Education

How Pennsylvania Teachers Salaries Stack Up

  • Priya Brannick
  • September 12, 2012

If the Chicago teachers union walk-out on school children or the WGAL story on sick-time pay has you wondering about teacher salaries in Pennsylvania, you’re in luck. Our…

Media

Read More: How Pennsylvania Teachers Salaries Stack Up

Education

PSBA Chooses Scores Over Kids

  • Nathan Benefield
  • September 5, 2012

Yesterday, Priya posted on how a Philadelphia area family faces criminal charges for trying to put their child in a better school, while demand for Pennsylvania’s new Opportunity Scholarship…

Media

Read More: PSBA Chooses Scores Over Kids

Education

Is Caring for Your Kids Criminal?

  • Priya Brannick
  • September 4, 2012

Hamlet and Olesia Garcia are facing criminal charges in Montgomery County for enrolling their daughter in the suburban Lower Moreland Township school district when they appear to live in…

Media

Read More: Is Caring for Your Kids Criminal?

Education

Opportunity Scholarships a “Choice for a Better Future”

  • Priya Brannick
  • August 24, 2012

This week, the Times-Herald of Montgomery County published my letter to the editor on underperforming schools and why Pennsylvania’s new opportunity scholarships matter: In “Norristown School…

Media

Read More: Opportunity Scholarships a “Choice for a Better Future”

Regulation

Popping Popular Privatization Myths

  • July 16, 2012

When short on facts, blow a lot of hot air. That’s the strategy of liquor store union boss Wendell Young IV. Wendell and I were panelists on a recent Delaware County…

Media

Read More: Popping Popular Privatization Myths

Public Union Democracy

Union Bosses Fight to Stay Relevant

  • Priya Brannick
  • July 12, 2012

Labor unions are so livid that the Democratic Party is having its national convention in North Carolina—a right to work state, and the country’s least unionized—that they are staging…

Media

Read More: Union Bosses Fight to Stay Relevant

Education

School Choice Expansion in Pennsylvania

  • Nathan Benefield
  • July 11, 2012

The fiscal year 2012-13 state budget increases the Educational Improvement Tax Credit by $25 million to $100 million and creates a new $50 million tax credit for Opportunity Scholarships—effectively doubling…

Memo

Read More: School Choice Expansion in Pennsylvania

Taxes & Economy

This Independence Day, You and I Have No Right

  • Charles Mitchell
  • July 4, 2012

This morning, spurred by a blog post by Bill Kristol, I’ve been reading an Independence Day oration given by the famed abolitionist Frederick Douglass in 1852, during the run-up to…

Media

Read More: This Independence Day, You and I Have No Right

Education

Kids 5 Times as Likely to Suffer Violence at Pa.’s Worst Schools

  • June 26, 2012

Pennsylvania’s worst schools don’t just compromise our children’s education and future success – they compromise our children’s safety.  Kids attending Pennsylvania’s worst academically performing public schools are more than…

Media

Read More: Kids 5 Times as Likely to Suffer Violence at Pa.’s Worst Schools