This morning, Americans woke up to the latest scores from the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), tests taken by students in 63 countries and other jurisdictions in fourth grade and 45 in eighth grade. The United States has participated since the exams began in 1995.

In fourth-grade math, the US average hit its lowest level in the history of the exam: 517, dipping below the previous 1995 and 2003 low of 518.

In eighth-grade math, the average hit its lowest point: 488, dipping below the previous low of 492. Note, however, that the United States did not hit the TIMSS guidelines for sample participation rates, so the results should be taken with a grain of salt.

The country hit another low in fourth-grade science, with an average score of 532.

Finally, in eighth-grade science, the country tied its previous low of 513, set again at the very beginning of TIMSS testing. As with math, these results should be viewed with caution due to low participation rates.

In terms of international standing, the United States is middling. Looking at eighth grade, which accounts for students having spent more time in the American education system than fourth, the country finished below nations such as Italy and Romania but above Israel and France. The top performers (not shown) were Singapore, Chinese Taipei—not all of China—and South Korea. The United States scored above 18 systems and below 19.

In science, the United States was closer to the top, below countries such as Ireland and Sweden, and above Austria and Italy. The top performers (again, not shown) were Singapore, Chinese Taipei, and Japan. US students scored better than 27 systems and below 11.

All things equal, we do not want to see US scores go down—indeed, hitting near 30-year lows. This is especially the case when we look at public school per-pupil spending, which, adjusted for inflation, rose from $12,366 in the 1994–95 school year to $18,614 in 2020–21, a 51 percent increase.

But things are not always equal. The most likely explanation for the country’s major drop is the COVID-19 epidemic, especially the long lockdowns of some schools. But our scores have been dropping largely since 2015, when the No Child Left Behind Act, which focused the entire public schooling system on standardized testing, was replaced by the Every Student Succeeds Act. The country’s decreased emphasis on standardized testing generally could be reflected in this particular standardized test. And a diminished focus on standardized testing might not necessarily be bad. Much of what people want from education—fostering creative thinking, building character, and more—is not well captured by standardized tests. And if rising scores reflected standardized testing strategies more than rising knowledge, they might have given us false signals.

Of course, we would like to see test scores rise. But we should not panic: We need to investigate these scores more deeply to understand what produced them, and standardized tests are limited in what they can tell us about education quality.

Note: This post updates last month’s post. The biggest changes from last month include: Split the HEA plan into two parts to account for the newly proposed hardship plan, and adding the latest batch of loans forgiven, $4.5B via the Public Service Loan Forgiveness plan.

Mass student loan forgiveness is terrible policy (see this report for a comprehensive list of reasons), but that hasn’t stopped the Biden administration from trying to forge ahead. While the Supreme Court overturned the administration’s student loan forgiveness plan, every few weeks the administration announces another batch of loans that have been forgiven. The administration recently celebrated that, since taking office, it has succeeded in forgiving $180 billion of student loans for 4.8 million borrowers by transferring the financial burden from the students who took out the loans to taxpayers who did not. And they aren’t going to stop—the administration’s spokeswoman declared, “President Biden has vowed to use every tool available to cancel student debt for as many borrowers as possible, as quickly as possible.” Biden himself stated, “I will never stop working to cancel student debt— no matter how many times Republican elected officials try to stop us.”

But if student loan forgiveness lost in the Supreme Court, how are so many student loans still being forgiven? The answer is that there isn’t a student loan forgiveness plan. There are many plans, some of which are already up and running. Previous laws had already left numerous methods to forgive student loans, and many of those laws may give the Secretary of Education the ability to expand those programs. 

The administration is also claiming that existing law gives it the authority to create new ways to forgive student loans. So the student loans the Biden administration already has or wants to forgive are a combination of existing programs, existing programs the Biden administration has expanded, and new programs the administration is seeking to implement.

Here’s a rundown of the administration’s student loan forgiveness plans and actions, which I’ll update monthly.

HEROES (new plan, overturned in court)

This was the big plan that got a lot of attention in 2022 and 2023. The plan was to forgive $10,000 for borrowers making less than $125,000, and $20,000 for borrowers who received a Pell Grant, at a total cost of $469 billion to $519 billion. The alleged authority for the plan was the 2003 HEROES Act. While designed to alleviate loan-related hardships for soldiers and reservists serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, the law also covered national emergencies, and the Biden administration argued the COVID-19 emergency gave it the authority to forgive virtually everyone’s loans. 

