Category Archives: Private Schools

Last week I introduced you to some kids from Washington D.C. who would be hurt by Congress’ attempt to take away their school choice program. These kids asked President Obama to step in and save their D.C. Opportunity Scholarships. Yesterday, a writer for the Wall Street Journal introduced us to two more kids who could lose their scholarships, kids that go to school with the President’s daughters: Dick Durbin has a nasty surprise for two of Sasha and Malia Obama’s new schoolmates. And it puts the president in an awkward position. The children are Sarah and James Parker. Like the Obama girls, Sarah and James attend the Sidwell Friends School in our nation’s capital. Unlike the Obama girls, they could not afford the school without the $7,500 voucher they receive from the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program. Unfortunately, a spending bill the Senate takes up this week includes a poison pill that would kill this program — and with it perhaps the Parker children’s hopes for a Sidwell diploma. You can follow the link above to see a picture of Sarah and James. I am so glad to see Joe Williams from Democrats for Education Reform write truth to power on […]

Another day at the state legislature, more setbacks for school choice. I’m back from school, have my homework done, so I wanted to share this quick update. Dead on arrival? Yes, that would be a proposal by state senator Kevin Lundberg, R-Berthoud, to create a modest pilot property tax credit for families who take their child out of public school and enroll him in a private school or homeschool program. The Democrat-controlled State Affairs Committee terminated Senate Bill 221 (PDF) on a party-line vote. In other news, the state house shot down an attempt to restore cuts in public charter school facilities funding. A double-whammy against school choice opportunities, and it’s only Monday….

The challenge of being able to help all kids shouldn’t be a reason not to help some kids. That’s why I’m excited that Colorado is one step closer to having legislation that will provide new options for students with autism. Senator Nancy Spence, truly one of the legislature’s champions for educational choice and opportunity, has sponsored Senate Bill 130. In its original form (PDF), the bill would have created a new scholarship program so parents of autistic kids could choose to enroll them in a private school to meet their special needs. If you look in the Alliance for School Choice’s brand-new School Choice Yearbook 2008-09 (PDF), you will learn – among many other things – that five different states have some sort of special-needs scholarship program. In fact, Ohio has an existing Autism Scholarship Program that in its fifth year (2007-08) had more than 1,000 students and 200 schools participating. Bills that include private school choice tend not to do so well these days at the Colorado State Capitol, though there is some support among members of both parties. At the hearing Senator Chris Romer came up with an amendment so the bill would create a special pilot program […]

Times are tough out there. I don’t have a lot of perspective yet, but there’s no doubt the economy is hurting. And that means not only are real people hurting, but – as the Wall Street Journal reports – so are private schools: Trinity Episcopal School survived Hurricane Ike last fall. But then another storm hit — the economy. The Galveston, Texas, school, where tuition is between $5,000 and $8,000 a year, has seen its enrollment drop 12%, says David Dearman, the head of the school. Many parents of its students were among the 3,000 workers laid off by the area’s largest employer, the University of Texas Medical Branch. At the end of 2008, the school’s endowment was $800,000, down about 20% from July. The school has ramped up donation efforts through its Web site, and held car washes and bake sales. It stopped using substitute teachers — other staff members now step in when a teacher is out sick. “Our school will survive, but it will take years to recover,” Mr. Dearman says. Trinity Episcopal School is one of many kindergarten-through-12th-grade private schools caught in the middle of an economic tempest: anemic endowments, dwindling donations, financially strapped parents slashing […]

In a recent article in The New Republic, John McWhorter from the Manhattan Institute wants to know why the Direct Instruction method for teaching reading that has proven so effective is so little used to help correct the achievement gap for poor minority students: Yet a solution for the reading gap was discovered four decades ago. Starting in the late 1960s, Siegfried Engelmann led a government-sponsored investigation, Project Follow Through, that compared nine teaching methods and tracked their results in more than 75,000 children from kindergarten through third grade. It found that the Direct Instruction (DI) method of teaching reading was vastly more effective than any of the others for (drum roll, please) poor kids, including black ones. DI isn’t exactly complicated: Students are taught to sound out words rather than told to get the hang of recognizing words whole, and they are taught according to scripted drills that emphasize repetition and frequent student participation. In a half-day preschool in Champaign-Urbana they founded, Engelmann and associates found that DI teaches four-year-olds to understand sounds, syllables, and rhyming. Its students went on to kindergarten reading at a second-grade level, with their mean IQ having jumped 25 points. In the 70s and […]

