Education Policy & School Reform News

Boko Haram, the terrorist group operating in north-eastern Nigeria and northern Cameroon that drew headlines this spring after kidnapping over 250 female students, aligned itself publicly with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in July. The decision likely has more to do with fundraising than a realignment of goals and ideologies: Boko Haram…

Nineteen-year-old Jorge Perez will attend Columbia University this fall to study philosophy and economics—something his single mother, Sophia Flores, never dreamed for her son. But when Sophia discovered Florida’s tuition tax credit scholarship program in 2003, the doors of opportunity opened for Jorge. Sophia was able to use Jorge’s tax credit scholarship toward tuition at…

Another summer has come to an end. As I’ve been looking toward the new school year, I have had a chance to reflect on all the children who have touched my life over the past few years. In 2004, when the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program (DCOSP) was implemented, I had the privilege of getting to…

This fall, more students than ever will head off to public charter schools as the school year begins. Approximately 2.5 million students will enroll in 6,500 charter schools across the country. Notably, from 2001 to 2011, charter school enrollment increased by 1.2 million students. Charter schools, which are public schools that are independently managed and…

Many kids are heading back to public school this week, and so begins fall and spring semesters. You have entrusted the government to give your child a good curriculum and a teaching staff you can count on. But what happens when the school staff is equipped with a big list of employees, but not necessarily…

That’s what one student at a Tennessee high school is claiming happened to her. Kendra Turner, a senior at Dyer County High School, was given an in-school suspension for breaking a class rule prohibiting the saying of “bless you” after a sneeze. The school has responded by claiming that Turner shouted “bless you” across a…

Attempts to overly regulate private schools participating in school choice programs have a funny way of behaving. We have tried very different approaches to testing across private school choice programs. If we are to make full use of the laboratories of democracy, we must assess the results of new policies as a part of a…

Most people would agree education and public safety should be among states’ top spending priorities. But few realize we actually invest more in criminals than children. New data shows nearly all states spend more on corrections than K-12 education—much more in some cases. New York, for instance, spent $60,076 per prison inmate but only $20,639…

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…