Most observers were skeptical of this supposed authority, but it was not clear who had standing to sue (standing is the requirement that those filing the suit have a concrete injury from the policy). The companies that service student loans would be the most obvious injured party. But there was a perception that the Biden administration would punish any servicer that challenged the policy in court, a perception that now appears accurate.

Fortunately, the Supreme Court ruled that Missouri had standing to sue (due to a quasi-public student loan servicer that would lose revenue under the plan) and that the plan violated the major questions doctrine (which holds that there needs to be clear congressional authorization for programs of substantial economic or political significance), preventing the policy from being implemented.

Higher Education Act (new plan—forthcoming, partially paused by courts)

Immediately after losing on HEROES, the Biden administration announced a new effort that would use authority under the Higher Education Act. The administration announced the new plan split into two parts.

HEA Plan Part 1

The first part would

• Waive unpaid interest;
• Forgive debt for those who have repaid for 20 years (25 years if there is debt for graduate school);
• Forgive debt for those who attended a low-financial value program (e.g., programs or colleges that fail the Cohort Default Rate or Gainful Employment); and, 
• There is also a plan to release additional regulations soon that will forgive debt for those undergoing financial hardship.

There are a several problems with this plan, which the Penn Wharton Budget Model estimates will cost $84 billion. The public comment window on the proposed regulations recently concluded, and the administration is now considering those comments and will issue final regulations, with a goal to start forgiving debt this fall. Once finalized, this plan will likely be overturned by the courts for two main reasons. First, it is likely to run afoul of the major questions doctrine, just as the HEROES plan did. Second, the Supreme Court recently overturned Chevron deference, which held that courts should defer to executive agencies when a statute was ambiguous. 

With major questions and no Chevron deference, it is hard to imagine the courts allowing the administration to stretch vague clauses in old laws into vast new powers authorizing billions of dollars in forgiveness.

However, much of this forgiveness is easy to implement, so a key question was whether a court injunction would come fast enough to prevent the administration from forgiving billions of debt before the courts can determine whether the regulations are legal. The Biden administration was preparing to move quickly to present the plan as a fait accompli the moment the final plan was released by immediately forgiving billions in loans, but fortunately, several state attorney generals saw what was happening and filed lawsuits to stop it. There has been some legal back and forth. But as things stand right now, a court injunction prevents the Department from forgiving any loans under the new regulations until the courts have ruled on their legality. 

HEA Plan Part 2

The second part of the plan focuses on forgiveness for students experiencing economic hardship. The administration’s proposed plan involves two pathways to forgiveness.

Under the first pathway, the Department would forgive loans for any borrower that it estimates is likely (80 percent chance or greater) to default on their loans within the next two years. This raises several new problems, in addition to the standard arguments against student loan forgiveness. One, the Department would be forgiving loans today based on what it thinks will happen in the future. This Minority Report approach to spending billions of dollars is a bad idea. Two, if their crystal ball is wrong, there could be lots of debt forgiven that shouldn’t be, and lots of debt that should be forgiven that isn’t. Three, to estimate the likelihood of default, the Department would use 17 data points. Most of these are already known before the student even takes out the loan. As Jason Delisle notes, the estimate is “based on many factors known when the loan is made, taken right from the FAFSA and school’s data … people will now ask if those loans should be made in the first place. It’s like the Biden admin is saying ‘We can look at the FAFSA and the school and program you’re attending and determine if you qualify for our new loan forgiveness program before you even borrow $1.’” If that’s the case, shouldn’t the government stop making those loans?

Under the second pathway, students could apply for forgiveness by claiming hardship, and the Secretary could approve forgiveness based on a holistic assessment. The current Secretary would likely approve any application, given that the administration’s stated goal is to “cancel student debt for as many borrowers as possible, as quickly as possible.”

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that part two of the HEA plan could cost up to $600 billion.

The proposed rules are still open to public comment until early December. After that, it will be a race against the clock to see if the Department can finalize the rule before President Biden leaves office in January. Much like the part one, much of this forgiveness can be done very quickly once the rule is finalized, so state attorney generals need to be ready to sue immediately upon finalization (or like with part one, before finalization if the Department again appears to be trying to forgive debt the day the rule is finalized).

