Policy experts note that public opinion about a particular topic is deeply shaped by at the time. These frameworks are frequently contested through implicit and explicit messages that go out through media, as well as topical debates in the political arena. The political scientist Deborah Stone puts it this way: “Ideas are at the center of all political conflict. Policymaking, in turn, is a constant struggle over the criteria for classification; the boundaries of categories, and the definition of ideals that guide the way people behave.”

A classic example . When nuclear power was primarily seen as a new source of cheap energy, it drew a great deal of support. When it became seen as an environmental danger — influenced by real-life accidents like Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, as well as fictional media portrayals — public support cratered. Today, some environmentalists are trying to intentionally insert a third frame whereby nuclear power is seen as in reducing greenhouse gas emissions that drive climate change; they face an uphill battle.

Or take a question closer to child care’s wheelhouse: public schools. While schools inarguably serve a child care function (sorry, ), that is not generally seen as their primary purpose. Instead, schools are defined by their educational impact. Whether that education is at successful careers, civic engagement, personal self-actualization or something else certainly remains contested, but the overarching frame of schools = education is set.

When it comes to child care, America seems to be experiencing what psychologist William James described as the first moments of an infant’s life: a “blooming, buzzing confusion.” Particularly in an era when child care is finally getting widespread attention instead of being relegated to a component of welfare, we have yet to answer the questions: what is child care and who is it for? In many cases, we have yet to even ask those questions.

Is child care primarily a work support for parents? Is it child development that helps kids with early learning and growth? Is it a way to reduce family stress and increase family functioning? Is it social infrastructure that connects parents, a la libraries and parks? Is it intended to promote gender equity? Who counts as a valid child care provider? Is the goal to have a minimum level of adequate child care that keeps costs low or to have abundant, first-rate child care settings with well-compensated educators? Heck, we can’t even agree on definitions: is child care policy about ages birth to 5? Birth to 8? Birth to 13? Birth to 18?

You’re probably thinking that child care is not just one thing, and that much of the above list is not mutually exclusive. You’d of course be correct. But ‘not just one thing’ doesn’t obviate the need, again, for a primary frame. Right now, we’re not even trying to hash out what that primary frame is, and so we often end up talking past one another.

Comments regarding child care made by Vance and Kamala Harris in recent months illustrate this societal confusion.

In an August Face the Nation , Vance responded to questions about his opposition to  universal child care proposals: “what I’ve opposed is one model of child care. We, of course, want to give everybody access to child care. But look, in my family, I grew up in a poor family where the child care was my grandparents, and a lot of these child care proposals do nothing for grandparents. If you look at some of these proposals, they do nothing for stay-at-home moms or stay-at-home dads. I want us to have a child care policy that’s good for all families, not just a particular model of family, and that’s what I’ve said.”

Harris, meanwhile, the following during an appearance before the National Association of Black Journalists: “the state of affairs in our country that working people often have to decide to either be able to work or be able to afford childcare … they can’t afford childcare and actually do the work that they want to do because it’s too expensive, and it doesn’t actually level out in terms of the expense versus the income. My plan is that no family — no working family should pay more than 7 percent of their income in childcare, because I know that when you talk about the return on that investment, allowing people to work, allowing people to pursue their dreams in terms of how they want to work, where they want to work, benefits us all. It strengthens the entire economy.”

As you can see, these are not two sides of a coin. This isn’t, ‘I think public schools should get more money, you think we should universalize school vouchers’ or ‘I think there should be a single-payer health care system, you think we should deregulate health care and let the market work it out’. This is one side emphasizing child care as a form of broad-based family support and one side emphasizing child care as a way to strengthen parents’ preferred attachment to the labor force. (I do want to emphasize that actions speak louder than words: Vance skipped a Senate vote where his GOP colleagues a bipartisan House-passed expansion of the Child Tax Credit, whereas Harris is second-in-command of an administration that proposed , including child care, in American history — one that was, again, blocked by Republicans.)
Partially because of child care’s history, it has been subject to markedly less philosophical scrutiny than other issue areas. Frequently, we hear advocacy groups wanting debate moderators or journalists about their plans for child care. That’s fine as far as it goes (the recent Vice Presidential debate was on care issues) but I think we’d get a lot further if we first asked political candidates: Why do you think child care is important? What is your vision for an ideal child care system? I think we’d get a lot further, in fact, if we first asked ourselves those questions.

