Articles

Liberty lost one of her staunchest defenders yesterday morning, when Andrew Coulson passed away after a 15-month battle with brain cancer. Andrew was a Senior Fellow in education policy at the Cato Institute. In that position, Andrew researched, published,and advocated for school choice. I have long been an admirer of Andrew Coulson's work -- ev ...

Two seemingly unrelated phenomena in education often befuddle those interested in the topic. First, substandard public schools continue to fail no matter how much money the government throws their way. Second, teachers' unions across the country categorically oppose school choice programs of all shapes and sizes. The same economic principle explain ...

School choice is too important to only celebrate for one week in January, so three years ago PLF created Back to School Choice Week. Much like it's bigger brother Back to School Choice Week is designed to raise awareness of school choice. As children are headed back to school after the summer, we think it's an important time to remind people that ...

This morning PLF submitted an amicus brief in the Colorado Supreme Court in Taxpayers for Public Education v. Douglas County School District.  This case is being brought by a number of anti-school choice groups to prevent Douglas County from allowing students and their parents to choose the school that best suits their needs.  PLF's brief argue ...

Happy Halloween, everyone! ...except to those unlucky students whose administrators have instead taken the position of "boo-humbug."  As our friends at Reason explain, some overzealous school officials have gone Ebenezer Scrooge two months early, and waged a war on Halloween.  Citing concerns ranging from peanut allergies to obesity, these schoo ...

We often get asked here at PLF why there isn't school choice in California.  The answer I usually give is that Californians do have some choices in education.  Californians, of course, have one of the most robust charter school laws in the country.  Further, California law permits transfers from one public school district to another school dis ...

When most people hear about school choice, they typically think about vouchers.  Vouchers are basically a check that parents receive from the state that they can use to send their children to private schools.  The check, or "voucher," can be used by parents to send their children to either sectarian or secular schools.  The anti-choice educatio ...

With students around the country returning to school, PLF thought it would be a good time to remind everybody of the benefits of school choice.  To that end, all this week we will be celebrating Back to School Choice Week. School choice can mean many things, but broadly speaking, it is the idea that parents and students should have choices in how ...

Our friends at the MacIver Institute report on the latest Wisconsin Student Assessment System results.  Wisconsin, you may know, recently expanded its first-in-the-nation school choice program.  What once only covered Milwaukee Public Schools was expanded to include Racine.  Lo and behold, the choice schools are improving student performance muc ...