Just Throw Them Under the Bus - That is the motto of many of our legislators and the teachers' unions. If education were for the kids, there would be no unions in public schools. There would be school choice and the tax dollars would follow the child and not the institution. If you really want to make a difference in school children's lives, lobby the legislators to the same extent that the teacher union thugs do. Don't condone the behavior of those who care more about protecting their little entitlement program than they do about actually educating the children of America.
The following piece appeared at the Business Wire.
Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.
Quote of the Day
"Academies that are founded at public expense are instituted not so much to cultivate men's natural abilities as to restrain them." - Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677)
D.C. School Choice Leaders Blast Appropriators’ Decision to Kill School Voucher Program
Call on Obama and Durbin to Stand with D.C.’s Low-Income Families
WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The leaders of D.C.’s school choice movement, Kevin P. Chavous (former D.C. Councilman) and Virginia Walden Ford (executive director of D.C. Parents for School Choice), today issued the following statement:
"House and Senate Appropriators this week ignored the wishes of D.C.’s mayor, D.C.’s public schools chancellor, a majority of D.C.’s city council, and more than 70 percent of D.C. residents and have mandated the slow death of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program. This successful school voucher program—for D.C.’s poorest families—has allowed more than 3,300 children to attend the best schools they have ever known.
The decision to end the program, a decision buried in a thousand-page spending bill and announced right before the holidays, destroys the hopes and dreams of thousands of D.C. families. Parents and children have rallied countless times over the past year in support of reauthorization and in favor of strengthening the OSP.
Yet, despite the clearly positive results and the proven success of this program, Sen. Dick Durbin, Rep. Jose Serrano, Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, and Secretary Arne Duncan worked together to kill the OSP. Funding the program only for existing children shrinks the program each year, compromises the federal evaluation of the program, denies entry to the siblings of existing participants, and punishes those children waiting in line by sentencing them to failing and often unsafe schools.
What is incredibly disappointing to low-income families in Washington, D.C. has been the silence of President Barack Obama. The President, who benefited from K-12 scholarships himself, worked on behalf of low-income families in Chicago, and exercises school choice as a parent, has stood silently on the sidelines while his Secretary of Education belittled the importance of helping such a small number of children in the nation’s capital.
Now, the fate of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program and the low-income children it serves and could serve depends on the willingness of Congressional supporters to insist that the FY 2010 budget allows additional children to participate in the OSP. We call on President Obama and Senator Durbin to stand up and do the right thing. Stand with the children of low-income families in Washington, D.C. who deserve access to a quality education right now—not five years from now—but right now. These children deserve that opportunity."
Showing posts with label Vouchers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Vouchers. Show all posts
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Righting a Wrong
Last spring legislators killed a voucher program that gave inner city children in Washington. D.C. the option of school choice. CNS News is reporting that Senator Lieberman and others are putting fourth a bill that would reinstate the D.C. voucher program.
The following is an excerpt from the CNS News report.
Liberal and Conservative Senators Unite on Bill to Reinstate D.C. School Vouchers
Friday, July 31, 2009
By Adam Brickley
Washington (CNSNews.com) – A bipartisan group of senators announced Thursday that they plan to introduce legislation to revive the District of Columbia’s recently terminated D.C. Opportunity Scholarship school-voucher program.
“It’s not a liberal or conservative program, it’s a program that puts children first,” said Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) Thursday at a Capitol Hill press conference announcing the effort.
“I’m happy to say it’s a program that’s working to give D.C. children, every one of them, a chance at a better education.”
Click here to read the rest of the story.
Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.
The following is an excerpt from the CNS News report.
Liberal and Conservative Senators Unite on Bill to Reinstate D.C. School Vouchers
Friday, July 31, 2009
By Adam Brickley
Washington (CNSNews.com) – A bipartisan group of senators announced Thursday that they plan to introduce legislation to revive the District of Columbia’s recently terminated D.C. Opportunity Scholarship school-voucher program.
“It’s not a liberal or conservative program, it’s a program that puts children first,” said Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) Thursday at a Capitol Hill press conference announcing the effort.
“I’m happy to say it’s a program that’s working to give D.C. children, every one of them, a chance at a better education.”
Click here to read the rest of the story.
Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.
Monday, May 11, 2009
Educational Freedom is a Civil Rights Issue
The following article was sent to me by Bruno Behrend of Extreme Wisdom. Last year in a survey Croydon residents overwhelmingly supported school choice by a near 2 to 1 margin. Residents and nonresidents with clear conflicts of interest are actively trying to fight Croydon residents civil right to educational freedom and their desire to have school choice.
