Free Republic

The hypocrisy of opponents of school choice schemes has never been a big secret. But rarely has that quality been so brazenly exhibited as by Vincent Giordano, the head of the New Jersey Education Association, in a recent interview on New Jersey public television. When asked why he opposes giving poor parents the same opportunity to take their kids out of failing public schools and into successful private or religious institutions the wealthy have, the teachers union boss, who makes more than half a million in salary and other compensation, replied: "Life's not always fair." Giordano, who has been a major antagonist of New...

PHOENIX — Education-reform advocates won a key victory today, with a judge upholding the constitutionality of Arizona’s first-in-the-nation education savings accounts. The Maricopa County Superior Court rejected a legal challenge by the Arizona School Boards Association and the Arizona Education Association against the accounts, known formally as empowerment scholarship accounts (ESAs).   “Though this is only the opening round of a protracted legal battle, it is gratifying to start with a victory for the kids,� declared Clint Bolick, vice president for litigation at the Goldwater Institute, who argued on behalf of the Institute before Judge Maria Del Mar Verdin.  ...

After 20 years of basketball fame and fortune, Jalen Rose returns home to Detroit to promote school reform and parental choice. The ride from the airport to the Jalen Rose Leadership Academy in Northwest Detroit isn't pleasant. Nearly every other home is boarded up, abandoned, dilapidated... His school also doesn't have tenure for teachers. "I hate tenure. Tenure allows teachers to put their feet up on the desk and possibly have a job forever. That's why I got turned on to charter schools. It's a business model. Every employee and every teacher will be monitored by performance."... He also wants...

The RevPac event I attended on Monday night was an quite an experience. First of all, the choice of setting seemed designed to highlight some of the recurring themes in Ron Paul’s presidential campaign. While most of his primary opponents have held Manhattan fundraisers targeting donors in this city’s ever-dwindling, yet still potent, financial services sector, the rigidly anti-corporatist, free market dogma of the Paul campaign-highlighted by the appearance of bearish Euro Pacific CEO Peter Schiff-lent a new dimension to what would otherwise have been a routine campaign fundraiser. The optics of the event were pleasing, which I suppose was...

A Virginia company leading a national movement to replace classrooms with computers — in which children as young as 5 can learn at home at taxpayer expense — is facing a backlash from critics who are questioning its funding, quality and oversight. K12 Inc. of Herndon has become the country’s largest provider of full-time public virtual schools, upending the traditional American notion that learning occurs in a schoolhouse where students share the experience. In K12’s virtual schools, learning is largely solitary, with lessons delivered online to a child who progresses at her own pace. Conceived as a way to teach...

The Berkley School District Board of Education approved a resolution this week that called charter public schools and online schools “for profits” whose governing bodies will be located in other states and said recent legislation pertaining to such schools has “no expectation of transparency and accountability.” The board struck out on all three claims, however, according to Michael Van Beek, education policy director at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Berkley’s claim that charter schools and cyber schools are “for profits” is inaccurate, Van Beek said. Charter and cyber schools are nonprofits, just like conventional public schools. Charter schools do...

For years, American education from kindergarten through high school has been a virtual government monopoly. Conventional wisdom is that government must run the schools. But government monopolies don't do anything well. They fail because they have no real competition. Yet competition is what gives us better phones, movies, cars -- everything that's good. If governments produced cars, we'd have terrible cars. Actually, governments once did produce cars. The Soviet bloc puts its best engineers to work and came up with the Yugo, the Volga and the Trabant. The Trabant was the best -- the pride of the Eastern Bloc. It...

Robert Burgess, former president of the Michigan School Business Officials association, recently wrote an Op-Ed for The Herald Palladium claiming charter schools spend considerably more on administrative and maintenance costs than conventional public schools. The Michigan Education Association cited Burgess’ column to echo his claim. But the claims by Burgess and the MEA warrant a closer look. Michael Van Beek, education policy director for the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, said Burgess and the MEA’s take implies that charter schools aren’t putting as much into the classroom as other public schools. But Van Beek points out that charter schools have...

After a successful professional basketball career, Jalen Rose is setting his sights on becoming an education entrepreneur. In 2011, the former University of Michigan basketball standout and Detroit native opened a brand new charter school — the Jalen Rose Leadership Academy. Expectations are high here, but Rose says he's committed to giving these high school students an opportunity to succeed. “I’m a Detroit native and I know that unions are Big Business. All adults know that. Based on the number of schools, the number of kids, the number of dollars that flow through that situation. But a lot of the...

