‘Alexa, how do you start a school?’
VERO BEACH, Fla. – For eight years, Danielle McLean couldn’t believe her luck. Through all of pre-school and elementary school, her twin boys Jackson and Lincoln, both on the autism spectrum, had only three teachers. Two were Teacher of the Year finalists in their east Central Florida school district, and...OUR LATEST
The big story: Nearly 3,000 low-income students and their families now find themselves scrambling for education options a month into the new school year after the South Carolina Supreme... READ MORE
Public education is in the early stages of transitioning from its second to third paradigm. In his 1962 book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn described an organization’s paradigm... READ MORE
Recently, because this is the sort of thing your friendly neighborhood school choice mad scientist likes to do, I examined the Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction annual reports. Stick... READ MORE
MIAMI BEACH, Fla. – Thirteen years ago, Katy Horowitz and her family moved from London to Miami, where she promptly secured a job at a charter school. But when the... READ MORE
Education freedom has been on a generational run. In the past few years, multiple public school choice programs, such as open enrollment, have been passed, and according to EdChoice, over... READ MORE
The evidence suggests that the choice critics are wrong. Education freedom does not contribute to unhealthy social discourse. When done well, it is part of the solution. READ MORE
Oklahoma lawmakers created the most robust K-12 personal use tax credit in American history last year. It occurred to your humble author that with a couple of tweaks an Oklahoma-style... READ MORE
As our country was being formed, states such as Connecticut, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Virginia adopted state religions that citizens were taxed to fund and expected... READ MORE
Kate Payne of the Associated Press wrote a piece about the Madison County School District, a small rural area east of Tallahassee titled School choice and a history of... READ MORE
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LEARNING SPOTLIGHTS
From Venezuela to the Naval Academy with the help of an education choice scholarship
RIVERVIEW – Rosa Salom Garcia’s car was reinforced to withstand bullets because the threat of being kidnapped was a part of everyday life in Venezuela. She was a leading eye surgeon in her native Caracas with a practice spread over multiple locations in the city. Her daughter, Maria Castillo Salom, attended... READ MORE Gabriel Lynch III was born five months early and weighed 1.8 ounces when he entered this world fighting for his life. He spent his first three months in an Orlando... READ MORE
Something about the Periodic Table of Elements grabs Conrad Black’s interest. All those chemicals and their atomic numbers. He heard about it, read about it, but didn’t know anything about... 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 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
Last year, the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision Carson v. Makin said excluding schools from choice programs solely because they teach religion violates the First Amendment’s free exercise clause. The... READ MORE
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