The Heartland Institute

Television blackouts resulting from retransmission fee battles have prompted the Federal Communications Commission to propose new negotiation rules between broadcasters and multichannel video programming distributors, more commonly known as cable and television satellite companies. Blackouts of television programming occur when television ...

Education reform became a defining issue in several state legislatures this session. Newly elected Republican governors, including Scott Walker in Wisconsin, Rick Scott in Florida, and John Kasich in Ohio, explicitly linked school reforms to their states fiscal health. Legislatures across the nation passed a variety of reform bills ...

Arguing that improving the state s education system is essential to economic growth, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) is proposing a package of reforms to raise student achievement. The state legislature in May wrote some of his proposals into House Bills 4625 through 4628. They would require teacher evaluations, that schools use ...

This fall, Utah parents will have more clarity about how their child s school performs, thanks to a new school grading system Gov. Gary Herbert (R) signed into law. SB 59 assigns a letter grade to schools based on student performance on a range of academic achievement measures. Modeled after Florida s decade-old grading scale ...

A new report calls on the nation s business community to take bolder steps toward reforming the nation s education system in order to improve its science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) performance. The changes they propose will not be easy, acknowledge the authors of The Case for Being Bold: A New Agenda for Business ...

Efforts to reform K-12 schooling in America are as old as schooling itself. Benjamin Franklin, among others, criticized the public schools of his time, called Latin schools, for focusing on preparing a small elite for lives in religious and academic institutions rather than teaching practical skills to the larger public. The ...

Pamela Justice, the principal of Clyde Elementary School in Haywood County in North Carolina, recently sent students home with a letter asking parents to contact their legislators and voice opposition to Senate Bill 8, the No Cap on Charter Schools Act. About the same time, students in Rutherford County Schools used school ...

A Parent Trigger amendment to a parental responsibility bill was voted down in a Colorado state senate committee, signaling what the amendment s sponsor said was the end of parent empowerment legislation in the Rocky Mountain State for the 2011 session. It s totally dead for the year, said state Sen. Nancy Spence (R-Centennial ...

Maine is the latest to join at least 15 state legislatures considering a bill to establish a Parent Trigger law, empowering parents of children at failing public schools to petition for reforms. State Rep. Amy Volk (R-Scarborough) is the author of the Maine House bill, designated LD 1417, An Act to Enhance Parental Roles ...

Indiana s state Senate is poised to vote on a host of ambitious school reforms, including a voucher bill aimed at providing children from families earning up to $60,000 a year with $4,500 a year to attend the school of their choice statewide. Gov. Mitch Daniels (R) is expected to sign the bills as soon as they pass. With ...

North Carolina municipalities soon may find it more difficult to implement or subsidize communications services for residents if either of two bills winding through the state s General Assembly becomes law. Both House Bill 129 and Senate Bill 87 emerged from committee hearings in March. If passed into law, neither bill will forbid ...

American higher education suffers from rapidly escalating costs and poor student learning outcomes. Collectively, the United States spends $430 billion on higher education, the equivalent of 3 percent of total gross domestic product (GDP), an amount that exceeds the entire GDPs of several midsize European countries. Yet, there ...

For at least the past two decades, school choice initiatives have been limited programs designed either to benefit a small group of special needs children or to punish failing government schools. No doubt these programs have given a few students opportunities they wouldn t have had otherwise. But these programs touch the lives ...

In an apparent policy reversal, California State Board of Education President Michael Kirst announced plans to accelerate the timetable for approving permanent regulations for the state s landmark Parent Empowerment Act, also known as the Parent Trigger. Kirst says the board s April 21 meeting would be devoted exclusively to discussing ...

A bill to reform Michigan s 1991 Telecommunications Act regulating landline providers has moved to the state legislature s House Energy and Communications Committee. Introduced by Ken Horn (R-Frankenmuth), chairman of the House Energy and Communications Committee, on February 22, 2011, and cosponsored by Roy Schmidt (D-Grand Rapids ...

In an effort to ease financial pressures on the state budget, Texas State Comptroller Susan Combs is suggesting the legislature replace the current cap of 22 students in each K-4 classroom with a maximum average of 22 students for the entire district s K-4 classrooms. Texas faces a combined $27 billion budget shortfall for ...

California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) is asking voters to extend a sales- and income-tax increase for five years to help close a $25 billion state budget deficit this year and spare the state s public schools from deep budget cuts. However, education policy analysts at Stanford and Pepperdine University dispute claims by Brown and ...

A key New Jersey state Assembly panel has cleared the New Jersey Opportunity Scholarship Act, a bill to aid low-income students in the state s worst schools. The vote sets the stage for a contentious floor fight over the bill even though it has bipartisan support. The Commerce and Economic Development Committee unanimously ...

Indiana Democrats are balking at votes on several labor and school reform bills winding through the state legislature. Despite a walkout, in which some House members reportedly fled to adjacent Illinois, Gov. Mitch Daniels (R) and Speaker of the House Brian Bosma (R-Indianapolis) say they remain optimistic the proposals will ...

The Kentucky state Senate has passed a bill opening the state to charter schools, overcoming opposition from the state s teachers union and culminating nearly a decade of work by school reformers in the Bluegrass State. Senate Bill 3 would establish a state charter authorizer. The bill also would permit parents to send their ...