Cohorts of younger Americans are more diverse than older Americans in essentially every way. , 70% of U.S. K–12 students were white, just shy of 10% were Latino, and not quite 3% were Asian or Pacific Islander. , U.S. K–12 enrollment was 44% white, 29% Latino, and 5% Asian or Pacific Islander. Similarly, , roughly 21% of school-aged children spoke a non-English language at home — , it was under 14%. Go younger, and linguistic diversity grows. , roughly 1 in 3 children under 5 years old spoke a non-English language at home. 

Our politics are badly lagging our educational reality. As I’ve written many times — echoing experts like demographers and (and ) —this new diversity is a huge advantage for the United States. However else you feel about the American present and future — particularly in light of the horrifying lies perpetuated against Ohio’s immigrant communities by the Republican presidential and vice presidential nominees — there’s no factual dispute about the benefits that immigrants bring to the country. Immigrants sustain growth in the U.S. economy and labor market (), which leads to greater public revenue via taxes. And all of this is to say nothing of the immense value of these children’s rich linguistic and cultural assets. 

But the extent of these benefits depends on schools’ abilities to take advantage of them — and American public education has plenty of room for improvement when it comes to supporting diverse kids. What’s the best way to help young and/or young kids who are still developing proficiency in both English and another language, known as ? It’s one of the most stable findings in education research: These kids uniquely benefit from early education programs. 

And yes, if you’re thinking, “surely pre-K programs are good for all kids,” you’re not entirely wrong. For years, economists, developmental psychologists, education researchers, and a wide range of advocates () have touted early education investments as a high-yield strategy for helping kids succeed. It’s true! have shown that access to high-quality early education programs helps improve short-term outcomes like for , as well as long-term outcomes like . 

And yet, recent research has provided a reminder that the success of educational interventions has more to do with implementation quality than with brand and good intentions. If high-quality pre-K can improve opportunities and outcomes for children, it’s also true that just because the public invests in early education (particularly in and ). 

For instance, recent research on Head Start has been somewhat mixed. The Head Start Impact Study produced some discouraging findings, with the academic bonuses for students “fading out” over time, but subsequent analyses have been more positive. , “Natural experiments of the effects of Head Start show that Head Start causes better , , and outcomes over the long term as a consequence of participation, though the effect sizes are smaller than those from the model programs.” 

But there is little research debate about early education program’s benefits for dual language learners. Indeed, even though found some discouraging overall outcomes for students, it still found that “non-native English speakers” showed stronger gains than other groups. 

Why? It’s simple: dual language learners appear to from early education programs because these programs give them an early start on English acquisition and sometimes provide them with . 

First, it appears that the earlier that these early ed students begin the process of learning English, the better they do in the long run. Pre-K programs that offer some instruction in English can help these kids get a jump on the expected five- to seven-year window that it takes for most students to reach proficiency in English — and when their brains are more neurologically flexible. Indeed, of the federal Head Start program found strong academic benefits for dual language learners, which appeared to be linked to early . 

Second, their native languages are powerful assets for these children in the long run. Early education programs are than K–12 schools to be staffed by bilingual teachers, which makes it easier for them to continue to develop their first languages and English simultaneously. that children who develop strong speaking and/or reading abilities in their native languages do better at learning English over time. It’s not yet clear exactly why this is, but it may be because their native language abilities often include transferable skills — stronger Spanish speakers and readers are also stronger users of verb tenses who better understand sentence structure and nuances of conveying meaning through language. 

In other words, dual language learners do best when we — when early education systems — prioritize their development in all the languages they’re learning. And notwithstanding the pull of backwards-looking discourse that in search of political gains, we all do better when young English learners —many of whom are children or grandchildren of immigrants — succeed at school. 

But in late 2023, Abbott began speaking out against him. With the support of other lawmakers and several political action committees, the governor began portraying Allison as weak on border security and property tax relief — two no-compromise issues for Texas GOP voters. In February, one PAC ran a calling Allison “wrong for Texas.”

