A Plan for Prudence

June 5, 2025

By Bruno Manno

The words “common sense” are central in today’s political lexicon. President Trump’s Inaugural Address called for a “revolution of common sense.” Michael Baharaeen, columnist and chief political analyst for the center-left Liberal Patriot, asked, “Is a common sense faction of Democrats rising?”  

Rival claims of common sense reminded me that my parents' go-to maxim was "Use your common sense." They directed it at me (and my siblings) when I was old enough to raise questions with them about doing something on my own. On the other hand, "That person doesn't have any common sense" was the worst thing they could say about another person.

These maxims weren’t particular to my family. Growing up, I heard them repeated by adults to their children throughout our Italian American neighborhood in Cleveland, Ohio. For my part, I found the simplicity of the advice appealing, though I was not always sure how to apply it.

As is often the case with simple truisms, it’s taken me years to understand the complexity and insight behind such timeless maxims. Only recently did I realize that my parents’ guidance was grounded in the virtue of prudence, which I’d learned about during my Catholic school education. This motivated me to re-educate myself on the meaning of this essential and overlooked virtue.

In today's fast-paced, often chaotic environment, the need for prudence—a virtue that combines foresight, wisdom, and discretion—has never been more critical. Properly understood, “use your common sense” might be a rallying cry for our time.

The Grammar of the Virtues

The Catechism of the Catholic Church sees prudence as one of the four human or “moral virtues acquired by human effort,” along with justice, courage, and temperance. They are the cardinal virtues, derived from the Latin word cardo or hinge. Prudence, or practical wisdom, is the foremost among the cardinal virtues. In The Four Cardinal Virtues, Josef Pieper says it is "the cause of the other virtues being virtues at all."  

Without prudence, justice is misapplied, courageous actions are harmful, and temperance is misguided. Prudence demands we make the right decisions, considering immediate benefits and long-term impacts on ourselves and others. “Prudence means practical common sense, taking the trouble to think out what you are doing and what is likely to come of it,” writes C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity.

Nor is prudence merely a Catholic virtue. Deirdre McCloskey, in The Bourgeois Virtues, calls prudence “the executive function” and “the grammar of the virtues.” Prudence is not only about judicious wisdom. It is also an entrepreneurial virtue. It involves the courage to take calculated risks and the wisdom to foresee the benefits of temperate actions in the economic sphere. Prudence is a balancing act between daring and restraint—a quality indispensable in our current political climate.

McCloskey also emphasized the role of prudence in economic development, suggesting that it underpins progress in capitalist societies. "The prudent use of resources, the weighing of costs against benefits, and the careful assessment of risk and reward are all essential to the entrepreneurial spirit that drives growth," she writes. Her view challenges the often-negative perception of capitalist virtues, highlighting how prudence is pivotal in achieving ethical and economic outcomes that benefit society.

McCloskey further explores the application of prudence in personal life, arguing that this virtue is not merely about avoiding risk but about making thoughtful decisions that enhance one's life and the lives of others. "To be prudent is to be mindful of the practical implications of one's actions,” she notes, “to foster a habit of reflective and deliberative engagement with the world."

The relevance of prudence can hardly be overstated. In a world where performance and instant gratification are often the order of the day and long-term consequences are overlooked, prudence calls us to pause and carefully consider actions and their ramifications. This is a much-needed antidote to the passions fueled by the outrage economy and its conflict purveyors. It opposes contemporary tendencies to inflame, catastrophize, sensationalize, and forget.

But prudence is not simply a virtue for citizens—common sense for the common man. It is essential in political leadership, where decisions have far-reaching consequences. That’s because prudence is fundamentally about good judgment. It involves a theoretical understanding of the good and the practical ability to achieve it.

In politics, this means crafting policies with an eye toward the present and an awareness of the impact on the future. It requires an engagement with reality deeply grounded in ethical considerations and empirical evidence.

A Prudential System of K-12 Public School Choice

Few policy arenas demand as much prudential judgment as K-12 education. Public schooling shapes young people in many ways while navigating diverse communities and competing interests. It is inherently local yet inescapably national, personal yet political. It requires balancing innovation and stability, equity and excellence, autonomy and accountability.

Nowhere is the need for prudence more obvious than in the landscape of K-12 public school choice. The American public education system is no longer a monolith. It is a growing system of educational approaches that seeks to meet students where they are and help them get where they need to go. Properly understood, this expansion is not a departure from public education but a prudential adaptation—a recalibration of means to achieve enduring public purposes.

Consider today's public education options: magnet schools, charter schools, microschools, open enrollment, dual enrollment, and career pathways programs. These six innovations represent a many-year effort of prudential experimentation to improve young people's education.

