Education economics

July 11, 2017

American students: Raw material or individual persons?

The quality of K-12 education in America is a major concern. This is largely because, despite marginally high spending per student, the United States does not compete very well against other countries on standardized tests. Continue Reading...

December 09, 2016

What standard should we use to judge school choice?

The United States spends a lot of money each year on public schooling. As a percentage of GDP, government expenditures on public education (five percent) exceed the amount we spend on defense (four percent) or welfare (two percent). Continue Reading...

November 29, 2016

Vouchers: the progressive policy loved by the right and hated by the left

Growing up, I attended a private, Christian school until 4th grade, when my mother couldn’t afford it any more and my brothers and I switched to a blue collar, suburban public school. Continue Reading...

April 12, 2016

4 Reasons to Support School Choice from Pope Francis’s ‘Amoris Laetitia’

Pope Francis’s recently released apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia has received considerable attention because of the issue of divorce and communion. But the 60,000+ word document has much more to say about family life than the dissolution of marriage. Continue Reading...

March 31, 2014

Homeschooled Students are More Politically Tolerant Than Their Peers

Critics of homeschooling have long maintained that it fails to inculcate students with the civic virtues necessary to maintain our republican form of democracy. But a study finds that when it comes to willingness to extend basic civil liberties to people who hold views with which one disagrees, homeschooled students are more tolerant than their peers: Scholar Albert Cheng’s just-published fascinating and provocative study provides one of the first solid portions of empirical evidence about whether the homeschooled become more or less politically intolerant than others.[3] Continue Reading...

July 16, 2013

What Public Schools Should Learn from Homeschool Economics

“Public education is the fount of most problems in the United States, not simply based on content, but also on structure,” says Thomas Purifoy. “Simply put: it is economically impossible for American public education to be successful in the long-run (or the short-run, for that matter).” Continue Reading...

April 18, 2013

School Vouchers Increase College Attendance for Black Students

New research suggests that school vouchers have a greater impact on whether black students attend college than small class sizes or effective teachers: Matthew M. Chingos of the Brookings Institution and Paul E. Continue Reading...

April 17, 2013

A Win-Win Solution: The Empirical Evidence on School Choice

A new report by Greg Forster of the Friedman Foundation finds that of all the “gold standard” research on children who utilize school vouchers, 11 of 12 studies conclude all or some of those students achieve better educational outcomes. Continue Reading...

April 16, 2012

Slum Dwellers in India Save for Private Schooling

As Michelle Kaffenberger points out, parents in the poorest parts of India share a concern of many Americans: Their children don’t actually learn much in the public schools. Continue Reading...