Category Archives: School Choice

From the files of “Did she really say that?” comes a post written a few days ago by Diane Ravitch, under the heading: “Do parents always know what is best?” Ravitch extensively quotes a Louisiana teacher, who hardly wins friends and influences people with this opener: I am tired of this attitude about parents knowing what is best for their children. Parents are easily swayed by politicians, talk show hosts and preachers. They rarely understand how schools work unless they are teachers themselves or have relatives who are teachers…. Yes, that is patronizing. Even worse, it can lead to a lot of dangerous and misguided policy conclusions. It’s hard to put it much better than has Victor Skinner of EAG News:

Last time I wrote about Florida, it was touting their “silver medal” among the 50 states for growing student achievement in the past 15 years. The Harvard study that handed out the imaginary awards analyzed how much progress 4th-grade and 8th-grade students have made on the national NAEP test. Second place out of 50? Not too shabby. But how valid is it? Some critics have said the remarkable gains Florida 4th-graders have achieved, particularly in reading, are dramatically overblown because of their student retention policy. Since 2003 most of the state’s 3rd-graders who have failed to demonstrate reading proficiency have been held back, of course the test results for the smaller pool of 4th-grade pupils is going to look better. End of story, right? Not so fast. A recent Independence Institute guest speaker has gone behind the numbers to figure out just how much the retention policy can explain away Florida’s remarkable gains. In a newly published analysis for Education Next, Manhattan Institute senior fellow Marcus Winters finds the truth lies between the two claims, but closer to those made by Florida’s boosters than those made by its critics:

Several days ago Education Week published a story about a large Colorado school district replacing French and German language instructors with software-driven programs: Of all the recent budget cuts made by the Eagle County, Colo., school district —the loss of 89 staff jobs through attrition and layoffs, a 1.5 percent across-the-board pay cut, and the introduction of three furlough days—none sparked as much anger or faced the same scrutiny as the decision to cut three foreign-language teaching positions and replace them with online instruction. Since I’m not too familiar with the details underlying the decision in Eagle County, I’m more interested in discussing policy ramifications and other ideas in general terms. Clearly, the decision was driven by the need to tighten the budget belt. The 6,300-student mountain district is not alone in this circumstance.

Summer vacation is almost over (for some students, it already is). Any reason why I can’t write about Douglas County again? That’s what I thought. So here goes… Education Week‘s Stephen Sawchuk reported last week from the annual the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) convention that members sounded off on a local Colorado issue: The union passed, unanimously, a special resolution pledging solidarity for AFT affiliates that it asserts have been attacked, beseiged, or had their contracts superceded, as in Detroit, Chicago, and Douglas County, Colo. Today a friend found and brought my attention to a copy of the resolution. Truth be told, it contains more Whereas‘s than you can shake a stick at, including the paragraph that honed in on Colorado’s third-largest school district:

Choice and accountability are two words you’ll hear my Education Policy Center friends say quite a bit if you’re around them enough. Empowering families with a broader range of educational options, and providing transparent information about — and real consequences for — a school ‘s learning results, are two general principles they and I regularly espouse. But what kind of accountability is appropriate for private schools that accept voucher students? One state with a large and growing private school choice program yesterday broke ground by adopting rules of a different kind from its predecessors. Fordham Institute blogger Adam Emerson, who supports the move, boils the decision down to its essence: Louisiana has shown us that it’s possible to offer private-school choice and control for quality in a way that doesn’t cramp what makes a private school unique. And in doing so, Louisiana has broken ground in school-voucher policy. While other states have made voucher and tax-credit-scholarship programs more transparent, only Louisiana would regulate enrollment at schools that consistently show poor performance. [emphasis added]

Friday means I’m taking it easy, and leaving the work up to Choice Media TV‘s Bob Bowdon, who interviewed Jeff Kwitowski of K12, Inc., to talk about online education in this 8-minute video:

Even though it’s the middle of the summer, your (no, really, it will be fun) homework assignment is to read the new Wall Street Journal guest opinion column by the Cato Institute’s Andrew Coulson: Since 1970, the public school workforce has roughly doubled—to 6.4 million from 3.3 million—and two-thirds of those new hires are teachers or teachers’ aides. Over the same period, enrollment rose by a tepid 8.5%. Employment has thus grown 11 times faster than enrollment. If we returned to the student-to-staff ratio of 1970, American taxpayers would save about $210 billion annually in personnel costs.

I left you with a school choice summertime smile, took a couple weeks to bask in the sun, only to return to find a host of good news on which to report: A bipartisan group of New Hampshire legislators overrode their governor’s veto to enact a brand-new tax credit scholarship program — the Cato Institute’s Adam Schaeffer highlights a couple of novel features that support parental choice to provide home education and allow the program to expand automatically to meet growing demand; Pennsylvania not only expanded its decade-old tax credit scholarship program for low- and middle-income families but also created a new program that expands choice for students in the lowest-performing 15 percent of schools; A June 27 bill signing by Gov. Bob McDonnell added Virginia to the growing number of states with educational tax credits, a move that offers opportunities to low- and middle-income families and many disabled students; and Mississippi became the 11th state to create a private school choice program for students with disabilities, in this case benefiting those with dyslexia. So yours truly leaves town for a couple weeks to get some fun and sun, and four states introduce or expand school choice. Do you think […]

Anyone who has followed my opinions here for awhile knows that I’m a big fan of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, which provides real choices to a small number of needy students in our nation’s capital. Well, I had to smile because the Washington Post reports this week that leaders from both parties in Congress have struck a deal with President Obama to continue and expand the program: House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.), the authors of legislation that reauthorized and expanded the Opportunity Scholarship Program, said they had reached an agreement with the White House to ensure that there would be no cap on enrollment in the program and that parents can apply to have their children stay in or join the program and get a response as soon as possible.

Education Week last week ran with a story touting renewed local interest in the weighted student funding concept. Quoted in the story, the Center on Reinventing Public Education’s Dr. Marguerite Roza noted that while current budget pressures have sparked interest, the policy offers some real benefits: Weighted student funding can also help promote nonstandard staffing models that are growing in popularity, Ms. Roza said, offering as an example the Rocketship Education model. The Palo Alto, Calif.-based charter management organization combines online learning with small-group instruction. Standard funding formulas that provide a teacher for a certain number of students don’t allow for that kind of flexibility, she said. Also quoted in the Education Week story, another nationally-renowned academic expert on school finance is less high on weighted student funding: