Mitt Romney yesterday released his plan to reform America’s ailing education system. It goes big on school choice and parental empowerment and calls for increased transparency of results. Along the way, it admonishes education unions — and rightly so — for standing in the way of reform. Notably, Romney’s plan would expand D.C.’s embattled Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP), which provides vouchers to low-income children in the nation’s capital. President Obama has been hostile toward the voucher program. Most recently he capped enrollment in OSP, after having agreed to its reauthorization …
President Obama’s latest budget request was completely rejected by Congress, failing to receive even a single vote. Yet Obama’s budget—universally rejected by Congress—is taking educational opportunity away from low-income children in the nation’s capital. President Obama’s fiscal year 2013 budget request cuts funding for the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, a private school choice program for low-income children in Washington. This is despite his agreement last spring to reauthorize the program. As Speaker of the House John Boehner (R–OH) wrote on Tuesday: The president inexplicably chose to zero out funding for …
This spring, parents and grandparents throughout the nation will be misting up as the chords of “Pomp and Circumstance” play and the children and grandchildren they have cherished and nourished walk across the stage to receive their diplomas. Sadly, however, for every three high-school students who earn their degrees, one peer will fail to graduate. Families play a significant role in a child’s academic success: Parental presence and involvement can make the difference between a youth’s academic accomplishment or failure. Students from intact families are more likely to attain more …
Earlier this month, schools across the country celebrated National Charter Schools Week. This commemoration comes 20 years after Minnesota passed the first state charter school law and City Academy in St. Paul became the first charter school to open its doors. Since then, 40 more states and the District of Columbia have adopted some form of charter school legislation, providing new options to parents who are seeking a choice in their children’s education. Ursula Wright of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools (NAPCS) described the basic goal of charters: …
Imagine being a child trapped in a failing school in Arizona. Prior to 2011, being trapped in a failing school in Arizona meant being trapped in a failing school in a state that ranks among the worst performing in the country. But during 2011—the “Year of School Choice”—Arizona led the way in expanding educational options for children outside of the public system. And the Grand Canyon State did so in a major way: by enacting groundbreaking, first-in-the-nation education savings accounts. Empowerment Scholarship Accounts (ESAs) enable parents of special needs children …
Opponents of national standards and tests see the push as furthering “federal intrusion into state education matters,” asserts the Wall Street Journal today. While the standards have been touted as “voluntary” by proponents, the Obama Administration’s heavy promotion of the standards—tying Race to the Top dollars to a state’s adoption of the standards, by suggesting that federal Title I money for low-income schools could be tied to their adoption, and, most recently, by making No Child Left Behind (NCLB) waivers contingent upon a state’s adoption of common standards—makes them anything …
When “states signed on to common core standards, they did not realize…that they were transferring control of the school curriculum to the federal government,” said Sandra Stotsky, 21st Century Chair in Teacher Quality at the University of Arkansas’s Department of Education Reform, speaking at The Heritage Foundation on Tuesday. Stotsky and four other education scholars from around the nation met to discuss the Obama Administration’s growing push for Common Core national education standards and why states should resist Washington’s attempt to further centralize education. The Obama Administration’s press for common …
The push to nationalize the content taught in public schools across the country should be of great concern to state leaders. The Common Core national standards effort represents a massive federal overreach into what is taught in local schools, further removing parents from the educational decision-making process, and likely to cost state taxpayers $16 billion over seven years just to implement. As more details emerge about the content and quality of the Common Core national standards backed by federal funding and the Obama Administration, questions about the coherence, international competitiveness, …
During the course of Obamacare oral arguments in late March, an interesting exchange between Justice Samuel Alito and U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli illuminated the Administration’s education overreach vis-à-vis national standards. Education Week reports: For the U.S. Supreme Court, the closely watched six hours of arguments last week were all about the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. So how did the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, teacher tenure, curriculum, Title IX, and other education topics become part of the discussion? They came up as the justices debated whether the …
“Budgets are about choices,” stated President Obama in recent remarks to governors about his massive fiscal year (FY) 2013 budget request. Nothing more clearly demonstrates the Administration’s priorities than Obama’s decision to once again place the successful D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program (DCOSP) on the chopping block while simultaneously growing the Department of Education’s (DOE) budget more than any other federal agency. In so doing, President Obama is showing low-income D.C. families that his priority is maintaining the unacceptable status quo—at least when it comes to other programs—while bowing to special …