Updated with more specific information about open enrollment Some things we learn about the world of education seem so obvious, yet when we hear about them they really seem to trigger a “light bulb” moment. Here is one in a press release from the University of Arkansas’s School Choice Demonstration Project: Parents report that having a choice of where to send their children to school boosts their satisfaction with and involvement in schools, a study of the publicly funded school voucher program in Washington, D.C., has found. You can hear some of the D.C. parents speak for themselves at the Voices of School Choice website. If there’s one thing we know with great confidence about school choice, it’s that parents who participate find great satisfaction with the opportunity. Parents overwhelmingly respond well to the consumer empowerment that comes with school choice, in part by getting more actively involved in their child’s education. The four-year focus group work of Patrick Wolf and his Arkansas team just have made that clearer than ever. And should we be surprised? Do you like being a savvy consumer when it comes to purchasing cars, clothes, electronics, or Legos (I had to throw that last one […]

I find it kind of nice to be not-so-famous, without all the media attention. We should just let kids be kids, right? That must be a lot tougher when your dad has just been elected President of the United States. To show its support for the burgeoning public school choice movement, the people over at Democrats for Education Reform were circulating an online petition encouraging the Obamas to send young Sasha and Malia to a Washington, D.C., charter school. In response to the petition, the Center for Education Reform’s Jeannie Allen wrote over at the Edspresso blog why choosing a charter school would be a bad idea for the First Family: While my organization is the nation’s leading advocate for charter school choices, I’m not so sure I want to see the Obamas choose a charter school. Though I disagree with our president-elect on many issues and fear that obsessive government solutions and spending will push us further into a government dependency, I want the best for him and his family when they come to Washington. I want him to have no distractions other than those that impact us all. With a clever, tongue-in-cheek tone, Allen explains the rigorous challenges, […]

The Rocky Mountain News today reports on jubilation from some Colorado charter school quarters at the promise of a Barack Obama presidency: So last week, when America elected a president who promises to double federal funding for charter schools, KIPP Denver founder Richard Barrett was among the area educators hoping Barack Obama will follow through on his plan for public education. “We’ve made no excuse about it. We just deal with it,” Barrett said of the school’s facility issues. “But when are we going to have equity for our kids? “If Obama’s plan would help that process, more power to it,” he added. “Fantastic.” No doubt charter school supporters in Colorado and elsewhere would be “buzzing” about the potential of more federal funding to alleviate problems in facilities and other areas caused by unequal state funding. I would be glad to see the new President-elect demonstrate that he’s a true friend to charter schools, but there are limits to his backing of school choice: But if Obama is willing to step across some boundaries, there are others he is not. [Michael] Johnston, his education adviser, said that includes vouchers. This news is, of course, not surprising to anyone who followed […]

Rocky Mountain News guest columnist Robert Maranto – an endowed chair at the University of Arkansas Department of Education Reform – makes some striking points about some politicians’ school choice hypocrisy. Especially about one very prominent politician in particular: Candidate [Barack] Obama declares that “We need to fix & improve our public schools, not throw our hands up and walk away from them,” the way Barack and Michelle Obama have with their own children. Candidate Obama’s official education program opposes private school choice, and only under pressure gave a very qualified endorsement to public charter schools. Instead of letting parents choose, Obama emphasizes bureaucratic programs like teacher certification. Supporters of traditional teacher certification programs, like Obama education adviser Linda Darling Hammond, want all public school teachers to be certified. They argue that no one wants children to be operated on by uncertified doctors, so why should they be taught by uncertified teachers? Yet unlike medical certification, there is precious little evidence that teacher certification works. Those same rich people who would never send their children to unlicensed doctors choose to pay big bucks to have those same children taught by unlicensed teachers. Just look at Sen. Obama and other recent […]

In contrast with the unimpressive remarks provided at the vice-presidential debate, I was excited to hear the candidates in last night’s presidential debate talk so much about school choice. The candidates agree on public school choice. First, an excerpt of Senator John McCain’s remarks: So choice and competition amongst schools is one of the key elements that’s already been proven in places in like New Orleans and New York City and other places, where we have charter schools, where we take good teachers and we reward them and promote them…. Charter schools aren’t the only answer, but they’re providing competition. They are providing the kind of competitions that have upgraded both schools — types of schools. And here’s some of what Senator Barack Obama had to say: Charter schools, I doubled the number of charter schools in Illinois despite some reservations from teachers unions. I think it’s important to foster competition inside the public schools. But then came the point of disagreement.