwide.
The report, “20 Years of Reinvention: Education Reform in New Orleans,” chronicles the city’s bold post-Katrina move to convert its traditional public schools into public charter schools. The move radically redefines the role of the district and shows student achievement surging across nearly every metric: test scores, graduation rates, college enrollment, and school accountability ratings.
“New Orleans proves that it is possible to build a public education system that is both excellent and equitable,” said Rachel Canter, Director of Education Policy at PPI and co-author of the report. “This transformation didn’t happen overnight; it required political courage, sustained leadership, and a relentless focus on student outcomes.”
Among the key findings:
- The percentage of New Orleans students scoring at “basic or above” on fourth-grade English tests rose from 44% in 2005 to 54% in 2024, on more rigorous exams.
- High school graduation rates climbed from 54% in 2004 to nearly 79% in 2023.
- College entry rates jumped from 37% to 65%, now surpassing the state average.
The report attributes these gains to a powerful mix of school autonomy, strong accountability, citywide public school choice, and a robust ecosystem of nonprofit partners.
“New Orleans didn’t just rebuild its schools, it reinvented the entire system,” said co-author Emily Langhorne. “The city separated the work of managing schools from operating them, embraced diverse school models, and prioritized student achievement above bureaucratic tradition.”
While acknowledging that New Orleans’ unique circumstances may not be replicable everywhere, the authors emphasize that the core principles of autonomy, accountability, and choice can be adapted to other urban districts facing systemic failure.
Read and download the report here.
The Reinventing America’s Schools Project seeks to refocus national leadership around proven strategies to improve public schools and educational achievement. We believe that American public schools must prepare children academically to be successful adults and citizens; families should have a voice in their child’s education, including a choice within the public system to find a school that best fits their child’s needs; and, though education is the province of the states, the federal government must protect the promise that every child will have access to a quality public education.
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 @PPI.
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Media Contact: Ian O’Keefe – iokeefe@ppionline.org
20 Years of Reinvention: Education Reform in New Orleans
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, accelerating the collapse of an already disintegrating city public school system. Prior to the storm, almost two-thirds of New Orleans public school students attended failing schools, half dropped out, and fewer than one in five enrolled in college. The school system suffered severe financial mismanagement, corruption, and crumbling school infrastructures.
Yet in the midst of a national tragedy came an unprecedented opportunity for education reform. Louisiana transferred 80% of the city’s public schools to the state-run Recovery School District (RSD), which, over the next decade, converted them all into charter schools. The elected Orleans Parish School Board (OPSB) turned most of its 17 remaining schools into charters as well. In 2018, the state “reunified” the RSD schools with the local school board. By 2020, the OPSB had converted its last two schools to charters, making New Orleans the first large U.S. school district composed entirely of charter schools.
This sweeping education reform led to remarkable academic gains. Over the last 20 years, student outcomes have grown substantially. Despite harder assessments, students have jumped ten percentage points in reading and math at fourth and eighth grade, and graduation and college enrollments have rocketed by more than twenty percentage points. In 2024, not a single New Orleans school was rated as “failing” by the state accountability system.
The New Orleans model will not translate perfectly to all American districts, given the unique circumstances of post-Katrina recovery. Nonetheless, elements of its approach provide a compelling blueprint for large bureaucratic districts. These include:
- Significant school autonomy, so school leaders have the freedom they need to craft schools that meet their students’ needs.
- Accountability for student performance, including the opportunity for schools to expand and/or replicate if successful, and to face replacement or closure if not.
- Full choice between a diverse array of educational models.
- Competition for students and dollars among schools.
- A board and superintendent largely freed of responsibility for operating schools, enabling them to concentrate on system-wide needs and issues.
The reinvention of New Orleans’ public schools represents both stunning success and critical lessons. If every major American public school system could achieve similar improvements, the effect on children across the nation would be profound.
Read the full report.
The Union Podcast Episode 8
Manno for Forbes: Parents Reshape K-12 Public Education As Students Go Back To School
It’s back-to-school season, with an estimated 47.2 million K-12 public school students and 3.2 million teachers returning to their classrooms. They come back to a K-12 system offering an expanding menu of public education choices for families (and teachers) that are leading parents to reshape public education. A Tyton Partners report dubs them “activated parents.” While COVID-19 accelerated this parent uprising, other longer-term forces set the stage for it.
Upheaval In The Making
Three factors have fueled a slow but relentless wave of K-12-activated parent upheaval, one that began before COVID-19 but gained unstoppable momentum during and after the pandemic.
- Expansion of public school choice. Over more than 60 years, K-12 policy changes have created a variety of public school choices for families. They now include options such as magnet schools, charter schools, microschools, learning pods, open enrollment, dual enrollment, course choice, tutoring, homeschooling, and career pathways programs. Moreover, families can mix-and-match these options. For example, more than a third of homeschool families also use traditional district public schools, and another 9% have a child in a charter public school.
