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This post originally appeared here on the Rick Hess Straight Up blog on Education Week. Greetings, fellow travelers. It’s Robert Enlow, back again with the next take from the mind of this old, cranky ed reformer. Imagine, if you will, that I’m sitting in a rocking chair sipping iced tea—or something slightly stronger—muttering under my […]
This post originally appeared here on the Rick Hess Straight Up blog on Education Week. Hi. My name is Robert Enlow. I’m an ed reformer, and I’ve been one for a long, long time. Over time, it’s easy to lose oneself in the daily grind that wears us all down, and sometimes we need to […]
As the school choice debate ramps up around the country, one of the most commonly used phrases by choice opponents, and some advocates, is that voucher schools are “unaccountable.” This conceptualization stems from the fact that most voucher programs face different accountability regulations than traditional public schools, some of which may be less transparent. On […]
For as long as we can remember, our society has known one system of education. Based on their ZIP Codes, our children are assigned to “free” public schools that are supposed to be identical and serve everyone equally. Once in that system, which was designed to educate a workforce of people during the Industrial Age, […]
First, we need to understand what it would take to topple public schools. Total expenditures nationwide for fiscal year 2014 exceeded $625 billion. Now, how much are states spending on school choice programs today? Based on the most recent data available, only $2.2 billion across the entire country. The truth? The biggest threat to public […]
Researchers from across the country have conducted more than 100 rigorous empirical studies on the effects of school choice programs. Here’s what they found. Does School Choice Help or Hurt Students? The vast majority of random assignment studies—the gold-standard method in social science—find school choice programs help improve students’ academic performance, especially over time. […]
Rich people have always been able to practice educational choice: They either pay out of pocket for private schools, or they pay a premium to buy houses in neighborhoods with “good public schools.” So, what happens to everyone else? We know for a fact that our current ZIP Code-based public education system has kept low-income […]
LEGISLATION AND LITIGATION Ohio Ohio’S HB 49 was signed into law by Gov. John Kasich. The bill raises the maximum voucher values for the Cleveland Scholarship Program from $4,250 to $4,650 for K–8 students, and from $5,700 to $6,000 for high schoolers.
The old system of delivering public education is not improving quickly enough. Since 1971, America’s spending on education has increased by 300 percent, and that’s adjusted for inflation. Yet student performance has been almost stagnant. Of the current forms of school choice, competition from private school choice and charter school choice works best to improve […]
The special education landscape has changed dramatically since the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA, was last reauthorized in 2004, and radically since the law was first written in 1975. Organizational, fiscal and medical aspects of special education are beyond a boiling point and have been driven to steam by a single handicapping condition: […]