Public education is the original American industrial policy. Every measurable outcome we care about runs through the public schools: workforce competitiveness, civic capacity, economic mobility, social cohesion. Decades of underinvestment and structural inequity have weakened the foundation that the rest of the country stands on. We propose six reforms that strengthen the pipeline at every point where it leaks: care before the start, access at the start, funding in the middle, pathways at the exit, the teachers and caregivers who make all of it work, and the sunlight that shows whether any of it is working.
STATE :: EDUCATION INDICATORS
The chart below shows three separate education measures. The people and
years differ, so the bars do not track a single group through school.
The six proposals connect early care, school quality and later pathways;
the chart does not establish their effects or a combined completion rate.
State-funded pre-K enrollment does not count all preschool options. NAEP proficiency is not the same as grade level. These measures do not identify a funding gap as their cause.
WHAT WE PROPOSE
Last updated :: September 9, 2026
These proposals would begin no earlier than January 2029, after the
next presidential term starts. Each depends on the laws, funding,
and preparation it requires.
01▸Universal Pre-K (Ages 3-4)
Mechanism: Your 3-year-old gets the same quality early education whether you live in a wealthy suburb or a rural town. Today, pre-K depends on what parents can afford or where they happen to live. The kids who would gain the most are the least likely to get it.
The deal: the federal government matches state money for pre-K programs that meet real quality bars for teachers, class sizes, and curriculum. Support grows as states enroll more kids. Head Start folds in instead of being duplicated. Low-income families pay nothing, and above that line the cost scales with income. And the promise does not depend on your governor. If a state says no, federal money flows straight to cities, school districts, and Head Start providers there, the same fallback Congress wrote in 2021. Universal means every state.
Why start here: the first five years are when the biggest gains in thinking, language, and behavior happen, and what is missed then cannot be bought back later. The money case is strong too. The best birth-to-five programs returned about 13% a year in better school results, higher earnings, and lower costs down the line. That number came from the most intensive programs ever run, which is exactly why our money follows quality, not headcount. And when care is affordable, parents who want to work, can.
02▸Equitable School Funding Reform
Mechanism: Your kid's school gets funded based on what they need, not what your neighborhood's property taxes raise. In EdBuild's 2015–16 data, mostly white districts got $2,226 more per student than mostly nonwhite districts of the same size. The gap totals $23 billion in that school year, not a current estimate. Housing rules that blocked families of color from wealth helped create the gap.
The fix uses a carrot: extra federal school money for states that fix their own funding formulas, so high-need districts get more per student instead of less. A federal floor also guarantees funding for special education and English learners, the students most often shortchanged.
A public good handed out by zip code breaks the country's basic promise of equal protection. And the research is clear: when courts forced states to spend more on poor districts, those students earned more as adults and were less likely to be poor. Money aimed at the kids with the least is money that works, and the results get published so everyone can see.
03▸Universal Post-Secondary Pathways: Community College & Career-Technical Education
Mechanism: Your kid can become an electrician making $83K or a cybersecurity analyst without taking on $40K in debt. Every year, America comes up about 712,000 people short of the certificates and two-year degrees that lead to jobs paying $55,000 to $83,000 and up. We made the four-year degree the default and starved everything else.
The promise: free community college and career training for every American, modeled on what Tennessee and Michigan already run. The guarantee holds in every state. Where a state will not join, the money goes straight to students as a federal grant they can use at any accredited program. Nobody's governor cancels their tuition.
Three rules make it work. Employers help design the programs, so training matches jobs that actually exist. Short programs count: Workforce Pell began in July 2026 for eligible short programs. We build beyond that law so short credentials get strong support alongside degrees. Which added programs qualify still needs to be set. And employers who create registered apprenticeships tied to these colleges get a tax credit.
We cannot rebuild American manufacturing and energy while refusing to train the people those industries are desperate to hire. That 712,000-a-year gap is a choice. Community college is where working people, career changers, veterans, and first- generation students climb. Making it free reopens the ladder.
04▸Teacher Workforce Investment
Mechanism: Your kid's teacher chose teaching because it's a career that pays enough to live on, not a sacrifice that burns people out in five years. The single biggest in-school factor in whether kids learn is the teacher. And America asks the profession that builds every other profession to take about a quarter less pay than other college graduates. That gap is the widest ever recorded and still growing. The shortage lands hardest where it hurts most: math, science, special education, rural schools, poor districts.
