Community & Philanthropy

The week in school choice: Winning in court

10/03/16 | Travis Pillow

Nevada’s Supreme Court blocked one of the country’s most ambitious educational choice programs, finding its funding mechanism unconstitutional. But in many ways, the outcome is actually a win for the state’s policymakers and thousands of families waiting to use education savings accounts. The ruling could even help bolster the constitutional case for private school choice in other places.

A march to double charter school enrollment in New York drew 25,000.

The NAACP faced more pushback for fighting against the nation’s largest school choice program.

I have been involved in advocating for school choice for the last 20 years and I still don’t understand why anyone, especially the NAACP, would oppose families having a choice in education.

Mother Jones on the response to the civil rights organization’s stance against charter schools.

A word from Catholic social teaching is seeing a resurgence in education policy: Subsidiarity.

If we re-center our search for solutions with subsidiarity – “putting power, authority, and significance as close to the level of the interpersonal community as reasonably possible” – in mind, our diffusion and diversity becomes a strength, not a weakness.

Related? The backlash against technocracy.

Massachusetts charter school backers took to the airwaves and tried to battle “misconceptions” about their financial impact on school districts. A new Harvard report supports their case. Two parents weigh in.

Why urban millennials could be the next generation of school choice advocates:

As it happens, D.C.’s open enrollment system is a fascinating experiment in the shifting terrain of education politics. As in many cities, the district’s demographics are changing: Its schools have more children now than before (including both of mine, as of this fall), and these children are more diverse. These trends are altering the city’s political context for education policymaking.

But this isn’t just a Beltway story. It matters for other cities — and the rest of the country.

An Ohio online charter school could owe the state millions after a critical audit.

National charter networks appeal to open more schools in Memphis.

What will the election mean for charter schools? What does the school choice agenda look like in Congress?

Who sits on charter school boards in the nation’s capital?

Tweets of the Week

Quote of the Week

You have moms and dads and students saying, ‘don’t take this away from me.’ C’mon, man.

— Jeb Bush, on the lawsuit challenging Florida’s tax credit scholarship program. Step Up For Students, which publishes redefinED, helps adminsiter the scholarhsips.

The Week in School Choice is our weekly compendium of news and notes from around the country. Sign up here to get it in your inbox, and send links, tips, pushback or feedback to tpillow[at]sufs[dot]org.

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BY Travis Pillow

Travis Pillow is Director of Thought Leadership at Step Up For Students and editor of NextSteps. He lives in Sanford, Fla. with his wife and two children. A former Tallahassee statehouse reporter, he most recently worked at the Center on Reinventing Public Education, a research organization at Arizona State University, where he studied community-led learning innovation and school systems' responses to the Covid-19 pandemic. He can be reached at tpillow (at) sufs.org.