• Recent parental dissatisfaction with the K-12 public school system—over curriculum, staffing, masking policies, and much more—should caution against more federal oversight in the daycare sector.
• The Biden administration’s Build Back Better’s childcare provisions would give the federal government the biggest role in childcare programs, introducing regulations that would increase the costs of operation and attendance, and reduce diversity of childcare.
• Although advertised as a means to improve life outcomes for children, government childcare and preschool programs have failed to produce long term benefits.

By: Carrie Lukas

• New rules proposed by the Biden administration codify an overbroad definition of unlawful sexual harassment, despite Supreme Court warnings about the limits of Title IX. 
• In additon, and without congressional or constitutional authority, the proposed rules unilaterally redefine the word “sex” to include “gender” and “gender identity.”
• Combined, these two distortions of Title IX encourage all schools that receive federal money to punish unpopular viewpoints on sex, gender, sex roles, gender identity, or pronoun usage.
• At least with respect to public schools, the new rules raise serious First Amendment concerns.

By: Jennifer C. Braceras & Heather Madden

• Unbanked and underbanked Americans are left vulnerable amid record inflation and financial regulatory policies that restrict access to non-traditional banking services.
• While most Americans use banks for their monetary needs, the Financial Deposit Insurance Corporation estimated that 5.4 percent of U.S. households (about 7.1 million) were unbanked in 2019.
• Non-Asian minorities, low-income households, less-educated households, young households, and households with disabled members are more likely than others to be  unbanked, according to the FDIC. Barriers to accessing other financial resources impact these groups the most.

By: Carrie Sheffield

• Covid-era education policies compounded an already dire literacy crisis. Students entered the pandemic with weak academic skills, with only one-third of students reading proficiently and less than one-quarter of 12th graders proficient in math in 2019.
• According to a McKinsey study, students didn’t just miss out on academic knowledge: “They are at risk of finishing school without the skills, behaviors, and mindsets to succeed in college or in the workforce.”
• Children are Covid’s lowest-risk demographic, but K-12 students have suffered the most throughout the pandemic at the hands of negligent school district officials and powerful teachers unions.
  

By: Ginny Gentles

• The most American form of environmentalism is conservation, typically defined by public-private partnerships, deregulation, and market solutions to environmental problems.
• Conservation calls for wise use of natural resources while advancing policies that equally bolster nature and people.
• While the federal government is impeding environmental progress, conservation is succeeding at the state and local levels due to public-private partnerships and market solutions.

By: Gabriella Hoffman