issue: Education
Kahlenberg for Slate: Martin Luther King Jr. Had a Dream for Economic Affirmative Action. The Supreme Court Failed Him.
In the era of Donald Trump, many liberals understandably look back with fondness at the time when Republican moderates recognized that racial diversity strengthens institutions.
Such nostalgia can include favorable feelings for three Republican-appointed Supreme Court justices who, over the course of nearly four decades, provided the crucial swing votes to sustain racial affirmative action in higher education. Nixon appointee Lewis F. Powell Jr. did so in the 1978 Bakke decision. Reagan appointee Sandra Day O’Connor did so in the 2003 Grutter ruling. And another Reagan appointee, Anthony Kennedy, did so in the 2016 Fisher case.
But what if that view is wrong? Looking back today, after the Supreme Court’s 2023 Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard decision, which struck down racial preferences, a very different picture emerges. Many (though not all) colleges have managed to preserve previous levels of racial diversity by adopting new programs to admit more low-income and working-class students of all races.
In light of this emerging evidence, the efforts of moderate Republican-appointed justices to fortify racial preferences takes on a different light. After all, the old admissions regime tended to benefit well-off Black and Hispanic students, and it provided political cover for a larger system of preferences for the mostly white children of alumni, donors, and faculty that is now coming under attack. What if the Republican moderates weren’t so much champions of racial justice as economic elitists who fulfilled the worst stereotypes of Republicans from that era?
Read more in Slate.
Kahlenberg for the New York Post: Here’s why real diversity should focus on class — not race
I’ve spent my career as a center-left thinker and writer, working with people like former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio to help promote school integration and Keith Ellison and the late John Lewis to strengthen organized labor. So why did I agree to join a conservative group, Students for Fair Admissions, in its lawsuits against Harvard and the University of North Carolina in cases that enabled the Supreme Court to bring an end to racial preferences in 2023?
As I outline in my new book, Class Matters: The Fight to Get Beyond Race Preferences, Reduce Inequality, and Build Real Diversity at America’s Colleges, I testified as an expert witness that racial and economic diversity benefits students, but there is a much better way to accomplish these goals than through racial preferences.
Universities, I testified, should consider ending preferences for the wealthy and instead give an admissions break to economically disadvantaged students of all races, a substantial share of whom would, in fact, end up being Black and Hispanic.
I’d long argued that this approach could work, but I became even more convinced once I had a chance to peek inside the files at Harvard and UNC and see how the admissions process worked.
Read more in the New York Post.
Kahlenberg for The Boston Globe: Ending Legacy Preferences is Key to Current Admissions Reforms
Nearly two years ago, the Supreme Court struck down the use of racial preferences in college admissions — a momentous decision that has reverberated through the landscape of higher education and begun to usher in a new approach to diversity.
In response to the ruling, then-President Joe Biden urged colleges to keep their commitment to diversity but adopt a “new standard” in admissions to reward students who had overcome adversity, including a lack of financial means.
How has that worked out?
Old ideologies don’t die easily, and there was initial resistance to the ruling on both the far left and the far right. But most schools have come around to the view that it’s time to find new paths to diversity, centered around addressing America’s great class divide.
Read more in The Boston Globe.
Manno for Forbes: Who Needs College Anymore? Creating The Experience First College
A New Book Describes The Experience First College
“For every employer I interviewed for this book, from the largest tech companies to smaller and medium size businesses in cities or rural American, the most important resume signal today for candidates to get hired is not where they went to college, or even whether they went to college, but their experience relevant to the role they’ll be asked to perform. And experts anticipate that this will become even more of a trend if artificial intelligence begins to eliminate more entry-level jobs,” writes Kathleen deLaski, author of the new book Who Needs College Anymore? Imagining a Future Where Degrees Don’t Matter.
The typical college degree does not provide graduates with the experience they need for the work role they will be asked to perform, creating an experience gap for graduates. DeLaski’s solution to this problem is an experience first model of college. This approach prepares students for jobs by integrating elements of what colleges traditionally offer with significant work experiences, especially for the career that interests the student.
Read more in Forbes.
HBCUs and the Future of Artificial Intelligence
Manno for Forbes: From Vocational Education To Career And Technical Education
“Low esteem, little clout” was the shorthand way Jeannie Oaks and her colleagues characterized high school vocational education in their 1992 groundbreaking report Educational Matchmaking. It describes in painstaking detail vocational education’s “failure to deliver either effective or equitable education.”
