Taiko Drums, Jazz Choir to Perform at Salem School Fair during National School Choice Week

RSVP for FREE to Options in Education Fest – 2019 SALEM (Jan. 11, 2019) – Japanese Taiko drums, a jazz choir, and an acting class will perform at the Options in Education Fest featuring a wide variety of schools from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 19 at the Salem Convention Center. Nearly 1,000 people are expected to attend the National School Choice Week celebration. Dozens of schools from every sector – public charter, public magnet, private, virtual, and homeschool – will be represented, helping hundreds of families find the right school or educational setting for their childr

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Lessons in Education from Gandalf the Grey

By Miranda Bonifield Cascade Policy Institute has supported parental choice in K-12 education since 1991. In fact, it’s the issue that convinced founder Steve Buckstein of the need for a free-market think tank in Oregon. But would you have imagined that Gandalf, fictional hero of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, would be a voice for educational choice as well? Yes, you read that right: Gandalf the Grey (delighter of hobbits, purveyor of fireworks, and instigator of disruptive adventures) would support school choice—giving parents the power to choose the educational setting that wo

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School Choice Improves Student Mental Health

By Miranda Bonifield If you’ve done your homework on school choice, you know it’s been linked with improved student safety, improved quality of public schools, and academic performance. But another compelling virtue of school choice, recently published by Dr. Corey DeAngelis and Professor Angela Dills, is its association with improved mental health and decreased rates of suicide. Even when controlling for students’ family backgrounds, the paper continued to find a strong association between school choice and decreased rates of suicide. This shouldn’t come as a surprise. When families a

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Survey Shows Florida Scholarship Parents Are Overwhelmingly Satisfied with Their Children’s Schools

By Kathryn Hickok Florida’s Tax Credit Scholarship Program currently helps more than a hundred thousand of the state’s most disadvantaged students to get a better education through privately funded scholarships, making it the largest private school choice program in America. The program has been funded by voluntary corporate donations to nonprofit scholarship organizations. In return for these donations, companies receive dollar-for-dollar tax credits against their state income tax. Last week, EdChoice released the largest-ever survey of the parents of Florida’s tax credit scholarship st

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Can School Choice Change Lives?

By Steve Buckstein Can School Choice Change Lives? Join Cascade Policy Institute and SchoolChoiceforOregon.com the evening of Tuesday, September 25th for a Live Stream Facebook event featuring two prominent national School Choice experts. Find out how and why School Choice is indeed changing lives around the country, and how Oregon school children can benefit from much more school choice than they have today. Each student has individual challenges and learning styles, and many factors can cause them to fall behind. Join this discussion to learn how School Choice can help. Are you a parent? Are

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