Policy
The NAS believes that policy change at the federal and state level is necessary to reform higher education—and educator preparation and K-12 education as well, which also must be reformed to make higher education effective. Here we provide a range of policy recommendations, including model legislation, to inform citizens and policymakers about the best ways to improve our education system. These policy recommendations have been issued partly in our name and partly drafted for the Civics Alliance, which focuses upon K-12 education.
Federal Legislation
Congress can and should reform higher education and K-12 education to promote intellectual freedom, academic rigor, equal opportunity, and affordability—and limit foreign interference, politicization, and administrative bloat. Our policy recommendations focus on reforms to the Higher Education Act, but include stand-alone suggestions for legislation.
Federal Higher Education Legislation Handout
State Legislation: Higher Education
State policymakers should re-establish the educational mission of the public universities and accountability procedures to ensure they keep to that mission; guarantee a wide range of freedoms in public universities; and establish a framework for proper university instruction in America’s ideals and institutions. Our policy recommendations are embodied in the Civics Alliance’s Model Higher Education Code.
State Legislation: Higher Education
State Legislation: Higher Education Handout
State Legislation: K-12 Education
State policymakers should remove discriminatory ideologies and action civics from public K-12 classrooms; reform public school administration to ensure that education administrators comply with laws removing Critical Race Theory and action civics; strengthen parental control over school boards; give the state legislature and the governor the power to veto state academic standards; establish a framework for proper K-12 social studies instruction; establish the civic foundations of public K-12 schools; and repeal civics education laws that harm K-12 education. Our policy recommendations are embodied in the Civics Alliance’s Model K-12 Civics Code and in American Birthright: The Civics Alliance's Model K-12 Social Studies Standards.
State Legislation: K-12 Civics Education
State Legislation: K-12 Civics Education Handout
State Social Studies Standards
State Social Studies Standards Handout
Model Education Licensure Code
State policymakers should eliminate the radical establishment’s power to select America’s teachers by de-politicizing education schools and the education licensure process, giving state policymakers the power to veto politicized licensure requirements, and establishing a standard path toward licensure that bypasses requirements for an undergraduate degree and minimizes education-school requirements.
Model Education Licensure Code
Model Education Licensure Code Handout
Accreditation and Licensure
America’s unelected accrediting organizations possess broad power over our nation’s higher education institutions and professional licensure—power unchecked by any meaningful public oversight and power increasingly used to stifle any challenge to the education establishment’s monopoly and to advance a radical political agenda. Our colleges and universities cannot be reformed unless the accrediting organizations are as well. American policymakers must act boldly at both the federal and the state level to reform the abuses that have become endemic in accreditation and licensure. The accrediting organizations’ stranglehold over America’s colleges and professions must be removed. The NAS endorses 10 principles and priorities of accreditation policy reform, to be enacted at both the federal and the state level.
We have drafted our accreditation policy recommendations both in the form of a Model Accreditation and Licensure Code and in the form of an Accreditation and Licensure Policy Brief.
Model Accreditation and Licensure Code
Accreditation and Licensure Brief
Accreditation and Licensure Handout
Model Science Policy Code
Federal policymakers can and should reform federal science policy 1) to require best existing practices to ensure reproducibility in science the government funds, or uses to inform policy; 2) to prevent universities from overcharging the government systematically in its grants; 3) to prohibit the use of federal science regulations and grants to impose identity-group discrimination and DEI ideology; and 4) to prevent foreign intellectual espionage in our universities.
Model Science Policy Code Handout
Model K-12 Science Standards
Too many state education departments have imposed state science standards drawing on sources such as the Next Generation Science Standards, which combine misguided pedagogical theory, low academic standards, politicized instruction, and training in activism. The Franklin Standards seek to restore informed and disciplined curiosity to American science education, along with the spirit and the rigor of America's first great scientist and inventor, Benjamin Franklin. States and school districts should create science standards modeled on the Franklin Standards, to teach students thorough scientific knowledge and to act as informed and confident citizens and policymakers.