On Friday, August 24, Heartland Institute President Joseph Bast will testify before the Texas Senate Committee on Education in the State Capitol in Austin on the Taxpayers Savings Grant, a revolutionary school reform proposal before the state legislature. Bast was invited to speak based on his years of scholarly research, writing, and editing on free-market solutions to fix America’s failing public schools.
“Taxpayers would save approximately $2 billion in the first biennium following passage of the law,” Bast said. “Students would benefit, as other school choice programs around the country have demonstrated how choice improves student achievement, retention, and other outcomes. Parents and teachers will be happier.
“School choice is not a radical or new idea. It is being used by some 20 states and cities across the country to solve problems similar to those Texas is experiencing,” Bast added. “A successful experiment with school choice took place right here in Texas, in the Edgewood school district, proving this is an idea that can work for Texas’s unique mixture of students.”
Bast is founder and publisher of School Reform News, a 15-year-old national public policy newspaper that surveys show is read by 50 percent of state legislators in the U.S. Bast is also co-author of four books with the Hoover Institution’s Dr. Herb Walberg, a leading authority on school reform, including most recently Tests, Testing and Genuine School Reform. Bast’s writing on school reform has appeared in five peer-reviewed journals: Phi Delta Kappan, The Cato Journal, The Journal of Private Enterprise, Independent Review, and Economics of Education Review.
Bast is also co-author, with Dr. John Merrifield, an authority on the economics of education in Texas, of studies about Taxpayers Savings Accounts – including The Heartland Institute policy paper, “Budget Impact of the Texas Taxpayers’ Savings Grant Program.”
Bast’s full testimony will be available at heartland.org on Friday morning at 9 a.m. Central Time. To book Bast on your program or schedule an interview, please contact Tammy Nash at [email protected] and 312/377-4000. After regular business hours, contact Jim Lakely at [email protected] and 312/731-9364.
The Heartland Institute is a 28-year-old national nonprofit organization headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. Its mission is to discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems. For more information, visit our Web site or call 312/377-4000.
Joseph Bast is a Senior Fellow at The Heartland Institute. He cofounded Heartland in 1984, serving as executive director then as president & CEO until January 2018. His research and writing focuses on climate change and energy policy.
