Tag Archives: scholarships

Yesterday marked the beginning of the 2018 National School Choice Week, one of the most fun and joyful weeks of the year for us school choice supporters. Throughout the course of this week, there will be gatherings, speeches, parades, and numerous other events held to celebrate all forms of choice in education. In Colorado specifically, there we be a variety of events held around the state. My friends at the Independence Institute and their partner organizations are holding an event in Denver on Saturday for families to celebrate school choice and to learn about scholarship organizations that help low-income children attend private schools. You are welcome to join us! In Colorado Springs, our friends from Parents Challenge have organized an event at City Hall on Wednesday. They would love to see you too!   This week, it’s important to remember that school choice is about giving every child the opportunity to succeed and reach their best self–not political partisanship. There is no one universal truth or omnipotent solution in education; each option provides a distinguished benefit or focus that may or may not be the best fit approach to teaching a particular student the critical thinking and academic skill set they […]

Man, it’s been an exciting two weeks for school choice. Last month, we celebrated Alabama’s induction into the charter club after it become the 43rd state to pass a charter law. We paused briefly to remember Colorado’s now-dead attempt at an ESA law, then proceeded to revel in the glory of freshly encouraging research on urban charters. I rounded out it all out by providing an update on the nation’s biggest school choice developments. The fifth item on the list was the passage of Nevada’s scholarship tax credit bill by the state’s lower legislative house. Guess what? That bill has now passed the Nevada State Senate and is heading to Governor Brian Sandoval’s desk for signature. I can say with 99.99 percent certainty that he will sign it forthwith (the .01 percent accounts for the possibility of an alien invasion and/or meteor strike). Why? Well, because he happily stated that he “will sign it when it reaches [his] desk” during Nevada’s 2015 State of the State address. Once the governor puts ink to paper, Nevada will become the 15th state to adopt a scholarship tax credit program. It will be the 26th state to adopt a private school choice program […]

Another Friday has arrived, my friends. In Colorado education, this week saw the continuation of an increasingly ugly fight over testing, accountability, and opt-outs. It will get worse before it gets better, but we don’t need to talk about that today. No, Fridays are happy days. And because I’m a stubborn young man about my happy Fridays, I’m going to (very) briefly stroll out between the trenches and pick an education dandelion that is likely to otherwise get lost in the cacophony: The new list of 2015 Colorado Daniels Scholars. First of all, I’d like to congratulate this year’s scholars. Great work, and I can’t wait to see what you can accomplish as you move into the next stage of your lives! For those who don’t know, the Daniels Fund provides college scholarships every year to “graduating high school seniors who demonstrate exceptional character, leadership, and a commitment to serving their communities.” These scholarship cover the gap between other financial aid sources, expected family contributions, and total tuition costs at an accredited college or university of a student’s choosing. Applicants have to meet a number of requirements that you can read more about here.

The school year is back underway in most places in Colorado, and that means it’s time for an important reminder: Just as parents ought to be informed consumers and make wise decisions concerning educational options that suit their children’s needs, so teachers ought to be informed consumers in choosing a membership organization that meets their professional needs. As far as membership organizations go, the new kid on the block in our state is the two-year-old, fast-growing Professional Association of Colorado Educators (PACE), “a Colorado-based, non-profit, professional educator association, dedicated to the academic and personal growth of every student.” Recently, PACE’s director of membership Megan Leatham explained what her organization is about with my Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow on an 8-minute iVoices podcast. For $180 a year, a full-time Colorado teacher has access to the following PACE membership benefits:

I’ve told you about a bipartisan group of U.S. Senators who are leading the fight to save the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program for disadvantaged children in our nation’s capital. Well, most urgent on the agenda is saving the scholarships of 216 kids that were taken away at the last minute by Obama’s Secretary of Education Arne Duncan — despite the program’s proven success. Sign up on the new Save School Choice website to stay in touch and learn about ways you can help these 216 kids and many more. And listen in to the radio ad that’s debuting today in Washington DC (click the play button to hear): Let’s keep up the good fight, and let them know that both little kids and big people here in the Rocky Mountain West want to save this important educational opportunity for as many D.C. kids as possible.

