Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose
Texas Forever
Happy Friday.
Congrats to our friends in Texas who after years and years of labor finally saw school choice become a reality. Patrick Wolf has a great rundown of the role research played in the discussion over those many, many years. It looks like the final vote was 86-63 in the House and 19-12 in the Senate, so not even particularly close. Well done all.
It’s a holy time of year for the world’s major religions. Billions of people around the globe are taking time to reflect and prepare themselves for the new life that springtime brings blossoming out of the earth. A couple of weeks ago I planted a big, L-shaped bed of wildflower seeds in my back garden that appear to have mostly been feed for the neighborhood robins and blackbirds. But I live in hope that some have taken root and will sprout soon.
We’re doing something different at Informed Choice today. No new content from anyone on our team. Rather, it’s a bit of a pre-Easter weekend roundup of interesting tidbits.
Stat of the Week
The Louisiana Department of Education opened applications to the state’s new “GATOR” ESA program from March 1st to April 15th. In that time period, they are reporting:
-39,189 students applied to the program.
-34,848 have been deemed eligible for funding
-81% of applicants come from families at or below 250% of the federal poverty level
-Nearly 3,000 applicants are students with disabilities
What we’re reading
Federal Education Research Has Been ‘Shredded.’ What’s Driving This?
AEI’s Rick Hess and Jal Mehta of the Harvard Graduate School of Education have an informative and substantive debate about what is going on at the Institute of Education Sciences.
This Annenberg Institute working paper by Jared N. Schachner, Nicole P. Marwell, Marisa de la Torre, Julia A. Gwynne, and Elaine Allensworth studied a broadband expansion initiative by the Chicago Public Schools and found that “broadband program participation boosted remote learning engagement and achievement for previously high-performing students and reduced engagement and achievement for low-performing pupils.” I imagine this is not the only educational intervention with such effects.
Lessons from Arizona: How States Can Improve ESA Programs for Families
Jenny Clark, Michael Clark, and George Khalaf analyzed 240 written comments submitted by parents to the Arizona State Board of Education regarding the state’s ESA program and offer ways to improve the program to respond to their experiences.
Schools Are Banning Phones. What About Laptops?
Sylvie McNamara blends research with her own son’s story to talk about the potential detrimental impact of technology in the classroom. If you pay attention to the end, there is a school choice angle here as well.
Free Trade: Producer Versus Consumer
Milton Friedman’s 1978 Landon Lecture at Kansas State University. With only minor adjustments this speech could be given today and be every bit as relevant.
What we’re watching
On Wednesday evening, we saw Andy Smarick and Josh Dunn debate Derek Black and Kathleen Porter-Magee at AEI on the question of religious charter schools. It was substantive, informative, and thoughtful. Well worth checking out!
I was also on two great podcasts recently of which video versions are available.
I talked about educational innovation, measuring student success, and how to choose a school with Shaka Mitchell and Caitlin Sienkiewicz of Quality Matters. (Filmed at last Fall’s PEPG Conference at Harvard’s Kennedy School)
My episode of Freedom to Learn with Ginny Gentles is a kind of director’s cut of my congressional testimony from last month. Ginny gave me some space to answer questions that I wasn’t asked and dig into what the research on private school choice says (and doesn’t say).
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So with that, Happy Easter, Chag Pesach Sameach, and (a belated) Eid Mubarak.
I’ll leave you with a poem appropriate for the changing weather and the state of the world, Wendell Berry’s “The Peace of Wild Things.”
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.