Croydon students are doing poorly on standardized tests, results revealed that 66.7% of students scored proficient or above in reading while 41.7% of the students scored proficient in mathematics. According to the most recent NECAP test results, 31%, 20%, and 78% of 11th grade Newport students scored in the "proficient" level in writing, mathematics, and reading respectively. Croydon School and Newport Schools are failing to educate our students this is a civil rights issue we must give parents a choice as to where to educate their children. We simply cannot force these children to stay in school systems that are failing to educate them. How these children are educated will affect them for the rest of their lives. If parents think that Newport and Croydon schools are so wonderful they will keep them in said schools but the school board should not hold parents hostage and force them to keep their children in a failing system.
The following article appears in the New York Times.
Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.
The Harlem Miracle
Article Tools Sponsored By
By DAVID BROOKS
Published: May 7, 2009
The fight against poverty produces great programs but disappointing results. You go visit an inner-city school, job-training program or community youth center and you meet incredible people doing wonderful things. Then you look at the results from the serious evaluations and you find that these inspiring places are only producing incremental gains.
That’s why I was startled when I received an e-mail message from Roland Fryer, a meticulous Harvard economist. It included this sentence: “The attached study has changed my life as a scientist.”
Fryer and his colleague Will Dobbie have just finished a rigorous assessment of the charter schools operated by the Harlem Children’s Zone. They compared students in these schools to students in New York City as a whole and to comparable students who entered the lottery to get into the Harlem Children’s Zone schools, but weren’t selected.
They found that the Harlem Children’s Zone schools produced “enormous” gains. The typical student entered the charter middle school, Promise Academy, in sixth grade and scored in the 39th percentile among New York City students in math. By the eighth grade, the typical student in the school was in the 74th percentile. The typical student entered the school scoring in the 39th percentile in English Language Arts (verbal ability). By eighth grade, the typical student was in the 53rd percentile.
Forgive some academic jargon, but the most common education reform ideas — reducing class size, raising teacher pay, enrolling kids in Head Start — produce gains of about 0.1 or 0.2 or 0.3 standard deviations. If you study policy, those are the sorts of improvements you live with every day. Promise Academy produced gains of 1.3 and 1.4 standard deviations. That’s off the charts. In math, Promise Academy eliminated the achievement gap between its black students and the city average for white students.
Let me repeat that. It eliminated the black-white achievement gap. “The results changed my life as a researcher because I am no longer interested in marginal changes,” Fryer wrote in a subsequent e-mail. What Geoffrey Canada, Harlem Children’s Zone’s founder and president, has done is “the equivalent of curing cancer for these kids. It’s amazing. It should be celebrated. But it almost doesn’t matter if we stop there. We don’t have a way to replicate his cure, and we need one since so many of our kids are dying — literally and figuratively.”
These results are powerful evidence in a long-running debate. Some experts, mostly surrounding the education establishment, argue that schools alone can’t produce big changes. The problems are in society, and you have to work on broader issues like economic inequality. Reformers, on the other hand, have argued that school-based approaches can produce big results. The Harlem Children’s Zone results suggest the reformers are right. The Promise Academy does provide health and psychological services, but it helps kids who aren’t even involved in the other programs the organization offers.
To my mind, the results also vindicate an emerging model for low-income students. Over the past decade, dozens of charter and independent schools, like Promise Academy, have become no excuses schools. The basic theory is that middle-class kids enter adolescence with certain working models in their heads: what I can achieve; how to control impulses; how to work hard. Many kids from poorer, disorganized homes don’t have these internalized models. The schools create a disciplined, orderly and demanding counterculture to inculcate middle-class values.
To understand the culture in these schools, I’d recommend “Whatever It Takes,” a gripping account of Harlem Children’s Zone by my Times colleague Paul Tough, and “Sweating the Small Stuff,” a superb survey of these sorts of schools by David Whitman.
Basically, the no excuses schools pay meticulous attention to behavior and attitudes. They teach students how to look at the person who is talking, how to shake hands. These schools are academically rigorous and college-focused. Promise Academy students who are performing below grade level spent twice as much time in school as other students in New York City. Students who are performing at grade level spend 50 percent more time in school.
They also smash the normal bureaucratic strictures that bind leaders in regular schools. Promise Academy went through a tumultuous period as Canada searched for the right teachers. Nearly half of the teachers did not return for the 2005-2006 school year. A third didn’t return for the 2006-2007 year. Assessments are rigorous. Standardized tests are woven into the fabric of school life.
The approach works. Ever since welfare reform, we have had success with intrusive government programs that combine paternalistic leadership, sufficient funding and a ferocious commitment to traditional, middle-class values. We may have found a remedy for the achievement gap. Which city is going to take up the challenge? Omaha? Chicago?Yours?
