On Thursday, Senator Daniel Akaka [D-HI] convened an education sub-committee hearing on the state of reform in the D.C. public school system. D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee testified, and was met with both support and opposition. Over the past two years, she has brought sweeping reforms to the DCPS …
Today, Education Secretary Arne Duncan unveiled the regulatory guidelines for his so-called “Race to the Top” Fund, the administration’s $4.3 billion incentive fund for state reforms. Like previous federal education reform efforts, including No Child Left Behind, American parents should be skeptical that new federal incentives will really encourage the …
Support for school choice in Washington, D.C. continues to grow. The latest national voice to call for saving the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program is MSNBC’s Chris Matthews. Check out this Hardball interview with RNC Chairman Michael Steele: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFUyqr6QsFY[/youtube] Mr. Matthews says: “These opportunity scholarships should be maintained.” Later in the …
Friday’s Wall Street Journal highlights the increasing bipartisan support towards charter schools around the country. Due to rapid growth, many states have limited their expansion by placing caps on the number of charter schools. But Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has suggested that lifting charter school caps and instituting merit …
New York City principals and parents have resourcefully devised a way to better equip their children’s local public schools to meet their needs. For years, some public schools in Manhattan have raised money from parents to hire additional teaching assistants to aid lead teachers in the classroom. The aides, who …
The massive 1,018-page health care bill introduced by House Democrats is full of bad policy ideas, and they’re not all even about health care. One troublesome provision calls for a home visitation program that would bring state workers into the homes of young families to improve “the well-being, health, and …
Soon, critics of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program won’t have any arguments left. For years, opponents have argued that the scholarship program wasn’t working. But a recent federal evaluation found that scholarship students have made “statistically significant” improvement in reading compared to their peers who didn’t get scholarships. The report …
General Counsel Bob Chanin explains to NEA convention why Big Labor is so powerful: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-piPkgAUo0w[/youtube]
Last night, the House Appropriations Committee marked-up the spending bill that included funding for the D.C. government. The package included $12 million in funding for the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program to allow current scholarship recipients to continue in their private schools. But the appropriations bill included language preventing any new …
Writing in Forbes yesterday, the Goldwater Institute’s Clint Bolick argues that the Supreme Court’s ruling in Ricci v. DeStafano should result in renewed attention to education reform and the need to improve educational opportunities for all people: “[The ruling] also brought the nation closer to an important day of reckoning. …