Before the creation of charter public schools in 1994, mere geography determined the education of Michigan’s public school pupils. Much like buying boots in the old Soviet Empire, parental choice was limited to accepting what the bureaucrats in the local education monopoly offered, or fleeing with the family across the border to another district (if you could afford it). Even today, a majority of charters have a wait list, and some must conduct lotteries to determine which parents get a choice over who teaches their kids. For last school year, one such lottery was used because a district had just...

SOUTH BEND, Ind. (AP) - Weeks after Indiana began the nation's broadest school voucher program, thousands of students have transferred from public to private schools, causing a spike in enrollment at some Catholic institutions that were only recently on the brink of closing for lack of pupils. It's a scenario public school advocates have long feared: Students fleeing local districts in large numbers, taking with them vital tax dollars that often end up at parochial schools. Opponents say the practice violates the separation of church and state.

Link to Video Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, and the students and staff at Messmer Preparatory Catholic School were all targets of an obnoxious protest on Friday, August 26, 2011. From this report by the MacIver News Service, it is clear the protesters (Union members, socialists, MPS officals, liberal activists) could learn a lot by emulating the behavior of the children inside the school.

Oh wait, that's not the Tea Party. It's Obama-supporting Democrat-voting* public union teacher protesters -- again.Yes, the Democrat-media complex still smear the Tea Party and anti-Obama conservative Americans as vitriolic and racist, and most recently "the real enemy" who can "go straight to hell." Meanwhile in the real world, actual vitriol and (by the left's own standards) racism occurred at the hands of union protesters in Milwaukee, Wisconsin both Thursday and Friday.As reported by Milwaukee's local Fox-TV affiliate: Vandals super glued the locks of several doors and a parking gate at Messmer Preparatory School in Milwaukee. School officials believe the people responsible...

DonÂ’t look now, but the fiscal mountain blocking our path is rockier than usually advertised. Why? Because even if House Budget chairman Paul Ryan prevails on every contentious detail of his long-term plan for prosperity, family fragmentation -- more severe in the United States than in any other industrialized nation -- will make it more difficult than generally assumed to balance our books. Very high rates of family breakdown, as it used to be known, are subtracting from what many American students learn in school and so holding them back economically. That harms the country by making millions of citizens...

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker today signed into law the largest expansion to the state’s school choice programs in history. The expansion will benefit thousands of children from the state’s low- and middle-income families and sends a strong signal to the nation that educational equality is possible with strong leadership from state legislators and executives. The American Federation for Children, which—along with School Choice Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Council of Religious & Independent Schools, Hispanics for School Choice, and Democrats for Education Reform—has invested significantly in outreach and advocacy efforts designed to expand school choice in the Badger State,...

TAMPA - In a classroom at Phillip Shore Elementary in Ybor City, 22 girls work together. The 5th graders, share ideas, listen to each others' thoughts and generally get along. "They've learned how to have relationships with other girls. Instead of that constant competitiveness, they are really a tight knit family," said Angela Nerti, their teacher. That may not seem like a big deal. But their teacher says in most co-ed classes, girls hold back. "They lose their focus a lot more because they try to impress the boy in the class instead of just focusing on what we're asking...

An expansive new voucher program, signed into Indiana law today, has been widely praised as a momentous victory for school choice and Gov. Mitch Daniels on the brink of his long-awaited presidential campaign announcement. In reality, the voucher program is a tactical victory for highly constrained choice won at the price of a broad strategic defeat for educational freedom. To see why, consider the bill's regulations. Most people would agree there are some topics about which every child in this country should learn. Historical documents, for instance, that are vital for understanding our shared American heritage: the Federalist Papers, the...

Momentum is building for school choice reform advocates. The latest evidence is in Oklahoma where the Oklahoma house voted to pass a massive school choice program. If the reform passes the state senate it would then be forwarded to the governor for final passage. This would be a landmark for education reform advocates and the senate and governor of the state should act steadfastly to enact this new legislation. The Foundation for Educational Choice, formally the Friedman Foundation, has been following the reform. Check it out here...

An Arizona school has been rebuffed in its efforts to obtain a court ruling that it doesn't have to provide access to public records to district residents and has been ordered to pay attorneys' fees to those it sued. The case came out of arguments in the Congress Elementary School District in Arizona, where officials objected to the number of public records requests – several dozen – submitted by various parents and community members.The district sued the parents to obtain a court ruling that officials would not have to provide access to records but was turned backed by the Arizona...

