The House of Representatives just passed the $26 billion education “jobs” bill by a vote of 247-161. The money will be split up with $10 billion going towards state and local workers in public education. The other $16 billion will go to state Medicaid payments. Speaker Nancy Pelosi had called members back from the August recess in order to pass the “emergency” piece of legislation. The public sector has been thriving at the expense of the private sector. Over at Jay Greene’s blog, Matthew Ladner displays the chart (click on …
One component of education reform that often gets overlooked is online or virtual learning. In the August-September 2010 issue of Reason Magazine, Katherine Mangu-Ward notes the following: During the last 30 years, the per-student cost of K-12 education has more than doubled in real dollars, with no academic improvement to show for it. Meanwhile, everything the Internet touches gets better: listening to music on iTunes, shopping for shoes at Zappos, exchanging photos on Flickr. Education reformers across the nation are listening. In 2000, only 50,000 students were enrolled in online …
The Lottery, a new documentary about charter schools in New York City, is changing the debate on parental choice in education. Madeleine Sackler, a 27 year old graduate of Duke University and creator of the film, follows 4 students who have been entered into a lottery to be selected for one of the spots at Harlem Success Academy (a transformative system of charter schools that is catching the eyes of policymakers across the country.) The film will be screened today at 5:30 at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. …
Barbara Martinez of The Wall Street Journal reported last week that New York City schools have begun handing out pink slips to teachers: Principals—who are facing an average 4% budget cut at their schools—have started eliminating teaching positions ahead of Friday, when their spending plans are due to the city Department of Education [DOE]. Presumably this action is meant to cut costs. But there’s a twist:
A new study released this week by the Department of Education’s Institute for Education Sciences found that participation in the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program “raised a student’s probability of completing high school by 12 percentage points, from 70 percent to 82 percent, based on parent reports.” The news is a victory for school choice and education reform advocates across the country. Patrick Wolf, lead researcher at the University of Arkansas School Choice Demonstration Project, said: These results are important because high school graduation is strongly associated with a large number …
