Education Policy & School Reform News

Thursday marked 102nd birthday of the late, great Nobel prize-winning economist Milton Friedman. It is both fitting and proper we remember his legacy of freedom crossed many disciplines—including education. Milton Friedman once remarked that there are “two alternative ways of organizing an economy: top-down verses bottom-up; central planning and control versus private markets; more colloquially,…

The growth of educational opportunity through school choice over the last ten years suggests American education is moving in the right direction. Last week, The Heritage Foundation’s Institute for Family, Community, and Opportunity released the first annual “Index for Culture and Opportunity,” tracking 31 leading social and economic indicators that reveal the state of America’s…

Several bills have advanced in Congress as part of a piecemeal approach that signifies the beginning of a process to reauthorize the Higher Education Act, which covers federal student aid and accreditation among other areas. One bill, the Advancing Competency-Based Education Demonstration Project Act introduced by Reps. Matt Salmon, R-Ariz.,, Susan Brooks, R-Ind.,, and Jared Polis,…

On Tuesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled against Abigail Fisher in her ongoing battle against the University of Texas at Austin for discriminating against her based on race. The court upheld the university’s admissions policy which uses racial and ethnic preferences to achieve “diversity” on campus. Texas adopted a plan…

Principals in Washington, D.C.’s public schools are taking on a new role this summer: neighborhood canvasser. They have been going door-to-door in an effort to retain and recruit students amid a growing charter and choice sector in the nation’s capital. As the Washington Post reported last week: “The District’s traditional public school system is sending…

University of South Carolina president Harris Pastides is refusing to comply with a state law that requires all public universities to teach students about America’s founding documents, including the Constitution, calling it “archaic.”  In a bit of irony that is apparently lost on Pastides, USC claims the state law is itself unconstitutional. Section 59-29-120 of…

Support for school choice is on the rise, but Americans hold a “dim view of the federal government’s performance in K-12 education,” found the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice in its newly released “2014 Schooling in America Survey.” The survey found 58 percent of Americans think that K-12 education has gotten off on the “wrong…