Demography Is Still Not Destiny
PRI Policy Brief
11.30.10

This policy brief shows that Florida's low-income, Hispanic, and black fourth graders now outperform all California fourth graders on the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) reading assessment and attributes this striking gap to Florida's comprehensive education reform efforts combining accountability, transparency, and parental choice. 

GI Junior Scholarships
PRI Policy Brief
9.21.10

National Standards Still Don’t Make the Grade
PRI/PI Study
7.19.10

This study finds that adopting the final draft of proposed national education standards in English language arts (ELA) would result in a significant weakening of the intellectual demands placed on Massachusetts and California students in language and literature.

Fostering Opportunity and Improving Achievement: The Benefits of a Foster-Care Scholarship Program in California
PRI Study
By: Vicki E. Murray, Ph.D., and Evelyn B. Stacey
6.30.2010

This study, the first part of the Making the Pieces Fit series, finds that adopting a Florida-style foster-care scholarship program in California would have no negative impact to state and public-school budgets, improve school stability and the provision of specialized education services for foster-care students, and could help encourage adoptions by expanding access to high quality schools. 

Fair to Middling: A National Standards Progress Report
Pioneer Institute & PRI Study
4.2.2010

This study provides a detailed comparison of the March draft standards being proposed by the Common Core State Standards Initiative (CCSSI) and standards currently in place in states recognized to have high standards—California, Indiana, Massachusetts, Minnesota and Texas.

Why Race to the Middle?
Pioneer Institute & PRI Study
2.23.2010

The case for national standards rests on more than the need to equalize academic expectations for all students by remedying the uneven and often deplorable quality of most state standards and tests.

A 10th-Anniversary Retrospective on Proposition 227 and the “End” of Bilingual Education Read more
 

Right now, many middle-class parents complacently believe that things are great in their neighborhood public schools. Is that belief largely true or an illusion? If the latter, then bold action on the part of middle-class parents is overdue.

Research shows that state school accountability systems have a positive impact on student achievement, but only when states attach significant consequences to the performance or non-performance of schools. California’s school accountability system, unfortunately, is severely deficient in this crucial area of consequences.

No Bang for the New Tax Buck, The Many Flaws of Proposition 88
By: Lance T. Izumi, J.D. Rachel Chaney
10.1.2006 

Proposition 88, the “Classroom Learning and Accountability Act” on the November 7, 2006 ballot, embodies the timeworn trope from the education bureaucracy: Increased government spending on public education will improve the system and produce better results. The initiative would impose a statewide parcel tax on every property owner in California, and funnel the revenue into programs in five different areas of education.

Overall, government spending on education in California is running at record levels. The recently approved 2006-2007 state budget allocates $55.1 billion to education — by far the largest part of the budget. That amount represents a 17-percent increase over state education spending just two years earlier. If local and federal tax dollars are added to state funding, then $11,264 is spent per pupil per year in California, an increase of more than $2,000 over per-pupil annual spending in 2002-2003.

No Magic Bullet: Top Ten Myths About the Benefits of Government-Run Universal Preschool

By: Lance T. Izumi, J.D., Xiaochin Claire Yan
5.1.2006

A majority of California’s K-12 students are not proficient in English and math, roughly a third of high-school students fail to graduate, and up to 80 percent of incoming freshmen at a number of state university campuses need remedial instruction. These dismal realities confirm that California’s public education system is broken and it isn’t surprising that some seek a magic bullet to fix it.

Giving A Voice To Workers: Why California Needs Paycheck Protection
Lance T. Izumi, J.D., Rachel Chaney
10.1.2005

Public-employee unions spend their members’ dues money to support political candidates and ballot measures. If members disagree with that political spending, they must ask the union to give back their money. Paycheck protection empowers union members by requiring that their union obtain permission prior to funds being deducted from the members’  aychecks for political purposes. In other words, unions must ask for the consent of the governed.

Charter schools, unlike traditional public schools, must demonstrate that they can meet the bottom line – student performance. To reach this goal, they must adopt practices that are proven to work. As a result, they are making tremendous strides in boosting student achievement, often in low-income communities where most of the other district schools are failing. Free to Learn: Lessons from Model Charter Schools shares stories from successful charter schools, and discusses how these schools can be models for the nation.