The San Antonio Express-News as “easily the most qualified candidate in this race,” but the attacks stuck: Voters in his district in the March 5 primary, overwhelmingly choosing Marc LaHood, a criminal defense attorney with no political experience, as the Republican nominee.

In an interview, Allison said his defeat came down to one unlikely issue: school choice, specifically his opposition to Abbott’s long-stalled effort to enact a statewide Education Savings Account to help families pay for private and homeschool expenses.

It’s a scenario that’s playing out in Texas and beyond as lawmakers, pushing to remake legislative maps, increasingly turn for assistance to groups like the American Federation for Children and the School Freedom Fund, a pro-ESA group tied to tech billionaire Jeff Yass. Yass, a well-known Pennsylvania-based school choice proponent and investor in TikTok parent company Byte Dance, has spent millions to promote ESAs.

The effort has already changed the ballot this November and produced an unprecedented shift in statehouses, with lawmakers increasingly approving taxpayer support for private education. Seventeen states now have universal or near-universal ESA programs. 

Whether it’s via a traditional voucher, which gives families tuition for private education, a tax credit, or a less restrictive ESA fund, the idea is increasingly finding favor in state legislatures. In Florida, families can receive 72% of what the state spends per-pupil; in Arizona, it equals 90%. The pro-school-choice group EdChoice has estimated that more than now take advantage of ESAs, up from 40,000 in 2022.

But many rural conservatives fear the funding won’t be useful in isolated areas where private schools are unlikely to open. In many small towns, school districts are the largest employer, making ESAs political kryptonite.

A few observers say the development also could backfire. Mark P. Jones, a political scientist at Rice University, warned that a rightward primary shift could spell defeat for Republicans in the Nov. 5 general election.

“It is possible, even after all the craziness, even after all the attacks and the millions of dollars spent, particularly by a particular TikTok owner, that you’ve got a situation where Abbott may not get his vouchers after all,” Jones said.

‘So wrong for Tennessee taxpayers’

For the moment, school choice efforts are moving full-speed ahead. FutureEd, a Georgetown University think tank, private-school choice bills in 34 states, with most aiming to broaden options like ESAs.

The effort is playing out in states like , and, most recently, in Tennessee, where the School Freedom Fund spent an estimated against Republicans who stopped a in 2024. Among their targets: Sen. Frank S. Niceley, a 20-year legislative veteran who boasted a lifetime on the conservative Tennessee Legislative Report Card. 

The fund painted him as “liberal Frank Niceley,” with one ad to give undocumented students in-state tuition benefits at Tennessee colleges, adding, “No wonder there’s an invasion.” Playing on his last name, it concluded: “Nice to illegals, but so wrong for Tennessee taxpayers.”

Niceley in July that allowing out-of-state PACs to label the most conservative senator as a liberal amounted to trashing elections in favor of pre-determined outcomes by interest groups. “Just call up and ask ’em who they want.”

A statewide voucher, Niceley said, ran counter to Tennessee’s reputation for curbing what he called wasteful spending.

Early evidence in other states suggests that while ESAs are popular, their benefits often take the form of tuition discounts for families whose children are . In Iowa last year, for the state’s ESA came from such students. In Florida, .

Despite Niceley’s plea for frugality, in August, primary voters ousted him in favor of Jessie Seal, a public relations director for a medical facility. 

Celebrating the defeat of Niceley and others, David McIntosh, a former Indiana congressman and the School Freedom Fund president, said, “Make no mistake: if you call yourself a Republican and oppose school freedom, you should expect to lose your next primary.” 

McIntosh declined an interview request.

Abbott’s ‘white whale’

On the flip side, teachers’ unions are well-known for supporting both Democratic candidates and anti-school-choice legislation. In this political cycle, the National Education Association has spent $21,800,773, according to , a nonprofit that follows money in politics. The American Federation of Teachers has spent $3,949,330.

In Texas, anti-ESA Republicans earned support from a PAC funded by H-E-B grocery store chain heir Charles Butt. It threw in more than $4 million last winter, equal to what the School Freedom Fund a dozen Republicans who blocked Abbott’s voucher legislation.

