WASHINGTON, D.C. -- In today's polarized environment, it can often be hard to discern the truth. So allow me to lay out two facts plainly and clearly: I believe every student should have an equal opportunity to get a great education. And I believe many of those great educations are, and will continue to be, provided by traditional public schools.
These are not new views for me. You may just never have heard them if you only read about my views in the press.
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The controversy surrounding U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos has brought into stark relief the battle lines in the debate over educational choice in America. Opponents of educational freedom continue to assert that choice is risky, unproven, and dangerous to public education systems. Broad educational options, they say, must be stopped or rolled back. These opponents seem woefully unaware that they are fighting a battle they’ve already lost.
The current state of educational choice in America makes clear that while bitter skirmishes continue, the war for educational choice—public and private—is over. Choice won.
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This week The Atlantic trotted out a bevy of soft-headed, undead arguments against school choice that rely on anti-capitalist fables, including the old “education is not a business.”
Tell that to the teachers unions, who profit handsomely from the $600 billion-per-year U.S. K-12 industry monopsonized by government. Pretending education is not big business is a lie to keep the taxpayer spigot open to its current hose. Teachers and bus drivers don’t work for free. They contract with schools to provide education services in exchange for money, regardless of whether that money comes filtered through government or directly from consumers. That’s called a market.
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IWF Senior Fellow Vicki Alger, who is also a research fellow at the Independent Institute, was featured last week at IWF's "The Future Is Now" panel on school choice and education reform (along with Heritage's Lindsey Burke, SAVE's Edward Bartlett with IWF's Sabrina Schaeffer moderating).
In the wake of the panel, Vicki has a must-read blog at the Independent Institute's website on the issues discussed Thursday evening (in what turned out to be one of the best conversations I'veeverheard on education reform--thanks to the participants and an especially well-informed audience).
Read more here.
The evidence in favor of the positive benefits of school choice grew considerably stronger this month with the release of a new methodologically rigorous evaluation of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program.
The D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program is a school voucher program in Washington, D.C., set up by Congress, which provides students with scholarships to attend private schools of choice.
More here.
A recent Gallup poll shows that by a 33% margin, the American public agrees with President Trump’s school choice plan.
The question asking for opinion regarding plans to “provide federal funding for school choice programs that allow students to attend any private or public school” netted 60% of Republicans in favor, along with 8% of Democrats.
According to EAGNews.org, the president has proposed $250 million for the next fiscal year in support of school choice.
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A strong majority of Americans support federal funding for a school choice program.
According to a poll released by Gallup this week, 59 percent agree with a proposal that would provide federal funding for a school choice program that allows students to attend any private or public school. Just 26 percent, or only one-in-four Americans, disagreed.
School choice is wildly popular among Republicans, with 74 percent in support compared to just 14 percent opposed. But even a plurality of Democrats- 46 to 38- would support such a program.
Read more about the poll here.
Your local PBS station might seem like an unlikely place to find a documentary critical of public education, but that is exactly what viewers get this week with the late Andrew Coulson’s new documentary School, Inc. The film doesn’t attack public schools. Rather, it asks why education has yet to behave like other industries have in the last 200 years or so — and why it has failed to achieve comparable gains. Continue when you click here.
Online learning used to mean sitting in front of a computer and click, click, clicking, page after mind-numbing page.
But over the past few years, online classes for high school students have evolved into a highly interactive, flexible way to learn. There are also opportunities to engage in social activities, internships, clubs and community service.
Students in grades 6 to 12 can attend school online full-time or part-time. All their courses and electives -- even physical education -- are available.
“At first, online classes were seen as different and in conflict with the traditional classroom,” said Daryl Diamond, director of innovative learning for Broward schools. “Now they are seen as a solution.”
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In 2009, Colorado District 49 began looking for ways to provide more flexible learning opportunities. We wanted to include as many students as possible, both to alleviate overcrowding in our brick-and-mortar schools and to attract students for whom a virtual model was the only way to keep them in the district.
Our mentality toward virtual learning in those early days was to just jump in and try it. The result was Falcon Virtual Academy, a multidistrict online K-12 school. Our district in Colorado Springs serves more than 20,000 students in 25 schools, but we decided to venture into the world of virtual education with just one school under the principle of “nail it before you scale it” and that Falcon Virtual Academy would serve as the pilot in order to make adjustments before expanding the model.
Continue reading here.