SAVE (new plan, paused by the courts)

Before diving into this one, it is important to understand the concept of income driven repayment (IDR). Under traditional (mortgage) style loan repayment, the amount and length of repayment are fixed (e.g., $200 a month for 10 years). For the past few decades, the federal government has been introducing IDR plans in which the amount repaid each month varies based on the borrower’s current income and the length of repayment varies based on how fast they repay their loan. The key features of an income driven repayment plan are:

• the share of income owed each month (e.g., 20 percent);
• the income exemption that is protected from any repayment obligation (e.g., the poverty line); and,
• the cap on length of repayment (e.g., 25 years).

IDR is a great idea, providing borrowers with better consumption-smoothing across their lifetime and flexible repayment, which helps avoid defaults due to short-term liquidity constraints.

But we’ve also botched the implementation. To begin with, a cap on the length of repayment is completely inappropriate. Income driven repayment ensures that payments are always affordable, and borrowers who make so little they do not repay will receive de facto forgiveness even without the cap, so there is no justification for a cap on the length of repayment.

The other problem with how we’ve implemented income driven repayment is political: the plans are tailor-made to allow politicians to give constituents big benefits today while sticking future taxpayers with the bill. It is, therefore, no surprise that these plans have grown more generous over time. The first IDR plan, introduced in 1994, had an income exemption equal to the poverty line, a share of income owed of 20%, and a cap on length of 25 years. Very few borrowers would receive forgiveness under these terms, and of those who did, they really wouldn’t have been able to repay regardless of whether they received forgiveness. The Obama administration introduced plans with an income exemption of 150% of the poverty line, a share of income owed of 10%, and a cap on length of payment of 20 years.

The Biden administration’s Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) plan took an existing plan (the REPAYE plan) and made it much more generous. It changes the share of income owed from 10% to 5%; increases the income exemption from 150% of the poverty line to 225%; and caps the length of repayment at as little as 10 years for some borrowers. By cranking every possible lever to the most generous settings in history, this plan would impose massive costs on taxpayers, estimated at $475 billion for just the next 10 years.

The legal questions facing this plan are the reverse of the HEROES plan. For the HEROES plan, the main obstacle was standing. Once that hurdle was cleared, it was fairly obvious that the plan was well beyond what Congress had authorized. But for the SAVE lawsuits, this is reversed. Standing is easily established (for Missouri at least), but the plan does have a much stronger argument of being within the parameters of the law. 

Mark Kantrowitz thinks SAVE will be upheld, while Michael Brickman did yeoman’s work digging up details on page 18,909 of the 1993 Congressional Record that may lead to SAVE being scrapped. Jason Delisle also recently released a fascinating report on the legal foundation of SAVE. He argues that “the Biden administration has claimed legal authority far outside what Congress intended when it enacted the law.” In particular, he argues that

• “Lawmakers assumed that the IDR plan the secretary would create would entail minimal or no budget costs” whereas SAVE may cost up to half a trillion dollars over 10 years.
• “Lawmakers assumed that the secretary would set loan forgiveness at 20 or 25 years, but not earlier as SAVE does. Moreover, loan forgiveness was clearly an afterthought in the original debates” whereas it is the central feature of SAVE.
• “Lawmakers believed that appropriate monthly payments in an IDR plan should be much higher than those in the SAVE plan.” 

The Supreme Court’s overturning of Chevron deference is also likely to affect these cases in a major way. Now that courts are no longer required to defer to executive agencies when statutory language is ambiguous, it will be much harder to convince courts that the president spending close to half a trillion dollars over the next ten years on this plan is consistent with congressional intent.

Parts of the SAVE plan have already been implemented, and full implementation was scheduled for July 2024. The plan has already forgiven “$5.5 billion for 414,000 borrowers.” However, there are two lawsuits that seek to overturn the plan, one by Kansas and ten other states (though a court ruled that only three of the states had standing to sue), and another by Missouri and six other states. An injunction from the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals (in the Missouri case) has paused implementation of the entire SAVE plan pending resolution of the case.

In sum, the chances of SAVE surviving the court challenges have declined dramatically over the past year. When it was first introduced, many analysts thought it had the best chance of being upheld in court, but the recent injunction, the overturning of Chevron deference, and the work by Brickman and Delisle on congressional intent leave SAVE much more vulnerable legally than most thought would be the case a year ago.

Student Loan Payment Pause (Existing and extended plan, now expired)

When COVID-19 hit in March 2020, student loan payments were paused. The pause was supposed to last two months but ended up lasting three-and-a-half years after Trump extended it once and Biden extended it six times.

