News and Opinions

State and local taxpayers cover the operating costs of charter schools, as well as the negative spillovers that they impose on local school districts. This public funding requires policy makers to pay attention not only to the benefits for enrolled students, but also to the collective or public interests that justify public funding for education.

Early childhood experts and community leaders from North Carolina and across the country described the needs of young children and families and how our systems, policies, and government structures could better address those needs.

Hosted at Duke University, the gathering, “Building a Universal System for Families with Young Children in North Carolina,” was organized by the Center for Child and Family Policy at Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy and by The Hunt Institute.

Prior to the pandemic, Jennifer Lansford and her colleagues were conducting in-depth, multi-year research on children and families in nine countries. They are now expanding their research to consider COVID-19 and children and parents’ mental health.

Helen Ladd presents The Diane Silvers Ravitch ’60 Lecture: How Charter Schools Disrupt Good Education Policy at Wellesley.

A bipartisan report on the challenges and opportunities facing children in America stresses the need to rebalance national investments toward children.

Questionable spending on contract buyouts for fired coaches at the University of South Carolina has state lawmakers demanding answers. It’s a familiar story at colleges across the country.

Early childhood education (ECE) and its counterpart, childcare, are indispensable in the effort to maximize the percentage of our population that has the necessary education and opportunity to not only function but to succeed and grow and thrive in a global economy.

There is now a consensus that children learned much less than usual — and that their mental health suffered — when schools were shut for months in 2020 and 2021. But Covid-related school shutdowns did not really end during Omicron. They instead became more subtle, often involving individual schools, classrooms or groups of students, rather than entire districts.

Jennifer Lansford joins Sanford School Dean Judith Kelley on the Policy 360 podcast to discuss ongoing research in nine countries around the world related to COVID-19 and parents’ and young people’s mental health.

February 8, 2022 — A bipartisan report released today on the challenges and opportunities facing children in America stresses the need to rebalance national investments toward children. The consensus report, “Rebalancing: Children First,” is released by the American Enterprise Institute-Brookings Institution Working Group on Childhood in the United States. More than three years in the…

As the Mega Millions and Powerball jackpots grow, so do the lines of people looking to buy a ticket. That’s good news for state coffers and the public education programs they fund. In many states, a significant share of lottery revenue helps finance public higher education.

Exposure to lead in drinking water from private wells during early childhood is associated with an increased risk of being reported for delinquency during teenage years, according to a new study.

As omicron threatens to lead to more school closures, a new study by researchers at Duke and Columbia looks at the pressures of such closures on families.

Much attention has recently focused on early childhood education (ECE), thanks in part to its inclusion in President Biden’s Build Back Better bill. A new study by Robert C. Carr and colleagues investigated how the longitudinal effects of ECE are mediated by the quality of the K–12 schooling that follows.

In this podcast episode Gassman-Pines offers an overview of their findings and discusses how what they learned fits within the larger context of low-wage work in the United States.

The vast majority of criminal cases in the United States are resolved without a trial. Duke researchers designed and implemented a data collection system that was piloted in prosecution offices in Durham, NC, and Berkshire, MA.

Our analysis shows that in spite of the safety net programs that support families residing in poverty, those living at or below twice the federal poverty line, devote a substantial share of their monthly expenditures to goods and services necessary for basic shelter, health, and nutrition.

Researchers continue to explore how to sustain the benefits that early childhood education (ECE) generates.

Jennifer Lansford breaks down parents’ behavioral control versus psychological control and why they are important for children’s development.

Family Connects International in Spartanburg, South Carolina.

Are kids and teenagers stressed, depressed and scared? How do they see themselves and their families changed by the pandemic? And how has their behavior changed to help reduce the spread of COVID-19 in their daily life?

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones urged supporters of public education in North Carolina on Oct. 26 to organize to fight “anti-history laws” being promoted by Republican lawmakers.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones urged supporters of public education in North Carolina on Tuesday to organize to fight “anti-history laws” being promoted by Republican lawmakers.

Our nation’s social infrastructure is composed of the economic and social investments that are necessary for U.S. workers and families to be able to take care of their loved ones and remain productive members of the U.S. workforce.

North Carolina is home to one of the most famous early childhood research studies, the Carolina Abecedarian Project, which for decades has affected research, policy, and public knowledge about the importance of early childhood experiences.

Family Connects is an evidence-based program, building on research that indicates more than 90 percent of families can use some additional support.

Our economy will be stronger and our families will be more secure tomorrow if we invest in care today.

Like other social enterprises focused on helping formerly incarcerated people, Café Momentum, located in Dallas, provides paid work for young people looking to get another start. But it also layers multiple forms of support — education, basic supplies and real-world skills — that are key to staying out of the system but hard for many youth to find at home.

The staffing shortage has become a defining feature of this school year.

Early education providers across the state and country are struggling to find and keep teachers. That has always been the case, but the current labor market and pandemic disruptions have worsened the problem.

In Denver, schools are struggling to find nurses. In Detroit, they’re short security officers. Principals across the country say substitute teachers appear to have vanished altogether.

Building relationships can help kids thrive in tough times.

The slew of stressors associated with the COVID-19 pandemic have taken a serious toll on youth mental health. But now that students have returned to the classroom, N.C. schools don’t have enough resources to support their emotional and behavioral needs.

Among O.E.C.D. nations, the U.S. has one of the highest rates of child poverty. How can that be? To find out, Stephen Dubner speaks with a Republican senator, a Democratic mayor, and a large cast of econo-nerds.

There were 3.3 million more people living in poverty in 2020 compared to 2019. The largest group experiencing poverty were children.

We are bombarded by data that illustrates the growing income inequality in society and its connection to educational attainment.

Black children have access to just 1 cent for every dollar enjoyed by their white counterparts, new research shows, and Hispanic kids fare little better.

Even before COVID, there was a clear disparity in the education children received based on where they lived, their economic status, and the color of their skin. As this equity gap continues to widen, policies are being introduced to level the playing field.

Physical aggression and antisocial behaviour are among the most consistently documented childhood outcomes of physical child abuse.

“Pre-K programs are not all equally effective,” concluded a 2017 study conducted by Brookings and the Duke Center for Child and Family Policy. “Several effectiveness factors may be at work in the most successful programs.”

New Jersey’s universal, voluntary program — the nation’s second, after Oregon, to be available to new parents regardless of income, insurance coverage or legal status — will offer free home-based wellness checks for mom and baby within two weeks of birth, with two additional visits over three months.

The study examines racial segregation that takes place within North Carolina schools, highlighting the need for more deliberate school-level policies to truly integrate schools.

Cash transfer programs for families with children can have a profound impact on health and development.

Monthly cash transfers to most families with children 17 years old and younger have begun and will run from July 15 through Dec. 15.

Cash transfers to families that start this week have potential to make a big difference in American families’ lives, expert says.

The Internal Revenue Service distributed payments to the families of nearly 60 million children Thursday as the federal government launched what advocates say could be the most significant initiative to combat child poverty in decades, but the impact might be short-lived.

According to the IRS, projections say the payments will lift more than 5 million children out of poverty this year, and will cut child poverty by more than half.

Barriers to accessing a federal nutrition program for moms and babies persist in North Carolina, but new research shows loosening the rules during the pandemic improved participants’ experience.