Free Republic

Eleanor Holmes Norton is hoping to save nearly 2,000 city students from the dreaded federal voucher program that allows them to attend well-functioning private schools in a safe and nurturing environment. Mrs. Norton vehemently opposes the voucher program because of its imposition on the District´s public schools, which, of course, perform at levels of bad and worse. Mrs. Norton and the like-minded in the Democrat-controlled Congress want to end the $18 million program because it works, is a big hit with the parents of disadvantaged students and provides low-income families with a choice. Some of the testimonials of the parents...

A landmark education program that provides opportunity to hundreds of families in the nation's capital to attend private schools is being opposed by Democrats in Congress. Barack Obama told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel in February that he was open to voucher programs, but just last week announced his intentions to squash the DC pilot program. "Barack Obama prefers private education for his daughters but won't give DC parents the same opportunity," said Brian Burch, President of Fidelis, a Catholic-based political, legal, research and educational organization. "Vouchers are Change," he continued. "Rather than subjecting kids to rotting schools, vouchers have brought change...

When Bill Clinton ran for president in 1992, he notably dissented from liberal orthodoxy on welfare and the death penalty. Many observers have been wondering if Barack Obama will follow Clinton's example. They frequently raise school choice as a cause Obama could take up to show his independence from Democratic interest groups. It doesn't look as if that's going to happen, as ABC News's Jake Tapper reports: On the same day that he was extolling the need to shake up the "status quo" in education, Obama also defended his opposition to school vouchers. "We don't have enough slots for every...

WASHINGTON – Voters are demonstrating widespread dissatisfaction with public schools in a series of surveys. In the latest scientifically representative poll conducted by the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice among Idaho voters, only 12 percent of parents said they would choose government school for their children if other options were available. The results were similar in other states, including Illinois, Nevada and Tennessee. The Indiana-based Friedman Foundation is using the surveys to gauge American attitudes toward school choice. In addition, the Idaho survey revealed only 4 percent of parents between the ages of 36 and 55 would use public schools...

Last week was tempestuous among defenders of the embattled school choice programs for disabled and foster children. Following an East Valley Tribune report and an article published here by Tim Keller of the Institute for Justice reporting that Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne had decided not to award vouchers next year, Horne responded with a memorandum provocatively entitled “Lies from the Goldwater Institute” denying that he had done so. The Arizona Republic weighed in for Horne, blasting Keller and the Goldwater Institute for assertions that were “insulting” and untrue. Horne and the Republic simply are wrong. Though the Court...

When Florida passed a law in 2001 creating the Corporate Tax Credit Scholarship Program for underprivileged students, all but one Democrat in the state legislature voted against it. Earlier this month, lawmakers extended the program – this time with the help of a full third of Democrats in the Legislature, including 13 of 25 members of the state's black caucus and every member of the Hispanic caucus. What changed? Our guess is that low-income parents in Florida have gotten a taste of the same school choice privileges that middle- and upper-income families have always enjoyed. And they've found they like...

(snip) Scarcely half of American children in our 50 largest cities will leave their public schools with a high-school diploma in hand, according to a study released by America's Promise Alliance. These children are disproportionately African-American. Their homes are disproportionately located in our largest public school districts. And the failure is a scar on this great land of opportunity. (snip) There's a good opening here for John McCain. As a senator, he has been a forceful voice for giving lower-income moms and dads the same options for their children that wealthier parents already enjoy. What if he took this campaign...

Today marks the 25th anniversary of "A Nation at Risk," the influential Reagan-era report by a blue-ribbon panel that alerted Americans to the weak performance of our education system. The report warned of a "rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a nation and a people." That dire forecast set off a quarter century of education reform that's yielded worthy changes – yet still not the achievement gains we need to turn back the tide of mediocrity. ...We're also far more open to charter schools, vouchers, virtual schools, home schooling. And we no longer suppose kids must...

