Education

SEATTLE, Sept. 9, 2015 Charter schools and school choice are on the edge of extinction nationwide thanks to Washington State’s Supreme Court’s ruling outlawing charter schools, according to Discovery Institute Senior Fellow Don Nielsen. The ruling was immediately deemed “as politically driven as it is overreaching and legally flawed” by The Wall Street Journal, and Nielsen, a former Seattle School Board president agrees. “Washington’s Supreme Court made a mockery of the law. Our state’s charter school law was filed with the attorney general’s office three years ago and was fully vetted both in terms of its legality and constitutionality,” said Nielsen. “Further, the attorney general’s office worded the initiative to ensure it was clear and unambiguous, then the voters approved Read More ›

By Donald Nielsen
Originally published in The Hill

Conservatives and liberals alike may rejoice at the notion that 2015 brings with it a chance to revamp the controversial 2001 No Child Left Behind Act. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) will be the new chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, and has said that his top priority is a revision of NCLB.

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Conservatives and liberals alike may rejoice at the notion that 2015 brings with it a chance to revamp the controversial 2001 No Child Left Behind Act. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) will be the new chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, and has said that his top priority is a revision of NCLB. Alexander is on the Read More ›

Unemployment is foremost on everyone’s mind today. Yet jobs can continue to leave the U.S. because of the threat of new taxes, the convergence of technology, the ease of digital collaboration and ready access to abundant foreign engineering talent. Multinational corporate executives may have to move R&D, product development, management and manufacturing overseas when there is no longer a comparative Read More ›

For all the praise and criticism surrounding the Supreme Court decision against the Seattle school district’s racial tiebreaker, not enough has been said about the policy’s impact on students of all races — how students before the litigation were denied the choice of a neighborhood high school, and how hundreds of future students, had the School Board prevailed, would have Read More ›

This article, published by PR Web, mentions Discovery Institute: In July 2000, the Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based think-tank, published an extensive report on homeschooling written by Senior Fellow Dr. Patricia Lines. She describes several controlled studies comparing the social skills of homeschoolers and non-homeschoolers. The rest of the article can be found here.

Discovery Senior Fellow Patricia Lines, an expert on homeschooling, has released a new educational guide on integrating homeschooling with public education in ways that benefit both schools and parents. The guide, Support for Home-Based Education: Pioneering Partnerships Between Public Schools and Families Who Instruct Their Children at Home, is published by the Educational Resources Information Center at the University of Read More ›

With charter schools almost a legislative reality in Washington State, don’t miss the chance to hear Discovery board member and charter school advocate Jim Spady talk about the promise of these schools for children. He will be participating in an hour-long discussion on Seattle’s KUOW 94.9 FM station on charter schools tomorrow, April 10, from 10 to 11 a.m. If Read More ›