“FIRE is pleased to announce its first annual ‘Freedom in Academia’ essay scholarship contest for high school students. To advance FIRE’s mission ‘to educate the public and communities of concerned Americans about the threats to rights on our campuses,’ FIRE is inviting high school students from across the country who will be attending college in […]
“For most media outlets that reported on an important new survey measuring the impact of technology on teens’ writing skills, the big news from the survey was that emoticons and text-messaging abbreviations are creeping into students’ formal writing assignments. Buried beneath the alarm of writing ‘purists,’ however, was a promising finding with equally important implications […]
“The Knowledge Is Power Program—KIPP—an open-enrollment schooling network that serves more than 14,000 children in 17 states and the District of Columbia recently released its fifth annual Report Card. (There is a registration requirement, but logging in is easy and free.) The report results, based on information from each of KIPP’s 55 charter schools and […]
“School reformers across the nation thought they had scored a victory in their efforts to weed out ineffective teachers last year in New York. Then-governor Eliot Spitzer convinced legislators to enact a law requiring new teachers seeking tenure to prove that they successfully use standardized test scores and other forms of student performance data in […]
“If Barack Obama wins the Democratic nomination, Americans will have two presidential candidates who are open to school choice measures. Barack Obama went on Fox News Sunday this week and said, ‘We should be experimenting with charter schools’ and ‘different ways of compensating teachers’ — beliefs he’s long held but not always trumpeted, The New […]
“Involving parents, families, and communities in the education of their children is imperative for all schools. The potential for parents and families to be skillful, knowledgeable, and effective partners, capable of ensuring that their children receive the quality of education to which they are entitled, should be a goal of every school system. Research confirms […]
“A recent letter signed by 30 superintendents of eastern Oklahoma school districts (Phoenix April 24 Opinion Page) was critical of Senate Bill 2093, the New Hope Scholarship Act. The bill would give a tax credit to taxpayers who contribute to organizations that provide private-school scholarships for low-income children currently attending failing public schools in […]
“Spare me all of this brouhaha about yet another debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, whose policy positions don’t amount to a dime’s worth of difference. What Democrat wants to see more of two strong candidates further sullying each other’s candidacy? Only Republicans would want to see more of it. Instead, what about a […]
“Gov. Ted Strickland and school superintendents take note: Public schools and charter schools need not be mortal enemies. The Cleveland schools’ successful partnership with the highly touted Entrepreneurship Preparatory School, the district’s sole charter school, proves that peace can be far more fruitful for Ohio’s youngsters than war among their schools. Of course, not all […]
“There are two (or maybe two and a half) very efficient ways of putting a price on emissions. You tax emissions and include an escalator clause that increases until they drop as far as you want. You can put a cap in place, auction the resulting permits, and keep dropping the cap until you get […]