This year’s National Career and Technical Education (CTE) Month is a time to raise awareness of how vocational education under the banner of today’s CTE has changed since then and how it’s now preparing many different young people for good jobs and career success. Many Americans, including young people, want schools to offer more education and training options like CTE. I have come to call this approach to creating many pathways to careers and opportunity in addition to the college degree opportunity pluralism.
Read more in Forbes.
A Way Out of the DEI Wars: A Pragmatic Approach to Education
WASHINGTON — As debates over diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) continue to divide the nation, the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) has released a new report, “A Way Out of the DEI Wars,” authored by Richard D. Kahlenberg, Director of PPI’s American Identity Project. The report examines the flaws in existing DEI programs, the illiberal backlash against them, and outlines a new, unifying vision for promoting equal opportunity and civic belonging in American institutions.
PPI, the think tank that helped Bill Clinton successfully reposition the Democratic Party at the political center 35 years ago, is now calling for Democrats to abandon unpopular and divisive DEI policies. The new report argues that while the goals of diversity and inclusion are laudable, the current approach has fueled political polarization, alienated working-class voters, and curtailed freedom of thought in schools and colleges.
In place of these policies, which PPI says are tearing the country apart, the report calls for a return to the foundational principles of historic civil rights and civil liberties movements: treating people as individuals rather than members of racial groups, fostering open debate instead of ideological conformity, and providing real pathways to social mobility for economically disadvantaged and working-class Americans of all races. The proposed framework, “Integration, Equal Opportunity, and Belonging,” offers a pragmatic alternative to both DEI excesses and the Republican response, which has often been equally illiberal, marked by sweeping bans on discussing race and punitive measures against higher education.
“DEI, as currently implemented, has alienated working-class voters, enforced ideological conformity, and too often ignored economic inequality,” said Kahlenberg. “At the same time, the backlash against DEI has frequently veered into book bans, limits on free speech, and attacks on diversity itself. This report charts a third way — one that promotes opportunity and integration without ideological coercion or racial preferences.”
Key findings from the report include:
- The Failure of DEI Bureaucracies: Many DEI initiatives rely on race essentialism, ideological litmus tests, and enforced conformity, rather than fostering genuine inclusion and opportunity.
- Illiberal Backlash: While DEI’s flaws are real, the response from some conservatives — including bans on discussing race, ideological purges, and book restrictions — threatens academic freedom and democratic norms.
- A New Path Forward: PPI proposes replacing divisive DEI policies with “Integration, Equal Opportunity, and Belonging” — a framework that respects diversity while emphasizing shared American values and economic opportunity for all.
The report argues that both Democrats and Republicans must move beyond the current DEI wars. Instead of entrenching racial preferences or banning discussions of race, policymakers should embrace policies that expand economic opportunity, promote free speech, and foster a common civic identity.
“Americans overwhelmingly support fairness, free expression, and opportunity,” said Kahlenberg. “What they reject are programs that treat people as members of racial categories rather than as individuals, or efforts to erase discussions of real inequities in our history. Our approach recognizes both the need for inclusion and the importance of shared American identity.”
Read and download the report here.
In the face of growing attacks on democratic values, increased polarization, and declining patriotism, the American Identity Project aims to help educators teach young people the anchoring shared values that define what it means to be an American. Read more from the American Identity Project at www.progressivepolicy.org/project/american-identity-project/.
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. Learn more about PPI by visiting progressivepolicy.org. Find an expert at PPI and follow us on X.
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Media Contact: Ian O’Keefe – iokeefe@ppionline.org
A Way Out of the DEI Wars
Introduction
Donald Trump’s second act as president has begun with so many unthinkable policies — from seeking to eliminate birthright citizenship guaranteed in the Fourteenth Amendment to pardoning January 6 rioters who attacked police officers — that it is tempting to assume that his moves to restrict diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies can easily be dismissed as wrongheaded.
The manner in which Trump has gone about his assault on DEI further enhances the impulse for Democrats to push back very hard. After a tragic airplane crash, at a moment when the president
should have been consoling the country, Trump cast blame on DEI policies despite lacking any evidence. The administration also hired an acting Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy who wrote in October, “Competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work.” As outlined below, Trump issued anti-DEI executive orders that were vague, and his purge of DEI staff in the federal government swept up some people who had merely attended DEI sessions. He has targeted for elimination not only racial preference polices, but also President Lyndon B. Johnson’s requirement that, before firms evaluate candidates in a race-neutral fashion, they engage in outreach efforts to make sure a diverse group of applicants are aware of opportunities. Trump has claimed to defend “merit” and then appointed cabinet members who are utterly unqualified. In short, if one wanted to find someone to make a principled case against DEI excesses, it is hard to think of a worse candidate than Donald Trump.
