issue: Education

Kahlenberg for Inside Philanthropy: Class Matters Most: So Why Do Foundations Focus More on Race?

Posted on by Alex Terr

In the past few weeks, we’ve seen the nation’s richest institution of higher education, Harvard University, and the nation’s wealthiest philanthropy, the Gates Foundation, have their status as tax-exempt organizations questioned. President Donald Trump threatened to remove Harvard’s IRS exemption over a larger struggle with the university, while a conservative group, the American Alliance for Equal Rights, led by Edward Blum, filed a complaint with the IRS against the Gates Foundation for a minority-focused scholarship program.

A casual observer might see these disputes as part of a larger pattern of unwarranted right-wing political attacks on the nonprofit sector. But the two cases are, in fact, worlds apart.

Trump’s threats aimed at Harvard’s exempt status are part of a bigger war on universities in which the administration has bypassed due process rules and sought to micromanage private colleges. For example, in its letter, the administration called on Harvard to create a “critical mass” of conservatives on campus. Harvard, though flawed in many ways, refused, and it has been widely lauded for standing up to a bully. Even the Wall Street Journal editorial page, which has been appropriately critical of the university’s lax attitude toward antisemitism, defended Harvard’s academic freedom.

Read more in Inside Philanthropy.

Kahlenberg for Slate: I Wrote the Book on Charter Schools. This Supreme Court Case Could Inadvertently Destroy Them.

Posted on by Alex Terr

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court is slated to consider a case that one education journal said could yield “the most significant legal decision to affect schooling in decades.” The justices will decide whether the religious liberty clause of the First Amendment requires the state of Oklahoma to fund the nation’s first religious charter school.

The central problem is that the educational institution in question, St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, is not designed to promote liberal democratic values or e pluribus unum in a nation that desperately needs both. Instead, the school says its “ultimate goal” is “eternal salvation.” That is surely a valid objective for people who are members of the Roman Catholic Church. But it is not clear why Americans who adhere to other religious traditions, or to no religion at all, should be compelled to support the school.

Read more in Slate.

Rachel Canter Joins PPI’s Reinventing America’s Schools Project as Director of Education Policy

Posted on by Alex Terr

WASHINGTON — The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) is proud to announce that Rachel Canter is joining PPI as Director of Education Policy for the Reinventing America’s Schools (RAS) Project.

Canter joins PPI after more than 16 years as the founder and executive director of Mississippi First, where she built a reputation as one of the most effective education reformers in the country. She brings a sharp focus on evidence-based policy, equity, and innovation — qualities that make her an ideal fit to lead PPI’s education policy initiatives at a national level.

In her new role, Rachel Canter will help chart a bold course for reclaiming America’s public schools as engines of opportunity, citizenship, and upward mobility. At a time when public confidence in K-12 education is faltering — and when neither political party offers a compelling vision for its future — Canter will help fill the policy vacuum with pragmatic, student-centered solutions that work. Her leadership will focus on restoring academic rigor, expanding high-quality public school options, and advancing policies rooted in evidence, not ideology. By working across sectors and with leaders at every level, she aims to help rebuild public education around a new compact with families — one that delivers on the promise of literacy, readiness, civic identity, and a future filled with possibility.

“Rachel Canter has a rare combination of deep policy expertise, practical experience, and a passion for expanding opportunity,” said Will Marshall, President of the Progressive Policy Institute. “We are thrilled to have her leading our education policy work, and we’re confident she’ll help shape the next generation of school reform with vision and urgency.”

Canter joins Curtis Valentine, Director of the Future Learning Network at PPI, in leading the RAS Project. While Valentine focuses on grassroots and grassroots advocacy, coalition-building, and political engagement, Canter will provide the policy infrastructure that underpins those efforts. Together, their complementary roles — one centered on policy development, the other on stakeholder mobilization — reflect a coordinated approach to changing how public education works for students and families.

“I’ve spent my career developing and advocating education policies that expand access, elevate quality, and center students — especially those too often left behind,” said Canter. “I’m honored to bring that work to PPI and help drive an education agenda that’s both visionary and grounded in what works. We have a tremendous opportunity to make lasting change.”

The Reinventing America’s Schools Project inspires a 21st-century model of public education geared to the knowledge economy. Two models, public charter schools and public innovation schools, are showing the way by providing autonomy for schools, accountability for results, and parental choice among schools tailored to the diverse learning styles of children.

