Cascade CounterPoint

Full text: January 21-27 is National School Choice Week, the world’s largest annual celebration of parental choice and effective education options for all children. In 2024, 183 Oregon schools and organizations will participate in National School Choice Week to raise awareness about K-12 education in our state.

The landscape of options for Oregon students includes district public schools, public charter schools, private and parochial schools, homeschooling, magnet schools, online learning, and microschools. Different learning environments meet the needs of unique students in the ways they learn best.

Empowering parents to choose among all options unlocks the potential of each child. Last year, seventeen states enacted or expanded school choice programs. Approximately 20 million American children—about 36% of students—are now eligible to participate in a private choice program.

As part of National School Choice Week, Education Freedom for Oregon and the National School Choice Awareness Foundation will host a school fair at the Salem Convention Center on Saturday, January 20th. This free event will showcase Oregon schools representing a range of education options. Attendees can meet educators and get questions answered to help make informed choices for their families.

For more information about this fun, family-friendly event, visit https://schoolchoiceweek.com/events/salem-school-fair-2024/.

Full text: In 2023, eight states passed universal or near-universal educational choice laws. Education Savings Accounts, vouchers, and education tax credits are different policy approaches; but the goal of each is the same: to put parents “in the driver’s seat” of their kids’ education.

A strong majority of voters agree that parents should be able to choose among schools and resources they believe will best meet their children’s academic and developmental needs. Here are three ideas for expanding education options for Oregon students:

Approximately 20 million American children are eligible to participate in a private choice program. Oregon should learn from the ten states that now offer universal school choice and expand options for students here, so families can match their children’s needs and goals with the educational environments that will serve them well.

Full-text: During the holidays, the Oregon Department of Energy quietly updated a chart it maintains showing where Oregon’s electricity comes from. The chart shows that from 2012 through 2021, Oregon’s dependence on fossil fuels increased from 44.7% to 46.3% of annual electricity consumed.

This may come as a surprise to people who thought Oregon was phasing out fossil fuels. Indeed, the Oregon legislature banned coal in 2016 and natural gas in 2021, and mandated that most new electricity come from large wind and solar farms.

The problem is that wind and solar facilities are classified as “intermittent” sources because they don’t generate electricity most of the time. In order to keep the lights on, grid operators must rely on natural gas plants to maintain voltage and frequency. Thus, even though the market share of wind generation went up from 5% to 9% over the past decade, natural gas generation increased from 12% to 24%.

Hydropower is also a good balancing mechanism for intermittent sources, but the era of big dam-building is over. In fact, hydropower capacity in the Northwest will steadily shrink over the coming decades as dams are decommissioned to protect

PGE rates are rising by 18% this month, in part due to the phase-out of fossil fuels. But the ban will never work, because the grid needs reliable power sources.

Sometime between now and 2030, the legislature will be forced to extend the lifespan of natural gas plants, just as California has done repeatedly since 2017. The sooner politicians admit that they made a mistake, the sooner we can address the looming shortage of electricity in Oregon.

Full text: Christmas came early for children and parents in Pennsylvania when the state legislature expanded funding for their K-12 education tax-credit programs in mid-December. Almost 80,000 lower-income children receive scholarships to attend private schools chosen by their families through Pennsylvania’s two school choice programs. The approved increase reportedly will fund about 35,000 more scholarships.

Pennsylvania has two school choice programs that help children from low-to-middle-income families attend private schools. The Educational Improvement Tax Credit Program and the Opportunity Scholarship Tax Credit offer tax credits to businesses that voluntarily donate to scholarship-granting organizations and other groups that promote educational improvement.

The bipartisan agreement to expand educational opportunity in Pennsylvania is a victory for families over political differences in a “purple state.” Colleen Hroncich of CATO’s Center for Educational Freedom and Sharon Sedlar of PA Families for Education Choice pointed out in a recent op-ed that “[s]upport for giving families a say in education is broad and bipartisan, but it often gets stymied by political fights in state legislatures.” The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board noted, “All House Democrats and most in the Senate supported the legislation, which included funding for public schools and other provisions.” Policymakers across the political spectrum are realizing that opportunity and choice in education are important to a lot of parents who live and vote in their states.

Full text: Nationwide polling this year revealed seventy-one percent of voters say parents should “have the right to use tax dollars designated for their child’s education to send their child to the public or private school which best serves their needs.” State policymakers should note it’s increasingly important to families to match their children’s educational needs with school environments that serve them best.

Oregon should expand students’ education options, and many ways exist to achieve that successfully. In a December article in Forbes, Michael McShane, Director of National Research at Ed Choice, explains why 2023 should be called “The Year of Universal School Choice”:

"Policymakers in 40 states debated 111 educational choice bills….As the months ticked by, a total of seven states enacted new choice programs and 10 expanded ones already in operation….[E]ight states have joined Arizona and West Virginia in offering all students choice, making 2023 the Year of Universal Choice….[A]pproximately 20 million students—or 36 percent—are now eligible for a private choice program.”

