Education Reform Hits The Great Plains

Happy Friday! As we head into our weekend, we're reminded that the education reform movement is strong, healthy—and spreading. Now, new reforms are on their way to the Sunflower State. And it is largely thanks to the work around the country, in places that have instituted widespread and heralded reforms, that Kansas begins its education reform discussion with a model as to how to best maximize how the state can help kids.

Fresh off his State of Education speech earlier this week, Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett spoke about how he's not content with his reforms only helping Hoosier State students:

We have to put our focus on the children and quit focusing on just the dollars. Redesign Kansas education so that kids not achieving can achieve like their peers who are achieving.

Now that states are beginning to see the earlier dividends being paid by new initiatives like the voucher program in Indiana, they're realizing that the status quo no longer has to stand in their way of expanding educational options for low- and middle-income families, either.