Posted 9:13 AM by Susan Darst Williams

SCHOOL CHOICE PROPONENTS
URGE INCENTIVES FOR TUITION ASSISTANCE SCHOLARSHIPS

Next week is School Choice Week! Woo hoo! Here's an on-point newsletter from Nebraskans For School Choice. Click the link in the lower right-hand corner:

http://www.nebraskansforschoolchoice.org/

The best thing for Nebraska education would be to start loosening up the death grip of the government and union monopoly, and inspire some innovation and competition from the private sector.

The best way to do that is to get some incentives and inducements in place to get some much-needed capital into the in-baskets of the private school community.

And the best way to do THAT is to pass a tuition assistance scholarship law in the Nebraska Unicameral. That would spur individuals, foundations and nonprofits to donate money to offset tuition for low-income students to attend private schools.

Nebraskans For School Choice has a new newsletter out that has the key state senators' contact information, and a fervent plea for you to push for this much-needed change in our ed landscape.

Labels: proposed law to get needy kids into private schools in Nebraska, school choice in Nebraska, tuition assistance in Nebraska

Posted 9:50 PM by Susan Darst Williams

NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTION:
TO BE A FAITHFUL REPORTER THIS YEAR!

Resolving to post a lot more often from now on. So let's get cracking:

Really liked Nydra Karlen's Public Pulse letter about the absence of meaningful school choice under Nebraska law. The competition that would be introduced in Omaha through enabling legislation for charter schools would be a big help for the disadvantaged kids trapped in ineffective schools.

Scroll down to her letter:
http://www.omaha.com/article/20111223/NEWS0802/712239980

She also points out how the education bureaucracy, when faced with a problem, tends to "paper" over it with more and more layers of programs and regulations and "solutions" . . . instead of getting rid of the problem with a fresh, new, data-proven solution.

The meta-analysis of Omaha's education problems is convincing, that the solution is in the private sector, with privately-run schools. The private sector has shown that it does a better job with needy kids, utilizing better leadership, management and skill players (teachers) who know how to use the right curricula, rather than leaving kids in the government infrastructure that has failed so many of them for so many years.

Labels: absence of school choice in Nebraska, school choice in Nebraska, solution for Omaha Public Schools is private sector schooling