Schools available to participate in and student enrollment are up in Wisconsin for its choice program.
The state’s Department of Public Instruction on Friday released the list of schools available for the 2023-24 school year. At 339, it’s 25 more than this year.
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The Senate Committee on Education and Health voted to “pass by indefinitely” on three school choice bills by Republican lawmakers Thursday – a signal other school choice bills in the Virginia House of Delegates could face obstacles moving forward.
One of the measures defeated Thursday sought to create a “Parental Choice Education Savings Account” program, which parents could apply for and use toward certain expenses, including private school tuition.
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More than six out of every 10 voters with children under 18 would be receptive to the prospect of their child attending a school outside of their locally zoned public district, a new State Policy Network poll finds.
Overall, the SPN State Voices opinion poll of roughly 2,000 registered voters conducted in partnership with Morning Consult through online interviews found that 62% of respondents said they would interested in such an option, some 30% of them very much so.
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Over the past several years, Tennessee lawmakers have increased school choice options for families. In an effort to influence parents’ educational choices, Metro Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) is providing each school with a stipend designed to entice families to make zoned schools their first choice. It’s a continuation of a strategy first implemented last year, and one that the district feels was successful.
In an email, MNPS spokesman Sean Braisted tells The Tennessee Star, “Our goal as a district is to get as many families as possible to choose MNPS as their first option for student success.”
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On this National School Choice Week, a new study by the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty shows parental choice programs continuing to outperform public schools, particularly in the state’s largest city.
“Apples to Apples: Accessing Wisconsin State of Education”, accesses Badger State educational performance across public, charter, and private voucher schools.
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Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, commemorated National School Choice Week by filing two bills to advance school choice, one of which his staff said would be the most significant educational reform since the GI bill.
“We need to provide students with a variety of educational options to fit their needs,” Cruz told The Daily Signal in an email statement Tuesday. “I have often said that school choice is the civil rights issue of the 21st century, and I believe no differently today than I did when I began serving in the Senate a decade ago.
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On Tuesday, Gov. Tony Evers will deliver his fifth State of the State speech before both chambers of the Legislature and the judiciary. Like many governors before him, a pronouncement that the state of the state is strong is all but to be expected. But is this truly the state of affairs in Wisconsin? Is state government serving the needs of its citizens and providing the services that we all expect? With a looming recession, is state government looking at how to help Wisconsinites — or at least not make things worse?
Here is what we hope the governor will say in his address.
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Georgia lawmakers are almost certain to discuss school funding and even school choice legislation during this year’s legislative session.
“I think we’re going to have a very robust discussion when it comes to school funding, when it comes to vouchers and other issues that come before us,” House Speaker Jon Burns, R-Newington, said during a press conference this week. “I believe we have … a very diverse state when it comes to education funding, whether you’re from rural Georgia, or whether you’re from urban Georgia, and how funding impacts us all and comes into this equation.”
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Florida House Speaker Paul Renner announced on Thursday that he’d filed school choice legislation that would provide education savings accounts and expand eligibility to children with unique abilities.
House Bill 1, which is sponsored by Choice & Innovation Subcommittee Chairwoman Kaylee Tuck, R-Lake Placid, would expand the state’s ESA program, known as the Family Empowerment Scholarship Program. It would allow the money to be used for tuition at a home education or private school, private tutoring or an approved online course.
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Senator Mark Obenshain (R-Rockingham) has introduced a constitutional amendment to add approving charter schools to the Virginia Board of Education’s powers.
“We’ve seen a huge number of parents move their children to private or homeschooling environments, and the only people who can’t take advantage of it are the people who can’t afford it. And I just don’t think that we ought to be depriving Virginians of a high-quality education either because they can’t afford it or because of the zip code we’re in,” Obenshain told The Virginia Star.
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Following the State of the State address from Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs, Majority Leaders State Rep. Leo Biasiucci (R-Lake Havasu) and Sen. Sonny Borrelli (R-Lake Havasu) released a video responding to the speech.
“You heard from Governor Hobbs; she does not want a policy discussion but a hasty action for political points. Our founding fathers set up the legislative process that works,” said Borrelli. “We will not be sidetracked or bullied for political games. It [the legislative process] is divinely inspired by our founding fathers. We will stick to the mission.”
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Gov. Tony Evers is already taking things off the list of possible compromises at the Wisconsin Capitol.
The governor told WISN TV on UPFRONT that he will not sign a flat tax or universal school choice plan if Republicans send him one.
“A flat tax, if that’s part of the budget, that could end it. If it’s universal school choice across the state for education, that could be a killer too. But we’ll see. I don’t think any of those things are going to happen, so I’m planning on signing a good budget.”
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Delegate Glenn Davis (R-Virginia Beach) has introduced a bill to create education savings accounts (ESAs) for parents that would receive a portion of state education funds; the money-follows-the-student bill is in line with long-sought Republican education goals.
