Tax Credits for Private Tuition, Arizona House Bill 2074

State of Arizona ——— Senate Engrossed House Bill House of Representatives Forty-third Legislature First Regular Session, 1997 House Bill 2074 An Act Amending section 43-1021, Arizona revised statutes; Amending Title 43, Chapter 10, Article 5, Arizona Revised Statutes, by adding sections 43-1087 and 43-1088; relating to individual income taxation. Be it enacted by the legislature […]

Educating Arizona: Credit Where Credit’s Due

Arizona’s public education establishment has gone on red alert, talking about a possible lawsuit or ballot referendum as a strategy to derail a $500 income-tax credit for private-school scholarships. Governor J. Fife Symington III (R) signed the measure into law on April 7. For many parents now worried about low test scores, high drop-out rates […]

Choice, Polls and the American Way

Anti-Choice Some weeks ago, a Calvert reporter went to a conference jointly hosted by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and People for the American Way (PFAW), a liberal organization founded in 1980 by Norman Lear. The NAACP/PFAW marriage goes under the name, “Partners for Public Education,” a partnership whose mission, […]

Civility: Key to Genuine School Reform

When they met last spring for the “Education Summit II,” the nation’s governors and several prominent corporate executives hoped to light a fire under American education. It needs it. The meeting’s co-chairmen, IBM chief executive Louis V. Gerstner, Jr. and Wisconsin Governor Tommy G. Thompson (R), started out under no illusions. Gerstner pointed out that […]

Taking Charge: How Citizens Can Help Kids when Government Won’t

At the same time that Baltimore Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke (D) was announcing plans to appoint a task force to explore different options for providing school choice for parents, a new group was being chartered in Maryland – a Baltimore version of the Children’s Educational Opportunity Foundation (known as CEO America). Like the original group, […]

Montgomery Innovations: Lessons for Baltimore?

One of the education establishment’s defenses of its poor performance (in relation to private and parochial schools) is that non-public schools are selective. That is, private and parochial schools may choose their own students, leaving the most difficult students for the public schools to deal with. This is used as a rationale to justify annual […]

Public v. Private Schools: A Reality Check on the BCPS

So how are vouchers doing?” asks columnist Clarence Page in a March 15 piece in the Baltimore Sun, preposterously titled, “A Reality Check on School Vouchers.” “Unfortunately,” he opines sternly, “the marketplace produces disasters along with miracles.” School choice falls into the former category, apparently. Two — yes, two — of the private schools participating […]