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 …
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 …
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.” …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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, …
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 …
