School Choice Links: State Legislative Agenda and Media Resources

School Choice and Legislation
As school choice options have made their way to the individual state as the various "laboratories of democracy," many on-line resources have been established to track legislation across the nation in individual states. Advocacy organizations have also established school choice web sites in individual states where legislation has been proposed. Lastly, there exist a number of general resource sites located at web site portals, search engines, and news media devoted to the topic of education. For an alphabetical list of all advocacy groups listed on this web site, click here.

School Choice Across the US: Current Legislation
Several sites allow one to follow the legislative agenda of any state on the topic of school choice:

Americans United for the Separation of Church and State: Legislative Update
Advocacy organization site which sponsors an account of church/state issues across the nation (regularly updated).

Center for Education Reform: School choice report card for the states
Advocacy organization site which provides a report card detailing advances of states from the perspective of school choice (last updated 05/01).

Children First America: Legislative Efforts Around the Country
Advocacy organization site, regularly updated, which provides a clearinghouse of information on the legislative agenda of choice in twenty-eight states based largely on news reports (last updated 02/01).

Education Commission of the States: State Notes on Choice
National bipartisan organization report, funded by the Joyce Foundation, detailing all aspects of school choice (including charter schools, open enrollment, vouchers, and tax credits) in every state of the US (last updated 02/01).

Education Week on the Web: State Information
Weekly magazine site which provides exhaustive information on education in each state, plus links to educational resources in each state and archived articles pertaining to each state (updated weekly).

Heritage Foundation: School Choice 2003: What's Happening in the States
Advocacy organization site which sponsors an account of school choice across the nation by Krista Kafer.

Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation: School choice in your State
Advocacy organization site which contains account of various referenda in the different states. Also includes state by state information on student population and enrollment, pupil-teacher ratios, per student expenditures, etc. over the last three years (updated regularly).

National School Boards Association (NSBA): Voucher Strategy Center
Advocacy and outreach organization site which contains very comprehensive Voucher Strategy Center, which includes a quite sophisticated state by state legislative analysis (updated weekly).

School Reformers.Com Network Center
Advocacy organization site, sponsored by the Heartland Institute and the Henry Hazlitt Foundation, which provides grassroots activists with information and tools for lobbying in each state, including links to government and education officials plus details on state laws (updated regularly).

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Grassroots Advocacy in Individual States
In states where legislation has been proposed on school choice, advocates on both sides of the issue have established on-line resources.

DMOZ: Open Directory Project "School Choice" Web directory (compiled by volunteer editors) with multiple links to web sites concerning choice. Not differentiated by topic. Large number of links to nonaffiliated web-sites of various quality.

Education News: A resource for currents stories in several educational publications
Contains links to current stories about education in newspapers and magazines across the country. Includes site-specific search vehicle.

Education Week Resource Page: Choice
Regularly updated archive of articles on school choice found in the magazine Education Week plus links to other articles on thh web

Electronic Policy Network: Issues in Depth School Vouchers
Exhaustive overview of the controversy over evaluating the use of school choice as an experiment in education reform, with links to many of the original scholarly reports and critiques. Generally critical of the claims made in favor of vouchers.

Google Directory: School choice resource page
Directory organized in terms of recent web sites. Not differentiated by topics, and includes both web sites and on-line reports and articles.

Issues 2001
Contains the policy positions of major national and state candidates as espoused during the 2000 election. Not currently updated, although it does include the positions of 30 different officials, taken from news reports and press releases.

The New York Times: Education (free registration required)
Contains regularly updated stories on-line from The New York Times on education, including the quarterly Times supplement Education Life. Especially good on current events in New York City, although only occasional articles concerning school choice.

PBS Frontline: "The Battle Over School Choice"
Election 2000 special contains extensive thematic journalistic reports, videos and interviews, and links. Not currently updated beyond the 2000 election.

Policy Review: "Questions on School Choice"
January-February 1999 issue of Heritage Foundation journal contains articles by major figures in the school choice movement, including Paul E. Peterson, Nina Shokraii Rees, Jeremy Rabkin, and Rev. Floyd H. Flake.

On Thin Ice: How Advocates and Opponents Could Misread the Public's Views on Vouchers and Charter Schools

Analyses of polling conducted in June 1999 by the nonpartisian, nonprofit public opion research and citizen education organization Public Agenda.

Religion in the News: "The Voucher Circus" (Spring 2001 Issue)
Analysis of jouranalists covering the issue of vouchers in the online magazine of the Leonard E. Greenburg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College

Yahoo! News: U.S. Full Coverage - School Choice and Tuition Vouchers
Contains regularly updated news stories from a variety of national papers plus a selection of web-sites, magazine articles, and editorials.

The Washington Post On-line: Education
Contains regularly updated stories on-line from Washington Post writers concerning school choice. Especially good on current events at the federal level and reform movements in Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia.