The Conservative Education Reform Network (CERN) is a worthy initiative by AEI that brings together conservative leaders in education from across the United States. Its goal is to foster a national community focused on advancing conservative solutions in early childhood, K–12, and higher education. AEI founded CERN in 2021, at the height of wokeness, and "after the era of educational bipartisanship that defined the early 21st century unraveled."

And now they have published "Sketching a New Conservative Education Agenda," which is a compilation of their reports from the past four years. This is, of course, a very precious reform for education policy leaders, at the Federal and state level.

The report is divided into four main sections. Part I focuses on curriculum, school atmosphere, and culture, advocating for a return to an emphasis on excellence, civics, and the importance of fine arts in education. Part II addresses higher education, finance, and workforce pathways, exploring alternative models for student loans and apprenticeships. Part III discusses school choice and parental rights, arguing for the expansion of choice and parental empowerment. Part IV covers instruction, administration, and governance, promoting policies such as early childhood education and teacher spending accounts. So as you can see, it covers all aspects of education.

Here's a totally subjective outline of some of the sections we found most interesting.

In "National Citizenship Curriculum," Chester E. Finn Jr. argues that it's time for conservatives to support a national citizenship curriculum, based on the U.S. naturalization test, to address the lack of civics knowledge among Americans. He proposes a detailed curriculum that includes readings, lesson plans, and assessments, to be provided free of charge, to schools.  

In "Reclaiming Arts and Culture in Education," Christos A. Makridis and Soula Parassidis contend that arts education is declining in America, despite widespread agreement on its importance. They argue that the arts are an effective way to build noncognitive skills, such as habits, discipline, social skills, and language development. The authors suggest that state leaders should promote arts education by allocating COVID-19 relief funding for arts programs, providing vouchers for arts lessons, and linking arts to patriotic themes.  

In "The Benefits of a Weighted Education Savings Account Model," Jenny Clark makes an interesting proposal: that education savings accounts (ESAs) should use a weighted model to allocate funds. This model would adjust the amount of funds based on the needs of students, such as students with disabilities, to ensure that all students have access to appropriate education. She contends that this approach would affirm the dignity of each student, expand individual freedom, and strengthen the education market.  

In "Bringing the Joy Back to Education: Microschooling and Distance Learning," Matthew Ladner discusses one of the most interesting recent trends in education, which is microschooling, and talks about combining it with distance learning to create more engaging and community-oriented education environments. Notably, he cites the Success Academy charter school network's high-engagement distance learning model with Arizona's Prenda microschooling model, which emphasizes community and group projects.  

In "Three Principles for Conservative Early-Childhood Policy," Rick Hess, who is often featured here, and Michael Q. McShane argue that conservatives should engage more in early-childhood education policy, which is certainly right. They outline three principles for conservative early-childhood policy: controlling costs, expanding access, and supporting diverse arrangements.

Lots of other good stuff in there!

Policy News You Need To Know

#LaborMarket — The Atlantic's Derek Thompson is flagging worrying data that seems to suggest that AI has begun to eat entry-level jobs. "According to the New York Federal Reserve, labor conditions for recent college graduates have 'deteriorated noticeably' in the past few months, and the unemployment rate now stands at an unusually high 5.8 percent. Even newly minted M.B.A.s from elite programs are struggling to find work. Meanwhile, law-school applications are surging—an ominous echo of when young people used graduate school to bunker down during the great financial crisis. […] Consider, then, a novel economic indicator: the recent-grad gap. It’s the difference between the unemployment of young college graduates and the overall labor force. Going back four decades, young college graduates almost always have a lower—sometimes much lower—unemployment rate than the overall economy, because they are relatively cheap labor and have just spent four years marinating in a (theoretically) enriching environment. But last month’s recent-grad gap hit an all-time low. That is, today’s college graduates are entering an economy that is relatively worse for young college grads than any month on record, going back at least four decades."

#Medicaid — Brian Blase of Paragon Health Institute and Paul Winfree of EPIC have an op-ed out in the WSJ arguing for a reform of Medicaid to focus it on the needy. "Medicaid’s financing is fundamentally broken. Because of ObamaCare, the federal government pays $9 for every $1 of state spending on able-bodied working-age adults, compared with roughly $1.33 for pregnant women and disabled children. That incentive pushes states to favor healthy adults over the vulnerable in enrollment and access to providers and better services. States also use mechanisms such as the Medicaid provider tax to distort federal-state fiscal responsibility. States tax hospitals and insurers, then use that revenue to increase Medicaid payments back to the same entities. These inflated payments trigger higher federal matching funds. The result: States recycle money through the system and extract substantial federal money with little real state contribution." Point well taken, that being said, a lot of those "able-bodied working-age adults" are Trump voters…

SEE ALSO: The Political Consequences Of Medicaid Cuts

#Crypto — Chris Dixon of Andreessen Horowitz has come out in support of the GENIUS Act, which has passed the Senate Banking Committee with bipartisan support, but has yet to come to a vote in the full Senate. The GENIUS Act, formally the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act of 2025 (yes we hate those names too), was introduced back in February and aims to establish a comprehensive regulatory framework for payment stablecoins. A stablecoin is a cryptocurrency whose value is pegged to some other asset, such as the dollar, in order to maintain its value. The act would create a federal framework for stablecoin with national standards. It would clarify that payment stablecoins are not securities, commodities, or investment products and instead its own class of product. It would establish reserve standards with regular audits and reporting, issuers would have to obtain a license and meet compliance, reserve backing, and consumer protection standards. The act provides for tiered rules based on issuer size and type. Issuers must register as financial institutions and follow AML/KYC rules to prevent illicit activity. On the consumer protection side, the bill includes provisions on transparency, disclosures, redemption rights, and fraud prevention, and mandates that issuers must allow redemption at par value. Overall, it seems like a good bill.