"When you read the study I just referenced, you start to realize that busting the cap on charters is a moral imperative on the order of the civil rights movement. Let me take that one step further, to stand in the way of more charters is immoral, and it is time to start to calling into question the moral legitimacy of any politician standing in the way of rapid charterization." Bruno Behrend
Croydon students are doing poorly on standardized tests, results revealed that 66.7% of students scored proficient or above in reading while 41.7% of the students scored proficient in mathematics. According to the most recent NECAP test results, 31%, 20%, and 78% of 11th grade Newport students scored in the "proficient" level in writing, mathematics, and reading respectively. Croydon School and Newport Schools are failing to educate our students this is a civil rights issue we must give parents a choice as to where to educate their children. We simply cannot force these children to stay in school systems that are failing to educate them. How these children are educated will affect them for the rest of their lives. If parents think that Newport and Croydon schools are so wonderful they will keep them in said schools but the school board should not hold parents hostage and force them to keep their children in a failing system.
The following article appears in the New York Times.
Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.
The Harlem Miracle
Article Tools Sponsored By
By DAVID BROOKS
Published: May 7, 2009
The fight against poverty produces great programs but disappointing results. You go visit an inner-city school, job-training program or community youth center and you meet incredible people doing wonderful things. Then you look at the results from the serious evaluations and you find that these inspiring places are only producing incremental gains.
That’s why I was startled when I received an e-mail message from Roland Fryer, a meticulous Harvard economist. It included this sentence: “The attached study has changed my life as a scientist.”
Fryer and his colleague Will Dobbie have just finished a rigorous assessment of the charter schools operated by the Harlem Children’s Zone. They compared students in these schools to students in New York City as a whole and to comparable students who entered the lottery to get into the Harlem Children’s Zone schools, but weren’t selected.
They found that the Harlem Children’s Zone schools produced “enormous” gains. The typical student entered the charter middle school, Promise Academy, in sixth grade and scored in the 39th percentile among New York City students in math. By the eighth grade, the typical student in the school was in the 74th percentile. The typical student entered the school scoring in the 39th percentile in English Language Arts (verbal ability). By eighth grade, the typical student was in the 53rd percentile.
Forgive some academic jargon, but the most common education reform ideas — reducing class size, raising teacher pay, enrolling kids in Head Start — produce gains of about 0.1 or 0.2 or 0.3 standard deviations. If you study policy, those are the sorts of improvements you live with every day. Promise Academy produced gains of 1.3 and 1.4 standard deviations. That’s off the charts. In math, Promise Academy eliminated the achievement gap between its black students and the city average for white students.
Let me repeat that. It eliminated the black-white achievement gap. “The results changed my life as a researcher because I am no longer interested in marginal changes,” Fryer wrote in a subsequent e-mail. What Geoffrey Canada, Harlem Children’s Zone’s founder and president, has done is “the equivalent of curing cancer for these kids. It’s amazing. It should be celebrated. But it almost doesn’t matter if we stop there. We don’t have a way to replicate his cure, and we need one since so many of our kids are dying — literally and figuratively.”
These results are powerful evidence in a long-running debate. Some experts, mostly surrounding the education establishment, argue that schools alone can’t produce big changes. The problems are in society, and you have to work on broader issues like economic inequality. Reformers, on the other hand, have argued that school-based approaches can produce big results. The Harlem Children’s Zone results suggest the reformers are right. The Promise Academy does provide health and psychological services, but it helps kids who aren’t even involved in the other programs the organization offers.
To my mind, the results also vindicate an emerging model for low-income students. Over the past decade, dozens of charter and independent schools, like Promise Academy, have become no excuses schools. The basic theory is that middle-class kids enter adolescence with certain working models in their heads: what I can achieve; how to control impulses; how to work hard. Many kids from poorer, disorganized homes don’t have these internalized models. The schools create a disciplined, orderly and demanding counterculture to inculcate middle-class values.
To understand the culture in these schools, I’d recommend “Whatever It Takes,” a gripping account of Harlem Children’s Zone by my Times colleague Paul Tough, and “Sweating the Small Stuff,” a superb survey of these sorts of schools by David Whitman.
Basically, the no excuses schools pay meticulous attention to behavior and attitudes. They teach students how to look at the person who is talking, how to shake hands. These schools are academically rigorous and college-focused. Promise Academy students who are performing below grade level spent twice as much time in school as other students in New York City. Students who are performing at grade level spend 50 percent more time in school.
They also smash the normal bureaucratic strictures that bind leaders in regular schools. Promise Academy went through a tumultuous period as Canada searched for the right teachers. Nearly half of the teachers did not return for the 2005-2006 school year. A third didn’t return for the 2006-2007 year. Assessments are rigorous. Standardized tests are woven into the fabric of school life.
The approach works. Ever since welfare reform, we have had success with intrusive government programs that combine paternalistic leadership, sufficient funding and a ferocious commitment to traditional, middle-class values. We may have found a remedy for the achievement gap. Which city is going to take up the challenge? Omaha? Chicago?Yours?
