Florida school district offers virtual classes to scholarship students – with more to follow
This school year, 2024-2025, for the first time, Brevard County students using Florida’s education choice scholarship programs will have a new option: the ability to sign up for online courses offered by Brevard Virtual School. Brevard Public Schools was the first countywide school district in Florida to offer courses to...OUR LATEST
Francis Ford Coppola shot a scene for Apocalypse Now set in a plantation owned by die-hard French imperialists holding out in Vietnam. Set in 1968 during the height of the... READ MORE
The big news: Yamilette Albertson Rodriguez could hardly contain her excitement. A Philadelphia billionaire whose name she had never heard before had donated $900,000 to cover tuition for her three... READ MORE
Sad news this week: Two great warriors for education choice, Institute for Justice co-founder Chip Mellor and the Walton Family Foundation’s Caleb Offley, died on the same day. The Wall... READ MORE
Education Next published a piece recently by Holly Korbey called The Tutoring Revolution, which reads in part: Recent research suggests that the number of students seeking help with academics is... READ MORE
The big story: After delivering a one-two punch to Blaine Amendments, the nation’s highest court decided not to take aim at Michigan’s version. Zoom in: This week, the U.S. Supreme... READ MORE
The Wall Street Journal ran an article which had your humble author giggling for hours afterwards called Sorry Harvard Everyone Wants to Go to College in the South Now. Nothing... READ MORE
In July, Jessie Pedraza was reading through posts on a Facebook page for mothers who homeschool their children when she saw three words jump off her screen. Personalized Education Program.... READ MORE
Years ago, education reformers coined the phrase “Big Learning Organization Bureaucracies aka the BLOB” to describe the collection of groups associated with the K-12 status quo. Recently the Arizona... READ MORE
LEESBURG, Fla. – The first tangible evidence of a new private school opening in town were the 1,500 fliers printed at Staples and handed to parents as they left a Publix... READ MORE
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LEARNING SPOTLIGHTS
PEP scholarship allows for ‘A-plus homeschool experience’ for one family
In July, Jessie Pedraza was reading through posts on a Facebook page for mothers who homeschool their children when she saw three words jump off her screen. Personalized Education Program. “I responded, ‘Hello. What is this?” Jessie said. So Jessie texted one of the moms. Then they met for coffee.... READ MORE
LEESBURG, Fla. – The first tangible evidence of a new private school opening in town were the 1,500 fliers printed at Staples and handed to parents as they left a Publix... READ MORE
PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. – Cristina Bedgood, a 15-year former public school teacher, took two years to craft plans for her own private learning center. She knew she needed 40... READ MORE
IDEAS & INNOVATIONS
Blazing Stars, blazing trails
DADE CITY, Fla. – LaTania Scott and Kameeka Shirley were former public school teachers who wanted something different when they opened their own school in January 2023. Something … authentically Montessori … accessible to families from all walks of life … embedded with the autonomy that’s often missing from traditional... READ MORE
Building a bridge to the 21st century nowhere
In 2005, the Alaskan Congressional delegation created a national controversy when they attempted to secure $398,000,000 to build a bridge to an island with 50 inhabitants. Known as “the Bridge to Nowhere” this effort lingered on until Congress finally halted it in 2011. The islanders continued to make do... READ MORE
Some of the most valuable learning experiences happen outside the classroom. Public education is evolving to support more learning by doing. READ MORE
In the early days of education savings accounts, several of our intrepid Scooby-gang members wrote and spoke about user reviews as the future of “accountability.” In a multi-vendor system, we... READ MORE
Despite calls for reform and waves of attempted transformation, key features of American schools have been remarkably stable for more than a century. Students spend six or so hours... READ MORE
A surefire way to get heads nodding at an education policy conference is to call for dismantling the Carnegie unit. The question, and a legitimate fear, is whether efforts to... READ MORE
An episode of Paul MM Cooper’s outstanding documentary podcast series “The Fall of Civilizations” recounts the history of Carthage, which includes details of wars fought between the Carthaginians and Syracuse... READ MORE
U.S. public education has had three primary eras. The first era reflected the needs of a sparsely populated rural agrarian society. Most children were homeschooled and literacy focused primarily on... READ MORE
DADE CITY, Fla. – LaTania Scott and Kameeka Shirley were former public school teachers who wanted something different when they opened their own school in January 2023. Something … authentically... READ MORE
As we prepare to say goodbye to 2023, it is worth noting what an extraordinary year it was for parental choice advocates. As recently as 2022, no states had statewide... READ MORE
If 2023 could be summed up in a single word, it would be transformation. Florida lawmakers passed House Bill 1, which expanded education choice eligibility to all students in the... READ MORE
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