Are Colleges Becoming Market-Oriented?
Someone once remarked to me that the college campus is the natural home of socialism. But it looks like even colleges are starting to price services according to demand rather than follow a simple uniform rule.

Major in some subjects? Expect to pay more.

Starting this fall, juniors and seniors pursuing a major in the business school at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, will pay $500 more each semester than classmates with other majors. The University of Nebraska last year began charging engineering students $40 [more (?)] for each hour of class credit.

A typical engineering graduate can expect a higher starting salary than the history major. In the market, then, the engineering degree is more valuable to the student than the history degree. It's not unreasonable to think he should pay more.

Labels: Education

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Union Industry Schools to Charter Schools: Come Join Us
Competition with charter schools for students has forced the traditional, union-rule schools to respond. Sometimes the response is outright hostility and obstructionism, such as when a district refuses to sell a surplus building to a charter school.

Sometimes the response is a little more friendly.

From the archives of draft posts that never got published, I noticed that the Boston public schools are trying to bring charter school employees back to the union shop.

Today, 550 teachers and principals in the city's 14 charter schools will begin receiving letters asking them to consider converting their schools, which are under state jurisdiction, to pilot schools, which are autonomous but fall under the Boston public school system. The letters were mailed by the Boston Teachers Union on Saturday.

I don't know what sort of reception this invitation received--when I put this item in the queue, it was well over a year ago--but I do see this as an interesting response of the traditional school systems to charter schools. At least it's better than trying to shut down those schools outright.

Where did these pilot schools come from?

Pilot schools, created in 1995 in response to competition from charters, have more autonomy than traditional schools but less than charter schools .... The school system has 19 pilot schools, which are popular among parents.

There's certainly public demand for shaking up the system:

In February, after a yearlong standstill, the system reached an agreement with the teachers union to create seven more pilot schools by 2009. Roughly 6,000 of the system's 58,600 students attend the pilot schools. About 4,300 Boston residents attend 14 charter schools.

Looks like something else for the "I ought to look into that" pile.

Labels: Charter schools, Education

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Education: Dollars and Cents; Apples and Oranges.
How much does your state on K-12 education compared with others? The U.S. Census Bureau has the goods.

Here's the home page for education-spending numbers, but you may need to head over to this page and then look for the text "Public Elementary-Secondary Education Finances" to pick from the annual reports. The reports, by the way, start in 1992 and go through 2005.

Since there's some production lag time, the numbers in the 50-state reports are typically a couple years old. But unless you have a full-time research assistant who can dig out the information for you, they're as good as it gets.

You can get the information in either PDF or Excel. You can also look at all states, or just a specific state, as the page for 2005 reveals.

Here are a few points that stand out from the 2005 edition, which was released in April, 2007:

Nationally, 47 percent of all public school revenue comes through state governments, 44 percent from local governments, and 9 percent from the federal government.

Only 85 percent of all spending is for current operations (the rest is on capital outlay and "other," which I think means debt). Of current operations spending, 55 percent is on "instruction," meaning that only 47 percent of all spending is actually on instruction.

The amount of money spent varies tremendously. In New York, schools spend $14,119 per student. Utah spends $5,257. (Utah, by the way, has much better student achievement.) The national average is $8,701, though that number was from the 2004-05 school year.

Dig into the spreadsheet version of Table 8, and you can figure out which states load up compensation with benefits, such as gold-plated health insurance and retirement plans.

There's always something to cherry-pick. Some people will turn to Table 12, which ranks states according to how much they spend on schools as a percentage of personal income. A state can rank high on the list in at least two ways:

- It has a high income and spends much more than average on schools

- It has a below-average income and spends an average or above-average amount on schools.

Of course, since we're dealing with the provision of services in an almost total absence of a market, it's hard to say what is the "right" amount of money to spend on schooling.

Labels: Education

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Don't Governmentize Toddlerhood. (Updated)
Fresh from today's electrons in the Wichita Eagle.


Wednesday, May 2, 2007
Opinion

SCIENCE DOESN'T SUPPORT CLAIMS ABOUT PRESCHOOL
By John R. LaPlante

Should Kansans expand taxpayer-funded preschool? It's a favorite cause of Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, and a number of legislators are on board. The promised cost savings make the idea sound compelling, but is it?

Let's start with the research used by advocates, who claim that money spent on preschool will avoid later social spending.

A recent Eagle article cited studies from Chicago, Michigan and North Carolina ("Lessons start now," April 22 Eagle). These flawed studies, however, are no grounds for government parenting.

No study has produced as dramatic results as the Perry (Michigan) study. Ron Haskins, a consultant to the Annie E. Casey Foundation, reminds us that while the study looks promising, "its results have never been fully replicated." This suggests that there was something unique about the Perry circumstances.

Further, the results were in some ways not that impressive after all. By the time the 123 children had reached age 19, nearly a third had been arrested.

The (Abecedarian) North Carolina study, started in 1972, is an even less useful precedent. As with Perry, there are questions about how representative its sample was. Experts can't even agree on what caused its positive outcomes.

Haskins calls it "one step away from foster care," since it enrolled children in 40-hour-per-week, year-round day care when they were 4 months old. (Are Kansans willing to turn children this young over to a bureaucracy?) Because Abecedarian was a five-year experiment, it was extraordinarily expensive. Haskins estimates it would cost $100,000 per child if implemented today -- more costly than four years at the University of Kansas or Kansas State University.

The Chicago experiment, meanwhile, did not use random assignment, the gold standard for social research, meaning that its findings also are suspect.

Instead of putting even more money into the same old programs, the Flint Hills Center for Public Policy recommends that Kansas foster educational improvement by making schools compete for students. Funding the student would promote greater choice and accountability, and spur all schools to excel.

The merits of preschool versus competition among schools have already been tested. Matthew Ladner of the Phoenix-based Goldwater Institute observed that the academic gains of preschool students in Arizona disappeared by the fifth grade. The schools that faced the greatest competition for students, on the other hand, achieved significant gains in student scores.

Arizona offers tax credits for private-school tuition. The state also makes it much easier for competent authorities to open a charter school than is the case in Kansas, and Arizona generally makes greater use of competition.

Rather than heed the siren call of expensive preschool programs based on uncertain science, Kansans who care about children ought to employ a competition-based approach to school funding.

Labels: Education

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Advancing Educational Choice: Job Openings.
The Alliance for School Choice is moving its offices from Arizona to Washington, DC. With that move comes the need for some staffers on the ground. What follows are some job announcements that may be of interest.

Professional Opening: Director of Research

The Alliance for School Choice (www.allianceforschoolchoice.org), the nation’s leading public policy organization supporting private educational options for disadvantaged schoolchildren, seeks a Director of Research in its new DC headquarters. Responsibilities will include research support for the Alliance’s policy advocates, supervision of research support staff, coordination with and supervision of outside researchers, and writing for a lay audience. The successful candidate should have strong research and writing skills, experience with education policy issues, sufficient experience and gravitas to supervise the work of distinguished outside researchers, experience with legislative bill-tracking, supervisory experience, and a congenial personality. The Alliance offers a fast-paced, positive working environment and excellent benefits. Please send resume and writing sample to Elizabeth Moser, director of state outreach, at schoolchoicelady@cox.net. The Alliance is a nonpartisan, equal opportunity employer.

Professional Opening: Director of Communications and Marketing

The Alliance for School Choice (www.allianceforschoolchoice.org), the nation’s leading public policy organization supporting private educational options for disadvantaged schoolchildren, seeks a Director of Communications and Marketing in its new DC headquarters. Responsibilities encompass supervision and execution of a media and marketing strategy to advance school choice across the nation. The successful candidate must possess experience and a demonstrated track record of success in both communications and marketing, strong writing skills, supervisory experience, high energy, and a congenial personality. The Alliance offers a fast-paced, positive working environment and excellent benefits. Please send resume and writing sample to Elizabeth Moser, director of state outreach, at schoolchoicelady@cox.net. The Alliance is a nonpartisan, equal opportunity employer.

Professional Opening: Print and Electronic Publications Director

The Alliance for School Choice (www.allianceforschoolchoice.org), the nation’s leading public policy organization supporting private educational options for disadvantaged schoolchildren, seeks a Production Director with responsibility for all print and electronic publications. These publications include: the School Choice Activist and Navigator newsletters, annual reports, various other publications, and the Alliance website. Specific responsibilities include designing and executing production of these publications; coordinating and editing substantive content; and supervising support staff and outside contractors. The successful candidate must possess experience and a demonstrated track record of success in both print and electronic publications, including web design and HTML coding experience, strong writing and grammatical skills, supervisory experience, high energy, and a congenial personality. The Alliance offers a fast-paced, positive working environment and excellent benefits. Please send resume and writing sample to Elizabeth Moser, director of state outreach, at schoolchoicelady@cox.net. The Alliance is a nonpartisan, equal opportunity employer.

Professional Opening: Executive Assistant to the President

The Alliance for School Choice (www.allianceforschoolchoice.org), the nation’s leading public policy organization supporting private educational options for disadvantaged schoolchildren, seeks a highly experienced Executive Assistant to the President in its new DC headquarters. Responsibilities encompass assistance to the President on correspondence, calendar, travel, and general organization; and principal liaison to the Board of Directors. The successful candidate must possess experience and a demonstrated track record of success as an executive assistant, experience in Board relations, experience with travel and meeting planning, careful attention to detail, an ability to multi-task, high energy, and a congenial personality. The Alliance offers a fast-paced, positive working environment and excellent benefits. Please send resume and writing sample to Elizabeth Moser, director of state outreach, at schoolchoicelady@cox.net. The Alliance is a nonpartisan, equal opportunity employer.

Professional Opening: Development Director (production and communications)

The Alliance for School Choice (www.allianceforschoolchoice.org), the nation’s leading public policy organization supporting private educational options for disadvantaged schoolchildren, seeks a Development Director for production & communications in its new DC headquarters. Position responsibilities include:

• proposal and letter writing,
• writing grant reports, Alliance Insider (development’s quarterly newsletter) and other fundraising marketing/communications materials and publications,
• working with communications team to produce an annual report,
• implementation and management of the direct mail program,
• establishment and implementation of an annualized mail schedule (requests, non-requests, annual giving) for each giving level,
• prospect identification and cultivation for Alliance, and
• stewardship of all current donors to ensure maximize retention and increased gifts.

Qualifications

Excellent oral, written and organizational skills required. Highly accomplished and versatile writer with thorough knowledge of strategic communications concepts, methods and techniques. Proficient in proofreading and fact-checking. Ability to manage and organize projects. Ability to handle sensitive and confidential information, prioritize competing work and deadlines, and produce highly accurate work. Experience with a direct mail program a plus.

Bachelor’s degree in English, communications, or a related field. Minimum of five years experience creating written communications in support of fundraising efforts.

Salary and benefits are commensurate with qualifications and experience.

Interested candidates please submit a cover letter and resume to Cheryl Hillen, director of development, at cehillen@aol.com. For questions/inquires, please call (860) 872-4004. For more information on the Alliance for School Choice, please visit our web site at www.allianceforschoolchoice.org.

Professional Opening: Development Director (c-4, state-based fundraising, external relations)

The Alliance for School Choice (www.allianceforschoolchoice.org), the nation’s leading public policy organization supporting private educational options for disadvantaged schoolchildren, seeks a Development Director for c-4 and state-based fundraising in its new DC headquarters.

Position responsibilities include:

• cultivation of a diverse base of donors for Advocates,
• management and implementation of events throughout the country to build support for Advocates,
• utilization of mail, meetings, events and proposals as appropriate to raise Advocates support,
• prospect research for political major donor prospects,
• working with the Advocates board to identify prospects;
• assisting with marketing and communications materials and mailings,
• stewardship of all current donors ($1,000 - $5,000 range) to ensure maximize retention and increased gifts, and working with state team to identify and cultivate support for state-specific fundraising needs/projects (both Alliance and Advocates).
  

Qualifications

Excellent oral, written and organizational skills required. Highly accomplished and versatile writer with thorough knowledge of strategic communications concepts, methods and techniques. Proficient in proofreading and fact-checking. Ability to manage and organize projects. Ability to handle sensitive and confidential information, prioritize competing work and deadlines, and produce highly accurate work. Experience with political fundraising a must!

Bachelor’s degree in English, communications, or a related field. Minimum of five years experience in a political fundraising position.

Salary and benefits are commensurate with qualifications and experience.

Interested candidates please submit a cover letter and resume to Cheryl Hillen, director of development, at cehillen@aol.com. For questions/inquires, please call (860) 872-4004. For more information on the Alliance for School Choice, please visit our web site at www.allianceforschoolchoice.org.

Professional Opening: Development Assistant

The Alliance for School Choice (www.allianceforschoolchoice.org), the nation’s leading public policy organization supporting private educational options for disadvantaged schoolchildren, seeks a Development Assistant in its new DC headquarters. Position responsibilities include:

• management of the Raiser’s Edge 7.0 database,
• serving as the gift administrator, reconciling contributions periodically with the accounting team and organizing/providing financial information for the monthly executive committee reports,
• facilitation of development mailings and serve as manager of the donor files, editing all development print materials including donor proposals and grant reports, supporting the development team in donor cultivation (assist the development manager with the facilitation of regional donor events, edit promotional and giving club materials), assisting with the management of the direct mail program, most importantly managing deadlines, and provide special assistance as needed (aid with organizational strategy and development progress).

Qualifications

Proficient with Raiser’s Edge 7.0. Knowledge in gift administration. Excellent oral, written and organizational skills required. Proficient in proofreading and fact-checking. Ability to manage and organize projects. Ability to handle sensitive and confidential information, prioritize competing work and deadlines, and produce highly accurate work. Experience in a fundraising environment preferred.

Bachelor’s degree in communications, business or a related field. Minimum of two years experience in a fundraising position.

Salary and benefits are commensurate with qualifications and experience.

Interested candidates please submit a cover letter and resume to Crystal Corriveau, development manager, at ccorriveau@allianceforschoolchoice.org. For questions/inquires, please call (480) 262-7708. For more information on the Alliance for School Choice, please visit our web site at www.allianceforschoolchoice.org.

Labels: Education, jobs in public policy, School choice

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How Much Does Your School District Spend?
For most homeowners, the single largest recipient of their property taxes is the local school monopoly. Yet numbers on school finance can be hard to find and worse, difficult to figure out.

The Goldwater Institute has set up an interactive database that gives a look at district finances. Unfortunately, it's of use only if you're looking at districts in Arizona. But it might serve as a model for groups in other states.

There appear to be some bugs that need to be worked out. The first few times I selected a grade level, some computerese error messages came up on the screen. Take that as a sign that the information is not relevant or available.

Labels: Education, K-12 education

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Rural Lawmakers: Vote for Urban Choice, or Pay for the Clean-Up.
There's a plan being floated in Missouri to establish tax credits for companies that provide grants to scholarship organizations that would, in turn, help students attend privately run schools.

A similar measure has been operating in Arizona and Pennsylvania for a while, but its prospects in Missouri are not strong.

What's interesting about this scenario is how the proposal might pass after all. From the St. Louis News-Dispatch:

Rep. Ed Robb, R-Columbia, hopes to sell rural legislators on the premise that the tax credit is a free-market solution to failing urban schools. Without such a solution, he said, the whole state may have to foot the bill for continuing declines in St. Louis and Kansas City.

Sounds about right.

Bring in some competition, fix up the schools, and stave off a state bailout or takeover.

Labels: Education

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Public Schools: Melting Pot, or Boiling Pot?
It looks like the Cato Institute is taking on the belief that public education (i.e., government-run schools) is an essential part of a civil society.

From an announcement:

"Many Americans believe that public schools are the gentle flame beneath the Great American Melting Pot-- that they are the best, perhaps the only, means of fostering social cohesion and good citizenship. But are they?

A new report from Cato's Center for Educational Freedom argues that, in reality, public schooling is inherently divisive. In "Why We Fight: How Public Schools Cause Social Conflict," Neal McCluskey explains that public schooling forces everyone to pay for a single official system that does not, and indeed cannot,– reflect the public's diverse and often conflicting views. The inevitable result of this system, he concludes, is endless social discord over what is taught."

If you're a C-SPAN junkie, you can watch a vide of a conference on the topic through this page.

Labels: Education

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School Choice Advances in Arizona.
Two new school choice measures in Arizona have survived a legal challenge, for now, says the Alliance for School Choice.

