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From walkouts to the Supreme Court to ballot measures, teachers and K–12 education made headlines this year. Elections can only tell us so much about what the public thinks about education matters and reforms, such as school choice. That’s why we look to polls like EdChoice’s six-years-running Schooling in America Survey, which allows us to provide a […]
A Clark County voter poll commissioned by Nevada’s Clark County Education Association (CCEA), a local teachers’ union, and conducted by Quirk Global Strategies made the rounds in the news over the last week. This poll of 500 Clark County voters, administered in November, has some questions similar to those from EdChoice’s Nevada K–12 and School Choice […]
School choice. The term was demonized in my teacher credentialing courses and by my own mother, who had been teaching in public schools since she was 20 years old. Everyone was doing it, so I toed the line as well, but only for a short while. My Ah-Ha Moment My first teaching assignment was in […]
When many people think of school choice, they think of programs that help students who live in struggling areas where the public schools are not always the best choice for a successful education. Loudoun County, Virginia however, is not one of those counties. The county schools are exceptional. The district boasts graduation rates one […]
Problematic public school classroom conditions have survived decades of education reform efforts. With federal lawmakers considering reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act—and new state lawmakers pursuing different types of education reforms—it is worth reviewing the root causes of our school system’s ineffectiveness and the policy reforms that would eliminate those problems—for the benefit […]
We’re back this week with the second installment of this series, which features Facebook feedback we regularly receive from teachers across the country. In our first post on the topic, we said, “Our ultimate hope is teachers, many of whom might be reading right now, will see that we aren’t all talk. We do listen. […]
Our previous two blog posts on how top-down reforms are not market reform and how school choice actually increases demand for educators garnered a lot of attention from public school teachers on Facebook. As it’s one of our goals to listen and learn from more educators, we were excited so many were willing to take […]
Today’s freakout comes to us from a frustrated teacher in the comments of “Half of All School District Employees Aren’t Teachers” on Ricochet. This veteran teacher said it best. Public schools have become increasingly burdened with regulations, including additional mandated testing, data processing, and reporting. Often times and especially in Cow Girl’s case, administrators with […]
Social movements such as women’s suffrage, Black civil rights, and parental choice in education involve the redistribution of social, political, and economic power. Because few groups in control of that power at the time are enlightened enough to share it voluntarily, these power struggles are usually contentious—but they don’t have to be. Although school choice […]
Today’s freakout comes from the comments section of Nicholas Simmons’ recent op-ed in The Wall Street Journal entitled, “What I’ve Learned Teaching Charter Students.” Simmons has taught math for two years at New York City’s Success Academy charter school. In his piece, he shares about his students and their outcomes, but the ultimate messages are: […]