This week on The Learning Curve, co-hosts Alisha Searcy of DFER and U-Arkansas Prof. Albert Cheng interview Eric Rassbach, Vice President and Senior Counsel at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. Mr. Rassbach discusses the Loffman v. California Department of Education case, where Becket successfully secured a unanimous Ninth Circuit decision ensuring equal access to special education funding for religious school students.
Advocates seek to require that admission to vocational-technical high schools be done strictly via lottery, but this would only rearrange who gets excluded. Thanks to their strong performance, voc-tech schools in Massachusetts have roughly 8,000 students on waiting lists. There are good reasons why mandated admissions lotteries are not the answer to the problem. First,...
The next major event on the legislative calendar is the FY2026 Consensus Revenue Hearing on December 2. At this forum, several experts make projections about how much money will be available for the fiscal year that begins on July 1, 2025. Making projections several months in advance for a budget that extends 18 months out...
This week on The Learning Curve, co-hosts Alisha Searcy of DFER and U-Arkansas Prof. Albert Cheng interview Carl Rollyson, CUNY professor, and acclaimed biographer of William Faulkner. Prof. Rollyson offers an in-depth exploration of Faulkner’s life, work, and enduring legacy.
Net loss accelerated in recent years; main reasons include high taxes, housing and healthcare
The Bureau of Labor Statistics' most recent national jobs report made headlines because it indicated the US economy added just 12,000 jobs in October, falling far short of the expected 112,500-job gain. While the number is preliminary and could be revised, it got me wondering about how the Massachusetts job outlook stacks up in comparison....
This week on The Learning Curve, co-hosts Alisha Searcy of DFER and U-Arkansas Prof. Albert Cheng interview New Hampshire Governor Christopher Sununu. Gov. Sununu discusses his upbringing in a well-known political family and how the influence of his father, a former governor and White House chief of staff, and his brother, a former U.S. senator, has shaped his public service.
Yesterday was a bad day for public school students in Massachusetts because the last pillar of the most effective state education reform in modern American history fell. Since 2008, the Commonwealth has been witness to the systematic dismantling of the 1993 Education Reform Act. With every step – the elimination of school district accountability, weakening...
This week on The Learning Curve, co-hosts Alisha Searcy of DFER and Dr. Jocelyn Chadwick interview Jeffrey Meyers, acclaimed literary biographer, about his comprehensive exploration of Edgar Allan Poe’s life and work.
This week on Homeschooling Journeys, we meet Tiffany Hoben from West Virginia. Curious Mike chatted with her twice: once in June 2024, and again in October 2024. This October episode shows the nature of homeschooling: plans change. That cuts both good and bad. One cool opportunity disappeared; but at roughly the same time, a new need emerged, as well as the perfect educator to solve that problem. Tiffany, like other homeschoolers using Education Savings Accounts (ESAs), has a variety of experiences: she gets to personalize her son's education, but in doing so, experiences friction that comes both from DIY and from the red tape of actually making purchases (software challenges and bureaucratic hoops). Her $4,900 “Hope Scholarship” is used for her son’s biology curriculum, rock climbing, an AI-aided writing class, and above all, a specialized phonics tutor. She is optimistic about the future of ESAs for homeschoolers in West Virginia.