Voters have rewarded the Freedom Fund’s efforts: Over the past few months, they’ve sent more than a dozen anti-ESA lawmakers packing. Abbott has persuaded a handful of others to retire rather than face difficult primaries. 

Yass, the TikTok billionaire, more than $12 million in this political cycle, while Miriam Adelson, owner of the Las Vegas Sands casinos, about $13 million, making the pair — residents of Pennsylvania and Nevada, respectively — Texas’ two biggest political donors.

School choice backers hope that kind of support ultimately results in a win for ESAs, a goal that has repeatedly eluded Abbott. 

Jon Taylor, a political scientist at the University of Texas at San Antonio, joked that ESAs have become Abbott’s “white whale,” one of the few legislative wins he can’t seem to earn.

Jones, the Rice political scientist, noted that several red-leaning states, including Florida, Georgia and Arizona, have ESAs. Texas Republicans have enjoyed a unified government since 2003, he said, creating a kind of “dissonance” between Texas’ perception as the most conservative state and Abbott’s inability to seal the deal.

While the financial support of Yass and groups like the School Freedom Fund may seem unprecedented, Jeanne Allen of the Center for Education Reform, said it merely serves to counterbalance “the enormously, humongously large coffers” of teachers’ unions and the educational establishment.

“The choice movement support, even with lots of wealthy people, pales in comparison to the tens of millions of dollars, hundreds of millions of dollars of in-kind and financial support that the unions put into legislative races,” said Allen, who also directs the . She called the development “obviously overdue.”

Allison said he opposed Abbott’s plan because Texas families already have many options, from magnet schools to charters to a program that lets students in low-performing schools transfer out. Lawmakers, he said, have approved countless programs that provide “choice on top of choice on top of choice” within districts.

Recent polling on school choice isn’t necessarily conclusive: of respondents to a recent University of Texas survey said they support spending taxpayer dollars to help families pay for private school. Meanwhile, a poll from the University of Houston and Texas Southern University found 65% support.  

‘We lost some very good members’

On occasion, the push to defeat lawmakers like Allison has taken an ugly turn. Last October, while he was down in Austin for one of several special sessions, an activist pulled a onto his suburban street. Mounted on the back were huge video screens that broadcast messages saying the former school board member “hates children” and “supports rogue administrators.”

“They also came up on the lawn and videoed and scared my wife and scared kids in the neighborhood,” he said. The truck’s commotion forced police to reroute a school bus.

Though lawmakers in Texas don’t convene again until early 2025, the effects are already playing out, said Allison. “We lost some very good members because of this — and some very experienced members.”

That could affect the legislature’s institutional memory and its ability to deal not just with education but other urgent issues, he said. “We’ve got a population that is growing by leaps and bounds. We’ve got some serious infrastructure problems: water, roads, bridges. Property taxes. I mean, it just goes on and on. So to single us out and to focus so much by the governor on this one issue is very shortsighted.”

Jones, the Rice political scientist, noted that while legislatures turn over regularly, the more immediate impact will be the “de facto purge” of House moderates. While he predicted that Abbott will likely gain enough support on Nov. 5 to pass some sort of voucher — perhaps not a particularly robust one — Taylor said Abbott’s aggressive pursuit of centrists could backfire, tilting as many as nine House districts into Democratic hands. Texas Democrats have said they hope to flip several seats based on what they call Abbotts’ .

In what may be the final irony of his ordeal, Allison reluctantly predicted that LaHood, who beat him in the primary, may have difficulty winning the seat against newcomer Democrat . LaHood in 2022 lost a race for county district attorney to a Democratic incumbent. 

One of Allison’s soon-to-be-former colleagues, Democratic Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, who represents a nearby district, in June Democrats’ hopes to gain seats “increased tenfold” with LaHood’s primary win.

For his part, Allison didn’t hesitate when asked if he thought the district might flip blue in November. “I think there’s a very good chance,” he said.

On an evening that had already seen appearances by Bill Clinton, Oprah and a lengthy speakers’ list of Democratic Party officeholders, Walz was preceded in Chicago by 15 former members of the Mankato West High School Scarlets, the football team to a Minnesota state title in 1999. Wider and grayer than in their playing days, the two lines of jersey-clad supporters walked onstage to the strains of the Mankato West fight song.