Even more interesting than the decision of the state Supreme Court to not hear a case challenging the "Arizona Displaced Pupil Choice Grants" (for children in foster care) and "Arizona Scholarships for Pupils with Disabilities" are the results of a recent public opinion survey.

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The Court's decision comes on the heels of a recent poll showing a significant amount of support among Arizonans for the challenged programs. The poll found that 76 percent of Arizonans surveyed like the idea of ArizonaÂ?s disabled students being allowed to attend the school of their choice, and 64 percent support the concept of foster children getting the education of their choosing, whether that is at a public or private school.

The survey also found considerable voter support for the concept of school choice beyond the targeted programs for foster and disabled children.

When asked if they liked the idea of Â?Parents having the ability to take their tax dollars and put their child in the school of their choosing,? respondents favored the idea by a 2:1 margin.

A full copy of the poll is available at www.azschoolchoice.com. The survey was conducted by The Polling Company, Inc. in December of more than 500 Arizona residents and has a margin of error of +/- 4.4 percent.

Labels: Education, School choice

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Just when you thought Detroit Public Schools Couldn't Get Worse . . .
The man whose poor record of managing the Detroit Public Schools led to his departure, and the state of Michigan's taking over the system is now a candidate ... for the job of superintendent.

Labels: Education

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Ohio Charter Schools are Safe, For Now.
In Ohio, charter schools turned back a constitutional challenge. See State ex rel. Ohio Congress of Parents & Teachers v. State Bd. of Edn (PDF), in which the plaintiffs alleged four complaints:

(in the summation of the law firm Jones Day, which defended charter schools)

"1) [charter schools] are not part of the 'common system' of public education,
(2) render the public school system less than 'thorough and efficient,'
(3) take local property taxes from traditional school districts, and
(4) may not be supported by the state due to the fact that the schools are operated by private individuals."

Labels: Charter schools, Education

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Are Public School Districts Constitutionally Protected from Charter Schools?
That's the question that is posed in Ohio, where community schools, as they are known, face legal challenges.

A challenge on the grounds of the state constitution was rejected on a close vote early last month.

See (PDF) State ex rel. Ohio Congress of Parents & Teachers v. State Bd. of Edn

Labels: Charter schools, Education

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No Child Left Behind on a Big Scale.
In theory, under No Child Left Behind, a student who attends a school with persistently lousy performance will eventually get the chance to attend another school, even a private one. I don't know if that's actually happened, however.

On the other hand, Ohio has taken steps to allow students, now, to take advantage of school choice. Under the Educational Choice Scholarship Program, students who attend failing schools have an out. They must attend a school building that has been in "academic emergency" or "academic watch" for three years.

Of course, the program has been opposed by the teachers union, which is all for protecting jobs, even if it means denying opportunities to students. You might not know, however, that the state's association of school boards also opposes EdChoice.

Labels: Education, School choice

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Public Education, Yes. Government-run schools? Not for all.
In the wake of Milton Friedman's death, I decided to look at his 1956 essay, which started him down the path of advocating for school choice.

The essay is The Role of Government in Education. There are two major components, K-12 education, followed by higher education.

For higher education, Friedman proposed a contract by which college students would get funding in exchange for a portion of their post-college income. He admits that it has a funny smell to it: "There seems no legal obstacle to private contracts of this kind, even though they are economically equivalent to the purchase of a share in an individual's earning capacity and thus to partial slavery."

On K-12 education, he says that we have three questions to ask.

Should government compel minor children to be educated? Yes, he concludes, as an educated citizenry is vital to a stable democracy.

Should the cost of that education be borne only by parents and the child, or by society at large? Friedman comes down on the side of compulsory payment of others (taxation), on the grounds that primary and secondary education carries substantial "neighborhood effects," or what your Econ 101 class may have called "externalities."

Who should administer that education? Through a series of events, we have ended up with giving a monopoly, based on geographic scope, to government bodies known as local school districts, the directors of which (school board members) are selected by political means (that is, school board elections).

Yet as Friedman points out, government financing need not mean government operation of schools, let alone government schools being the only place at which taxpayer funds would be spent. (Think of food stamps; they are not bought at "public grocery stores.")

Governments could require a minimum level of education which they could finance by giving parents vouchers redeemable for a specified maximum sum per child per year if spent on "approved" educational services. Parents would then be free to spend this sum and any additional sum on purchasing educational services from an "approved" institution of their own choice. The educational services could be rendered by private enterprises operated for profit, or by non-profit institutions of various kinds. The role of the government would be limited to assuring that the schools met certain minimum standards such as the inclusion of a minimum common content in their programs, much as it now inspects restaurants to assure that they maintain minimum sanitary standards. An excellent example of a program of this sort is the United States educational program for veterans after World War II.

Fifty years after Friedman's initial essay, school choice has but a toehold in American education. It works more or less at the university level, with privately and publicly owned colleges.

At the K-12 level, school choice is expanding, with tax credits, tax deductions, voucher programs, and other means operating in about a dozen states. Here's hoping that it doesn't take another 50 years for the idea to get to fruition.

Labels: Education, School choice

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Fifty Years of School Voucher Progress.
The recent death of Milton Friedman reminds us all of the value of competition in education, and the promise--largely untried--of school vouchers.

The Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation offers a timeline of the idea of school vouchers in a poster they recently sent my way. Here are some of the items on the list:

1955: Friedman articulates the idea of school vouchers--government financing of education coupled with consumer choice of school, in "The Role of Government Education," a chapter of the book Economics and the Public Interest

1955: Minnesota enacts an education tax deduction.

1962: Friedman writes Capitalism and Freedom, which further discusses vouchers.

1970: The U.S. Office of Economic Opportunity decides to create a pilot voucher plan. The NEA denounces vouchers.

1972: The U.S. Office of Economic Opportunity creates a pilot program in Alum Rock, California. It is very limited in scope, hindering its demonstration value.

1975: The president AFT--the other teachers union--reverses his opinion and comes out in favor of vouchers, in "Vouchers: A Critic Changes his Mind."

1980: The PBS series "Free to Choose" highlights economics, and school choice.

1983: Reagan administration proposes vouchers and tuition tax credits. In Muller v. Allen, SCOTUS gives OK to Minnesota tax deduction.

1985: Reagan administration proposes converting Title I money to vouchers.

1987: Iowa enacts the Iowa Tuition Tax Credit

1990: Wisconsin enacts the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program

1995: Ohio creates a scholarship and tutoring program for Cleveland.

1997: Arizona creates the Arizona Tax Credit program. Minnesota establishes a tax credit program and expands the tax deduction.

1998: SCOTUS upholds the use of religious schools in the MPCP

1999: Florida starts the A+ program, which gives vouchers to students in failing public schools. Illinois creates an education tax credit.

2000: Florida expands the A+ program to include students with special needs.

2001: The Illinois Supreme Court rejects a Blaine Amendment challenge to the state's tax credit. Florida enacts a corporate tax credit program, as does Pennsylvania.

2002: In Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, SCOTUS rules that the Cleveland program does not violate the U.S. Constitution

2003: Pennsylvania creates a tax credit for pre-K.

2004: The DC Schools Choice incentive Act implements vouchers in the nation's capital city.

2005: Utah enacts a Special Needs Scholarship program. Arizona and Ohio expand school choice programs.

Labels: Education, School choice

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Legislative Scheduling of Sports Schedules: Good Stewardship, or Mere Meddling?
Glenn Price of the Durant (Oklahoma) Daily Democrat thinks that the state legislature should require that when Oklahoma State University (division I) schedule tune-up games against division II opponents, it should do so against schools within the state.

"Between both the men and women's programs, OU did not play one exhibition game against another Oklahoma state supported school this year. But, they did play against two Missouri teams and gave them money to play the exhibition games. Why not an Oklahoma team? ... When the division I schools set up these exhibition games, why don't they use the division II teams that are in their own state to help out their fellow state universities?"

Price compares the situation of OU and OSU to the two universities out east, Louisville and Kentucky: "Both schools were perennial powerhouses in basketball. They were about 100 miles apart, both were state supported schools, but they refused to play each other. The state legislature got tired of the two schools being afraid to schedule each other, so they passed legislation that the schools must play each other at least once a year in both football and basketball."

Ah, the wisdom of the legislature.

Labels: Education

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The U.S. Becoming a Nation of the Less Educated?
Is the U.S. actually becoming a nation with less education? The National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education says so.

"If current trends continue," it warns, "the proportion of workers with high school diplomas and college degrees will decrease and the personal income of Americans will decline over the next 15 years."

Granted, having a BA in English lit isn't a great qualification to serve up coffee, but the Center expects that high school graduation rates will decline as well. One way of measuring the economic effect: a 2 percent decline in inflation-adjusted per-capita income by the year 2020.

Changing demographics and the achievement gap are largely responsible.

Just another reason to introduce competition, choice, and a diversity of players into the delivery of K-12 education. Private schools and public charter schools have a record of helping close the achievement gap.

Labels: Charter schools, Education, School choice

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Choice School Students Say: He's Throwing Away My Dream.
Policy recommendations based on rational thought are good. Emotional appeals that have rational thought behind them are even better.

Milwaukee has had a limited version of parental choice in education for about a decade now. You have to live in Milwaukee and be under a certain income level, but if you qualify, you get a voucher to send your child to a participating school.

The number of students who could participate in the program has been capped by law, and in the last year there was a lot of political action over raising the cap.

The group called School Choice Wisconsin was instrumental in getting the cap increased. They did a great job of adding some grassroots advocacy to the policy arguments.

I highly recommend the following commercial. Make sure to watch it until the end. It's a Quicktime file, 5MB.

http://www.schoolchoicewi.org/library/comealong.cfm

See more commercials here: http://www.schoolchoicewi.org/library/commercial.cfm

Labels: Education, School choice

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California Rejects Another Preschool Proposal.
California, the trendsetting state, takes a step back from universal preschool.

Writes K. Lloyd Billingsley, for the Pacific Research Institute, "On Tuesday, 61 percent of California voters improved the state's educational and fiscal prospects by rejecting Proposition 82, an expensive government pre-school measure of dubious merit that would have raised already high taxes and expanded state power."

Citing a number of previous ballot measures that were disregarded by state officials, he wonders if the program will be implemented anyway.

Meanwhile, Billingley's associate, Xiaochin Claire Yan, explains Why Voters Did the Right Thing:

The program designed by Prop. 82 lacked components that were critical to the success of preschool programs in other cities. It also didn’t help that Rob Reiner had to resign from the state preschool commission due to allegations of questionable use of classroom funds to help the campaign on 82.

Labels: Education

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Conservatives now offering "one of the worst ideas in education:" former U.S. Secretary of Education.
"DUMB liberal ideas in education are a dime a dozen," says Rod Paige, "and during my time as superintendent of Houston's schools and as the United States secretary of education I battled against all sorts of progressivist lunacy, from whole-language reading to fuzzy math to lifetime teacher tenure. Today, however, one of the worst ideas in education is coming from conservatives: the so-called 65 percent solution."

As an alternative, Paige recommends the 100 percent solution, about which I will have more to say in the next month or so--with any luck, in a major newspaper in the Midwest.

The mad professor of economics has a couple of thoughts on the 65-percent plan.

Labels: Education

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Some Bad Ideas Won't Die Just Yet.
Milwaukee and Chicago have the only two big-city school districts that have a residency requirement for teachers.

The Wisconsin Policy Research Institute recently explained (PDF) Why It's Bad for Schools and Why It Isn't Going Away.

Why won't it go away? Here's one reason: the teachers union's power increases if its membership lives within the district.

Labels: Education

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Schools for Students ... or Student for Schools?
Should traditional public school districts be required to let charter school students participate in extra-curricular activities?

The Saint Paul Pioneer-Press recounts the story of a 16-year old boy who wasn't doing well in his school district. He enrolled in a charter school, and has performed well since then.

Since the charter school does not have a football team, Randall Brekke asked to try out for the team of the district high school.

They said no. The logic is appalling: "District 196 Superintendent John Currie said students should view the activities as part of the whole school experience and not drop in only for one or two."

In other words, take it or leave it, regardless of whether the academic program--allegedly the reason for a school to exist--fits the needs of the student. We're going to claim all of you, regardless of the fact that customization is the order of the day.

The system must prevail.

Labels: Charter schools, Education

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NEA Fights NCLB, $8 million worth.
The National Education Association--the union of many public school teachers--doesn't like the No Child Left Behind law.

Now, some folks who have taken a look at the union's documents find that it has given $8 million to groups that have produced publications against the act.

Labels: Education

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School Bill in Congress Offers Funds for Trapped Students.
Federal funding for schooling isn't idea by any means. But if it is to be, initiatives such as the following would be useful. It comes from the offices of Senator Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn) and a few other politicians.

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House and Senate Education Leaders Introduce Legislation to Give Children Trapped in Under-Performing Schools More Opportunities to Achieve

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senators Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and John Ensign (R-NV) and U.S. Representatives Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-CA) and Sam Johnson (R-TX) today introduced bicameral legislation to implement the Bush administration’s America’s Opportunity Scholarships program to give children who are trapped in under-performing schools more choices and opportunities to improve their educational experience.

“America’s Opportunity Scholarships give meaning to the promise of No Child Left Behind,” said Sen. Alexander, Chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Education and Early Childhood Development. “This is about giving low-income families whose children are stuck in low-performing schools the same opportunities as other families. A recent poll found that 62 percent of public school parents have transferred a child out of one school into a better school or have decided where to live based on the schools in that district. This offers a way out for students whose families don't have the money for tuition or the luxury of moving.”

“Educating America’s youth must be a priority for the people of our nation, and our government,” said Sen. Ensign. “America’s Opportunity Scholarships program opens greater avenues to make certain that all children in our nation are given a chance to succeed. This legislation will help to ensure that our most disadvantaged children can receive a better education and will ensure that our nation’s next generations have the skills they need to succeed in the future.”

“Not only does the America’s Opportunity Scholarship for Kids Act expand upon the great success of No Child Left Behind by increasing parental choice, but it also shines a brighter light than ever on the need for more educational opportunities and – ultimately – higher achievement in our classrooms,” said Rep. McKeon, Chairman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.

“Children may be a fraction of today's society but they are 100% of our future. It's time we empower students - and their parents. I want to give these children a choice and a chance,” said Rep. Johnson.

The America's Opportunity Scholarships for Kids Act would authorize the Department of Education to provide $100 million in fiscal year 2007 for competitive grants to states, school districts, and non-profit organizations to provide scholarships of up to $4,000 to low-income children in persistently under-performing schools to attend the private school of their choice.

States, school districts, and non-profit organizations would also be authorized to provide up to $3,000 to low-income students for intensive, sustained supplemental educational services if students don’t want to attend a different school. This would include high-quality tutoring, after-school or summer school programs designed to help improve the student’s academic achievement.

Under the bipartisan No Child Left Behind Act, schools are identified for restructuring after failing to meet their Adequate Yearly Progress goals for six years. The U.S. Department of Education reports that in the 2004-05 school year, 1,065 schools were identified for restructuring. Preliminary estimates suggest that an additional 1,000 schools will be identified for restructuring in the 2005-06 school year.

“You shouldn't need to win the lottery to send your child to a high-performing school,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings who joined the bill sponsors at a press conference on Capitol Hill to announce the legislation. “President Bush believes we must give parents options, and the America’s Opportunity Scholarships program will empower parents to demand more from our schools and enable them to make choices for their kid’s education and future.”

The bill’s sponsors noted a pair of studies that illustrate the effectiveness of school choice:

- a Harvard-Georgetown-University of Wisconsin study published in 2000 found that African-American students receiving private scholarships in three regions – Ohio, New York, and Washington, D.C. – scored significantly better than their public school peers; and

- according to the 2002 book, “The Education Gap: Vouchers and Urban Schools” by William Howell and Paul Peterson, African-American students using vouchers in New York cut their achievement gap in half over three years

Labels: Education, School choice

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Milton Friedman 101
Imprimis has a short Q&A with Milton Friedman. Here's the section about education. LA is Larry Arnn, president of Hillsdale College, which publishes the monthly periodical.


LA: I want to talk now about education and especially about vouchers, because I know they are dear to your heart. Why do you think teachers unions oppose vouchers?

MF: The president of the National Education Association was once asked when his union was going to do something about students. He replied that when the students became members of the union, the union would take care of them. And that was a correct answer. Why? His responsibility as president of the NEA was to serve the members of his union, not to serve public purposes.

I give him credit: The trade union has been very effective in serving its members. However, in the process, they've destroyed American education. But you see, education isn't the union's function. It's our fault for allowing the union to pursue its agenda.