"When you read the study I just referenced, you start to realize that busting the cap on charters is a moral imperative on the order of the civil rights movement. Let me take that one step further, to stand in the way of more charters is immoral, and it is time to start to calling into question the moral legitimacy of any politician standing in the way of rapid charterization." Bruno Behrend
Sunday, April 26, 2009
American Stinker
The article below is garbage. There are so many flaws, so much conclusion jumping, I'm not even sure where to begin...
Weissberg's outright rejection of what he calls "Say's Law" is unsubstantiated and flat-out untrue. Few people demanded cell phones before they became available en masse. Same with iPods. In some instances, supply DOES create demand. Henry Ford commented that if they had listened to what the public wanted, they would have built faster horses.
Second, Weissberg mischaracterizes what "demand" actually means. To say "I'd like a cheeseburger" is not demand in the economic sense. To say "I'll pay $5 for a cheeseburger" IS demand. What advocates of free market solutions to education point out is that the unionized government monopoly destroys demand (backed by money, in the economic sense) by confiscating private funds which could otherwise go to the private sector. Absent this abhorrent seizure of national wealth, parents would have insatiable demand backed by real dollars.
Today's "choice" schemes only apply to those privileged few able to support the unionized government monopoly AND their own private needs. Ironic and hypocritical from a political party self identified with working class Americans.
The idea that parents must be satisfied with the monstrosity that is public education because they're not all flocking to Sylvan is preposterous. It would be like saying people prefer Ford to Porsche because more people own Fords. (Apologies to Ford, as they do in fact deliver a decent product unlike our public schools).
Weissberg goes on to state that "Ironically, free-market reformers mistakenly believe that only the state can permit free-market solutions". Untrue and idiotic. Free market reformers aren't asking government to somehow "permit" free-market solutions. They're asking government to stop obstructing the free market. Creating a third rate school system propped up by seizing private property is the most egregious form of market interference one can imagine. The unions and their puppets don't oppose school choice because they fear it will fail. They oppose it because they fear it will succeed and thereby expose the system for what it is: a multibillion dollar entitlement parasite.
Weissberg's article is so dumb, so ill-conceived and so contrary to what is obvious that it almost seems like a shill article. I certainly hope not, but I have seen first hand how desperate educrats have become in discrediting an end to their gravy train.
Jim Peschke
The above was in response to the American Thinker article titled Demand, Not Supply Drives Educational Achievement by Robert Weissberg.
Free market conservatives passionately insist that school choice will solve America's education woes. So as schools proliferate and competition heats up, academic achievement will soar just as fierce market competition has delivered better and cheaper computers and TVs. This seductive analogy is, unfortunately, hardening into unchallenged dogma. Worse, it misdiagnoses the problem. It is demand, not supply that drives academic attainment. In economic terms, Say's Law -- supply creates demand -- is wrong and Keynes -- demand creates supply -- is correct. If youngsters and parents truly desired academic excellence, the market would happily supply it. Absent demand, no amount of supply, regardless of price, can whet appetites for learning.
To read the rest of the article go to American Thinker.
Cathy Peschke
Weissberg's outright rejection of what he calls "Say's Law" is unsubstantiated and flat-out untrue. Few people demanded cell phones before they became available en masse. Same with iPods. In some instances, supply DOES create demand. Henry Ford commented that if they had listened to what the public wanted, they would have built faster horses.
Second, Weissberg mischaracterizes what "demand" actually means. To say "I'd like a cheeseburger" is not demand in the economic sense. To say "I'll pay $5 for a cheeseburger" IS demand. What advocates of free market solutions to education point out is that the unionized government monopoly destroys demand (backed by money, in the economic sense) by confiscating private funds which could otherwise go to the private sector. Absent this abhorrent seizure of national wealth, parents would have insatiable demand backed by real dollars.
Today's "choice" schemes only apply to those privileged few able to support the unionized government monopoly AND their own private needs. Ironic and hypocritical from a political party self identified with working class Americans.
The idea that parents must be satisfied with the monstrosity that is public education because they're not all flocking to Sylvan is preposterous. It would be like saying people prefer Ford to Porsche because more people own Fords. (Apologies to Ford, as they do in fact deliver a decent product unlike our public schools).
Weissberg goes on to state that "Ironically, free-market reformers mistakenly believe that only the state can permit free-market solutions". Untrue and idiotic. Free market reformers aren't asking government to somehow "permit" free-market solutions. They're asking government to stop obstructing the free market. Creating a third rate school system propped up by seizing private property is the most egregious form of market interference one can imagine. The unions and their puppets don't oppose school choice because they fear it will fail. They oppose it because they fear it will succeed and thereby expose the system for what it is: a multibillion dollar entitlement parasite.