Furthermore, it is enticing to defend current DEI policies because the goals are noble. America’s ability to draw diverse populations from all over the world is undoubtedly one of the country’s great strengths, the nation’s “superpower.” Genuine equal opportunity and nondiscrimination are cherished values. And educational institutions and employers should foster inclusive environments that are welcoming to people of all backgrounds. Thought of in those terms, lower-case diversity, equity, and inclusion values can be considered outgrowths of the nation’s heroic civil rights movement.
Having said all that, it would be an enormous mistake for Democrats to launch a strong defense of existing DEI programs whose means to achieving positive goals are deeply problematic. To begin with, Trump has laid a political trap. He would love nothing better than for Democrats to spend a lot of time and energy supporting politically toxic DEI policies that have alienated large numbers of voters, especially those from working-class backgrounds.
Moreover, on the merits, many DEI policies and practices in education and employment have become frighteningly illiberal and stand as a counterpoint to the historic fight for civil rights. At their worst, DEI policies have promoted mandatory ideological indoctrination about how people should think, backed up by an enforcement mechanism to make sure students, educators, and employees suffer consequences if they don’t adopt the “right” views. Too many DEI programs have oversimplified complex controversies into Manichean struggles between “oppressors” and the “oppressed,” and have advanced race essentialist thinking that equates skin color with certain sets of values. These poorly thought-out programs have been shown to sow division and resentment, and they have promoted a troubling victim mindset that is disempowering to the very populations DEI is aimed at assisting. DEI programs have often pursued rigid equality of racial group results by fiat, imposed illiberal loyalty oaths in college faculty hiring, curtailed free speech rights, and denigrated merit. With a singular focus on race, they have too often ignored pressing issues of economic inequality and the benefits of ideological diversity. They have diverted precious resources, often proven ineffective and counterproductive and, in some cases, fed antisemitism. For all these reasons, these policies, often enforced by coercive DEI bureaucracies, have hurt Democrats politically, particularly among working-class voters, and helped to fuel Donald Trump’s return to the White House.
In turn, Republican responses to DEI, including Trump’s, have often themselves been exceedingly illiberal. Bans on DEI in states such as Florida and Iowa, have trampled on academic freedom by barring professors from discussing certain forbidden topics. In some red states, anti-DEI policies have led schools to pull books from libraries, including volumes about Roberto Clemente, Anne Frank, and Ruby Bridges. Reducing access to these materials is a close cousin of the “book bans” that authoritarian countries have implemented. In some states, such as Texas, educators cannot teach topics that might cause “discomfort” or arouse feelings of guilt among some white students. Some anti-DEI policies have taken on a punitive approach toward higher education generally, which Vice President J.D. Vance has described as “the enemy.”6 Finally, some right-wing attacks on DEI look suspiciously like assaults on the goal of diversity itself. Whereas conservatives used to oppose racial preference programs but support efforts to uplift economically disadvantaged students of all races, some now claim that even race-neutral programs are a form of “proxy discrimination,” if racial diversity is one of their goals.
When both sides in the DEI wars suppress free speech and try to police how citizens think, what is the way out? This report lays out a completely different vision that would end troubling DEI bureaucracies and replace them with new forms of civic education that seek to bring people of different backgrounds together and emphasize what they have in common as Americans. New policies would benefit economically disadvantaged people of all races, including those whose prospects have been stunted by the economic legacy of racial discrimination. The animating vision of these policies would embrace the wonderful diversity of the United States and honor people of all backgrounds as fully American but also recognize that the genius of liberal democracy is to transcend tribalism to create a shared American identity centered around fundamental principles.
Read the full report.
Manno for Forbes: Revisiting The K-12 Student Engagement Cliff
In 2009, the Gallup Student Poll of young people in grades five through 12 began documenting what it called the student engagement cliff. This cliff describes how student engagement drops dramatically as young people move from middle through high school.
More evidence for this decline in involvement and enthusiasm comes from recent Gallup polling on Gen Z 12- to 18-year-olds and a Brookings Institution and Transcend analysis. The latter also describes a parent perception gap between students reporting on their school engagement and parents’ perception of student school engagement.
These analyses of the student engagement cliff are troubling. But they also may reveal a rational response by students to a genuine problem in their school environment that must be solved. A solution includes developing an economics of identity based on the hope cycle that entails acquiring the knowledge and relationships that contribute to forming an identity.
Read more in Forbes.