Consider this fact: There are two areas in the United States that suffer from the same disease—education is one and health care is the other. They both suffer from the disease that takes a system that should be bottom-up and converts it into a system that is top-down. Education is a simple case. It isn't the public purpose to build brick schools and have students taught there. The public purpose is to provide education. Think of it this way: If you want to subsidize the production of a product, there are two ways you can do it. You can subsidize the producer or you can subsidize the consumer. In education, we subsidize the producer—the school. If you subsidize the student instead—the consumer—you will have competition. The student could choose the school he attends and that would force schools to improve and to meet the demands of their students.

LA: Although you discuss many policy issues in Free to Choose, you have turned much of your attention to education, and to vouchers as a method of education reform. Why is that your focus?

MF: I don't see how we can maintain a decent society if we have a world split into haves and have-nots, with the haves subsidizing the have-nots. In our current educational system, close to 30 percent of the youngsters who start high school never finish. They are condemned to low-income jobs. They are condemned to a situation in which they are going to be at the bottom. That leads in turn to a divisive society; it leads to a stratified society rather than one of general cooperation and general understanding.

The effective literacy rate in the United States today is almost surely less than it was 100 years ago. Before government had any involvement in education, the majority of youngsters were schooled, literate, and able to learn. It is a disgrace that in a country like the United States, 30 percent of youngsters never graduate from high school. And I haven't even mentioned those who drop out in elementary school. It's a disgrace that there are so many people who can't read and write. It's hard for me to see how we can continue to maintain a decent and free society if a large subsection of that society is condemned to poverty and to handouts.

LA: Do you think the voucher campaign is going well?

MF: No. I think it's going much too slowly. What success we have had is almost entirely in the area of income-limited vouchers.

There are two kinds of vouchers: One is a charity voucher that is limited to people below a certain income level. The other is an education voucher, which, if you think of vouchers as a way of transforming the educational industry, is available to everybody.

How can we make vouchers available to everybody? First, education ought to be a state and local matter, not a federal matter. The 1994 Contract with America called for the elimination of the Department of Education. Since then, the budget for the Department of Education has tripled. This trend must be reversed.

Next, education ought to be a parental matter. The responsibility for educating children is with parents. But in order to make it a parental matter, we must have a situation in which parents are Free to Choose the schools their children attend. They aren't free to do that now. Today the schools pick the children. Children are assigned to schools by geography—by where they live.

By contrast, I would argue that if the government is going to spend money on education, the money ought to travel with the children. The objective of such an expenditure ought to be educated children, not beautiful buildings. The way to accomplish this is to have a universal voucher.

As I said in 1955, we should take the amount of money that we're now spending on education, divide it by the number of children, and give that amount of money to each parent. After all, that's what we're spending now, so we might as well let parents spend it in the form of vouchers.

Labels: Education

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School's Out for Summer. Is that a Good Idea?
The Brookings Institution's Frederick M. Hess makes the case for year-round school.

One problem with entrusting an important function (such as the education of children) with government is that governments are by design and by nature slow to respond to changing times. (Private companies can have the same problem, but eventually the discipline of market competition catches up with them. See: GM, Ford, Sears, etc.)

One once-useful, now not-quite so useful feature of schooling today is the 9 month calendar. As Hess points out, it originated in a different age, when agricultural production took up a substantial portion of the workforce. (Today it's, what, under 3 percent? Or is that 2 percent?)

Of course, the needs of business still hold sway--the summer recreation industry depends on cheap teen labor, Hess reminds us--but social inertia and political interests play a role as well.

Hess, writing in the Washington Post, does not call for government imposition of summer school, at the federal or even the state level. Instead, he calls for striking down laws that prohibit a year-round calendar.

He also calls for increased school funding, which could be argued with. We've been increasing funding of schools for decades, and yet achievement (as reflected by NAEP scores and graduation rates) remains flat. Even if the "summer forgetfullness" is addressed by going to a year-round program, more funding alone is likely to give us unsatisfactory results.

But the idea of changing the school calendar? It's a reminder that we need not more money as much as systematic changes.

Labels: Education

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Virtual Schools Show Promise.
Bricks and mortar as the only operating model is losing steam in retail. Carolina Journal describes how it's giving way as the only model for K-12 education.

The A.L. Brown Cyber Campus is one case of putting new technology to use for the benefit of groups of students separated by distance or interests.

Labels: Education

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California Rejects Another Preschool Proposal.
Since K-12 education isn't working out so well (at least in some schools), the logical step is to ... expand the school system to an even younger age?

(Here's an entry that has been stuck in the "draft" stage for several months. I just noticed it this morning.)

California, the trendsetting state, takes a step back from universal preschool.

Writes K. Lloyd Billingsley, for the Pacific Research Institute, "On Tuesday, 61 percent of California voters improved the state's educational and fiscal prospects by rejecting Proposition 82, an expensive government pre-school measure of dubious merit that would have raised already high taxes and expanded state power."

Citing a number of previous ballot measures that were disregarded by state officials, he wonders if the program will be implemented anyway.

Meanwhile, Billingley's associate, Xiaochin Claire Yan, explains Why Voters Did the Right Thing:

The program designed by Prop. 82 lacked components that were critical to the success of preschool programs in other cities. It also didn’t help that Rob Reiner had to resign from the state preschool commission due to allegations of questionable use of classroom funds to help the campaign on 82.

Labels: Education

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More school choice news.
In case you missed it, Iowa takes a step towards school choice. It looks similar to a program already established in Arizona. The approach is an indirect approach to giving vouchers for education to families.

From the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation:

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For Immediate Release
June 2, 2006


Iowa enacts new scholarship tax credit program
Unprecedented bipartisan support marks a growing trend among the states

INDIANAPOLIS-Today, Gov. Tom Vilsack (D-IA) signed the Educational Opportunities Act (EOA), a law that will allow thousands of Iowa students the chance to receive scholarships to attend a school of their parents choice. The bill, which reached the governor's desk after getting overwhelming support from both sides of the political aisle, is the second time this year that a democrat governor has signed a school choice law.

"This is a great day for all Iowa families," said Sara Eide, executive director of the Iowa Catholic Conference. "While the Catholic Conference has been working on this issue for nearly twenty years, it took the combined efforts of parents, educators, community leaders, organizations such as the Iowa Alliance for Choice in Education, and our national allies to make policymakers understand that expanded school options is a critical need in the state."

The program establishes a 65 percent tax credit for individuals who make contributions to approved school tuition organizations (STOs), which then distribute scholarships to families to be used at a school of their choice. To qualify, families must have an income that is at 300 percent or below of the federal poverty level. STOs must spend 90% of funds raised on scholarships, and scholarships may not exceed tuition at the child's private school. In addition, while the program will be capped at $2.5 million for 2006, the cap will rise to $5 million for subsequent years.

Following a growing trend occurring around the country, the EOA received overwhelming bipartisan support from Republicans and Democrats alike. In the Senate, which is evenly split between the two parties, the bill passed 49-1: and in the House, where Republicans hold only a one vote majority, the bill passed by a vote of 75-19.

"We are so thankful for the strong bi-partisan support for expanded educational options in Iowa, including the leadership in both houses and educational opportunity champions like Representative Carmine Boal and Senator Joe Seng," said Eide.

In 2006, school choice has seen growth in the number of Democrats who back educational freedom. Earlier this year, Gov. Janet Napolitano of Arizona became the first Democrat governor to sign a new school choice bill into law. Gov. Vilsack becomes the second governor to do so. Democrat Gov. Jim Doyle of Wisconsin signed a bill expanding the cap of the Milwaukee school choice program by nearly 7,000 students. Also, the Democrat leaders of the Missouri Black Caucus were among the top proponents of a school choice bill before its legislature.

"We're seeing an important shift in the support for school choice," said Robert C. Enlow, executive director of the Friedman Foundation. "More and more legislators, parents and opinion makers from all sides of the political spectrum are realizing that the ability to choose a school is a fundamental freedom and that there are immense moral implications that come from denying families educational choice."

Labels: Education, School choice

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Discussion of School Choice Gets Nasty.
I know that headlines are meant to be provocative. But the LA Times went wild when it titled its discussion of school choice "A Satanic Idea?"

Bob Sipchen relates a recent visit with Milton Friedman. Says the Nobel-prize winning economist: "It'?s very clear that the people who suffer most in our present system are people in the slums -? blacks, Hispanics, the poor, the underclass."

On funding, "In the last 10 years, the amount spent per child on schooling has more than doubled after allowing for inflation. There'?s been absolutely no improvement as far as I can see in the quality of education. . . . The system you have is like a sponge. It will absorb the extra money. Because the incentives are wrong."

If you read the comments--which are remarkably civil for a newspaper-sponsored blog--remember to read from the bottom of the page up.

Labels: Education, School choice

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Arizona may have been the last of the continental states to be admitted to the union, but it's leading the country in school choice.

Here's a press release (a couple weeks old by now) from the Alliance for School Choice:

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We are poised for a miracle for school choice in AZ.

As you know, earlier this year, after a pitched battle, Gov. Napolitano finally allowed a $5 million corporate scholarship tax credit for economically disadvantaged students to become law without her signature, after two vetoes. We assumed this would be the high-water mark for school choice given that it was the first time a new school choice program was enacted in a state with a Democratic governor. (Later, Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack signed a corporate scholarship tax credit bill.) But because we have a very pro-school choice legislature, we kept pushing for more.

Last week, in return for increased teacher salaries and full-day pre-K, Napolitano agtreed to three more bills as part of a budget deal:

1. a doubling of the corporate tax credit to $10 million, plus automatic 20 percent annual increases until 2010 when it will total nearly $21 million and over 6,000 students;

2. a voucher program for children with disabilities; and

3. a first of its kind voucher program for foster care children.

All three passed the Legislature yesterday. Napolitano has agreed to transmit the bills to the Secretary of State without her signature. If so, these will be the first voucher programs to be enacted in a state with a Democratic governor.

Our hero is Senate President Ken Bennett (who received an award at our Board dinner last November), who twisted arms until the very end to squeak out the necessary votes, even on his LAST DAY as a legislator. He deserves our thanks.

I am enormously proud of our state coordinators, Matt Ladner and Robert Teegarden; our lobbyists, Sydney Hay (Republican) and Barry Dill (Democrat); and our partners, the Hispanic Council for Reform and Educational Options and the Friedman Foundation.

Labels: Education, School choice

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The Limits of Charity Vouchers
Milton Friedman (PDF article, 4 pages) reflects on the prospects for school choice 50 years after his influential essay.

He notes that competitive industries produce economic growth through "bottom up" innovations, while schooling, by nature of it being government-directed, is top-down. It's also seen "little, no, or even negative improvement in the product." We spend more and get less.

He faults current voucher programs (which he calls "charity vouchers") as being limited in scope (generally they are available only to the poorest of families in the worst performing of school districts).

Even worse for the cause of educational excellence is the fact that in current voucher programs parents are prohibited from adding onto voucher amounts. What drives innovation in other industries, Friedman notes, are consumers who are willing to shell out big bucks. It sounds like a typical parody of economic conservatism, but it's true: the early adapters who pay $2,000 for a VCR lead the way for the development of $99 DVD players.

One major obstacle to real vouchers--though not the only one--is the wealth ($1.5 billion) of teacher unions, who benefit from the current system.

Given the strength of the opposition to school choice, Friedman predicts that when true competition and choice are ushered in, they will do so through a swift collapse of political support for the status quo.

Labels: Education, School choice

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Schools Slow to Publicize Family Options in NCLB.
The federal law No Child Left Behind offers families a tiny element of school choice, provided that they put in enough time in an abysmally performing school district. But school districts have strong financial incentives to neglect their obligations to inform families of their options.

This comes out in a several-month old announcement from the Alliance for School Choice (cleaning up the old in box today!). Here's a press release that gives some details:

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

March 23, 2006

Contact: Laura Devany, Alliance For School Choice 602-468-0900/ 602-615-8897


NATIONAL TEST CASES FILED AGAINST LOS ANGELES AND COMPTON SCHOOL DISTRICTS DEMANDING PUBLIC SCHOOL TRANSFER OPTIONS UNDER NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND ACT

PHOENIX-- In a major legal development that could test the vitality of the No Child Left Behind Act and impact educational opportunities for children in large urban districts across the nation, the Alliance for School Choice today joined the Coalition on Urban Renewal and Education (CURE) in a legal filing. The action demands that the Los Angeles and Compton Unified School Districts immediately provide and publicize public school transfer options for children in failing schools as required by the law.

The Alliance also called upon U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings to cut off applicable federal funds to the districts until they comply with the law or make other suitable educational opportunities available to children in failing schools.

"The No Child Left Behind Act isn’t worth the paper it’s written on so long as children are forced to remain in failing schools," declared Clint Bolick, president of the Phoenix-based Alliance for School Choice, the nation’s leading advocacy group for school choice programs for disadvantaged schoolchildren.

"NCLB shined a spotlight on what we already knew exists in our community; now it's time for our children to know that their parents aren't leaving them behind," said Star Parker, president of CURE. "If anyone needs the opportunity to improve the educational options for their kids, it's the most vulnerable members of our society."

NCLBA requires that school districts offer to children in schools that have failed to make "adequate yearly progress" for two years under state standards the option to transfer to better-performing public schools within the district. Lack of capacity is not a basis to fail to provide transfer opportunities under the law.

A 2004 report by the General Accounting Office found that more than 3 million schoolchildren -- overwhelmingly low-income and minority children -- were entitled to transfer, but only 1 percent of those eligible actually transferred.

The complaints filed against the school districts charge that of at least 250,000 schoolchildren eligible for transfer in Los Angeles, only 527 (.2 percent) received transfers to better-performing schools; while in Compton, zero students have received transfers despite appalling educational conditions. The complaints charge that the districts have failed adequately to make information available to parents or to provide sufficient options.

Los Angeles has by far the nation’s highest number of students in failing schools who are eligible to transfer. Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa has called for mayoral takeover of the school district, declaring that to serve the students it is necessary to "take on the powerful and entrenched interests" and "shake up the system." Compton, meanwhile, was already under state control, which did not significantly improve educational conditions.

"I don’t think it’s fair that the school is failing the parent and the child," said Linda Braxton, speaking of her 13-year-old son Jamal, who she would like to transfer out of a Compton high school. "The Compton system failed him, period."

"The conditions in Los Angeles and Compton are the tip of a national iceberg," Bolick stated. "The problem is that the number of children in failing schools vastly exceeds the number of available slots in better-performing public schools. Public schools alone cannot solve the crisis of inner-city education."

Because NCLBA does not provide a private right of action, the parents and their organizational partners must file complaints in the first instance with the school districts, demanding compliance. That is what they did today, in a pair of complaints prepared by Robert Boldt, partner in the Los Angeles office of Kirkland & Ellis, but Secretary Spellings has authority to take action to cut off certain federal funds to the districts until they comply.

In January, the Bush Administration proposed a $100 million demonstration project to add private school options to NCLBA for children in "restructuring" schools Â? that is, schools that have been failing for at least six consecutive years. More than 1,000 schools across the nation are in that category.

Bolick said that similar actions could be filed in almost every large district in the United States. "Millions of children are being left behind in failing schools," Bolick declared. "They deserve immediate access to better educational opportunities, to which federal law clearly entitles them."

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And here's a more recent announcement, which suggests that little has changed:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE May 9, 2006

SPELLINGS ASKS CALIFORNIA OFFICIALS TO TAKE ACTION ON SCHOOL TRANSFER COMPLAINTS


PHOENIX— Responding to complaints against the Los Angeles and Compton school districts’ failure to provide public school transfer options to children in failing schools, U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings last week asked top California school officials to take action.

While “it is usually best to allow matters such as these to be resolved at the local and state level,” the U.S. Department of Education is “mindful of our own compliance responsibilities and remedies,” Spellings said in a May 1 letter to California State Board of Education President Glee Johnson and Superintendent of Public instruction Jack O’Connell.

The Alliance for School Choice and the Los Angeles-based Coalition on Urban Renewal and Education filed the complaints in March, charging that the two districts failed to provide meaningful notice or transfer options for thousands of eligible students. Federal law requires the school districts to make findings within 60 days, and authorizes the Secretary of Education to cut off federal Title I funds for failure to provide transfer options.

In her letter, Spellings also notes concerns about compliance by the Oakland and Stockton school districts. She noted that department officials will “gather further information on the implementation of public school choice and SES (supplemental education services) in your state.”

