The Heartland Institute

Although vouchers are supposed to prompt improvements in the public schools through competition for students, the Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) have shown little improvement in graduation rates or test scores -- despite the migration of more than 19,000 students to voucher schools over the past 18 years. This lack of improvement ...

After reviewing additional research studies on teacher performance and the mechanisms of student learning, Barak Rosenshine and Robert Stevens in 1986 developed a six-function teaching model to describe the necessary sequence of instructional steps that are involved in having a student learn new skills. The principles apply equally ...

Despite educational reforms implemented over the past eight years, students graduating from public schools are still largely unprepared for the workforce, according to the latest annual employer survey published in November 2005 by the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), the Manufacturing Institute, and Deloitte Consulting ...

Good news about student athletes in the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) was publicized in Mayor Richard M. Daley's "Principal for a Day" news conference October 27. In addition to announcing that an anonymous philanthropist had donated $2 million to provide basketball shoes to every basketball player in the city's public schools ...

Since its inception in 2000, the Media and Technology Charter High (MATCH) School in Boston has drawn its predominantly black and Hispanic students largely from the city's poorest demographic, and most of its students enter ninth grade achieving well below grade level. Yet 100 percent of its 2005 graduates went on to college ...

Review of Doomed to Fail: The Built-in Defects of American Education by Paul A. Zoch Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2004, 237 pages, ISBN 1-56663-567-5, $26.95 Paul A. Zoch's book, Doomed to Fail , clearly, concisely, and convincingly lays out the reasons why K-12 education in the United States produces high school seniors who ...

Some education policy analysts say tuition tax credit programs such as Arizona's, which a federal district court judge on March 24 upheld as constitutional, are preferable to vouchers because they do not involve "public money" and are therefore less likely to be subject to government regulation. But recent objections to tax ...

Review of Public Schools, Public Menace: How Public Schools Lie to Parents and Betray Our Children by Joel Turtel New York: Liberty Books, 2005, 387 pages, ISBN 0-9645693-2-9, $17.95 "[T]ake their future into your hands, now." That's Joel Turtel's blunt message for parents of school-age children in Public Schools, Public ...

Despite the efforts of teacher unions and their allies to portray voucher supporters as extremists whose ideas are out of touch with mainstream America, the results of recent public opinion polls taken in three different states show solid support for parental choice proposals among voters in Arizona, Texas, and Indiana. In ...

When K-12 public school teachers attain certification through the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS), they are rewarded with annual bonuses of up to $7,500. Yet four value-added research studies conducted since 2002--including three sponsored by NBPTS itself--have shown NBPTS-certified teachers produce only ...

Ruling in what school choice advocates have called "the most frivolous" challenge ever filed against a school choice program, a federal district court judge on March 24 upheld Arizona's scholarship tax credit program as constitutional, dismissing a lawsuit from the state American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) chapter. Since Arizona ...

Crowds of concerned parents, students, and educators rallied in Tallahassee, Florida and Madison, Wisconsin in January and February to show support for defending and expanding school voucher programs that school choice opponents are trying to kill or limit. On January 24, parents and students who participate in publicly funded ...

Culminating a 12-year court battle over the funding of New York City's public schools, New York State Supreme Court Justice Leland DeGrasse issued a final decision on February 15 ordering the state legislature and governor to spend an additional $5.63 billion a year to educate the city's 1.1 million public school students. That ...

A total of 531 students transferred to better-performing public schools and more than 200 were able to receive tutoring services during 2003-04 as a result of help provided by Project CREO, according to a February 2005 update from Hispanic CREO, the Hispanic Council for Reform and Educational Options. Initiated in the fall ...

"Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door." Attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson Many entrepreneurs have discovered that Emerson's maxim often requires a substantial investment in informational advertising before customers appreciate the superiority of a new marketplace offering. But from the time ...

"Politicians who promote public schools don't always send their kids to them," said ABC News journalist John Stossel in a segment of the 20/20 program broadcast on January 28, called "Public Schools for Poor Kids, Not Politicians' Kids." You might think the people who fight for public schools would always send their children ...

A new study from the bipartisan legal reform coalition Common Good found U.S. schools are greatly over-regulated, in many cases to the point of paralysis. The study details thousands upon thousands of laws and regulations that apply to public schools in New York City. The study was released on November 29 as an interactive ...

The parent organization of the Lewis Lemon public school in Rockford, Illinois is asking the local school board not to drop a three-year-old reading program that has raised the school’s test scores well above the district average. The school’s student body is 80 percent minority, and almost 90 percent of students are eligible ...

Deputy Secretary of Education Gene Hickok resigned from the U.S. Department of Education effective at the end of January, after four years of efforts to bring historic changes to the culture of American K-12 education. In his resignation letter to President George W. Bush, Hickock said it was rare in public life to get ...

In a potentially far-reaching lawsuit filed on January 27 in Fulton County Superior Court in Georgia, three Atlanta families charged the State of Georgia and its agents with failing to provide their children with the opportunity for an adequate education. The parents are seeking the freedom to use the per-pupil funds spent ...