- Rising dissatisfaction with public education. A Gallup poll shows that satisfaction with public education has declined. Between 2017 and 2025 , the share of adults satisfied with the quality of public education fell from 37% to 24%, reflecting a broader erosion of confidence in U.S. institutions. The 2025 Phi Delta Kappan poll reports that Americans’ confidence in K-12 public schools is at an all-time low. Only 13% grade them an A or a B, down from 19% in 2019 and 26% in 2004. Adults have more positive attitudes toward their local schools, with over 40% grading them highly.
- Public funding for private school access. Policy changes over more than 35 years in 33 states have created 81 different K-12 programs that give families public funding to cover the costs associated with private schools. These programs include vouchers, tax credits, and education savings accounts.
Continue reading in Forbes.
Manno for RealClearEducation: 20 Years After Hurricane Katrina: What New Orleans Teaches America About K-12 School Reform
On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina made landfall and began its destructive path through the Gulf Coast. New Orleans bore the brunt of the devastation, not only in the loss of homes and lives, but also in the destruction of its public infrastructure, especially its schools. Over the next two decades, the governance of New Orleans’ K-12 public schools underwent a significant reinvention.
This effort produced one of the most innovative and ambitious approaches to K-12 school reform in modern American education: a system of public charter schools funded by taxpayers and independently operated as schools of choice. This reinvention of the New Orleans K-12 public school system sparked a nationwide conversation about public school governance, autonomy, school choice, and accountability.
Now, with twenty years of evidence and the return of schools to a locally elected board, the question is no longer whether New Orleans succeeded or failed. What will U.S. K-12 public education learn from this unparalleled innovation to improve the lives of New Orleans’ young people? While the New Orleans model was born of crisis, the lessons it offers extend well beyond The Big Easy.
Tulane University economist Douglas Harris and his colleagues have led the effort to understand these lessons. Harris is the founding director of the University’s Education Research Alliance for New Orleans, whose reports serve as the primary sources of information for the discussion that follows.
Read more in RealClearEducation.
Manno for Forbes: Workforce Pell Expands Access To Education, Training, And Opportunity
Finally—A Win For Political Bipartisanship
“We just expanded the definition of college,” writes Kathleen deLaski, capturing the spirit behind the new Workforce Pell legislation in President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed into law on July 4. The legislation extends post-secondary Pell Grant financial eligibility to short-term training programs that currently are not eligible to be paid for using federal aid.
While the Beautiful Bill Act passed with a mostly party-line vote, Workforce Pell has long had bipartisan legislative support at the federal level in both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. Additionally, this approach has strong support from many quarters, including working-class voters, broadly defined as those without a four-year college degree.
A Progressive Policy Institute/YouGov Survey of working-class voters reports that when given five options to choose what would most help them have a good job, career, and get ahead, the number one response of nearly half (46%) was “affordable, short-term training programs that combine work and learning,” followed by “more opportunities for apprenticeships with companies” (23%). Only 9% said a four-year college degree, which came in four out of five.
As Lisa Larson, CEO of the Education Design Lab, writes in Community College Daily, “Workforce Pell has finally become law after years of advocacy, stalled negotiations in Congress and a groundswell of support from educators, employers, and learners.”
Read more in Forbes.
Manno for Forbes: The Dreary State Of Global Teenage Career Preparation
Teenagers from around the world enter the workforce blindfolded. They are intensely interested in future careers. Their expectations, though, are outdated because they are not aware of the career options available to them. Family background plays a significant role in shaping this mismatch, more than real-world insights or aptitude.
This news of teens adrift as they move from school to work is the central message from a new report released by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) on the State of Global Teenage Career Preparation. The report uses 2022 data from the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). It surveyed roughly 690,000 15- and 16-year-old students from more than 80 countries, including the U.S. OECD began collecting this data in 2000 with a smaller group of countries, which allows it to make comparisons over this time period.
Read more in Forbes.
Canter for RealClearEducation: Democrats Can and Should Support Public School Choice
At a recent dinner party with people who would define themselves as “very liberal,” someone asked me whether my new center-left employer was uncomfortable with my long record of advocacy for charter schools. “No,” I shrugged, “because charter schools are public schools.”
“But they aren’t real public schools,” he chided.
I’ve had this same conversation dozens of times in the last twenty years, and it goes to the heart of the debate now about private school choice. What makes a public school “public”? What does it mean to provide children with a “public education”?
Ask most Americans to define “public schools” or “public education,” and you’re likely to get a response that goes something like “public education happens at public schools; public schools are schools everyone can go to, they’re free, and they have to follow the rules set by the government.”