“We are encouraged that the secretary is taking seriously the rampant noncompliance of school districts with their public school transfer obligations,” declared Clint Bolick, president and general counsel of the Alliance for School Choice. “Millions of children are languishing in failing schools around the nation. That is neither morally nor legally tolerable.”

Labels: Education, School choice

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Entrepreneurial Schools.
The value of charter-school fundraising.

Recently I toured several charter schools. None depends solely on taxpayer support, each engages in development work, seeking volunteers and financial backing from foundations and individuals.

This is not unusual; many traditional public schools as well as public universities do fundraising. But charter schools are more consumer-sensitive than traditional public schools. There are several reasons:

One, they must persuade potential donors to actually contribute.

Two, they cannot rely on persuading a bare majority of voters to compel everyone else to pay more each day for the school's operating expenses. (Traditional public schools can place measures on the ballot, often timing them in ways as to maximize the likelihood of passage.)

Three, each family must take the active step of actually rejecting the default option of the standard school district, and actively select and apply to a charter school.

Charter schools do not operate uniformly well, no more than do all traditional district-owned schools. Yet they face more incentives to actively listen and respond to willing customers. If for no other reason, they are worthy elements of "public education."

Labels: Charter schools, Education

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No Child Left Behind ... Left Behind?
Alexander Russo says that No Child Left Behind is being gutted by administrative measures.

While the law is troublesome for several reasons, especially the federalization of education policy, it has had a few good results, including putting a spotlight on poor academic performance of schools.

The law is provides a long path towards some increased use of school choice--weak forms, perhaps, but options nonetheless. But the administration that pushed for NCLB is now taking away what little pressure it has put on schools.

One rule of politics is "follow the money." The threat of losing money--or even seeing more money go to outside agents--was supposed to be the stick to prod districts into reform.

No more?

Last summer, when the law was on the verge of shifting tens of millions of federal education dollars from urban school districts to outside tutoring companies, Spellings created a "pilot" program that allowed several big-city districts to keep on doing their own tutoringÂ?and to keep the money.

If this pilot program is expanded, much of the value of NCLB will have been wiped out. It will have turned into just another story in the story of putting more money into the sane old system.

Labels: Education, School choice

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Can school choice work in rural areas?
One objection to school choice is "it can't work in rural areas." According to this line of thought, the economics won't support more than one school system.

But the Alliance for School Choice says that it is possible--and looks to Iowa as an example.

Labels: Education, School choice

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Comparison Shopping for Schools.
Will the WWW foster consumer-driven education? Here's hoping. Competitive markets depend on the free flow of information. Of the web sites I have come across lately, two provide information about schools.

Great Schools.Net encompasses both government and privately run schools. Private School Review, as the name suggests, limits its coverage to privately owned and operated K-12 schools.

Labels: Education

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Doing School Choice Right.
charter schools are as different from each as regular public schools are--and by design, even more so.

They are still a relatively small element of the nation's school landscape, which means that we are still learning what works and what doesn't. One resource I've come across lately is the Center for Reinventing Public Education.

At the end of the month, CRPE will come out with a new white paper that analyzes previous studies on whether charter schools help students learn. Should be interesting.

Labels: Charter schools, Education, School choice

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Great Moments in Public School Marketing.
Some students in Wiscsonsin attend GET High. Seriously.

Labels: Education

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Does Johnny Look for the Union Label?
Do teacher unions like charter schools? Not the one in Chicago, at least.

Labels: Charter schools, Education

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New Education Blog Launched.
The Alliance for School Choice has launched a new blog, Edspresso. The debates feature of the site have featured the desirability of universal pre-school, the 65 percent solution, and national standards.

Labels: Education, School choice

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Are Schools for Teaching Students, or Providing Janitorial Jobs?
The old "schools as a means or an end" debate comes up again in Michigan, where the Detroit schools--a system that needs reform if there ever was one--is under fire for saving money by outsourcing janitorial work.

Detroit News web colleague Jeffrey Hadden reports, and links to an editorial titled "School districts are not jobs machines."

Well, they are. They just shouldn't be.

Labels: Education

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No Child Left Behind not being implemented.
One provision of No Child Left Behind is that local school districts notify families when they are entitled to remedial measures, including the right to transfer to other schools.

Not surprisingly, some schools that are shirking their obligations.

Here's a short note from the Alliance for School Choice:

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SPELLINGS ASKS CALIFORNIA OFFICIALS TO TAKE ACTION ON SCHOOL TRANSFER COMPLAINTS


PHOENIX— Responding to complaints against the Los Angeles and Compton school districts’ failure to provide public school transfer options to children in failing schools, U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings last week asked top California school officials to take action.

While “it is usually best to allow matters such as these to be resolved at the local and state level,” the U.S. Department of Education is “mindful of our own compliance responsibilities and remedies,” Spellings said in a May 1 letter to California State Board of Education President Glee Johnson and Superintendent of Public instruction Jack O’Connell.

The Alliance for School Choice and the Los Angeles-based Coalition on Urban Renewal and Education filed the complaints in March, charging that the two districts failed to provide meaningful notice or transfer options for thousands of eligible students. Federal law requires the school districts to make findings within 60 days, and authorizes the Secretary of Education to cut off federal Title I funds for failure to provide transfer options.

In her letter, Spellings also notes concerns about compliance by the Oakland and Stockton school districts. She noted that department officials will “gather further information on the implementation of public school choice and SES (supplemental education services) in your state.”

“We are encouraged that the secretary is taking seriously the rampant noncompliance of school districts with their public school transfer obligations,” declared Clint Bolick, president and general counsel of the Alliance for School Choice. “Millions of children are languishing in failing schools around the nation. That is neither morally nor legally tolerable.”

Labels: Education, School choice

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School choice key to urban vitality.
If you want to retain and attract highly-educated and mobile people to your city, enact school choice.

Cities and states across the country have worried about how to attract the "creative class," college graduates, and the like. Some cities do a better job than others, but cities, especially the "non-glamour" cities such many of those in the Midwest, could do worse than to promote a vigorous program of school choice. While recently minted college graduates can be a key part of a city's economic life, how many of them will stick around once junior comes on the scene?

From an AP story printed in the Arizona Republic:

cities need good schools to keep people from fleeing to the suburbs once they become parents, said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

Frey pointed to Washington, a city with lagging public schools but impressive education levels among adults.

"D.C. is like a revolving door," Frey said. "These young people move in and then they move out when they want to have kids."

True enough, a few urban areas do have state-enacted school choice programs. Cleveland and Milwaukee come to mind, and neither one is a national standout in economic terms. Then again, the programs in both cities have severe income tests, limiting their participation, and usefulness as an economic development tool.

Labels: Education, School choice

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The Union that Killed Opportunity for Children.

In an e-mail from Americans for Tax Reform, Ron Nehring writes:

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Will unions kill Florida's highly succcessful school choice program?

Lobbying campaign against choice successfully flipped four Republican state senators.

To the casual observer, last year’s decision by the Florida Supreme Court striking down the state’s school choice program might appear easily fixed: a Republican legislature, a conservative Republican governor, and a clear record of success for the “A+ School Accountability and Choice Program” should produce a political solution.

Not so fast.

Enter: the Florida Education Association union, the state affiliate of the National Education Association teachers union and ardent foe of anything threatening the public school monopoly in education.

Florida’s school choice program provides students attending consistently failing schools in the Sunshine State the option of attending another school, public or private, with the state picking up the tab. A total of 733 students, 90% of whom are minorities, are taking advantage of the program.

Last year in a bizarre ruling the Florida Supreme Court struck down the program, finding it violates the “uniformity” clause in the state constitution because, remarkably, students exercising their choice option are receiving a better quality education than those trapped in the underperforming public schools. As the Wall Street Journal opined this week, “As they used to say in the Soviet Union, everyone gets to share their poverty equally.”

The same ruling also jeopardizes Florida’s school choice program for 18,000 learning disabled students.

Looking for a solution, Florida Governor Jeb Bush and Republican leaders in the legislature are working to place on November’s ballot a constitutional amendment that would exempt the voucher program from the constitution’s uniformity clause. All that’s needed is for 60% of the legislators in chamber to agree to place the measure on the ballot.

This is where the Florida Education Association (FEA) union, with its deep pockets and sophisticated lobbying campaign, comes in.

Over the last twenty years, Florida has reflected the trend in other southern states in a transformation from total Democrat to total Republican control of the executive and legislative branches of government – despite the best efforts of the FEA and other politically active labor unions to the contrary.

In adapting to the new environment in Tallahassee, the FEA recognized that simply because a legislature is majority Republican, the opportunity to block reforms such as charter schools and school choice still exists – if the union can successfully woo just enough members of the majority party to deny reformers a majority on any key vote.

To succeed, the strategy need not be successful in both houses – just one. In this case, it’s the Florida Senate, whose Republican majority has proven consistently less reliable in advancing education and other reforms than the more conservative House of Representatives.

With its headquarters filled with lobbyists and operatives just one block from the capitol, the FEA’s intensive pressure campaign directed at the Senate succeeded this week in blocking the proposed constitutional amendment to save the school choice program. The amendment fell one vote short of the 60% supermajority to proceed to the November ballot for voter approval. Needing 24 of 40 senators to vote in support, it garnered only 23.

What’s remarkable is the FEA’s success in turning four Republican Senators, including Republican Majority Leader Alex Villalobos, against the amendment, which was strongly supported by Senate President Tom Lee and Governor Jeb Bush.

(One encouraging sign: Lee immediately stripped Villalobos of his Majority Leader position, replacing him with the more supportive Sen. Dan Webster of Winter Garden).

The FEA’s successful lobbying campaign, and victory despite a significant Republican majority in the Senate, highlights the influence that comes as a result of the union’s power to funnel union dues directly into massive spending on behalf of anti-reform candidates in general elections.

A bill to end the practice by giving Florida teachers the right to choose for themselves whether to fund union political action died this year when Senate Republican leaders used a parliamentary maneuver to keep the bill bottled up in multiple committees while the session drew to a close.

Sen. Webster, along with up and coming Senators like Mike Haridopoulos of Osceola, show the Senate’s Republican majority continues to slowly drift away from union influence, but apparently not fast enough to save the choice program this year. Yet, Republican legislators not compromised by FEA pressure and Governor Jeb Bush continue to work on solutions to save the school choice program and prevent the 733 students in the program from being forced back into public schools which consistently fail to perform.

Labels: Charter schools, Education, School choice

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Happy National Charter Schools Week!
In honor of National Chater Schools Week (there's a week for everything, isn't there?), officers of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute offer a review of the authorities that grant charters to charter schools.

Labels: Charter schools, Education

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Why Do We Have Education Taxes?
What's our goal: the preservation of "public schools," or the education of children?

(Reprinted from the Detroit News)

Good for the voters in St. Clair Shores, Michigan, as Jeffrey Hadden notes in the Detroit News politics blog. Contracting out janitorial work, landscaping, cafeteria work, and so forth, is a smart thing for schools to do. When done properly, it can save money.

The controversy illustrates a larger problem that afflicts education today. We tax ourselves to pay for the education of minor children because we think that there is (to use a term from economics) a "public good" at stake.

But what is this "public good?" It's seeing to that the next generation receives an education in reading, math, science, and so forth. It isn't that individuals X, Y, and Z can have a job (unionized or not) in a school.

Right now, most money collected for education is distributed through local school districts, which with minor exceptions aside (charter schools, mostly), have a government-granted monopoly on where a student living in a particular house will receive his education.

Is this the only way to delivering education? Certainly not. We could, for example, give families vouchers so they can select from privately operated providers of schooling. We already use a similar arrangement in housing (section 8 vouchers), groceries (food stamps) and even higher education (state and federal scholarships and loans).

Yet anytime vouchers or even contracting out of non-instructional jobs is considered, their advocates are attacked by the school establishment as being "against public education," or even "anti-education." Now, vouchers can be criticized on several grounds, none insurmountable. But it's just silly so say that voucher advocates are against the education of the public.

Many "public schools" do a fine job for some students. But when we insist tying education money to government-run organizations, our first priority is, in effect, to preserve an institution that rather than recognize that other arrangements might better serve the ultimate goal.

Labels: Charter schools, Education

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Uniform, Efficient, Safe, High Quality--and None of the Above.
Florida schools are none of the things that the state's constitution calls for. Yet the Supreme Court forbids legislators from considering serious alternatives.

Andrew J. Coulson reports:

- Uniform? Not when some districts spend nearly double what others spend--and achieve much less academically.

- Efficient? Not when public schools spend 50 percent more than the average tuition for private schools.

- Safe? Not when 1 in 12 students reports being assaulted or threatened with a weapon.

- High quality? Not when the state ranks near the bottom of the country in graduation rates and SAT scores.

It's time for Florida to introduce some school choice. But for now, the state's highest court has barred that move on "uniformity" grounds. It's time for the legislature to make changes, constitutional ones if required, to bring the promise of education into reality.
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Labels: Education, School choice

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More on that Arizona Tuition Law.
The Arizona Republic reviews the new tuition tax credit program.

The bottom line: An estimated 3,000 to 5,000 children will be able to get scholarships to private or parochial schools over the next year.

The creation of corporate tax credits for businesses that donate to private-school scholarship funds will be capped at $5 million annually for the next five years. It's estimated that each student will receive at least a $1,000 scholarship. Senate Bill 1499 directs the money to children in low-income families. The purpose of the private-school tax credits is to give poorer children the option to attend private schools and to save the state money as more kids leave public school to attend private ones.

There is also a sunset provision, after 5 years. That is the kind of compromise that is actually useful, rather than other kinds (No Child Left Behind comes to mind) that guts the strongest part of a proposal altogether.

In addition, enacting sunsets is probably a good idea anyway, even for those who support the legislation in question. In general, more laws out ought to be subject to such a provision.

Labels: Education

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Home Schooling Branches Out.
"What about socialization?" people ask home schoolers. Here's one way: home school families are developing musical program, athletic leagues, and public speaking tournaments.

RALEIGH -? The popular image of homeschooling is a mother and her children leaning over the kitchen table or gathered in the family room with their schoolbooks. This is not inaccurate for most families, but it is far from complete.

Studies show homeschooled students are involved in many after-school activities along with their public and private-school counterparts, such as scouting, 4-H, church groups, and sports leagues. Yet home educators also are building their own programs to provide more of the traditional high-school activities, such as varsity athletics, band, and academic clubs.

Hal Young reports for the Carolina Journal.

Labels: Education

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Educational Choice Expands in Arizona.
Arizona has found a new way to promote competition and choice in schools. The Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation reports:

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Arizona enacts corporate tuition tax credit, expands
educational freedom for second consecutive year

INDIANAPOLIS — Up to 5,000 children in Arizona will now have the freedom to attend a school of their parent’s choice after Gov. Janet Napolitano allowed a corporate tuition tax credit bill to become law without her signature. [Note: the governor had vetoed an earlier version of the bill.]

"After two years of struggle, Arizona parents finally can breathe a sigh of relief," said Gordon St. Angelo, president and CEO of the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation, one of the nation’s leading advocates of school vouchers. "Thousands of children will no longer be forced to attend a school simply because of where they live or how much their family earns. Parents will now be free to choose a school based on what’s best for their child."

Senate Bill 1499 will create a corporate tax credit for businesses that donate to non-profit organizations that distribute private-school scholarships. The total credits are capped at $5 million annually and will allow scholarship organizations to provide vouchers to Arizona children whose family income does not exceed 185% of the income limit to quality for a free and reduced price lunch. The program, which provides vouchers worth up to $4,200 for K-8 and $5,500 for high school, includes a five year sunset provision. [One hopes that this program will be so successful that pressure will rise to continue the program.]

"The dedication and leadership of Senate Majority Leader Ken Bennett and House Speaker Jim Weiers serves as an example not just in Arizona, but for the country," St. Angelo said. "School choice does not happen overnight. But the tenacity of parents, opinion makers and legislators makes it happen eventually."

The addition of this program complements the existing personal tax credit, which provides over 21,000 students with scholarships worth over $28 million. Other school choice programs, such as one similar to Florida’s voucher program for children with special needs, are still being discussed in Arizona this session.

"Success happens when everyone works together," said Robert Enlow, executive director of the Friedman Foundation. "The local and national groups that have forged partnerships in Arizona have been a tremendous asset to the effort to provide greater educational freedom for children."

