Georgia State Rep. Wes Cantrell (R-Woodstock) has introduced a bill that, if enacted into law, would offer greater school choice for parents through Educational Scholarship Accounts. Parents could take these ESA’s and use them for private educational opportunities instead of public education funds.
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The Georgia House Education Committee introduced legislation to fund education savings accounts for qualifying parents. House Bill 60, or the “Georgia Educational Scholarship Act,” proposes granting certain state educational funds to parents directly rather than schools.
The bill would allow students with circumstances including poverty, foster care, active duty military parent(s), disability, bullying, or mandated distance learning to apply certain state educational funds to attend the participating school of their choice.
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Legislation to expand Ohio’s school choice eligibility was signed into law by Gov. Mike DeWine on Friday.
Senate Bill 89 will expand the state’s EdChoice Program, which allows students to apply for vouchers for private schools if they are in low-performing schools or low-income districts. Supporters say this bill provides more opportunities for students and parents, but opponents say it diverts potential public resources away from public schools and toward private schools.
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A new study from the University of Arkansas found the average disparity in per-pupil funding between traditional public schools and their public charter schools across 18 cities reached $7,796 per-pupil — a record high.
In Detroit, public charter schools educate over 40% of K-12 students.
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State officials are asking the Tennessee Supreme Court to allow a school-choice program to move forward after being ruled unconstitutional by lower courts earlier this year.
Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery III filed an appeal to the state Supreme Court on Tuesday afternoon, appealing decisions of district and appeals courts.
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Monday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed all-star panelist Crom Carmichael to the show to discuss government-run schools versus charter schools in America.
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A RealClear Opinion Research poll of 2,020 registered voters in August saw a 10-point increase in support of school choice policies since its last poll in April, from 67 percent to 77 percent.
The American Federation for Children describes school choice as the right for parents to use the tax dollars designated for their child’s education in a school of their choice. The tax dollars would follow the child, not be tied to a nearby school system. Funding could be used for public, private, charter, or homeschool education, whichever method the parents believes provides the best learning environment for their child.
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Minnesota Representatives Ilhan Omar (DFL-MN-5) and Angie Craig (DFL-MN-2) helped pass a House bill to “desegregate” schools nationwide. All 105 cosponsors are Democratic.
“This legislation is an important step in making sure every student receives an excellent public education,” stated Craig in a press release.
In the wake of many schools around the country participating in remote learning, one Harvard University professor has admitted that parents are finding public schools to be “worse than they thought.”
The Harvard law professor gained national attention earlier in 2020, calling for a homeschooling ban. According to The Harvard Gazette, Elizabeth Bartholet said in May, “when it comes to homeschooling, the victims are all children so it’s harder to mount a political movement.”
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Vice President Mike Pence will visit Thales Academy on Wednesday while he is in North Carolina, according to ABC11.
Pence is going to view Thales Academy to see “how school choice works and to advocate for its further implementation,” ABC 11 reports.
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Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael to the studio to discuss Trump’s recent announcement that if schools close funding should go to families so they can have a choice.
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Live from Music Row Monday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael to the studio.
During the second hour, Carmichael weighed in on Joe Biden’s recent advocacy for teachers and not students in his endorsement of the National Education Association (NEA) during a virtual assembly last Friday. He stated that Donald Trump is the clear choice for Blacks, Hispanics, and other people of color that care about their children’s education.
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The Supreme Court ruled against a ban on taxpayer funding of religious schools Tuesday in a monumental win for school choice.
Chief Justice John Roberts joined conservative justices in a 5-4 ruling backing a Montana tax-credit scholarship program that gives residents credit if they donated to private scholarship organizations, according to Fox News, which would help the students pay for the private school of their choice.
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by Mary Margaret Olohan President Donald Trump said Tuesday that school choice is the “civil rights statement of the year.” “School choice is the civil rights statement of the year, of the decade and probably beyond,” he said at a White House press conference. “Because all children have to…
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Next time you hear progressives talk about how they are the ones who are sticking up for minority communities, ask them to square their opposition to educational freedom – or the ability for families to customize their child’s education.
Progressives cheered this week as Nashville Chancellor Anne C. Martin ruled that the state’s education savings account program is “unconstitutional” because of an obscure section in our constitution where it talks about “home rule.”
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Two separate sources show there is pent up demand for the state’s Education Savings Account (ESA) Pilot Program, but there is not yet a way for interested parents to apply with the Tennessee Department of Education for the upcoming school year.
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Greg R. Lawson, a research fellow at The Buckeye Institute, testified Wednesday before Ohio legislators looking at solutions to the problems facing Ohio’s EdChoice program.
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Ohio Democrats seized on an opportunity to blame Republicans for what they call an inability to fix the EdChoice school voucher program and for delaying the start of enrollment for two months.
Last week, state lawmakers signed off on a plan to move the start of the enrollment period for the Educational Choice Scholarship Program – colloquially known as EdChoice – from Feb. 1 to April 1. The program “provides students from designated public schools the opportunity to attend participating private schools.”
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I am a glass-half-full kind of person, so while we could focus on the criticisms and some of the setbacks related to expanding educational freedom to more families, there is much more to celebrate than to lament. As National School Choice Week ends, it’s a great time to spotlight the growing variety and abundance of education options available to parents and young people.
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Most of us have our own life experiences to draw from when thinking about school, but things have changed a little (or a lot!) since we were last in a classroom.
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The U.S Supreme Court is heard a case on Wednesday that could open doors to public money paying for religious private schools in Montana.
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State Rep. Bo Mitchell, D-Nashville, is gearing up to defend proposed legislation he filed last year that, if enacted into law, would take away the Education Savings Account bill that passed last year.