It’s budget time again. And Democrats are once again taking down and dusting off all their human shields and straw people, in order to convince those Americans, who are still unable to think for themselves, that they will die if the government doesn’t provide them with every form of aid from the day of their birth. So far we have the Obama administration declaring that at least 70,000 children will die if the Republicans pass their spending cuts. No hyperlink to the authoritative study on how they came up with this number because, well, there is none. But, if children...

News hit the stand on Tuesday that Milwaukee's Public Schools out-performed Milwaukee's voucher schools on the Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Exam, which MJS journalists unfortunately dubbed as an "apples-to-apples" comparison. As expected, the MJS story elicited criticisms from organizations like School Choice Wisconsin and Hispanics for School Choice noting that a single test cannot properly compare the quality of public and private schools. School Choice Wisconsin stated that the Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Exam (WKCE) does not track student achievement, thus it is not a true apples-to-apples comparison. Hispanics for School Choice echoed the sentiment adding that the WKCE does...

.... Currently, the Wisconsin Supreme Court tilts conservative with a 4-3 majority. If David Prosser loses his seat, it will most certainly mean trouble for the recent expansion of Milwaukee's school choice program. Governor Walker's budget - already signed into law - expands the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP) into Milwaukee County suburbs. This means that low-income students in Milwaukee are now qualified for spending a $6400 voucher on an approved private school of their choice. Poor Hispanic kids who are forced to attend South Division High School, for instance, will not have the chance to attend any of the...

There are many reasons why America's students are falling behind those in other countries. A recent comparison showed that America ranked 25th in Math, 17th in Science, and 14th in reading. This is out of only 34 countries. Obviously, this poses a number of extreme problems. If our graduates our inferior to the greatly more populous China (and they are), then inevitably our economy will suffer. The world's economy is dependent on highly skilled jobs, and a nation that perpetually turns out c students is bound to fall behind no matter the lead it started with. The problems grow larger...

Among the topics President Obama covered in his State of the Union Address was the need for education reform in the United States. The President told both houses of Congress and the millions who watched, "In the 21st century, the best anti-poverty program around is a world-class education. And in this country, the success of our children cannot depend more on where they live than on their potential." The State of the Union address occurred during National School Choice Week. One of the most successful examples of school choice was in Washington, DC, until President Obama ended the program by...

Kelley Williams-Bolar is jailed for lying about her residency to get her daughters into a better school district.

This week is National School Choice Week and that’s not lost on Speaker of the House John Boehner, as he prepares for tomorrow night’s State of the Union Address. His first Speaker’s box will include parents, students, and teachers. Three of four children who will be sitting there will be students who are attending Catholic schools in Washington, D.C. under the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program this president and congressional Democrats have thus far refused to renew. Also sitting in the Speaker’s box will be someone who has written for NRO: Virginia Walden Ford, the brave, energetic hero to many D.C....

Opponents speak out against tuition vouchers Thursday, January 20, 2011 By Tom Barnes, Pittsburgh Post-GazetteHARRISBURG -- In his inaugural speech, Gov. Tom Corbett barely hinted at what is sure to become one of the most hotly debated issues of the spring -- "school choice," also known as "tuition vouchers." It would be a major change in how the state funds education. "Our students compete not only with those from the other 49 states, but with students from around the world," the new chief executive said Tuesday. "So we must embrace innovation, competition and choice in our education system." The measure,...

Count Bill Cosby as a big fan of school choice. With Congress and the White House gearing up for a major battle over the future of education policy, the comedian who famously criticized academic failings in the black community added his voice Wednesday to that of House Speaker John A. Boehner and others who want to give parents a bigger say in their children's education. The debate over reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which was renamed the No Child Left Behind Act by the Bush administration, is expected to be resurrected during the 112th Congress. Congressional leaders...

AKRON, Ohio - A Summit County jury started deliberating around 11:30 Saturday morning in the case of a mother accused of stealing educations for her children from the Copley-Fairlawn school district. At 7 p.m. Saturday, a decision was reached. Kelly Williams-Bolar, 40, is charged with one count of grand theft and two counts of tampering with records. Her father, Edward Williams, 64, is also on trial for grand theft. Prosecutors said Mr. Williams took part in the deception against the district. ...Williams-Bolar, who was standing before the bench with her attorney, Kerry M. O'Brien, nearly collapsed into the arms of...

Gov. Brian Sandoval will seek a constitutional amendment in the upcoming session of the Nevada Legislature to allow for public tax dollars to be used in a school voucher program that would include religious schools, a staff member said this week. Senior Adviser Dale Erquiaga, in a briefing with the media on Thursday, said a voucher bill submitted by former Gov. Jim Gibbons will be rewritten by the Sandoval administration. Sandoval intends to pursue the constitutional change, he said. Changing the Nevada constitution is a complex process that would take as many as six years to accomplish, including voter approval....