"This is the second year in a row that Arizona passed a school choice bill and the second year in a row that a Democrat governor allowed a school choice bill to become law. Arizona really is a state of choice; the only thing left for the state to do is pass a universal voucher program for all children," added Enlow.

Labels: Education, School choice

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How Much Does Your State Spend on Education?
Probably more than you think.

From the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation comes this story of education funding in Florida:

A recent poll indicates that Floridians underestimate how much money is spent on K-12 public education. In this poll of 1,200 Floridians, sponsored by the Collins Center for Public Policy, the James Madison Institute and the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation, half (50 percent) of those polled think that Florida spends no more than $4,000 per student on the operating costs of K-12 schools, not including school construction.

The real number? Nearly $7,000, or 6,931 per student. And that was in 2003-04.

No wonder why schools don't get much scrutiny.

Labels: Education

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Less Money for Schools? Why Not?
Is spending less money on schools a stupid idea? Not necessarily.

The local teachers union is running a TV ad calling for more money for themselves and their employers. It goes like this:

A stereotypical politician (white man, suit, tie) knocks on the front door of a house. He is in full-campaign mode, dumping his stump speech to any set of ears around. In this case, he offers to spend less money on schools so that "we can have mediocre schools," or something like that. The young girl who answers the door gives him the "Not only are you uncool, but you are soooo stupid" look.

There are so many things that one could say about this ad, but let's keep it to one point: all other things equal, isn't spending less money on something, not more, a good thing? If you can find a product or service that costs less this year than it did the year before, shouldn't you happy?

Work smarter, make do with less, become more efficient--all that stuff that drives economic growth and progress in the private sector, doesn't exist in the world of public education. The goal there, at least according to the union, is not "how can we do so much better this time out that we improve our product while charging the same, or even less," but "How can we be sure to get more?"

You can spend more on schools. You can get more in student performance. But one does not necessarily flow from the other.

Labels: Education

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24 Percent of Families with Minor Children Move.
In a show of how our schooling system serves itself as much as it serves children, the federal government's NCES tells us "the parents of 24 percent of students reported that they moved to their current neighborhood so that their children could attend their current school."

We don't make people who use food stamps move. Those who receive housing vouchers are able to take them to any willing vendor, and tax credits for day care know no geographic restrictions. Yet we continue to tie education from the ages of 5-18 to geographic boundaries, and force disruptions in personal lives as those who can afford to move and want to, and despair in those who would like to but can't afford to.

Labels: Education

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More Teacher Facts
As long as we're on an roll with education today: more public school teachers are likely to have a masters degree than private school teachers: 41 percent to 30 percent, according to the latest numbers available.

Since public school teachers generally get on time-in-service plus number-of-credits scale, it's not surprising that they tend to have more graduate school work. Now how much good that work (often in education schools, one presume) is a question for another day.

Labels: Education

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Pupil-teacher ratio? Down.
From our friends at the NCES: public schools have a higher pupil-teacher ratio than public schools, and public school ratios have been declining for years.

So much for underfunded public schools and pampered private schools.

From the NCES Fast Facts page on teacher staffing:

During the 1970s and early 1980s, public school enrollment decreased, while the number of teachers rose. As a result, the public school pupil/teacher ratio declined from 22.3 in 1970 to 17.9 in 1985. After 1985, the number of pupils per teacher continued downward, reaching 17.2 in 1989. After a period of relative stability during the late 1980s through the mid 1990s, the ratio declined from 17.3 in 1995 to 16.1 in 1999. Small declines have continued since then, and the pupil/teacher ratio was 15.9 in 2002. The estimated pupil/teacher ratio for private schools for 2002 was 16.2. The pupil/teacher ratio includes teachers for disabled students and other special teachers, who generally are excluded from class size calculations. The average class size in 1999Â?2000 was 21.1 pupils for public elementary schools and 23.6 for public secondary schools.

Labels: Education

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Home schooling up 30 percent in 4 Years.
More fun facts from the National Center of Education Statistics: the number of home-schooled students was estimated to be 850,000 in 1999. Just four years later, the number had grown to 1.1 million. That's a growth of nearly 30 percent.

And I remember when I had friends who had to hide the existence of their children from the local school district ...

Labels: Education

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Education Fact: Spending Up. Achievement?
Current expenditure spending for schools in 1961-62: $393. In 2002-03: $8,044.

Put into inflation-adjusted dollars, we're talking about $2,382 for the 1961-62 school year, and $8,044 for 2002-03: a rise of 373 percent.

Did we see a corresponding rise in student performance?

(Source: National Center for Education Statistics)

Labels: Education

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So How Much Do We Spend on Education?
Lies, damned lies, and statistics. And schooling.

One theme of debates over education policy is that schools need more money. And, says one expert on the subject, if you don't like one set of numbers that serve the purpose, find another.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities laments that Colorado is 49th in the country in education spending.

Sounds horrible, doesn't it? It's amazing that anyone in that state knows how to read and write.

Except ... the ranking--as the CBPP page points out--calculates states the "percentage of personal income" spent on K-12 education.

The Independence Institute's Benjamin DeGrow provides some perspective with this 16-page report (PDF), Counting the Cash for K-12.

DeGrow starts out with a familiar topic: more money does not necessarily bring better results. "A comprehensive professional analysis by Dr. Eric Hanushek of Stanford University in the 1990s found that only 27 percent of 163 studies 'that conformed to basic social science methods' demonstrated 'a statistically significant relationship between increased per-pupil spending and student performance.' Two-thirds of the studies showed insignificant correlations, and the rest revealed a negative relationship."

Several regression line graphs reinforce the point. Four graphs compares per-pupil spending with NAEP scores. Two more compare increases in per-pupil spending with increases in NAEP scores. What do you see? Not the upward sloping line that would indicate a positive correlation. (If you remember econ 101, think of a supply curve.)

Where the paper really shines, though, is the discussion of the claim that "Colorado ranks 49th in education spending." It points out that the ranking includes not only education outlays, but personal income. If the state's personal income goes up but spending goes up not as much, the state will drop in the national rankings.

Is that a bad thing? Not necessarily. After all, some of the highest ranking states (New Mexico, for example) got there because they are poor, not because they spend a lot on schools. Should Colorado follow the New Mexico model and hope for lower income? Hey, that would put them higher on the list of state rankings when personal income is considered.

Like any government service, taxpayer funding of schools doesn't necessarily to go up just because income does. Given the weak relationship between funding and performance, maybe something else ought to happen--something like increased school choice.

But back to DeGrow. He finds that in 2004 or 2005, at least 10 states were "49th" in education funding. The states are as different as heavily populated, urban Illinois and lightly populated, rural Idaho; and fast-growing Nevada, and slow-growth Pennsylvania.

Clearly, you've got to ask "49th in terms of what," and then ask whether the comparison makes any sense.

Labels: Education, School choice

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Charter Schools: Less Money, More Success.
What would you think of a school that gets "at risk" kids to learn more--at a lower cost?

One kind of school that is good at this is the charter school, says the Center for Education Reform. Their 2005 survey of schools came out a while ago. Here's a link to the PDF file (18 pages total).

The press release below gives a glimpse of the report:
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Study Shows Charter Schools Succeeding Where Others Fail
Report details Charter Schools serving more at-risk
and minority students while increasing achievement.


Washington, DC, March 16, 2006 - Charter schools are serving considerably more "at-risk" children and doing so with $2,000 less per pupil than conventional public schools, according to a recent report by the Center for Education Reform (CER). The data refutes claims that conventional public schools serve more minority and at-risk students. The Annual Survey of Charter Schools reveals a migration towards the innovative public schools, which have experienced double-digit annual growth since the mid-to-late 1990’s. Currently, 3,617 charter schools serve over a million students in 40 states and the District of Columbia.

"Year after year this survey shows the depth of education charter schools provide to children most in need," said CER president Jeanne Allen. "They are doing so with fewer resources, longer days and school years, and through the use of more focused curricular approaches, such as college prep, math and science, and core knowledge programs."

With a 60 percent median minority population and a median 63 percent qualifying for free/reduced lunch, the survey shows that charter schools continue to serve students who have been failed by the "one-size-fits-all" educational system. Charter school growth can be attributed to multiple curriculum options, smaller class sizes, and more instructional time, according to the report. Of the schools surveyed, 56 percent reported significant waiting lists, with a median of 50 students on charter school waiting lists.

Charter schools are independent public schools, designed by educators, parents, community leaders, educational entrepreneurs, and others who are interested in providing a quality education to children in their community. Charters operate outside the educational bureaucracy that too often stifles innovation in traditional public schools. As public schools, charters do not charge tuition or select their students.

Since 1997, CER has regularly surveyed charter schools operating in the United States. The information in the report was pulled from surveys of the nation’s charter schools compiled throughout 2005. Click here to download the report.

The Annual Survey of Amerca’s Charter Schools is available in print to the media by contacting Jon Hussey at jon@edreform.com. Print copies are available to the public for $19.95. Click here for ordering information.

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The Center for Education Reform (CER) creates opportunities for and challenges obstacles to better education for America's communities. Founded in 1993, CER combines education policy with grassroots advocacy to foster positive and bold education reforms. For more information, contact CER at (202) 822-9000 or visit www.edreform.com.

Labels: Charter schools, Education

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Left By the Side of the Road.
What does the parable of the Good Samaritan have to tell us about education? Plenty, says the group Clergy for Educational Options Options.

Here's a story from Richard L. Davis, the group's leader:

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When I first got involved with School choice, I was introduced to the concept of Social Justice in the arena of education by Dr. W. Raymond Bryant, Pastor of Greater AME Worship Center of Austin, Texas. He had us to look at the story found in Luke 10:25-37.

It is a very familiar story but Dr. Bryant had us to look at it in a new and very different way. Let’s look through his eyes, at the implication of this text as it relates to the household of faith, and more specifically Pastors leading congregations. First, we see the person who is beat up robbed and left on the side of the road. This paints a very vivid picture of what is happening to our children, who go to school day after day and are being beat up and robbed of a quality education. In fact, they are being beaten so bad that they are being left along life’s highway and if we are honest about it, the corrections departments are picking up more of them than our churches. We have a real disaster on our hands and it is time for us to step up to the plate and do something.

Many of our churches have realized this travesty and have started programs that tutor and help a few kids along the way. And some churches have gone even further and started schools, which is no small undertaking. CEO applauds all of you who are attempting to stand in the gap and walk in the spirit of the Good Samaritan. You are picking up the beat up and robbed and trying to nurse them back to health.

But during that discussion Dr. Bryant threw us a curve ball. He stated that “While we are doing so much with tutoring and with starting a few schools here and there, we have not addressed the issues of social justice for our children. I know you are saying “wait a minute... I’m doing all I can!” Well, maybe, and maybe not.”

As we investigated the text he showed us something the text did not address: “There is one major issue that Luke does not address in the parable, and it is that nothing was done about the robbers.” As you study the text you will notice the victimized man was taken to the inn and provided for, but nothing was done about the robbers out on the road. They are still out there beating up others and robbing them. "And they are left for dead as well." And if no one comes along to help them, they will die on the side of the road.

We were challenge by being confronted with issue of doing something about the robbers on the road. The question for us today is what do we do? We can either build a new road trying to avoid them, or place protection all along the current road. We have some decisions to make about how we are going to protect out children from the robbers. It is no longer enough to pick them up after they are beat up and left for dead. We definitely need to be proactive and do something before we get to that point, such as:

• Education and empower black parents about "Choice" in education.
  
• Empower them with new ways to communicate to Teachers.
  
• Show them how to help their children be successful in school and life.
  
• Educate your congregations so they can educate parents they touch.
  
• Help build coalitions with like-minded individuals.
  

The challenge we face is how to provide social justice in education. It may be different in different places, but we have a serious challenge and it is time for us to rise and meet it! The focus of our time together is to meet this challenge! God bless each of you, Parent, Pastor, Teacher, Community Leader, and Concerned Citizen, as we undertake this task.
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Now, the Good Samaritan parable has been used to justify any manner of bureaucratic, institutional-focused social welfare programs that have fallen short of the promise. But in this case, the emphasis is not on creating new institutions as much as it is helping families use existing, private and public institutions.

Labels: Education, School choice

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Are Bigger School Districts Better?
If buying in bulk at Sam's Club is smart shopping, is consolidating school districts smart governance?

The Texas Public Policy Foundation looks at the question in a short report (PDF) School District Consolidation and Public School Efficiency.

Between 1930 and 1980, author Chris Patterson says, the number of districts in the country dropped from 120,000 to 15,000. The number of schools dropped from 225,000 to 100,000 during that time as well. (Yet costs soared, and achievement, to put it kindly, did not.)

The number of school administrators increased 500 percent, reflecting an increased professionalization of overhead, but hardly the increased efficiency promised by consolidation.

Patterson says that research suggests an optimal district size of 6,000, and school size of 400-600 students. This suggests that there is a point of diminishing returns in consolidation. Consolidation of rural districts doesn't save much, since these districts must necessarily (under the current model of schooling) spend a proportionately larger share of funds on transportation. A consolidation that sends kids to a school 30 miles away instead of only 15 miles away is hardly the way to reduce transportation costs.

Labels: Education

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If There are No Papers, Is it an Archive?
Keep your eyes out for a new source of papers on education reform: the Education Working Paper Archive. The archive has been announced, but as of today, there are no papers in it.

The EWPA is housed at the University of Arkansas, whose new Department of Education Reform is headed by Dr. Jay P. Greene, author of many papers on school choice and competition, as well as the recently published book Education Myths.

Here's a description of the archive:
All articles published by Education Working Paper Archive are subject to a double-blind peer review process to ensure quality. All submitted articles that meet editorial standards for quality and relevance to EWPA’s mission are sent to referees for review.

A paper must meet three criteria in order to be considered for publication by EWPA:

1. Empirical work. EWPA is a forum for empirical research on education policy. While qualitative research and general literature reviews are important to the field of education policy, they are not within the scope of EWPA’s mission.

2. Relevance. The paper must speak to an ongoing public education policy debate. EWPA seeks to be relevant to policymakers and the public by focusing on issues that are of immediate interest or by introducing new issues that should be considered in the policy discussion. Papers that discuss purely technical research problems in public policy are unlikely to be relevant to EWPA’s mission.

3. Professional standards. The paper must meet professional research standards. This standard is ensured by a) the Research Editor’s initial review of the paper and b) the peer review process.

Though papers appearing in EWPA go through a peer review process and are posted by EWPA, they are considered to be working papers in progress. Therefore, authors may feel free to submit their article to other journals while the paper is being considered by EWPA and also after it has appeared on the Archive website.


What's the new department about?
The Department of Education Reform (EDRE / DER) is the newest department in the College of Education and Health Professions at the University of Arkansas, established on July 1, 2005. The creation of the Department of Education Reform was made possible through a $10,000,000 private gift and an additional $10,000,000 from the University’s Matching Gift Program. This gift is one of the largest ever received by a college of education in the country. With these resources the department has six endowed professorships, ten doctoral fellowships, and funds for research and projects.

The mission of the Department of Education Reform is to advance education and economic development in Arkansas and nationwide by focusing on the improvement of K-12 schools. The Department of Education Reform is committed to producing and disseminating high-quality research that will inform policymakers, scholars, parents, teachers, administrators and the general public about policies and practices that could improve the performance of schools in Arkansas and nationwide. By gathering a critical mass of leading researchers focused on education reform, the Department of Education Reform will be uniquely positioned to have a meaningful impact on education policy research and the quality of schools.

Labels: Education, School choice

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Pennsylvania's Pension Problems Could Be Yours.
Both corporate officials (see: GM, airlines, etc.) and public officials have made pension promises that they can't keep. Here's the latest example of problems with a public plan, from the Keystone state. (The text comes in an e-mail from the Commonwealth Foundation. Emphasis added. In short, it looks like long-term improvements can be made, but short-term pain is unavoidable. The only question is whose ox will be gored.)

Getting Out of the Pension Dilemma
Richard C. Dreyfuss
03.08.06

Pennsylvania’s public employee pension plans are facing a looming financial crisis. Regardless of how one looks at the current situation, our policymakers must confront a serious dilemma.

Taxpayer costs to fund the State Employees Retirement System (SERS) and the Public School Employees Retirement System (PSERS) are expected to increase in six years from about $1 Billion next year to close to $4.2 Billion in 2012 – and that’s only if the actuarial value of assets earns 8.5% annually. Returns that are more favorable, of course, would decrease future costs just as the reverse holds true.

