February was a particularly busy month for our education team.
Let’s do more than a “rebranding.” Virginia lawmakers are considering a long-overdue proposal that would help parents, educators, and other community leaders create public charter schools. But to do so, they will need to give charter operators independence from assigned school districts. Jonathan Butcher explained the details for Virginia Works.
Read on. Jonathan also explained how public charter schools come in different shapes and sizes and can meet the needs of students and families in Virginia with different interests.
See here. Virginia lawmakers have still more ways to help families by improving the state’s “lab school” provisions—along with the charter school law. See his column in the
Virginia Pilot.
Now that’s a welcome change. While President Joe Biden’s administration dismisses parents and works with special interest groups to intimidate families, Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) introduced a proposal during National School Choice Week to empower children from low income families with flexible access to their share of federal education spending. Jonathan explained the proposal in
reimaginED.
Protecting students and teachers from racial discrimination. Jonathan reviewed proposals from states where lawmakers are considering ways to reject school officials’ application of critical race theory in K-12 classrooms.
Here’s what you need to know.
“Free meals” sounds less appetizing after this. Writing in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Jonathan explains that proposals to expand federal school meal programs would result in expanding a wasteful, error-prone program. And it would also mean providing free meals to children from middle- and upper-income homes, not more children from disadvantaged backgrounds because they are already eligible.
Read on.
Washington keeps finding ways to make taxpayers pay for federal student loans. Writing for
RealClearPolitics, Jonathan says “
President Biden says that student loan payments, which federal officials paused during the pandemic, will resume in May. With little more than two months to go, however, his administration is doing everything it can to make the process of meeting this deadline look impossible – both for students and the Department of Education.”
Read on.
Erasing redlines. Writing for the Washington Times, Jonathan explains that federal officials can reverse any lingering effects from education redlining—which resulted in students who are ethnic minorities being assigned to persistently failing schools in Washington, D.C.
“With or without the remaining effects from education redlining, lawmakers must stop assigning students to persistently failing schools. By disconnecting housing and education, lawmakers can unleash the potential of the next generation of District children,” Jonathan writes.
Read on
.
Indiana and missed opportunities. In The Daily Signal, Jonathan says Indiana lawmakers had the opportunity to protect teachers and students from racial discrimination, but a revised version of a proposal that would have rejected critical race theory’s prejudice missed the mark.
Here are the details.
