Free Republic

Pennsylvania Senate hopeful John Fetterman (D.) opposes vouchers that let children in failing public school districts attend private and charter schools. But the progressive champion, who lives in one of Pennsylvania’s worst performing school districts, sends his kids to an elite prep school. Fetterman’s kids attend the Winchester Thurston School in Pittsburgh, where parents pay up to $34,250 for a "dynamic" learning environment and an "innovative" approach to teaching. They would otherwise go to schools in Woodland Hills School District, where graduation rates are far below the state average. The local elementary school that serves Fetterman’s town of Braddock is...

A New Jersey lawmaker wants the state to pay to send students to private school if their parents are offended by what they are learning. And the plan is already being ripped as an attack on New Jersey’s requirement for an LGBTQ-inclusive curriculum. State Assemblyman Robert Auth, R-Bergen, proposed the school voucher bill this week, saying all parents should have the option to spare their children from “harmful” curriculum.

School choice opponent Barbara Miner says that Wisconsin legislators should "just say no" to Gov. Scott Walker's proposal to expand educational options for Milwaukee parents (Crossroads, March 13). My advice to legislators? Just say yes. Those who do will have Milwaukee residents, especially Milwaukee parents, on their side. In a recent poll, Milwaukeeans rate the 20-year-old Milwaukee Parental Choice Program successful by a two-to-one margin (60%-28%). The results cut across racial and economic lines and extend even to households without school-age children. Parents are especially enthusiastic. Two-thirds say the program is successful, and 64% endorse expansion. There is good reason...

In my childhhood, I always dreamed of being a professional athelete. I played football and baseball in high school. Though I was recruited to play football at a local college, my true love was basketball, a sport I did not play well in high school. I apparently lacked the requisite skills to play that particular sport and was not invited to play on the school basketball team. It really was no fault of my own. In fact, some of the factors that made me good at football and baseball were a hinderance in basketball. I was cursed with short legs...

About a thousand parents, students and teachers gathered outside the Capitol on Wednesday morning in support of the D.C. school voucher program, which is up for reauthorization in Congress. Chants of "put kids first" floated toward Senate office windows as students waved signs that said "School Choice Now" and "Save Our Scholarship." "We're still here, and we're not going away!" said former education secretary Margaret Spellings, who spoke in front of the crowd along with House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), D.C. Council member Marion Barry (D-Ward 8) and others. The federally funded voucher program provides scholarships to low-income...

When Barack Obama was young and poor but lucky, he received a scholarship to Honolulu's prestigious Punahou School, an elite private K-12 school where tuition now tops $16,000 a year. Today, Sen. Obama sends his two daughters to a private school in Chicago that costs $15,528 a year - for kindergarten. And yet our presumptive president disses school choice because, while "it might benefit some kids at the top," it "leaves a lot of kids at the bottom." We know that's how "progressives" garner ringing endorsements from the National Education Association, the teachers union whose core mission is protecting public...

If you knew that a recent Zogby International survey found 59 percent of the respondents described themselves as "fiscally conservative and socially liberal," and if you were a head of a political party wanting to put together a winning platform, what would you do?The question is not all that tough, but both Republican and Democrat leaders have yet to get it right. The Republicans, after losing three straight, off-year special congressional elections, are in a panic about what to do to renew their "brand." The Democrats naively think they are in great shape, even though they only have an...