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Democratic Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren is pledging to crack down on school choice if elected, despite the fact that she sent her own son to an elite private school, publicly available records show.
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by Bruce Walker School choice is overwhelmingly supported by likely Democratic primary voters nationwide, according to a recent poll conducted on behalf of Democrats for Education Reform (DFER). Education analysts interpret the poll results as a rebuke of current Democratic Party strategies nationwide in general and, specifically, Michigan Gov.…
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U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos said that it is no surprise “families want more control” over their children’s education.
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More than three in four Americans think that parents should be able to decide which public school their child attends, according to a new poll.
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Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee is pushing to launch his school voucher program a year early, in the 2020-2021 school year, education blog Chalkbeat said. The General Assembly had set a deadline of the 2021-2022 school year, the blog said. Lee told the Tennessee Department of Education to work with…
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by Derek Draplin The U.S. Supreme Court will hear a wide-reaching Montana case dealing with school choice and the First Amendment. The Supreme Court announced Friday that it will take up the case Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, which is being litigated by the Institute for Justice, a…
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Dear Senator Gardenhire, My name is Alexander Ioannidis and I am a rising senior studying Economics at the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga. I am a lifelong resident of Chattanooga and currently reside in East Brainerd. I have been following the debate over the proposed school-choice legislation very closely, and my…
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Tennessee’s efforts to provide school choice have captured President Donald Trump’s attention. The president on Wednesday tweeted, “The Great State of Tennessee is so close to passing School Choice. All of our Nation’s children, regardless of background, deserve a shot at achieving the American Dream! Time to get this…
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by Joshua Nelson Elisha Doerr would not have had an opportunity to attend Wisconsin Lutheran High School, a Milwaukee-based private boarding school, if it weren’t for a school choice program. The school’s excellent curricula and the religious community were valuable to Doerr, 18, who now attends Harvard University and…
Read More By Andrew I. Fillat and Henry I. Miller Retired teacher Mary Hudson recently wrote a damning exposé based on her experiences in the New York City public school system. Hudson taught in three different public high schools and her observations from those years lead her to implicate the students…
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On Thursday’s Tennessee Star Report with Steve Gill and Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 am to 8:00 am – guest host and Nashville Tea Party Activist Ben Cunningham spoke with The Tennessee Star’s own senior reporter Laura Baigert, co-guest host…
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On Monday’s Tennessee Star Report with Steve Gill and Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 am to 8:00 am – Gill and Leahy talked in depth about the Williamson County school districts “Cultural Competency” video training series that have been…
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NASHVILLE, Tennessee – The Tennessee School Board Association, funded through membership dues paid with tax dollars allocated for school systems, lobbies the Tennessee General Assembly on various issues many of which work against taxpayers’ interests. This week, the Tennessee School Board Association (TSBA) held their annual Day on the Hill…
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On February 13th, the Citizens for Community Values will join with a group of concerned parents to hold a press conference, imploring the Ohio legislature to expand access to EDChoice Scholarships. Since 2005, EdChoice scholarships have existed been a statewide initiative that gives students the opportunity to receive scholarships to attend private…
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by Daniel Buck During a moment of small group discussion in a professional development session, a teacher near me gave his opinion: Look, I’ve learned a few things in my time here, and that’s to only do these sorts of things on the days the administration comes in to…
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In celebration of National School Choice Week, Tennessee Federation for Children sponsored a Champions of Choice event at the state capitol to present Representative Bill Dunn with the 2019 Champion award. Standing beside Tennessee Speaker of the House Glen Casada (R-Franklin), Shaka Mitchell, Tennessee’s State Director of American Federation for…
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by Jude Schwalbach The new year is bringing exciting developments to Puerto Rico’s education reforms. Not only will the U.S. territory open new charter schools, it will also launch a new pilot private school voucher program in the fall. The need for education reform is most clearly illustrated by…
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Latinos and Millennials are among the demographics who most strongly support school choice, the fifth annual National School Choice Poll says. The American Federation for Children, which advocates for educational choice, and Beck Research, a Democratic polling firm, announced the poll results Thursday. More information on the poll is available…
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Would you eat at a restaurant that the cooks and wait staff avoided themselves? Wouldn’t that tell you everything you needed to know about the quality of the food they were serving? Likewise, as public school teachers send their own children to private schools at about TWICE the rate of…
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Minnesota received an overall C grade in parent empowerment on the Center for Education Reform’s annual Parent Power Index, which factors school choice, charter schools, personalized learning, teacher quality, and transparency into its grading system. With two school-choice programs, Minnesota received an F grading in the area of school choice,…
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After a staggering number of Ohio public schools failed to make the grade, the state’s voucher and charter school system is poised for tremendous expansion. In Ohio, if the public school test scores of a student’s home district fall below a certain level, calculated by the Ohio Department of Education, a…
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On Wednesday’s Tennessee Star Report with Steve Gill and Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 am to 8:00 am – Gill and Leahy talked with State Rep. Glen Casada (R-Franklin), the incoming Speaker of the Tennessee House of Representatives about…
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State Senator Ken Yager (R-TN-12) said he will not support school vouchers if they come up for a vote in the Tennessee Legislature in 2019, the Independent Herald of Oneida said. “I am opposed to vouchers,” Yager said. “I will not support any proposal that will cause a hemorrhage of…
Read More As the focus on education choice is elevated by Governor-elect Bill Lee, maybe the easiest place to find initial consensus is with open enrollment. We must expand open enrollment policies in our public school districts.
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In a specific discussion on Tuesday morning’s Tennessee Star Report with Steve Gill and Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 am to 8:00 am – the duo contemplated Bill Lee’s current cabinets picks and the absence of any conservatives. The conversation…
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