Category Archives: Uncategorized

Are our schools and officials doing enough to ensure that enough skilled and effective candidates are getting into classrooms to teach kids like me? A recent Wall Street Journal article suggests the answer is still No, but a successful program is showing there’s hope for more change: Unions keep saying the best people won’t go into teaching unless we pay them what doctors and lawyers and CEOs make. Not only are Teach for America salaries significantly lower than what J.P. Morgan might offer, but these individuals go to some very rough classrooms. What’s going on? It seems that Teach for America offers smart young people something even better than money – the chance to avoid the vast education bureaucracy. Participants need only pass academic muster and attend the summer training before entering a classroom. If they took the traditional route into teaching, they would have to endure years of “education” courses to be certified. The American Federation of Teachers commonly derides Teach for America as a “band-aid.” One of its arguments is that the program only lasts two years, barely enough time, they say, to get a handle on managing a classroom. However, it turns out that two-thirds of its […]

I recently found this disturbing story about a threat to school choice for needy kids way across the country in the District of Columbia: On Monday, the Washington Post reported that the future of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program is in doubt. This program—which is currently helping 1,900 disadvantaged kids attend private schools—is set to expire next year if Congress doesn’t extend it. The Post reports that D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton is championing an effort to kill the program. The D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program gives low-income students scholarships worth up to $7,500 to attend a private school in the nation’s capital. It has proven widely popular with parents. Since 2004, approximately 7,200 students have applied for scholarships through the program—about 4 applications for each scholarship. D.C. parent Maritza White tells what school choice has meant to her son This piece from Dan Lips at the Heritage Foundation documents the success of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, and offers recommendations for improving the program through expanded school choice. But the best proof that Congress should take its hands off D.C. parents’ educational opportunities comes from a terrific website that lets parents whose kids have benefited from the program tell their […]

Sunday’s Steamboat Pilot and Today provides a great example of how parents can take the initiative to create a public charter school that has the opportunity to thrive in a more rural setting: Although its halls have been devoid of students for years, the former McCoy Public School will get a new life as a charter school next fall, serving young minds from Toponas to Wolcott. In less than a year, what began as a cooperative homeschooling movement for families in McCoy, Burns and Bond “took on a life of its own,” said Dawn Mutchelknaus, mother of 4-year-old Jayden. The effort’s goals and geographic reach expanded to a full-fledged charter school, home to students in kindergarten through third grade, first through an online program and eventually through Eagle County Schools. Kudos to parents in Colorado’s northern mountains for working together to create a new educational opportunity. If it were me, I’d be thankful for a great school to attend and not have to ride in the bus all those extra hours. What a great idea! The other good news is that there still is a lot of new wonderful schooling opportunities out there just waiting to happen.

Did you miss the opportunity to come see the movie Flunked? Here’s your chance to do the next best thing: Click here to watch Flunked producer Steve Maggi and Education Policy Center Director Pam Benigno (the really nice lady who lets me write here) discuss some of the education success stories featured in the movie… and some Colorado examples, too. It’s the latest Independent Thinking with host Jon Caldara. If you’d rather watch the episode the old-fashioned way, it will be on KBDI Channel 12 this Tuesday (June 17) at 5 PM.

My friends who run SchoolChoiceForKids.org have made it even easier for my mom and dad and lots of other parents to find a good school for me and my friends. Now you can search for PK-12 non-public schools (private, religious, and independent schools not operated by the government). For each school you can find: Address Map of the area Phone number Web site (when available) Grade levels served Religious affiliation (if any) Schools that only teach preschool and kindergarten are not listed, but you can find all of that information on this special page they created just for preschool. Parents who can’t afford private school tuition may be able to get a scholarship for their kids through one of the private organizations listed here. And don’t forget that you can also look for public schools near you, too.

