• Public school enrollment decreased by 3% during the last school year. Homeschooling rates doubled to over 11% of the total school-aged population. Families in areas with perpetually closed public schools, but fully open private schools, eagerly transferred their children.
• State legislators recognized the soaring demand for educational options, and expanded or created new school choice programs in 20 states in 2021.
• School choice policies empower parents, rather than school board officials or district bureaucrats, to direct their children’s education.
• School choice programs should be expanded everywhere so that all families possess purchasing power to direct their children’s educational path, rather than remain beholden to district inertia and negligence.

By: Ginny Gentles

• Under the cloak of buzzwords like “anti-racism”, equity, and inclusion, critical race theory has seeped into America’s most powerful institutions. As a result, efforts to beat it back will also need to be — in the favorite word of CRT scholars — systemic.
• Different institutions captured by the ideology, including education, government, corporations and the media, will require different strategies to purge the influence of CRT.
• E pluribus unum — “out of many, one” — isn’t just a motto of the United States that appears on our Great Seal, but presents our greatest challenge. CRT directs the country away from forming a “more perfect Union” between citizens of all racial backgrounds.

By: Inez Feltscher Stepman

• Many businesses have attributed hiring difficulties to the extra federal unemployment payments that continued even as the COVID emergency subsided.
• In a recent Harvard/HarrisX poll, an overwhelming 76% of Americans said people are “staying on unemployment because they can make more money.”
• Minimum wage hikes yield job losses and disincentivize hiring, especially among those who are less educated and with lower skills—people who need jobs the most.

By: Carrie Sheffield

• But nuclear is underutilized in the United States despite the increased calls to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
• Instead, environmental purists advocate for renewables only, such as the wind turbines that shut down when Texas faced freezing temperatures in February 2021.
• This has caused America’s nuclear power capabilities to remain at the same level for the past three decades while increased energy consumption has led to overall higher carbon emissions.

By: Kelsey Bolar & Charlotte Whelan

• States vary in their occupational licensing requirements, creating significant challenges for workers who cross state lines to keep their licenses in good standing.
  
• States should make every effort to eliminate excessive licenses or reduce the onerous requirements for licenses in their jurisdiction.
  
• States should conduct regular cost-benefit analyses of their licensing systems to determine if they truly serve a public good and remove any licensing requirements that do not.

By: Patrice Onwuka