For years, Wake County, North Carolina, has had a “busing” policy aiming to create socioeconomic diversity in county schools. The district’s experiment to better integrate schools left many students having to take long bus rides to schools far from their homes. “Parents and residents … said busing for the purpose of economic diversity poses an unfair burden on families, in terms of costs to the district and in time that children could spend on learning rather than being transported,” according to an account in the Christian Science Monitor. The current …
South Carolinians for Responsible Government has produced a new video featuring Senator Jim DeMint (R–SC) on the importance of school choice. DeMint outlines the keys to achieving educational success not just in South Carolina but in the rest of the country: If we want true innovation in education to reach the widest range of student interests, aptitudes and learning styles, we need to follow the model of other states like Pennsylvania, Florida, and Arizona who have made school choice for families a reality.
“In 1993, Sweden introduced a system of school choice and vouchers inspired by the ideas of American economists Milton and Rose Friedman,” writes Odd Eiken, the executive vice president of Kunskapsskolan, an innovative network of schools in Sweden, and an architect of the Sweden voucher model, in the Washington Examiner: Even though the system was just as controversial then as any U.S. voucher proposal, the right to choose your school and bring the funding with you is today … widely accepted by all political parties. Even Sweden’s Social Democrat party …
Governor Scott Walker (R–WI) is in the news for suggesting an overhaul of public-sector collective bargaining, but in the midst of the controversy he has also offered a great proposal to expand school choice. Walker’s biennial budget proposes expanding school choice in Wisconsin, including charter schools and vouchers. Most significantly, the budget lifts the cap on the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, the nation’s oldest voucher program. More than 20,000 low-income students currently receive vouchers in Milwaukee, and lifting the cap would ensure that all low-income students in the city have …