So what can policymakers do to avert this coming financial crisis – other than hope for superior financial performance to continue into the foreseeable future?

The first step is to remind our state policymakers (those who designed these taxpayer-funded pension plans) to go back to the basics of Pension 101. There are only three ways to grow assets: 1) Increase employee contributions, 2) Increase taxpayer contributions, or 3) Increase investment earnings. Significant increases in any of these inputs could solve the looming pension crisis.

The first option lawmakers could consider is to increase employee contributions, as well as prohibit employees from withdrawing all of their accumulated contributions from the plans at retirement (which virtually everyone does). Employee contributions are reasonably significant, relative to the total pension plan assets, and every little bit would help.

However, according to PSERS Board Member and State Rep. Steve Nickol, the pension problem in Pennsylvania cannot be averted by raising employee contributions, or by reducing pension benefits, because courts have ruled both of those measures illegal.

The second option is to increase taxpayer contributions significantly. This tends to be the universal solution to many problems within government – and it is the likely solution to the coming crisis if nothing is done to avert it. In fact, even as property tax reform bills bounce around the Capitol, many lawmakers are working to ensure that pension costs are excluded from any taxpayer control. Doing so would allow unlimited property tax increases to pay for these pension liabilities.

Another related alternative is to start increasing the taxpayer contributions now so that the sticker shock of the taxpayer contribution amount in 2012 is muted. This seems to be the preferred approach of many in state government. In other words, start paying more now instead of waiting until later. Of course, this only spreads out the pain, it doesn’t relieve it.

The third option is to increase investment earnings. It’s simple: Harrisburg passes a law mandating the PSERS and SERS must earn at least 20 percent return on investment per year, every year. This, of course, is nonsense.

What, then, should state government do when all three options are unreasonable, impractical, or prohibited?

Gov. Rendell’s budget secretary, Michael Masch, proposed a fourth way; one that actually has some promise. He said he supports caps on employer (taxpayer) contributions that would prevent the state and school districts from paying exorbitant amounts toward pensions. This would keep the state’s pension promises to employees, but also start to protect the taxpayers from skyrocketing taxes.

Additionally, Masch said he would require taxpayers to continue contributing at constant rates even when PSERS and SERS’s assets performed well. Not necessarily a bad thing. But where would that leave us? Actually, it would do exactly what nearly every major corporation in America is starting do – move toward a “defined contribution” retirement plan where employer (taxpayer) costs are capped and predictable.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t solve the looming crisis, but it would certainly put Pennsylvania on the path toward good financial health. Now all Mr. Masch has to do is sell the solution to his boss.

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Richard C. Dreyfuss is a Senior Fellow with the Commonwealth Foundation (www.CommonwealthFoundation.org), a public policy research and educational institute located at the foot of the Capitol in Harrisburg. For more information on this topic, see Dreyfuss's policy report Beneath the Surface: Pennsylvania's Looming Pension & Healthcare Benefits Crisis.


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Earlier, Commonwealth Foundation president Matthew Brouillette explained how the state got into this mess:

Pennsylvania Pensions: Man-Made Financial Disasters
Matthew J. Brouillette
03.07.06


The “Process Improvement Theory” relates to the timing in a process when errors are diagnosed and fixed. As the theory goes, at each ensuing interval in which a problem is not detected the potential damage increases exponentially.

The current design of Pennsylvania’s taxpayer-funded pension is a case study of what happens when problems are either not detected or detected and not addressed. The result: Man-made financial disasters.

Unfortunately, these disasters are not limited to state government in Harrisburg, but also extend to the pension plans sponsored by county and municipal governments across Pennsylvania.

The financial calamity facing taxpayers is not in the administration of Pennsylvania’s Public School Employees Retirement System (PSERS) and the State Employees Retirement System (SERS) plan, but the result of failing to correct plan design decisions that occurred almost on an annual basis beginning in 2001 with the passage of Act 9.

Following favorable investment returns in the 1990s, the costs to taxpayers to fund retirement benefits were lowered significantly. But rather than maintaining these low costs to taxpayers, policymakers decided to increase pension benefits for employees by essentially tapping the surplus.

Act 9 of 2001, part of a political tradeoff with the Pennsylvania State Education Association (PSEA) by then-Governor Ridge, dramatically increased both pension benefits. The plan was to draw down the surplus over 10 years and cover the Act 9 costs over that same period. Later that year, the financial downturn following the terrorist attacks of September 11th negatively affected the asset returns of both PSERS and SERS.

In 2002, Act 38 increased benefits for retirees who were left out of the 2001 pension enhancements. However, another poor year of investment returns further increased the pensions’ unfunded liabilities.

To be clear, the investment losses were likely as significant as the Act 9 and Act 38 changes. The surpluses were such that the plans were financially positioned to cover either the benefit improvements or significant investment losses such as those incurred – but not both.

Therefore, with the economic downturn, the plan to use the surplus to pay for the additional costs of Act 9 and 38 was no longer feasible. In response, Governor Rendell signed Act 40 of 2003, which among other changes effectively refinanced the additional liabilities incurred from Act 9 from 10 years to 30 years.

With this financial engineering, the expected taxpayer contributions were projected to be lower in the near term then rise and spike in the year 2012-13. The strategy was that the economy of Pennsylvania would be so robust in the years leading up to 2012 that this action would prove more affordable to the taxpayers.

While the projected 2012 pension costs have diminished from the original 2003 projections due principally to asset returns, the expected taxpayer contributions will nonetheless jump from $1.376 billion in 2011-12 to $4.176 billion in 2012-13, according to PSERS and SERS latest estimates projections. As such, it remains a looming fiscal crisis.

In 2004, a Joint State Government Commission report on PSERS and SERS recognized this looming financial crisis. However, the report noted that while full funding – or having current assets meet liabilities – “may be a necessary standard for a private plan … it is not necessary for a public plan because a public entity can assume perpetual life” [emphasis added]. This operating premise, although astonishing, is nevertheless clearly reflected in the plan funding of both PSERS and SERS.

Although assets returns by PSERS and SERS have exceeded expectations in recent years, the taxpayers’ contribution continues to escalate. PSERS alone expects an increase of over $200 million, with the state paying more than its traditional share. Apparently, the taxpayer can now pay at the state level what they presumably could not afford at the school district level.

PSERS costs are currently projected to increase by another $100 million in 2007. Unless the state continues to assume these added pension costs in future years, property tax increases school districts to fund these liabilities will be inevitable.

To make fiscal matters worse, two PSEA labor union-backed bills in the House of Representatives (HB 2268 and HB 2339) would further increase the costs of pensions to taxpayers by providing current beneficiaries another cost of living enhancement.

As policymakers prepare to return to Harrisburg to address pressing issues, it is time they pay attention to the “Process Improvement Theory” and attend to problems in the pension systems. Although there is plenty of blame to go around for past mistakes, proposed actions by Governor Rendell and the public school lobby will only assure that Pennsylvania’s man-made financial disasters will continue in perpetuity.

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Matthew J. Brouillette is president & CEO of the Commonwealth Foundation (www.CommonwealthFoundation.org), a public policy research and educational institute located at the foot of the Capitol in Harrisburg. For more information on this topic, see the Commonwealth Foundation's policy report Beneath the Surface: Pennsylvania's Looming Pension & Healthcare Benefits Crisis by Senior Fellow Rick Dreyfuss.

Labels: Education, Public employee pensions

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expensive, Worthless Early Childhood Initiative in California.
Rob Reiner is touting a plan for universal preschool for 4-year olds in California. Lance Izumi counters that there are cheaper alternatives to the $2.4 billion per year plan.

Further, it's not clear that universal programs do much good: "a recent UC-Santa Barbara study found that the positive effects of preschool fade away by the middle of elementary school, and even RAND admits that there is no long-term evidence that preschool has any benefits for middle- and upper-income children."

Labels: Education

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Before We Kill All the Lawyers.
Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal decided that one way to celebrate its 100th anniversary as a law firm was to open a charter school in Chicago's North Lawndale Neighborhood.

They need for something new is obvious: 46 percent of students in the public schools in the area drop out. (Actually, that's the official rate; the real number could be higher.) The firm will donate $1 million, professional talent and office equipment over 5 years.

The school is in its first year, so we don't know how well this experiment will turn out. They've made it this far past bureaucratic obstacles, including the objections of the local alderman (if you're not from Chicago, trust me: this can be a big deal). There was also a little matter of right hand-left hand coordination of programs:

Stone and Kenner originally wanted Legacy to hold full-day pre-K classes, a curriculum that can be funded in Illinois by one federal (Head Start) and two state government programs. Stone worked for months trying to reconcile the different requirements each program had for families as well as the school, before throwing his hands up and deciding instead to offer two half-day pre-K classes.

When a law firm can't cut through the red tape .... Read more at Forbes.com (registration may be required.)

Labels: Charter schools, Education

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Can't the Scouts Do This?.
One with education policy is that we expected public schools to do more than teach.

In addition to offering classroom teaching, schools are health centers, social service agencies, and so forth. De Pere High School in the Green Bay suburb of De Pere, Wisconsin, may be adding "extreme sports" to its offerings in an attempt to lure some students to hang out after school.

School officials conducted a survey, and found (no surprise) that many teenaged students are interested in what might commonly be called X Games sports. So the school wants to "hire two paid advisers to oversee extreme-sport activities, and school leaders intend to meet with kids to find out which sports they'd most like to see." The school expects to pay $5,000 to $6,000 for the advisory positions. This expense would be on top of whatever cost the school has already incurred in conducting the survey.

I have no beef with anyone who wants to try out motocross, skiing, skateboarding, in-line skating or snowboarding, activities mentioned in the article from the Green Bay Press-Gazette. But ... Why a school?

Superintendent Ben Villarruel says that "If kids are involved in high school life beyond academics, they tend to do better in all things including academics." This may be true--but then again, scouts, church groups, and new voluntary groups could be used to provide the "beyond academics" life.

In addition to distracting school officials from academics, such activities have another ill effect: they stand in the way of efforts to introduce market competition into the provision of K-12 education. We already "public education" with "schools funded by property taxes, governed by politicians, and serving a captive customer base." The more that "public schools" as we know them take on non-educational tasks, the more difficult it will be to separate the interests of the system from the goal of creating an educated citizenry. (OK, there are several steps in logic that are left out here. Time is short. Maybe another time.)

Labels: Education

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School District to Charter School: Hell No, You Can't Have Our Empty Building.

Debates over education policy often proceed on the assumption that the things that motivate ordinary business people--earning more money and garnering a larger market share--do not apply to the people who work in and manage public schools. But at least one school district in Michigan is showing some pit-dog business ethics.

The Walnut Elementary School sits in Lansing, Michigan. The building's owner is the Lansing School District, which closed the facility at the end of the 2004-2005 school year.

Smart management might call for the board to sell the building to somebody else, and use the proceeds to, oh, pay for some deferred maintenance in other district buildings.

And who might be interested in buying a school building?

How about the management of a charter school? Pretty obvious, don't you say?

The Mid-Michigan Leadership Academy, a charter school, would like a new campus.

The Academy tried to purchase the building from the school district. The district's response: No. Way.

In a remarkable exhibition of candor, district officials admit that they are refusing the Academy's offers because they don't like the competition that the charter school represents.

Listen to the representatives and allies of the Lansing School District:

-- "From an ideological standpoint, it might be difficult for me to swallow," the idea of selling to the charter school. -- Board member Hugh Clarke Jr

-- "'We have the first right of refusal for a charter school.' She was then asked if the district would likely exercise that right. 'Definitely.'” -- Superintendent E. Sharon Banks.

-- Banks has also said "We would like to keep it as a learning place for children to go." Yes, as long as she is in charge.

-- "I’d hate to see charter schools expanding, because they create havoc on the public school system." -- Tim Kaltenbach, member of the city council for the ward that includes Walnut Elementary.

Meanwhile, the property is sitting vacant, and as such, is already falling prey to vandalism.

Worse yet, the wants and needs of a school district are trumping the needs of education.

(The article has been taken down in the hours since I started this post. Click here for a Google cache. I have no idea how long it will work.)

Labels: Charter schools, Education

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About that 65 Percent Solution.
The latest fad in education reform--the 65 percent solution--is the subject of some, well, gaming.

Texas has instituted a rule (currently being talked about around the country) requiring that 65 percent of all K-12 school money be used for "classroom spending."

Ah, but what exactly is "classroom spending?"

The Houston Chronicle picks up the story:

Houston ISD Superintendent Abelardo Saavedra said the district is facing uncontrollable expenses, including rising utility bills and fuel costs for buses and higher property insurance due to hurricanes.

"If I put 11 million new dollars into utilities, I'd have to identify another 22 million in new expenses on the instructional side," he said. "Any logical business person would understand the challenges districts will have concerning meeting this rule."

Saavedra said he doesn't like the NCES definition because it values football over libraries. He hopes that Texas writes its own standards for classroom expenses."

The NCES is the "National Center for Education Statistics," a division of the U.S. Department of Education. According to the Chronicle (I have not verified this myself), "expenses for extracurricular activities" (presumably including football) are included as "classroom expenses" under federal guidelines.

Labels: Education

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News on Charter Schools.
A good resource for what's up with charter schools is the Center for Education Reform. Here's a sampling of some of the latest information from or through them:

The Simple Guide to Charter School Laws (PDF) gives A-F grades to states based on the autonomy they give to charter schools, as well as how difficult or easy it is to open a charter school.

Meanwhile, the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools offers another look at the restrictions on charter schools. The PDF-format report Stunning Growth: The Impact of State-Imposed Caps on Charter Schools reviews one specific form of restriction on charter schools, numeric caps.

There are multiple versions of caps. The most obvious one is the number of charter schools that may operate within a state. Other restrictions include:

- The number of new charter schools that may be opened in a given year;

- For states where more than one authority can grant a charter, the number of charters that can be granted by a particular authority (e.g., Michigan universities have reached their cap of 150 charters);

- Number of students who may be enrolled statewide in charter schools;

- Percentage of students who may be enrolled statewide in charter schools;

- Percentage of K-12 funding in the state that may be spent on charter schools;

- Geographic restrictions on where charter schools may operate (e.g., in Missouri, only St. Louis and Kansas City);

- Regional caps on the number of charter schools (only 15 for downstate Illinois);

The group recommends putting sunsets on the restrictions.

The Boston Herald calls for removing some (all?) of the raising caps on charter schools in Massachusetts. As it observes, "Opponents will recycle the tired argument that it would drain traditional public schools of resources that are already insufficient. But charter schools are public schools. Artificial limits serve no purpose other than appeasing the teachersÂ? unions."

Labels: Charter schools, Education

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Education: A Q&A With Jay Greene.
ABC News has a handy chat with Jay Greene about competition and school performance.

Among the topics covered:

- Will school choice make public schools worse off?
- Will school choice bring disparities to schools?
- Do "Church and State" concerns rule out school choice?
- Why don't we go for smaller class sizes instead?
- Shouldn't we be paying teachers more?

If you've been around the block a few times on the question of competition and choice in education, there's nothing new here. But it's a good reminder of what's in the popular debate.

Labels: Education, School choice

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School Choice Bill Introduced in South Carolina.
The idea of making it easier for parents to pay for K-12 education in schools of choice is getting another hearing in South Carolina this year.

What's good is that the idea is back. What's not so good is that the size and scope of the proposal has been scaled back. Says the Charleston Post and Courier:

"Supporters pared down the original legislation, decreasing the size of the tax break for parents who send their children to private schools and directing the private-school vouchers to the most needy students: those from low-income families and those in poor-performing public schools."

Why the change? Rep. Dan Cooper, chairman of the Ways and Means committee, wants any effort to change the status quo to be limited to low-income families and students in the worst schools. Why this should be so, I don't know--e-mail from readers would be welcomed.

The greatest benefits (up to $4,500 in vouchers) would be available only to students in low-income families attending the poorest-performing schools; everyone else would have to make due with tax credits of no more than $1,000.

The Port and Courier article points out the value of media reports in propelling reform:

What changed some lawmakers' minds was the recent school documentary on ABC's "20/20" called "Stupid in America." The report featured an 18-year-old South Carolina public school student who was struggling to read.

"That opened my eyes and helped push me across the line," said Rep. Mike Pitts, R-Laurens, a co-sponsor. "American students are not stupid. We have problems in our system.

Also on the plate for lawmakers: a proposal to make it easier to open charter schools (good as far as it goes) and another one to create open enrollment in public schools (again, good as far as it goes.)

