Category: General News
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Nation’s Wealthy, Seeing Void, Take Steps to Aid Public Schools
Thursday, September 23, 1999 in New York Times By JACQUES STEINBERG Long dismissed as the runts in the family of philanthropy, public schools and their students are getting fresh attention from high-profile donors plainly concerned about the nation’s academic future. Rather than donating only to their college alma maters, the wealthy givers — including George…
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Break Up the Education Monopoly
Thursday, September 9, 1999 in Wall Street Journal By Ted Forstmann Recently a federal judge in Cleveland snatched tuition vouchers away from 3,600 children the day before school started — only to restore the funding three days later in response to a public uproar. This reinforces what John Walton and I learned earlier this year…
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A Look At…School Vouchers: The Public Revolution Private Money Could Bring
Sunday, May 19, 1999 in Washington Post By Terry M. Moe American education is in the midst of a revolution. In another decade or two, we’ll look back at the 1990s as a truly pivotal time–and at certain events that were especially influential. One of them began last summer, when businessmen Theodore Forstmann and John…
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Itching to Get Out of Public School
Monday, May 10, 1999 in Business Week By Richard A. Melcher in Chicago and Aaron Bernstein in Washington A new scholarship fund heats up the debate over vouchers. Quantina Samuels, a single mother of two honor students in Washington, D.C.,’s public schools, is proud of her offspring. But she wishes they could have the attention…
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A Gauge of Distress with Public Schools
Thursday, May 6, 1999 in San Francisco Chronicle By Joseph A. Califano Jr. I HAVE WITNESSED decades of an education debate in which warring statistics and clashing studies often serve more to obscure than to illuminate. But on April 21, something extraordinary happened. A new verdict rocked the educational establishment. It was issued not by…
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Let Parents Choose Their Kids’ Schools
Thursday, April 29, 1999 in Los Angeles Times SCHOLARSHIPS, OR VOUCHERS, WILL ALLOW THEM THE OPTION OF FINDING A DECENT EDUCATION. By ANDREW YOUNG Certain flash points in America’s civil rights struggle represent moments of moral awakening: Rosa Parks’ refusal to give up her bus seat; John Lewis’ beating at the Edmund Pettus Bridge; Martin…
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Competition Will Improve Education
Wednesday, April 28, 1999 in Kansas City Star BY JERRY HEASTER A couple of well-heeled American businessmen are adding a huge competitive dimension to the public education market that shows promise of evolving into a significant spur to the school-choice movement. Their recently launched effort is creating 40,000 four-year scholarships for mostly inner-city kids from…
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We Must Give Parents Choices in Education
Wednesday, April 28, 1999 in Chicago Sun-Times On April 21, the lives of 40,000 American children changed overnight. Through the Children’s Scholarship Fund, these low-income kindergarten through eighth-graders were given four-year scholarships to the school of their choice. The prospects for these children is now much brighter — prospects for graduating from high school, attending…
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City Schools Should Welcome Competition
Tuesday, April 27, 1999 in Baltimore Sun BY Howard Baetjer Jr. WHEN IT was announced last week that 500 low-income Baltimore children had won scholarships to private and parochial schools of their choice, the naysayers came out in force. Some people interviewed by Sun reporters claimed that such a scholarship program encourages parents to flee…
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Public Lives: A Latter-Day Warbucks, Helping Children
Tuesday, April 27, 1999 in New York Times By JAN HOFFMAN WHEN a 59-year-old bachelor who is also a Wall Street titan puts up $50 million of his own to help 40,000 poor children attend private school, it seems only reasonable to ask, Why is he doing this? Sprawling on a couch recently in his…