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Freedom and Opportunity Are the Future of Education

by Kathryn Hickok Monday, January 28. 2013

This week is National School Choice Week. Every January, National School Choice Week highlights the need for effective educational options for all children.

Planned by a diverse and nonpartisan coalition of individuals and organizations, National School Choice Week features special events and activities that support school choice programs and proposals. The world’s largest celebration of education reform, the 2013 School Choice Week will feature more than 3,500 independently planned events across 50 states.

According to schoolchoiceweek.com, “Participants in National School Choice Week believe that to improve student achievement, boost graduation rates, and improve American competitiveness in the global job marketplace, families must be empowered to choose the best educational options for their children. These options include high-performing public schools, public charter schools, magnet schools, private schools, digital/online learning, and homeschooling.”

Students have different talents, interests, and needs; and they learn in different ways. The landscape of educational options to meet those needs is far more diverse today than it was even a few years ago. Freedom in education is good for all children, not just for children deemed by the state to be “at risk” or in “failing schools.” Parents, not government bureaucracies, should decide which learning environment is best for their children and be empowered to choose those schools. It’s becoming increasingly evident that more choices in education are the way of the future. For more information, visit National School Choice Week online at schoolchoiceweek.com.

Cascade Policy Institute will host a National School Choice Week School Choice Policy Picnic on Wednesday, January 30, at noon. Cascade founder Steve Buckstein will discuss the importance of school choice and where we go from here to get more of it in Oregon. Those interested in attending can RSVP here.

Kathryn Hickok is Publications Director and Director of the Children’s Scholarship Fund-Portland program at Cascade Policy Institute.

Learn more at cascadepolicy.org.

Posted by at 05:00 | Posted in Education, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment | Email This Post | Print This Post
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  • Bob Clark

    I attended a public education forum last week where Rudy Crew (Kitzhaber’s “Czar” of Education) made a presentation and fielded questions from an audience pre-dominantly of public education teachers, administrators, and a few parents. Rudy Crew opposes the portability of public school dollars; and in place, offers as yet an undefined program of government intervention in the lives of child and parent who are not on the path to achieving a level of vocational or academic skill. His focus is not so much on what is succeeding, but rather what needs improvement (the so-called Equity issue). This I suspect is bound for failure, especially if you recall Kitzhaber I’s decade long attempt at computerized testing of student performance (a multi million dollar, at the time promising, failed attempt by Kitzhaber to reform public education). Most importantly, Crew’s outlined reform will take many years, if ever, to actually produce results, even if funded. Crew and Kitzhaber will both be out of office before the real “results” come in (ah, the pleasure of long term forecasts and plans…as a bureaucrat you get paid very, very well; and when actual results appear, you’ve moved on…In Planning, the unspoken gold is “Planning been very, very good too, me”…to borrow from SNL’s Garret Morrison’s baseball playing character’s old saying).

    Meanwhile, the Teachers Union and public administrators strive hard to retain the old public education legacy, the cost of which they help drive ever more financially more unsustainable. So, they are pulling the strings of Representative Jules-Bailey and Senator Rosenbaum to eliminate or weaken property tax limits or introduce a sales tax, all in the hopes of raiding the pocket books of taxpayers once more to financially prop up an increasingly uncompetitive public school system. In these folks world, a budget cut is not an actual cut in public school spending mind you, but rather a cut from a wished for budget shaped like a tree that grows ever steadily to the sky without limit.

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