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Alabama – Stephanie Linn @StephanieJLinn Alabama lawmakers filed a bill (HB 558) that would amend the Alabama Accountability Act to define individual donors as shareholders or partners of S corporations or Subchapter K entities. The bill would also eliminate the $7,500 cap on individual contributions. The Alabama Accountability Act currently requires scholarship granting organizations to wait […]
This week the Mississippi Press posted a story entitled “Parents push for Mississippi special education vouchers.” The article, which is actually about an education savings account (ESA) bill, is straightforward, but be warned: Two commentators in the story’s sound-off section hit hard. The fact of the matter is government has agreed to adequately fund children […]
An ACLU blog post this month questioning the intentions of School Choice Week and the policy impact of “vouchers” was disappointing, particularly in its framing of school vouchers and voucher advocates as one-trick policy ponies. More important, however, it just shows the fundamental misunderstanding of “choice” in American education. Which is to say, there’s a […]
The state of Louisiana sparked a paradigm shift in education when it created the New Orleans’ Recovery School District in 2004. RSD is now almost entirely composed of charter schools. School principals gain autonomy over budget, staff, and curriculum while central office staff focus on addressing school failure. This experiment has delivered encouraging results. Just […]
A misconception we have seen multiple times is the relationship between school choice and race. This veteran’s recent tweet is just one example: If RickJarHead and others truly believe school choice supporters subscribe to Wallace’s segregationist views, perhaps choicers are not doing a good enough job promoting the research surrounding school choice’s effects on people […]
When Dr. Friedman’s views on economic freedom are invoked nowadays, it is often lost that he was very concerned about the plight of the poor and the potentially disruptive nature of problems like widening income inequality. Over the past decade, the matter of growing income disparity between the richest and poorest Americans has been gaining […]
In light of the great strides two education savings accounts (ESA) bills made just yesterday, today’s Friday Freakout comes to you from Mississippi. In a local news story about Mississippi’s ESA bills, the Executive Director of the Mississippi Association of School Superintendents was quoted saying this. “I think special needs kids are being provided for,” […]
UPDATED BELOW With the advance of its school choice ESAs, Mississippi is closer to becoming the second state, behind Arizona, to adopt education savings accounts, which allow parents to withdraw their children from public schools and receive a deposit of public funds into government-authorized savings accounts with restricted, but multiple, uses. Those funds can cover […]
The holy grail of research is the causal claim. That is, if you can prove that A causes B, not that A is related to B or that A is similar to B, you can cure diseases, create rockets that leave our atmosphere, and design social programs that help people live better lives. In medicine, […]
Salon.com is known for posting anti-school choice pieces. This week, “Creationism, at taxpayer expense: Secrets of the GOP’s frightening new school voucher schemes” appeared in their headlines. Sadly, we weren’t surprised to see the comments section riddled with people repeating these “points”: Many school choice supporters have reacted defensively to this type of feedback, resorting […]