The way to solve any problem is to analyze its causes and propose common sense solutions that don’t exacerbate it further. In this case, the educational crisis stems from three factors. First, many urban children are brought up without guidance and direction. Second, children have been raised to “do what feels good,” with a focus on instant gratification and without regard for what’s best long term (even if this was not the parents’ intent, children often learn by example). And last, the school system has stopped stimulating academic growth and fails to deal with the student’s specific needs. As a...

This week's revelation that 17 of the nation's 50 largest cities have high school graduation rates below 50% surely saddened many. But it surprised few people attuned to the state of U.S. public education. Proponents of education choice have long believed that dropout rates fall when families can pick the schools best suited for their children. So news that Sol Stern, a veteran advocate of school choice, is having second thoughts about the ability of market forces to improve education outcomes is noteworthy. Mr. Stern explains his change of heart in the current issue of the indispensable City Journal, a...

KJ Come Home! : Kevin Johnson turns on the heat for school choice Matthew Ladner, Goldwater Institute Daily Email, April 03, 2008 Former Phoenix Suns point guard Kevin Johnson didn’t consider himself benched when he retired from the game. Johnson, an NBA all-star who in 1993 helped bring the Suns as close to an NBA championship as they’ve ever been, is now jumping through hoops to bring school choice to the nation’s kids. Johnson grew up in Sacramento, California. After retirement he returned and founded a system of high-quality charter schools known as the St. Hope Academies. Johnson turned a...

Debt Doesn’t Deliver : Charter Schools Are a Better Option Matthew Ladner, Goldwater Institute Daily Email, March 24, 2008 “Crazy for loving you,” Patsy Cline crooned. She must have been singing about district schools. Bill Clinton famously defined “insanity” as doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting a different result every time. Apply that notion to Governor Napolitano’s repeated calls for the state to incur huge levels of debt in order to build school district facilities. We have better options. Charter schools operate with fewer taxpayer dollars, and with no state funding for facilities. Charter schools make up nine out...

School Choice Reaches Adolescence : An age that requires more attention, not less Matthew Ladner, Goldwater Institute Daily Email, March 11, 2008 Rebelling against tedious 12 minute rock songs in 1974, the Ramones invented punk rock by taking 1950s Do-Wop songs and speeding them up to last a minute and half. Music fans have been grateful ever since, even if punk isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. Spin Magazine voted them second only to some obscure group from Liverpool when ranking rock bands. In tribute, I offer my own piece of short entertainment in the form of a blitzkrieg summary of...

Barack Obama has been backing off post-partisan rhetoric on education, looking more like a stick-in-the-mud Democratic regular on schools and less like the reformer who supported test-based accountability and performance pay for teachers. The Chicagoan had bucked teachers' unions and other stodgy liberals, supporting charter schools in Illinois and mentorship programs in Washington, Josh Patashnik writes in the New Republic. But a campaign-hardened Obama is sounding more like a traditional lefty, waffling when the issues get tough and even employing an advisor who has worked to kill the avant-garde Teach for America (which subverts certification standards cherished by unions). Patashnik...

DEERFIELD, IL, March 7, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Deerfield High School, in Deerfield, Illinois, is offering the books "Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes" (Part One & Two) - laced with graphic sexual content, including gay sex, pervasive expletives, religious denigration and mockery - in English classes this spring.The books contain graphic descriptions of sodomy heretofore only heard of in hardcore homosexual pornography.  With numerous uses of the 'f' word and vulgar sexual references to Mother Teresa, the Mother of Jesus, and God."After almost 15 years of school advocacy and reviewing many objectionable books and curricula, I...

I began writing about school choice in City Journal more than a decade ago. I believed then (as I still believe) that giving tuition vouchers to poor inner-city students stuck in lousy public schools was a civil rights imperative. Starting in the 1980s, major empirical studies by sociologist James Coleman and other scholars showed that urban Catholic schools were better than public schools at educating the poor, despite spending far less per student. Among the reasons for this superiority: most Catholic educators still believed in a coherent, content-based curriculum, and they enforced order in the classroom. It seemed immoral to...

