The Steele Commission Report: A Lost Opportunity To Debate Vouchers In Maryland

By Kirk A. Johnson, Ph.D.
Published on Wednesday, September 14, 2005
On September 14, 2005, the Governor’s Commission on Quality Education in Maryland, dubbed the “Steele Commission” because of its chairman, Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele, released its final report—the culmination of a year-long investigation of Maryland’s K-12 public schools. While there are a number of both positive and troubling recommendations, the report fails to even mention school vouchers as a way to improve the educational prospects of children trapped in too many failing Maryland schools. Read More »

Top Five Myths of School Vouchers and Why They Should Not Impede Education Reform in Maryland

By Kirk A. Johnson, Ph.D.
Published on Monday, September 12, 2005
In many regards, public education in Maryland is a broken system in that it does not work well for many children living in the Old Line State. Recent press on the state of education in Maryland’s public schools clearly shows this. Read More »

School Options Opening Up For Parents

Originally Published in The Baltimore Sun

By Alison Lake
Published on Tuesday, August 16, 2005
It was once unfashionable, even unpatriotic, to criticize one’s local public school, and for years mainstream media were reluctant to reveal a systemic decline of public education. For better or worse, No Child Left Behind changed all that. Suddenly, schools became accountable and their shortcomings were made public. That was four years ago. Read More »

A School Voucher Program for Baltimore City

By Dan Lips
Published on Tuesday, July 19, 2005
Baltimore City’s public school system is in crisis. Academically, the school system fails on any number of measures. The city’s graduation rate is barely above 50 percent and students continually lag well behind state averages on standardized tests. Adding to these problems is the school system’s current fiscal crisis, created by years of fiscal mismanagement that has now caused multimillion dollar budget deficits. Despite persistent problems in the city’s public schools, city officials continue to oppose studentcentered, parent-directed school choice reform proposals such as school vouchers. Such voucher programs have proven successful in other cities, such as Milwaukee and Cleveland, which have seen test scores and parental satisfaction climb. Washington D.C. was the most recent city to launch a school voucher program. More than a thousand low-income students were awarded vouchers for the fall of 2004. This paper explores how Baltimore could enact a similar school voucher program. It examines the current state of the Baltimore City school system and considers other cities’ experiences with vouchers. Read More »

Baltimore City Should Open its Doors to Charter Schools

Originally Published in The Washington Times

By Kirk A. Johnson, Ph.D.
Published on Wednesday, June 01, 2005
Baltimore City’s perennially problematic public school system is once again crying poverty, this time, over required funding of the new charter schools scheduled to open this fall in Baltimore. On May 6, 2005, the Maryland State Board of Education ruled that students in charter schools must have a per pupil funding amount equal to what other local public school children receive. Therefore, if students leave the traditional public schools and start attending a charter school in Baltimore, nearly $11,000 will accompany each student to the new public charter school. Read More »

How to Strengthen Maryland’s Charter School Law

Maryland Policy Update No. 2005-3

By Kirk A. Johnson, Ph.D.
Published on Monday, April 11, 2005
Imagine you are an entrepreneur who wants to open a new hamburger restaurant in a city. You are bright, eager, experienced, and ready to take on a new challenge to compete for customers against the well-established McDonald’s and Burger Kings of the region. Read More »

Maryland and Virginia Students Deserve More Choices

Originally Published in the Washington Times

By Dan Lips
Published on Friday, April 01, 2005
Nikia Hammond is a singlemother, working hard to provide for her four elementary-school children. She's also on the front lines of a national debate about education reform. Read More »

Simple Yet Significant Lessons

Originally Published in The Fresno Bee

By Christopher B. Summers
Published on Sunday, November 14, 2004
It seems that you can hardly pick up a newspaper today or turn on the local TV news in Maryland without reading more doom-and-gloom about the condition of education in the state. Read More »

Beyond the Thornton Commission Proposal

By Dan Lips
Published on Monday, May 17, 2004
In 2002, the Maryland General Assembly approved Senate Bill 856, requiring the state to provide an additional $1.1 billion for public education by 2008. The legislation formally committed the state to the proposal by the Thornton Commission on Education Finance, Equity and Excellence to boost the amount of per-pupil state aid to education from $3,500 to more than $5,600—an increase of 63 percent.1 The following year, new governor Robert Ehrlich’s office submitted the first budget to include funding for the Thornton proposal. Read More »

Education’s Less-Traveled Road

Originially Published in the Daily Record

By Dan Lips
Published on Friday, April 09, 2004
Facing a fork in the road, Robert Frost famously took the path less traveled. That choice, he wrote, “has made all the difference.” Last Friday (2/27), the Maryland Senate offered Gov. Robert Ehrlich his own two roads. Following the recommendations of the Thornton Commission, the Senate overwhelmingly voted to increase state education spending by $1.3 billion. For Ehrlich, deciding whether to veto the legislation will surely make all the difference. Read More »