The payment pause resulted in two costs to taxpayers.

First, while no interest accrued on student loans (around $208 billion of interest was waived), the government had to borrow more money to make up for the lack of payments (recall that the government is the lender for student loans) and the government paid interest on that extra borrowing. Thus, even if students eventually repay everything, there is still a cost for taxpayers.

Second, recall that IDR plans (unnecessarily) cap the length of repayment, and the pause counted towards that cap. In other words, for any student that does not fully repay before they hit the length of repayment cap, payments weren’t paused, they were waived. We won’t know for many years how many students had their payments forgiven rather than postponed.

New research from Sylvain Catherine, Mark Pérez Clanton, and Constantine Yannelis finds that the substantial inflation and counting of the pause towards the cap on repayment reduced the present value of future student repayments by around 25%.

There is virtually no chance for this burden on the taxpayer to be reversed. The only good news is that the payment pause ended, with most borrowers restarting payments in October 2023.

Public Service Loan Forgiveness (Existing and extended plan, still active)

The Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program was established during the George W. Bush administration and allowed for public and nonprofit workers to receive forgiveness after 10 years of repayment when they used an IDR plan. While I object to PSLF in principle (as a distorting and non-transparent subsidy for the government and nonprofit sectors) and due to the windfalls these borrowers receive (an average of over $70,000 per beneficiary), because PSLF legally exists, it should operate as seamlessly as possible. 

The Biden administration granted many waivers and other changes to increase the number of borrowers who could benefit under PSLF. For example, the administration introduced a waiver that allowed for payments made under non-IDR plans to count toward the payment limit (previously, only payments made while enrolled in an IDR plan counted). Some of these changes were good in the sense that they more faithfully implemented the law, but the administration crossed some lines too. 

In particular, it started counting some types of deferment as payments (borrowers can get deferment when they cannot afford to make payments, which generally allows the borrower to temporarily postpone payments though interest continues to accrue). The whole point of deferment is to temporarily avoid making payments. So for the Biden administration to give borrowers credit for making payments when they were in deferment is logically, morally, and potentially legally wrong (Cato was part of lawsuit seeking to end this abuse, but the case was thrown out when a court ruled the policy didn’t directly affect Cato enough to satisfy standing requirements). The administration also waived income requirements, making more people eligible for the program. 

The Biden administration has forgiven $79 billion for one million borrowers under these programs, which works out to around $73,000 per borrower. By comparison, a formerly homeless student who receives the maximum Pell Grant for four years would get less than $30,000 in Pell Grants. Some of this would have been forgiven even if the administration hadn’t made any changes to the program, but not all of it. In the future, these burdens on the taxpayer can be reduced by rolling back some of the administrative changes, but eliminating the program entirely would require legislation. 

Borrower defense to repayment (Existing and extended plan, still active, though recent changes are paused during a court case)

When a college engages in fraud or severely misleads students, borrowers can have their debt forgiven under “borrower defense to repayment.” This is reasonable, as victims of fraud should have some recourse. It is also extremely rare because a college would not just need to dupe a student but would also need to fool a state, an accreditor, and the US Department of Education, as all three are required to sign off on the legitimacy of a college before its students can take out student loans. As the House Committee on Education & the Workforce noted, “for the first 20 years of the rule, there were 59 claims.”

However, the federal government can claw back debt forgiven from the responsible college. This makes borrower defense to repayment an incredibly powerful tool for progressives in their war on for-profit colleges. If a for-profit college can be declared to have substantially misled students, they can be ruined financially by the claw backs. Indeed, new regulations from the Biden administration would make it much easier to conclude a college engaged in misconduct. As the White House gloated, “Less than $600 million in debt relief had been approved through borrower defense, closed school discharges, and related court settlements from all prior administrations combined, compared to the $22.5 billion approved under the Biden-Harris Administration alone.” Some of this was done outside the law. For example, $5.8 billion of debt for Corinthian College’s students was forgiven even if students didn’t submit a borrower defense claim. The administration has promised to forgo claw backs on much of it (likely in part to avoid giving affected colleges standing to oppose the changes in court).

The good news is that any further forgiveness under the new regulation is on hold due to an injunction from the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals (this injunction applies to the closed school discharge plan as well).

