Category Archives: School Choice

A quick Friday freebie to wrap your mind around, compliments of Education Week‘s Sean Cavanagh: An estimated 610,000 students are on waiting lists to attend charter schools—a jump of about 200,000 from just two years ago, a national organization says. The National Alliance of Public Charter Schools (NAPCS) — with its brand new executive director Nina Rees — notes that there are as many students nationwide on charter school waiting lists as attend charters in the two most heavily enrolled states, or enough to “fill seven and a half Olympic Stadiums during this summer’s Olympics in London.”

Being a Monday and all, I thought you might appreciate a little good news on the school choice front. So let’s head quickly to our nation’s Heartland, first to see my Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow‘s new offering for School Reform News on the state of Hoosier State’s Choice Scholarship Program: Scarcely more than a year old, Indiana’s voucher program has grown in popularity, sent an extra $4 million to public schools, and yielded clear evidence of taxpayer savings. With Governor Mitch Daniels and Superintendent Tony Bennett at the helm, Indiana has really taken the reins of education reform and run forward with it. Just one year old, the private school choice program already is the nation’s largest, and two years from now there will be no cap on enrollment for choice scholarships. Most interesting, though, from the article is what’s beginning to bubble up:

Once in awhile you read something that makes you really step back and think. In that spirit I commend to you the new Friedman Foundation report The Greenfield School Revolution and School Choice by Greg Forster and James Woodworth. Want to know what I mean? Start off with a statement like this potent summary: Existing choice programs transfer students from marginally less effective public schools to marginally more effective private schools, but they do not seem to drive more ambitious school reforms. Forster and Woodworth dive into the data, unpacking the private-sector share of students and schools in places where school choice has had the biggest reach, such as Milwaukee, Florida, Arizona, Ohio, and Washington, D.C. Generally speaking, while doors are opening to break down some segregation, the private sector is shrinking and still catering to provide niche educational opportunities. Far and away, the greatest amount of true innovation is coming from charter schools, which includes blended learning superstars like Carpe Diem and Rocketship.

School is out… Hooray!!! But in Douglas County, Colorado’s third-largest school district and a true hotspot of education reform, the summer months still give us plenty to which we can look forward. First, this month of June represents the final 30 days before the collective bargaining contract with the Douglas County Federation of Teachers (DCFT) expires. What happens after that, no one knows. It’s going to look much different, though, that’s for sure. Groundbreaking open negotiations kicked off there more than seven weeks ago. I applauded the bold proposals set forth by the Douglas County school board, some of which also caught the favorable attention of Denver Post columnist Vincent Carroll. Previously, my Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow had raised the question of how serious DCFT was about embracing open union negotiations. Transparency has seemed to suit everyone just fine, even as a few hundred teachers showed up at the last session to send a statement. It’s good to listen to the voice of teachers. Especially the best teachers. And an organization doesn’t necessarily have to be recognized by a government body as exclusive bargaining agent to ensure that happens. Are the teachers in Colorado’s 137 non-bargaining districts (as […]

Marcus Winters — whom I will long remember as the author of Teachers Matter and featured presenter at the Independence Institute’s first-ever Brown Bag Lunch — has written a great new piece for City Journal. Appropriately titled “Better Schools, Fewer Dollars,” Winters’ column addresses the issue of tight budgets and educational productivity. A few weeks ago I highlighted a new 2-minute Education Policy Center video on rethinking Colorado school finance that sounded similar themes. Winters brings forward data, some more familiar than others, to show how spending per K-12 student skyrocketed in the past generation with very little or no improvements to show for it. The Manhattan Institute senior fellow further undermines the logic of adequacy studies used to inform court decisions like Colorado’s Lobato case. And this is what a Denver judge hangs her cut-and-paste ruling for the state to spend billions more in scarce resources? Anyway, Winters also reviews the research on cost-saving charters and voucher programs, which show some benefits for students and at the very worst could be interpreted as not doing any harm. Nothing new or surprising there for faithful readers or others who have paid attention to the education reform debate. But his concluding […]

Has it been a whole year since the last big ACE Scholarships luncheon? Funny. I was still 5 then, too. Last time around it was my edu-reform crush Michelle Rhee, only a few months out of her famous tenure as chancellor of D.C. Public Schools, explaining her change of heart about vouchers and praising Douglas County’s choice scholarship program. The 2012 edition of the ACE Scholarships luncheon featured Foundation for Excellence in Education board chair Jeb Bush sounding the call for more choice as a catalyst to his winning education reform formula. His successful track record as Florida governor from 1999 to 2006 is tied to his focused and comprehensive approach to education reform. But as Governor Bush famously has said time and time again in various forms, “Reform is never finished because success is never final.” Therefore, the theme of his Denver speech yesterday was focused on the future, as reported by Ed News Colorado:

What a hubbub. Having finally read last week’s desperate New York Times attack against K-12 tuition tax credit programs, I was left scratching my head. Really? The Old Gray Lady seems awfully cranky about school choice and short on facts or serious arguments when it comes to this one. In a way, it felt like writer Stephanie Saul was pushing different random hot buttons to get people fired up about… something or other. As usual, overlooked in the article was the fact that nearly all gold standard academic research shows positive academic or competitive benefits from private school choice programs — and not one shows a negative impact. But that probably didn’t sound as compelling as the overblown assertion that “scholarship programs have been twisted to benefit private schools at the expense of the neediest children.” Writing for Education Next, Jason Bedrick does the most thorough job of dismantling the implicit argument in Saul’s story.

It’s not every day when my parents turn on the radio and get to hear education policy top the national news headlines. But yesterday Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney gave a big speech to explain why improving education was “the civil rights issue of our era, and it’s the greatest challenge of our time.” Hardly a coincidence, I’m sure, but the Romney campaign also just released “A Chance for Every Child.” The document outlines his education policy plans, including:

Perhaps it’s just the school choice geek in me (ok, the school choice geek is me!), but I want to bring your attention to a worthwhile and important discussion. A couple weeks ago redefinED posted comments made by the longtime voucher supporter Dr. Howard Fuller at the recent American Federation for Children national summit. He eloquently reiterated his views that private educational choice programs should be means-tested and targeted to lower-income students. Responding to Dr. Fuller, who represents the social justice wing of the school choice movement, redefinED asked the Cato Institute’s Andrew Coulson to provide a thoughtful response from the libertarian wing. Last week’s Coulson column hones on the need to create “universal access to the educational marketplace” while reducing the problem of having a third party pay for the schooling service. Not surprisingly, he comes down in favor of direct tax credits for middle-class families and scholarship tax credits for poorer families. Today, Dr. Matt Ladner chimes in to offer a compelling case of where the school choice movement should go from here. He strongly supports universal choice, but advocates for a weighted system that underwrites more for students in poverty. As one of the earliest backers of […]

I’m a little bit tired today, having Tweeted up a storm at the Donnell-Kay Foundation’s Colorado Summit on Blended Learning. I have neither the time nor the energy to recap the great presentations from the likes of iNACOL’s David Teeter, Utah Senator Howard Stephenson, New Hampshire Deputy Commissioner Paul Leather, Colorado Department of Education Assistant Commissioner Amy Anderson and Colorado Senator Michael Johnston. But I can take advantage of the incredible timing to share a brand-new issue paper from my Education Policy Center friends titled Online Course-Level Funding: Toward Colorado Secondary Self-Blended Learning Options. It’s about following the lead of states like Utah and Florida to give students more freedom of course selection through the power of digital technology and a system that allows the funding to follow: