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At a time when Americans are divided, patriotism is declining, and liberal democratic norms are threatened, working Americans, more than college-educated Americans, take appropriate pride in the special contributions of their country. The extreme right and left have for too long engaged in a seesaw of bad policies that foster illiberalism. Policymakers can and should nurture and foster the expansion of programs that will strengthen social cohesion, restore social mobility, and sustain American's grand experiment in self-governance. This in-depth Progressive Policy report outlines nine ideas local, state, and federal policymakers can adopt to help public schools -- and colleges -- return to the central goal of public education. The primary mission, encapsulated by the late president of the American Federation of Teachers, Albert Shanker, is to "teach children what it means to be an American," by which he meant "a common set of values and beliefs" expressed most vividly in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. This report is the seventh in a series of Campaign Blueprints that can help Democrats reconnect with the working-class voters who have historically been the party's mainstay.

Charter schools are public schools, free and open to all. Like traditional public schools, charter schools are prohibited from charging tuition, must not discriminate in admissions or be religious in their operation or affiliation, and are overseen by a public entity. There is a growing body of research highlighting the superior performance benefits of growing well-designed portfolio systems that include a mix of both traditional and charter public schools. This report's findings add credence to the long-stated supposition that public charter schools create a competitive dynamic that compels traditional district schools to upgrade their teaching and learning to maintain enrollment, so that conditions improve for all children. Another common explanation, as charter schools uncover better ways of motivating learning, other schools in that same geography then adopt those innovative practices. Or, an increase in school options to make it more common for parents to find a school that is the optimum fit for unlocking their child's potential. The report concludes with recommendations for further research into why increased public school choice lifts school quality and how cities that currently have even a small share of public charter school students can strengthen their gap-narrowing capacity. [Preface by Will Marshall.]

In the 21st century, education has become America's most significant marker of class privilege. People with bachelor's and advanced degrees have mostly prospered, while wages for those with less education have fallen. This divergence in economic fortunes lies at the heart of our country's present economic and political discontents. Federal and state policies remain strongly biased in favor of subsidies to Americans who go to college, specifically those who acquire a 4-year degree. The nation's chronic underinvestment in work-related learning, experiences, and supports is not just unjust, it is bad economics. It squanders our most precious resource -- our workers -- and subtracts from U.S. productivity growth and competitiveness. American workers deserve better than a binary choice between an overpriced college degree program and a patchwork of public and private job training programs of uneven quality. Instead, U.S. leaders should equalize opportunity for workers, regardless of what path they choose. This means building a world-class education system that is inclusive of all options, not just college, to ensure greater upward mobility for American workers. This report is the first in a series of Campaign Blueprints detailing new ideas that can help Democrats reach across today's yawning "diploma divide" and reconnect with the working-class voters who have historically been the party's mainstay.

America's labor market presents a paradox. Although the unemployment rate is just 3.9%, there are more jobs open than people who can fill them. Nationwide, there are roughly 68 workers for every 100 open jobs. Many factors contribute to this workforce shortage, but one of the most significant is a growing skills gap -- millions of workers across the economy are unprepared for in-demand employment opportunities. In construction and other industries, employers are hurting, desperate for talent, and looking for innovative ways to attract people to open positions. Recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) show that the construction industry currently has 407,000 job openings. This shortage is expected to grow, with a projected need for 723,000 workers annually due to economic expansion, worker retirements, and the changing skill needs driven by energy transitions and technological advancements. Some 88% of construction firms report having a hard time finding workers to hire. To address this challenge, employers in construction and other industries are investing in workforce development -- working to ensure current and future workers have the skills needed to succeed in high-demand careers. But employers can't do it alone. And although federal funding is available to support skill development, it is not nearly enough. Just $28.2 billion out of a total $139.5 billion allocated annually for postsecondary education and training is spent on workforce development. This policy brief estimates current federal spending on postsecondary workforce education and training and compares these funding levels to funding for traditional academic programs. This brief explores how investment in workforce education today compares to in investment in recent decades. Finally, it offers examples of how four states are investing in workforce education and offers policy recommendations for stakeholders and policymakers to consider for the future. [This report was co-produced by Procore with support from the Construction Advocacy Fund.]

Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) have been a catalyst for transformation in K-12 through initiatives, including diversifying teaching pipelines, starting new schools, and establishing programs designed to meet the aspirations of students far away from quality opportunities. HBCUs and their alumni have played powerful roles in K-12 public education, including charter schools. Alumni are leading outstanding charter learning institutions with exceptional student outcomes, and some HBCUs have partnered with charter schools in effective ways including integrating charter schools on their campuses. This arrangement provides students with a unique experience in which they are introduced to the promise and prestige of higher education earlier in their educational journey. Utilizing that expertise and record of achievement is especially important now. America's public schools lag behind those of our international competitors, both in terms of student attainment and educational equity. The lasting influences of a global pandemic, particularly for lower-income students and students of color, have magnified the challenges of our outdated K-12 system -- one that was not working well for many students even before COVID-19. This report examines the potential for HBCUs to make high-stakes decisions about who is able to start new public schools, what outcomes those schools should meet, and what to do when adults fail students.

Fewer young adults believe college is important, only about one-third of the American public has confidence in higher education. A recent study from Pew Research Center revealed that Americans are increasingly concerned about affordability, access, and the overall payoff of a college degree. Meanwhile, technological advances and AI have begun to change the world of work, altering the credentials and skills needed for success. Many Americans have come to believe that traditional degree programs do not meet these new industry demands. Public policy has not kept up with these changing demands. While dramatically expanding financial support for college students, Washington has chronically underinvested in workforce development and the ability for non-degree workers and learners to acquire in-demand skills. Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) believes "Super Pell" grants aimed at helping future and current workers acquire valuable in-demand skills can help bridge that gap. PPI scholar Paul Weinstein proposed reforming Pell to establish a single higher education grant that would be more generous, easier to access, and financed by folding the myriad of existing tax incentives and higher education spending programs into one offering. He later renamed it "Super Pell" and PPI added to the idea in 2019 in the progressive budget for equitable growth. This policy brief dives into why Super Pell is needed now, why this proposal is different than what's out there and action that has been done to date.

America's colleges and universities are at a crossroads. The number of schools closing their doors continues to grow driven by the declining number of students pursuing a bachelor's. This situation is expected to worsen because of a number of factors: (1) Starting in 2025 the U.S. will face the so-called "enrollment cliff," in which the population of college aid students will drop by 15% over four years. Colleges can expect to lose over 575,000 students over that four-year time span; (2) The strong labor market has led more high school graduates to delay indefinitely their pursuit of a bachelor's degree; and (3) Young Americans have become increasingly skeptical of the value of a college degree. The rising cost of college and the amount of debt students are required to take in order to graduate has re-enforced this viewpoint. Paul Weinstein, Jr. argues for schools to streamline their costs and pass some of the savings on to students in the form of increased scholarships, lower tuition, or a combination of both. Specifically, colleges could cut non-faculty positions by 1% per year over the next five years and use the savings to reduce tuition.

Nearly 1 in 5 U.S. students attend rural schools. However, during policy discussions, rural schools' unique challenges are often eclipsed by those of their urban and suburban counterparts. This report is a case study of an innovative, replicable public education experiment at three rural Texas high schools called the Rural Schools Innovation Zone2 (RSIZ). This first-of-its-kind experiment is a collaboration between three rural school districts focusing on college attainment and career pathways for the 21st-century job market.

Given the skyrocketing costs of higher education, some borrowers -- particularly those with low incomes and those who were scammed by for-profit colleges -- genuinely need assistance. But portraying student loan forgiveness as a working-class issue is highly misleading. In fact, data on student borrowing shows that debt relief benefits few working-class families, most of whom never attended college in the first place. This paper dives deeply into the evidence on the economic impact of student loan forgiveness. As the paper shows, proposals from political progressives to forgive all student loan debt (or large amounts such as $50,000 of debt) overwhelmingly benefit affluent Americans. President Biden departed from these more elitist proposals, yet his decision to forgive even a more limited amount is still puzzling. At a time when the economic returns to education are rising and the Democratic Party is losing noncollege voters, it makes little sense to target government aid to people who attended college. The paper goes on to examine the question of why the Democratic Party -- traditionally the party of working-class people -- has become so focused on canceling student loans.

Just decades ago, the internet was an entirely new concept, but it's become second nature for billions of people and is now embedded into daily life across the world. While the internet is old news, there are recent technologies like blockchain, artificial intelligence (AI), and the cloud that have gone from niche, specialized roles in the global economy to the mainstream. This rapid and widespread digitalization has changed the nature of work, and as a result, digital skills are now regarded as essential for the modern workforce. While demand for digital skills is growing, unfortunately supply is lower than it needs to be. Workforce shortages persist across the tech industry with employers struggling to find skilled talent that is prepared for digital roles. A 2021 Rand Corporation report found that the global digital skills gap was widening due to the following factors: tech talent outpacing an already short supply; high costs and disorganized approaches to traditional education that increase barriers to learning; access to digital infrastructure and skills limited by socio-economic status. These findings highlight the barriers confronting workers who want to acquire digital skills. Policymakers around the world need to tackle this problem, both to ensure their industries and businesses can keep pace with the rate and scale of technological innovation, but also to ensure current and future workers will have more opportunities to develop the skills needed to succeed in changing labor markets.