In the past year, 46 states grappled with budget deficits of more than $130 billion. This year could be worse as federal recovery dollars dry up. And yet, for education reform, 2011 could be the best of times. California, to name one example, bridged its $25.4 billion budget gap by cutting billions from public education. It is now forced to cut another $18 billion to fill its current deficit. State executives and legislatures face severe choices and disappointments that could undo political careers and derail progress. On the bright side, public support is building for a frontal attack on the...

The Family Foundation Day at the Capitol We are very excited about our annual Day at the Capitol this year on Thursday, February 10, 2011. Our focus will be on school choice and giving parents the opportunity to choose the educational option that is best for their children. After a briefing from the legislators and the staff of The Family Foundation you will have the opportunity to meet with your Senator and/or Delegate. At 11:00 a.m. we will join with several other groups for a Rally for School Choice at the Bell Tower on the Capitol grounds.

On November 3, 2010, the United States Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization v. Kathleen M. Winn. The Court was asked to consider the constitutionality of an Arizona law which gives residents a State tax credit when they donate to what are called "School Tuition organizations." These organizations in turn provide assistance to students. Arizona has at least 55 of these "School Tuition Organizations". They have distributed $50 million to 27,000 students. These grants have enabled needy students to attend 370 private schools in grades K-12. This includes religious schools, if the parents so choose....

Check out today’s ad in The New York Times by the civil rights leader Kevin P. Chavous, chairman of the Black Alliance for Educational Options, condemning President Obama for his failure to support school choice nationwide. (The alliance advocates for vouchers and is supported by several pro school choice foundations, including the Walton Family Foundation.) Chavous asks President Obama to endorse school vouchers, saying that the president himself attended the most elite school in Hawaii because of scholarships. At the risk of being pilloried, I have to point out that the evidence is not strong that vouchers have dramatically improved...

It’s the film the teachers unions don’t want you to see. The revelatory documentary “Waiting for ‘Superman’ ” opened Friday to parents’ cheers — and union howls. The film follows five families trying desperately to escape failing traditional public schools in favor of charter schools — and it profiles education reformers rebuilding a national school system that’s in ruins. The unions panned the flick, naturally: It exposes how they drag kids down into the swamp, spotlighting how bad teachers are passed from school to school and how all-but-automatic tenure allows even the worst teachers to stay on the job. But...

The British International School of New York offers spacious waterfront classrooms, small computers encased in rubber for small people who tend to drop them, and a pool for the once-a-week swimming classes required for all students. But there is nothing within its halls or on its Web site that indicates what differentiates British International from the teeming masses of expensive private schools in New York: It is run for profit. It is one of a small number of large for-profit schools that have opened recently or plan to open in New York City next year. While they are a speck...

What does diversity mean to you? Same-sex marriage? Building a giant mosque on the 9/11 spot in New York? Elena Kagan on the Supreme Court? To the largest teachers union, the National Education Association (NEA), diversity means celebrating the anniversary of the Communist takeover of China by Mao Zedong. The NEA posted this on its website calendar as a diversity event for Oct. 1. Thankfully, we live in a wonderful era when parents, tea partiers, conservatives and students can rapidly spread the news ignored by the mainstream media. After this activity suggestion for teachers was reported on World Net Daily,...

We’re All Right-Wing Bastards Now —that is, if the NEA’s logic is to be believed. On the final day of the National Education Association’s convention last summer, its outgoing general counsel, Bob Chanin, gave a speech for the ages. After sharing fond recollections of his 41 years as the NEA’s top lawyer, he switched gears and started lobbing grenades at “conservative and right-wing bastards,” including Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, and Forbes. The NEA and its affiliates, by contrast, were “the nation’s leading advocates for public education and the type of liberal social and economic agenda that these groups...

The same politicians set to lay federal largesse on public school teachers and deny the poor vouchers that would allow them to attend higher performing private schools in turn send their kids to…..private schools. “President Obama, who at age 10 used a scholarship to attend a private school in Hawaii, isn’t the only one practicing school choice while taking others’ opportunities away,” Candi Cushman writes in the August/ September 2010 issue of Citizen magazine. “According to an informal survey of Congress conducted by the Heritage Foundation, approximately 44 percent of senators and 36 percent of representatives with school-age children have...

