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“Charter schools create an alternate form of public schooling where schools are granted significant autonomy but are held accountable for results. The ‘charter’ is essentially a contract … Unlike other public schools, parents specifically request the charter school and if the school fails to attract students, or if it fails to meet the terms of […]

  “The Review Team recommends that management of Arkansas’ five Retirement Systems be consolidated under one agency.” (Arkansas Policy Foundation, 1998) Investment losses by the Arkansas State Police Retirement System have led a state Senator to suggest merging the system, a proposal first made by the Murphy Commission, a Policy Foundation project in 1998. The […]

(November 2007) The Policy Foundation, in light of monthly revenue reports since the July 1 grocery tax cut is renewing its 1998 and 2006 proposals to subject any state tax cuts to a process of dynamic analysis. The Murphy Commission, a Policy Foundation project, recommended in 1998 that all •tax proposals should be submitted to […]

“The students who go to charter schools are not those of great need but have support at home and are relatively high achieving.” Little Rock School Board Member Baker Kurras (“Little Rock Board Resisting 6 Charter Schools,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Sept. 28, 2007) (October 2007) The role of at-risk students in the creation of Arkansas charter […]

  “The students who go to charter schools are not those of great need but have support at home and are relatively high achieving.” Little Rock School Board Member Baker Kurras (“Little Rock Board Resisting 6 Charter Schools,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Sept. 28, 2007)   (October 2007) The role of at-risk students in the creation of […]

  Arkansas educators will insist they already have a report card. They do-for only each district, not school by school. But for Arkansas’ parents and the public to draw any real conclusions about performance from thjs collection of raw data would be almost impossible without a great deal of digging and some analytical sk,11s. Moreover, […]

(July 2007) The late Milton Friedman (1912-2006), the 1976 Nobel laureate in economics will be remembered at a July 31 event at 11: 45 a.m. at the Univ. of Arkansas at Little Rock. The event, in the first floor auditorium room of the Reynolds Building, will feature a lecture, video of Dr. Friedman and free […]

  In 1998, the Murphy Commission, a Policy Foundation project, recommended Arkansas’ 311 school districts should be restructured into not more than 134 administrative units to save tax dollars. Through last summer (2006), 66 districts, more than 20 percent of Arkansas K-12 districts had been restructured.   (June 18, 2007) Recent events in Arkansas’ largest […]