Closed School Discharge (Existing and extended plan, still active though recent changes are paused during a court case)

Borrowers whose school closes while they are still enrolled or shortly after they have withdrawn can have their student loans forgiven. The Biden administration imposed new regulations that loosened the requirements and has used this as an excuse to forgive other loans as well. For example, Biden forgave $1.5 billion in debt for students from ITT Technical Institute, even if they didn’t qualify for a discharge. Further forgiveness under the new regulations has been paused by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals until courts determine whether the new regulations are legal. However, the administration can still forgive loans under the previous iteration of these regulations.

Total and Permanent Disability Discharge (Existing and extended plan, active)

Borrowers who are unable to work due to a permanent disability can have their loans forgiven. Historically this was very rare. And to protect against fraud, the income of borrowers who had their debt forgiven was monitored to ensure that they really couldn’t work. The Biden administration both expanded eligibility and dropped fraud detection efforts. In particular, in 2021, regulations were introduced that “provided automatic forgiveness for borrowers who were identified as eligible for a total and permanent disability discharge through a data match with the Social Security Administration. The Department had been using such a match for years to identify eligible borrowers but required them to opt in to receive relief.” Switching to the opt-out model dramatically increased the number of borrowers receiving forgiveness. As a result of these changes, forgiveness under total and permanent disability discharge to spike from negligible amounts to $16.2 billion for 572,000 borrowers.

Waiving Interest

Another method the Biden administration is using to forgive loans is to waive interest. This plan is somewhat unique in that it is usually a component of another forgiveness plan, but the goal and methods are unique enough to warrant its own category.

Waiving interest has been implemented primarily through three mechanisms. The first was the student loan payment pause, which as noted above waived interest for three-and-a-half years. The second were regulations that took effect in July 2023 that “ceased capitalizing interest in all situations where it is not required by statute (87 FR 65904). This includes when a borrower enters repayment, exits a forbearance, leaves any IDR plan besides Income-Based Repayment (IBR), and enters default.” And the third is the SAVE repayment plan, which waives any unpaid interest.

Conclusion

In sum, the Biden administration has been the most aggressive in history regarding student loan forgiveness. Despite many setbacks, the administration has cancelled a massive amount of debt ($180 billion and counting), with most of the burden on taxpayers still to come from future repayments that will no longer be made. And while many of its attempts to forgive student loans have been stymied, there are still many active plans in play, with more on the horizon. 

Project-based learning sounds great … until you realize you have to find or create the projects for your learners. That’s where Rock by Rock comes in. Jeff Imrich and Sung-Ae Yang, experienced teachers and school leaders, created Rock by Rock to increase access to project-based learning. “For a lot of kids, what we do traditionally for learning isn’t working for them,” says Jeff. “We know that one of the best ways to prepare kids for the future and develop all these critical thinking and other skills is through project-based learning.”

Jeff and Sung-Ae had collectively helped design and open seven different school models, and families kept asking how they could support their children’s education at home. They began thinking of ways to make high-impact project-based learning more equitably accessible, across the income spectrum and regardless of schooling model. “We started prototyping with homeschool families, and then the pandemic hit. Then we were working with some homeschool families, some microschools called pods, and some more traditional educators,” says Jeff.

Initially, Rock by Rock sent projects-in-a-box that included a mission—like save the elephants or help address traumatic brain injury—along with the supplies needed to complete the project as part of a four-to-six-hour experience. They got very positive feedback with parents reporting their kids were really engaged in the projects and they were having interesting conversations around the dinner table.

They also received a lot of tips on how to improve, such as: “Our kids love it, but I don’t need the scissors, the markers, and the glue—I have that in my magic homeschool cabinet.” “We don’t want just a four-to-six-hour experience; we want a deeper project-based experience.” “When you send us a project, it’s great. But we have to do the project you sent us. Can you make it a library so we can choose with our kids what we want to do and when we want to do it?”

Jeff and Sung-Ae took that input and created an online library of on-demand projects, with some geared toward grades K‑2 and others to grades 3–5. Parents and teachers have the flexibility to mix up ages in the way that works best in their situation. “We have some families where a fifth grader will work with their second-grade sibling or a microschool will do one project for K‑5 and they’ll sort of dial up or down depending on the kids,” says Jeff.

“All of the projects are real-world topics. Sleep inventions look at the Earth, science, seasons, and patterns of motion. But it does it through the lens of how that impacts our sleep and how we can improve our sleep,” Jeff explains. “Ugly food, Hungry people looks at the science standards related to seed dispersal and plants, but it does it through the lens of food sustainability. Kids do an action to address an issue of hunger in the community when they learn about food waste and ways that we can use food more wisely. So they’re all real-world topics that empower kids to do something with what they’re learning.”

