Last month, the Pennsylvania State Senate passed a landmark bill to allow children in the bottom 5 percent of schools to receive scholarships to attend a private school of their choice. The bill also lifts the cap on the Educational Improvement Tax Credit Program—which provides tax credits to corporations that donate to scholarship organizations—$25 million in 2012 and another $25 million in 2014. Robert Enlow, president and CEO of the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, said the proposal brings “Pennsylvania closer to Milton Friedman’s vision of true school choice for …
Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee may have ravaged northeastern Pennsylvania with floodwaters, but displaced people have found aid and comfort in the relief provided by private charities and businesses. A recent New York Times story described affected people’s disillusionment with the federal government’s ability to dispense disaster relief aid through FEMA. “Uprooted and desolate, hard-working people in this part of the country expect a bit more from their government,” the Times reported. The story failed to mention the outpouring of food, furniture and housing repair assistance provided by charities …
This morning we wrote about hurricanes, and then Washington, D.C., had an earthquake. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) provides information about what to do before, during, and after an earthquake. FEMA also provides an index with contact information on state agencies. As residents of the East Coast found out today, earthquakes can happen anywhere. Earthquakes result from shifts in tectonic plates that comprise the Earth’s surface. The edges of the plates impact one another, creating intense geologic activity, including earthquakes, violent fracturing of the earth’s crust. There are also …
State governments across the nation are looking for ways to tighten their belts in the face of declining tax revenues and growing budget shortfalls. In Pennsylvania, legislators have offered a measure that would, they claim, dramatically reduce the state’s construction costs on public works projects by bringing contractors’ wages in line with the prevailing market rates. On Thursday, the Pennsylvania Assembly’s Labor and Industry Committee debated a measure offered by Rep. Ron Miller (R) that would bring the prevailing wage – or the wage contractors must pay workers when working …
Families and students in the nation’s capital won big over the weekend, as Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) secured language to reauthorize and expand the acclaimed D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program as part of the long-term continuing resolution. This week, legislators not too far north in Pennsylvania have the opportunity to expand school choice for students in their state. Just yesterday, Pennsylvania’s Senate Appropriations Committee passed a bill—The Opportunity Scholarship Act—to extend school choice under Pennsylvania’s existing Educational Improvement Tax Credit program. In the next day or two, a …
In the latest efforts to promote school choice for the nation’s children, Pennsylvania state Senators Anthony Williams (D–Philadelphia) and Jeffrey Piccola (R–Dauphin and York) have introduced a plan to provide opportunity scholarships for low-income Pennsylvania students to attend a school of their choice. Said Senator Piccola: We know we have a group of schools that have been persistently failing, unsafe and falling short in meeting the needs of our kids and families who cannot afford to move to a better school district. … Our plan targets these schools and those …
Many baseball fans and sports writers woke up yesterday morning scratching their heads to Cliff Lee’s decision to turn down a deal worth $154 million over 7 years with the New York Yankees to join the Philadelphia Phillies for a mere $120 million over 5 years. As ESPN columnist Jayson Stark put it, “Does anyone out there remember anything like this — a player who’d been portrayed as being obsessed with getting every possible dollar out there, who then decided he didn’t really need, like, 30 million of those dollars …
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 …
Head Start, which provides child development services primarily to low-income families and their children, is one of the few popular programs that came out of President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. But following up on hotline tips alleging fraud and abuse, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) began an undercover investigation of Head Start centers in California, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin. Heritage Senior Policy Analyst David Muhlhausen details what the GAO found: In eight of the 13 eligibility tests, the fictitious families were told by Head Start staff that …
The scene opens up on an image of the Earth and slowly zooms in down through the clouds while an ominous female narrator declares, “Your name is Tom … You live just off of 5th Street … Nice car, Tom—nice house.” As the camera sinks lower and lower, it finally stops to hovers over Tom’s house while the narrator warns him to pay his outstanding debt because after all, “we do know who you are.” The scene fades and the words, “Find Us Before We Find You” are flashed on the screen …
