Articles 20 (School Choice)

The following articles address the current state of public primary and secondary education in the U.S. I think the public education debate revolves around three themes: 1) freedom and empowerment of parents and students 2) religious freedom of families 3) accountability of teachers, administrators, parents, students, and entire schools. The following four articles share many of the same goals but are deeply divided on how to achieve those goals. Christians can always begin with the question, what approaches to public education will be most beneficial to poorest among us (Catholic Social Teaching’s “preferential option for the poor”)? There are other important considerations as well. Many on this blog have children, have chosen to live in neighborhoods specifically because of the quality of the public school there, have paid property taxes (funding local public schools) while also choosing to pay private school tuition, teach in a major urban public school system and have chosen to placed their children in that same system, and so on. I am curious to hear any responses to the current education debate, particularly implementation of school choice programs vs. further investment in traditional public schools. -NB

Reason.com “Knowing is Half the Battle. But It's the Easy Half.” (September 1, 2010)

By Katherine Mangu-Ward

Liberating teacher performance data is a great way to start out the school year. But it's not enough.

They say that knowing is half the battle. But it’s the easy half.

On Sunday, the Los Angeles Times caused quite a stir by releasing individual performance data about 6,000 of the system’s primary teachers after weeks of hyping the story. The paper took the simple but ingenious step of filing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for the district’s raw math and reading standardized test scores over several years. For each teacher, the paper calculated a score based on the gains shown by his or her individual students from the time they arrived in the classroom in the fall to the time they left—a value-added score—and then rated the teachers’ effectiveness.

Information is power, and the school system and teachers union had access to this data long before theTimes. But instead of releasing scores—and thus seizing the opportunity to frame the information and the debate—they sat on the data for years, stalling, hoping no one would notice that it existed at all. Their mindset dates from a time when processing a large amount of data and offering a granular analysis was a difficult and expensive business. But number crunching on this scale is no longer the province of big bureaucracies with major computing power. Anyone can do it, and it was only a matter of time before someone did.

Naturally, the teachers union flipped out. In addition to announcing a boycott of the paper, union reps have condemned the release of the scores to parents as “dangerous.” (To his credit, Obama education chief Arne Duncan backed the release of the scores, saying “What’s there to hide?”)

But all the data in the world won’t do kids or their parents any good if they can’t make choices informed by that data.

In a world where we can get rankings and information about every book, every household appliance, every restaurant, and every manicurist, we are in the habit of casually seeking information and making well-informed choices about the things we buy and the people we contract with for services. But in education (and, for that matter, in medicine) users are mostly working in an information vacuum. One reason doctors and hospitals are frightened of the popularization of information about patient satisfaction and pricing is that people can, with some constraints, take their broken legs, strep throats, or brain tumors elsewhere. But parents don’t have that luxury when it comes to public schooling.

Even if parents know who the good teachers are—and they often do already—it often doesn’t matter, since kids are randomly assigned. They’re allocated to a district, a school, a schedule, and a classroom, all without any input from students or parents. The biggest decision public school parents get to make about their child’s primary education is where they choose to live. Short of staging a mini-sit in at the guidance counselor’s office (something my parents were known to do from time to time) there’s not much you can do once the die has been cast. And if you’re a parent who doesn’t have the luxury of taking a day off from work to spend fighting the school bureaucracy, your kid is stuck wherever he was randomly assigned, no matter what. Teacher data doesn’t do a lick of good if you don’t have input about which teacher you wind up with.

Instituting a small degree of teacher choice wouldn’t be overwhelmingly difficult. Schools at all levels could opt for the kind of first-come, first-served lottery that large colleges use. It's not an ideal system, but it’s an improvement. Again, computers these days, they can do amazing stuff. Once a system is in place, this kind of limited choice would be neither time consuming nor expensive. But it would create one outcome that teachers unions will do almost anything to stop: It would quickly become obvious which teachers aren’t desirable. The teachers with the half-empty classrooms would be ripe for firing. And that’s the scenario that makes teachers unions (and to a lesser degree school boards and other education bureaucracies) fear a flood of data, especially if it’s accompanied by even a little choice.