When families or schools purchase a Rock by Rock membership, they receive access to the entire library of projects as well as teacher training and resources to help them manage the projects and go beyond them when there is interest. The lessons are interactive and incorporate videos, games, readings, and hands-on activities. The extension resources include data collection posters to help students understand the importance of data and ways to share it with others, a debate planning guide, and a songwriting template to help kids write simple songs to accompany their projects.

Every membership also includes virtual field experiences that give students the chance to engage with an expert in the field and be exposed to different careers. “On December 12, we’re doing a visit with the Tanganyika Wildlife Park in Wichita, where kids can zoom in and meet Penguins live and talk to a zookeeper. We’re doing a rainforest virtual field trip to meet the animals at the Birmingham Zoo in January because we have a rainforest project. We have our Save Our Brains project. So in February, Doctor Jones is doing a live sheep’s brain dissection and talking about what it’s like to become a neuroscientist,” says Jeff.

Critical thinking, problem-solving, collaboration, and creativity are crucial skills that often aren’t built in conventional schools where, Jeff notes, success equals compliance. “I followed the steps, I got the predictable outcome, check,” he says. “We know that kids need reading and math for sure, but they also need to apply it in real-world ways that actually solve real-world problems. With the advent of AI, these 21st-century skills are even more important.” He’s heard from second-grade teachers who give their students open-ended tasks and they have no idea what to do. “How are we at a place where a second grader has already unlearned curiosity and the way to explore in the world?” Jeff asks. He and Sung-Ae created Rock by Rock to bring project-based learning to more students to help solve that problem.

In a bit of a surprise to education watchers, former World Wrestling Entertainment CEO Linda McMahon has been nominated to be the new US Secretary of Education. It comes amidst a renewed push to eliminate the unconstitutional and ineffectual federal Department of Education.

Will McMahon tear the place down?

That’s the wrong question. The right one points to why it is not all that important who the education secretary is.

Neither the secretary, nor her boss the president, gets to unilaterally decide to raze the Department of Education. To end it, Congress must pass a law dissolving it, and then the secretary executes the law. Indeed, that is the job of the executive branch overall—to execute the law, not to make it, which administrations seem to forget all the time.

Hopefully, that is what the Trump administration will do: Work to persuade Congress to pass legislation dissolving the department, sure, but focus on executing the law as it is and not remaking it through executive action, as the Biden administration has tried to do egregiously with federal student loans and, perhaps more arguably, Title IX.

The main thing the secretary should be—until the job is ended—is a good administrator. Current Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona appears to have failed in this regard, most pointedly with the disastrous simplification of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. Indeed, running federal student aid is the biggest Department of Education function, and it has long been decrepit, perhaps because secretaries have never come from financial backgrounds. A good sign for McMahon is that she has had a successful business career, albeit running steel cage matches and not red tape machines. But she probably knows something about efficiency and effectiveness.

So should we be thrilled or depressed by McMahon’s nomination?

Neither. It is not the job of the secretary to drive the reforms we want. That is Congress’s job. But if and when Congress does the right thing and eliminates the US Department of Education, I hope there is a secretary in place to faithfully and efficiently do as the law commands. As of yet, I have no reason to believe that Linda McMahon is not that person.

President-elect Donald Trump has signaled an appetite for change with his new Department of Government Efficiency and various cabinet picks. While many federal programs and regulations need an overhaul, childcare policy is an overlooked area that is ripe for a new approach.

For parents of young children who utilize formal childcare, childcare is one of the most significant child-rearing costs. At the high end, annual infant care costs are quoted at an eye-popping $24,243 in Washington, DC, and $20,913 in Massachusetts. Historically, federal policymakers have tried to solve childcare affordability issues by doubling down and expanding childcare subsidies. Recently they have dug their heels in on this approach.

This fall, Representative Ro Khanna (D‑CA) proposed a bill capping childcare costs at $10 per day for all families earning less than $250,000 annually. Over the summer, Senators Tim Kaine (D‑VA) and Katie Britt (R‑AL) proposed expanding various existing childcare subsidies, including the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit (CDCTC).

Meanwhile, the Biden administration unsuccessfully proposed fully subsidizing some families’ childcare and capping other families’ childcare costs at 7 percent of income. Biden’s plan would have the government subsidizing childcare demand and supply (although the American Families Plan failed, some of the childcare ideas were rolled into a subsequent Biden executive order).

