On Tuesday, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals said that Uwe and Hannelore Romeike along with their children were not persecuted by the German government and will not be granted asylum in the United States.

Read more on German Homeschoolers Denied Asylum in U.S….

Private schools are for the privileged and those willing to pay high costs for education; everyone else attends public school or seeks alternate options: this is the accepted wisdom. In the United States, the vast majority of students at the primary and secondary level attend public school, funded by the government.

When considering education in the developing world, we may hold fast to this thinking, believing that for those in severely impoverished areas, private education is an unrealistic and scarce option, leaving the poor with public school or no education at all.

Indeed, this was the opinion held by James Tooley, a Professor of Education Policy at Newcastle University, until he experienced the landscape firsthand, traveling throughout the developing world, conducting research on educational systems in poor and prosperous areas, documenting numerous case studies, and reporting findings that prove the prevalence of low-cost private schools in poor areas.

In an Education Next article, Tooley discusses his observations and unmasks two common myths associated with education for the poor.

Myth #1: Private Education for the Poor Does Not Exist

We sometimes treat “the poor” as if they were somehow uniquely incapable of rising out of poverty without our assistance. We often assume, if we don’t provide them with everything they need, including education, that no one will. Yet if we look closely (and with a bit more humility), we see indigenous solutions everywhere. Read more on Free primary education is a fundamental good. Isn’t it?…

As commencement ceremonies once again are being celebrated around the country, I was reminded again of the moral crisis of US education.

Elise Hilton recently surveyed the dismal employment rate among young adults in the US, writing that we have moved in twelve years from having the best rate in the developed world to being among the worst, following the path of Greece, Spain, and Portugal.

She highlights two possible solutions. The better one is from Acton’s director of research Samuel Gregg:

Gregg says we must rely on free markets rather than redistribution of wealth, economic liberty, rule of law, entrepreneurship and the ability to take risks economically – all things that have made America great in the past.

The second comes from David Leonhardt, who, among other ideas, suggests, “Long term, nothing is likely to matter more than improving educational attainment, from preschool through college.”

Notice the language he uses? Not educational quality, nor even job-training, but “educational attainment.” With no intended disrespect to Mr. Leonhardt, it is precisely this well-meaning, widespread, but ill-informed mentality that has led, in large part, to our current educational crisis. Read more on The Injustice of US Educational Attainment…

While school choice is helpful, what we really need in the U.S., says Stephen Davies, is a revolution in the delivery of education that gives us “education choice.”

A recent CNBC article by Mark Koba notes the bleak outlook for 2013 college grads looking for work:

A survey released last week from the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) reported that businesses plan to hire only 2.1 percent more college graduates from the class of 2013 than they did from the class of 2012.

That’s way down from an earlier NACE projection of a 13 percent hiring rate for 2013 grads.

There is good reason for this bad news, however. As Koba notes, “One reason there may not be so many grads hired is that many employers don’t believe college graduates are trained properly.” He goes on: Read more on Is Higher Education a Sinking Ship?…

This past weekend, I had the privilege to attend and present a paper at the 2013 Kuyper Center for Public Theology conference at Princeton Seminary. The conference was on the subject of “Church and Academy” and focused not only on the relationship between the institutions of the Church and the university, but also on questions such as whether theology still has a place in the academy and what place that might be. The discussion raised a number of important questions that I would like to reflect on briefly here.

In the first place, I was impressed by Dr. Gordon Graham’s lecture on the idea of the Christian scholar. He began by exploring a distinction made by Abraham Kuyper in his work Wisdom & Wonder. Kuyper writes (in 1905),
Read more on Christian Scholarship and the Crisis of the University…

1. It’s truly international. Last year, we hosted 800+ people from over 70 countries.

2. You can create your own curriculum. Whether you’re interested in business, poverty alleviation and development, economics, history, social thought, urban ministry… just read the list of courses for yourself. You’ll find great stuff there.

Read more on 6 Things You Need to Know About Acton University…

New research suggests that school vouchers have a greater impact on whether black students attend college than small class sizes or effective teachers:

Matthew M. Chingos of the Brookings Institution and Paul E. Peterson, director of Harvard’s program on education policy and governance, tracked college enrollment information for students who participated in the School Choice Scholarship program, which began in 1997. They were able to get college enrollment information on 2,637 of the 2,666 students in the original cohort.

Read more on School Vouchers Increase College Attendance for Black Students…

According to a new study, private religious schools perform better than both public schools and public charter schools. William Jeynes, professor of education at California State University at Long Beach and senior fellow at the Witherspoon Institute at Princeton, told the Christian Post that he found religious, mostly Christian, school students were a full year ahead of students who attend public and charter schools.

Could the results be due to religious school parents being move involved in their child’s lives? Jeynes controlled for this “selection effect” and still found that religious schools perform better. He controlled for other variables too, such as socioeconomic status, gender and race, and found that students at religious schools still have a seven to eight month advantage over students at public and charter schools. According to the Christian Post:
Read more on Study: Religious Schools Perform Better Than Public Schools…

The Acton Institute presents Acton University every June in Grand Rapids, Mich. The course offerings are rich and diverse, but there is often the idea that Acton University is all about economics. It is, but keep in mind that economics is truly about human interaction, and thus the depth of the courses. Who should come to Acton University, and what can they expect to get out of it?

Read more on Acton University: It’s All About Human Interaction…