'Military bases open their doors to homeschoolers'

"A growing number of military parents want to end the age-old tradition of switching schools for their kids," the Associated Press reports. "They've embraced homeschooling, and are finding support on bases, which are providing resources for families and opening their doors for home schooling cooperatives and other events."

Digital-learning roundup

"State legislatures scramble to boost, or in some cases block, online learning," Michael B. Horn writes.

U.S. adults have poor literacy, numeracy skills

"A particularly alarming report on working-age adults was published earlier this month by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a coalition of mainly developed nations," The New York Times editorializes. "The research focused on people ages 16 to 65 in 24 countries. It dealt with three crucial areas: literacy — the ability to understand and respond to written material; numeracy — the ability to use numerical and mathematical concepts; and problem solving — the ability to interpret and analyze information using computers. Americans were comparatively weak-to-poor in all three areas."

Common Core distracting attention from serious school reform

"Discussions of the Common Core standards are actually sucking all of the air out of the room," writes Hoover Institution fellow Eric A. Hanushek, "distracting attention from any serious efforts to reform our schools."

One might interpret the emphasis on developing the Common Core curriculum as an effort to divert debate away from more intractable fights over bigger reform ideas like improved teacher evaluations, expanded school choice, or enhanced accountability systems. While I support better learning standards, we cannot be distracted from more fundamental reform of our schools. The future economic well-being of the United States is entirely dependent on improving the academic achievement and skills of today’s students, but Common Core will do little to ensure this.

Thefts and assaults against teachers 'not uncommon' in OKC

The Oklahoman has the story. Horace Mann, bless his heart, just didn't see this coming.

Notre Dame law professor says Common Core more important than Obamacare

"Look at today's newspapers and you will see that Americans are poised to fundamentally reform two huge sectors of our lives," writes Gerard V. Bradley, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame Law School.

He believes Common Core -- "a wholesale education revision that shortchanges the central goals of all sound education" -- is a bigger deal than Obamacare.

Barresi sees growing interest in vouchers

At around the 9:00 mark.

Some reforms make us feel good -- even if they don't work

Poor, starving children in Africa are not actually helped by our finishing all of the food on our plates, Jay Greene reminds us. Likewise, our futile efforts to fix public schools that don't want to be fixed aren't actually helping the students in those schools.

School-spending transparency needed

"Do you know how much it costs to educate a student in Oklahoma?" asks Jason Bedrick of the Cato Instute. "It's likely more than you think."

From 'school choice' to 'educational choice'

Stories from some of the first families to enter Arizona's innovative Education Savings Account program illustrate "how life-changing the ESAs have been," writes Lindsey M. Burke, the Will Skillman Fellow in Education Policy at the Heritage Foundation.

"Two years ago we weren’t even sure if we were ever going to have a conversation with him," says Amanda Howard, mother of second-grader Nathan. "He is in a private school now for kids with developmental delays. . . . He reads now. He is reading a little below grade level. But he likes math. He is working above grade level for math. And he really loves social studies; he knows all the 50 states. So it is really exciting to see all the progress he has made verbally and being able to communicate, and that he is actually making a lot of academic progress." ...

ESAs represent a complete reimagination of what it means to finance education publicly. They represent a shift from the very worthwhile goal of school choice to educational choice, the future of school choice.

As more states across the country consider ways to provide school-choice options to families, ESAs should be at the top of their lists. And states with existing voucher or tuition-tax-credit programs should consider expanding the allowable uses of funds and transitioning them to more flexible ESAs.

"When you find out your kid has autism, you go through a stage where you think you are all alone," says Nathan’s father. "But then people slowly, but surely, point out different things. The ESA is one of those things."

Fleeing Common Core

... into the more rigorous territory of classical education.

A Christian education is a 'public' education

"Based on the evidence," writes James K.A. Smith, "we keep pointing out that a Christian education is a 'public' education and serves the common good — more, in fact, than so-called 'public' (i.e., state-run) schools do."

No grandiose ideas, please, we're monopolists

The state's largest newspaper has an excellent editorial taking some local superintendents to task for their opposition to common-sense education reforms. I encourage you to read it here.

"I'm not one for grandiose ideas.
Just send money."

One of the superintendents mentioned is Pat Harrison of Ada. He is on record complaining that state Supt. Janet Barresi advocates "grandiose ideas we all can tell immediately are not going to work." Now, to his credit, Mr. Harrison does appear to be an expert on ideas that don't work. He is paid $117,423 annually to oversee a school district which produces students with reading and math performance worse than that of the typical student in the average developed country. For example, the math achievement of the average student in Ada is at the 40th percentile relative to an international comparison group. If one were to pick up the Ada school district and drop it into Canada, the average Ada student would be at the 31st percentile in math achievement.

At a time when many taxpayers are asking why Kathleen Sebelius still has a job, there are plenty of other tax-funded bureaucrats who need to devote more attention to delivering a better product.