Weissberg's article is so dumb, so ill-conceived and so contrary to what is obvious that it almost seems like a shill article. I certainly hope not, but I have seen first hand how desperate educrats have become in discrediting an end to their gravy train.
Jim Peschke
The above was in response to the American Thinker article titled Demand, Not Supply Drives Educational Achievement by Robert Weissberg.
Free market conservatives passionately insist that school choice will solve America's education woes. So as schools proliferate and competition heats up, academic achievement will soar just as fierce market competition has delivered better and cheaper computers and TVs. This seductive analogy is, unfortunately, hardening into unchallenged dogma. Worse, it misdiagnoses the problem. It is demand, not supply that drives academic attainment. In economic terms, Say's Law -- supply creates demand -- is wrong and Keynes -- demand creates supply -- is correct. If youngsters and parents truly desired academic excellence, the market would happily supply it. Absent demand, no amount of supply, regardless of price, can whet appetites for learning.
To read the rest of the article go to American Thinker.
Cathy Peschke
Friday, August 1, 2008
Commentary: McCain right, Obama wrong on school vouchers
The following piece appeared on CNN and can also be found on Roland S. Martin's website.
Vouchers give parents a choice and choice is exactly what the people of Croydon want. The 2008 Croydon Survey results reveal that 43 of the 70 respondents want a choice as to where to send their children. If schools have to vie for Croydon's education tax dollars they will perform better to try to keep those children in their school districts.
Cathy
Commentary: McCain right, Obama wrong on school vouchers
By Roland S. Martin
CNN Contributor
Roland Martin says school vouchers should be an option for families with kids in dead-end schools.
ACCRA, Ghana (CNN) -- "All I want is for my children to get the best education they can."
That statement, along with so many others, has been a consistent one that I've heard on my radio show and in discussions with parents for years, especially those whose children are stuck in inner-city schools with decrepit buildings and a lack of critical resources.
And for the past 20 years, one of the most talked-about solutions for parents stuck in dead-end, failing schools is to give them the option to use vouchers to send their children someplace where they could get a quality education.
Republicans have made vouchers a linchpin of their education overhaul initiatives. Democrats have steadfastly refused, saying it would take vital dollars out of the public school system.
This year's presidential candidates are lining up right along with their parties. Sen. John McCain, the GOP nominee, says vouchers are the right way to go to give parents an option for a better education, while Sen. Barack Obama says the GOP has talked and talked about vouchers, and it hasn't amounted to much more.
But part of the reason why vouchers have been denounced and dismissed is because Democrats have been far too obstinate on the issue, and have not listened to their constituents, especially African-Americans, who overwhelmingly support vouchers.
There is no doubt that on this issue, McCain has it right and Obama has it wrong.
The fundamental problem with the voucher debate is that it is always seen as an either/or proposition. For Republicans, it is the panacea to all the educational woes, and that is nonsensical. For Democrats, it is something that will destroy public education, and that too is a bunch of crap.
I fundamentally believe that vouchers are simply one part of the entire educational pie. There simply is no one sure-fire way to educate a child. We've seen public schools do a helluva job -- I went to them from K through college -- and so have private schools, home schooling, charter schools and even online initiatives. This is the kind of innovation we need, not more efforts to prevent a worthy idea from moving forward.
Obama's opposition is right along the lines of the National Education Association, and the teachers union is a reliable and powerful Democratic ally. But this is one time where he should have opposed them and made it clear that vouchers can force school districts, administrators and teachers to shape up or see their students ship out.
It is unconscionable to ask a parent to watch as his child is stuck in a failing school or district, and ask him to bank on a politician coming up with more funds to improve the situation. Fine, call vouchers a short-term solution to a long-term problem, but I'd rather have a child getting the best education -- now -- rather than having to hope and pray down the line.
McCain and Obama have presented comprehensive education plans, and those are noble. But leaving out vouchers does a tremendous disservice to the parents who are fed up with deplorable schools, and allows school districts to operate with impunity and without any real competition.
Roland S. Martin is an award-winning journalist and CNN contributor. He is the author of "Listening to the Spirit Within: 50 Perspectives on Faith." Please visit his Web site at http://www.rolandsmartin.com/.
Quote of the Day "Leaving out vouchers does a tremendous disservice to the parents who are fed up with deplorable schools, and allows school districts to operate with impunity and without any real competition." Roland S. Martin
Vouchers give parents a choice and choice is exactly what the people of Croydon want. The 2008 Croydon Survey results reveal that 43 of the 70 respondents want a choice as to where to send their children. If schools have to vie for Croydon's education tax dollars they will perform better to try to keep those children in their school districts.
Cathy
Commentary: McCain right, Obama wrong on school vouchers
By Roland S. Martin
CNN Contributor
Roland Martin says school vouchers should be an option for families with kids in dead-end schools.