“This is about where our children should go to school,” Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears said at a Thursday press conference.
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The Kentucky Supreme Court unanimously ruled on Thursday against the state’s school choice program created in 2021.
The Education Opportunity Accounts (EOA) Act created a privately funded needs-based assistance program for those seeking a private education. Those who donated to the program received a nearly “dollar-for-dollar” tax credit which the court ruled violated Kentucky’s Constitution which prohibits the collecting of a “sum” for “education other than in common schools.”
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Pennsylvania state Representative Clint Owlett (R-Wellsboro) on Tuesday announced he will reintroduce legislation to guarantee school choice to students in the state’s most poorly performing school districts.
Under Owlett’s proposed law, families of such students could also use the new “lifeline scholarships” to pay for textbooks, special-needs services and other qualifying expenses.
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The school choice movement is gaining momentum as states focus on legislation that would give families greater freedom to select their child’s education, advocates told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Utah, New Hampshire and South Carolina are pushing for more expansive school choice legislation that would increase the value of school choice vouchers and the number of eligible students, while states such as Arizona and Florida have already implemented programs that provide vouchers to students outside of the public school system. The increasing push for more school choice legislation across the country is because other states have provided the model to do so, advocates told the DCNF.
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Vermont families that want to send their children to religious schools will no longer be excluded from the state’s tuition benefit program, as a result of legal settlements in two cases brought by the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF).
The plaintiffs who were denied funding under the Town Tuition Program, which provides tuition for students who live in areas without local public schools, will get reimbursement for money spent out of pocket on tuition. Other families denied funding can apply as well.
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In the next few weeks, Franklin County Common Pleas Judge Jaiza Page (D) is poised to decide whether a lawsuit against Ohio’s private-school choice program will go forward.
Litigation against private school choice in the Buckeye State has been in the works since last year when dozens of school districts under the aegis of Ohio Coalition for Equity and Adequacy of School Funding posited that the state’s EdChoice program harms the state’s ability to properly fund its public schools. The districts suing the state, which now number more than 130, filed their action in January.
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The top Republican in the Wisconsin Assembly says he’s willing to work on “solutions” with Gov. Tony Evers.
Speaker Robin Vos on Thursday said he sees Republicans offering the governor compromises on abortion, school choice and taxes.
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The release of the “Nation’s Report Card” on October 24th has led to a variety of pronouncements from a variety of experts. Many have expressed grave concerns over the potential effects on students, due to lost instructional time during the recent COVID pandemic. The value of this national test, designed to measure fourth and eighth-grade student learning, is in of itself a hotly debated issue. While the interpretation of the results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which supplies the data for the Report Card, may be open to debate, they do offer a large trove of valuable information that can be used in the consideration and evaluation of policy. In some cases, providing a warning of future outcomes.
This year, Florida is publically celebrating its successful outcomes. In the wake of the positive results, Governor DeSantis sent out a press release using NEAP results to defend his response to COVID and his commitment to keeping schools open,
“We also knew that younger and at-risk students would be the most impacted if schools were closed, and the results speak for themselves. In Florida our 4thgrade students rank #3 in Reading and #4 in Math, achieving top 4 in both English and Math for the first time in state history, while lockdown California and New York aren’t even in the top 30.”.
While Florida’s fourth-grade results are exceptionally positive, they don’t tell the whole story.
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Wednesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed Tennessee House of Representatives D-59 GOP candidate Michelle Foreman in studio to reiterate her top priority of school choice in the state of Tennessee.
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Michigan voters will have the chance to create one of the largest school choice programs in the country on Nov. 8.
The Let Michigan Learn Proposal on the Michigan ballot starts with a $500 million cap for school vouchers, one of the largest in the country, and can increase by 20% each year. All students age 5 and older are eligible to apply, but low-income families and students with disabilities would be prioritized.
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EdChoice’s annual Schooling in America survey found 61 percent of Americans believe government-run education is headed in the wrong direction, while 76% of the public back parental choice programs such as education savings accounts (ESAs).
In 2022, the poll’s tenth anniversary, the survey found 61 percent of Americans and 52 percent of school parents say public schools are on the wrong track, while 34 percent of Americans and 48 percent of school parents state government-led education is headed in the right direction.
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Thursday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed all-star panelist Carol Swain on the lack of Republican leadership, meeting AZ GOP Governor nominee Kari Lake, and the importance of public school and school choice.
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Parents at the St. Augustine School in Colgate could soon be putting their kids on the school bus after a federal judge ended a long-simmering court battle over Wisconsin’s school choice busing program.
A federal judge in Milwaukee last week issued a final decision in the case that questioned both First Amendment religious protections and Wisconsin state law.
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Arizona officials are now calling out Secretary of State Katie Hobbs to expedite the signature counting process for the referendum against Arizona’s Universal Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) law, including the bill’s sponsor, State Rep. Ben Toma (R-Maricopa).
“We expect that your office will have formally rejected the referendum petition as legally insufficient no later than the opening of business on Friday morning,” Toma said in a letter to Hobbs. “If the full and effective implementation of H.B. 2853 continues to be obstructed, the Arizona House of Representatives will exercise its constitutional oversight function in order to find facts and ultimately to determine what, if any, legislation may be required to prohibit, deter, and penalize such dishonesty in future campaigns and administrations, and to ensure that the statutory procedures for filing and processing ballot measure petitions cannot be manipulated to enable such misconduct.”
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A number of school teachers in Rutherford County took advantage of a public comment form in order to speak out against what would be a competing charter school in the county.
In the open public comments, 255 of 311 comments were in favor of Rutherford County Schools, meaning that about four in five of the commenters said they did not want the American Classical Academy, a Hillsdale College affiliated school, to open in the county.
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Wisconsin’s U.S. Senator is making an issue out of what his reelection campaign is calling Mandela Barnes’ hypocrisy on school choice.
“After Lt. Gov. Barnes has reaped the benefits of private school, he has sought to prevent that choice for parents who only want what is best for their children. Barnes is a hypocrite who is only out for his own political gain,” Mike Marinella with the Johnson Campaign told The Center Square.
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First Lady Suzanne Youngkin presented the Spirit of Virginia Award to An Achievable Dream, an organization that partners with the Newport News, Virginia Beach, and Henrico school districts to operate six schools serving 2,000 students in total.
“Education is a critical component of opportunity for all and An Achievable Dream’s approach to caring for the whole student, supporting families, and setting high standards is unparalleled,” Youngkin said in a Wednesday press release. “When we honor Virginians who are changing lives for the better, we need look no further than the administrators and teachers in these schools.”
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The Heritage Foundation ranked Florida, followed by Arizona, as the states that most empower parents in their children’s education and support education freedom.
On Friday Heritage published its first Education Freedom Report Card which provides measures of the concept in four categories: school choice, academic transparency, regulation freedom, and spending.
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Connecticut Republican candidate for governor Bob Stefanowski announced a “Parental Bill of Rights” that seeks to empower the state’s parents to make education and healthcare decisions for their children.
“During the last several years, the pendulum has swung too far against the rights of parents and their ability to make critical decisions for their children in terms of education, healthcare, and the teaching of moral values they hold dear,” Stefanowski said Tuesday. “As Governor, I am going to reverse that trend and restore parental rights in a significant and meaningful way.”
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Responding to major learning loss suffered by Ohio students as a result of the school closures following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Columbus-based Buckeye Institute recommended policy solutions this week to help students regain what the education system did not provide.
On March 30, 2020, Republican Governor Mike DeWine ordered all in-person K-12 schooling closed throughout the state for the remainder of that school year. Students instead participated in “virtual classrooms” wherein they would watch their teachers’ instructions online. During the 2020-21 school year, many school districts continued to keep school buildings closed at least part-time.
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The Arizona-based Goldwater Institute (GI) made a request to the Arizona Attorney General’s Office (AGO) Wednesday, asking it to take action against a school board event that would use taxpayer dollars to oppose school choice.
“Arizonans should be appalled to learn that school districts are using taxpayer resources to have district employees participate in an event clearly geared toward a political objective,” said GI Senor Attorney Scott Day Freeman. “All Arizona families should be free to make educational choices for their children without having the government work against them by rigidly defending a status quo that protects bureaucrats and government unions.”
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As summer comes to an end, parents are once again questioning whether neighborhood schools can give their children what they need.
According to the 2019 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), low-income students are 2.8 years’ worth of learning behind their more affluent peers. Similarly, a Reveal analysis of hundreds of public schools across Georgia found that most special education courses are being taught by underqualified teachers. This is not the fault of the teachers, the majority are doing their best while dealing with overcrowded classrooms and unrealistic expectations from leadership-heavy school systems. However, this does not change the fact that it is a problem.
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More than 600 applications for Tennessee’s new Education Savings Account (ESA) Program have been filed by Tennessee families, Governor Bill Lee (R) announced Thursday in a video message.
“We’ve been working overtime to get the ESA program up and running for this school year,” Lee said.
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Monday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed Visiting Fellow for the Independent Women’s Forum, Angela Morabito to the newsmaker line to explain how white Democratic liberals are trapping minority students in failing schools.
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As unionized public-school staffers protest the School District of Philadelphia’s failure to assent to the union’s salary and training terms, threatening to strike at the beginning of the school year, school-choice advocates are reminding parents of alternatives.
Bus drivers, custodians, maintenance staff and other workers represented by the Services Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 32BJ have authorized a strike that could compromise the resumption of schooling that is scheduled for next Monday. Pro-strike workers insist they are underpaid, noting that cleaners make roughly $16,000 per year at the low end. At the high end, construction inspectors make approximately $70,000.
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As a teacher strike keeps Columbus students out of the classroom in the first week of the school year, advocates for Christian education are advertising private school choice on five billboards around the city.
The signs read, “COLUMBUS CITY SCHOOLS LOCKS KIDS OUT… AGAIN,” referencing long periods during which schools were closed in response to COVID-19. The ads, placed by the Columbus-based Center for Christian Virtue (CCV), let passers by know that various Ohio school-choice programs are available to families, particularly low-income ones. CCV is encouraging interested parents to visit BackpackBill.com/Columbus to learn about these opportunities.
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The Tennessee Department of Education has sent out its first approval letters to families applying for the state’s Education Savings Account (ESA) program, with 46 applicants approved thus far, out of a total number of 517, as of Wednesday.
“To note, an award for an Education Savings Account does not mean that a student is accepted to a participating private school,” said Brian Blackley, director of media for the department. “A student must still apply to a participating private school. A participating private school’s decision to accept or reject a student is the sole decision of the school.”
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Tennessee Governor Bill Lee (R) said Friday the state has not yet approved any school Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) for families seeking to choose education options outside of public schools.
“There are about 250 families that have actually applied (but) those approvals have not been made yet,” Lee said according to an updated report Saturday from the Associated Press (AP). “The process is underway.”
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Let MI Kids Learn filed more than 520,000 signatures with the Michigan Bureau of Elections to put an education choice initiative on this November’s general election ballot.
If the ballot initiative is approved by voters, the Michigan legislature can approve the initiative immediately. Previously, both the state House and Senate passed the bill similar to what 21 states have as law, but Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer declined to sign it.
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A Tennessee trial court heard arguments on Friday in an attempt to place another injunction on the Education Savings Account program for Davidson and Shelby counties.
The new ESA program, set to begin with this school year, is now being contested based upon its swift implementation. Lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union and Southern Poverty Law Center argued that, since schools did not have time to budget for the potential loss of student funds due to the late implementation of the new program, that an injunction would be required.
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“School choice is good for everybody but unions, socialist bureaucrats and the tired education establishment,” libertarian John Stossel wrote Wednesday at the New York Post.
The author and journalist observed the “silver lining” of the COVID pandemic is that parents discovered alternatives to public schools and, as the statistics are telling us, they continue to act on that discovery by removing their children from them – in droves.
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The Arizona-based Goldwater Institute recently shared that a report from Matt Beienburg, Goldwater’s Director of Education Policy, reveals how spending surged in Arizona’s Public School system, but not for the actual needs of students.
“The COVID-19 pandemic ushered in an era of unprecedented spending on public K-12 schools, yet available evidence suggests that the bonanza of federal spending was almost entirely avoidable and that much of it will likely serve a very different purpose than the one originally sold to policymakers and the public,” according to Goldwater Institute.
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Governor Glenn Youngkin hit 49 percent job approval and 38 percent disapproval in a new poll from the Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU). The poll included questions focused on key budget policy debates, and reports 58 percent support a three-month gas tax suspension.
“The responses in the poll suggest what I have always stated: The people are always ahead of the leaders,” former Governor Doug Wilder said in a press release. “The grocery tax proposal is very receptive; gas tax suspension and/or stipend is greeted positively, which can be viewed as a direct response to rising inflation.”
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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.
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Gov. Tom Wolf (D) on Friday signed Pennsylvania’s $45 billion budget for Fiscal Year 2022-23.
The governor and Republican-controlled legislature were only able to agree to the fiscal blueprint a week after the June 30 deadline. Revenues covering budget items include $42.8 billion in state taxpayer dollars and $2 billion in federal money.
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Governor Doug Ducey (R) said Thursday Arizona is now the “top state for school choice” and the “first state in the nation to offer all families” school choice options.
Ducey signed into law House Bill 2853, which allows all K-12 students in Arizona to be eligible for scholarship funds so they may access the education setting that best fits their needs.
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“Our goal is to have a system in which every family in the U.S. will be able to choose for itself the school to which its children go,” the Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman stated in 2003. “We are far from that ultimate result. If we had that, a system of free choice, we would also have a system of competition, innovation, which would change the character of education.”
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An Ohio group that has been fighting against school choice vouchers in its own state is expressing support for a lawsuit that is seeking to halt a West Virginia school voucher program.
As Ohio lawmakers have considered legislation to expand school choice, the group called Vouchers Hurt Ohio stated that lawmakers are looking at other states, such as West Virginia, for how to craft their school choice programs.
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