Manno for Merion West: When Student Disengagement Meets Worker Disengagement, and a Solution
Student engagement in K-12 schools drops dramatically as young people move from middle through high school. Evidence for this decline in involvement and enthusiasm—dubbed the engagement cliff—comes from the Gallup Student Poll of young people in grades five through 12, which began in 2009. This engagement cliff can be seen in recent Gallup polling on Gen Z 12- to 18-year-olds and in a Brookings Institution and Transcend analysis describing a parent perception gap in student engagement.
Unfortunately, the problem of disengagement is not limited merely to middle and high school students. Gallup polling of workers paints a similar picture of today’s worker disengagement that it calls “the great detachment.”
To be sure, record-high levels of student and worker disengagement from school and work are disturbing trends. However, these trends may be the symptoms of a rational response by students and workers to problems in their environments that must be solved. One solution lies in developing an economics of identity based on the hope cycle.
Keep reading in Merion West.
Untapped Expertise: HBCUs as Charter Authorizers, Part 2
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. Lester McCorn, a graduate of Morehouse College and President of Paine College in Augusta, GA.
The group discusses Paine’s role in preparing African-American K-12 students for college, as well as what it would mean for schools like Paine to create schools on campus as an authorizer of public charter schools.
Manno for Forbes: K-12 Public Education Options Continue To Expand
National School Choice Week is a time to rediscover the embarrassment of rich educational opportunities in today’s K-12 public education. These opportunities include not only different school options like magnet schools, charter schools, and microschools. They also involve other educational options using open enrollment, dual enrollment, and career pathways programs. Many of these options have the added benefit of giving public school educators new options for their professional lives.
Read more in Forbes.
Pankovits for RealClearEducation: National School Choice Week is Here. Democratic Lawmakers Need to Join the Celebration.
This week is “National School Choice Week.” It’s the 15th year millions of parents, students, teachers, and school leaders have celebrated education options in their communities. There are school fairs and statehouse rallies, gubernatorial proclamations, and of course, the movement’s ubiquitous bright yellow knit scarves.
But why the last week of January, instead of back-to-school season or wrapped around college signing day, when K-12 education is top of mind?
Because it’s a strategic spot on the academic calendar, winter and early spring are when public charter schools and other nontraditional schools begin accepting applications for the following year.
National School Choice Week is actually a nonpartisan public awareness campaign. Its goal is alerting parents about available school choices and encouraging them to be unafraid to exercise agency over their kids’ education, while there’s time to make a move.
Read more in RealClearEducation.
Kahlenberg in NJ Spotlight News: NJ school desegregation talks nearing resolution?
Segregated schools tend to produce lower educational outcomes, in turn limiting lifetime opportunities, for students who attend high poverty, high minority schools, according to a report on New Jersey from the Civil Rights Project. A growing body of research is showing that desegregated schools are linked to benefits for all children.
“In terms of the life chances of students, it matters enormously whether New Jersey can make progress on school segregation,” said Richard Kahlenberg, expert on education and housing policy at the Progressive Policy Institute.
One of the best ways to integrate schools, according to Kahlenberg, is through choice programs that provide incentives for parents to send their kids to schools outside of their neighborhood, such as a Montessori program or one with a special focus on the arts. This works best when there are established fairness guidelines, he added, warning that completely unregulated choice can lead to more segregation. Choice also works best when parents have a say in what types of magnet schools would work best for their families, Kahlenberg said.
“There are magnet schools that are not magnetic. They don’t draw, so that’s why it’s important to do careful planning and survey parents to find out what would be attractive and work to integrate the student bodies,” Kahlenberg said.
Read more in NJ Spotlight News.
Weinstein Jr. in The Boston Globe: How ‘administrative bloat’ swells staffing, costs at Massachusetts colleges
Even as financial pressures on universities grow, experts said, the growth in administrators is unlikely to reverse in the short term.
The Trump administration aims to dismantle diversity, equity, and inclusion programs; boost the tax on college endowments; and reevaluate federal funding for universities — all of which could prompt schools to hire a cadre of attorneys and other professionals to stay in compliance, or fight back. An anticipated wave of higher ed mergers will need compliance managers, consultants, and other experts to shepherd deals and manage integration.
But Paul Weinstein Jr., a Johns Hopkins professor in Maryland and senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute, said the boom cannot last forever. Both students and professors are catching onto the uptick in administrators, critiquing the floors and floors of employees who scarcely interact with the rest of the institution, he said.
“We’re coming to this reckoning moment,” Weinstein added. “Universities going to be faced with this reality that they have more administrators than they can support or justify, and it’s not going to be pleasant.”