House Republicans have passed their version of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which now goes to the Senate for consideration. The goal is to pass the bill by July, though final content and timeline are subject to change. The bill puts forth several changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) aimed at reducing federal spending…

This report sheds a new light on the history of the U.S. Department of Education (ED), its abuses of policy, and recommendations for a path forward. The report's evidence, and the long-term political dispositions of America's citizenry, supports the wholesale reform of ED, but not its elimination. The authors have structured their report in this…

In 2021, approximately five million young people in the United States were not in school or working. This group of young people transitioning to adulthood, roughly ages 16 to 24, are often referred to as "opportunity youth" and sometimes "disconnected youth." Young people from low-income families and from communities of…

A recent FutureEd report, "Directional Signals: A New Analysis of the Evolving Private School Choice Landscape," offers a generally useful, up-to-date compilation of basic facts and trends around universal school choice programs in 10 states. These universal programs, including vouchers and education savings accounts, subsidize private…

We consider two local reparations cases--the Evanston Restorative Housing Program and Chicago reparations for police torture survivors. We argue that the programs are shaped by the differing political opportunities, the local context, and the social location of their advocates given that one was constructed within government systems in Evanston…

In July 2021 the Chinese Government unexpectedly released what has become known colloquially as the 'Double-Reduction' policy. The policy decreed the reduction of homework pressure on students and greater control of private tutorial companies. In this paper, we set out to understand why the Chinese central government launched the…

This paper contends that state bans on Critical Race Theory (CRT) and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) offices are indicative of a broader political agenda to restrict scholarly analyses and practitioner outreach that reveal how societal inequities, policy failures, and racialized deficit framings of marginalized students--not perceived…

Budgets are moral documents, reflecting our priorities as a nation by deciding where to allocate resources. Congress is targeting cuts and policy changes that limit access to health care, nutrition programs, and basic financial stability for millions of children, including Medicaid, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), and the…

This paper provides an analysis of government-supported workforce development programs in the United States and selected states as of the end of 2024. We provide an overview of the topic of workforce development, defining this to include activities and funding mechanisms that aim to increase the skills of workers and help them succeed in the labor…

This chapter reviews the steps taken in Slovakia to adopt and implement Youth Guarantee (YG) and how they interact with existing policy tools and governance structures. There is a long history of a high unemployment rate amongst the Slovak youth, with the lowly skilled youth in particular suffering the most. Hence, youth employability as a…

When the COVID-19 pandemic plunged the economy back into recession in early 2020, it laid bare a fragile and profoundly inequitable labor market. The economic expansion that reigned from 2009 through 2019 brought historically low unemployment and inflation but failed to reduce income inequality or arrest the decline in the number of high-quality,…

The problem of social orphanhood is one of the most important among the social problems of modern Russia, it is acute for a society. In the study of the problems of social orphanage, we used the author's methods of ranking the regions of Russia according to the dynamics of indicators, an integrated index of "favorable" changes, as well…

This paper examines the role of the UK's post-16 education and training system in supporting the young unemployed. It maps the trajectory of a series of time-limited policy initiatives, which have attempted to install a training system for young people alongside containing fluctuating levels of youth unemployment. The impact of the expansion of…

Youth mainstreaming involves the integration of a youth perspective into the preparation, design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of all policies and programmes that concern and affect young people. Youth mainstreaming also aims to shape institutional and policymaking processes that provide space and opportunities for young people to…

Wages below the living wage are poverty wages for many households. For decades, teachers have been clear about the damaging impact poverty has on childhood development in particular, as well as on individuals and communities as a whole. Teachers experience first-hand the impact that poverty has on children, how it leaves children more vulnerable…