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

Kahlenberg for The Chronicle of Higher Education: Higher Ed Brought This on Itself

Posted on by Alex Terr

Academe is right to be alarmed by President Trump’s attacks on colleges and academic freedom. His administration appears to be acting in bad faith, motivated by a desire to punish political enemies and weaken the sector’s independence. The attempt to micromanage Harvard University’s viewpoint diversity is particularly alarming. Trump’s dangerous approach comes straight out of the authoritarian playbook of leaders like Viktor Orbán. It should be — and has been — roundly denounced.

But to end the discussion there misses the other half of the story: It is not simply rotten luck that landed higher education in this position. And so academic leaders must take this moment to look in the mirror. The truth is that, for decades, elite higher education has been starkly out of step with the public. At top liberal-arts colleges, one study found, Democrats outnumbered Republicans by 48 to one among English-department faculty members, and 17 to one among philosophy, history, and psychology professors. While college leaders tirelessly championed diversity by race and gender, they tolerated, and sometimes abetted, an ideological monoculture.

Some academics wore this political disconnect as a badge of honor, a sign that higher ed’s leaders, faculty, and students were more enlightened than a benighted American public. And for years, they got away with it. But in our system, where even private colleges rely on enormous public subsidies, that was a dangerous game to play. Many large universities receive at least a quarter of their operating budgets from the federal government, and it was only a matter of time until we encountered an administration that sought to leverage that dependency to exact changes.

On one high-profile issue that the administration and conservative critics see as an easy target — the use of racial preferences in college admissions — elite colleges have been stunningly out of touch. And predictably, countermeasures have begun: The Department of Justice is already investigating admissions at Stanford University and the University of California’s Berkeley, Irvine, and Los Angeles campuses.

I’ve been writing about admissions for more than three decades, and over that time I’ve visited dozens of campuses. I frequently ask audience members to raise their hands if they oppose racial preferences. Very few hands go up. Often none do. When I next cite Pew Research polling showing that 74 percent of Americans, including a majority of people of color, oppose the consideration of race, my audiences seem surprised.

Maybe the American public is cold-hearted and doesn’t care about racial justice the way right-thinking people in elite colleges do? The polls contradict that as well: Americans support racial diversity, they just don’t think racial preferences are the right way to accomplish that goal. Instead, Americans support, by a substantial margin, colleges giving a break to economically disadvantaged students of all races, a disproportionate share of whom are Black and Hispanic.

This approach does not ignore America’s history of racial oppression. It is precisely because of that history that Black and Hispanic Americans are more likely to find themselves in America’s lower socioeconomic brackets. Moreover, as I argue in my new book, Class Matters, the strong political support for economic rather than racial affirmative action makes sense given profound changes in American society over the past half century or more.

Read more in Inside Higher Ed.

Manno for Forbes: Workplace Career Guidance And Mentorship: Education And Gender Matter

Posted on by Max Sherrill

Work is not only about the economic exchange that comes from earning a living. Work also involves social exchange. It is a place where we earn a living and make connections with other people. These connections nurture social capital, the relationships we need to work, live life, and reach our potential.

The American Perspectives Survey of over 5,000 U.S. adults conducted by the Survey Center on American Life is filled with insights into workplace social capital. It includes a discussion of the workplace career guidance and mentorship workers receive. It also describes the different workplace experiences and social relationships that exist between those with and without college degrees and between males and females.

Understanding education and gender differences in developing workplace social capital is important because it helps us understand social wealth and social poverty in the workplace and beyond. This awareness also should lead us to ensure that K-12 students receive career education and mentorship experiences before they graduate from high school. These K-12 experiences prepare students to take advantage of the job opportunities they will have for career guidance and mentorships that nurture workplace social capital.

Keep reading in Forbes.

Manno for AEI: The Growth of Earn-and-Learn Apprenticeship Degrees: Expanding America’s Mobility and Opportunity Structure

Posted on by Alex Terr

Key Points

• Earn-and-learn work-based education through apprenticeships is a promising and growing pathway to good jobs and other opportunities.
• To be successful, any effort to expand apprenticeship programs will have to brand and market them as genuine and effective pathways to jobs and opportunity.
• By valuing both educational and employment outcomes, the new apprenticeship degree paradigm makes the nation’s opportunity infrastructure more flexible and pluralistic.

