The Heartland Institute

Jordan Visser was not thriving in his Arizona public school. After a round of arguments with his school, Jordan's parents learned of Arizona's education savings accounts (ESAs), which deposit part of state funds set aside for the child's education into an account parents control and can use for any educational purchase. The ...

The stereotype that homeschooled kids do school in their pajamas may actually indicate better mental health. A new study finds that homeschooled kids sleep 90 minutes more, on average, than their non-homeschooled peers. Homeschooled kids also sleep in later than public school students, which actually better fits a teen's natural ...

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer signed a bill making approximately 100,000 more children eligible to receive their state education dollars in an account parents can use to purchase things like private school tuition, tutoring, and textbooks. Arizona became the first state in the nation to offer education savings accounts (ESAs) when ...

An Arizona judge has refused to block education savings accounts for disabled and foster children in the state, removing one more hurdle to school choice for the state’s one million schoolchildren. “The exercise of parental choice among education options makes the program constitutional,” ruled Maricopa County Superior Court Judge ...

Teachers receive job evaluations much like workers in other professions; except the “satisfactory” rates for teaching usually lie somewhere in the high 90th percentiles, according to an Education Next study. Meanwhile, even higher percentages of students fall behind in school. This casts great doubt on the validity of teacher ...

The Common Core State Standards Initiative, supported and created by the National Governors Association and Council of Chief State School Officers, sets grade-by-grade content requirements for K–12 in English language arts and math. The consortium is also developing science and history/social studies standards. The Obama administration ...

As Congress gears up to reauthorize No Child Left Behind, the largest federal law on education, and various school districts display the fruits of the act’s mandated testing, experts have begun to weigh in on the merits and disadvantages of national and state-administered standardized tests. NCLB greatly expanded state-mandated ...

Under the federal government’s "Early Learning Challenge" for state early education and childcare programs, states will offer a proposal, then follow through if they win a grant. The pool of money is $500 million of $700 million in Race to the Top grants available this year. Awards will be made by December 31, 2011; each ...