Neal McCluskey

Restructuring education from a government-controlled to a choice-driven system will not end values-based conflicts. Wherever two or more people get together, disagreements will likely occur. But it will lower the political stakes, and thus the heat, and enable people to more peacefully coexist. 

Over the last few years, the country has experienced especially heated culture war in public schools. But new data from Cato’s Public Schooling Battle Map suggest things might be cooling off.

Far from being a disaster, ending the Education Department and moving student lending to, say, the Treasury Department would almost certainly be an improvement.

The survey indicates that book conflicts are not as prevalent as they might seem from frequent media reports, but differences about what books are appropriate for schools are very real.

There has been a revolution in school choice over the past few years. After decades of slowly creating programs focused on students from low-income families, with disabilities, or assigned to public schools with poor academic outcomes, we have seen an explosion of “universal” programs that place no limits on who is eligible to receive funding for private educational options. This has changed the school choice debate, moving once largely theoretical questions into reality.

Vice president and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris is scheduled to speak to the national convention of the American Federation of Teachers, the country’s second-largest teacher union. She will almost certainly talk about raising teacher pay.

There’s Nothing “Absurd” or “Dangerous” about Ending the US Department of Education

Why inject religion into public schools? Why can families who want religious education not simply go to private institutions? Quite possibly because there are not enough religious schools to meet demand.

Yesterday, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry (R) signed legislation mandating the posting of the Ten Commandments in public schools. Thankfully, Governor Landry signed another bill yesterday offering the solution to the problem, though the state almost fumbled the ball.

Still, the overall findings suggest that public school libraries tend to give students access to a slanted field of opinions. That is a problem when everyone must fund these schools.

The most crucial education problem in the pandemic was not that public schools tended not to be in-person but that they forced one answer on everyone.

Peace, though, is not the primary reason to support educational freedom. That is liberty: Government taking money from everyone to fund schools it controls is fundamentally at odds with a free society.

The ability of private schools to better meet parent demand compared with public schools may help explain rising demand for private school education.

In our latest national survey of private school enrollment—released today—46 percent of schools reported enrollment increases between the 2022–23 and current school year, 30 percent reported no change, and 25 percent reported decreases.

Overall, the CCRA would take us closer to where we need to be – ideally, no federal aid – but it could go much further.

According to Cato’s Public Schooling Battle Map, 2023 was a record year for fighting with 465 conflicts, edging out 2022 with 463.

“Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.”

The most important finding is that K‑12 enrollment in private schools rose from 4,652,900 in 2019 to 4,731,300 in 2021.

A new Government Accountability Office report on the Biden administration’s student debt cancellation bonanza says the administration was doing too little to protect taxpayers.

People who attend college are poised to be major economic winners.