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IN THIS EDITION |
What to Watch
The Indiana Star examines who benefits most from the state's voucher program. | Number of the Week
“Last in, first out” means Los Angeles is losing teaching talent. | Quote of the Week
A call for a new approach to repairing city school systems. | Don't Miss
The Wall Street Journal explores teachers unions' resistance to growing charter school momentum. | |
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A Supreme Court Win for Oklahoma Students
By Rachel Sheffield
 |  | Last Tuesday, Oklahoma’s special-needs students received a pre-Thanksgiving win. The state’s Supreme Court ruled that two school districts that had challenged the legality of the Lindsey Nicole Henry Scholarship Program—a voucher program for special-needs students—were out of line in bringing the lawsuit.
The school districts had challenged the scholarship program on the basis that it violated the state’s Blaine Amendment by allowing scholarship money to be used at religious schools. Other opponents of school choice programs have time and again brought similar claims to the courts.
Eric Baxter of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty said that the Supreme Court’s decision in this case “is a great victory for both religious freedom and the disabled.”
“Let’s hope the school districts drop their paranoia that allowing disabled kids to go to a private religious school of their choice somehow creates an official state church for Oklahoma,” said Baxter. “The message from the Supreme Court today is unequivocal: These school districts should stop spending taxpayer dollars suing their most vulnerable students and focus on what they are supposed to be doing—teaching kids.”
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| What To
Watch | | Indiana Families “Winners” with Vouchers
“Who benefits the most from Indiana's voucher system? It's primarily low-income families who have a valuable new tool to help their children obtain the best education possible. It should not be taken from them,” asserts the Indiana Star. | |
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Number of the Week
45 Percent
of Los Angeles teachers who were laid off between 2008 and 2010 were in the top two quartiles of performers, according to Harvard researchers.
Rather than arbitrary seniority–“last in, first out”– policies that often punish high quality teachers, top performers should be rewarded for their efforts, ensuring that children have the best teachers in the classroom.
See Education Action Group’s “Education Researchers Take a Chainsaw to Cherished Union Beliefs” | | | Quote of the Week |  | “The feds spent several billion dollars and got terribly disappointing results—but, tragically, the results are predictable to anyone familiar with the history of ‘turnarounds.’…we need a new approach to the ongoing failure of our city school systems—one that stops behaving as though the broken schools of yesterday need to be the schools of tomorrow, one that stops jamming scarce resources into dysfunctional systems that remain impervious to reform and improvement."
-Andy Smarick Thomas B. Fordham Institute | | |
Don’t Miss
The Evil Empire Strikes Back (WSJ, 11/18)
“Education reformers had good news at the ballot box this month as voters in Washington and Georgia approved measures to create new charter schools. But as the reform movement gathers momentum, teachers unions are giving no quarter in their massive resistance against states trying to shake up failing public education,” writes the Wall Street Journal. |  | |
 | About The Heritage Foundation
Founded in 1973, The Heritage Foundation is a research and educational institute -- a think tank -- whose mission is to formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense. | |
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