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Study: School Vouchers May Lead to Lasting Positive Outcomes

featuring Paul E. Petersonvia Heartland Institute
Wednesday, February 18, 2015

A study by Matthew M. Chingos of the Brookings Institution and Paul E. Peterson of Harvard University confirms a positive long-term effect of school vouchers for minority children. The results of the study should lead to more support for school choice options, Chingos said in an interview with School Reform News.

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Blogs

The Future Of School Accountability

by Chester E. Finn Jr.via Education Next
Tuesday, February 10, 2015

Recent days have brought several thoughtful commentaries on results-based accountability in K-12 education, why it’s important, what it’s accomplished and why it needs to continue.

Articles
Featured Commentary

NCLB Accountability is Dead; Long Live ESEA Testing

by Chester E. Finn Jr.via Education Next
Friday, February 6, 2015

It’s fascinating—and telling—how rapidly the zillion issues tucked away in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act have been distilled down to arguments about testing.

Articles
Other Media

American Teachers Might Not Work Such Long Hours After All

quoting Eric Hanushekvia Slate
Thursday, February 5, 2015

There’s little question that American schoolteachers work hard. But a new report suggests they probably don’t work quite as many hours as many prominent scholars and journalists have long believed.

Articles
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Climate Change within New York's Democratic Leadership: Will There Be More Parental Choice in Education?

quoting Chester E. Finn Jr.via Independent Women's Forum
Thursday, January 29, 2015

While New York seems to be weathering Winter Storm Juno well, former U.S. Secretary of Education and president emeritus at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute Chester E. Finn, Jr., recently noted another climate shift change in the Empire State. New York. Finn explains in a recent New York Daily News editorial:

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To Expand Opportunity, Expand School Choice

mentioning Caroline M. Hoxbyvia Congress Blog (The Hill)
Monday, January 26, 2015

Americans are free to choose where to live and work, what products to buy, and which services to use. But there is one important sphere in which Americans do not have freedom of choice—education, both primary and secondary.

Articles
Featured Commentary

Thanks to Gov. Cuomo, Preet Bharara And Sheldon Silver, It Was A Huge Week For Education Reform

by Chester E. Finn Jr.via New York Daily News
Friday, January 23, 2015

Is Cuomo the first Democratic governor ever to propose a program of private-school choice for kids and families in his state?

Articles
Other Media

How Tuition Tax Credits Fuel The Higher-Ed Industrial Complex

mentioning Caroline M. Hoxbyvia National Review Online
Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Over the past several days, President Obama has released a serious of ambitious domestic policy proposals that he will more formally unveil in tonight’s State of the Union address. Most of these proposals, thankfully, will be blocked by Republicans in Congress.

Articles
Education and finance
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When Public Schools Get More Money, Students Do Better

quoting Eric Hanushekvia Washington Post
Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Beginning 40 years ago, a series of court rulings forced states to reallocate money for education, giving more to schools in poor neighborhoods with less in the way of local resources. Critics such as Eric Hanushek, an economist at the Hoover Institution, argued these decisions were simply "throwing money at schools." 

Articles
Graduation
Blogs

Exit, Voice, Loyalty—And The Common Core

by Williamson M. Eversvia Education Next
Monday, January 19, 2015

One of the most influential books in social science in the last 50 years is economist Albert O. Hirschman’s Exit, Voice, and Loyalty.

Articles

Pages

Koret Task Force Timeline 1998-2014

Research Themes

What Lies Ahead
Choice and Federalism
American Education in 2030

Task Force Findings

Education in the Media, 2012
Best and Worst of 2011
Best and Worst of 2010

Featured CommentaryFeatured Commentary

Single-Parent Families: Revisiting the Moynihan Report 50 Years Later

Thursday, March 5, 2015

The Spring 2015 issue of Education Next is dedicated to revisiting on its 50th anniversary Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s 1965 report “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action” (generally referred to as the Moynihan Report). The issue features articles by leading scholars that document changes in family structure over the last 50 years and discuss the policy approaches that might be undertaken to address the social problems that have accompanied these changes.

Event
Other Media

Joel Klein on Lessons of Hope: How to Fix Our Schools

Monday, December 8, 2014
Hoover Institution, Washington DC

During his eight-year term as New York City schools chancellor, Joel Klein presided over some of the nation’s most promising education reforms. One hundred charter schools opened on Klein’s watch (including KIPP and Uncommon Schools).

