News and Opinion

  School choice sparks population boomlet - Cincinnati Enquirer While most of the city has been losing families to suburbs that offer more land, newer houses, lower taxes and better schools, this neighborhood is a magnet for young professionals with large, growing families...._{Respond to this posting}  

NCLB Will Leave All Americans Behind - CATO Commentary - Andrew Coulson U.S. students have suffered overall stagnation or decline in math, reading, and science in the years since NCLB was passed._{Respond to this posting}  

2007 Test Scores Show Increased Spending Hasn't Produced Results - Heartland Institute Gains on standardized tests made in early grades evaporate by the end of high school, and the scores of 17-year-olds have stagnated or fallen in reading, math, and science since the NAEP tests were first administered in the late '60s and early '70s, despite the fact that we have more than doubled real per-pupil spending since 1970, to the current national average of more than ,000 per pupil._{Respond to this posting}  

Columbus on list of "Dropout Factories" - Columbus Dispatch Just under 70 Ohio high schools have rates of retention that are so low that they could be nicknamed "dropout factories," according to a Johns Hopkins University analysis of education data for the Associated Press. That description fits 12 percent of all high schools in America. _{Respond to this posting}  

Some teachers say ‘yes’ to merit-pay plans - New Philidelphia Times Reporter While the words “merit pay” drew hisses and boos at a recent teachers’ union convention, some educators are endorsing contracts that pay bonuses for boosting students’ test scores._{Respond to this posting}

Schools Spend All They Can Get, Study Shows - Heartland Institute What do public officials do if they're looking out for their own interests? They spend more money, because the bigger the budget you control, the more power you have_{Respond to this posting}

New Jersey has become the new front in the fight for school vouchers  - The Economist Some supporters of school vouchers, frustrated with state legislators, are testing a new tactic: going to court. Last July a group of parents in New Jersey filed a lawsuit against the state and 25 poorly performing districts._{Respond to this posting}

Success in Philadelphia - Wall Street Journal Among big-city public school systems, Philadelphia's record of improvement in recent years has been the most impressive. Test scores in reading and math have risen substantially, even in what had been the lowest-performing schools. Continuing the reforms that facilitated this trend might seem like a no-brainer. But if district administrators have their way in the current budget negotiations, the city's schools stand a good chance of reverting to the bad old days._{Respond to this posting}

States found to vary a lot on education standards - Boston Globe An Education Department report yesterday compared what it takes to be rated proficient on elementary- and middle-school state reading and math tests with what it means to hit that mark on national tests. The state tests are a key measure for enforcement of the federal No Child Left Behind law. The study found that most of the scores that would label a student proficient on state tests don't yield that grade on the national tests._{Respond to this posting}

Ohio's proficiency bar set near middle, report says  - Columbus Dispatch In Ohio, proficiency levels for fourth- and eighth-grade reading and math all fall below the national standard, putting the state in the middle of the pack. An Ohio fourth-grader deemed proficient in reading may fall short of the mark in Massachusetts, South Carolina, Wyoming and Arkansas. Likewise, an eighth-grader judged proficient on Ohio's math test might not make the cut in Missouri, Hawaii or Arkansas._{Respond to this posting}

Utah Universal Voucher Program Becomes Law - Heartland Institute Utah's new voucher law allows families to spend between 0 and ,000 in public funds per child on private school tuition, depending on family income._{Respond to this posting}  

Governor's Budget Sounds a Death Knell for Charters and Choice in Ohio - Thomas B. Fordham Institute Governor Strickland has made it clear that he intends to dismantle both Ohio’s charter school program and the state’s voucher program, and sadly, none of the governor’s legislative proposals aimed at charters and choice are tied to the actual academic performance of schools and individual students. _{Respond to this posting}

Ohio's EdChoice Program Expanded - Edspresso.com Update By adjusting the eligibility requirements, Ohio's choice program for students in failing schools has now doubled the number of children who can now take advantage of the benifits of this scholarship program.     _{Respond to this posting}  

Bad Apples and Public Schools - Terence Jeffrey at Townhall.com It's time to give all American parents vouchers equal to the per-pupil spending in local government schools. Then parents can decide whether the government schools deserve their children_{Respond to this posting}  

The Other Milton Friedman - Cal Thomas at Townhall.com Universal vouchers would allow all parents to direct funds set aside by the government for education to the school they believe will best serve their child, whether the school is public or private, religious or secular._{Respond to this posting}  

