Neal McCluskey

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.

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

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 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.

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.

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

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.

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. 

While some referenda on school choice failed, public support is high, showing momentum toward a more flexible, peaceable education system.

The federal government furnishes a relatively tiny amount of K‑12 funding—but the feds need relatively little money to exert powe