Denver’s Bruce Randolph School, which serves a challenging, high-poverty student population, is really working to change the culture from the ground up. The Rocky Mountain News‘ Nancy Mitchell reports that Bruce Randolph – led by Principal Kristin Waters – is putting a stop to social promotion. The school has signed contracts with the parents to ensure high expectations are kept and that students can avail themselves of needed interventions to help them make it to the next grade: Bruce Randolph’s part of the bargain was to closely monitor student achievement and to step in as soon as teachers saw a child struggling. So they launched tutoring Mondays and Wednesdays after school in the fall. They began Saturday school in October. They launched a week of intense remediation, which came to be known as “F-land,” in December. At the year’s midpoint, letters went home notifying parents if their children were facing retention. Letters went home again three-quarters of the way through the school year. In April, staff started weekly monitoring for failing grades. “All year long, we’ve talked to the parents,” Waters said. “And every time, parents have been supportive.” In May, teachers began calling homes to tell them the bad […]

Louisiana’s young governor sure looks to be making himself into a school choice hero, with a bipartisan legislative victory nearly under his belt: Gov. Bobby Jindal moved one step closer Wednesday to final approval for a $10 million pilot program that would pay private school tuition for some children in Orleans Parish public schools. The 25-12 Senate vote sends House Bill 1347 by Rep. Austin Badon, D-New Orleans, back to the lower chamber for its reconsideration. Some form of the measure, one of Jindal’s top legislative priorities, is now certain to reach the governor’s desk, with the plan slated to start this fall. [emphasis added] Greg Forster points out that Louisiana now looks to have the nation’s 24th school choice (vouchers or tax credits) program. The Alliance for School Choice notes the dire straits of Louisiana’s public school system, and the “hope and educational opportunities” that a plan like the one moving through the state legislature could provide. With school choice advancing in one more state, this guy Greg Anrig must really regret having written this article now. I’m excited for the new opportunity some needy kids in Louisiana are going to get, and hope that Colorado can some day […]

Two of the Education Policy Center staff – Pam Benigno and Ben DeGrow – just got done speaking to all those in attendance at the Independence Institute Candidates Briefing. It was hard to fit inside of 30 minutes a real flavor of all these busy people (including Marya DeGrow and Raaki Garcia-Ulam) do. There were plenty of good questions from the audience. The candidates seemed especially interested in information about school finance, because it’s so hard to find reliable information. And they’re interacting with members of the public, many of whom drastically underestimate how much our schools spend. This stuff is kind of boring and hard to figure out, but ask Mr. DeGrow for help. He’s done a lot of the hard work digging through the data. But for the candidates here, it gets even better this afternoon, as Pam is going to talk about our School Choice website. Me? I’m going to play outside before it starts raining.

One of the most common critiques of No Child Left Behind is that its goal of achieving proficiency in reading and math for all students by 2014 is impossible to achieve. While it may be impossible for all American public schools to achieve the 100 percent proficiency marks, should we let that excuse stop many schools from achieving 100 percent proficiency, schools that really are able to get there? The Washington Post highlights a Maryland elementary school that already has hit the mark: Last spring, all 184 students in the third and fourth grades at Ocean City Elementary School passed the Maryland School Assessment, or MSA, a battery of tests given by the state every year since 2003 to satisfy the law. The school was the first in the state, apart from a few tiny special-education centers, to meet the goal that has defined public education this decade. “We think of MSA as the floor, as sort of the basics of what all students should be doing,” Principal Irene Kordick said. “We shoot for the ceiling.”… The school serves 568 students in a coastal resort town with an odd mix of families — in oceanfront condominiums, middle-class colonials and Coastal […]

Thinking about last week’s Denver teacher sick-out, it doesn’t make me happy to see teachers walk out on the kids in their classes. But seeing Ben Hummel’s latest cartoon at least made me chuckle a bit: The leader of the the non-union teacher group PACE is right that “children deserve teachers who are dedicated to their education.” I might add, and not so much teachers who are dedicated to sunbathing. But then I see what’s going on in Los Angeles – requiring teachers to skip an hour of school each day to carry picket signs (H/T Flypaper blog) – and Denver’s situation doesn’t seem so bad. Still, I would like to have good teachers, professional teachers, who are there for me during school hours. But you’ll have to excuse me now … it’s summertime, and I’m ready to play in the sun, too!