Tag Archives: Core Knowledge Blog

Updated for clarity Over at the Britannica blog, Dan Willingham wonders aloud if school choice might be a bad policy not effect positive change in the system through competition because many parents won’t make the “rational” decision: The logic of school choice seems obvious. If parents selected their children’s schools, they would not choose bad ones, so bad schools would not be able to survive. Schools would have to improve or close, just as a store that offers poor service will lose business to a store that offers better service. Here’s my problem with that logic: I think it’s highly likely that many parents will choose bad schools. (H/T Core Knowledge blog) You’re welcome to go ahead and read Mr. Willingham’s entire entry. But I think Jay Greene has done the best job of providing a rational objection:

The clever folks at the Heritage Foundation have done it again, coming up with a new version of a classic survey (H/T Core Knowledge Blog): The new survey revealed that 38 percent of Members of the 111th Congress sent a child to private school at one time. (See Appendix Table A-1.) Of these respondents, 44 percent of Senators and 36 percent of Representatives had at one time sent their children to private school; 23 percent of House Education and Labor Committee Members and nearly 40 percent of Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee Members have ever sent their children to private school; 38 percent of House Appropriations Committee Members and 35 percent of Senate Finance Committee Members have ever sent their children to private school; and 35 percent of Congressional Black Caucus Members and 31 percent of Congressional HispanicCaucus Members exercised private-school choice.[6](See Chart 1.) It’s the perfect example of “School Choice for Me, But Not for Thee”. The report is great, but I have a couple questions for the author Lindsey Burke — in search of more detail: Senator Dick Durbin is mentioned as a leading opponent of the D.C. voucher program who sends his own children to […]

In a new Education Next article, Michael Petrilli gives a little primer on the education blogosphere – what he calls “the far end” of the long tail of the blogosphere at large. That makes someone like Joanne Jacobs, one of the more well-trafficked edu-bloggers, “a big fish in this small pond.” One way to measure the influence of blogs is by Technorati Authority, which simply tracks the number of different blogs that link to you in the past 180 days. Since I’ve been out there “watching” for more than 180 days now, I thought it would be neat to know where I stack up compared to Petrilli’s list. (Ironically, the article, intended for a non-savvy audience, is already out of date – or as Jay Greene puts it, “like so two months ago”. Meanwhile, Robert Pondiscio at the Core Knowledge Blog wonders why his site was left off Petrilli’s list.) Anyway, in the world of the education blogosphere, it seems there are no education policy blogs in the top 10. Hmmm. I can’t say I’m terribly surprised by that. Anyway this small “top 10” section at the end of the long tail includes respected friends like Mike Antonucci’s Intercepts, the […]