teresa mull

In today’s edition of the Heartland Institute’s education podcast, your host, education research fellow and managing editor of School Reform News, Teresa Mull, spoke to Heartland’s own Kyle Maichle, project manager for Constitutional Reform.

On this edition of the Heartland Institute’s education podcast, your host, education research fellow and managing editor of School Reform News, Teresa Mull, spoke to Heartland’s own Lennie Jarratt, project manager for education transformation.

The Legislature is preparing to embroil itself in a special session after the Kansas Supreme Court threatened to close public schools over a funding dispute amounting to less than 1 percent of the state’s education budget. Gov. Sam Brownback and like-minded state lawmakers are considered by many in the media to be the enemy here, and that shouldn’t be a surprise. Have you ever heard of an elected official who is praised for cutting education spending?

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.