The Heartland Institute

Two years ago Romain Bertrand was a middle school math teacher, finishing his fifth year teaching in North Carolina’s Charlotte-Mecklenberg district and thinking he needed a way to reach more teachers and students. He moved to a new position mentoring and coaching teachers, but professionally, he felt stuck. “This wasn’t going ...

In 1989, Wisconsin became the first state to implement school vouchers for poor families. The program began in the Milwaukee School District in 1990 and expanded to Racine School District in 2011. This spring, Gov. Scott Walker (R) and state lawmakers introduced proposals to expand these opportunities to more families throughout ...

Joseph Bast, President of the Heartland Institute, and Dr. Herbert Walberg, chairman of the Board of Directors of the Heartland Institute, discuss their book Education and Capitalism: How Overcoming Our Fear of Markets and Economics Can Improve America's Schools on the 10 th anniversary of the book’s release. Image by the Center ...

U.S. Senator Marco Rubio has gone on the road to promote a federal tax-credit scholarship bill aimed at helping poor children attend private schools. The program is about “giving parents more choices,” he says. “This bill will incentivize investment in students and empower parents and K-12 students by allowing more educational ...

MADISON – In January 2011, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett begged the state senate for legislation that would transfer control of vacant Milwaukee Public Schools real estate to the city of Milwaukee. State lawmakers passed a law allowing Milwaukee to sell unused school buildings without MPS approval. Two years later, the city struggles ...

Comedian Jay Leno periodically devotes a few minutes of his TV show to “jaywalking” segments, where he and his camera crew take to the streets and quiz passersby about basic historical facts. Most interviewees embarrass themselves by not knowing, for example, the name of the first U.S. president. Leno’s comical surveys hint ...

Friday's ed news Louisiana lawmakers start figuring how to pay for vouchers after a disappointing state Supreme Court ruling. The Texas House passes a charter school expansion . One more step to the governor's desk. South Carolina 's Senate will have a close vote on an education tax credit proposal. A German family seeking asylum ...

Indiana Gov. Mike Pence signed a bill to reconsider Common Core national education standards and analyze its costs. “My only bias is that we’re going to do education the Indiana way,” he told WIBC FM . “We’re going to set our curriculum for Indiana in Indiana.” Common Core lists what every child must know in K-12 math and ...

It took just eight years and 56 days for the United States to deliver on President John F. Kennedy’s pledge to put a man on the moon. But we’re still waiting on another Kennedy proposal: school reform. In fact, every president since Kennedy—10 presidents over 50 years—has had a plan to “reform” our failing public education ...

Georgia charter schools have started their own first-in-the nation teacher certification program that is already inspiring charters in other states. Teacher certification is a chokepoint for recruiting talented potential teachers, because it often requires years of preparation and thousands of dollars for applicants before they ever ...

Several states have passed legislation requiring public schools to teach cursive to fill in after adopting Common Core national standards, which do not require cursive. North Carolina’s House passed its “Back to Basics” bill March 4. Companion Senate Bill 243 unanimously passed the Senate Education Committee. The bills require ...

Nearly 8,000 kids are suddenly uncertain about where they will attend school this fall now that the Louisiana Supreme Court has ruled 6-1 the state's voucher program is unconstitutional. Because the justices ruled against how the program is funded, state lawmakers can vote to fund the program directly rather than through the ...

Nevada’s education system is on a downward spiral, says former state Superintendent James Guthrie. He recommends one dramatic change: Paying top teachers $200,000 per year. Dr. Guthrie joins the podcast to discuss his proposal, which he published recently in a Nevada Policy Research Institute paper . We talk about why Nevada ...

So far, Indiana’s voucher program has provided private school scholarships only to families meeting certain income requirements. In May, Gov. Mike Pence (R) signed a measure expanding the program to children zoned into failing public schools and special-needs students, regardless of family income. State Sen. Carlin Yoder (R-Middlebury ...

Private schools often attract parents by offering a unique school culture, often based on a particular religion or philosophy. Because school transfers are often difficult for students, they could be even more so when the new school is quite different. About 9 percent of school-aged children attend U.S. private schools, according ...

Friday's ed news WISCONSIN: The U.S. Justice Department orders the state to do more monitoring of special-ed kids in voucher schools. FLORIDA: A section of the dead Parent Trigger bill, requiring that kids not be assigned to poor teachers two years in a row, is resurrected and sent to the governor . FEDS: The Obama administration ...

School choice opponents frequently claim vouchers don't improve recipients' academics, hurt public schools, cost taxpayers, increase segregation, and even reduce civic unity. A new report reviewing the highest-quality research on all these topics concludes the opposite is true. Greg Forster is a senior fellow at the Friedman Foundation ...

State Senate Republicans blocked a bill to repeal New Hampshire’s new tax-credit scholarship law, but pending court cases and repeal language in the state’s education budget have left the program, and students hoping for school choice this coming school year, in jeopardy. The Republican-majority Senate voted 13-11 along party ...

Online schools, mobile technology, and independent students are beginning to bring promising innovations to the heart of modern education: Standardized testing. There is growing restlessness about standardized testing and teaching methods. Texas, for instance, is currently debating reducing high school end-of-course exams from 15 to ...

A labor expert is praising a new Kansas law for promoting teachers' freedom to make informed political choices, and opinion polls show strong public support for it, including union members and government employees. Republican Gov. Sam Brownback signed House Bill 2022 into law on April 1, enacting a policy often referred to ...