When the Wall Street Journal blessed 2011 as the Year of School Choice, few advocates for public and private school options passed up the chance to celebrate the benediction. But the American Legislative Exchange Council knows that rhapsody will take the education reformer only so far. ALEC’s latest annual report[Read More…]
Author: Adam Emerson
What history can teach our school choice debates today
It’s hard to miss Dick Morris. The former presidential aide and Fox News contributor has raised the volume on his rhetoric during the last couple of days to promote National School Choice Week, and Education Sector’s Kevin Carey was right to note that Morris does more harm to his cause[Read More…]
School choice, subsidiarity and the common good
Subsidiarity is an organizing principle rarely discussed outside the Catholic Church and the European Union, and it’s a shame so few academics and advocates of school choice in the United States talk about it. It is a principle that is skeptical about the ability of large bureaucracies to trump smaller units[Read More…]
It’s time to move beyond old assumptions about vouchers
School voucher critics generally approach their job reviewing the research on school choice with unfair assumptions, and otherwise insightful commentators risk recycling old canards. This is true with Thomas Toch’s critique of vouchers in the newest edition of Kappan, which concludes that voucher programs haven’t shown enough impact to justify their[Read More…]
Dozens of Philly Catholic schools to close or combine
From The Philadelphia Inquirer: The Archdiocese of Philadelphia plans to close four Catholic high schools and 44 elementary schools will be closed or partnered with other schools, officials told school administrators and priests at a close-door meeting at Neumann University this morning. West Catholic, St. Hubert, Monsignor Bonner-Archbishop Prendergast in[Read More…]
A bleak future for a saint’s legacy
Today, the Catholic Church celebrates the feast of St. John Neumann, a Philadelphia bishop who is credited with establishing the first unified system of Catholic schools under a diocesan board. Neumann himself increased the number of Catholic schools from two to 100 in his diocese. By tomorrow, a blue ribbon[Read More…]
A modest, yet radical proposal
Now that MacArthur “genius” Roland G. Fryer’s new paper on school inputs and effectiveness is beginning to get attention, it seems appropriate to look back at the most pioneering of studies on inputs and student achievement, the Coleman Report of 1966. Sociologist James S. Coleman (1926-1995) released “Equality of Educational Opportunity”[Read More…]
Forming school communities on the basis of choice
Boston University professor Charles Glenn, one of redefinED’s newest contributors and an expert on comparative school choice policy, has taken to the journal First Things to further explore what he has long called the myth of the common schoool. From 1970 to 1991, Glenn served as director of urban education[Read More…]