Ten states now have universal or near-universal school choice laws: seven Education Savings Account programs, two voucher programs, and one tax credit program. Each of these approaches empowers parents to choose the best education options for their children. States can learn valuable lessons from each other’s policy approaches as they craft programs that suit the needs of their own families and voters.

Full text: The New York Times published an editorial November 18 regarding learning losses experienced by K-12 students since the COVID-19 pandemic. The editorial board’s recommendations are predictable: spend more money, combat chronic absenteeism, and increase teacher compensation.

CATO education policy analyst Colleen Hroncich takes a more incisive approach.

“We’ve spent a lot of time and money on the system‐​focused approach,” Hroncich writes. “Let’s try focusing on the kids now….

“Pouring more money into the system and making children spend more time there isn’t what’s needed. It is individual children who are struggling, so they need individual—not system-focused—help….”

“One size does not fit all when it comes to education….School choice programs that allow state funding to be used for private schools or home education expenses are spreading. While no state had universal school choice in 2020, 10 states now have universal or nearly universal programs.

“More of the same is not the solution for what ails our education system. All states should move to universal choice so all kids can attend the learning environments that work for them.”

The student-focused approach represented by school choice addresses many of the problems raised by the Times. School choice empowers parents to match their students with the teachers, schools, and learning environments that best keep them engaged on the path to educational success.

Full text: At the Portland Public Schools board meeting last week, the Portland Association of Teachers and the school board members were united on one issue: They all blamed the state legislature for the November teachers strike. However, parents should be aware of the following sections of the new PPS contract:

If teachers get paid for not working and there is no student discipline, more money from the legislature won’t solve the district’s problems.

Full text: For those of us who came of age in the 1970s, the conventional wisdom was that cars were gas guzzlers and the environmentally correct way to travel was via transit.

That is no longer the case.

Last month the Federal Transit Agency (FTA) released its 2022 National Transit Database. According to Oregon economist Randal O’Toole, the results show that transit used more energy per passenger-mile than the average car or light truck in every urban area. Transit vehicles also emitted more greenhouse gasses than the average car or light truck in every urban area except New York.

Local planners seem to have missed this development. Metro’s proposed Regional Transportation Plan, which the agency will adopt in early December, recommends that we provide more funding for TriMet and take measures to increases ridership as a means of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Obviously this strategy will fail, because transit itself is failing.

TriMet’s share of all regional trips today is about 4%, which means it’s irrelevant to most regional travelers. This suggests that it’s time to reconsider the basic purpose of the agency. Ridership peaked in 2012, and there is no evidence that it will ever come back. If there are few riders and transit vehicles are less efficient than cars, what is the point?

Full-text: Oklahoma’s Parental Choice Tax Credit Program is the first universal, refundable tax credit for K-12 education expenses. Education Tax Credits: Restoring Trust in Families, a new report published by yes. every kid., explains how education tax credits can be a direct, unbureaucratic approach to expanding education options for all students.

“Personal education tax credits,” the report says, “are tax credits received by a parent or guardian for educating his or her student outside of the existing public school system. They are a simple way to give families support to offset the cost of educational expenses by returning their taxes to them and, in some cases, providing them with a refund.” Following the model of the federal Child Tax Credit, education tax credits “provide families direct funding with little bureaucratic interference and allow families to spend these funds in the most flexible way.”

The report recommends that states looking to enact a strong education tax credit policy should ensure that it applies to all families, retains parental autonomy over education decisions, ensures administrative efficiency, and is built on a sustainable basis.

Ten states now have universal or near-universal school choice laws: seven Education Savings Account programs, two voucher programs, and one tax credit program. Each of these approaches empowers parents to choose the best education options for their children. States can learn valuable lessons from each other’s policy approaches as they craft programs that suit the needs of their own families and voters.

Full text: The homeschool landscape is changing. Our approach to school funding should, too.

A recent Washington Post study found that homeschooling is booming in popularity. In districts with available data, the homeschool population has grown on average 51% since the 2017-2018 school year.

Homeschooled students do not come from one ideological, racial, political, or religious background. The reasons families choose homeschooling are also diverse. Homeschoolers come from liberal districts and conservative districts alike, with diverse cultural makeups, pointing to the benefits of homeschooling and other non-traditional education settings for children from all walks of life.

As education options expand, states should let education funding follow the students so they can learn in the environments that best meet their needs. In 2023, school choice programs don’t serve one interest group. They serve everyone. States that are enacting school choice laws are helping families find the right fit for their children to succeed, whether that’s through public, charter, magnet, private, online, or home education. All children should have the opportunity to learn in the schools that are best for them.