Opponents of the significant reform come through with the same old mistake of identifying confusing the desired policy outcome (an educated public) with one means (the public school as we know it) with that outcome.

Labels: Charter schools, Education, School choice

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Can I Get Some Credit?
School choice--the ability to direct money taxpayer money already devoted to educated to the school of the parent's choice--exists on a small scale. The Minnesota House Research Department offers a quick outline of tax credits and deductions in the Land of 10,000 Lakes.

The Minnesota law was one of the first (if not the first) in the nation, but it's rather limited. For a family with two children, the tax credit is adjusted for income; it is completely phased out at $37,500 for a family with two children. Median family income, way back in 1999, by contrast, exceeds $47,000. The tax credit, unlike the tax deduction, cannot be applied to tuition at privately run schools.

The average value of the tax credit is $259; the average value of the tax deduction: $78. Better than a poke in the eye, but more valuable as setting a precedent than being a large financial boost, even for private schools with minimal tuition rates.

Labels: Education, School choice

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Who Gets the Union Dues Your Child's Teacher Pays Out to the NEA?
Teacher unions are just another special interest. Nothing wrong about that, but it's a fact often overlooked in education debates.

The National Education Association (NEA) is one of the largest unions in the country. It's an active force in the Democratic Party, and donor to left-of-center causes. The Wall Street Journal has noted before some findings from a web site run by the U.S. Department of Labor. Today, they've got some more interesting findings (available to subscribers).

In many states, membership in the NEA is a requirement of employment. Some of the money goes for contract-related work, while some of it goes to political causes. (Members must take an extra step to stop the withdrawal of the portion used for politics.)

Some of the political spending of the NEA goes more or less directly to education, to combat any form of school choice. In such a way the union contributes to the conflation of the goal of education--an educated population--with one (dysfunctional) method of achieving that goal, the residential-based method of school assignment. Thus, the Journal tells us after reviewing the DOL web site, the NEA gave $500,000 to an anti-charter school group in Washington state, "never mind that charters are 'public schools,' albeit ones allowed to operate outside the teachers' union education monopoly."

Other donations from the NEA show the union to be simply another element of the "progressive left" -- $250,000 to a group lobbying for an increase in the minimum wage; $400,000 to another group fighting the idea of personal investment accounts in Social Security, and $40,000 to the Congressional Black Caucus, a dependable element of the congressional left wing.

Again, there's nothing wrong about employees in the same occupation banding together for political activity, even when it is far afield from the daily concerns of their workplace. But the NEA has for too long been given a pass as a disinterested source of information, an honest broker, when in fact, the interests of union officials and the interests of parents and students are not necessarily aligned.

Labels: Charter schools, Education, School choice

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Innovation From the Feds?
Can an office within the world’s largest government lead to more competition in education?

The federal government is everyone's favorite whipping boy when it comes to K-12 education. The No Child Left Behind Act is a special focus of criticism. Some people don't like it because, they say, it is an "unfunded mandate," or at the least, because they like the federal money that does come with the program, but would prefer to get the money without complying with the requirements. Others object to the national government getting its nose in the way of state and local matters. Still others are concerned that one of the stated goals of the act--100 percent student proficiency a few years from now--is both unrealistic and by the way, hideously expensive.

Yet NCLB has had a few positive effects. It has focused some needed attention on education in general, and on the achievement gap (whites versus non-whites) in particular. It also represented the tiniest movement towards school choice.

The administration that brought us NCLB also (I may be wrong on this) gave us yet another federal office, yet one that may (or not, you know how bureaucracy works) have some positive effects that linger beyond the history of its political patrons. The Office of Innovation and Improvement within the U.S. Department of Education describes itself this way:

The Office of Innovation and Improvement is a nimble, entrepreneurial arm of the U.S. Department of Education. It makes strategic investments in innovative educational practices through two dozen discretionary grant programs and coordinates the public school choice and supplemental educational services provisions of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act as amended by No Child Left Behind. It also serves as the Department's liaison and resource to the nonpublic education community and oversees the Family Policy Compliance Office. The Office helps to develop guidance on provisions and programs related to its work under No Child Left Behind.


Put aside the question of how long a government office can be "nimble" and "entrepreneurial." There's something to be said for what might be called the institutional approach to de-institutionalization. In this case, creating a government office may be a useful element in promoting less dependence on other government institutions. The office has promoted choice within and even outside of the traditional model of "you live here, your child will attend THIS school" model of school governance: anti-trust, on a small scale, applied to K-12 education.

I write this because I noticed, in a recent letter from the office, that its leader, Nina Rees, has (or will soon) leave for the private sector. I've met Nina once or twice, though I'm not sure she would remember the occasion.

One legacy that she will leave is the web site BuildingChoice.org. It's got best practices in public school choice. Fourteen districts (as of this writing) out of thousands is a drop in the bucket, but large ideas sometimes start small. For source for school administrators who are willing to practice some school choice, there's a lot of "rubber meets the road" information--sometimes literally, as in "how do you manage transportation when students are going to schools all over the city, and not simply the school they used to be assigned to?"

Advocates of school choice who envision a world that includes government-run schools, for-profit schools, and non-profit schools are on the right path when they observe that competition should be applied to the provision of taxpayer funded education. After all, the policy goal is to have an educated population, not run specific school systems. But the path to full choice may take a long time. If a federal office helps advance us to that way of delivering education, then something useful may come out of the Department of Education after all.

Labels: Education, School choice

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Better than Average? Yes, and Your Point Is?
A state can be "better than average" in its education system and still fall short.

Kansans like to think that their schools do better than the national average. They do. But its graduation rate is still only slightly better than 75 percent (that is, only 3 out of 4 high school freshmen graduate in 4 years).

Better than average?

Oh, did we mention that the graduation rate for African-Americans and Latinos is not much better than one in two, or 50 percent?

On the National Assessment of Educational Progress, only a third of students are "proficient" or better (that is, have mastery over the subject matter suitable for their grade level) when tested for reading at grades 4 and 8, and math at grade 8. The picture is slightly better for grade 4 math, where the proficient-or-better percentage clocks in at just under half--47 percent.

Better than average?

Not too comforting.

That's the national test. What about test assessments? There we find something more interesting.

The tests look at students in four subjects: reading, math, science, and social studies. The students are tested at each school level: elementary, middle, and high schools.

When we look at how well students do at each school level, here's what we find: elementary school students do better than middle school students who do better than high school students.

If you want to want a careless take on it, you might say that students lose ground the more time they spend in school. (Since these are not longitudinal exams that track the same cohort over time we can't say that, but it is tempting.)

Kansans, like people anywhere in the U.S., are reluctant to bring competition and choice to the delivery of schooling. One reason: "we don't need to, our schools are doing just fine."

Really?

Read the report (PDF, 7 pages) at the web site of the Flint Hills Center for Public Policy.

Labels: Education, School choice

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Symposium on Education Reform
When it's not busy endorsing pot use, Reason magazine can provide some insightful material.

For example, last month it rounded up the leading lights of the market-based school reform movement. No surprise: there are some significant disagreements to be found. Here's a sampling:

Lisa Snell thinks that advocates of market-based reform are selling charter schools short:

"With close to 1 million students enrolled nationwide and more than 3,400 contracts between charter schools and their government authorizers, charter schools may be the most common example of school choice. . . . in order to have substantial growth, school choice programs need students with substantial purchasing power, and they need to be open to a larger student population."

Andrew Coulson argues that the greatest challenge for reform is the conflation of ends (an educated public) with one method of trying to get there ("public schools" as we know them):

"The greatest barrier to reform is that, when it comes to education, Americans have lost sight of the distinction between means and ends. Our state-run school system is no longer recognized as just one possible tool for pursuing universal education; it has come to be misperceived as an ultimate goal in and of itself. The term '?public education' has come to refer to both the institution of public schooling and the ideals that the institution is meant to advance."

Coulson seems to come out against all refundable tax credits, which could pose political problems for tax credits--a problem that might be ameliorated by generous caps (or none at all) for donations to scholarship funds.

Marshall Fritz wants to do away with government involvement, period, including any taxation. He opposes vouchers, calling them the biggest obstacle to his goal:

"Vouchers replace today'?s monopoly with a 'monopsony' (single buyer). Schools will have only one customer to serve--and it's not you. Follow the money." Actually, he's got harsh words for vouchers, tax credits, and charter schools. Just pull your kids out of the schools, he says: "You'?ll not be paying twice for education: You'll pay taxes for the state to harm other people'?s children, but you'?ll pay only once for education--?your children's."

Williamson Evers favors decentralization and pluralism--in content, (presumably) pedagogy, and in what is the appropriate age for a child to leave school:

"We would advise a student to stay in school. Indeed, we know that finishing school and delaying marriage and babies is excellent advice for avoiding poverty. But in a framework of liberty, dropping out is allowed, even if it isn'?t advisable.

Clint Bolick says take whatever you can get:

"Given the tenacity and power of those who have a powerful stake in the status quo, freedom advocates cannot afford to oppose anything that meaningfully expands parental choice."

A market-driven approach to education will produce some losers: unions, local politicians, and schools of education.

Howard Fuller says that only the poor should receive vouchers:

"I'm not a supporter of universal vouchers. I support targeted vouchers for low-income and working-class people. People with money have always had choice."

On the other hand, thexercisedis excercised only at a significant cost in real estate commissions, moving expenses, and emotional turmoil--costs that must be borne only because we have a residential-based system of assigning students to schools.

Fuller also points out that "The people who support the status quo are much more politically powerful at this point than people who are supporting reforms such as parental choice."

True enough--but it would then be unwise to make the coalition in favor of reform smaller by denying meaningful vouchers or tax credits to the middle class.

Terry M. Moe lays out the biggest obstacle to market-based reforms, grounded in public choice theory:

"Political power is the obstacle. There are reformers who are concerned about what's best for kids, but the vested interests that arise are more concerned with protecting the status quo; thatÂ?s their livelihood. The unions in particular are extremely powerful and want to prevent any kind of threatening changes. And I don'?t know that there'?s an answer to that other than to amass power on the choice side."

Jacob G. Hornberger echoes Marshall Fritz: "No compulsory attendance laws, and no school taxes. No government involvement at all."

While I and most reforms accept the argument that government financing of at least some level of education (if not a monopoly on the delivery of it) is justified on the grounds of public goods, Hornberger will have none of it:

"If they truly believe that a free market in education would succeed, why would they feel the need to advocate welfare, which is what vouchers are, as a way to get there?"

John Merrifield says that if knowledge about economics was more widespread, there would be more pressure to change:

"The differences between political and market accountability are poorly understood, and the present system'?s failure to teach basic economic principles helps it survive withering criticism."

Chester E. Finn Jr. sees two major problems: interested adults (the education establishment) have lobbies, but children (who would benefit from change) do not, and most suburban parents (a key political force) believe, mistakenly, that all is well with their own school.

Uniting these themes, he adds is "the idea that the system's employees are experts who ought to be in charge of establishing the ground rules by which the system operates."

What's wrong with that? Nothing--except that their natural self-interest is not checked by competition, as happens elsewhere in life.

Jay P. Greene thinks what counts are better incentives, brought forth by expanded school choice, accountability testing, and merit pay for teachers.

His description of the obstacles to reform is so good it's worth reprinting in whole:

"When purchasing a service most people tend to think that they ought to be able "to choose among providers. Most people tend to think that those service providers are likely to do a higher quality job at lower cost if they have to earn business from customers. Most people believe that it is both fair and efficient for compensation in those service industries to be linked to performance. Most people believe in the desirability of choice and competition and the power of incentives--?except in education.

When it comes to education most people somehow believe that the rules should be different. We shouldn't allow choice, they argue, because people might make bad choices. Schools donÂ't need competition to perform better, they argue, they just need better resources. And assessing performance to compensate educators is fraught with error, they fear. Besides, teachers don'?t do it for the money; they do it because they love children.

These arguments for education being exceptional do not stand up to scrutiny. The government does not assign people to doctors, even though it is possible that people may choose poorly--?and health care is an area where the cost of failure can be catastrophic. And while we understand that almost everyone who works with kids, from doctors to babysitters, loves children, we also recognize that financial rewards for excellent performance inspire better service."

John Taylor Gatto, finally, calls for an end to compulsory attendance laws ("prison regulations," he says). He also fears the effects of vouchers: They will result in "a much deeper and broader reach of official pedagogy into every home and every small secular or religious group that puts together schools." He seems to endorse a model of anarcho-capitalism, where teenagers are free to be entrepreneurs rather than students.

Labels: Charter schools, Education, School choice

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Does the Florida Ruling Imperil School Vouchers?
Adam B. Schaeffer, of the American Enterprise Institute, thinks so, and says that efforts to reform may turn to tax credits: "Education tax credits are quickly becoming, out of necessity, the last best hope for school choice in most of the country."

He points out that there has been no legal challenge to education tax credits since 2001.

Advocates of tax credits and vouchers can sometimes get into heated debates (something that Schaeffer, to my knowledge, has never done). Picking a particular method to enhanced competition and choice in the delivery of k-12 schooling is less important than the fact that it gets started.

Labels: Education, School choice

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Stupid Is ... as a Stupid System Does.
Cue up the TiVO for John Stossel, who hosts a TV special "Stupid In America: How We Cheat Our Kids."

Fromthe announcement at ABC News:

"We're not stupid. But we could do better," one high school student tells Stossel. Another says, "I think it has to be something with the school, 'cause I don't think we're stupider."

That's the question Stossel examines in his special report: What is it that's going wrong in public schools?

There are many factors that contribute to failure in school. A major factor, Stossel finds, is the government's monopoly over the school system. Parents don't get to choose where to send their children. In other countries, choice brings competition, and competition improves performance.

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Friday, January 13, 10pm EST.

Labels: Education, School choice

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More Money for Schools! Or Will it Be Wasted?
It seems like increased spending for public schools is an unqualified good. But what happens when schools waste money?

John T. Wenders offers some thoughts in this oldie-but-goodie that I found in the Kansas City Star.

Economists instinctively presume that costs are developed by cost-minimizing producers weighing the productivity of various inputs and choosing an optimal mix. Total expenditures are then built from the bottom up.

In the U.S. public education system, this assumption is dead wrong. There, total expenditures are allocated from the top down to mop up available revenues. How much any public school spends depends not on how much it “needs” for efficient operation but on how much it can extract from taxpayers. These revenues are then dissipated among various squabbling constituencies to feed their continuous demand for taxes.

Labels: Education

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School Choice Setback: Florida Court Rules Against Program.
One of the most innovative programs in school reform has been dealt a body blow by the Florida Supreme Court.

Under the Opportunity Scholarship Program, each public school is rated for its performance. If a school gets an "F" two years our of four, the students in the school can transfer to any public or privately run school that abides by specified rules.

Teacher unions, among others, objected, and found a sympathetic ear in the Florida Supreme Court, which has struck down the program. The court says that it violates legal requirements for a uniform system of free public schools.

(Uniform? It's hard to find a state that has "uniform" public schools. Perhaps Hawaii, which is one big school district.)

The Alliance for School Choice vows to fight on. Says director Clint Bolick, "Given that parental choice is triggered only when kids are in a failing public school, this ruling turns the guarantee of high-quality schools on its head."

Labels: Education, School choice

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Competition Here, But Not There.
Competition does exist in education--to a point.

Kenneth Daniels (you can tell I'm going through my piled-up e-mails and web site reading today, can't you?) points out that competition is already used in K-12 education--except where it counts.

Sports competition is big in public schools. Academic competition is big in public schools. Competition for administrative jobs is big in public schools.

The only competition our educrats hate is competition for public funding," in the form of vouchers and even charter schools.

Labels: Charter schools, Education

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Does Lake Superior College Favor High School Administrators Over Students?
For whose benefit are educational institutions run: students, or teachers and administrators?

One education program run by the state of Minnesota is the Post-Secondary Enrollment Option, or PSEO, under which the state pays college tuition for high school juniors and seniors, who also earn high school credit.

The Hubert H. Humphrey Institute, at the University of Minnesota, released a report in December on the PSEO. It finds that the program is underutilized, in part because high schools and universities don't do enough to promote it.

And why wouldn't that be? Follow the money, and the social connections.

Says a press release from HHH, some high school counselors are unhelpful to students using the tuition funds. One possible reason: "The school district, which receives a portion of its state money based on each student, receives substantially less from the state for full-time PSEO students, who do not count toward enrollment."

