Education Policy Program Overview
The U.S. spends more per pupil than virtually all other nations, yet the educational performance of even the best American students lags behind those of developed and even developing nations. We suffer from unacceptable gaps in achievement across racial and class lines, and wide disparities in the quality of education offered from state to state, school district to school district, and even among schools within a single district. Productive citizenship in the 21st century requires far greater technical skills, scientific literacy and civic sophistication than our current educational infrastructure provides.
New America’s Education Policy Program focuses on modernizing our systems of school finance, teaching and learning, and college financial aid. The program proposes comprehensive changes to education policy from pre-kindergarten to graduate school, so that all Americans can benefit from extended learning time, improved teaching and curricula, and full and fair access to primary, secondary, and higher education.
New Policy Solutions
Closing the international, racial and economic achievement gaps in our education system has become hostage to our dysfunctional politics. While Republicans emphasize private market forces and policies and Democrats seek to bolster public schools, neither party offers a comprehensive set of reforms necessary to ensure that our greatest asset—the next generation—reaches its fullest potential. To overcome this challenge, the Education Policy Program offers bold and innovative solutions in six key areas:
Early Education. Early education should support children’s cognitive and social development from ages three through eight. Federal and state policies should expand and enhance the coordination of programs and services from Pre-K through the third grade—using high-quality teaching practices that integrate families fully into their children’s education. Our Pre K-3 effort is supported by the Foundation for Child Development.
School Finance Reform. Mississippi’s average per pupil expenditure is $5,800 while New Jersey’s is almost $13,000 per year—a disparity replicated across the nation. Meanwhile, the federal role in elementary and secondary education, widely thought to be small and progressive, is in fact large and regressive when the tax policies that support it are taken into account. New America develops and promotes federal policies that support school finance equity within districts, among districts, and across states, ensuring that students attending schools in poorer districts have educational resources and opportunities on a par with those in wealthier school systems.
National Standards. There are fifty sets of academic content and performance standards in use in the fifty states, almost all of which are lower than OECD norms (and they are wildly uneven from state-to-state as well). New America promotes the adoption of higher national standards and the use of curricula with a demonstrated track record of success in order to facilitate higher student achievement.
Extended Learning Time. Ask America’s teachers their biggest challenges and high on their list will be inadequate time for learning. New America promotes policies that extend learning time during the day and throughout the year in order to improve educational achievement, in a manner that could serve as a compromise on the divisive issue of school vouchers.
Teacher Accountability. Teacher quality is the number one indicator of student success in grades K-12. New America challenges the status quo by promoting modernization of teacher recruitment, pay, and placement policies at the federal, state, and local levels.
College Access. America’s college financial aid system is insufficient, antiquated, and opaque. Whereas teacher quality is the number one indicator of K-12 success, for those who do pursue post-secondary training, high school curricular rigor is the number one indicator of college completion. New America advances innovative changes to higher education policy to expand student financial aid, modernize the delivery of grants and student loans, and hold institutions of higher education accountable for student access and success.
Education Budget Project
Our Education Budget Project informs and compliments our proposed policy solutions by analyzing the financing, quality, and cost-effectiveness of various federal initiatives—including each year’s federal education budget, appropriations legislation, education-related tax policy changes, and mandatory spending on student loans. Such analysis will serve as an important reality check in the education debate, exposing the real world impact of proposed policies and budgets. In the process, New America will convene a diverse and bipartisan array of academics, interest group representatives and others to build consensus around better approaches for reinventing our nation’s ailing education system.
