THE ISSUE
Social Policy
PUBLICATION
K-12 Education: What Happened to the Bipartisan Consensus on Charter Schools?
A decade ago, there was an emerging bipartisan consensus on education reform in general and the benefits of charter schools in particular. That consensus has completely fallen apart at the worst possible time. This policy paper discusses how the consensus on charters fell apart and why it needs to be rebuilt.
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PUBLICATION
K-12 Education: Can More Funding for Low-Quality Schools Move the Needle?
Most American schools are actually doing well and effectively preparing students for college and beyond. But a minority of our schools are catastrophically bad, dragging down America’s overall test scores—but, most importantly, consigning millions of kids to diminished futures. There is no silver bullet that will completely fix this inequity, but this New Center policy paper highlights a few solutions that could finally start to improve chronically underperforming schools.
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PUBLICATION
Can the New Congress Find Common Ground on Gun Safety?
If a group of Democratic and Republican members were interested in passing legislation in the 2021-2022 Congress that could meaningfully enhance gun safety in America, they should look to ideas that would actually reduce gun violence and could realistically become law.
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PUBLICATION
Beyond Social Security & Toward Real Retirement Security
Here’s the not-so-secret problem that will face the next president: Even if Social Security’s finances are shored up, the program still will not be equipped to meet anything close to the retirement needs of the 10,000 elderly Americans who will be retiring in the coming years. The scale of America’s gathering retirement challenge demands some creative thinking—and fast—on how to create a new framework for retirement security in the 21st century.
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PUBLICATION
Why is Everyone in College Sports Getting Rich Except the Athletes?
Americans have been aware of the stark inequity between the people who run college sports and the kids who play them for years. But now, amid a pandemic that’s potentially putting college athletes at risk and renewed attention to broader issues of social justice, the NCAA’s stance that there should be a “clear line of demarcation between college athletics and professional sports” is looking increasingly untenable.
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PUBLICATION
Unaffordable Housing: Why Housing is So Expensive and What We Can Do About It
America has a housing problem that keeps getting worse. Too many working and middle-class Americans can’t afford a decent place to rent or buy. This policy paper explores the causes of the affordable housing crisis, obstacles in the way of solving it, and some short- and long-term solutions to promote new construction and make existing housing more affordable.
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PUBLICATION
Policing in America: Closing the Data Gap
Despite the attention on policing nationwide, we simply don’t have good enough data on how it is actually practiced in communities across the country. This issue brief identifies the specific areas in which more data collection and reporting could directly and indirectly improve policing—by holding police officers and departments accountable and allowing for objective policy analysis.
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PUBLICATION
Public Libraries for Bipartisanship
As political polarization hammers away at families, workplaces, and government, policymakers must think quickly and critically about ways to bring Americans back together. One solution lies in an oft-overlooked, time-honored American resource: U.S. public libraries.
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PUBLICATION
The Immigration Debate: The Poison Infecting Our Politics
What the American people want—and what Washington refuses to give them—is an immigration system that makes sense for the times we live in, provides security, and strengthens our country. It's time for Washington to fix the system and to drain the poison from our politics with an immigration deal forged in the center.
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The Big Issues
Climate and Energy
Climate and Energy
The fight against climate change is a multi-decade challenge, and must be sustained across many presidencies and sessions of Congress. For any solution to stand a chance, it must be forged in the center.
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