The miniature pep rally was another biographical touch in the Democrats’ efforts to introduce the electorate to Walz, an obscure figure outside of party circles just a few weeks ago. The campaign has leaned heavily on the governor’s years of experience as a teacher and coach, including numerous testimonials from former pupils and . If elected, he would become the first vice president in over 60 years to have previously worked as a K–12 teacher.

In a 16-minute address, Walz credited his students with inspiring him to make his first run for Congress in 2006, a longshot bid that saw him unseat a six-term incumbent. 

“There I was, a 40-something high school teacher with little kids, zero political experience and no money, running in a deep-red district,” he remembered. “But you know what? Never underestimate a public-school teacher.”

Yet, like most of the convention thus far, the speech ran short on details related to education policy. Walz made little mention of his six-year governing record in Minnesota, where he signed sweeping school funding legislation in 2023 but also for the length of pandemic-related school closures. While delivering a passing shot at Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance for attending Yale Law School, he didn’t refer to the wave of laws passed in red states that allow public funding to flow to private school tuition. 

Instead, in keeping with attacks launched by speakers through the first three days of the convention, Walz jabbed at Republicans for seeking to review and remove controversial materials from school libraries. As governor, he signed laws both to provide universal school lunches to students and based on ideology — a combination he trumpeted with one of the night’s biggest applause lines.

“While other states were banning books from their schools, we were banishing hunger from ours,” he said to cheers.

Echoing the Democrats’ longstanding commitments to gun safety legislation, Walz further pledged to fight for children’s “freedom to go to school without being shot dead in the hall.” Despite his respect for the Second Amendment as a hunter and Army National Guard veteran, he added, “our first responsibility is to keep our kids safe.”

With audience members waving signs reading “Coach Walz,” the nominee brought the remarks to a close by returning to the theme of teamwork and the beginnings of his leadership on the gridiron.

“It’s the fourth quarter. We’re down a field goal, but we’re on offense and we’ve got the ball. We’re driving down the field. And boy, do we have the right team.”

While a slight majority of Black and Hispanic voters say they still trust Democrats more than Republicans on the issue of education, more than two-thirds say they do not think Democrats are focused enough on improving K-12 schools, according to a .

The shot across the bow comes as Democrats seek to maintain their slim Senate majority and nab four seats to take control of the House in November. more or less a dead heat in the race for the House for months – though calculations in both chambers are somewhat scrambled in the wake of President Joe Biden stepping aside to anoint Vice President Kamala Harris as the presumptive Democratic nominee and the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump. 

“Black and Hispanic voters view and experience education differently, particularly parents, and the data shows that they strongly believe that public schools are failing children of their race,” says Cornell Belcher, president of Democratic polling firm Brilliant Corners. “Improving K-12 schools is a top issue concern they want their elected officials focused on and they overwhelmingly believe that Democrats are not focused enough on the issue of education.”

Brilliant Corners performed the survey between June 4 and June 17 on behalf of Freedom Coalition for Charter Schools, and polled more than 800 Black and Hispanic likely voters in seven swing states, including Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

“It’s quite frustrating as someone who lives in the city of Atlanta and who does vote that you often don’t see our elected officials have even been paying attention to education until something tragic happens,” says Keisha Spells, who has spent nearly two decades working with families as a community engagement specialist in the public school system, and whose  own four children attended  Atlanta’s public schools. 

“In 17 years, I have seen families in complete frustration,” she says. “I’ve watched failing schools remain open and fail more kids. You have to ask yourself: Are we failing generations now, as the grandmother, mother and now the child, all are unsuccessfully reading at [a] third grade [level]?” 

“They know that this isn’t right and that their kids need something more, but they don’t know how to advocate for it.”

For decades, voters overwhelmingly trusted Democrats over Republicans on the issue of education. But that trust has eroded in recent years, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, when K-12 schools across the country shuttered, some for more than an entire academic year. The impact of those closures disproportionately fell on Black and Hispanic students and students from low-income families, and their academic recovery has been painfully slow as a result. 

The new poll shows that a quarter of all respondents say they trust neither party on education issues or don’t know who to trust. Over a third, 36%, of Black voters who also identify as public school parents trust neither party, and roughly a quarter of Hispanic voters trust Republicans more than Democrats.

