Free Republic

NEW ORLEANS — The American Federation for Children, which wants a dramatic expansion of charter schools and voucher programs, picked a boxing theme for its annual policy summit this week. Red boxing gloves became table centerpieces at the opening lunch Monday. Panel titles included "Knocking out yesterday's education models" and "Training parents to win the fight." And the first keynote speaker was Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a likely Republican presidential contender who is best known for aggressively fighting and weakening his state's education labor unions..... ....Wisconsin is home to the nation's first modern voucher system. The state adopted legislation in...

Alabama and Montana passed historic school choice legislation this legislative session, giving parents more options in choosing the best atmosphere for the education of their children. Finally, Alabama and Montana join more than 40 states in the movement for school choice and educational freedom, demonstrating that Americans want school choice. In Alabama, the state legislature passed SB45, allowing for the first public charter schools. Within the bill, an unlimited number of conversion charter schools are permitted, while start-up charter schools are limited to ten schools per year until the law sunsets in 2020. Additionally, charter schools may be authorized by...

When Wauwatosa parent Darnelle Kaishian first heard about the K-12 budget cut in Gov. Scott Walker's biennial state budget proposal, she wondered: What would that actually mean for her schools? When she and some other parents heard that the cut would amount to about $900,000 for Wauwatosa next year and that art, some orchestra, an Advanced Placement course or school maintenance work could be trimmed, they sprang into action. Six weeks later, they've created websites and yard signs and T-shirts, knocked on doors, talked to neighbors and launched a letter-writing campaign that has blasted lawmakers with more than 2,000 pieces...

Gov. Scott Walker is set to serve as the keynote speaker for a voucher school summit next month in New Orleans. The American Federation for Children announced Tuesday that Walker would speak May 18 at the opening lunch for the summit. "Gov. Scott Walker is a tremendous leader who has been a relentless advocate for educational choice," Betsy DeVos, chairwoman of the group's board of directors, said in a release..... Walker's latest two-year budget plan, which is currently being considered by the Legislature's powerful budget committee, would expand school vouchers statewide.

Unlike any of the programs identified today as “school choice,” such as opportunity scholarships, charter schools and tax credits, universal school choice transfers control of education back to parents, where it rightfully belongs, by allowing public education funds to follow the child to the school chosen by the parents. These funds — substantially less than current costs but sufficient to pay for a quality education at nonpublic schools — are made available to every parent in the form of a voucher that can be cashed only by a qualified school. With parental control comes responsibility — a prerequisite to success...

MILWAUKEE — James Carl was able to sum up the importance of former Assemblywoman Annette Polly Williams in bringing school choice to Milwaukee in two words: “absolutely essential.” Williams died Sunday at the age of 77, having helped to transform the education landscape in Milwaukee and the nation. Starting in the late 1980s, Williams threw her support behind the legislation that created the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program. The legislation eventually passed in 1989. “If it were not for her willingness to support this program, it never would have gotten through the state Legislature,” Carl told Watchdog. Carl, dean of the...

YouTube Video

How does the Cristo Rey business model work? Here are the words of founder John P. Foley, S.J. of the Cristo Rey schools, “If you can afford to come here, then you can’t come.” Here is the reality of the numbers: Start-up per student costs for the Cristo Rey Columbus school are about $18,000 per year. Once the school reaches enrollment capacity, that will drop to about $12,000-13,000. Cristo Rey found a creative way to fund most of the tuition. First, in Columbus, $5000 per student per year is potentially available from Ohio’s school choice voucher program; if a student’s...

Democrat Mary Burke told education officials Friday she would fight as governor to stop the expansion of voucher schools but would leave alone the long-standing program in Milwaukee. "This is something that may sound like a good political sound bite, but it is bad public policy," she said of expanding the voucher program. "I think it is the thing that most threatens a vision of a public school system and an education for students in Wisconsin to be the leaders in our country." Her comments drew applause from her audience at a Wisconsin Association of School District Administrators conference at...

North Carolina Superior Court Judge Robert Hobgood declared the state’s the Opportunity Scholarship program unconstitutional. The program provided funds for poor children to attend the same private schools attended by their financially better off peers. “Allowing these children to exit the failing public school system undermines the incentive and capability for improving the public schools,” Hobgood ruled. “It would put the good of the few ahead of the collective well-being of the whole. By preventing the few from escaping we maintain the pressure for reform of the system.” Hobgood rejected the argument that allowing students to exit substandard schools would...

