Category Archives: Federal Government

I don’t have a lot to write about on this manic Monday. But after venturing over to Jay Greene’s blog and finding not one, but two, closely related news stories that make me want to pull my hair out. Well, how could I not share the experience with you? Irony reigns, the world is spinning out of control, and vulnerable kids bear the brunt of it all. The first story, which takes us back to last week’s developments in Alabama’s new scholarship tax credit program, makes me want to scream in frustration: The Southern Poverty Law Center filed a federal lawsuit Monday contending that low-income students attending failing public schools are being hurt by a new state law that provides tax credits to families that transfer their children to private schools. Are you kidding me? Of course not. As Jay Greene blogger Jason Bedrick notes:

Colorado’s non-union teacher group PACE today posted some more of the results from their recent member survey. Roughly 3 out of every 4 expressed support for “a pathway for career advancement outside of the traditional, seniority-based salary schedule,” often known as a career ladder. One of their members hit the nail on the head: A high school math teacher in Harrison School District commented, “I think a seniority-based salary schedule is a horrible way to pay teachers and should be eliminated, not tweaked. A very interesting (and not terribly surprising) observation coming from a school district that has pioneered true pay-for-performance and as of a year ago showed tremendous signs of front-line support. But even more noteworthy, there is a Colorado district that is pushing change even further. Interestingly, given yesterday’s topic here, it came from the lips of former U.S. Secretary of Education Dr. William J. Bennett, who spoke Friday at a Fordham Institute event on “A Nation at Risk: 30 Years Later”:

More than two-and-a-half years ago, the Colorado State Board of Education adopted the Common Core standards. Just this last December the State Board took another careful look at the decision, as this School Reform News article by my Education Policy Center friend notes. For a number of reasons, the issue has gained greater national notoriety of late. I could link to a number of articles, but two very recent commentaries in the debate present a worthy read. School Reform News editor Joy Pullmann and Heritage Foundation analyst Lindsey Burke raise serious questions that need to be addressed.

It’s been almost two years since I last brought your attention to the overwhelming research findings that the nearly-50-year-old Head Start program has not made a real difference in education outcomes. But a new Wall Street Journal story by Stephanie Banchero points out that some federal officials appear intent on doubling down. In an article last month, Heritage Foundation scholars not only summarized the lackluster findings regarding the latest Head Start research but also some disturbing news about how it was released:

A few weeks ago an article by the I-News Network (“an independent, nonprofit journalism project that creates long-form investigative reports, in partnership with major daily newspapers and has recently accepted significant funding from wealthy Democrat activist Tim Gill”) portrayed Colorado minorities as victims of inadequate tax funding of education: Regardless of which way the causal arrow runs, poverty and education are intertwined across the range of societal distress. Several experts said the state’s pullback in funding education over the past two decades has narrowed the path for escaping poverty. Between 1992 and 2010, according to Census data, Colorado plunged from 24th to 40th on overall state spending per student for K-12 education. When compared to per capita personal income, Colorado ranked 45th among the states on K-12 spending. Today The Gazette in Colorado Springs published a powerful response from my Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow:

All the big people are talking about these days seems to be the coming “fiscal cliff,” and some tough decisions leaders in Washington, D.C., have to make. For anyone who has common sense, a big part of the solution has to be for Congress to stop spending more money than it takes in. You know, the kind of balanced budget people like my parents have to use? In one of his more provocative pieces (and that’s really saying something), education guru Rick Hess writes that many so-called education advocates are essentially saying: “Let’s push kids off the fiscal cliff!” What does he mean? He does a good job crunching some numbers to show that, in order for politicians to stop racking up bills that kids like me will have to pay someday, our country needs significant reforms to old-age entitlement programs (Social Security and Medicare). So you’d expect the education advocates to be pushing for entitlement reform to help spare kids like me a massive debt burden? Not so fast, Hess points out:

Not many students can say their principal has served in Congress and chairs the State Board of Education. Perhaps even fewer can say their principal also has been a great champion for parental choice and positive educational transformation. In fact, that’s probably a unique distinction that belongs to the chartered Liberty Common High School in Fort Collins, Colo., in its third year of operation under the direction of Bob Schaffer. Another distinctive source of pride for Liberty Common, its inaugural junior class (2011-12) earned the highest ACT average scores in the entire state of Colorado. To see firsthand the source of the school’s success, my Education Policy Center friends two days ago joined a small group from Jefferson County Students First on a morning tour. The academic rigor and emphasis on core character values were evident throughout the building. Fairly unique, Liberty Common High School students are initiated into one of five different “houses” with a character trait as theme. The system promotes camaraderie among different grades and helps the students embrace and convey the school’s core values that ought to serve them well later in life.

Four months ago, while introducing you to the education policy blueprint of a major party presidential candidate, I noted that one of the hardest areas in which “it might be hard to make a contrast” between Obama and Romney is K-12 education. Every time one of these major national elections comes up, serious questions and debates take place about the federal government’s role — like the seven-part video series on Choice Media TV with Joe Williams and Jay Greene. In the last installment, the question comes up about the deep potential and widespread problems with fraud and abuse in the federal Title I program for low-income students. Greene responds with the vital idea of attaching the Title I dollars directly to needy students rather than filtering them through wasteful bureaucracies — a great idea touted here before. But beyond that kind of choice, mobility and empowerment, what other reform ideas could be part of a conservative agenda for the federal role in education?

More than 10 years after Washington, D.C., gave us the No Child Left Behind era, the issue of educational accountability is returning to the forefront. How do we measure and attribute school success (or failure)? Who should be held accountable, and how should that accountability be shared? What should be the consequences, both positive and negative, and how will they be implemented and enforced? What role, if any, should the federal government play? The New York Times is hosting a forum with some of the brightest minds in education policy chiming in on the question: “Can School Performance Be Measured Fairly?” Now look, I’m not really fond of the way the question is framed. The obvious answer is Yes, just as obvious as the answer to the question “Can School Performance Be Measured Perfectly?” is No. That being said, some of the points respondents have made are significant, and deserve serious attention in policy debates:

Not many people out there get the joy out of school funding figures, but understanding them clearly is crucial to the debate. Part of the problem? Depending on which source you look at, per-pupil spending and revenue data don’t always line up, something my Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow pointed out in his 2006 backgrounder Counting the Cash. Last month, when the U.S. Census Bureau released its Public Education Finances report (PDF) for the 2009-10 school year, the Business Journals Network dryly proclaimed, “Public schools spending rose in fiscal 2010.” Interestingly enough, that’s not as much of a “dog bites man” headline as it would be for most years. Thinking back to 2009-10 (I was 5 then… big shock), and the recessionary effects of the financial crisis on tax revenues, it’s somewhat remarkable that spending rose nationwide. Of course, the borrowed spending of federal stimulus dollars chipped in. When are we going to be able to pay for it all? That’s another story for another day. Anyway, somewhat less shocking is the response analysis of the Colorado School Finance Project (COSFP), a group that makes a living off habitual claims that Colorado K-12 education is underfunded. Their latest output […]