Corey DeAngelis, a school choice activist and senior fellow at the American Federation for Children, applauded the 2024 Republican Party Platform for including universal school choice in its 20-point agenda released earlier this week.
On Monday, the Republican Party unveiled its 2024 platform, which consists of 20 promises Republicans intend to deliver on if Trump is elected back to the White House and Republicans obtain majorities in both the U.S. House and Senate.
Read the full story
The Canary Mission’s deep dive into the hateful messaging being pushed by educators across the nation and in Pennsylvania comes at a time when lawmakers of the Keystone State are attempting to revive a school voucher program which would award scholarships to low-income students attending underperforming public schools.
Read the full story
In just three years, the number of states with universal or near-universal private school choice programs has grown from zero to 10, and the number of students eligible for these programs has increased by 60%. According to the latest ABCs of School Choice – EdChoice’s comprehensive report about all matters pertaining to educational freedom—32 states (plus Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico) are using school choice as of 2023. Additionally, policymakers in 40 states debated 111 educational choice bills last year alone. Overall, approximately 20 million students—or 36% of all kids—are now eligible for some kind of private-choice program.
But what’s good for children and their families is problematic for the teachers’ unions and their fellow travelers. As such, on January 22—not coincidentally the beginning of National School Choice Week—the Partnership for the Future of Learning released a toolkit, maintaining that “voucher programs are “deeply rooted in segregation, racism, and discrimination.” The PFL, which is comprised of predominantly left-wing outfits—the National Education Association, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Learning Policy Institute, etc.—adds that private schools “do not have necessary accountability measures.”
Read the full story
According to the latest ABCs of School Choice – EdChoice’s comprehensive report about all matters pertaining to education freedom – policymakers in 40 states have debated 111 educational choice bills in 2023, 79 percent of which related to education savings accounts. (ESAs allow parents to receive a deposit of public funds into a government-authorized savings account with restricted, but multiple uses. Those funds can cover private school tuition and fees, online learning programs, private tutoring, community college costs, higher education expenses, and other approved customized learning services and materials).
Read the full story
The conservative political advocacy group Americans for Prosperity – Tennessee (AFP-TN) published its 2023 Legislative Agenda, suggesting four major policy changes in the state.
During Tennees’s General Assembly legislative session this year, AFP-TN will advocate for legislation that moves to tackle and overall improve: economic opportunity, educational freedom, transparency, and criminal justice reform.
Read the full story
In Massachusetts where I live, average private school tuition hovers around $23,000. For secular private schools, the cost is typically much higher, with Boston-area private school tuition often exceeding $40,000. This price tag is way too high for most families to afford, but emerging microschools are typically a fraction of the cost of other private education options.
For example, the Wilder School is a new Acton Academy-affiliated microschool that costs about $12,000 a year, while Life Rediscovered, a new homeschool resource center offering up to five days a week of full-day, drop-off learning, costs about $10,000. Even established local microschools, such as Bay State Learning Center that was founded in 2014 and that I wrote about in Unschooled, have similar tuition costs and frequently offer financial aid or sliding scale tuition.
Read the full story
Tuesday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed official guest Grant Henry in studio for another edition of Grant’s Rants.
Read the full story
by Sam Nienow Why is educational freedom a personal issue to me? Because 17 years ago, my big brother had cancer. In 2002, when my brother was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia, he received excellent care at Vanderbilt Medical Center. But the treatment and recovery still took months, and I spent much of that time with him. Our dad worked at the GM plant in Spring Hill at the time, so my mom could afford to take the time off to homeschool me. A lot of families would not have been able to do what we did. Today, too many kids in our state are living in difficult situations – a bad illness in the family, trying economic circumstances, or maybe constant bullying from classmates – but don’t have the options that I was blessed enough to have as a 10-year-old. That’s what makes me so dedicated to the idea of educational freedom. Gov. Bill Lee’s proposal for educations scholarship accounts (ESAs) would provide 5,000 students – with an additional 2,500 added every year — in low-performing schools a scholarship, based on the state’s per-student funding of about $7,300 year that they could use for tutoring, private school tuition,…
Read the full story