Earn-and-learn work-based education through apprenticeships is a promising and growing pathway to good jobs and other opportunities—both for young people and for adults looking to switch careers. Those in apprenticeship programs earn a living by working, learn from mentors in the workplace and classroom, and receive an employer credential while taking on little to no student debt.

The recent popularization of the earn-and-learn model has spawned new forms of apprenticeships across the US, including apprenticeship degrees that combine work experience with the pursuit of a traditional college degree pathway. This work-based degree model aligns with Americans’ desire for more flexible, pluralistic pathways to opportunity. It also broadens the mobility and opportunity structure by recognizing and valuing diverse pathways to human flourishing beyond the pursuit of a traditional college degree.

Read the full report.

Manno for Real Clear Education: Earn and Learn Apprenticeships Create Opportunity for Young People

Posted on by Alex Terr

“Everyone wants to hire somebody with three years’ experience, and nobody wants to give them three years’ experience,” says Peter Capelli, management professor at The Wharton School. Many first-time job seekers confront this mismatch between work requirements and their ability to apply what they know to those demands. Analysts call this problem the job seeker’s experience gap.

K-12 schools, two- and four-year colleges, and workforce training programs can help young people overcome the experience gap through earn-and-learn apprenticeship programs. In addition to long-standing registered apprenticeships, new models are emerging, including youth apprenticeships, pre-apprenticeships, and apprenticeship degrees. National Apprenticeship Day is an opportunity to investigate this growing movement.

Read more in Real Clear Education.

Kahlenberg in City Journal: Will Universities Embrace Class-Based Preferences?

Posted on by Alex Terr

Richard Kahlenberg is an old-school liberal, committed to narrowing the gap between rich and poor. He’s also one of the leading critics of racial preferences in college admissions, having served as an expert witness for the plaintiffs in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, the Supreme Court case that effectively ended the practice. In his new book, Class Matters, Kahlenberg lays out the connection between these commitments.

Notably, Kahlenberg’s opposition to affirmative action doesn’t seem to be rooted in instinct or ideology. His concerns are practical. First, racial preferences divide the working class, making political solidarity harder to achieve. More significantly, the gatekeepers at selective colleges seem far more invested in race than in class—eliminating racial preferences, he argues, might finally force them to focus on economic disadvantage.

Citing studies of admissions data, Kahlenberg explains that, prior to Students for Fair Admissions, preferences for black applicants tended to be substantial, while those for lower-income students were minimal or nonexistent. Because wealthier students generally have stronger academic credentials—and can afford steep tuition—elite colleges became havens for a multiracial upper class, doing little to dismantle class barriers. Race-based affirmative action let these institutions achieve the aesthetic diversity they sought without making serious investments in financial aid.

Read more in City Journal.

Untapped Expertise: HBCUs as Charter Authorizers, Part 4

Posted on by Max Sherrill
On this episode of RAS Reports, Curtis Valentine, the Director of PPI’s Reinventing America’s Schools Project, and Naomi Shelton, CEO of the National Charter Collaborative, sit down with Dr. Said Sewell, the President of Morris College in Sumter, South Carolina.

They discuss Dr. Sewell’s path to becoming the 11th President of Morris College, as well as how he sees his role in enhancing student success and the broader role of HBCUs as a whole.

This episode is the 4th in a series titled Untapped Expertise: HBCUs as Charter Authorizers, based on the paper of the same title by Curtis Valentine and Dr. Karega Rausch, President and CEO of NACSA.

Listen to the full episode.

Who Needs College Anymore? ft. Kathleen deLaski

Posted on by Max Sherrill

On this episode of Radically Pragmatic, PPI’s Senior Advisor and Director of the What Works Lab, Bruno Manno is joined by Kathleen deLaski, a Senior Advisor at the Project on Workforce at Harvard.

The pair discuss deLaski’s new book, “Who Needs College Anymore?”, which she describes as a blueprint for a world in which a college degree is not the only way to unlock professional success. She touches on the workarounds that could well become the “new normal” for how America prepares for work.

Kathleen’s book can be ordered ⁠⁠here⁠⁠.

Manno for The 74: A K-12 Public School Choice Agenda for the Trump Administration

Posted on by Alex Terr

The Trump administration’s K-12 education policy prescriptions typically focus on ways to provide financial support for private schools, including federal vouchers and tax-credit scholarships. These programs require congressional action through new K-12 legislation or modifications to the U.S. tax code.

