Education Policy & School Reform News

Florida long has been a pioneer in providing families with education freedom and choice. It was among the first states to enact both tax-credit scholarships and education savings accounts, and to expand those options to every K–12 student in the state. With 350,000 students participating in the state’s K–12 scholarship policies, Florida has both the…

Touchdown Arizona! Philanthropist Janine Yass penned a column recently that was so delightfully perfect about the importance of school choice and how we as a country seem to be more engaged in football scores than test scores that I can kick myself for not having written it myself. She referenced an NFL upset victory of…

New research estimates that some students’ grades will never catch back up after falling during the pandemic. Recently, some in the mainstream media worried that the federal taxpayer money that lawmakers sent to K-12 schools during COVID-19 may not be enough to help schools turn things around. But public schools—also known as “assigned” schools—had money…

A school choice revolution is sweeping the nation. Ten states have passed universal education choice initiatives in the past two years. In addition to private school tuition, most of these new programs allow families to use their children’s taxpayer-funded education dollars to cover certain homeschool expenses.  The loudest and most influential pushback against school choice comes from…

Charter schools, which are public schools authorized by state laws, differ from traditional public schools, primarily because they enjoy exemptions from most of the state’s educational bureaucracy and regulations in exchange for accountability to parents and authorizers. The authorizers negotiate the charter contract, under which the school promises to operate in certain ways, and those…

The school choice policies sweeping the nation may be among the most innovative—and promising—enacted in recent memory. Yet they also embody a return to principles first enshrined in American law nearly 400 years ago. In 1642, when the Massachusetts Bay Colony crafted the nation’s first education law, its objective was clear: Parents must educate their…

National School Choice Week begins Sunday after the school choice movement’s most successful year ever and with the promise of more momentum going forward. But not everyone is celebrating. A highly organized, well-financed coalition of two dozen national and local left-wing advocacy organizations, teachers unions, and associations of government bureaucrats have teamed up to fight…

Moms for Liberty held an event in New York City on Thursday night to discuss and diagnose the woeful state of education in the Big Apple. Residents and local representatives were invited to take part in the education organization’s town hall on the Upper East Side and the follow-up discussion. Moms for Liberty has been…

National School Choice Week begins on Sunday, and this year, there’s much to celebrate. In 2023, the school choice movement made more progress expanding education options than ever before. The Year of Education Freedom saw seven states pass new education choice policies and nine states expand existing choice policies. There are now nine states with…

Twenty years ago, when I was hiring teachers for the private K-12 school I founded, I knew better than to recruit certified teachers. From my previous work as a college history professor, I know that the people least prepared to teach a subject are education majors. Requiring an embarrassingly low minimum of credit hours to be certified…

American institutions of higher education won’t reform on their own. The recent explosion of antisemitism on college campuses has made many Americans—including high-profile donors—turn against modern academia. How could our schools be filled with so many frothing antisemites who hate Jews, hate America, and hate the West? This has prompted many to understand the depth…

Just in time for Christmas, new data finds good news on education: Average graduation rates nationwide are up two percentage points. Before celebrating, though, research reminds us that students still are posting low scores in national and international comparisons, and a troubling share of college students need remedial work. Graduation rates may not represent what…

Our most prestigious institutions of higher education have devolved into know-nothing hate factories operating in an unaccountable cocoon of ideological conformity and reinforcement. That’s what was revealed Tuesday at a House hearing on antisemitism on college campuses. The presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology were brought before Congress…