In May, The New York Times’ Dana Goldstein offered a startling question: “Has America Given Up on Children’s Learning?“ Goldstein asserted that, “For decades, both Republicans and Democrats strove to be seen as champions of student achievement. Politicians believed pushing for stronger reading and math skills wasn’t just a responsibility; it was potentially a winning electoral strategy. At the moment, though, it seems as though neither party, nor even a single major political figure, is vying to claim that mantle.”

Despite, or perhaps because of this passivity, American children—and especially low-income children—continue to struggle, a trend that began before and was exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Certain get-back-to-basics strategies, like focusing on evidence-based reading pedagogy and better teacher training, offer promise; an increasing number of states are following Mississippi’s lead and passing a suite of such policies. However, an even older idea may hold the key for improving children’s learning and breaking the political logjam: strengthening family well-being. While schools, of course, play a critical role, the reality of how children develop and learn demands that those interested in educational excellence and fair educational opportunity look to the family as one of education’s magnetic poles. This means, in turn, that policies which secure the stability and quality of family life should be an inextricable part of any education reform agenda.

There is a fraught history of pointing to families as a route to improve educational outcomes, which may be why it remains out of vogue despite a raft of empirical evidence. Two famous reports from the 1960s still loom large: the Coleman Report and the Moynihan Report. While the subject of frequent misunderstanding, these reports were interpreted by many, for understandable reasons, to take a deficit-based view of the family and the Black family in particular, thus blaming parents and absolving schools of responsibility.  

Over a half-century later, however, the underlying findings of these reports—that families have outsized impacts on children’s development and learning—have been borne out. Writing in 2016, scholar Eric Hanushek noted that, even as Coleman’s original work can be methodologically critiqued and may have missed the full picture of school effects,

… the finding that family-background factors powerfully affect student achievement is not and never has been disputed. Virtually all subsequent analyses have included measures of family background (education, family structure, and so forth) and have found them to be a significant explanation of achievement differences. Indeed, no analysis of school performance that neglects differences in family background can be taken seriously.

Yet, in many ways, the “no excuses” education reform movement of the 2000s and early 2010s was explicitly built around the idea that looking to the family for educational solutions was problematic at best (having been a Teach For America corps and staff member during this time, I can confirm that firsthand). Well-intentioned as such an approach may have been, it cleaved family well-being from the educational improvement agenda. When that education reform movement dissolved following Donald Trump’s 2016 election, little remained except a vague anti-poverty handwaving on the left and school-choice zealotry on the right. This crack-up may have been coming even had Hillary Clinton won the 2016 election; for a deeper analysis on movement dynamics, the writer Matthew Yglesias’ four-part series on “The Strange Death of Education Reform” is a worthwhile read.  While we’ve since seen a modest resurgence in interest around teacher pay and instructional methods—to say nothing of the continued, if unfulfilled, hope put into education technology—the energy around school reform is hardly vibrant. Hence, Goldstein’s headline.

The good news is that, with the benefit of time, we can now synthesize a new, well-calibrated educational improvement agenda that brings together the best of what we’ve learned. Teachers matter, and pedagogy matters: investments in high-quality, well-trained, well-compensated teachers should remain a top priority. School environments matter: creating structures for positive peer interactions, removing phones, and developing school cultures that minimize distractions are all needed steps. Continuing to address inequitable funding that leaves many schools serving lower-income populations trying to do more with less matters. And it is now time to say, loudly and unapologetically, that the stability and quality of family life matters as well.

This argument does not suggest that it is the school’s job to create a positive family life for students—they can be partners in the endeavor but not prime movers. (Indeed, while ‘community school’ approaches can be impactful, a balance must be struck: piling too many roles onto schools can lead to unhelpful mission creep.) Nor can what students need be reduced to merely lifting their families above a semi-arbitrary poverty line. Instead, there is a concrete and unified family policy agenda that can cultivate, both through and outside of the education sector, enabling conditions for family flourishing. 

That agenda may include creating what Capita Senior Fellow Kathryn Anne Edwards has elsewhere termed a “child development system” that wraps around the K-12 education system, starting with comprehensive early care and education and including universal after-school and summer care. These indelible influences on family well-being—and, in turn, child development—should be rights alongside the right to free, government-funded education that exists in all 50 state constitutions.

What’s more, family stability does not stop at the water’s edge of care and learning. Paid parental leave, predictable job scheduling, solid wages and benefits (including for part-time jobs), affordable family-sized and multigenerational housing, Social Security caregiver credits, and more all shape whether a family experiences precarity or predictability. The need is all the more acute as the American family faces tremendous shifts due to economic and demographic pressures, climate chaos, declining social connectivity, and technological uncertainty. 

Education-focused philanthropies, advocates, K-12 leaders, elected officials, and anyone who cares about America’s educational performance and the well-being of our students must understand that while schools play a vital role, the truth has not shifted: one cannot effectively address education without addressing the condition of America’s families. To do otherwise is to impose a ceiling on any educational impacts—and our students deserve room to soar.

Elliot Haspel is a Senior Fellow at Capita.