Event
Global Education

Peterson discusses US education in global perspective

Thursday, May 15, 2014

On Tuesday, May 13, Hoover senior fellow Paul Peterson discussed his study, conducted with fellow researchers Eric Hanushek (also a Hoover senior fellow) and Ludger Woessmann, which compares US children to other students in developed countries. The event, held at Harvard University, was recorded live and can be watched here. The study culminated in a book entitled Endangering Prosperity: A Global View of the American School. The Hoover sponsored publication EducationNext also ran several articles using the data from the study, one of which can be found here.

News
What Lies Ahead for America's Children and Their Schools

What Lies Ahead for America’s Children and Their Schools Examines Prospects for Education Reform in the United States

Tuesday, March 4, 2014
Stanford

The Hoover Institution Press released What Lies Ahead for America’s Children and Their Schools,  an assessment by the Hoover Institution’s Koret Task Force on K–12 Education.  This profound work examines both the potential gains and the pitfalls that lie ahead for primary- and secondary-school education in the United States. 

Press Releases
Hoover's Koret Task Force on K-12 Education timeline, 1998-2014.

Koret Task Force on K-12 Education Reaches Milestone

Friday, February 21, 2014

The year 2014 marks the sixteenth year of work by Hoover’s Koret Task Force on K-12 Education. The eleven-member task force first met in 1999 and established as its mission to present pertinent facts about K–12 education, contribute to the debate with constructive commentary, and generate new ideas for education reform.

News
Sal Khan speaks at the Hoover Institution

Founder of Khan Academy Speaks at Hoover Institution

Monday, February 3, 2014

It began with concern over his faraway cousin’s problems with middle school math. Today, the initiative that Sal Khan started in August 2004 to help his cousin has grown into the Khan Academy, which reaches ten million users a month in nearly every country in the world.

Khan, the founder and executive director of the Khan Academy, gave the keynote address at the Hoover Institution’s symposium on Blended Learning in K–12 Education on January 16, 2014. Blended learning is the integration of classroom teaching with online lectures, exercises, and tutorials (such as those offered by the Khan Academy) that can viewed either at home or in the classroom at the student’s own pace.

News
Hoover senior fellow Caroline Hoxby

Hoxby named recipient of Smithsonian’s American Ingenuity Award

Monday, November 25, 2013

Hoover senior fellow Caroline M. Hoxby has been named one of the nine recipients of the Smithsonian’s annual American Ingenuity Awards for her research in encouraging low-income students to apply to and attend elite universities. Read the article summarizing her work or see the other award winners.

News
Hoover senior fellow Caroline M. Hoxby.

Hoxby featured on NBC News’s Master Class

Wednesday, October 23, 2013

On October 10, 2013, Caroline Hoxby was featured on NBC News's Master Class in a lecture entitled “Opportunity, Meritocracy, and Access to Higher Education.”

News
Endangering Prosperity: A Global View of the American School

In a new video and book, Hoover senior fellows Hanushek and Peterson explain how American schools are failing American citizens

Wednesday, September 11, 2013

Dashton is enthusiastic about the number thirty-two. Find out why.

News
Walkway heading towards the School of Education and Hoover senior fellow and mem

Hoxby on expanding opportunities for low-income students

Monday, August 19, 2013

Caroline Hoxby, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, has dedicated years of research to finding out why low-income students aren’t applying to colleges that are their academic match. A recent study shows that awareness is the key. Students who received materials from Hoxby’s Expanding College Opportunities Project informing them about the available financial support and the likelihood of attaining a higher-paying job if they attended a selective college were 46 percent more likely to go to a top school than equally strong students who did not receive one.

News

Pages

Significant gifts for the support of this task force are acknowledged from

  • Koret Foundation
  • Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation
  • Mrs. Edmund W. Littlefield
  • Bernard Lee Schwartz Foundation, Inc.
  • Tad and Dianne Taube
    Taube Family Foundation

The K–12 Education Task Force focuses on education policy as it relates to government provision and oversight versus private solutions (both within and outside the public school system) that stress choice, accountability, and transparency; that include systematic reform options such as vouchers, charter schools, and testing; and that weigh equity concerns against outcome objectives.

Its collaborative efforts spawned a quarterly journal titled Education Next, one of the premier publications on public education research policy in the nation.

Chester E. Finn, Jr. serves as chair of the Task Force on K–12 education.