The Heartland Institute

"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 ...

“In an age of cynicism, the parents of America still believe in their country--and they want the public schools to teach their children to believe as well. ... We found a clear-eyed patriotism among parents of all backgrounds; a deep belief that the United States is a unique nation, while acknowledging its faults. Parents ...

Lee H. Walker, president of The New Coalition for Economic and Social Change, knows how important it is for children from limited environments to have a teacher or role model who can open their eyes to the breadth and freedom of opportunity available to them here in the United States. That's because Walker has lived the ...

Little did Mae Duggan realize that a letter she wrote to the St. Louis Review in April 1959 would be the opening shot in a battle for school choice that she and her husband Martin would still be fighting some four-and-a-half decades later. Prompted by the letter, a group of reformers met in the Duggan home in St. Louis ...

"My recommendation would be to turn every single school in the district into a charter school and to turn the central office into a support center for the charter schools. As charter schools, the schools would be schools of choice and the funding would follow the child to the school. At the same time, the principals of ...

Established as a nation dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal, the United States of America has been a magnet for immigrants seeking to better their lives and provide their children with their own shot at the American Dream. But many of today’s immigrants--particularly Latinos--are finding the urban public ...

Starting with the Milwaukee voucher program some 15 years ago, new school choice programs--whether vouchers, tax credits, or charter schools--have been subjected to an almost constant barrage of criticism from opponents who have demanded the programs be halted if research could not convincingly demonstrate a significant improvement ...

Victoria Martino knew students at her school were doing well. After all, she had co-founded the little school on the prairie, Mountain View Academy in Greeley, Colorado, simply to be able to teach using a highly effective instructional program. But even she couldn’t believe the Stanford Achievement Test results they received ...

Although there are many major players in the school choice movement--and School Reform News has interviewed many of them over the past seven years--it was Heartland Institute President Joseph L. Bast who last year was singled out for criticism in the Wall Street Journal by Ralph G. Neas, president of People for the American ...

Parochial school administrators may do their best to keep tuition as low as possible, but often it is privately funded scholarships that make education at a private school a reality for many children from low-income families in the inner city. And while large national programs like the Children’s Scholarship Fund have focused ...

In September, the U.S. Census Bureau’s annual poverty and income survey indicated that families headed by a single female were faring much better than anticipated in the current economic downturn. Indeed, following the 1996 welfare reforms, which required many single mothers to work, the poverty level among single parent families ...

The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent 5-4 ruling in Grutter v. Bollinger , which allows an applicant’s race to be considered as a factor in college admission decisions, raises profound policy questions about American K-12 education: What causes the racial gap in academic achievement? Can it be closed, or will black, Hispanic, and ...

During the past six and a half years, School Reform News has interviewed more than 60 school reform advocates. Although all of these interviews are available online, they are organized there only by date, perhaps not the most helpful structure. A different organization--by perspective and by issue--is presented below to ...

It's unfortunate that readers of the Koret Task Force's book, Our Schools and Our Future ... Are We Still at Risk?" do not come across the chapter by Terry M. Moe on the politics of school reform until almost half-way through the book. Moe's chapter should have been one of the first, since it's impossible to understand ...

If ever the right man got the job, it was Roderick Paige when he was appointed the seventh U.S. Secretary of Education in January 2001. As the first school superintendent to serve in this role, as well as the first African-American, Paige brings an unmatched depth of personal and career experience to the highest education ...

“What then is the American, this new man?... He is an American, who, leaving behind him all his ancient prejudices and manners, receives new ones from the new mode of life he has embraced, the new government he obeys, and the new rank he holds. He has become an American by being received in the broad lap of our great ...

The Miami-Dade County Public School District is the fourth-largest in the country, and it appears to be too big for its own good. Its land area is larger than some states, and its budget rivals that of many nations. Yet it produces very little efficiently and seeks to evade accountability for what it does produce. ... So ...

"This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. ... Now is the time to open the doors of opportunity to all of God's children." Martin Luther King Jr. August 28, 1963 A hundred years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, Martin Luther King Jr ...

“PTA parents in general are concerned about what’s happening at their local schools, and the PTA leadership at the local schools deserves a great deal of praise: They do all of the work and raise all of the money that supports the state organization as well as the national organization. They get very little in return ...

John D. Merrifield can tell you in an instant how many years ago Milton Friedman came up with the proposal to dramatically restructure incentives in publicly funded K-12 education by distributing schooling funds directly to all parents with vouchers redeemable at both government-run and privately run schools. That's because ...