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Empirical evidence is information that researchers generate to help uncover answers to questions that can have significant implications for our society. Take seatbelts. Prior to their invention, people were killed or maimed in what today we would think of as minor traffic accidents. So smart engineers put their heads together to try to do something […]
National As a part of its tax reform bill, Congress expanded the federal 529 college savings account program to permit withdrawals of up to $10,000 annually to cover tuition at elementary and secondary schools. Family and friends can make contributions to beneficiaries’ 529 accounts, and any earnings that the accounts accumulate over time are non-taxable. […]
Based on recent media coverage, you might get the impression that the Florida Tax Credit (FTC) Scholarship Program operates in some kind of Mad Max free-for-all, where families are routinely exploited by ne’er-do-well school operators. An editorial in the Orlando Sentinel decried “your tax dollars” being “whisked away” to private schools and called for an […]
In September, Matt Di Carlo and Kinga Wysienska-Di Carlo published an interesting research brief for the Albert Shanker Institute, wherein they used data from the Common Core of Data and the Private School Universe Survey (both administered by the US Department of Education) to track levels of segregation in public, private and charter schools in […]
As someone who has been working with private school data for nearly five years, I am always looking for more tools to help us fill in the information gaps. To that end, I took a handful of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) courses to get a Graduate Certificate that gave me the skills and ability to […]
School choice programs received high marks from Americans in 2017. Five national, highly discussed polls detailed a wide range of public opinion results regarding American education this year. Gallup, the Associated Press-National Opinion Research Center (AP-NORC), Education Next (EdNext), Phi Delta Kappa (PDK) and EdChoice all measured what the public thinks about education and […]
LEGISLATION AND LITIGATION Florida Florida’s House Education Subcommittee voted 9–5 in favor of HB 1, a bill that would create HOPE Scholarships for students who have been the victims of bullying or abuse. This would become Florida’s second tax-credit scholarship program. New Hampshire New Hampshire’s House Education Committee voted 10–9 to recommend that the legislature […]
Hundreds of children in Douglas County, Colorado, lost something precious: the opportunity to attend a school where they could learn to their fullest potential. Their school district’s voucher program—one that once represented the best hope for truly local, community control of education—has been terminated. This is the first voucher program terminated by the government entity […]
Students with special needs are a vulnerable population. Often, they lack the ability to effectively advocate for themselves within the classroom or school house. Diagnoses can be complicated and contradictory—incredible strengths in one area can be tempered by profound deficiencies in others. No two children with special needs are alike. This is perhaps why both […]
In 1921, Swiss psychoanalyst Hermann Rorschach published Pscychodiagnostik, wherein he produced 10 cards blotted with ink that he believed were a window into an individual’s subconscious. In the nearly 100 years since, the term “Rorschach Test” has come to denote a phenomenon whose interpretation is derived entirely by the observer. In recent years, the research […]