Appalachazona? : Hispanic students excelling in other states with similar per-student spending Matthew Ladner Goldwater Institute Daily Email February 05, 2008 Last week I refuted the notion that the rising Hispanic population will doom the Southwest to becoming the Appalachia of the 21st century with data from Florida. I’ve dug into the numbers further, and they tell an extraordinary story. Figure 1 presents reading scores from Florida and Arizona for all students. Looking at the data, the obvious question to ask: what happened after 1998? Two words: Jeb Bush. Jeb Bush was elected Governor of Florida in 1998, and implemented...

Old Milwaukee Light by: Jeremy Hempel, February 04, 2008 A new report has come out comparing Milwaukee public highschool students and students enrolled in the Milwaukee Parent’s Choice Program. The Milwaukee Parent’s Choice Program or MPCP is a system of private schools available to low-income families (<$35,000) living in Milwaukee. About one in four high school students who live in the region are in the MPCP program boasting over 18,000 students. There are a total of 122 private schools that parents can choose from for their children to attend. Jay Greene, PhD, has conducted a study on the class of...

Inspired Choice: Molera nomination great news for State Board of Education Clint Bolick, Goldwater Institute Daily Email, January 31, 2008 Governor Janet Napolitano’s nomination of Jaime Molera to the Arizona State Board of Education is welcome news to all who value educational freedom. Molera served as Superintendent of Public Instruction from 2001-2003 and pursued a reform agenda. Most important, Molera is a passionate champion of parental choice, through public school choice, charter schools, and vouchers and tax credits for private schools. When Superintendent Tom Horne tried to stifle charter schools with a one-size-fits-all state-mandated curriculum, Molera joined fellow past Arizona...

Choices Not Echoes by: Louisa Tavlas, January 28, 2008 ...It may not be news to some us that, academically, American students lag behind many of their international counterparts. And it may not come to as a surprise that, despite this, the U.S. is an extravagant spender on education, having the highest per student cost in the industrial world. But a series of statistics that Walberg reveals in his introduction are even more disconcerting. For example, he notes that reading achievement of 12th graders has steadily declined from 1992 to 2007. The 2006 American College Test indicated that only 51 percent...

Choosing More Than Choice by: Louisa Tavis, January 23, 2008 In opening his City Journal article “School choice isn’t enough”, Sol Stern is careful to assert that he resolutely supports the practice of giving tuition vouchers in order to promote educational independence. Indeed, he states that tuition vouchers’ competition-based ideology would be key in forcing public schools to improve, at the risk of losing their students to, say, urban Catholic schools. Stern muses: “Since competition worked in other areas, wouldn’t it lead to progress in education too?”... Since the first voucher program was established in Milwaukee 15 years ago, the...

Capital Comparison There are other ways to address school capital costs besides financing By Matthew Ladner, Ph.D. When considering whether or not to finance capital costs for schools, or utilize other methods to reduce pressure on Arizona's beleaguered budget, a comparison between Arizona and Nevada is instructive. Nevada faces runaway enrollment growth similar to that of Arizona. Between 1995 and 2005, Arizona's K-12 student population expanded by approximately 351,000 students. During the same period, Nevada's K-12 population increased by just over 147,000 students. As a percentage of the total student population, these increases were comparable. Projected growth extends as far...

To the Rev. Reginald Jackson, head of the Black Ministers' Council, the remarkable success of the state's private preschools holds an obvious lesson. We need more school choice. We need to break the monopoly of the public school system. We need to build on this success by at least experimenting with vouchers in the K-12 system. "These preschools, 70 percent of which are privately owned, are providing a good foundation for these children," he says. "The only way we're going to know if it would make a difference in the later grades is by giving it a chance." That, of...

...Conservatives, I suspect, will find some of Huckabee's reservations about vouchers more persuasive than others. He cites a compelling argument from Christian school administrators, for example, who told him they fear that "once you take government money, you take government control." ...Huckabee did offer an alternative route to school choice for parents who don't want to send their children to public schools. "I think that we ought to have tax credits for a family whose decision is to put their children in an alternative environment. And that is something that I would support," he said. "It's an empowering method to...

