Policy

The National Association of Scholars upholds the standards of a liberal arts education that fosters intellectual freedom, searches for the truth, and promotes virtuous citizenship.

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 Legislation


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: 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 Education

State Social Studies Standards


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


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