We had to talk about migrants eating cats yesterday, but that is hardly the only issue in the race. And some issues are very important and sadly overlooked.

As Douglas Holtz-Eakin rightly points out in his recent piece for American Action Forum, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) data paints a dismal picture of our education system's performance over the past decade.

The statistics are truly concerning. Since 2013, we've witnessed a steady decline in 8th graders' proficiency in both reading and mathematics. Currently, over 30% of these students fall below basic skill levels in these crucial subjects. This isn't just a post-pandemic problem; it's a long-term trend that threatens the future of our workforce and economy. Holtz-Eakin is correct in asserting that this failure to impart basic skills will severely limit these students' future opportunities and potentially increase the burden on our social safety net.

The gravity of this situation makes the lack of substantive discussion about K-12 education in the current presidential race all the more frustrating.

Which makes it encouraging that FREOPP's Dan Lips has a piece out recently on this very issue.

Lips astutely observes that neither major candidate has presented a realistic, comprehensive plan to address the challenges facing our education system. He rightly argues that the sweeping changes proposed by the Presidential candidates like abolishing the Department of Education or dramatically increasing federal funding are very unlikely to pass Congress.

To be fair to President Trump, the most exciting thing happening in education in decades has been school choice, and the best thing the Federal government can do there is get out of the way, which abolishing the DoE, while politically unrealistic, would do.

His first actionable proposal is to use existing statutory authority to expand school choice, notably using the Community Services Block Grant program. He also proposes reversing the Biden-Harris Administration's onerous regulations on charter schools.

Another very good and actionable idea is to increase transparency on public school funding and performance. Lips argues for evolving the federal statistical work to include more comprehensive and accessible information in school report cards. This would not only help parents make more informed choices about their children's education but also shed light on how public funds are being used, since, as conservatives know all-too-well but the public all-too-little, public education is very expensive and most of the money is wasted.

Another very interesting proposal involves leveraging existing tax benefits to expand education options. Specifically, Lips suggests issuing policy guidance to clarify that the Federal Employer-Provided Child Care Credit could be used to provide educational instruction at child care facilities. This could lead to the establishment of new microschools that provide both child care and educational services, potentially addressing multiple needs for working families.

On the legislative front, Lips proposes considering legislation to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) and the Individuals with Disabilities with Education Act or IDEA to increase state flexibility and portability. "In addition Congress could consider tax reforms to expand parental choice and expand access to education savings accounts during the upcoming 2025 tax reform debate," he adds.

Very good proposals to add to an important discussion.

Policy News You Need To Know This Morning

#Freedom - Let us join Cato's Scott Lincicome in celebrating an important holiday: Yeltsin Supermarket Day! The day, memorialized by a famous photo, when Russian President Boris Yeltsin first visited an American supermarket and was bowled over by what is available to consumers under capitalism.

#AIrisk - You may have read (including here) about OpenAI's new models, o1-preview and o1-mini, which seems to have outstanding new capabilities and “exceeds human PhD-level accuracy on a benchmark of physics, biology, and chemistry problems.” A less-noticed, and more worrying aspect: as AI expert Shakeel Hashim reports, these models seem to have "alignment" problems. "For the first time, OpenAI has given its models a 'medium' rating for chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapon risk." In other words, there's a non-negligible risk a bad actor could potentially use o1-preview to design and/or build weapons of mass destruction. Fun! But wait, there's more! According to a third-party evaluation, the model “sometimes instrumentally faked alignment during testing”, “strategically [manipulating] task data in order to make its misaligned action look more aligned”, so that “o1-preview has the basic capabilities needed to do simple in-context scheming.” In other words, the model has the ability to "choose" to trick its human masters if it "wants" to.

#TaxPolicy - ATR has a list of the tax increases endorsed by Kamala Harris. It's a doozy. Apart from that giant nonsense, the unrealized capital gains tax, our favorite is the excise tax on electricity used for cryptocurrency mining. Crypto bros have the wrong aesthetic so they have to be punished, because apparently that is how pursuing the general welfare works.

#Debt - From Heritage's Richard A. Stern: "We’ve now topped $1 trillion in federal interest payments - much more than we spend on the military - and the fiscal year isn’t even over yet…" Nothing more to say…

#Immigration - Even, perhaps especially, advocates of high overall levels of immigration should be outraged by the shambolic nature of the Biden-Harris Administration's de facto open borders policy. Perhaps the most horrid example of this is the issue of the so-called "lost" migrant children. The Biden-Harris Administration, through a report of the Office of Inspector General for the Department of Homeland Security, as admitted that it has "lost contact" with at least 85,000 migrant children. Read that again. Who could defend this? Who believes this is humane? It's terrifying. Since that stunning admission came out, the Center for Immigration Studies has issued an FOIA to HHS to try to find out more about this crucial issue. However, HHS is stonewalling. Writes CIS' Colin Farnsworth, "in this instance, HHS has refused to provide the Center with the requested records, forcing the parties through a lengthy summary judgment process, conveniently delaying the inevitable release of this critical data until after the election." Because this is how you conduct good policy.

#TheEconomy - The August CPI report is out. The headline number is 0.2%, driven mostly by housing, reports CEI senior economist Ryan Young.

#TikTok - The TikTok divestment law is now winding its way through the courts. Two academic studies conducted as part of that process are damning for the allegedly CCP-controlled company. Key quotes: “We assess a strong possibility that content on TikTok is either amplified or suppressed based on its alignment with the interests of the Chinese government"; “TikTok algorithms actively suppress content critical of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) while simultaneously boosting pro-China propaganda.” Via NBC News.

#PermittingReform - The debate around permitting reform continues. R Street's Philip Rossetti has a very good post up explaining why judicial review is so important. Key sentences: "In lay terms, permitting is getting more difficult not because of higher risks of new construction or better-quality environmental outcomes, but because project permits are more likely to get sued. […] Importantly, individuals that are negatively affected by projects are not the ones suing. That is done by public interest groups that oppose new development." We couldn't have put it better. Time to build!

#MilitaryReadiness - Fox News: "The U.S. Navy has commissioned the USS New Jersey, its first submarine designed for full gender integration. This Virginia-class fast-attack submarine was unveiled at Naval Weapons Station Earle in Middletown, New Jersey. Cmdr. Steve Halle praised the crew's professionalism and integration during the commissioning ceremony. With a crew of nearly 135, the submarine includes gender-neutral accommodations, addressing privacy concerns in living quarters. The USS New Jersey, 377 feet long and capable of deep dives, honors the state's legacy with state-themed decor. It's the third Navy vessel named after New Jersey." Now we're finally ready to confront China! (Also: what's a woman?)

#FederalLand - This is a slightly-off-the-radar conservative issue that we like to keep an eye on: the Federal government owns 28% of the land in the United States, which is objectively a very large amount. Here's Mises Institute with the case for privatizing it.