public school

Last month was National Dropout Prevention Month. The media has been eagerly reporting that high school graduation rates have reached a record high, though “incomplete or fuzzy” district data makes such claims questionable.

Washington should spare school choice its suffocating embrace.

Last month, more than six million people across the nation rallied, danced, and wore colorful scarves at 21,000 events celebrating National School Choice Week.

Betsy DeVos survived a Senate confirmation process made bitter because of the opposition of the teachers unions, which fear that she can parlay her advocacy of school choice into much bigger gains for choice in her powerful new position.

The record-breaking numbers for the seventh annual National School Choice Week (NSCW), which wrapped up January 28, were stunning.

Winter has officially come, and children across the country will spend the next few months stuck in classrooms, gazing longingly out the window while they eagerly wait for spring break.

The teachers unions’ cruel streak is helping no one.

There is a growing divide within the education reform movement between the so-called technocrats and free-marketeers, causing confusion with parents and grassroots activists and making reform much more difficult to achieve.

Two recently released studies, both analyzing research from impartial sources, have come to the same conclusion education reformers have been pronouncing for years: School choice benefits not only children but society as a whole. It’s not surprising the Friedman Foundation for Education Choice (FFEC)—an organization whose mission it is to promote “school choice as the most effective and equitable way to improve the quality of K–12 education in America”—would release a study showing school choice is beneficial, but the data used by FFEC in its fourth edition of A Win-Win Solution: The Empirical Evidence on School Choice come from a variety sources, including many that are not tied to or in favor of the school choice movement.

The Northwestern University College Republicans and the Young America’s Foundation co-sponsored an event featuring author John Stossel on Tuesday, May 24, at 8:00 p.m. at the Leverone Auditorium in Evanston, IL. The topic of Stossel’s speech, “Freedom and Its Enemies.” In keeping with Stossel’s professed political affiliation, a sizable number of Libertarian college students were in attendance at the free event.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Nevada filed a lawsuit on August 27 challenging the constitutionality of Nevada’s education savings account (ESA) program. The ACLU claims the Nevada ESA program furthers a religious and sectarian purpose by allowing parents to choose religious educational options for their children.

As any parent knows, every child learns in a way that’s tailored to his or her personality. That’s a fundamental reason all parents should have the right to choose the education of their child. Unfortunately, the current public school system is based on your street address instead of how your child learns.

In their new book, Rewards: How to use rewards to help children learn – and why teachers don’t use them well, Herbert Walberg and Joseph Bast point out, “research makes clear that reward systems can significantly raise academic achievement levels … for adolescents.”