In today’s Los Angeles Times, this troublingly common sentiment showed up: "As a parent, I think I have a right to know," said [school] board member Nury Martinez, who added that she did not believe that the general public should be able to see a teacher's entire review.” Giving parents all the information that’s available is a bad idea, the argument goes, in part because they might start trying to make the kind of choices for their kids that they make every day about their lunches, their jobs, or their dry cleaners.

Asked about the release of the Los Angeles teacher data at a recent community meeting, reformist D.C. school Chancellor Michelle Rhee replied with a personal story and a similar gut reaction: “I was looking at the data in my own children’s school,” she says. “I could see the teacher data. One good, one not so much. I pride myself on not giving my kids preferences. But as a mother i was like whoa! From an administrative point of view, it’s pretty terrifying.”

There were a lot of mothers in Los Angeles on Sunday who were like whoa. But none of those whoamoments will amount to much in a system starved of choice.

“I’m kind of waiting for the FOIA request in my mailbox,” says Rhee. It’s coming, alright. But it won’t be enough.

Katherine Mangu-Ward is a senior editor at Reason magazine.

Source: http://reason.com/archives/2010/09/01/knowing-is-half-the-battle-but

Guidelines for Government and Citizenship, "Education"

A Publication of The Center for Public Justice (www.cpjustice.org)

1. Parents bear primary responsibility for the nurture and education of their children. This fact is recognized in both American and international law.

2. In justly exercising its responsibility to provide for the general welfare, government may – and indeed should – help parents meet their responsibilities. For most of American history, such assistance has included the funding of elementary and secondary education.

3. With its support of schooling and its mandate that all children receive an education, government should concentrate on upholding public equity provisions, assuring that each child has fair access to quality education.

4. To honor the educational responsibilities of families and to fulfill its own responsibility to treat citizens equitably, government should be impartial in its treatment of the diverse types of schooling parents choose for their children.

5. Those who educate and establish schools should be free to decide on the philosophical and pedagogical approaches they offer, the curricula they adopt, and the means of governing and administering the schools they open to the public.

6. When government certifies a variety of schooling options that fulfill the public purpose of educating children and when parents choose schools for their children, justice demands that each child should receive the same kind and degree of public financial support. Equitable public funding should be offered without regard to the religious, philosophical, or pedagogical differences among the variety of certified schools parents choose.

7. At present, government fails to do justice when it does not fund equally all of the schooling options it legally certifies. Instead it discriminates against many American families and schools by not funding the education of children who attend non-government schools, including religious schools. This stands in contrast to public funding of school choice in most other democracies in the world.

8. The Center for Public Justice advocates equitable public funding for all children, allowing parents to choose the means of education that is best for their children. A school-choice system of this kind does justice to parental responsibility for children, to the diversity of publicly approved schools, and to the religious freedom of all citizens, ensuring a just and proper relationship between government and society’s diverse families and schools.

Implications

1. State education vouchers for each student may be the best means of covering tuition costs equitably for students at all schools, including religious schools.

2. Schools receiving public support, whether via vouchers or directly, should be free to hire staff and to design curricula that reflect their distinctive educational, philosophical, and religious missions.

3. State laws that authorize specialized charter schools may be the best legal means of expanding choice in American education. In order to be fair and equitable, however, charter-school laws should be revised to include religious schools as eligible schooling options.

For Further Reading

Glenn, Charles L. Ambiguous Embrace: Government and Faith-Based Schools and Social Agencies. Princeton University Press, 2000.

McCarthy, Rockne M., James W. Skillen, and William A. Harper. Disestablishment a Second Time: Genuine Pluralism for American Schools. Christian University Press, 1982.

Skillen, James W., ed. The School Choice Controversy: What Is Constitutional?Baker Book House and Center for Public Justice, 1993.

[Read more about this Guideline in the Public Justice Report, Fourth Quarter 2006.]

Sourece: http://www.cpjustice.org/content/education

National Education Association (website), “Study Finds Vouchers Fail to Raise Student Achievement” (April 13, 2010)

By Kevin Hart

Milwaukee’s school vouchers program has lasted 20 years and has channeled hundreds of millions of dollars in public funds to private schools. Now, an ongoing study on the academic performance of voucher students is casting serious doubt on whether the program is effective.

The Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, established in 1990, currently serves more than 20,000 students who receive public funds to pay for private school tuition. The University of Arkansas’ School Choice Demonstration Project has been commissioned to perform a five-year study comparing voucher students to demographically similar public school students. Two years into the study, the results are not looking promising for vouchers.