The Only Solution Is Competition: An Exclusive Interview with Milton Friedman - A Heartland Institute Interview Milton Friedman believed that allowing parents a free choice of schools for their children would improve children's education and also lead to the separation of public financing from government administration of K-12 education._{Respond to this posting}

Vouchers are in Session - Akron Beacon Journal Ohio has a new program that provides taxpayer dollars to pay tuition for children transferring to private schools from persistently low-performing public schools._{Respond to this posting}

Feds Propose National School Choice Project - The Heartland Institute If it passes, the bill will mark the first time Congress has approved the use of federal funds for private education for anyone other than Hurricane Katrina victims or students in the District of Columbia. But the measure is unlikely to gain traction on Capitol Hill before the November elections._{Respond to this posting}

The School Choice Movement’s Greatest Failure - A Mackinac Center Commentary A vigorous free market in education requires that all families have easy access to the schools of their choice (whether public or private); that schools are not burdened with extensive regulations on what they can teach, whom they can hire and what they can charge, etc.; that consumers directly pay at least some of the cost of the service; that private schools not be discriminated against financially by the state in the distribution of education funding; and that at least a substantial minority of private schools be operated for profit._{Respond to this posting} 

Research

Not as Good as You Think: Why the Middle Class Needs School Choice  - Pacific Research Institute Right now, many middle-class parents complacently believe that things are great in their neighborhood public schools. Is that belief largely true or an illusion? If the latter, then bold action on the part of middle-class parents is overdue._{Respond to this posting}

Ohio 8th Graders trail Peers in Other Countries - American Institutes for Research A study done by Gary Phillips for the American Institutes of Research indicates that on average, students in 12 states and 8 countries were ahead of Ohio 8th graders in science, and 17 states and 9 countries in math. But the study also found that the highest achieveing students in Ohio ranked significantly below the highest achievers in other countries._{Respond to this posting}

School Choice:  The Findings - CATO School Choice: The Findings is a comprehensive and up-to-date survey, summarizing the research on charter schools, vouchers, and public versus private school effectiveness. The focus is on rigorous studies—those using randomized control groups (as in medical research), those that monitor achievement changes over time, and those based on large numbers of students. _{Respond to this posting}

Facts About School Finance in Ohio - Matthew Carr - Buckeye Institute Given the importance of school funding, both for the state’s one million plus students and the taxpayers who finance the system, it is critical that the coming debate on funding reform be grounded in the facts. What follows is a brief summary of the most important information to keep in mind. _{Respond to this posting}

School Choice and School Competition: Evidence from the United States  - Caroline Hoxby - Harvard University This study examines how public schools respond to competition, and finds that in general they raise their achievement and productivity. Looking at study design, she finds the best studies on this question examine the introduction of choice programs that have been sufficiently large and long-lived to produce competition. In addition, the study concludes that students’ achievement generally does rise when they attend voucher or charter schools, and that currently enacted voucher and charter school programs do not "cream-skim", but infact they disproportionately attract students who were performing badly in their regular public schools._{Respond to this posting}

Mapping 2005 State Proficiency Standards Onto the NAEP Scales  - Columbus Dispatch This report attempts to compare state proficiency standards in reading and mathematics to the appropriate NAEP equivalent standard for proficiency. Employing data from the 2004–05 academic year, the report finds large variation between states. It also indicates that the standards many states use to establish proficiency are less stringent than the standard used on the national level._{Respond to this posting}

Turning the Corner to Quality - Thomas B. Fordham Institute Policy Guidelines for Strengthening Ohio's Charter Schools._{Respond to this posting}

School Choice:  2006 Progress Report - Heritage Foundation Report In 2006, eight states— Arizona, Florida, Iowa, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Utah, and Wisconsin—enacted new school choice programs or expanded existing programs. By 2007, as many as 150,000 students will be par­ticipating in publicly funded tuition scholarship programs._{Respond to this posting}

Are Public or Private Schools Doing Better? How the NCES Study Is Being Misinterpreted - A Heritage Foundation Report A recent study published by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) contains some surprising results based on a snapshot of student achievement data. According to the study, public school students are performing better than private school students in fourth grade mathematics and at the same level as pri­vate school students in fourth grade reading and eighth grade math. Indeed, the report says that private school students have an advantage over public school stu­dents only in eighth grade reading. These results should be handled very carefully._{Respond to this posting}

School Choice and Charter School Programs -  A Heritage Foundation Map