As their home page declares, "The Center for Education Reform is a national, non-profit education advocacy group and an active broker in providing resources, support and guidance for school reform to communities across the United States." This site has news, overviews of major reform efforts, and information on regional reform organizations.

The Center for Independent Studies

Based in Australia, the Center for Independent Studies is "a non-profit, private sector policy research institute. Its major concern is with the principles and conditions underlying a free and open society. The Centre's activities cover a wide variety of areas dealing broadly with social and economic policy." Since 1994, the CIS has been pursuing a research program titled Taking Children Seriously, and in 1997 it published the book Taking Education Seriously by Ken Gannicott.

The Concord Review

Thanks to dumbed-down textbooks and curricula, today's high-school students are rarely pushed to excel, and it is easy to forget what sixteen-, seventeen-, and eighteen-year-olds are capable of achieving. Benjamin Franklin, for example, was editing a newspaper while still in his teens. Fortunately we do not have to look only at historical figures to find examples of youthful excellence. The Concord Review, and its corresponding web site, gathers together numerous fine articles written entirely by modern high-school students. Here is a worthy standard against which to measure the accomplishments of our students.

Education Policy Institute

Online presence for the Education Policy Institute, whose emphasis is on exposing the predominantly negative effects of teachers' unions on American education. Headed by former NEA and AFT officials who are intimately familiar with the irreconcilable conflicts between the unions' agendas and those of families.

Electronic Educational Excellence Network

Web site of the Educational Excellence Network, an affiliate of the Hudson Institute, chaired by Chester Finn and Diane Ravitch. Web work and contributions by Gregg Vanourek. Offers monthly updates on the state of public schooling, and education-related research and legislation.

Evergreen Freedom Foundation: Education Page

"The mission of the Evergreen Freedom Foundation is to advance individual liberty, free enterprise and responsible government."--From the EFF website

The EFF has been a leader in the fight to make the Washington Education Association abide by the state's campaign and labor laws.

The GEO Foundation

Many experts know a great deal about school choice, but most
urban leaders and families are unfamiliar with their work. The GEO Foundation takes the message to the people,  or in some cases it takes the people to the message. GEO takes urban leaders on  fact-finding trips to Milwaukee so they can see choice in reality, and follows these trips with an intensive series of forums with key speakers talking  about the issue and relating it to urban leaders. This is an extremely important mission, and GEO is particularly deserving of the generosity of philanthropists.

The Harvard Program on Education Policy and Governance

"Questions of education governance - who should make the central decisions about the schooling of our children - have moved to the top of the political agenda at all levels of government.... In response to these developments, PEPG has sponsored numerous research projects on school governance that examine the impact of inner-city scholarship programs as well as the effects of "traditional" forms of school choice." --From the Harvard website.

Under the guidance of its director, professor Paul Peterson, the PEPG has been one of the leading sources of hard evidence on the effects of parental choice and competition. The PEPG website is highly recommended.

The Heartland Institute

"The Heartland Institute is a nonprofit public policy research organization serving the nation's eight thousand federal and state elected officials, journalists, Heartland members, and other opinion leaders. Founded in 1984, Heartland was the first think tank in the nation to focus on free-market solutions to state and local public policy problems." --Quoted from the Heartland web site.
 
Heartland publishes a variety of materials of interest to parents and school-reformers, including a widely-used 400-page manual on how to design, promote, and implement school choice plans titled "Rebuilding America's Schools," and a monthly twenty page newspaper on market-based school reform. As if this were not enough, a recent overhaul has made Heatland's website one of the most attractive and easy to use public policy sites.

Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace

"The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University is a center for advanced study in domestic and international affairs. Founded by President Herbert Hoover in 1919, it contains one of the largest private archives and most complete libraries in the world on economic, political, and social change in the twentieth century, as well as a scholarly press." --Quoted from the Hoover web site.

Hudson Institute

The Hudson Institute is a lively think tank dedicated, in its own words, to "solving impossible problems." Is it any surprise that they've turned their attention to public schooling?

The Milton & Rose D. Friedman Foundation
for Educational Choice

"The Milton & Rose D. Friedman Foundation was established in September 1996 by a generous contribution from these two distinguished economists. The origins of the Foundation lie in the Friedmans' deep concern about the serious deficiencies in existing government-run schools. The only way to improve our children's education, they believe, is radically to restructure the present education system to ensure effective competition in the market for educational services and enable parents to have a truly free choice of the schools their children attend." --From the foundation's website.

National Center for Policy Analysis

The educational section of the NCPA's web site brings together newspaper clippings and research summaries on the state of public education, the contracting out of public school services to private sector providers, as well as parental choice and education finance. The NCPA also provides updates of recent news by email.

School Choice YES!

"School Choice YES! is a coalition of parents, educators, employers and citizens working to provide all Michigan children the best possible educational opportunity. School Choice YES! will accomplish this by amending the Michigan Constitution to allow parents and other taxpayers to claim a tax credit for tuition paid to Michigan public or nonpublic elementary or secondary schools."--From the organization's website

School Report

An umbrella site providing an online presence to several organizations working for educational freedom. Has a tremendous amount of information and breaking news on school reform issues, the activities of teachers' unions, and many other topics.

Separation of School and State