Education Reform Hotline

        The big news in school reform this week is undeniably the Children’s Scholarship Fund’s award of 40,000 scholarships to low-income children across the country on Wednesday.

        In the midst of the fervor about the intentions of the generous donors who provided these scholarships, one truth rings clear: inner city parents are dissatisfied with the public schools.  Parents who send their kids to public schools for nothing clamored for the opportunity to PAY the portion of private school tuition that these modest scholarships will not cover. One in five eligible families in Los Angeles applied for the opportunity to buy a better education for their children. One in four eligible families in Chicago made the same choice. In New York City, New Orleans, Newark, Philadelphia, and Washington DC the figure was one in three. And in Baltimore a whopping 44% of eligible families asked for the means to send their children to better schools.

        Who, in the face of these numbers, can possibly argue that the public system is meeting these families needs?

        Meanwhile, publicly funded school choice initiatives are on the legislative docket in Florida, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Arizona and Texas.

        In Florida both houses have passed versions of Jeb Bush’s education package, which presently contains a voucher program. Kudos to Floridians for School Choice for all their efforts to give lower-income Floridians access to quality education. For those wanting to know more about the voucher battle in the sunshine state, Floridians for School Choice maintains an informative home-page at www.floridians.org.

        And at long last, the latest edition of CER’s Charter School Directory will be available for purchase beginning next week! The fifth edition contains comprehensive information about the country’s more than 1200 charter schools. To place your orders, or for further information call the Center for Education Reform at 1-800-521-2118.

        Thank you for surfing into the Center for Education Reform’s hotline. Have a great week.

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The CER Newswire is published by The Center for Education Reform, the nation's leading authority on school reform. CER is dedicated to making schools better for America's children by improving educational access and excellence for all. CER works with parents, teachers and policymakers to advance meaningful education improvement initiatives.

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