Education Policy & School Reform News

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…

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…