Family Resources

Cool Schools: Season One Roundup

Cool Schools Podcast

In our Cool Schools podcast series, EdChoice’s Director of National Research Mike McShane spotlights some—you guessed it—cool schools across the country. This series isn’t just a celebration of innovation. McShane gets in the weeds, asking school leaders all the burning questions we education geeks care about. Season One of the series wrapped last month, so […]

Four Ways Evidence Shows School Choice Can Help Teachers

From the 11-day teacher’s strike in Chicago, the nation’s third largest public school district, to a looming Statehouse protest in Indiana, teachers and their working conditions are making headlines. Teachers’ unions tend to oppose educational choice policies, but there are several ways expanding choice could actually help teachers. Here are the four big ones.   […]

Top Five Questions About Teacher Pay

Teacher pay has made lots of headlines the last couple years, with educators in Illinois and Indiana among the latest to take action to up their salaries. Because K-12 funding is so complicated, we thought it would be a good time to throw out the Top Five questions we get asked about pay. Some of […]

Where the “Funding Competing Systems” Argument Falls Completely Apart

The new “gotcha” argument from school choice opponents is that school choice is inefficient. Charter schools and private schools create redundancies by duplicating the services, systems and governing structure of public schools. Some even take it a step further and argue that choice robs from traditional systems, and if it would go away, all that […]

Cool Schools: Season Two Roundup

In our Cool Schools podcast series, EdChoice’s Director of National Research Mike McShane spotlights some—you guessed it—cool schools across the country. McShane gets in the weeds, asking school leaders all the burning questions we education geeks care about. Season two of the series just wrapped, so if you’d like to binge those seven episodes and […]

Cool Schools: All-Boys High School Focuses on Building Brotherhood, Being Leaders

In this episode of Cool Schools, Kevin Festerling, founder of Kingdom Prep Lutheran High School, recounts the institution’s first academic year. Festerling says, “Our job isn’t to create Lutherans. Our job is to be Lutheran.” Click to listen, or read the full transcript below. LISTEN ON ITUNES LISTEN ON STITCHER Our Podcast Transcribed Mike McShane: […]

How to Afford Private School

Can I Afford Private School

Parents choose private schools for a lot of reasons. Maybe their local public school is not meeting their needs. Maybe they want a religious education for their child. Maybe they prefer a different instructional approach for their child. Does one of these describe your situation? Maybe sending your child to private school is the right […]

Can I Use a 529 Plan for K–12 Expenses?

529 Tax Plan

If you’ve done much research into how to save for your child’s college education, you’ve probably heard of 529 plans. These plans, created as part of the Small Business Job Protection Act in 1996, were originally meant to give parents a tax-advantaged way to save for college expenses. Parents could get federal income tax benefits […]

How Do You Build a School Choice Coalition?

In today’s episode, EdChoice’s President and CEO Robert Enlow moderates a conversation with two of our team’s long-time coalition builders, Vice President of Training and Outreach Keri Hunter and Senior Director of State Relations Michael Chartier. The three talk about their past experiences in coalition building and which states have strong school choice coalitions today. […]

What Recourse Families of Students with Special Needs Have When Their Schools Fail Them: Public vs. Private

Special Needs: Private vs. Public Schools

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 […]