Education

The average national high school graduation rate, from 1997 to 2007, rose 3.1 percentage points to 68.8 percent, according to a recent report from Education Week. California’s graduation rate, meanwhile, dropped 4.7 percentage points to 62.7 percent. Only Nebraska and Nevada posted worse declines, and the problem is not limited ...

Canadians, particularly those of conservative persuasion, love to compare Canada with the United States, which has a lot to learn in the key area of K-12 education. As the United States struggles with mounting deficits and debt, Americans would be well served to look north if they want to raise ...

With graduation season in full swing, the cover story in the June issue of Sacramento Magazine rates the 66 high schools in and around California’s capital. The ratings rely on the state’s school-performance scoring system which, unfortunately, masks a key reality. The “best” schools, largely in middle-class or affluent neighborhoods, ...

Fostering Opportunity and Improving Achievement: The Benefits of a Foster-Care Scholarship Program in California, by Vicki E. Murray, Ph.D., PRI associate director of Education Studies, and Evelyn B. Stacey, policy fellow, finds that adopting a Florida-style foster-care scholarship program in California would have no negative impact to state and public-school ...

New Study Finds Foster-Care Scholarship Program is an Academically and Fiscally Responsible Reform —Would Benefit Students, Public Schools, and the State— San Francisco— Today, the Pacific Research Institute (PRI), a California-based public policy think tank, released a policy brief on improving education opportunities for foster-care children in California. Fostering Opportunity ...

Race to the Top Proves that Competition Works By Evelyn Stacey, policy fellow in Education Studies SACRAMENTO—In the first round of Race to the Top (RTTT), California placed 27th out of 41 states that applied and failed to gain a one-time federal grant. Now California is trying again in Phase ...

Essentially, if you put policy options for a given area on a spectrum ranging from freest to least free, there is a very small window of options that will be considered politically feasible. That is, there are relatively few policy options a politician will support in order to garner public ...

In a recent column, David Brooks, who fills the center-right slot on the New York Times opinion page, asserts that the Obama administration’s education agenda adheres to a “measured vision of a limited but energetic government.” Citing the president’s $4.5 billion Race to the Top (RTTT) education-funding program, Mr. Brooks ...