Proposals like these are enormously costly, raise the market price of care, and favor working families that use childcare over working families that don’t, like families with stay-at-home parents. Government policy should be neutral regarding family work-life decisions rather than favoring the dual-earner model.

The new administration would be smart to take a different approach and refocus on the root cause of high costs and waiting lists. A significant portion of access and affordability issues in the childcare sector are driven by restrictive local regulations, sometimes encouraged by federal policy. A variety of regulations are undoubtedly to blame, but research indicates that educational requirements for staff and staff-to-child ratios are especially important.

A simple comparison of state regulation and cost data supports this idea. For instance, as educational requirements increase for daycare center directors, the average cost of care nearly doubles. The average cost of infant care is $10,018 in states with no or minimal educational requirements, while the average cost is $19,354 for states that require a bachelor’s degree for daycare center directors.

The cost of childcare is also higher in states with restrictive educational requirements for daycare center teachers. The average cost of infant care in states without educational requirements is $9,586, and the average cost grows to $18,285 in states that require an associate’s degree for center teachers.

Just as greater educational requirements for would-be carers limit the supply of childcare staff, restrictive child-to-staff ratios and maximum group sizes limit the supply of “seats” at childcare centers. Data also support a link between these regulations and costs: the average cost of care nearly doubles as the child-to-staff requirement moves from 5 children per staffer to 3 children per staffer.

Regulators claim that these and other childcare regulations increase the quality of care. For instance, when Washington, DC, recently implemented a rule requiring that childcare providers have a college degree, supporters and officials argued that it would benefit DC’s disadvantaged children and that educational requirements would increase staff pay.

But increasing requirements so that some staffers lose their jobs is an ill-considered strategy for “raising” staff pay. More importantly, research indicates that regulating daycare reduces options for low-income families, who respond by sending their children to lower-quality home-based care. 

Rather than doubling down on failed policy, the incoming administration should focus on rolling back costly regulations that limit supply and access. It can revoke Biden’s childcare EO and use its influence to refocus the conversation on local government policy. 

For its part, Congress should eliminate federal laws that worsen credentialism in the childcare sector. It can start by removing the requirement that Early Head Start staff have a CDA and be trained in child development and that half of Head Start teachers have at least an associate’s degree in early childhood education or a related area. Local policymakers have admitted that federal policies like this have encouraged them to implement more restrictive childcare regulations locally. 

These reforms would constitute a radical change in the direction of childcare policy, and paired with serious efforts to reform local regulation, they would make a difference. 

“The more that I, as a parent, learned about Charlotte Mason principles, the more I realized that this woman was way ahead of her time,” says Andy Zawacki, Head of School at Arborbrook Christian Academy in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Arborbrook was founded in 2005 by four homeschooling families who wanted a Charlotte Mason-based education for their own children and others in the area. In the first year, it served 40 students K‑8, mostly homeschoolers. The school grew rapidly, both in enrollment and grades offered. By the fifth year there were 170 students in grades K‑11. “We’re at 270 students now without much room for more growth,” says Andy. “We currently have two sections of every grade in K‑7 and one section in the upper school, grades 8–12. But that trend is continuing, so K‑8 next year will have two sections. We’re looking to build a building to accommodate the growth.”

In the lower school, which includes grades K‑6, they have what they call Alpha and Omega time where they start and end their days with God. On Mondays and Wednesdays, they start with classroom devotions and prayer time. On Tuesdays and Thursdays they have assemblies. The classes rotate sharing about the chosen theme on Tuesdays and Andy generally shares a message building off that on Thursdays. Omega time at the end of each day for K‑6 is Bible class so they receive that right before they head home.

In between Alpha and Omega time, the day is full of short, fast-paced lessons. “We’re not rushing them, but we are moving them from subject to subject, special to special, ideal to ideal to give them a very robust feast throughout the school day that is all laced in the Charlotte Mason philosophy of education,” Andy explains. 

Arborbrook includes the academic coursework and enrichment classes that parents expect in a private school. But it’s the nature component that makes the school unique in the area. “As a Charlotte Mason school, this is part and parcel of her philosophies. Get children outside, get them learning, get them in the dirt, help them make observations,” says Andy. “We have a fantastic nature studies program where they’re growing their own gardens, they’re reaping the harvest from those, and having a salad party.”

