By Marcela Costa Pereira Reis, a mom of three from Boca Raton, Fla., whose children are attending Florida Virtual School
Last year, many families discovered online learning for the first time, including me and my three children, Vinicius, Manuela, and Rafaela. I originally began researching Florida Virtual School (FLVS) because my husband and I were looking for a flexible online program that allowed our children to do their schoolwork from anywhere and at any time so that we could take a one-year sabbatical and travel the world. …
By Jennifer Wagner
Hi there.
Do you like research?
We have lots of research. Like, an entire library full of it that I bet five bucks you couldn’t read all the way through if you had a week of unstructured free time.
Research has been the backbone of our organization for 25 years — something that sets us apart in the school choice movement — so we pay close attention every time someone publishes something looking at the effects of school choice on students, schools, families or anything else, for that matter.
An Indiana University doctoral candidate recently published a…
By Jennifer Wagner
Pardon me while I put my ex-political hack hat on for a moment to talk about polling.
When you work in politics, you don’t just love polling; you live or die by it. You have to constantly know where you stand with likely voters so you can fine-tune your campaign to attract more support.
If you ask any politician who’s down in the polls how they’re feeling, they’ll almost certainly give you some version of this response: “Well, a poll is just a snapshot in time, and we’ve still got a chance to move those numbers before…
By Jennifer Wagner
EdChoice Fellow and longtime school choice advocate Matt Ladner has a solid new blog post over at the Fordham Institute about the future of open enrollment and the changing demographics of our nation, specifically lower birth rates and longer life expectancies.
Using his home state of Arizona as “the demographic canary in America’s coal mine,” Ladner makes a compelling case that three main factors — the pre-pandemic baby bust; an increase in homeschooling and microschooling; and new and improved school choice policies — are driving toward a potentially unpleasant conclusion for those folks who’ve high-tailed it to…
By Gwen Samuel
Yep, it’s that time of year again for diverse families across the country where parents are sending their most precious cargo (children) into the hands of educators, with the hopes that they will treat them as their own. But it does not escape this Black mom that this will not be a business-as-usual moment in time — and it should not be! We are sending our kids back-to-school in a pandemic landscape where it feels like everyone, most of whom have never had a child in an unsafe and failing school, has an opinion on literally everything…
A first-person perspective on what it felt like to be without K-12 options
By Christina Grattan
During a high school rally, my cross country team participated in a dance-off against the volleyball team. I tried my best to dance the moves we rehearsed, but even hours of practice could not make us escape an onslaught of “boos” from the crowd. Embarrassment loomed over me, and I stood there thinking, “What is the point of high school? Popularity? Trying to fit in and be someone I was not?” …
To Any And All State Lawmakers Who Are Willing To Listen:
Last August, I attended my very first open schools rally, and it made me want to do more. In October, my Girls Scout sister Olivia committed suicide due to the isolation from school shutdowns. Olivia’s death lit a fire inside me because I knew exactly how she felt. I was dealing with my own issues of depression and suicidal thoughts and attempts caused by isolation from shutdowns. Olivia’s death gave me a purpose again, and that was to bring awareness to the mental crisis students are facing due to…
By Jennifer Wagner
CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR NEW JOB! YOUR EMPLOYEE BENEFITS PACKAGE INCLUDES…
Vacation, sick and flex time. Medical, dental, vision and life insurance. Retirement savings accounts. Tuition or childcare reimbursement. Gym memberships and wellness programs. Relocation assistance.
AS WELL AS…
On-site hybrid learning space? Employer-funded education savings accounts Tutoring services?
Over the past year, work as we knew it changed. School as we knew it changed. Our lives as we knew them changed.
As states and localities lift restrictions and more Americans are able to access the vaccine, our minds naturally shift to what comes next: Which changes will…
By Jennifer Wagner
After almost five years working in the school choice movement, the subhed on this story about the potential cost of Indiana’s proposed voucher expansion and special needs ESA wasn’t really a surprise:
An Indiana House bill could boost by 40% the number of students, many from middle-class families, receiving state subsidies for private schooling
Goodness gracious, not the middle class!
Heaven forbid we help out those families who’ve worked hard to get a leg up, maybe even gotten themselves out of a lower income bracket, and want to utilize their tax dollars to send their kids to…
By Jennifer Wagner
Four decades ago, Nobel laureate Milton Friedman sat down with talk show host Phil Donahue to discuss his bestselling book, Free to Choose. You can watch the interviews here and here.
If you don’t have time for the clips, here’s a quick summary: Friedman and Donahue clashed. A lot. Suffice it to say that Friedman, a Libertarian, had a very different take on capitalism and free markets than the left-leaning Donahue, who seemed to support more government oversight and regulation as he sparred with Friedman about what he’d written.
In perhaps their most famous exchange, Donahue pressed…