A bill that would allow more public schools to offer seats to out-of-district students has passed the Legislature and is awaiting Governor Christie's signature. The idea for the expanded school choice program was tried out on a pilot basis. While still in the trial stage, it led to the creation of the Academies@Englewood, which drew students from other school districts and was aimed at desegregating Dwight Morrow High School. But the new legislation is unlikely to have much of an impact in North Jersey where most cash-strapped schools are operating at capacity and officials say they are not in a...

For Hire or Charter Bethany Stotts, July 8, 2010 In their interim report on a National Study of Charter Management Organization Effectiveness, Mathematica and the Center on Reinventing Public Education contrast charter management organizations (CMOs) with coexisting public school districts and explain how the leaders of the former have considerable latitude in terms of hiring, firing and other institutional practices. “In contrast to typical school districts in which school leaders frequently complain about the lack of flexibility in allocating school resources, well over one-third of surveyed CMOs (41 percent) allow their schools to determine the number of teaching positions needed...

Ever wonder why the teachers unions hate charter schools so much? Here's one reason. State test scores this week showed 100 percent of eighth-graders in the Harlem Village Academies achieved proficiency in science and social studies. By contrast, in Harlem's traditional public schools, only 35 percent of eighth-graders made the grade in science, and 22 percent in social studies. This continues a trend: New York charters -- public schools that operate free of union work rules and bureaucratic mandates -- are wildly outperforming their traditional counterparts in student test scores, graduation rates, college acceptances and other measures.

“The Lottery� Deborah Lambert, June 24, 2010 A new documentary film called “The Lottery� that takes on the topic of charter schools, is getting cheers and jeers from critics and filmgoers. Variety called it “advocacy to the point of propaganda� that creates a “virtual PSA for charter schools and New York’s celebrated Harlem Success Academy in particular.� The film focuses on founder/CEO Eva Moskowitz who has to battle with stupidity, corruption and practically has “to apologize to the New York City Council for being a white woman living in Harlem.� Madeline Sackler, a 27-year-old filmmaker, tells the story of four...

One of the important public policy issues making its way through the Courts is "school choice" or more accurately, "Parental Choice" - since parents are the ones who should make the educational decision for their children. The unwillingness of those in charge of the Federal Educational Bureaucracy to consider this approach at a time when we all know the educational system is broken exposes the difference between rhetoric and reality. To support "Parental Choice in Education" is to affirm that Parents are the ones who should be able to make the choice of how to best extend their own teaching...

Support for Sen. James Meeks' school choice bill is coming in from major newspapers across the state and the Illinois Policy Institute's research has been integral in shaping opinion on the matter.

More than Choice Bethany Stotts, May 6, 2010 At a recent book forum at the American Enterprise Institute, AEI scholar Frederick Hess argued that education reform should move beyond whole-school conceptions of school choice and focus on the dynamics of “supply.” “Now, like I just said previously, opening new schools is only one part of the solution but they’re a useful part of the solution and they’re an important part of the solution but choice doesn’t tell you anything about what’s gonna happen to the supply,” said Hess, discussing his new book Education Unbound: The Promise and Practice of Greenfield...

Since his election as the first Republican Governor of New Jersey in twelve years, Catholic Governor Christopher J. "Chris" Christie has been making news! He was the keynote speaker at the American Federation of Children National Policy Summit Dinner in Washington, D.C. on Monday, May 3, 2010. Once again he surprised observers with his candor - and his refreshing willingness to shake up the "same old/same old" approach to politics and public policy. He strongly endorsed parental choice in education or what is often called "School Choice". Governor Christie is a practicing Catholic. ... He was equally frank in addressing...

Let D.C. Rise Bethany Stotts, April 20, 2010 D.C. school choice activists and families fighting for the restoration of the Washington Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP) met together at the Heritage Foundation on April 13 to screen their short documentary, Let Me Rise, which states that it documents “the story of hundreds of families in our nation’s capital fighting for their children’s future…” “…and of millions of others who hope to one day follow in their footsteps,” it continues. A significant portion of the film footage is devoted to showing the faces of parents and families currently involved in the program....

ILLINOIS -- Illinois state senators approved a school voucher measure by a vote of 33-20 on Thursday, March 25. Sponsored by Rev. Sen. James Meeks, Senate Bill 2494 would create a pilot school voucher program for students in struggling Chicago public schools.

The government-school establishment has said the same thing for decades: Education is too important to leave to the competitive market. If we really want to help our kids, we must focus more resources on the government schools. But despite this mantra, the focus is on something other than the kids. When The Washington Post asked George Parker, head of the Washington, D.C., teachers union, about the voucher program there, he said: "Parents are voting with their feet. ... As kids continue leaving the system, we will lose teachers. Our very survival depends on having kids in D.C. schools so we'll...