ACCRA, Ghana (CNN) -- "All I want is for my children to get the best education they can."
That statement, along with so many others, has been a consistent one that I've heard on my radio show and in discussions with parents for years, especially those whose children are stuck in inner-city schools with decrepit buildings and a lack of critical resources.
And for the past 20 years, one of the most talked-about solutions for parents stuck in dead-end, failing schools is to give them the option to use vouchers to send their children someplace where they could get a quality education.
Republicans have made vouchers a linchpin of their education overhaul initiatives. Democrats have steadfastly refused, saying it would take vital dollars out of the public school system.
This year's presidential candidates are lining up right along with their parties. Sen. John McCain, the GOP nominee, says vouchers are the right way to go to give parents an option for a better education, while Sen. Barack Obama says the GOP has talked and talked about vouchers, and it hasn't amounted to much more.
But part of the reason why vouchers have been denounced and dismissed is because Democrats have been far too obstinate on the issue, and have not listened to their constituents, especially African-Americans, who overwhelmingly support vouchers.
There is no doubt that on this issue, McCain has it right and Obama has it wrong.
The fundamental problem with the voucher debate is that it is always seen as an either/or proposition. For Republicans, it is the panacea to all the educational woes, and that is nonsensical. For Democrats, it is something that will destroy public education, and that too is a bunch of crap.
I fundamentally believe that vouchers are simply one part of the entire educational pie. There simply is no one sure-fire way to educate a child. We've seen public schools do a helluva job -- I went to them from K through college -- and so have private schools, home schooling, charter schools and even online initiatives. This is the kind of innovation we need, not more efforts to prevent a worthy idea from moving forward.
Obama's opposition is right along the lines of the National Education Association, and the teachers union is a reliable and powerful Democratic ally. But this is one time where he should have opposed them and made it clear that vouchers can force school districts, administrators and teachers to shape up or see their students ship out.
It is unconscionable to ask a parent to watch as his child is stuck in a failing school or district, and ask him to bank on a politician coming up with more funds to improve the situation. Fine, call vouchers a short-term solution to a long-term problem, but I'd rather have a child getting the best education -- now -- rather than having to hope and pray down the line.
McCain and Obama have presented comprehensive education plans, and those are noble. But leaving out vouchers does a tremendous disservice to the parents who are fed up with deplorable schools, and allows school districts to operate with impunity and without any real competition.
Roland S. Martin is an award-winning journalist and CNN contributor. He is the author of "Listening to the Spirit Within: 50 Perspectives on Faith." Please visit his Web site at http://www.rolandsmartin.com/.
Quote of the Day "Leaving out vouchers does a tremendous disservice to the parents who are fed up with deplorable schools, and allows school districts to operate with impunity and without any real competition." Roland S. Martin
Thursday, November 1, 2007
There's nothing progressive about blocking vouchers
The following piece appeared in Daily Herald and a number of other newspapers. Our favorite line " What will defenders of that idea -- former liberals, now progressives -- call themselves next? Surely not "pro-choice."
This is another great piece how teachers' unions put their greed above what is best for America's children.
There's nothing progressive about blocking vouchers
By George Will | Columnist
Published: 11/1/2007 12:27 AM
In today's political taxonomy, "progressives" are rebranded liberals dodging the damage they did to their old label. Perhaps their most injurious idea -- injurious to themselves and public schools -- was the forced busing of (mostly other peoples') children to engineer "racial balance" in public schools. Soon, liberals will need a third label if people notice what "progressives" are up to in Utah.
There, teachers unions are waging an expensive campaign to overturn the right of parents to choose among competing schools, public and private, for the best education for their children. Utahans next week will decide by referendum whether to retain or jettison the nation's broadest school choice program. Passed last February, the Parent Choice in Education Act would make a voucher available to any public school child who transfers to a private school, and to current private school children from low-income families. Opponents of school choice rushed to force a referendum on the new law, which is suspended pending the vote.
The vouchers would vary in value from $500 to $3,000, depending on household income. The teachers unions' usual argument against school choice programs is that they drain money from public education. But the vouchers are funded by general revenues, not the two sources of public school funds, which are local property taxes and the Uniform School Fund. And every Utah voucher increases funds available for public education. Here is how:
Utah spends more than $7,500 per public school pupil ($3,000 more than the average private school tuition). The average voucher will be for less than $2,000. So every voucher used -- by parents willing to receive $2,000 rather than $7,500 of government support for educating their child -- will save Utah taxpayers an average of $5,500. And because the vouchers are paid from general revenues, the departed pupil's $7,500 stays in the public school system.
Furthermore, booming Utah, which has about 540,000 public school pupils and the nation's largest class sizes, expects to have at least 150,000 more than that a decade from now. By empowering parents to choose private alternatives, the voucher program will save Utah taxpayers millions of dollars in school construction expenses.