“Democratic leaders have an opportunity here to better position themselves in these important battleground states with this key base constituency by addressing their concerns about how the school system is serving their communities and elevating education as a national issue and priority,” Belcher says.

As it relates to specific education policy issues, 91% of the survey’s respondents say parents deserve the right to choose the public school that best meets their child’s individual needs, and 68% agree that children in their neighborhood would be able to get a better education if they could attend a different school outside their current zip code. Nearly the same percentage, 67%, agree that most children who graduate from their assigned public school aren’t yet ready for college or the workforce.

The vast majority of those polled also say they support increasing funding for public schools, including public charter schools, increasing teacher pay, hiring more diverse teachers and school leaders and including more Black and Latino history in curricula.

“We really wanted to hear from Black and Latino swing voters because this is an opportunity for lawmakers to hear what their constituents want and need,” says Jay Artis-Wright, the executive director of Freedom Coalition for Charter Schools, which advocates for equitable access to quality public school options for Black and Brown communities. 

“Here are the lived experiences of swing voters and here is an opportunity for lawmakers to know exactly how they feel,” she says.  “The clear message is that education is a priority for us and the data is showing that not only do we want education, we prioritize public education.”

Notably, Republicans in many of the same swing states where Black and Hispanic voters were polled – Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – have capitalized on parental frustrations over public schools in the wake of the pandemic. Several Republicans are calling for more choices by passing legislation that establishes or significantly expands private school choice programs, including education savings accounts, tax credit scholarships and voucher programs. 

The poll shows that while Black and Hispanic swing state voters generally support private school choice programs, their support is contingent upon ensuring that  funding for these programs  isn’t shifted from public school budgets and  that the schools don’t discriminate based on values or beliefs of students and staff. They’re much more enthusiastic about increasing funding for public schools and creating more public school choices, including charter schools.

“Republicans have been a little bit more out ahead on the issue, but our Black and Latino voters favor Democrats and trust Democrats more on education,” Artis-Wright says. “And at the same time, feel like they could be doing more.”

“We don’t want to do the us versus them narrative,” she says about public schools versus private schools. “But the reality is that they want more options. And that’s a huge issue coming out of the pandemic because we can’t just focus on this monolithic traditional public school. We cannot do this anymore and everyone is yelling about it.”

The poll is hardly the first to pick up on the increasing frustration among Black and Hispanic voters on the issue of K-12 education, including as it relates to calls for more funding and more choices. commissioned by the National Parents Union, a parent-led advocacy organization. 

“Parents have been really clear about wanting something different,” says Keri Rodrigues, founding president of the National Parents Union. “Upwards of 90% of people say parents deserve the right to choose the public option that best meets their child’s individual needs. You see it in this poll, you see it in our poll. We couldn’t be clearer about this.”

“Education for us is the pathway to economic mobility,” she says about Black and Hispanic parents. “We don’t see schools actually keeping pace with that and that is why you’re seeing a lot of movement among parents seeking alternatives and having this consistent outcry of wanting something different.”

Organizations like are working to equip Gen Z with the skills to differentiate between what’s real and what’s fake online. 

YVote was founded in New York City in 2017 out of concern for low youth voter turnout in the 2016 presidential election, when only of 18- to 29-year-olds nationwide cast a ballot. The organization is youth-centered and youth-led, with a core team of six that includes two high schoolers. The main facilitator is Mukilan Muthukumar, a senior at Hunter College High School. Since its launch, the organization has worked with over 1,500 students across 70 schools.

Kenisha Mahajan, a YVote alumna and lead facilitator, said that since the organization’s founding, it has expanded to civically engage young constituents beyond just voting. “A lot of people on our team banded together and realized that young people need a lot more empowerment and uplifting and also this connection to resources if we’re actually going to get them out to the polls,” Mahajan said.

Mahajan said the organization planned several sessions and activities for its annual, week-long Democracy Camp this month centered on media literacy, including icebreakers on current events, guided discussions on accessing information and trivia-style games on media bias.

“For young people that might be concerned about [artificial intelligence], we want to give them a platform to air out their concerns when it comes to what AI and media is looking like and talk about their experiences with it,” she said.

