During National School Choice Week, celebrate the promise of educational choice

Posted on:January 26, 2017

As the nation prepares to celebrate another record-breaking National School Choice Week, education reform is on more minds than ever, thanks to Secretary of Education Nominee Betsy DeVos’ Senate hearing, where she answered questions about her support for educational choice programs like charter schools, tax credit scholarships, vouchers and education savings accounts.

School choice has a great record of boosting student academic success and other important outcomes in states all over the country. Research on private school choice programs found students perform significantly better on math and reading tests than their public school peers, particularly after an initial adjustment period. Participating parents love Arizona’s groundbreaking education savings account program. Students enrolled in Milwaukee’s Parental Choice Program were 42 percent less likely to be convicted of a crime and 79 percent less likely to be convicted of a felony than a demographically-matched student in public school.

Despite a misleading narrative about charter schools published in the New York Times and repeated during DeVos’ hearing, Detroit charter students actually gained about two months of additional reading and math learning gains per year over their peers in similarly-situated traditional schools.

Read more at the Washington Examiner.

Feltscher, Inez. (2017, Jan. 22). During National School Choice Week, celebrate the promise of educational choice. Retrieved from http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/during-national-school-choice-week-celebrate-the-promise-of-educational-choice/article/2612629

 

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