Opponents argue that it will produce less racially and socially diverse schools. But because students are assigned to public schools based on where they live, and because residential patterns reflect income, most of Utah's public schools are either mostly wealthy and white or mostly nonwealthy and nonwhite. Utah's Office of Education reports that the state's private schools -- which are operating one-third below full enrollment -- have a higher percentage of nonwhites than do public schools.
Public filings showed that by September the National Education Association, the megalobbyist for the public education near-monopoly, had already spent $1.5 million to support repeal of the voucher program. Intellectually bankrupt but flush with cash, teachers unions continue to push threadbare arguments, undeterred by the fact that Utah's vouchers will increase per-pupil spending and lower class sizes in public schools. Why the perverse perseverance? Fear of competition and desire for the maximum number of dues-paying public school teachers.
Utah is among the most supportive states regarding public education: It has the fifth-highest proportion of K through 12 students in public schools. Nevertheless, Utah voters can strike a blow against the idea that education should remain the most important sector of American life shielded from the improving force of competition. What will defenders of that idea -- former liberals, now progressives -- call themselves next? Surely not "pro-choice."
© 2007, Washington Post Writers Group
Quote of the Day
"Parents should be empowered to take responsibility for their child’s education because parents understand their children better than government bureaucrats do." Mayor Giuliani’s Remarks At The Family Research Council’s Values Voter Summit, Washington, D.C., 10/20/07
This is another great piece how teachers' unions put their greed above what is best for America's children.
There's nothing progressive about blocking vouchers
By George Will | Columnist
Published: 11/1/2007 12:27 AM
In today's political taxonomy, "progressives" are rebranded liberals dodging the damage they did to their old label. Perhaps their most injurious idea -- injurious to themselves and public schools -- was the forced busing of (mostly other peoples') children to engineer "racial balance" in public schools. Soon, liberals will need a third label if people notice what "progressives" are up to in Utah.
There, teachers unions are waging an expensive campaign to overturn the right of parents to choose among competing schools, public and private, for the best education for their children. Utahans next week will decide by referendum whether to retain or jettison the nation's broadest school choice program. Passed last February, the Parent Choice in Education Act would make a voucher available to any public school child who transfers to a private school, and to current private school children from low-income families. Opponents of school choice rushed to force a referendum on the new law, which is suspended pending the vote.
The vouchers would vary in value from $500 to $3,000, depending on household income. The teachers unions' usual argument against school choice programs is that they drain money from public education. But the vouchers are funded by general revenues, not the two sources of public school funds, which are local property taxes and the Uniform School Fund. And every Utah voucher increases funds available for public education. Here is how:
Utah spends more than $7,500 per public school pupil ($3,000 more than the average private school tuition). The average voucher will be for less than $2,000. So every voucher used -- by parents willing to receive $2,000 rather than $7,500 of government support for educating their child -- will save Utah taxpayers an average of $5,500. And because the vouchers are paid from general revenues, the departed pupil's $7,500 stays in the public school system.
Furthermore, booming Utah, which has about 540,000 public school pupils and the nation's largest class sizes, expects to have at least 150,000 more than that a decade from now. By empowering parents to choose private alternatives, the voucher program will save Utah taxpayers millions of dollars in school construction expenses.
Opponents argue that it will produce less racially and socially diverse schools. But because students are assigned to public schools based on where they live, and because residential patterns reflect income, most of Utah's public schools are either mostly wealthy and white or mostly nonwealthy and nonwhite. Utah's Office of Education reports that the state's private schools -- which are operating one-third below full enrollment -- have a higher percentage of nonwhites than do public schools.
Public filings showed that by September the National Education Association, the megalobbyist for the public education near-monopoly, had already spent $1.5 million to support repeal of the voucher program. Intellectually bankrupt but flush with cash, teachers unions continue to push threadbare arguments, undeterred by the fact that Utah's vouchers will increase per-pupil spending and lower class sizes in public schools. Why the perverse perseverance? Fear of competition and desire for the maximum number of dues-paying public school teachers.
Utah is among the most supportive states regarding public education: It has the fifth-highest proportion of K through 12 students in public schools. Nevertheless, Utah voters can strike a blow against the idea that education should remain the most important sector of American life shielded from the improving force of competition. What will defenders of that idea -- former liberals, now progressives -- call themselves next? Surely not "pro-choice."