Superior Court Judge Robert Hobgood appeased liberal wishes today and ruled against a school vouchers program designed to provide poor and minority kids in North Carolina the opportunity to attend the same private schools as better offer children. Siding with teachers unions, atheist groups and public education administrators, Hobgood deemed the Opportunity Scholarship program to be unconstitutional. The ruling comes less than a week after the program awarded more than 360 lower-income families with education grants of $4,200 per child, providing their parents the opportunity to place their sons or daughters in a school of their choice. Fearing that poor...

The high-rise at 500 N. Lake Shore Drive is the second-most expensive in the city, with rents for a one-bedroom apartment approaching $3,000 a month, well beyond the reach of most Chicago residents. But that's not too much for the Chicago Housing Authority, which has used federal tax dollars to pick up most of the tab for four lucky residents in the year-old building, with its sweeping views of Lake Michigan, a concierge and a dog-grooming center. The tenants moved in over the past two years as part of a push by the CHA to expand its housing voucher program...

In many circles -- including advocates for cleaner air, safer streets, public transit -- it's a major policy goal to get people out of cars. Reduce car use, and you reduce pollution. Reduce car use, and we'll need fewer costly roads and parking garages. Reduce car use and shift more people onto bikes and trains, and maybe we'll all spend less of our lives idling in traffic. That line of thinking, however, seldom considers a group of people for whom more car use might actually be a good thing: the poor. A group of researchers at the Urban Institute, the...

Apparently the media only consider education reforms controversial if they are opposed by the Left. The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) compared media coverage of President Obama’s Common Core initiative with reportage on vouchers and the results are illuminating. “In contrast to the pattern of Common Core coverage, thousands of articles were written about school vouchers, even when only a small number of students were enrolled in voucher programs,” Michael Q. McShane and Frederick Hess wrote in an Education Outlook analysis for AEI. “The raw number comparison is pretty staggering.” “More articles were written about school vouchers in every year from...

Eric Meikle, project director at the National Center for Science Education, recently told Politico that he doesn’t believe “the function of public education is to prepare students for the turn of the 19th century.” Good point. We should stop teaching kids about the wonders of windmills and choo-choo trains and stop demeaning the technological accomplishments of the 20th century. Because, guess what; it already sounds a lot like the 19th century in classrooms. Of course, Meikle wasn’t referring to the environmental Cassandras of our public-school districts; he was pondering the bogeyman of creationism. And like most efforts to warn us...

Gov. Bobby Jindal is battling to protect Louisiana’s fast-growing school voucher program from an all-out attack by the Obama administration. The Justice Department claims the state’s private schools are defying a decades-old federal desegregation order. In November, a judge ruled the Department could monitor Louisiana's voucher program, even though 90 percent of the 6,750 students who use the Louisiana Scholarship Program are minority, and 85 percent are black. Jindal filed a 38-page response to the ruling earlier in January, asking a judge to overturn a 1976 "white flight" case that prohibited giving public funds to all-white private schools. "The state...

October 1, 2013 marked a victory for school choice when the Arizona Court of Appeals issued a unanimous decision upholding Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Account program in Niehaus vs. Huppenthal. Discussing both the constitutionality and benefits of the program, Judge Jon W. Thompson wrote, “This program enhances the ability of parents of disabled children to choose how best to provide for their educations, whether in or out of private schools.” Under Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Program, certain qualifying parents—those with specials needs children, children in failing public schools (either receiving a D or F), children in military families, or adopted and foster...

People say public schools are "one of the best parts of America". I believed that. Then I started reporting on them. Now I know that public school -- government school is a better name -- is one of the worst parts of America. It's a stultified government monopoly. It never improves. Most services improve. They get faster, better, cheaper. But not government monopolies. Government schools are rigid, boring, expensive and more segregated than private schools. I call them "government" instead of "public" schools because not much is "public" about them. Members of the public don't get to pick their kids'...

Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog Obama sues Louisiana to keep low income blacks trapped in bad schools The Obama administration has just sued Louisiana to try to bring an end to its school voucher program – a program which had just been passed in 2012.Under the Louisiana program, both of the following criteria had to be met in order for a student to get a school voucher. First, the student must come from a family whose income is below 250% of the poverty level. And second, the current public school that the student is attending must be graded as “C” or...

“Bewildering.” “Perverse.” These aren’t the words of Charles Krauthammer or Marc Thiessen on the pages of the Washington Post in reaction to the Department of Justice lawsuit against Louisiana’s school-voucher program, but those of the Post’s editors. The DoJ argued in its lawsuit that the vouchers intend to undo segregation, but since 90% of voucher recipients in the program are black, the Post pronounces itself mystified as to what Attorney General Eric Holder could possibly mean: