Pennsylvania residents in this year’s gubernatorial race will be casting their votes for school choice regardless of their political affiliation. In Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal, author Bill McGurn reports that both Democratic candidate Dan Onorato and his Republican opponent, state Attorney General Tom Corbett, are proponents of school choice. It is promising to see states opening more opportunity for the educational futures of children. For decades, the federal government has poured increasing amounts of money into public education under the guise of “reform,” yet test scores and achievement indicate no …
One in six Americans now receives some form of government assistance, reported last week’s U.S.A Today. Fifty million are on Medicaid, a record high and a whopping 17 percent increase since December 2007. Food stamp enrollment has climbed nearly 50 percent since 2008 and now stands at 40 million, or one in seven people. Ten million Americans receive unemployment benefits, and 4.4 million get direct cash assistance, an 18 percent increase from two years ago. And these are the numbers from only four of the more than 70 welfare programs …
How can the government grow the nation’s welfare roles and undermine efforts to support marriage, in a single effort? It must simply follow the plan outlined in President Obama’s budget: pay states to grow their welfare roles and eliminate programs that encourage healthy marriage in low-income communities. Despite the fact that low work hours and single motherhood are two of the greatest contributors to poverty in the United States, the newly released budget undoes welfare provisions that encourage work and discourage out-of-wedlock childbearing. Prior to the reforms of 1996, the …
A recent national study shows that the majority of U.S. parents and their teens support sexual abstinence before marriage. But the Obama Administration doesn’t want you to know this. Early last year, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) completed the National Survey of Adolescents and Their Parents: Attitudes and Opinions about Sex and Abstinence. Results show that the majority of parents favor abstinence and the abstinence message. However, while HHS released a brief summary of the results, when researcher Dr. Lisa Rue of the University of Northern Colorado …
Yesterday, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced the round 2 Race to the Top (RttT) winners. Nine states, along with the District of Columbia, will divide $3.4 billion in federal grant money. The winners included D.C., Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, and Rhode Island. Delaware and Tennessee won grants in round 1 of the competition. Neal McCluskey, associate director of the Center for Educational Freedom at the Cato Institute, isn’t impressed:
“Need Welfare in the Bronx? Come Back Tomorrow, Maybe” — that’s the title of a recent Womensenews.org piece that questions the success of welfare reform. Caseloads may have dropped, argues author Anna Limontas-Salisbury, but the system leaves those in need feeling frustrated and discouraged. Specifically, she blames the system’s inefficiencies on the ’96 reforms — the ones that inserted work requirements and time limits into the main federal cash-assistance program and created Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF). The author is correct that the current welfare system is in need …
What should a school principal expect after working “tirelessly” to help struggling students achieve? Certainly not to be asked to step down. However, this is exactly what can happen once the federal government gets involved. Despite support from parents, teachers, and administrators for Principal Joyce Irvine of Wheeler Elementary School in Burlington, Vermont, school administration is being forced to remove her. This is so the school will be eligible to receive federal stimulus money through programs such as the Obama Administration’s Race to the Top. Reports The New York Times:
“The Common Core Curriculum: National Education Standards Even Conservatives Can Love.” This is what Chester Finn and Michael Petrilli of the Fordham Institute write about the Obama Administration’s push to implement national standards in classrooms across the nation. In reality, there is nothing conservative about national standards, which will further tie schools to the demands of Washington bureaucrats but do little to improve student achievement. National standards create a one-size-fits-all, centralized approach to education. And while proponents will say that these standards are “voluntary,” the significant amount of federal funding …
The results are in: The Department of Education (DOE) is the least popular of all federal departments. Considering the stagnate state of U.S. students’ test scores despite ever increasing federal education spending, this should come as no surprise. What should be surprising—and troubling—however, is that some Members of Congress want to allocate even more taxpayer money to this “bureaucratic boondoggle,” as termed by President Ronald Reagan. Currently, Congress is considering pumping $10 billion more into the DOE, adding to the recent $80 billion already allocated via the stimulus package. After …
Last week, Heritage Foundation Senior Fellow Robert Rector went head to head with TV personality Tom Colicchio of Top Chef at a House Education and Labor Committee hearing, both testifying about proposed increases to federal funding for child nutrition. Unfortunately, unlike the television show that results in one contestant coming out on top, no one wins with this new policy. The $8 billion bill claims to expand food assistance to low-income school children in order to fight hunger and prevent unhealthy eating. The more likely outcome, however, is simply the …