But the blame doesn't extend only to high schools. Post-secondary institutions can undercut the program, too. Again, quoting the HHH: "Harry Cottrell, director of extended campus programs at Lake Superior College, said the institution does not recruit PSEO students largely because of the cost to K-12 schools.

'That wouldn't make for a good relationship,' he said. 'It would be counterproductive.'"

Counterproductive for the employees of the district and the college/university. But for the student?

Yet another case in which a government program meant to help people is captured by those who run it. How many students who could have benefited from the PSEO not done so because of the reluctance of school or university officials to put the interests of the students first?

While the PSEO is not the most important innovation that could or even has been implemented, it should get some credit for introducing a tiny bit of school choice into the K-12 scene. It says to the student "Hey, we'll pick up the tuition. You choose where to take these classes; we won't dictate that simply on your place of residence."

In addition, of course, the PSEO is useful to students who would otherwise not be stretched by their high schools. I could have used such a program in high school. Heck, even before that. I took some history and psychology classes before the walk in funny clothes to Pomp and Circumstance. I had to get the permission of my high school to take the classes, none of which, by law, could be applied toward high school credit. The result: I picked up some interesting classes (on my parent's dime) in college, but could not substitute them for some dull classes that repeated what I had already learned from college--or even, in one case, junior high school.

Labels: Education, School choice

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Where Your Tax Dollars Go.
Teachers in public schools are paid for by taxpayers--who may be surprised to find that their dollars then go to left-wing political groups.

Now of course what teachers do with their own money--spend it on slot machines or on orphanages--is their own business. But in many states, membership in teacher unions is a job requirement, so some members of the public might have some interest in knowing where union funds go.

The U.S. Department of Labor is putting the screws to big unions, trying to increase financial disclosure requirements. The Wall Street Journal comments favorably on this (no surprise there). But in so doing it passes along a few NEA (National Education Association) disbursals that have, at best, a tangential relationship to the business of schooling: money has gone to Amnesty International and an AIDS walk. (Couldn't union members who value these activities donate money themselves? I've studied AI and I don't recall that group having much to do with improving education in the U.S.)

Of course the NEA has given money to groups that seek to protect the status quo (i.e., anti-school voucher, anti-charter schools.)

The Department of Labor runs the LMRDA public disclosure web site where you can download such information. The interface is a bit cumbersome, but I did find that the Florida NEA made a payment of $11,586 in 2005 to Adeco Employment Services. That would be a temp agency

Labels: Charter schools, Education

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Money is No Object ... But is More the Answer?
Question the premise that what schools need today is more money, and you may viewed as a crank. And yet the Supreme Court of one state admits that more money does not guarantee better students or schools.

The decision from Texas, Neeley v. West Orange-Cove Consolidated, has lessons for any number of states dealing with school finance lawsuits, including Kansas.

(The court's decision is available in HTML, with some awkward formatting, or in an 88-page PDF file.)

As the court hints at (but takes no position on), competition is the missing ingredient in promoting academic excellence, not to mention setting the right price for education.

Labels: Education

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I Pledge Allegiance ... to the KPS.
Can a promise of free college education revive a struggling city?

That's the hope of the Kalamazoo Promise.

But first, Yes, there really is a Kalamazoo, as these fine items from the local convention and visitors bureau attest.

To date, the city may be best known for what's no longer there. Sarah Woolley, the subject of Glenn Miller's 1942 hit, I've got a Gal in Kalamazoo, has long since passed the scene, having died in 1981. Perhaps coincidently, Gibson Guitars, (long identified with B.B. King and other musicians) fled town for Nashville the same year.

What else happened around that time? Oh yes, Checker Motors stopped production of its famous taxi cabs.

The 1990s saw further downturns, with First of America (a regional bank) being bought by an Ohio concern, a local GM plant closing down. To make matters worse, the Upjohn Company, a pharmaceutical firm that was the region's "best and brightest" (and most well-paid) magnet was merged into a foreign company, and eventually disappeared into a small unit of Pfizer, the largest drug company around.

Today, then, the city lingers on supported in large measure by government, including Western Michigan University, which is buying the scraps of the old Upjohn Company.

All during this time, the city and its largest suburban neighbor, Portage, engaged in spats over property taxes, "burden sharing," and the like, while many fled the higher taxes and less desirable schools of Kalamazoo for its suburbs.

Now, the old money of the town is desperate to see something done. To their credit they're ponying up some money for the effort. Under the Kalamazoo Promise, which will pay up to 100 percent of the tuition (at state institutions only) of any child from the city.

Scratch that. The offer is limited only to students who graduate from the Kalamazoo Public Schools.

That's a pity. For while the offer will (and already has) encouraged people to move into the city (the city and district overlap but do not have identical boundaries), it gives a boost to one school system: KPS, which is now sheltered even more from the weakly competitive forces that obtain in most urban areas. To be sure, the plan does make living in the city more promising. But it identifies "education" with one specific school system, rather than letting the privately run schools in the area into the mix.

Oh, there's one other thing that Kalamazoo is famous for. It opened the first pedestrian mall in the country, in 1959, leading to the nickname "Mall City." But the mall was opened back up for vehicle traffic in 1998. Over the years the mall was unable to compete with changing tastes and preferences.

The city leaders recognized that an existing structure had outlived its purpose. One day, the school-district-as-monopoly-supplier of taxpayer funded education may also be recognized as obsolete.

Labels: Education

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An Oldie But Goodie: Bombers and School Books.
What's the biggest area of public spending? Defense? No. K-12 education.

In an essay from 2003, Jay P. Greene takes on the "Schools are underfunded theme."

My favorite part: "some argue that once "special" items are set aside, per pupil spending actually hasn't increased very much over time. This type of reasoning resembles (and is about as persuasive as) claims by publicly traded companies that they really had good profits once special charges are excluded."

Labels: Education

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Is 65 Percent the Right Solution?
Standard and Poor's calls into question an education fad that requires 65 percent of education spending to go to the classroom.

The group First Class Education has been pushing states to impose the requirement on school districts. But there are a number of problems with that approach. Among the problems: it doesn't seem to work.

Standard and Poor's has evaluated the relationship between classroom dollars and student performance. In a move that should not be surprising, it concluded that "the specific ways that schools use their instructional dollars may have as much, if not more, to do with student achievement as the percentage of dollars spent on the classroom."

The 65-percent proposal looks smart, on the surface, especially for people who hold to traditional views of pedagogy. But it's also the same kind of one-size-fits-all approach to education that has gotten us into trouble.

A better route is to maximize competition and choice. There is no single environment in which all students excel. Focus on achievement, and the rest will take care of itself.

Labels: Education, School choice

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School Choice for New Orleans.


"Until recently, Louisiana's state school board had steadfastly opposed the idea of using public funds in the form of vouchers to pay for private-school tuitions. But with New Orleans school officials yet to reopen a single building, and some Catholic schools already welcoming students, the board and the Archdiocese of New Orleans are discussing a plan to pay parochial schools to educate as many as 3,000 displaced public-school students."

The Rev. William Maestri, school superintendent for the New Orleans archdiocese, has said to his schools "Let the kids come in, we'll sort out the finances later."

This move gets children into school. It's also a smart political move: imagine children having to leave school mid-year, when a political showdown makes it clear that taxpayer dollars won't go to those schools, and the archdiocese can't afford to give away tuition any longer.

The offer is also a pragmatic one; it points out an important fact often unstated in the school choice debate: what should be the goal of public education? Is it sending children to specific schools, run through a particular arrangement (what we call "public schools")? Or should it be that children receive an education?

Another step forward: federal money being sent to the area may prompt an increase in the number of charter schools. In addition, the governor may be on board: "if Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco, a Democrat, has her way, New Orleans will become an even bigger laboratory for school choice. Since Katrina, the former public-school teacher has issued two executive orders easing the regulatory requirements for opening new charter schools."

Labels: Charter schools, Education, School choice

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Kansas Board of Ed to Discuss Vouchers.
The Kansas Board of Education discussed using vouchers as a means of improving education through competition.

While the idea has the support of the new education commissioner and some in the legislature, there's still a long way for it to go.

Standing in the way of vouchers are several objections. One member of the board said "We don't have in this state any failed school systems." (I bet some parents who, for financial reasons, are unable to move from school districts in Wichita, Topeka, Kansas City, Kansas might think differently.)

The same board member objects to competition, on the ground that it produces "a winner and a loser."

Unfortunately, when you compare achievement rates of various schools in Kansas and across the country, there are already winners and losers. It's time to bring competition to bear so that all families can enjoy the benefits of competition, not just those wealthy enough to move or to pay private schools.

Labels: Education

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Can Small Government Units Survive?
Federalism and fragmentation of government is a fundamental part of the American political system--but when is "small" too small?

If you're not familiar with the number of small towns and school districts across the country, you may be amazed. Kansas, for example, has a total of 627 cities. Only 56 cities (9 percent of all cities) have 5,000 residents or more. On the other hand, 429 cities (68 percent of all cities) have fewer than 1,000 people. (The PDF version of Governor's Economic and Demographic Report has the details on page 56, if you're interested.)

The situation may be exaggerated in Kansas, but it's not unique. Minnesota has 852 cities; 60 percent of them (512) have fewer than 1,000 residents. More astonishing, 88 cities have fewer than 100 people. State aid to local governments, no surprise, has become a contentious issue in the state's politics.


A similar situation exists with school districts, with 35 districts in Kansas enrolling fewer than 200 students. But consolidation has been on a tear in the last 100 years. It continued during yesterday's election.

The Kansas City Star reports that voters in Jewell County in north central Kansas voted to consolidate two school districts

Says the Star: "The ballot issue, which won approval with an unofficial count of 731 to 164, spells the end of the White Rock and Mankato school districts, which have a combined enrollment of 312."

Writing in anticipation the vote, Denis Boyles offered a political lamentation of the move in National Review.

But are small schools doomed? Not necessarily.

Dr. Adrian Moore, vice president of the Reason Foundation, thinks that consolidation administration is a way to preserve school districts and still direct more money into the classroom:

"I helped a few of my colleagues write a report looking at how sharing services for non-instructional operations works in practice and can help many school districts cut costs and maintain local control. We found that saving just a quarter of the tax dollars spent by school districts on non-instructional operations could save $9 billion. That is equivalent to 900 new schools or more than 150,000 additional teachers."

The report, in a PDF file, is available here.

While some people advocate smaller districts on the grounds that they provide a community its identity, there are also educational advantages. If anything, bigger doesn't guarantee better when it comes to educational outcomes.

Labels: Education

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The Newest Supreme and School Choice.
How does "Justice Samuel Alito" sound? Pretty good, if you're concerned about letting low-income people have the same thing that wealthier Americans have--school choice.

At least that's the word from the Alliance for School Choice:

"Although history makes abundantly clear that it is impossible to predict a Supreme Court justice’s positions, based on the evidence available, we believe that Justice Alito has a firm grasp on relevant legal issues and would provide a fair hearing to advocates of school choice," says president Clint Bolick. "In that regard, the nomination does not change the Court’s course at all, but would keep it solidly on track in support of educational opportunities for children who need them desperately."

Labels: Education, School choice

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About Those Rigorous High School Exit Exams.
The California Assembly voted to do away with the state's high school exit exam, which is really a test of tenth grade English and eighth grade math. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed the bill.

K. Lloyd Billingsley thinks that's a good first step.

Labels: Education

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Understanding the Types of Charter Schools.
Does the term "charter school" mean anything? The Thomas B. Fordham Institute suggests not, in a new publication that scopes out the range of charter schools.

In Playing to Type? (PDF file), Dick M. Carpenter II says that charter schools are not all alike; "charter" simply means that the school has some operation freedom, it does not designate its pedagogy. On the other hand, the 3,500 charter schools are not so different individually that there are no other similarities among the schools.

Carpenter sorts schools into 55 types of schools, based on each school's targeted population and curriculum. Some schools, for example, are vocational. Others are traditional, while others are progressive. (In the words of progressive advocates, their approach is that the teacher is the "guide on the side," and not the "sage on the stage.")

Meanwhile, schools are also classified by their targeted market, which includes open enrollment (anyone can come) or targeted enrollment (often but not always, at-risk students.)

So what did Carpenter find?

Traditional schools make up 23 percent of the charter school universe; progressive schools come in at 29 percent, while general schools are 29.5 percent. What are general schools? Institutions that are "essentially indistinguishable from conventional neighborhood public schools." They may operate free of some of the normal regulations that conventional public schools face, but they do not have a distinct pedagogy or targeted market.

Institute president Chester E. Finn, Jr. says that this study does not compare the types of charter schools by effectiveness. But, he promises, a follow-on report will do that by taking advantage of the types developed out in this report, called "Playing to Type."

If you're in the market for a charter school, here is how Carpenter categorized some well-known programs:

TRADITIONAL, OPEN ENROLLMENT
Core Knowledge
Edison
International Baccalaureate

PROGRESSIVE, OPEN ENROLLMENT
Montessori
Waldorf

The section of the report labeled "Descriptions of Instructional Sub-Themes" gives a brief yet helpful explanation of the different (and sometimes opposing) approaches to understanding the goals and methods of education.

Labels: Charter schools, Education

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Four Days a Week.
Go to school 4 days a week? That's what some children in Kentucky are doing.

Four districts have a four-day week (with longer hours per day). Critics say that the move was motivated by a desire to save money on the costs of running the school bus system. Defenders say it's a plan to help teachers get more prepared for classroom time.

Labels: Education

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Teachers Union, School Board Association Unite in Opposition to TABOR.
Do management and labor disagree? Not in Kansas, where the state school board association and teachers union unite in opposition to a Taxpayers Bill of Rights.

Labels: Education

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Anti-Education, or Anti-Satisfaction with the Status Quo?
Do you need to be a teacher to be an administrator of a state education bureaucracy?

As night follows day, the selection of Bob Corkins as the next Commissioner of Education, for the Kansas State Department of Education has drawn fire from the status quo lobby. The commissioner's job is described on one state web site as being the chief administrative officer of the Kansas Department of Education. The fireworks have started, however, not over questions of mere administration, but over what constitutes support for education.

The Wichita Eagle's story on the appointment quotes several legislative critics who label Corkins as "anti-education." Why? Presumably because he has called for funding education (or at least some students' education) through vouchers rather than the "you live here, you go to school there" approach.

The Eagle's editorial board is even more critical than the people it quotes in its news story.

As Craig Westover has pointed out, however, "public education" and "public schools" are not necessarily the same.

In short, "public education" is education in the public interest. It is a "public good" in the sense of "benefit to all." It is worthy of tax dollars. But "public education" is NOT the private fiefdom of the tenurial few. "Public education" is NOT equivalent to a government monopoly. It is NOT a specific institution.

Indeed. This separation between purpose and institution works well in higher education, where "public education" is furthered through channeling some funds directly to students--financial aid--which may then be used to purchase schooling at privately owned and operated universities. The purpose of public education is achieved at government-run colleges, and at privately-run colleges.

Critics of Corkins, it would appear, are focused on specific institutional arrangements, and above, all, giving extreme deference to those institutions. Whether that approach is the best way to ensure an educated public is another question.

Labels: Education

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This Could Get Interesting ...
The Kansas Board of Education has selected a conservative activist and policy expert to be the next commissioner of education for the state.

Bob Corkins is not a teacher, and does not have experience as an administrator in a school or in the school bureaucracy. That's going to raise some hackles. Even more enraging (to some) is the fact that he filed an amicus brief defending the state against demands for even more funding, in the controversial and ongoing Montoy case.

To outsiders, it's easy to think "evolution" when the words "Kansas" and "education" appear in the same sentence. But the bigger problems in the Jayhawk state are similar to those other states face: less than satisfactory school performance, increasing costs, and demands for even more money. Corkins certainly brings some new ideas to the post, ideas that might hold the solution to these problems.

Labels: Education

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School Audit Doesn't Tell Us Much.
Standard and Poors has come out with a review of school district efficiency in Kansas. But as I argue in Sunday's Wichita Eagle, the audits don't tell us much.

Why? They're conducted within the confines of a non-competitive system. We have yet to see what the true "costs" of education will be in a competitive market of education providers.

Labels: Education

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Education: More Money, Sir.
In another sign that public policy is being made less in legislatures and more in courts, nine school districts in North Dakota are suing the state in an attempt to get more money from the state.

Doug Bahr, of the attorney general's office, argues that "The constitution does not mandate what the plaintiffs are requesting," adding that "They are actually asking for the court to usurp legislative authority, not to make judicial decisions, but to act as a super-Legislature."

Labels: Education

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