The upper school, grades 7–12, follows a block schedule with Monday/​Wednesday classes and Tuesday/​Thursday classes that meet for 90 minutes. They have core subjects of math, English, history, science, and Bible. The other classes vary by grade. In junior high, they have a specials block and a writing workshop based on Charlotte Mason principles. High school juniors and seniors can take dual enrollment courses that give them high school and college credits.

There are also required classes meant to prepare students for life after high school. For example, freshmen take a special PE/​health class that combines practical, hands-on skills training and classroom instruction to provide basic foundational life skills in the area of fitness and health. Sophomores take a Christian leadership class with Andy. Juniors have a junior seminar class to walk them through the college application process. And seniors have an advanced apologetics class that Andy says includes “subjects not yet covered that they need before they launch out into the world.” 

On the dual enrollment front, Arborbrook has a rather unique program. Andy had a previous relationship with Ocean County College, a community college in New Jersey, so he asked them about partnering for dual enrollment. “We get certified as professors by the college, and we teach the courses embedded into our program here. So the students get college credit and high school credit while they’re here. They can graduate with 33 or 36 college credits just taking courses here. They also have online courses that they can take if they want,” Andy explains. The college already ran similar programs with local high schools, but Arborbrook is their only extension partner so far.

According to Andy, the North Carolina Opportunity Scholarship is helping Arborbrook families. Last year, the legislature made the program universal, meaning every North Carolina family is eligible to apply. Scholarship amounts are higher for lower-income families. However, under current funding levels, there is a waitlist of around 55,000 students who did not receive scholarships due to lack of funding. As funding increases, “that will be a big game changer for our school as a whole and I think every private school,” Andy says. “I never thought I’d see the day, but here we are on the precipice of it. That will be a tremendous blessing and change for our families.”

Andy is thankful that he found Charlotte Mason and has seen the fruits of the model in his own children. “I encourage parents to exercise your freedom to be able to find things that are out there that really resound with you as an educator or as a parent for your children’s education,” he says.

California voters decisively defeated an attempt to expand rent control, voters in eight of ten states looked favorably on abortion rights, school choice fared poorly, and Coloradans voted to impose an excise tax on firearms but not ban trophy hunting. Those were some of the notable results of last week’s crop of ballot measures around the country. I discussed them with Caleb Brown at the Cato Daily Podcast here. 

Some more details: 

• It was not an especially good day for advocates of drug freedom. Dallas voted for de facto marijuana legalization and Nebraska for medical cannabis. But Florida’s big marijuana measure, while earning a majority, fell short of the supermajority required (as did the state’s abortion rights measure). Massachusetts declined to legalize psychedelics. And in California, where Proposition 36 restored many of the higher crime penalties reduced by a 2014 initiative, drug crime penalties were among those affected. 
• It was a downright bad day for those of us who’d like to reform the way we hold elections. Primary reform, in particular, went down to defeat in at least five states, with the Alaska result still waiting on absentee ballots. For ranked choice voting standing on its own, it was more of a mixed bag, with Washington, DC, and several smaller municipalities saying yes but the state of Oregon declining. I’ll have more to say in another post. 
• Massachusetts voters went along with a measure meant to herd rideshare drivers into unions. The Service Employees International Union plowed $7 million into the campaign, against no organized opposition. A remarkable bit of background, via Ballotpedia: in June of this year Uber and Lyft agreed to settle a lawsuit brought by the state of Massachusetts over employment practices, and as one of the terms of the settlement they agreed to drop support for an initiative campaign that would have strengthened the rights of independent contractors against regulation in the state. Legally strong-arming private entities into giving up their right to petition for redress of grievances—no dangers to civil liberties there at all, am I right? 
• At the same time, Bay State voters said no to a plan to eliminate the tip credit on the state minimum wage. Restaurant workers in many states have spoken out against such schemes, which by discouraging tipping can actually reduce servers’ income. Arizona voters, on the other hand, declined to expand a tip credit. 
• Minimum wage laws remain popular, and left organizers have also found that voters in even conservative states like Alaska, Missouri, and Nebraska may look favorably on costly private employer mandates if sweetened with the term “earned,” as in “earned leave.” 

• Arizona voters missed a chance to do something genuinely useful, rein in their governor’s emergency powers by giving the legislature more of a say on them. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, about 10 states have moved to check emergency executive powers in this way, a reform which also has parallels at the federal level in debates over Presidents’ emergency powers.