(WNS) - At a time when lawmakers in Washington can’t seem to agree on anything, parental rights advocates think their issue could erase the left-right divide, at least temporarily. Backers of the movement are trying to get Congress to pass an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would codify the rights of parents to make decisions for their children without government interference. It’s a tall order. Constitutional amendments require a two-thirds majority in both chambers of Congress. … [Read more...]
Beating back Blaine in New Mexico
(WNS) - As expected, the newly elected slate of anti-choice school board members in Douglas County, Colo., voted Dec. 4 to end the yearslong litigation over one of the most sweeping school voucher programs in the nation. The program, approved by the suburban Denver district in 2011, allowed students to use publicly funded vouchers to attend any school they wanted. Douglas County was the only school district in the nation to adopt a voucher program. The group that filed suit against the … [Read more...]
Lockdown drills and the new school safety reality
(WNS) - I remember my dad telling me when I was a kid about the Cold War-era safety drills he did in school. Students would hunker down under their desks, arms wrapped around their knees, until the hypothetical threat of Soviet missiles had passed. It all seemed so preposterous to me, the idea that children could face the unimaginable horror of an air raid in the middle of Texas. Although I participated in my share of fire drills, I never feared experiencing a real blaze. Those drills … [Read more...]
School choice marching orders: Giving military families access to education savings
(WNS) – Military families want school choice. That’s the broad takeaway from a new survey conducted by researchers at EdChoice and the Heritage Foundation. Perhaps not coincidentally, the survey’s results bolster the researchers’ advocacy for a school choice program for children from families associated with the federal government – primarily those whose parents are in the military but also Native American children living on tribal lands. Heritage education policy experts Lindsey Burke … [Read more...]
Getting ready for the student loan bubble to burst
WASHINGTON (WNS) – Amid all the other drama in Washington, one major higher education crisis isn’t getting enough attention: the student loan bubble. Analyst Daniel Pianko believes the United States is on the cusp of the largest subprime lending bubble since the mortgage boom that sparked the Great Recession. And taxpayers have no idea how much they’ll likely have to pay to extricate millions of borrowers from financial catastrophe. Since 2010, when it took over the student loan … [Read more...]