Magnet schools were born from the effort to achieve voluntary desegregation through curricular specialization. The first magnet school opened in Tacoma, Washington in 1968. These schools focus on themes like performing arts, STEM, or language immersion. With about 4,300 schools serving nearly 3.5 million students today, magnets are a prudent blend of equity goals and parental choice.

Charter schools are public schools that are typically free from many school district requirements and held accountable by independent authorizers. The first one opened in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1992. Today, over 8,000 of these independent public schools of choice serve 3.8 million students. Charter schools vary widely but often reflect a prudent response to bureaucratic rigidity. Giving educators more flexibility and families more options allows them to channel innovation without abandoning public accountability.

Microschools, the modern heirs to the one-room schoolhouse, offer highly personalized education in small settings. They emerged in the early 2000s and gained significant traction during COVID-19. They are sometimes tied to charter networks and allow for experimentation with instructional models and student grouping. With an estimated 95,000 microschools serving roughly 1.5 million students, they reflect a prudent search for intimacy and adaptability in learning environments.

Open enrollment policies allow families to enroll children in public schools outside their residential zones. The Minnesota legislature passed the first open enrollment law in 1998. Today, 43 states have open enrollment laws that empower families, foster competition, and push schools to improve. Yet they require prudent oversight to ensure equity and prevent unintended disparities.

Dual enrollment programs allow high school students to take college-level courses from a two- or four-year college, earning high school and college credit. Currently, 48 states and the District of Columbia have these programs. Nine out of 10 high schools offer college courses to nearly 2.5 million students, which is one out of three students.

Career pathway programs allow high school students to choose and earn credentials for high-demand jobs that typically do not require a college degree. The most common form is career and technical education, or CTE, which enrolls around 11.2 million students.  

Prudence and K-12 Education Going Forward

The gradual expansion of public school choice through these six innovations has created a more institutionally diverse K-12 education landscape. Increasing the scope of public school choice in the years ahead should continue to develop these approaches and add additional ones. Here are three examples of how a prudential approach to this might unfold.  

         The first example illustrates how a prudent approach could mitigate the controversies surrounding K-12 curriculum issues. It stems from the school closures associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, which disrupted student learning and led to learning loss. This problem has led to multiple efforts to help students recover from that loss, including the growing use of evidence-based programming that has improved student learning outcomes. These interventions are aligned with high educational standards, utilize effective teacher instructional strategies, and include student assessment and feedback.

One approach is high-dosage tutoring, which produces impressive academic results. Elementary students gain more than four months’ worth of reading instruction, and high school students earn more than 10 months of mathematics instruction, equivalent to an additional school year. Another approach involves using high-quality classroom instructional materials and teacher professional development to improve literacy based on the science of reading. Between 2019 and 2022, 223 laws based on the science of reading were enacted in 45 states and the District of Columbia. A report calls these laws “an ambitious, bipartisan, state-driven effort to improve U.S. reading outcomes through multilayered investments in teachers and students.” Both of these have expanded the educational options available to families and teachers and have produced improved student outcomes.

The second example illustrates how the federal government can utilize existing funding authorities to expand public school choice in the areas previously discussed. It begins with a January 2025 Executive Order by President Trump on Expanding Education Freedom and Opportunity for Families. It was followed by a March 2025 U.S. Department of Education letter to all state education agencies on how to use existing funds from Title I, the largest K-12 program, for expanding public school choice. It enumerated multiple examples, “including advanced courses, dual enrollment, academic tutoring, career and technical education, personalized learning, and out-of-school activities.” Using current federal program authorities to expand public school choice builds on the prudential approach discussed here.

A final example illustrates how a prudent approach to an issue could lead to not doing something that might be legally allowable. It stems from a controversy in Oklahoma regarding whether a charter school can be considered a religious school. The Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled that a religious charter school was not permitted under current law. This decision was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, whose decision ended in a four-to-four tie vote since Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused herself from the decision. This decision will not be the final word on the issue.  

But this case presents more than a legal question for some involved in faith-based schools. It raises a prudential question. "The most obvious reason for caution is the threat to religious liberty…blurring the line between public and private schools…could invite far more government control over what it means to teach the faith than the church wants," wrote Kathleen Porter-Magee, superintendent of Partnership Schools, a network of urban Catholic elementary schools. In this case, what might be legally allowable may not be the prudent path to take in expanding public school choice.

Prudence demands: adapting means to serve ends while remaining grounded in public values. Prudence, as a form of practical wisdom, is a virtue for our times. And my parents' admonition to “use your common sense” is indeed a rallying cry for our times

Bruno V. Manno is a senior advisor at the Progressive Policy Institute, leads its Pathways to Opportunity What Works Lab, and is a former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education for Policy.