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By Jennifer Wagner Mother Jones recently published a story questioning whether GreatSchools, a national nonprofit that rates public PK-12 schools using test scores and other factors, is inadvertently contributing to neighborhood segregation because families are using the website to find homes near highly rated schools that might not be particularly diverse. GreatSchools partners with a number […]
By Jennifer Wagner EdChoice is the oldest group in the nation solely dedicated to advancing school choice. Dr. Friedman and his wife, Rose, founded the organization in 1996. We’ll be a quarter-century old next year. That means we’ve endured six — soon to be seven — presidential elections and dozens at the state and local level. Power has shifted from one […]
By Jennifer Wagner To my sweet, kind, inquisitive son: I love you so much. I love how you tell us all about the latest Fortnite updates and perform all the dances — and how your passion for the game hooked us all into playing with you. I love how you run on the beach without a care in the world. An […]
By Jennifer Wagner The other day, I dropped an opinion piece — with no personal commentary — on my Facebook timeline from someone who was concerned about students going back to school in person. I stuck my phone in my pocket and didn’t think much about the post until someone texted a few hours later to let me know the comments […]
By Jennifer Wagner There has been much debate in recent weeks about criminal justice reform following the killing of George Floyd and a series of high-profile cases of police brutality against African-Americans. Police unions have found themselves squarely in a very harsh spotlight. Because the word “union” is being bandied about, some in the school choice […]
By Drew Catt As a native of Indiana and science fiction fan, I grew up loving Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind and was downright giddy when Stranger Things lasted more than just one season. Both of those storylines, in some ways, seem more plausible than what we’ve been experiencing in 2020. While I certainly […]
By Jennifer Wagner It’s always easy to hate the rich and their fancy private schools. It’s even easier in tough economic times when unemployment is high and the future is uncertain. So when the U.S. Department of Education issued guidance last month for the distribution of $13.5 billion in federal pandemic aid to all schooling types based […]
By Jennifer Wagner “I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.” I’ve always appreciated that Douglas Adams quote — and I’m drawn to it more than ever in these strange pandemic times. Deadlines are boundaries. Deadlines give us structure. We need deadlines, even if they whoosh by. Especially as they whoosh by. They keep […]
By Jennifer Wagner In case you missed it, we’re all teachers now — and probably will be for the rest of the school year. Teachers are amazing. My parents were teachers. I love helping the kids with their homework and chaperoning their field trips and hearing about their days when they get home from school. I am part of a broad […]
As we navigate the shutdown of ordinary life and the many ways the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting our routines and families, we wanted to provide a handy list of free, online tools to help you continue teaching and learning at home. We’ve found these tools to be useful to us as we are also learning how […]