Christine Li and Eloise Gordon are peer leaders for the organization. Li is a junior at Millennium Brooklyn High School and Gordon is a senior at West End Academy Secondary School in Manhattan. The high schoolers worked together this spring on a Civil Action Project with the organization about media literacy and misinformation, which they showcased to about 60 students from several schools, adult leaders from voting and human rights organizations and community members during a virtual presentation. They also worked with journalist , co-founder of RANTT Media, to record an of The Roundtable: A Next Generation Politics Podcast titled Media Literacy in a Maelstrom.

“I think the consensus within our group was that media literacy was very important for this time of AI, false information and the 2024 election,” Li said. “A lot of the young leaders in our fellowship were really alarmed by how much false information they were interacting with.”

“When you think about the advent of mis- and disinformation since [then-candidate Donald Trump’s] 2016 tweets … the obvious example I point to is the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, which were rooted in mis- and disinformation,” Gordon said.

An analysis from The Brennan Center that Trump’s election-denial scheme that began in 2020, when he was president, is still impacting the voting process four years later. The organization cited the increase in threats and harassment of and restrictive across the country that disproportionately impact voters of color as byproducts of those efforts to overturn the results of the election.

As part of their project, Li, Gordon and other high schoolers brainstormed ways to combat falling for fake information online. One strategy the group implemented is the SIFT method, created by digital literacy expert and research scientist . SIFT stands for: Stop, Investigate the source, Find better coverage and Trace claims. Li said it’s a simple yet effective way to find biases and connect to original sources.

Another strategy Gordon said they promoted for detecting AI images is focusing on people’s hands, as artificial intelligence doesn’t have fingers and other small details like teeth figured out. In March, a fake of Trump being arrested circulated online. One of the biggest signs that it was bogus was the hands of Trump and the police officers in the image.

The group also discussed social media echo chambers and how easy it is to fall into a cycle of interacting only with information you agree with.

“We are really limited in our ideas, especially by algorithms and the conversations we have … I think if we really want to use social media for good, it’s really important that we seek out these new opinions and ideas,” Li said.

For Gordon, Facebook is the most concerning social media app when it comes to fake news being shared widely, “specifically on the news feed section of the Facebook app. We discussed as a group that the idea of a customized news feed inherently sounds flawed because news obviously isn’t customizable.”

Facebook has been several times over its content, and in 2021, founder Mark Zuckerberg said posts with misinformation about COVID had been removed from the site.

As for Li, she said she believes Trump’s Truth Social app is the most dangerous for mis- and disinformation.

“I think it’s a breeding ground for bias and misinformation because it’s not really fully developed. I think other apps do a much better job with regulating content and having fact checkers,” she said.

Aside from the Civic Action Projects, YVote has initiatives like training youth on canvassing for voter registration and participatory budgeting. The organization won first place and $20,000 in a 2021 citywide budgeting campaign to create community gardens at underfunded public schools.

During the organization’s summer camp, NYC teens are guided to envision what democracy looks like to them and are taught skills necessary to create it. They learn about the history of American democracy, craft proposals on specific issues they’d like to tackle and are encouraged to continue what they’ve learned by creating a research project during the school year. Though students don’t receive extra credit at school, those who participate will qualify for Certificates of Activist Excellence and/or Civic Leadership.

The organization also offers a year-long program called the Change Makers Institute, where facilitators aged 17 to 24 lead high school students in monthly virtual sessions to learn about voting and advocacy. They train students on reading news headlines and how to point out ones that may be fake, disreputable or skewed to the left or right politically.

In addition, the organization encourages young people to explore topics they’re passionate about, such as mass incarceration and school segregation and teaches them how voting can impact these issues.

In April, YVote launched Youth Civic Hub, a one-stop shop for New York City youth to learn where and how to vote, find out who is running for office in their area and get information on civic organizations that they may want to get involved in. The hub is run by a team of seven, six of them college students. 

The offers a civics glossary to break down common terms and an interactive map that allows voters to enter their neighborhood and see which politicians represent their area and what authority they have. The hub also features a directory of nearby organizations, an election portal that can help young people register to vote and an opportunities board for those who want to get involved beyond voting.