However, the administration has an additional opportunity to provide families with more K-12 education choices that has received far less attention. This involves existing federal programs, administrative guidance and regulatory shifts that would not require new legislation. Doing this would create more choices for families, give educators more options to work in different learning environments and unlock more educational opportunities for K-12 students nationwide.

This approach is consistent with the January 29 executive order that focused on helping parents escape the “geographically based school assignments” that constrain “choosing and directing the upbringing and education of their children.” The order requires the secretary of education to issue guidance on how states can use federal formula and discretionary grant programs to do this, consistent with the administration’s desire to return education authority to the states.

Read more in The 74.

Manno for Forbes: Is Experience Via Apprenticeship Degrees A New College Degree Pathway?

Posted on by Alex Terr

“Artificial intelligence snaps up good entry-level positions [so] entry-level jobs start to look like today’s mid-levels, which demand years of experience,” writes Ryan Craig, Managing Director at Achieve Partners. The result for college graduates who are career beginners is an experience gap, where requirements for good entry-level jobs are higher than in the past.

In cybersecurity, for example, Tier 1 entry-level jobs that involve detection and response are now automated. This creates new entry-level analyst jobs requiring at least four years of experience, placing a higher premium on demonstrated experience or knowing what to do with the skills individuals have.

Another example comes from OpenAI researchers, who showed how ChatGPT could perform thousands of tasks that cover more than 1,000 occupations defined by the U.S. Department of Labor. The effect is to “sever the career ladder of industries like finance and law,” writes Molly Kinder of the Brooking Institution. The problem will worsen as industry-specific language models develop, with employers adding years of job experience to entry-level job descriptions.

Read more in Forbes.

The Disengaged Teen, ft. Rebecca Winthrop

Posted on by Max Sherrill

On this episode of Radically Pragmatic, PPI’s Senior Advisor and Director of the What Works Lab, Bruno Manno is joined by Rebecca Winthrop, Senior Fellow and Director of the Center for Universal Education at The Brookings Institution.

Winthrop discusses the motivation behind and premise of her and Jenny Anderson’s new book, “The Disengaged Teen: Helping Kids Learn Better, Feel Better, and Live Better.” She touches on the growing teen disengagement problem and explains her four modes of student engagement. She also discusses practical strategies for how parents and educators can engage students in learning. 

Rebecca’s book can be ordered ⁠here⁠.

And check out Manno’s recent ⁠Forbes article⁠ on the book and revisiting the K-12 student engagement cliff.

Untapped Expertise: HBCUs as Charter Authorizers, Part 3

Posted on by Max Sherrill
On this episode of RAS Reports, Curtis Valentine, the Director of PPI’s Reinventing America’s Schools Project, and Naomi Shelton, CEO of the National Charter Collaborative, sit down with Dr. Yolanda W. Page, the President of Stillman College in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

They discuss Dr. Page’s journey in becoming the 8th President of Stillman College, as well as how she sees the role of HBCU administrators in higher education evolving in today’s environment.

Listen to the full episode.

Marshall for The Hill: Public Schools are Languishing in a Political Dead Zone

Posted on by Max Sherrill

Stumping for president a quarter-century ago, George W. Bush posed the immortal question, “Is our children learning?” Although his bad grammar elicited much condescending mirth, Bush at least seemed passionate about improving public schools.

Today’s national leaders, not so much.

Manno for Forbes: The K-12 Pandemic Disruption: Five Years And Counting

Posted on by Alex Terr

The month of March marks the five-year anniversary of the event that forever changed U.S. K-12 public education: the COVID-19 pandemic. The immediate effect of the President’s COVID-19 emergency declaration was that public schools closed their doors and went into lockdown mode. This lockdown produced long-term consequences for K-12 education.

One of these consequences is how dissatisfied Americans are today with public education. From 2019 to 2025, Gallup’s annual public satisfaction survey shows that the percentage of adults who report feeling dissatisfied with K-12 public education increased from 62% to 73%, with those who felt satisfied at the lowest level since 2001.

Another consequence is the learning loss disaster COVID-19 produced for our nation’s young people, especially the most vulnerable. (There also are other negative pandemic-related social and emotional consequences that befall young people.) To be fair, some of the pandemic’s distressing effects result from school closures, while others predate the pandemic but were made worse by it.

Read more in Forbes.