Our own appointed U.S. Senator and former Denver Public Schools superintendent Michael Bennet conducted a recent Q & A on federal education reform with Linda Kulman for Politics Daily. Here’s his answer to one question about incentives not matching objectives in the education system: We have not updated our theory of human capital, which is a fancy word for saying how do we attract and retain people to public education, since the labor market was one where women had two professional choices: being a nurse or being a teacher. We say to people, “We’d like you to come be a teacher, we imagine that you’re going to teach “Julius Caesar” every year for the next 30 years, we’re going to pay you a really terrible wage compared to what you could make doing almost anything else. … The way most school districts and states pay teachers in this country (is) if you leave any time in the first 20 years, you leave with what you’ve contributed to your retirement system … but if you stay for 30 years, you (get) a pension that’s worth three times what your Social Security is worth. No matter what else you want to do, […]

When I wrote yesterday with questions about Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s handling of the release of the D.C. voucher study, I didn’t necessarily expect such a fast answer. But former U.S. Department of Education official Russ Whitehurst has posted “Secretary Duncan Is Not Lying”. It’s a worthy read, and puts to rest the more extreme hypothesizing that Duncan knew about the positive results and intentionally hid them from Congress during the important debate on reauthorizing the program. While it seems clear that extreme case isn’t true, Jay Greene also rightly observes that other unsettling issues remain: Why did Duncan suppress the positive results in a Friday afternoon release with no publicity and a negative spin? Why falsely claim that the WSJ never attempted to contact him? The Secretary may well not be lying about his knowledge of the study but his credibility in general is very shaky right now. I’m too young to really grasp it all, but it seems politics lies at the center of the controversy. The D.C. voucher issue raises the specter of divisions within the Democratic Party and therefore causes some adults discomfort. But downplaying the results of the research doesn’t serve either the kids in […]

I’m kind of leery about even writing this here, afraid it might give some Colorado lawmakers a bad idea. But consider it a note of caution. Apparently, the Florida legislature is trying to put the clamps down on the state’s successful online public school program. So writes Bill Tucker at The Quick & The Ed about SB 1676 and its impact on the Florida Virtual School: The bill would eliminate enrollment in any elective courses and funding for any courses beyond a standard six periods. Students would no longer have an option to take electives, including some AP courses, beyond those offered at their traditional schools (especially painful for small or rural schools), nor would they have the opportunity to take extra courses to catch up on graduation requirements or accelerate. The legislation was approved in committee and now goes to the full State Senate. As tempting as it might be, it’s a bad idea for Florida officials to use tough economic times as an excuse to limit educational options. As this AP news story highlights, it has a negative effect on real students: Kathryn Groves, a high school student from Keystone Heights, told the panel she took a virtual […]

I’ve written about it a lot: the attack by Congress against students in the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, that is. But I’m not ready to give up yet. And you shouldn’t be, either. If you need some inspiration – or maybe you’re just learning about this attack on school choice that benefits low-income kids in our nation’s capital – you really ought to listen to Virginia Walden Ford, executive director of D.C. Parents for School Choice, explain the situation in this 10-minute iVoices podcast: Is it really true that the best we can hope for is saving the scholarships of the 1,700 kids who currently receive them, and leaving out in the cold the thousands more on waiting lists to escape some terrible D.C. public schools? Maybe that is the best we can hope for on behalf of Washington D.C. students for now, but don’t give up. After all, it’s important to note – as Adam Schaeffer does on the Cato-at-Liberty blog – that voucher and tax credit programs across the country are growing and growing in bipartisan political support. Keep your chin up. Stay in the fight.

So I just started cooling down a bit from yesterday (I assure you, no Legos were thrown … at least not directly at anybody). Then I watched this Fox News clip about the U.S. Senate trying to take away vouchers from people like Mercedes Campbell (H/T Edspresso): That Glenn Beck guy? I can tell he feels like I do. Jeanne Allen explains what’s at stake so eloquently. And then I’m just left feeling bad for Mercedes and the 1,700 other kids in Washington, D.C., whose scholarships are at stake. Are you outraged yet, too? After taking a couple deep breaths, I had to go around and look for some good news, and found this: “Appeals Court Rules School Choice Program is Constitutional”. At least the 1,947 kids benefiting from Arizona’s corporate tax credit program have won a victory. And I don’t have to consider throwing Legos at any judges. That could probably get me in trouble, anyway.