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Network for Public Education Top 5 Priorities

Game On for Kansas Schools is among the grassroots organizations supporting this effort to promote effective education policy in the Biden administration. “The promises made during the campaign drew support from public education advocates across the nation. With those promises in mind, these are the top five K-12 priorities that they should keep at the forefront as they govern. 1. Rebuild our nation’s public schools, which have been battered by the pandemic, two decades of failed federal policy, and years of federal neglect. 2. Reject efforts to privatize public schools, whether those efforts be via vouchers or charter...
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Cash Balances Reminder: 2019 Kansas Legislative Post Audit Finding Recommended NO Changes to Kansas Schools Cash Balance Practices

BOOKMARK THIS FOR THE UPCOMING KANSAS LEGISLATIVE SESSION Anti-public education legislators and lobbyists love to criticize district cash balances, often choosing to look at the balances at particular times of the year (like right before August bills get paid) or failing to acknowledge that funds are responsibly used to build savings for future projects. The fact remains public schools are held to higher standards of transparency, accountability, checks & balances compared to non-public schools. One example is a recent Legislative Post Audit study of school district cash balances. Thanks to KASB’s Scott Rothschild for the concise summary of...
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PolicyWatch Report: NC Voucher Program Damaging Public Schools

Article Top Line: “New report says “Opportunity Scholarship” voucher programs undermine public education, foster division, and undermine children’s development while also costing the state millions.” We fully expect to see efforts to expand Kansas’s tax credit scholarship program and launch other voucher schemes. We continue to watch other states and oppose such efforts based on what we see over and over-expansions continue despite the damage these programs do and despite data showing they do not generally improve academic outcomes for students. “‘Financial concerns are just one negative aspect of voucher programs – even if the Opportunity Scholarship program...
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School Finance 101…A Flashback Read as We Begin Another Kansas Legislative Session

Below is a link to a 2017 blog by Bruce Baker, Professor in the Graduate School of Education at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey who has written many peer-reviewed articles on state school finance policy. “The necessity to revisit the basic connections between taxation and the provision of public goods[ii] comes about partly in response to a frequent argument of school choice (voucher and charter) advocates that the public tax dollars belong (or at least should belong) to the child, not the institutions (schools). Institutions – especially government institutions – are faceless bureaucracies, thus “bad” whereas...
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