In general, North Carolina’s public school systems are not particularly “parent-friendly.” That’s the conclusion John Locke Foundation Education Policy Analyst Terry Stoops reached in a recent report. The Greensboro News & Record published Stoops’ op-ed on the topic Sunday. The N.C. Republican Party responded with interest, featuring the op-ed on its home page blog. In a separate opinion piece picked up by the Leland Tribune, Stoops urges North Carolina to scrap its existing ABCs testing program to make way for accountability measures that would allow this state to compare its students to those in other states. Stoops also shared his education expertise in a wide-ranging interview for Don Curtis’ “For Your Information” program, which airs on radio stations throughout the Curtis Media Group network. Speaking of education-related news, the Pender Post recently highlighted Carolina Journal‘s efforts to expose problems in the free and reduced-price lunch programs in North Carolina’s public schools. (In Pender County, according to a state survey supplied by the John Locke Foundation, 53 percent of applicants to the children’ nutrition program were rejected.) The author responsible for the school lunch program investigation, CJ Associate Editor David Bass, shared his findings with WPTF Radio listeners Tuesday on Bill LuMaye’s afternoon drivetime program. Bass returned to the WPTF airwaves Friday morning to discuss his report on themes from The Dumbest Generation, a recent book from Emory University English Professor Mark Bauerlein. Sticking with the theme of higher education, syndicated columnist Scott Mooneyham recently cited John Locke Foundation President John Hood in a widely published piece on tuition rates at North Carolina’s public universities. ([A]s conservatives like John Hood
at the Locke Foundation love to point out, the customers — students
and their parents — receive subsidies from taxpayers when they buy the
product, higher education.) Hood also contributed to the higher education debate this week, with a column-length entry at National Review Online’s blog, “The Corner,” about a new report on college affordability.