Through the 2007-2008 school year, two years into the study, researchers found that there was no difference in academic achievement among the elementary, middle, and high school students who were tested. Students receiving vouchers failed to outperform their public school counterparts.

Ironically, the research was funded by several groups with a history of supporting school choice, such as the Kern Family Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation. The study also found that, to date:

▪ Religious schools have been the primary beneficiaries of the vouchers program: Of the 124 participating private schools, 82 percent are affiliated with one of 10 distinct religions.

▪ Teachers at schools receiving voucher funds may be less qualified: More public school teachers had teaching certifications and master’s degrees than teachers at the private schools participating in the vouchers program.

▪ Boys and girls are not benefiting equally: Girls in the vouchers program were considerably less likely to experience growth in reading than boys.

The University of Arkansas research is not the first study that failed to show achievement gains among Milwaukee students receiving vouchers. As the study authors point out, a previous study by University of Wisconsin researcher John Witte compared voucher students to public school students from 1990-1995 and found “no clear evidence” that vouchers improved student achievement.

The results are unsurprising for those who follow research on voucher programs. Research on a controversial vouchers program in Washington, D.C. yielded similar results.

According to data from the U.S. Department of Education, students from schools labeled “in need of improvement” – the very students vouchers are supposed to help – have not experienced any gains in reading or math after using vouchers to attend Washington, D.C. private schools.

Source: http://neatoday.org/2010/04/13/study-finds-vouchers-fail-to-raise-student-achievement/

The following text consists of excerpts of this report taken from NAACP.org. -NB

NAACP.org “Framework for Providing All Students an Opportunity to Learn through Reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act”

Sponsored By:

Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights under Law

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)

NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc.

National Council for Educating Black Children

National Urban League

Rainbow PUSH Coalition

Schott Foundation for Public Education

Today there is nothing short of a state of emergency in the delivery of education to our nation’s communities of color. As our communities quickly grow on pace to become a numerical majority, it is clear that confronting the issues we face is not just our challenge alone but all of America’s challenge. As a nation, we are failing to provide the high-quality educational opportunities that are critical for all students to succeed, thereby jeopardizing our nation’s ability to continue to be a world leader.

As a community of civil rights organizations, we believe that access to a high-quality education is a fundamental civil right. The federal government’s role is to protect and promote that civil right by creating and supporting a fair and substantive opportunity to learn for all students, regardless of where and to whom they were born. This objective is advanced by many components of the proposed FY 2011 education budget and the Blueprint for Reform setting forth the Administration’s priorities for reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). For instance, we applaud the Administration’s goal for the United States to become a global leader in post-secondary education attainment by 2020 and its efforts to develop specific strategies for turning around low-performing schools.

While there are numerous positive aspects of the Administration’s education agenda, more comprehensive reforms are necessary to build a future where equitable educational opportunity is the rule, not the exception. As civil rights organizations, it is our responsibility to seek to close and ultimately eliminate the opportunity and achievement gaps experienced by communities of color. To this end, we outline six major principles that we will collectively advocate to strengthen the ESEA and ensure that the federal government provides the support necessary to protect every child’s civil right to a high-quality education:

Equitable opportunities for all;

Utilization of systematically proven and effective educational methods;

Public and community engagement in education reforms;

Safe and educationally sound learning environments;

Diverse learning environments; and

Comprehensive and substantive accountability systems to maintain equitable opportunities and high outcomes.

....we also offer specific recommendations to implement the principles outlined above. We advance proposals to leverage federal resources available to all states in order to create the preconditions to achieve equitable opportunities for all. As a part of extending an opportunity to learn as a civil right, we call for: “universal” early education for all students in all states; policies that will provide access to highly effective teachers for all students, including incentives to recruit and retain well-prepared, highly effective teachers in high–need, low-income, and rural areas; and community schools that offer wraparound services and strong, engaging instruction with adequate supports. We urge the federal government to institutionalize a federal resource accountability system so that students, parents, and teachers will have the school and community resources necessary for students to achieve high standards, regardless of where they live....