Exclusive Interview: Huckabee on Education and School Choice By Terence P. Jeffrey CNSNews.com Editor in Chief December 28, 2007 (CNSNews.com) - Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, the Republican presidential candidate, told Cybercast News Service that he supports tuition tax credits for parents who send their children to private schools and that public schools ought to teach children, as per the Declaration of Independence, that there is a God and that our rights come from Him. Cybercast News Service Editor in Chief Terence P. Jeffrey interviewed Huckabee via phone about his views on education and school choice on the morning of...

"I see it as a social justice issue--I want them all to be in excellent schools. The kids in Tenleytown are getting a wildly different educational experience than the kids in Anacostia, so our schools are not serving their purpose."So says D.C. schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee, who has brought an unusual sense of urgency to her new job. One of her first decisions was to get rid of the furniture. When she arrived last summer, she says, there was a whole area, complete with couch and chair and TV for lounging in her sprawling, pink-carpeted office. Wasted space, she thought,...

Here are four ways our elected officials can make the new year a truly happy one: 1. Remember that Santa Claus lives in the North Pole, not Arizona. When elected officials feel the need to give away presents, they either should use their own money (imagine that!), or at least make sure that everyone benefits—such as with across-the-board tax cuts rather than subsidies to favored business interests. 2. Politicians who have exercised school choice for their own children ought to be willing to extend school choice to those in less-fortunate circumstances. The three leading Democratic candidates for president—Hillary Clinton, Barack...

Wednesday’s choice of a home-schooling educator to be the State Board of Education’s chairwoman in 2009 signals a new dynamic in the state’s crusade to fix its troubled public schools. Kristin Maguire, of Clemson, would be the nation’s only home-schooling educator to lead a state school board if she took office this year, according to the National Association of State Boards of Education. Maguire lobbied intensively for legislation that created a statewide charter school system and has voiced support for Sanford allies who want the Legislature to OK financial incentives for parents who send their children to private schools or...

We do have to give moderator Carolyn Washburn credit for asking a good question about education -- not only because the subject is often ignored on the campaign trail, but because ... ... it sparked a noteworthy outburst by Fred Thompson against the National Education Assn. -- the nation's leading teachers union. Washburn asked the candidates to identify the biggest impediment to improving public education. Thompson was clear and direct in his response, making the case for giving families, especially low-income ones, greater latitude in choosing the schools their children attend, presumably through a government-backed voucher program. "The biggest obstacle,...

And we must not fear conservative curriculum courses like world religion, ethics, Intelligent Design, and the most overlooked yet embedded text in Western culture and civilization – the Bible – which even our Founders expected us to teach. Provide Further Support For Educational Options If states continue to oppose conservative curricula and impose overarching liberal educational revisions and law like California recently enacted in SB777, which will in the end reverse discrimination against religious students and students with traditional family values, public schools should continue to expect an increased exodus. (A petition drive has until Dec. 20 to repeal SB777.)...

State Sen. Eric Johnson was among the first prominent Georgians to jump on the Fred Thompson for President bandwagon. The Savannah Republican helped persuade dozens of state lawmakers to endorse the former Tennessee senator earlier this year. But he remained relatively quiet after Thompson officially entered the GOP race this summer. Until last week, that is. That was when Thompson slipped to fifth place in one national poll after doing only a little better in other recent ones. Earlier, he'd led in one national poll and stayed near the front of the pack in others. Against that backdrop, Johnson weighed...

A common argument against public funding of parental choice of K-12 education is the claim it would result in government regulations harmful to nongovernment schools. Some fear such regulation would so burden independent schools as to put them out of business or make them virtually indistinguishable from public schools. This argument is too often used by, or effective with, those who might otherwise be among the strongest supporters of generally available publicly funded student grants. People who sing the song of excessive regulation tend to accept it as a given, but they rarely cite evidence to support their fears. In...

