Good morning:
Since the U.S. Department of Education was established in 1979 by President Jimmy Carter, Republican lawmakers and political leaders have wanted to eliminate it. “Better education doesn’t mean a bigger Department of Education,” President Ronald Reagan said in a 1983 radio address. “In fact, that department should be abolished.”
For now, the department still stands. But, as Christopher F. Rufo writes in City Journal, President Trump’s recent “blitz through federal departments” has been surprisingly effective. If the current president is serious about shrinking or abolishing DOE, Rufo lays out the steps to make it happen.
Education reform has been on the minds of other MI scholars this week, as well.
In the Wall Street Journal, Jason Riley explains how Trump and the Supreme Court can make great progress in expanding access to educational opportunities for all children through charter schools.
On the higher education front: Kristin D. Hultquist and Stephanie M. Murphy published a report on how public four-year colleges and universities can adapt to the rise of short-term microcredentials and better serve their students and state economies.
Adjunct fellow Eric Kaufmann warns in UnHerd that diversity, equity, and inclusion—or DEI—is an ideology that is getting further embedded into higher education in the United Kingdom, risking academic freedom and free expression for our cousins abroad.
Elsewhere at MI, fellow and CJ contributing editor Charles Fain Lehman published a first-person account of his visit to Kensington, Philadelphia, “the Walmart of Heroin.” His City Journal essay discusses what steps are necessary to successfully shut down an open-air drug market.
In a new report, Matt Logan, John Paul Wright, and MI’s director of policing and public safety Hannah E. Meyers explain the failure of most criminal rehabilitation programs and teach policymakers how not to be taken in by ideological blindness and bad science.
Finally, Jesse Arm, executive director of external affairs, conducted a two-part poll on the New York City mayoral race and wrote about the results—including former governor Andrew Cuomo’s big lead, and progressive policy priorities being out of favor—for the New York Post, with John Ketcham.
Continue reading for all these insights and more.
