If you want a peek at where our educational priorities might land in about 10 years, take a look at this poll. Here are a few hot-button findings that jump out from “Education in America: The Views of Millennials:” Millennials support school choice, both charters and vouchers, especially if the vouchers help low-income families afford private school. Millennials think there… Read more →
I’m going to take a moment to celebrate my state’s historic school funding plan–and ignore the brewing debate over a private school tax credit that opponents want to call a backdoor voucher program but isn’t a voucher program at all. Today, Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner is expected to sign legislation that will close spending inequities, reduce the reliance on property… Read more →
On August 1, Celine Coggins, a former classroom teacher who founded an organization called Teach Plus, will publish a new book about the importance of engaging teachers in policy development. It’s called “How to Be Heard.” I have just begun reading it, and I am hopeful it will drive dialogue about the role teachers, and especially teachers unions, play in… Read more →
School reform advocate Derrell Bradford and policy writer Andy Rotherham hit on it. Illinois education writer Tracy Dell’Angela has a blog focused on it. Teacher/education writer Robert Pondiscio said it was a factor in the anti-charter vote in Massachusetts last fall. And former Education Secretary Arne Duncan famously broached the subject in 2013. “It” is the long overdue conversation about… Read more →
The school choice war has gone hot, writes Neal McCluskey on the Cato @ Liberty blog. New America’s Kevin Carey lamented “dismal voucher results” in the New York Times, which followed with an editorial calling choice an academic “failure.” However, “the vast majority of random-assignment studies of private school voucher programs — the “gold-standard” research method that even controls for… Read more →
To President Trump: I was one of the 470,000 women who marched on Washington Saturday, the day after your inauguration, holding a sign that was earnest but not angry, focused on the aspirations I have for my young adult daughters. In a million years I couldn’t have imagined I would ever be writing you a letter (let alone putting the… Read more →
I’ve been procrastinating about writing this post. Why? Because while I believe all people should speak their truths, I’m cautious about doing so when it comes to school choice and my kids. Let me be frank: My truth is that of a white, passing-as-privileged suburban mom (my husband and I are self-employed – so we’re honestly not as privileged as… Read more →
There’s something depressingly familiar about the privileged pushback we’re seeing in Massachusetts around the ballot measure to lift the cap on charter schools. An active group of affluent white parents in well-resourced suburban districts are organizing to deny low-income black and brown families access to better schools, all under the progressive guise of “saving our public schools.” If this sounds… Read more →
At a recent book club meeting, we were wrapping up a spirited discussion of James Baldwin’s “The Fire Next Time” when our talk veered to the racially charged education politics of New Orleans, where one of my neighbors was raised and educated. She mentioned the rapid expansion of charter schools, which she described as “private schools that drain money from… Read more →