© 2007, Washington Post Writers Group
Quote of the Day
"Parents should be empowered to take responsibility for their child’s education because parents understand their children better than government bureaucrats do." Mayor Giuliani’s Remarks At The Family Research Council’s Values Voter Summit, Washington, D.C., 10/20/07
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Worse Than You Think
The below article solidifies are stance on why vouchers are so important for the children of Croydon and SAU 43. As reported by our superintendent at lasts months school board meeting about 2/3 of our students are performing at or above proficient level on performance. He seemed satisfied with this level. That means 1/3 of the children are being left behind. Parents should at least have the option of choice many may still may choose Croydon schools and SAU 43 schools but parents should have options. If a person is on food stamps they are not required to shop at only one store. If a person is on medicare or medicaid they are not restricted to one hospital or doctor. It is time we push forward in the 21st century. We in Croydon need to think outside the box.
The following article appeared in the Wall Street Journal.
Worse Than You Think
WSJ: October 24, 2007; Page A20
Proponents of educational choice tend to focus on the underprivileged, which is understandable given that low-income kids are overrepresented in failing inner-city public schools. But an emphasis on the plight of the poor can leave the impression that middle-class public school students are doing fine. And that would be a false impression, according to a new book-length study by the Pacific Research Institute, "Not as Good as You Think: Why the Middle-Class Needs School Choice."
Conventional wisdom holds that upscale communities tend to have "good" schools, and parents often buy homes in expensive neighborhoods so their kids have a shot at a decent public education. But the PRI study, which focused on California, found that in nearly 300 schools in middle-class and affluent neighborhoods, "less than half of the students in at least one grade level performed at proficiency in state math and English tests."
Many of these schools were located in the Golden State's toniest zip codes, places like Orange County, Silicon Valley and the beach communities of Los Angeles. In areas such as Newport Beach, Capistrano and Huntington Beach, where million-dollar houses are commonplace, researchers found more than a dozen schools where 50% to 80% of students weren't proficient in math at their grade level. In one Silicon Valley community where the median home goes for $1.6 million, less than half of 10th and 11th graders scored at or above proficiency on the state English exam.
Schools serving middle-income kids are also doing a poor job of preparing them for higher education. Some 60% of freshmen in the California State University system need remedial courses. And it's not because they grew up in Watts. At Dos Pueblos High School in ritzy Santa Barbara, only 28% of high school juniors tested college-ready for English in 2006, slightly better than the 23% of students who did so at San Marin High School in Marin County, where the median home price recently hit $1 million.
"Many middle-class parents don't think they have a stake in the school-choice debate," says Lance Izumi, the lead author of the study, in an interview. "They assume their schools are doing better than they are." In reality, these families would benefit from vouchers, tuition tax credits, charter schools and other educational options as surely as the inner-city single mom.
And the competitive pressure would help make the surrounding public schools better. "When you show people in these communities how their schools aren't doing so well, how they're not getting the bang for their buck," says Mr. Izumi, "they can begin to see how the debate over school choice affects them, too."
The following article appeared in the Wall Street Journal.
Worse Than You Think
WSJ: October 24, 2007; Page A20
Proponents of educational choice tend to focus on the underprivileged, which is understandable given that low-income kids are overrepresented in failing inner-city public schools. But an emphasis on the plight of the poor can leave the impression that middle-class public school students are doing fine. And that would be a false impression, according to a new book-length study by the Pacific Research Institute, "Not as Good as You Think: Why the Middle-Class Needs School Choice."
Conventional wisdom holds that upscale communities tend to have "good" schools, and parents often buy homes in expensive neighborhoods so their kids have a shot at a decent public education. But the PRI study, which focused on California, found that in nearly 300 schools in middle-class and affluent neighborhoods, "less than half of the students in at least one grade level performed at proficiency in state math and English tests."
Many of these schools were located in the Golden State's toniest zip codes, places like Orange County, Silicon Valley and the beach communities of Los Angeles. In areas such as Newport Beach, Capistrano and Huntington Beach, where million-dollar houses are commonplace, researchers found more than a dozen schools where 50% to 80% of students weren't proficient in math at their grade level. In one Silicon Valley community where the median home goes for $1.6 million, less than half of 10th and 11th graders scored at or above proficiency on the state English exam.
Schools serving middle-income kids are also doing a poor job of preparing them for higher education. Some 60% of freshmen in the California State University system need remedial courses. And it's not because they grew up in Watts. At Dos Pueblos High School in ritzy Santa Barbara, only 28% of high school juniors tested college-ready for English in 2006, slightly better than the 23% of students who did so at San Marin High School in Marin County, where the median home price recently hit $1 million.
"Many middle-class parents don't think they have a stake in the school-choice debate," says Lance Izumi, the lead author of the study, in an interview. "They assume their schools are doing better than they are." In reality, these families would benefit from vouchers, tuition tax credits, charter schools and other educational options as surely as the inner-city single mom.
And the competitive pressure would help make the surrounding public schools better. "When you show people in these communities how their schools aren't doing so well, how they're not getting the bang for their buck," says Mr. Izumi, "they can begin to see how the debate over school choice affects them, too."
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