As important as school vouchers are, the greatest progress toward choice probably isn't taking place in Utah right now. I say this not to minimize the efforts being made there, but to remind reformers the solutions to traditional questions may not have traditional answers. Instead, the most exciting progress in education reform is in technology and distance learning. Education technology does not merely mean having a computer (or computers) in the classroom. It is simply a computer, the student--and, depending on the format, the tutor--all connected by Internet technology. On the surface, it might not seem very revolutionary, but the...

Democrats for Education Reform is a new group that is making a big splash. On November 19, the group held an event in which U.S. Representative James Clyburn (D-SC) stressed the importance of parental choice and innovation in education. Clyburn, the House Majority Whip and the highest-ranking African-American in Congress, supports both charter schools and tax credits for middle-class families. At an earlier event held by the group, Representative Jesse Jackson Jr. discussed “alarming dropout rates” and the dangers of a “monopoly” filled with failing schools. “We must explore options,” he said. “Every option for every American child so that...

On October 21, Rudy Giuliani convinced me that he could be the Republican nominee for President. In a singular moment during the Fox News Channel debate on that day, he almost persuaded me that I want him to be. That instant came when Giuliani was asked what he would do to bring public school teachers that he had angered in New York City and those who have been alienated by No Child Left Behind back into the fold for the GOP. Giuliani answered, “…what we need is choice.”

Governor Mitt Romney has an opportunity to help to deliver a victory at the ballot box in Utah next month when voters will decide whether to repeal the state's recently-enacted universal school voucher program. The benefits of sustaining this kind of program are clear: An education marketplace encourages innovation, greater efficiency, and more diversity. Instead of being stuck with one-size-fits-all, local-government-run public schools, parents are able to choose the schools that best meet their children's unique needs and talents. Schools respond by offering a variety of curricula and specialties. If parents have doubts about whether their child is thriving they...

I read this sort of thing and I just do a slow burn. In the end, though, I couldn't sacrifice my son to an education system that seems at best inefficient and at worst willfully corrupt. As much as I admire Mayor Fenty, I can't help noting that his children go to a private school. And if he doesn't send his kids to D.C. schools, why should I? The more interesting question is why should all of the parents who don't have the choice to send their kids to a private school, or move to the suburbs? How do you...

Not As Good As You Think by: Emmanuel Opati, October 23, 2007 It has been reported that middle-class children in suburban schools are not as proficient at their grade levels as most parents think. Presenting their research findings from a study carried out among California middle class schools, at the Heritage Foundation recently, Lance Izumi and Dr. Vicki Murray noted that of the 284 California middle-class schools where the median home price was more than $400,000, 78% of the students failed standardized tests in English or Math. Although the U.S. Department of Education’s Nation’s Report Cardwhich was released in September...

Next month, voters in Utah will go to the polls to decide whether to give parents the opportunity to choose the best school for their children. The National Education Association is pouring resources into the state to defeat the initiative. Signed into law by Governor Jon Huntsman, Jr., in February, the Parent Choice in Education Act would offer tuition scholarships to each of Utah's 500,000 public school students and to all low-income children currently attending private schools. The scholarships would be worth between $500 and $3,000, with students from lower-income families receiving greater assistance. By 2020, every child in the...

Parents and children of America have a grievance. Government compels us to pay into the public educational system, but will not allow us to choose the schools that best meet the needs of our children. This choice is left to government educrats who decide which schools our children attend and what they will be taught, including indoctrination conforming to their political and religious outlook. Parents who opt out of this system are penalized with the loss of educational funding. Clearly, this violates the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise...

I’ve been following the news story on the execution style killings of three college bound students in Newark, NJ. It is just so horrific that I wanted to find some justification, no matter how slight, for such an atrocity to befall this particular group of victims; young adults whose gruesome fate was decided because they chose to hang out in the wrong place at the wrong time. I was particularly disappointed when Bill O’Reilly’s guest, Jesse Peterson, a professor of hip hop culture, had absolutely no concrete suggestions on how to prevent kids from turning into thugs --except to suggest...

Mr. Booker is trying to turn around a city plagued by violent crime, poverty and failing schools. Problem cities can be found all over the country, but most of them don't have mayors like Cory Booker. "It may be like taking castor oil to fix all these problems, but at the end of the day, this city will be financially healthy and people will be better off for it." A major part of the mayor's grand solution is developing Newark's private sector. "You want to create a more vibrant private sector that's going to generate more economic activity, more economic...

