In August 2012, the White House released the report "Investing in Our Future: Returning Teachers to the Classroom" to bolster President Obama's call for massive new education spending. The report suggests that, absent an enormous infusion of more tax dollars, the nation's public schools will lose teachers and programs, damaging American education.…

On its 10-year anniversary, there is consensus that No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is broken. The debate over how to reform NCLB has generated a number of proposals from both houses of Congress and the Obama Administration, but ideas about how to rewrite the law differ greatly. In early 2012, the House Education and the Workforce Committee introduced…

With the tuition cost of traditional colleges and universities soaring and education technology advancing, online courses and degree programs are becoming more common. Some critics argue that an online degree cannot provide all the important features of a traditional college education, from extracurricular activities to new professional networks,…

The push for centralized control over what every child should learn has never had more momentum. The Obama Administration has pressured states to adopt the Common Core State Standards Initiative, conditioning more than $4 billion in Race to the Top grants on its adoption. The Administration's blueprint for the rewrite of No Child Left Behind also…

2011 has been a milestone year for school choice, setting the bar high for state legislatures across the country to increase families' educational options. What began with a crucial re-authorization of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program continued with 12 states creating or expanding school choice options. The movement toward educational…

Virtual or online learning is revolutionizing American education. It has the potential to dramatically expand the educational opportunities of American students, largely overcoming the geographic and demographic restrictions. Virtual learning also has the potential to improve the quality of instruction, while increasing productivity and lowering…

The authors express reservations about additional federal funding for the National Science Foundation, including new funding for science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education programs, provided by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. For more than 50 years, American political, business, military, and academic leaders…

More than a decade after offering students universal preschool, neither Georgia nor Oklahoma has shown impressive progress in student academic achievement, as measured by the National Assessment of Educational Progress. As Congress considers whether the federal government should encourage states to offer universal preschool, the author advocates…

Twenty-five years after the seminal report "A Nation at Risk," American education remains in a state of crisis. Millions of students continue to pass through the public schools without mastering basic skills and knowledge. Policymakers and the public must recognize both this persistent failure and the attendant need for systemic reform in American…

A growing number of American families are choosing to homeschool their children. While research evidence is limited, evaluations of student outcomes suggest that homeschooling is successful for participating students: They do well in their learning environment, perform as well on national college assessment tests as traditional high school…

The Washington, D.C. school system has a long history of poor academic achievement; however, over the past decade, the District of Columbia has made strides in offering families greater choice about which schools their children attend, thanks to a strong charter school law and the federally funded D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program. District…

School choice improves parents' satisfaction with their children's schools, and public schools that face competition have shown improved performance, yet opponents continue to oppose reforms that give parents the opportunity to choose their children's schools. State and federal policymakers should reform existing education policies to give all…

Parental choice in education is growing. A dozen states and the District of Columbia provide a variety of private school choice programs. Forty states and the District of Columbia have enacted charter schools laws. A growing body of evidence suggests that parents of students participating in school choice programs are happier with their children's…

Across the United States, nearly 50 million students are served by 96,000 public schools. Federal policymakers cannot be expected to diagnose the diverse learning needs of these students and to craft solutions adequate to meet all of them. Four decades, eight reauthorizations of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, and expenditure of…

In 2006, President Bush proposed the America's Opportunity Scholarships for Kids initiative in his budget request for the Department of Education. The plan would make $100 million available in competitive grant awards to provide scholarships to low income students in persistently failing public schools. Only low-income students attending public…