docketED

A collection of 4831 posts.

Your guide to legal issues that arise in a new era of education.

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One legend's call to today's civil rights leaders: Erase the lines we have drawn in the past

After listening recently to RiShawn Biddle's podcast calling on civil rights leaders to change their approach to education reform, I was reminded of an unpublished column written by one Florida legend in the civil rights movement, the Rev. H.K. Matthews. Matthews shared the piece with me and others after several civil rights groups last summer demanded that President Obama reconsider the core elements of his education agenda, which included the expansion of charter schools and the closure of consistently low-performing schools. These iconic groups, which included the NAACP and the Urban League, had good intentions in presenting their education policy framework, but Matthews found their arguments irrelevant today. Their call for equal opportunity, he wrote, was "limited by some familiar boundaries of generations past -- those of neighborhood and family income."

It's time we redefine unionism for teachers, too

Teacher unions should be raising capital to help teachers start and manage their own schools. They should be demanding that all hiring, firing and compensation decisions be made at the school level so that each teacher’s compensation reflects his or her true market value. And as I wrote here last week, teacher unions should learn from professional sports unions and start advocating for free agency for teachers.

Florida Gov.-elect Rick Scott embraces choice

Gov.-elect Rick Scott got some national attention last week while speaking at an event celebrating the companies that so far...

Children of color are not the only ones empowered by private school options

As the Florida coordinator of Democrats for Education Reform (DFER), I am frequently asked by Democrats in other states why...

How CEOs can become a force for education reform

Florida is one of seven states with no personal income tax, which explains why its Tax Credit Scholarship for low-income...

Parents are ready to make choice the norm. Are states ready to accommodate them?

These events are not isolated. If we are to accept Manno’s analysis, more than half the nation’s 57 million elementary and secondary school students are attending a K-12 school of their choice. Public education to these families no longer represents the traditionally zoned neighborhood school, and the leaders who they elect are taking notice.

We'll see more school choices with Rhee's impatience

Rhee has lent her support to the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program, and she made it clear yesterday that her new advocacy group, Students First, will push for similar programs. Getting states to clear the obstacles to additional charter schools and pushing for opportunity scholarships will anchor what Rhee identified as a key component of a four-part legislative agenda for the group: an expansion of school choice and competition.

Private schools with public students need oversight

Fordham reasoned that the more a private school begins through its percentage of voucher or tax credit scholarship students to look like a public school, the more it needs to be regulated like one. That seems fair enough as a working guideline. In Florida, where we have 33,000 tax credit scholarship students who make up on average only 17 percent of the total enrollment in their private schools, the sliding scale approach seems entirely reasonable.

Klein is close, but his call for choices falls short

Outgoing New York schools chancellor Joel Klein is right to identify that low-income families deserve to have the best educational options available to them, but he frames the argument for school choice in a way that stops short of advocating for equal opportunities for our most disadvantaged families.

Choices are reshaping Florida's educational landscape, and the nation is taking notice

Roughly one of every three public schoolchildren in Florida now attend a school other than the one tied to their zip code.

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