Tag Archives: bureaucrats

Yesterday I wrote about President Obama’s plan to address schoolchildren across America next Tuesday. I got so much response, I thought a quick follow-up was in order. Some of the concerns undoubtedly are overblown, though the hubris embodied in the original lesson plans presented to the public was genuinely disturbing. Even if the substance of the message is essentially good (e.g., stay in school, personal responsibility, etc.), some parents may feel that is usurping their role. But the Obama speech in that sense is no isolated incident. One has to ask the parents who feel this way why they continue to send their child to the public school system. Anyway, the White House since has backtracked from the political gaffe and revised the lesson plans, but much of the damage already has been done. But still plenty of good can come from this whole scenario, if parents pay heed to the principal lesson explained by Adam Schaeffer at the Cato Institute: But this problem didn’t begin with Obama and won’t end with him. Politics in the schools is what we get when the government runs our schools. Don’t want your kids indoctrinated by government bureaucrats, special interests, or the President? […]

Update 5, 9/8: The speech that went off today, and the lesson plans that accompanied it, were a lot less creepy and controversial than the original release. Who knows how much the uproar had an effect on that? Anyway, I commend to you two thoughtful perspectives on the whole episode: by Jay Greene at Education Next and by coolreformchick at Edspresso. The good news about the President addressing schoolchildren across the nation? At least this time Congress won’t start an inquiry into it. Update 4, 9/4: I have gathered and posted numerous responses from Colorado teachers and schools to Obama’s address to schoolchildren. Also, my Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow explains what he told Denver Post reporter Jeremy Meyer that didn’t end up being quoted in today’s story. Update 3, 9/3: Westword blogger Michael Roberts noticed me!! I’m glad he likes my sense of humor. I have a 5-year-old kid crush on him now …. Hope he also reads my latest on this topic. Update 2: Jim Geraghty notes that the Department of Education has reworded the teacher’s guide to make it less offensive. A good idea … you think? Meanwhile, Douglas County School District south of Denver, the […]

Updated for clarity Over at the Britannica blog, Dan Willingham wonders aloud if school choice might be a bad policy not effect positive change in the system through competition because many parents won’t make the “rational” decision: The logic of school choice seems obvious. If parents selected their children’s schools, they would not choose bad ones, so bad schools would not be able to survive. Schools would have to improve or close, just as a store that offers poor service will lose business to a store that offers better service. Here’s my problem with that logic: I think it’s highly likely that many parents will choose bad schools. (H/T Core Knowledge blog) You’re welcome to go ahead and read Mr. Willingham’s entire entry. But I think Jay Greene has done the best job of providing a rational objection:

With a proposal in the state legislature, Georgia is having a debate right now over universal vouchers for K-12 students. The bill, sponsored by state senator Eric Johnson, would attach $5,000 to each child for their parents to select the public or private school of their choice. The debate over such a radical change makes events down in the Peach State worth watching closely: Will one state dare to make the leap to truly competitive, student-centered, customer-friendly public education? Are our schools foremost a jobs program for adults or a place to serve the needs of students? I think most parents and many teachers would choose the latter, but connecting that perception to constructing a more competitive system of consumer empowerment is easily lost in the heated rhetoric that inevitably follows the word “vouchers”.

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 […]

According to a report cited in the Los Angeles Times, 12 of the top-performing 15 schools in California that serve low-income students are charter schools (H/T Joanne Jacobs). Nearly all of them! Number 1 on the list is the American Indian Public Charter run by the amazing Ben Chavis: “These poor kids are doing well because we practice math and language arts,” [Chavis] said. “That’s it. It’s simple.” He insisted that it is easier to teach poor students than more affluent ones because they are more motivated to succeed. “It’s the opposite of what everybody says,” he said. “It’s easier to do it with the poor kids and the minority kids because they have nothing, so they should be the highest.” Asked why most educational researchers say the opposite, he said: “They’re liberal and lazy . . . and they see these kids as victims.” Ben Chavis and his students are among the leading stars of the award-winning Flunked documentary. As you can imagine from his remarkable can-do attitude, Chavis has succeeded where the naysaying bureaucrats in the traditional education system have not. Then you hear the ridiculous news that the school board in Memphis, Tennessee, has gone out of […]

If you didn’t make it to our fabulous event Friday evening, you not only missed a chance to meet me, you also missed our exciting speaker Joe Williams from Democrats for Education Reform (DFER). Maybe you also missed the chance to listen live online. Well, you’re still in luck. The main page of the Independence Institute website includes the complete video of Williams’ presentation. Audience members asked many important questions and offered some conservative and libertarian challenges to the speaker’s message that Democrats could step up, take on the teachers unions and bureaucrats, and help to bring about real education reform. Mr. Williams also announced the formation of the first state DFER chapter: Colorado Democrats for Education Reform, headed by State Senator Ron Tupa. Senator Tupa was kind enough to come to unfamiliar turf as a guest and engage in some lively conversations. If you only have time for a quick read, Joe Williams sat down for a five-question interview with Nancy Mitchell from the Rocky Mountain News. My friends at the Independence Institute said they really appreciated being able to have so much access to Mr. Williams’ time while he was here in Colorado (he also recorded an episode […]

Economic times are rough. Many state budgets look to be short of money. Having recently passed one of the nation’s most generous tax credit scholarship programs, lawmakers in the state of Georgia have a bold idea they plan to bring forward early next year: Republican State Senator Eric Johnson plans to introduce legislation in January 2009 that would give each public school student a voucher equal to the money the state currently spends on his or her education. The voucher could be used for tuition at the parents’ school of choice — public, private or religious. The Fox News article is talking about universal vouchers, an idea first introduced by the great economist Milton Friedman in 1955. It represents more choice, more opportunity, and a major change to the education system that puts parents and consumers back in charge. Of course, there are critics: [Professional Association of Georgia Educators spokesman Tim] Callahan says voucher programs in Milwaukee and Washington, D.C., have failed to deliver promised results, and Georgia lawmakers should focus on strengthening public schools instead of creating incentives to leave them. Too bad Callahan’s statement is misleading. The best research studies show that vouchers help the students who use […]