“School choice” on The Daily Caller

School choice is today’s civil rights issue, if you ask Michelle Bernard, and she’s trying to start a movement to get people to fight for those rights. (more)

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s State of the State address was a breath of fresh air for New Jersey residents, who have grown tired of hearing that the only acceptable reform in public education is to further balloon schools’ administrative staffs. Why else would the U.S. Census Bureau report that Camden, Jersey City, Newark and Trenton all spend over $20,000 per student per year on public education? That’s over $400,000 of spending for every classroom of 20 kids, folks. Take out the teacher’s salary and benefits, as well as a healthy overhead percentage for management to run the school, and you’ve still got to wonder where another couple hundred grand is going. Then multiply that pecuniary disappearing act by every single classroom in school after school, and it gives you a sense of the situation. When I tell people the town of Newark, New Jersey alone had a $940 million budget last year, many think it’s a joke. In fact, the joke’s on us. (more)

Shortly before President Barack Obama delivered the State of the Union on Tuesday night, comedian Bill Cosby joined with school choice advocates to discuss the “State of American Education.” (more)

On Friday the Supreme Court ruled that Indiana’s school voucher program, which is the largest school voucher program in the country, is constitutional. America’s presidential candidates should waste no time realizing the significance of this, not only as an educational issue, but also as an economic one. (more)

With the New Year upon us, pundits are handing out their “best and worst” awards and gossip magazines their “top whatever” lists. Well, on my list, you won’t find Occupy Wall Street or No Child Left Behind drama, but something much more significant to taxpayers, parents, and citizens: the top five underreported education stories of 2011. (more)

By the end of the day today, 16 more young Americans will be murdered. (more)

If you have any doubt that real school choice can reach practically every state in this country, cast those apprehensions aside. School choice is making inroads in big, blue states, and it’s likely coming to a community near you. (more)

Nearly a year ago, I noted how 2010 had been “a very bad year” for defenders of the education status quo, or as I may have called them, “antediluvian, retrograde, establishment-defending hacks.” So far, 2011 isn’t pretty either. (more)

As U.S. politicians continue to debate the merits of allowing parents to choose their children’s schools, research financed by the Department of Education has found that school choice programs significantly improve the future educational prospects of children who might otherwise attend lower quality schools. (more)

Based on recent headlines, this would appear to be a glorious year for education reform. After years of wheel-spinning debates, governors in states such as Florida, Connecticut, Indiana and Ohio are blazing fast tracks trying to turn around troubled school districts. (more)

School choice advocates applauded a provision in the continuing resolution that funds the government for the rest of the year, which restores and strengthens the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program for five years. (more)

In a decision school choice advocates are cheering, the Supreme Court dismissed an American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) lawsuit against an Arizona school program, which allows residents to get a tax break for donations to organizations that grant scholarships to private schools. (more)

Over fierce Democratic opposition, the House on Wednesday approved a bill to re-establish a school choice voucher system for Washington, D.C., residents. (more)

President Obama recently spoke at a Virginia middle school on the topic of education reform, highlighting the need to restructure No Child Left Behind before the start of the next school year. Fixing NCLB and returning power to the states is certainly important, but Obama has a more immediate opportunity at hand. Before this school year is even finished, he can boldly lead on a bi-partisan education issue critical to local families in our nation’s capital. (more)

As you read this, Democratic state legislators across the country are doing something that, 20 years ago, would have been considered politically taboo. (more)

In what is becoming a signature move of a defeated political coalition, Democratic members of the Indiana state legislature followed their Wisconsin counterparts and fled Hoosierland this week. Ostensibly done to avoid voting on legislation that would make Indiana a “right-to-work” jurisdiction, the real devil for Indiana Democrats may not be this “union-busting” legislation. After all, private-sector unionization — the bill’s key target — is now the sick old man within labor’s empire. Rather, the real fear of fly-by-night Democrats is recently introduced legislation that would establish path-breaking statewide tuition scholarships enabling students from low and middle income families to choose their own school. By running, these politicians are signaling blanket opposition to the education reform proposals of a conservative coalition led by Governor Mitch Daniels. (more)

A new Congress has brought better prospects for supporters of the D.C. school-choice program abruptly nixed by Congress in 2009. (more)

A bipartisan group of congressmen, led by Republican House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio and Independent Connecticut Sen. Joe Liebermann, has introduced legislation to prevent the Obama administration from phasing out the D.C. school choice program that has given disadvantaged children throughout the city access to elite schools. (more)

In 1993, Sweden introduced a system of school choice and vouchers, inspired by the ideas of American economists Milton and Rose Friedman. Even though the system was just as controversial then as any U.S. voucher proposal, the right to chose your school and bring the funding with you is today considered a natural right for families and is widely accepted by all political parties. (more)

Liberals often argue that conservatives don’t care about children, especially those from low-income families. To the contrary, conservatives are committed to one reform that can actually help such children and requires only a loosening of government control. (more)