Category: Education
-
Is 65 Percent the Solution?
At the Kansas Education blog, a post titled Is 65 Percent the Solution? examines some of the arguments and policy considerations surrounding the popular proposal that schools must spend at least 65 percent of their funds in the classroom. Whatever that — “in the classroom” or on “instruction” — means. And that’s part of the…
-
Charter school students more likely to graduate high school
Jay P. Greene discusses a news study examining charter schools: The researchers look at whether attending a charter high school in Chicago and Florida increases the likelihood that students would graduate high school and go on to college. The short answer is that it does. … This study comes on the heels of positive results…
-
Charter Schools Can Close the Education Gap
We don’t have these, to my knowledge, in USD 259, the Wichita public school district, and there are very few in Kansas. Across the country, however, charter schools are making a difference, particularly in addressing the needs of urban and high-poverty students. Joel I. Klein, chancellor of the New York City Department of Education, and…
-
Video Reveals Uninformed Citizenry
Utah Education Facts has released a video that illustrates the startling lack of information possessed by the average citizen. This video was made in Utah and uses Utah’s facts, but I’ve made some similar videos in Wichita, and the results are similar. People are mostly uninformed about basic facts. School districts use this to their…
-
Obama Deserves a Scarlet “H” for Hypocrisy
At the Goldwater Institute, Clint Bolick exposes Barack Obama as another in a long line of politicians that deny school choice to the masses, but exercise it themselves: During the campaign, Obama stated that school choice doesn’t work. If he believes that, why not simply send the girls to whatever school the District of Columbia…
-
Obama’s Education Transformation
At one time it seemed like Barack Obama might be an education reformer. He was actually booed when speaking before the National Education Association for his support of merit pay for teachers. But after observing Obama’s recent actions, Liam Julian, writing in the National Review Online piece Hoping for Change in Education? comes to this…
-
Public Charter Schools Help Students and Save Tax Dollars
This press release spotlights the fact that charter schools operate much more efficiently than to public schools. Kansas could save money and increase parent satisfaction if our state had more charter schools. The education establishment in Kansas — the teachers unions, administrators, and school boards — are happy with as few charter schools as possible,…
-
Charter Schools Are Mostly Okay Despite Misconceptions
A recent Wichita Eagle Editorial Blog post mentioned charter schools in Arizona. A comment writer wrote “Arizona found out, ‘Charter schools tend to be fly by night’ schools operated by entrepreneurs looking for new profit centers at the giant expense of the public school system.”
-
School Choice Resource Center Now Open
I’ve created a small portal of information and links about school choice. I hope to expand this as I become aware of more school choice resources and success stories. Particularly, I want to include more information about school choice initiatives in Kansas. The link to the page is here: School Choice Resource Center.
-
A Monopoly by Any Other Name
What’s in a name? Apparently, to a government school monopoly, it’s everything. Last month, Pittsburgh Public Schools announced the district would be dropping the word “Public” from its name in order to avoid the negative connotation often associated with public schools. A paid marketing consultant helped develop the plan, which will also result in renaming…
-
Adjusting the Testing Gap
In the July 25, 2006 Wall Street Journal Charles Murray has a commentary titled “Acid Tests” which describes how the way that the No Child Left Behind program uses test scores is misleading. Actually, misleading is too mild a word. The subtitle of Murray’s article is “No Child Left Behind is beyond uninformative. It is…
-
Curious Logic
There’s something about our nation’s capital that converts many leading Democrats to school choice. But in most cases this extends only to their own children — not to the millions of children in failing public schools.