Regular readers of the Foundry are probably aware that the federal government’s school voucher program in the nation’s capital, the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program, is benefiting students by improving school safety and providing higher academic achievement. We thought you’d probably like to know that they’re finding the same trends in Milwaukee, home to the nation’s longest-standing urban school voucher program. A recent report from School Choice Wisconsin presented an analysis of the number of calls made to 911 from schools in Milwaukee, similar to a Heritage analysis from last summer …
Credit the Pittsburgh Tribune Review for being one of the nation’s first newspapers to editorialize about last month’s national Head Start evaluation, which found that the program provided children with zero lasting benefits. They editors write: “That it took the feds more than 40 years for a proper analysis suggests it’s the spending that matters, not results. And yet Congress is moving ahead to increase early childhood education programs with $8 billion in new spending. Mr. Obama has said, repeatedly, that federal programs without benefit should be dumped. Well, Mr. …
Who was it who said that the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results? According to the Department of Education, the Obama administration’s budget proposes: “$173 billion in loans, grants, tax credits and work-study programs to help students go to college.” But experience has shown that simply increasing federal subsidies for higher education hasn’t solved the college affordability problem. After all, federal spending on student aid has doubled over the past decade, but college tuition costs are higher than ever. Since …
While the federal government already spends as least $25 billion on the existing 69 preschool and child care programs, the Obama administration is calling for #70—proposing $9.3 billion for a new “Early Learning Challenge Grant”. As we wrote last year, the Early Learning Challenge Grant fund would push states to spend more on preschool programs, when evidence is mounting that preschool programs aren’t delivering the benefits their proponents promise.
We received an email today from Education Secretary Arne Duncan. “By now, I expect you’ve heard the good news,” the Secretary wrote. “…at a time when most government spending is frozen, the President proposed a significant increase in discretionary spending for education in his fiscal year 2011 budget.” We were tempted to respond: What makes you think we’d think this is good news? Secretary Duncan’s email offered a sneak-peak of the highlights of the Obama administration’s 2011 budget for education: “a massive increase in student aid” ($156 billion for 2011), …
The Los Angeles Times reports that President Obama plans to call for a “$1.6 billion increase in federal funding for child-care programs” in his upcoming State of the Union address. The report frames this proposal as part of a larger effort to “help the middle class.” Some parents will probably welcome the news of more subsidized child care. But they need to remember that their children are the ones who will end up paying for the billions that will be added to the ballooning national debt, which is set to …
Picture the world in 1960 and imagine how much has changed over the past half century. Now picture the average classroom in 1960 and today. In both, you’d probably see roughly the same thing—a teacher standing in front of a row of desks. Today, there might be a computer or two in the classroom. But the set-up and the teaching process are probably about the same. This mental experiment highlights how education is one of the areas of American life that has been most resistance to change over the last …
When a Congressionally-mandated study released in 2008 found that President Bush’s favorite reading program was a failure, it was national news. An article by Greg Toppo in the USA Today blared the headline “Study: Bush’s Reading First Program Ineffective” and reported that the results could be a “knockout punch” for the program. Similar articles appeared in the New York Times (by Sam Dillon) and Washington Post (by Maria Glod). But when a similarly devastating report was published last week that undercuts a pillar of President Obama’s education plans, none of …
President Obama and other supporters of increasing government spending on preschool have argued that “investments” on early childhood education yield big results later in life. As President Obama told an audience last March, “For every dollar we invest in these programs, we get nearly $10 back in reduced welfare rolls, fewer health care costs, and less crime.” The president and other preschool backers generally base these claims on impressive results from one or two small-scale preschool programs that existed decades ago and that have not been replicated since. Unfortunately, a …
Writing in the Carolina Journal, John Hood of the John Locke Foundation takes up the story of the overdue report on the national Head Start evaluation: For decades now, both liberal and not-so-liberal politicians in Washington and Raleigh have clung to the plausible and promising notion that spending tax money early on early childhood education can save money in the long run by boosting high-school graduation rates and reducing rates of future crime, joblessness, and welfare dependency. The notion is plausible in part because some early laboratory experiments of preschool …