#Ed #StudentLoans — Speaking of hits to the economy, the Department of Education has announced that it will resume federal student loan collections. There will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth… "The Department has not collected on defaulted loans since March 2020. Resuming collections protects taxpayers from shouldering the cost of federal student loans that borrowers willingly undertook to finance their postsecondary education. This initiative will be paired with a comprehensive communications and outreach campaign to ensure borrowers understand how to return to repayment or get out of default." This is a looming political headache. Many people have gone on with life simply assuming that they no longer have to pay these loans and will be shocked when they are informed that they must pay them back. And not all of them are Democrats… Now, you might say, tough, they took out those loans, and the moral hazard in not making them repay it is hard. Very true. And yet the lending was so reckless… The obvious solution is to (a) allow people to discharge student loans in bankruptcy; (b) make universities that gave people worthless degrees share the pain.

#Chyna #Tariffs — From Bloomberg's Joe Weisenthal: "Citi held a conference call with people who work in the China-US e-commerce industry. And the takeaway left the analysts less confident going forward. There aren't many workarounds, and alternative production capacity will take a long time to ramp up."

#Chyna — Speaking of China, the WSJ has a good op-ed on a tantalizing new trend: the Chinese government has simply stopped publishing a lot of economic and other official data. This includes birth rate data, suggesting the population decline is even worse than the already-alarming official estimates, the youth employment rate, real estate prices, and more… Here's the full story.

#Housing — This proposal is in the Trump Administration budget so it's unlikely to become law, but still interesting: the proposal calls for a 40–44% reduction in funding for the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), including a nearly $27 billion cut specifically to rental assistance programs like Section 8. The plan would move Section 8 from a federally administered program to state-based block grants, giving states more control but likely reducing overall funding and coverage. For able-bodied adults, rental assistance would be capped at two years. After that, they would no longer be eligible, with the stated goal of prioritizing aid for the elderly and disabled. This is obviously a good proposal, especially at a time when we are looking for savings; housing subsidies never made sense and this is a de facto subsidy for slumlords. If you believe poor people need help, do anti-poverty programs; if you believe the rent is too damn high, build more housing; rental assistance as such makes no sense.

#LGBTQ #Science — President Trump's anti-trans EO directed HHS to publish a review of literature and best practices on "identity-based confusion" in children. That report is out, and it's very good. Notably, its authors are anonymous, presumably to protect their careers. (What a time to be alive, incidentally.) As The Economist puts it in its report: "The HHS report is more than 400 pages long, with a 173-page appendix full of charts. […] The report largely avoids culture-war battles or terminology, though it does refer to 'paediatric medical transition' (PMT) rather than 'gender-affirming care'. The summary cuts to the chase. 'The evidence for benefit of paediatric medical transition is very uncertain, while the evidence for harm is less uncertain.' When medical interventions pose unnecessary, disproportionate risks of harm, 'healthcare providers should refuse to offer them even when they are preferred, requested, or demanded by patients.' Claims that distressed children who do not transition face greater risk of suicide 'are not supported by the evidence.' The report includes a review of 17 previous systematic reviews on the subject, many conducted in Europe, to evaluate the evidence for benefits and harms of PMT. It finds that the overall quality of evidence on the effects of intervention is 'very low.' What is more, the report says the risks of PMT include sterility, sexual dysfunction, impaired bone density, adverse cognitive impacts, psychiatric disorders, surgical complications and regret. The ethics chapter gives perhaps the deepest bioethical analysis of the issue yet to be published (the Cass Review had no chapter on ethics)." The Trump Administration is going to save many vulnerable children from having their lives broken by a cult.

#Fed — Andrew Gins at ATR calls our attention to a striking fact, which we weren't aware of: "For the first time in its history, the Federal Reserve is losing money." It would seem that it takes very special skill to lose money when you have a literal legal license to print money. "The Federal Reserve recently reported an operating loss of $77.6 Billion in 2024. This was actually a substantial improvement over 2023, when the Fed posted its first loss ever at more than $114 billion. All losses are deferred for a few years before the debt must be retired at taxpayer expense if the Fed cannot on its own." The basic issue is that since 2008 the Fed has bought countless bonds, which produce income for the Fed; on the other hand, it pays interest on the reserves that it credits depository institutions (ie, banks) with. Because the interest rates have risen, it must pay out more money.

#Media #Life #EnemyOfThePeople — ProPublica received the 2025 Pulitzer "for Public Service" for its "reporting" on the deaths of pregnant women in abortion-restricted states, even though this reporting has been widely debunked. As Dan McLaughlin explained in NR at the time, the women in question were killed by the (very unsafe) abortion pill, not by evil Republicans.