Apprenticeship is engrained in America's history -- three of the Founding Fathers started their careers as apprentices. Apprenticeship is a model employers can trust, helping to ensure talent is prepared for in-demand opportunities while also providing a quality postsecondary path for young Americans who are questioning the traditional four-year degree. It also is highly attractive to adult learners, who are older and have increased barriers to accessing and completing skill development opportunities due to child care or the need to keep working. Apprenticeships are the original work-education model, allowing adult learners to learn the skills they need without sacrificing a wage and providing education that is applied -- ensuring learning connects immediately to the workforce. To ensure more American workers and businesses benefit from these opportunities and keep pace with other partner nations, the country must dramatically scale up apprenticeship and create roughly 10 times more, reaching the end goal of 4 million apprentices in this country. To get to this number, it is not only a matter of boosting public investment, but also requires a new policy architecture in which public, nonprofit, and private intermediaries play a catalytic role in training and placing apprenticeships in companies. This report presents six key policy recommendations to encourage U.S. policymakers to adopt a novel approach toward scaling up U.S. apprenticeships.

Ascend Indiana is a nonprofit intermediary organization that connects Hoosiers to in-demand careers and regional employers to skilled talent, fostering cross-sector partnerships, building capacity, and developing insights that enable system-level change to transform the career trajectory of youth and adults in the community. As part of their efforts, Ascend partnered with EmployIndy, the local workforce board, to offer the Modern Apprenticeship Program (MAP). MAP is a three-year program designed to prepare Central Indiana high school students for the workforce with paid, hands-on experiences that complement their traditional academic coursework. This brief calls on policymakers to elevate innovative approaches across the country, like MAP in Indianapolis, that can be replicated and scaled. It also offers policy recommendations, calling on leaders to adopt solutions that: ensure every high school student can participate in high-quality work-based learning, boost public investment, and make these resources more effective and build strong cross-sector partnerships, which are critical for these efforts to succeed. This work is more important now than ever to ensure the nation's education system creates paths to greater economic opportunity and avoids leaving millions of young people behind, especially those who don't go to college.

The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world, and as many as a third of Americans have some type of criminal record. Upon reentry, individuals with a justice history, whom referred as returning citizens, face significant barriers to economic security and reintegration into their communities. Among the most formidable barriers to reentry are a disadvantaged living environment, low levels of education, mental health challenges, and stigma that excludes them from job opportunities and other resources. All of these factors contribute to a high recidivism rate among returning citizens and make it harder for them to secure employment. Entrepreneurship presents a promising pathway to economic security and reintegration into communities as it requires minimal formal schooling, provides additional income and control over their livelihoods, and has the potential to uplift the often-low-income communities to which these individuals return. While entrepreneurship has great potential to reduce recidivism and promote economic stability, returning citizens have to overcome several hurdles in their entrepreneurship endeavors, ranging from a lack of access to capital, collateral consequences of having a criminal record, a digital skills gap, and limited access to wraparound support services. The paper will highlight two entrepreneurship training initiatives in Missouri and Washington, D.C. [This paper is a collaboration with the Association for Enterprise Opportunity (AEO).]

In August, the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) released the grimmest "Nation's Report Card" in 20 years. Between 2020 and 2022, America's students dropped five points in reading and seven points in math. At a time when there is empirical evidence that America's students are struggling -- the NAEP scores are just one indicator -- it seems timely to take a deeper dive into the widely reported teacher shortage. This report examines the current teacher shortage. There is controversy about its severity and data is missing from several states. There is, however, a plethora of data to learn from regarding teachers' attitudes toward their profession. The case is also made for evolving the nature of more American school systems into a "portfolio model" so that more teachers have the opportunity to flex their autonomy. Finally, the report examines some common roadblocks (and some pragmatic strategies to get around them) to creating 21st century autonomous schools. These schools are more likely to provide teachers with enhanced opportunities to innovate in the classroom in the quest of student success. Given the Nation's Report Card and other serious fallout from the response to the pandemic, there is no time to lose.