The Heartland Institute

Before Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans’ education system was defined by corruption, dropouts, and illiteracy. Then Katrina leveled the city. In the storm’s aftermath, a flow of federal, state, and private dollars coupled with political backing to upend the city and state’s education system has strengthened student achievement and ...

“Liberal mayors would never have dared to challenge union power even a few years ago, but now they see charter schools, parent trigger and even vouchers as a chance to side with parents against an increasingly unpopular special interest,” writes the Wall Street Journal editorial board. Iowa did not receive a federal No Child ...

Pennsylvania lawmakers are merging previous school vouchers and tax credit scholarship legislation to provide more options, especially to students in the worst 15 percent of public schools. Legislators have attempted to pass similar bills this past year and for at least a decade, said state Rep. Jim Christiana (R-Beaver). Voucher ...

Recent reports claiming the Obama administration supports Parent Trigger or parent empowerment legislation are untrue. The administration has not yet taken a public stance on the issue, U.S. Department of Education spokesman Justin Hamilton told School Reform News . Parent Trigger laws have passed in four states after first becoming ...

Presumptive Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney announced his education policy platform in May. He supports tying federal education dollars directly to poor and disabled students to help them attend public, charter, or private schools or pay for online education and tutoring. He also supports reversing the nationalization ...

Speaker of the House John Boehner and Sen. Joe Lieberman have reached a deal with the U.S. Department of Education to continue funding the endangered DC vouchers program. The agreement means no cap on program enrollment, current students can continue participating, and new students can apply. A U.S. Department of Education spokesman ...

Today the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools announced it elected Nina Rees as its new president and CEO. Rees is a former senior vice president for global education provider Knowledge Universe, former head of the Office of Innovation and Improvement at the U.S. Department of Education, where she oversaw the D.C. vouchers ...

In May 2012, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan announced his department would offer approximately $200 million in competitive grants of up to $25 million apiece that local school districts nationwide can apply to receive. This is the latest iteration of Race to the Top, a $4.35 billion pool of money originally allocated ...

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush discusses the Common Core, Parent Trigger, ALEC, third grade retention, and federal involvement in education. California lawmakers prefer to the governor's budget one that would spend a billion more on education. A judge's ruling means student test scores may soon be used to evaluate Los Angeles teachers ...

As more schools and districts begin adding objective components to annual teacher evaluations, some are asking students to flip the traditional arrangement and grade their teachers. This fall, Georgia will be the first state to include student perceptions in teacher evaluations. Along with student test growth and principals’ classroom ...

The Alabama Senate has passed a resolution expressing disapproval that the state Board of Education adopted and refuses to reconsider Common Core education standards for the dangers that action poses to state control over education. “Education standards should be left to the purview of state governments, not the federal government ...

Barely more than a year old, Indiana’s voucher program has grown in popularity, sent an extra $4 million to public schools, and yielded clear evidence of taxpayer savings. In May the Indiana Department of Education paid $4 million extra to school districts and charter schools statewide because of the vouchers program. A special ...

Senator Jim DeMint and Rep. Trent Franks have introduced an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would affirm parental rights . The Michigan Senate passed a Parent Trigger bill . An attempt at amending the New Hampshire constitution to give the legislature and not state supreme court control over school funding has failed. A ...

Wisconsin’s Scott Walker became the first U.S. governor to win a recall election on June 5 with 54 percent of ballots and massive voter turnout at approximately 57 percent. Walker, Lt. Gov Rebecca Kleefisch, and four Republican state senators were recalled because of policies they implemented to restrict collective bargaining ...

Maine has passed a new law that will base high school graduation on student proficiency rather than seat time. “Some high schools are looking at a sequence of seat time and too many of them don’t have a rigorous expectation for a diploma,” Maine Superintendent Don Siviski said. “The difference now is that we have the technology ...

The New York Times published an article in May purporting to indict tax credit scholarship programs with evidence some scholarship-granting nonprofits were poorly and unethically managed. The paper charged tax credit scholarship programs in Georgia and Pennsylvania, particularly, abused funds previously destined for public coffers ...

The “Tennessee K-12 & School Choice Survey” project, commissioned by the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice and conducted by Braun Research Inc. (BRI), measures Tennessee registered voters’ familiarity and views on a range of K-12 education topics and school choice reforms. We report response levels and differences (using ...

The Missouri legislature has passed its first major piece of charter school legislation since its first in 1998: Senate Bill 576 would allow charter schools to open statewide and make it easier to close poor-performing ones. Missouri currently allows charter schools only in St. Louis and Kansas City, which enroll 20,000 students ...

In the past 18 months, the number and reach of school choice programs have increased exponentially across the United States, bolstered by Republican governors and legislative majorities elected in 2010. The legislative and public relations battles have been fierce. Do typical voters and families approve of school choice efforts ...

In the 2012 Texas Republican primary, 85 percent of voters supported a school choice proposition to have state education dollars follow individual children to any school their parent chooses. Of the nearly 1.4 million voters considering the proposition, nearly 1.2 million of them approved it, according to the Texas Secretary ...