NEWARK, N.J.--"As difficult as it's been the first year, I'm blessed to be in the most important American fight going on." Thus spoke Newark Mayor Cory Booker when I sat down with him late last month in his spartan City Hall office. There were no pictures of smiling politicians on the walls, few personal mementos and minimal paperwork cluttering the tabletops. Mr. Booker doesn't need any extra distractions. "I'm used to doing a million things and balancing them all," he tells me. "But a job like this has so many areas that are screaming for attention." Mr. Booker is trying...

Democrats missed a real opportunity during the July 23 CNN/YouTube debate to declare themselves proudly pro-choice. Not on abortion, but on education. During the unconventional debate, Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., could have done it easily. He's been an advocate for giving poor families the same opportunities wealthy families have: moving kids out of failing public schools and into private ones. Unfortunately, his admirable position wasn't clear during the debate. Asked if candidates would send their children to public or private school, Biden's answer sounded positively apologetic. He said that, after his wife and daughter were killed in a car accident,...

But not a one of them even whispered a word of outrage about a public school system that spends $13,000 per child -- third-highest among big-city school systems -- and produces pupils who score among the lowest in just about any category you can name. The only area in which the Washington school system is No. 1 is in money spent on administration. Chests should not swell with pride. The litany of more and more when it comes to money often has little to do with what, in the military, are called facts on the ground: kids and parents. It...

Justice O'Connor continued to defend her original position. She lamented statistics that showed that as a result of California's Proposition 209 (passed in 1996) only 2.2% of UCLA freshmen were black, and a fifth of those were on athletic scholarships. (California's overall population is 6.1% black.) She seemed strangely unaware, however, of the growing evidence that racial preferences might have actually decreased the likelihood that blacks and Hispanics will graduate from college. Put differently, if the body of evidence is correct, the whole affirmative action enterprise has been deeply and tragically flawed from the beginning, failing to achieve its most...

WOAI radio, the flagship station of San Antionio-based media giant Clear Channel media, reports that a powerful group of businessmen and former politicians have embarked on a project to fight school vouchers in the state of Texas. The group proclaims that the idea is to fix what's wrong with the public schools, but the mechanism to accomplish this, is, ...to spread the message of the dangers that vouchers would do to the public schools. The advisory board of the new group includes several heavy hitters in the South Texas corporate arena, such as HEB grocery chain Chairman Charles Butt. Butt's...

In a fantastic victory for Utah children, on Friday the Utah legislature passed the Parent Choice in Education Act, the nation’s first ever school voucher for all schoolchildren. Governor Huntsman awaits the bill’s arrival on his desk for signature. Under this system, public school children of all income levels will be eligible for a voucher, but greater levels of aid will be given to children from lower-income families. This is an elegant solution to the argument concerning targeted versus universal school choice programs. The program will be both broad and targeted. The program will also be statewide, rather than concentrated...

WASHINGTON -- Fifty-seven years later, the Sumner Elementary School in Topeka is back in the news. That city's board of education is still wrongly preventing the right people from getting into that building. Two educators wanted to use Sumner for a charter school, a public school entitled to operate outside the confinements of dictated curricula and free from many work rules written by teachers unions. Their school would have been a back-to-basics academy for grades K through five, designed to attack Topeka's 23-point gap between the reading proficiency of black and Hispanic third-graders and that of whites. When the school...

Evolution battles caused by politically powerful Cato Institute says solution is simple: Allow choice A new study is blaming the monolithic public school system being used in the United States for the estimated 150 major battles over the course of the last year over religion, evolutionary theory, slogans on T-shirts, the "gay" agenda and other points of contention. "All across the country, public schools threw Americans' fundamental values into conflict during the 2005-2006 school year – whether over intelligent design, dress codes, controversial school books, or sundry other divisive topics," said the study by Neal McCluskey, policy analyst with the...