Three fixes. A pay floor: federal matching money, on the Medicaid pattern, that covers up to half of the gap between teacher pay and other college-educated work in a state's region, with states funding the rest. The cap makes the cost knowable, state by state, and publishable. Fast loan forgiveness for teachers in high-poverty schools, quick enough to change a career decision. And a fast track into the classroom for career changers, because the worst shortages are in exactly the fields where people with real-world experience teach best.
This is the workforce that builds every other workforce. You can fund pre-K and fix school budgets, but if nobody qualified is standing in front of the class, the money never becomes learning. And churn is expensive. When good teachers leave, districts pay to replace them, kids get a revolving door of rookies, and parents watch the best teacher in the school leave for a corporate job that pays double. Paying the profession enough to stay costs less than replacing it every five years.
05▸Affordable Child Care from Birth
Mechanism: You can afford childcare and keep working, because the bill is capped at a share of what you earn. Today the average price of full-time care runs over $13,000 a year per child. In 41 states and Washington DC, infant care costs more than in-state college tuition. For a single parent earning the median income, the average bill eats about a third of everything they make. Parents are not choosing between jobs and kids. The price is choosing for them.
The design caps what a family pays for licensed care at about seven percent of income, the affordability line the federal government already uses, on a sliding scale that phases out at higher incomes. Three parts make the cap real. The cap itself: families pay their share, and the program pays providers the difference. Supply: grants to open licensed care where it barely exists, because about half of young children live in a childcare desert, and rural areas are hit hardest. A cap means nothing where there is nothing to buy. And the workforce: a pay floor for childcare workers, for the same reason as the teacher proposal above. The people doing this work earn near the bottom of the wage scale, so they leave, and quality leaves with them.
This closes the loop on this page. The 13% return came from programs that start at birth, not at three. Pre-K covers ages three and four. This covers the beginning. And the promise does not depend on your governor: where a state declines, federal dollars flow straight to licensed providers, the same fallback as pre-K.
Mechanism: You can see how your kid's school is actually doing, in plain English, on one page, next to what it spends. Federal law already makes every state publish school report cards, down to per-student spending. But they are scattered across fifty websites, written in jargon, and built so no two states can be compared. Ask a parent what their school's report card says and you will get a blank look. The data exists. The sunlight does not.
The fix is one plain-language format for every school that takes federal money. Four numbers, every fall: how much students grew this year, how many meet state reading and math standards, how many teaching jobs sit unfilled, and what the school spends per student. Same format in every state, readable on a phone. A shared format does not make state scores the same scale.
Three rules keep it honest. No new tests: this uses the tests states already give. NAEP helps compare state standards, but NAEP does not score individual schools. Its Proficient level is not a grade-level label. Growth comes first: judging a school by raw scores mostly measures who enrolls, and growth measures what the school added, so growth leads the page. And this format adds no new sanctions: no new federal takeovers, no new closure lists beyond what current law already requires. Parents, school boards, and voters do the accountability.
This closes the loop on everything above. This page proposes real money for pre-K, school funding, teachers, and childcare. Every dollar of it should land somewhere the public can see.
STATUS :: CHILDCARE VS COLLEGE▸ The average price of full-time center-based childcare reached $13,128 a year in 2024. In 41 states and Washington DC, infant care costs more than in-state public college tuition. For a single parent at the median income, the average price consumes about 35% of household income, five times the federal affordability benchmark of 7%.
◇ Child Care Aware of America, "Child Care in America: 2024 Price & Supply" and companion affordability analysis ↗
METHODOLOGY :: EDUCATION INDICATORS
▸ HOW THE CHART IS BUILT
Three independent national statistics, not a longitudinal cohort: state-funded pre-K enrollment among four-year-olds in 2023–24 (NIEER), fourth-grade reading at or above NAEP Proficient in 2024, and credential attainment among adults aged 25–64 in 2023 (Lumina). Each bar uses a separate 0–100% reference; percentages are never multiplied. State-funded pre-K excludes private preschool and other programs, and non-enrollment is not proof of denied access. NAEP proficiency is not grade level. The funding-gap source gives context, not causal identification. Source definitions and years differ.
Funding studies provide context, not a causal estimate from these three indicators.
The EdBuild funding gap uses 2015–16 data; it is not a current annual estimate.
Enrollment counts do not establish program quality or prove denied access.