....We propose that the federal government adopt Common Resource Opportunity Standards, which would support the states’ common student outcome standards movement by ensuring sufficient resources to address extreme state budget cuts and interstate inequities. These standards would include national benchmarks for the following resources: (i) high-quality, early childhood education; (ii) highly effective teachers; (iii) a broad, college-bound curriculum that will prepare all students to participate effectively in our democracy; and (iv) equitable instructional resources.1 As a condition for receiving federal funds under the ESEA, each state would be required to submit a plan for closing opportunity gaps in these areas and ensuring that all students

1An outline of Common Resource Opportunity Standards was presented to Secretary Arne Duncan by several organizations on November 4, 2009.3

have access to these core resources. As envisioned in the now pending Student Bill of Rights Act, H.R. 2451, federal funding should be tied to each state’s demonstrated progress toward equitable access to these education resources.

The federal government should also require that states make progress in achieving resource equity for their schools. It should do so by enforcing existing requirements for comparability in the funding provided to high- and low-poverty schools and close the loopholes in those comparability requirements by incorporating into the ESEA the provisions of the now pending ESEA Fiscal Fairness Act, H.R. 5071....

....We applaud the Administration’s Blueprint for proposing that information on school climate and the health of students’ learning environments should be incorporated into school accountability measures. But it is critical that these measures are designed well and implemented effectively. At the school level, we urge replacing the ESEA’s ineffective “persistently dangerous schools” label with a “safe and supportive schools” metric, focusing on indicia of positive school conditions that support learning. Criteria should include infrequent use of 11

exclusionary discipline measures, high pupil and teacher attendance rates, low arrest rates, and survey results showing good rapport and personalization between students and staff. Research has shown that high marks on these indicators are predictive of learning environments that keep students in school until graduation rather than pushing them to drop out of school prematurely.

The shift to a “safe and supportive schools” approach must be coupled with changes to discipline practices at the school level. A school’s failure to perform well under this metric should trigger local and state support to implement evidence-based approaches to improve school climate....

....The ESEA’s “right-to-transfer” provisions should be retained and strengthened. States should be required to ensure that every low-income child assigned to a school that consistently underperforms on the ESEA’s accountability standards has the guaranteed right to enroll in a high-performing school. If no such school is available within the same school district, the student should have the right to enroll in a high-performing school outside the district that has available seats and, if the school receives federal funds, it must be required to accept the student. The ESEA should also provide transportation, resources, and services to support families who exercise their child’s right to transfer. Additional incentives, coupled with the resources proposed in the DOE’s Magnet School Assistance Program, could aid states in promoting these opportunities....

....CONCLUSION

More than fifty years ago, it took the persistent efforts of parents and students in cities and hamlets across the country to persuade the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education to rule that all students should have access to an inclusive, high-quality education. Today, our nation is still struggling to fulfill Brown’s promise.

As a community of civil rights organizations, our objective is not to support prescriptions that only have the capacity to change a few schools for a few students. We want a blueprint for a federal commitment to education reform that embraces the entire nation and all of its people.

We therefore call on the Administration and Congress to take four important direct actions:

1. Adopt the recommendations in this letter for current discretionary education spending, budget proposals for FY2011 and subsequent years, and ESEA reauthorization;

2. Convene a Summit on the Opportunity to Learn in fall 2010 where administration and legislative officials can meet with key stakeholders to outline a federal role and blueprint for fulfilling the fundamental civil right of all students, in all states, to a fair and substantive opportunity to learn; 15

3. Establish a White House Commission on the Opportunity to Learn as a standing interagency and intergovernmental commission tasked with identifying and monitoring the coordination and investments necessary to place the United States on a trajectory to meet the 2020 goal of becoming a global leader in post-secondary education attainment and to provide all students a fair and substantive opportunity to learn; and

4. Convene a panel comprised of leadership of the Department of Justice, the DOE, the National Governors Association, civil rights organizations, and other key stakeholders to recommend steps towards confirming that education is a federal civil right.

Some have articulated a belief that our nation is unable to garner the resources to provide a high-quality education for all students and therefore we should just save those we can. But as civil rights advocates, our objective is not to support prescriptions that only have the capacity to change a few schools for a few students. We invoke the leadership and drive of the candidate and Senator from Illinois who told a nation, “Yes we can.” Securing equal access to high-quality education is the civil rights battle of this generation.

Source: http://naacp.3cdn.net/bbe013962d37e1c6a9_com6btgji.pdf