I’ve posted hundreds of charts over the past several years, including on favorite topics such as tax code corruption and counterproductive government spending. But arguably the most powerful and compelling chart I’ve ever shared is on the topic of education. Prepared by my Cato colleague, Andrew Coulson, it shows that massive increases in spending and bureaucracy (which accompanied increasing federal involvement […]
read more...You would think the bureaucrats who run government schools would want to focus on the basics, such as teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic. After all, no nation spends more per pupil on education than the United States. And based on some Cato Institute research, I suspect the OECD estimate of about $15,000 per student is […]
read more...I’m a big fan of school choice. If we bust up the government education monopoly and create a competitive education market, we’ll get a much better education system at much lower cost. This isn’t just idle theorizing. The evidence shows that competition produces better results. That will be especially good news for children from poor […]
read more...School choice should be a slam-dunk issue. There’s very powerful evidence that we can provide superior education for lower cost if we shift away from monopoly government schools to a system based on parental choice. Yet some leftists oppose this reform, even though poor and minority kids would be the biggest beneficiaries. Here’s some of […]
read more...I don’t write or speak about education very much, but, when asked, I explain that America has a very costly and inefficient government school monopoly. The strongest piece of evidence is an amazing chart put together by a Cato colleague. It shows that education spending has skyrocketed while educational performance has stagnated. One of my […]
read more...The education people at Cato do remarkable work. They put together one of the best charts I’ve ever seen, and they are leading the fight for school choice and against any federal government role in education. This new video, showing the failure of Bush’s main education initiative, is one example of their great work. The […]
read more...School choice doesn’t automatically mean every child will be an educational success, but evidence from other nations certainly suggests it means better overall performance. Sweden, Chile, and the Netherlands are just some of the countries that have seen good results after breaking up state-run education monopolies. The same is true in the United States. When […]
read more...Forget the victory over the union bosses in Wisconsin. Yes, that was important, but school choice is an ever bigger threat to the left. Breaking the government education monopoly would reveal the inefficiency and incompetence of government, while simultaneously threatening the power of the National Education Association, which is a major source of money and […]
read more...School choice should be the civil rights issue of the 21st century. Rich people already have school choice, both because they have the ability to live in good school districts and they have the resources to send their kids to private schools. The children of poor people, by contrast, are warehoused in failing government schools. […]
read more...You wouldn’t expect any positive developments from California when it comes to schooling, but this video shows that parents now have the ability, for all intents and purposes, to fire the incumbent management of a government school. I don’t think this is nearly as good as what’s being proposed in Douglas County, Colorado, but it’s […]
read more...