What has 'doomsday' education spending wrought?

Higher graduation rates and test scores, Lisa Snell writes.

Oklahoma newspapers shine spotlight on bullying

The Shawnee News-Star is teaming up with Ardmore's Daily Ardmoreite and a Tennessee newspaper for a multi-part series on bullying.

Barresi stands up for special-needs children

Our state superintendent has an excellent column in the Oklahoma Gazette.

'Inconsistencies apparent in Oklahoma schools' private funds policy'

The state's largest newspaper is tired of the double standard used by the likes of Jenks and Tulsa.

Spending up, confidence down

'African-Americans increasingly turn to homeschooling'

Fox News has the story. 

Battle for disabled children's scholarships begins before Oklahoma Supreme Court

A group of Oklahoma parents with disabled children, represented by The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, have filed their critical brief before the Oklahoma Supreme Court defending the constitutionality of a scholarship program aimed to help disabled children succeed.

Walker's win could boost parental choice

"The most important consequence of Scott Walker's key victory," Joel Belz writes, "is likely to be its ripple effect over the next decade on the issue of educational choice."

Wisconsin has its own historic role, especially in the city of Milwaukee, as a hospitable laboratory for educational vouchers and charter schools. Now, Wisconsin has also strategically minimized the potentially hostile role of the teachers unions. More than almost anywhere in the nation, and largely because of Scott Walker's remarkable courage, genuine educational diversity may have the opportunity to flourish and thrive.

I don't mean to imply that Walker's role in public life ought to be limited to a single issue. But choice in education has been a central focus during the controversial first term of this son of a Baptist minister. If after expanding energetic voucher programs from Milwaukee to Racine, Beloit, and Green Bay, he now provides a replicable template that can be exported to the rest of the nation, I can think of no more enduring gift he could offer the rest of the nation and its desperately broken culture.

Is an Oklahoma City principal cheating?

Jerry Bohnen has the story.

Oklahoma Democrats stand up for human rights

The Oklahoma Democratic Party recently facilitated the first meeting of the Oklahoma Universal Human Rights Alliance. One fervently hopes they will take seriously the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which declares that "parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children."

Democrats wanting to learn more about parental choice in education can learn a lot from the chairman of the Tulsa County Democratic Party, Judy Eason McIntyre, a strong supporter of this universal human right. 

Disadvantaged kids deserve choices

"In Florida and across this nation," writes the Rev. Manuel Sykes, "many die-hard Democrats and hard-core public education advocates are standing up to insist that our most disadvantaged schoolchildren are provided with every tool available. We see it as a moral imperative."

'Our Special-Ed system favors the rich'

It's time to come out of the shadows.

Vouchers, tax credits breathing new life into Catholic schools

"For the first time in decades, Catholic education is showing signs of life," Stephanie Banchero and Jennifer Levitz report in The Wall Street Journal. "Driven by expanding voucher programs, outreach to Hispanic Catholics and donations by business leaders, Catholic schools in several major cities are swinging back from closures and declining enrollment."