The Decision that Made Milwaukee Famous · Voice of Reason · Reluctant Debutante or Courageous Soul? · Taking a "Paige" From a Choice-minded District Superintendent · Pressure-Points · Penny-Wise... · ...And Pound Foolish · While we’re on the subject of choice... · Top Ten Ways to Spend Your Budget Surplus
AND...
A Special Charter School Supplement: Just When You
Thought It Was Safe...
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Dear Friends:
O.K., so it’s not June. But this is your June issue, even though it’s July, reporting back on the last few weeks of community and school doings, and results from the end of most legislative sessions. Of course, we are giving you some July highlights too (like the failed AFT/NEA merger, ha,ha,ha,ha), but all in all, this is our promised year-end round-up, with a special supplement to boot.
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The Decision that Made Milwaukee Famous
Parents in Milwaukee could be seen doing the wave on June 10, when the Wisconsin Supreme Court unequivocally ruled their parental choice program valid. Let’s be clear on what this means: up to 15,000 poor children will have the opportunity to use a portion of the dollars allotted for their education to choose any private or public school. While this program had been authorized in 1995, it was immediately challenged by the ACLU, the unions, et. al., and thus the court battle, that ended in early June, ensued. Meanwhile, according to reputable research, children in the original, limited program since 1991 had demonstrated achievement superior to that of their counterparts that could not participate. The fate of those children — and more — is now certain. The opponents, of course, have made noises about going to the U.S. Supreme Court. Such a battle would be much-welcomed and watched, but at least, for now, more children in Milwaukee will be safe. [For more details of the decision, a glimpse at CER’s own Amicus brief in the case, or links to the sites of the groups who shepherded this thing through the courts, go to About School Choice.]
For those having periods of mental instability since the Milwaukee court decision, some comments from national reform leader Howard Fuller will bring clarity of thought. Fuller, the director of the Institute for the Transformation of Learning and long-time educator, argues (correctly, of course) that the state of Wisconsin already heavily subsidizes a wide variety of religious institutions that taxpayers believe contribute to the better of society. He writes:
"Since 1965, Wisconsin taxpayers have spent more than a quarter of a billion dollars to help students attend private, religiously affiliated colleges. Last year, thousands of students used a $16 million appropriation from the state’s Tuition Grant Program at religiously affiliated colleges such as Viterbo, Marquette, Concordia, Lakeland...and St. Norbert.
"More than $100 million in taxes support tens of thousands of children at private day care and child development centers, many religiously affiliated.
"More than 100 public high school students are taking taxpayer-financed courses this year at religiously affiliated colleges and universities. They do so under a 12-year old state program which was expanded in 1991 to include private universities.
"Here are some of Wisconsin institutions which have received tax funds for early childhood education programs: Emmaus Lutheran Child Care Center; the Jewish Family Services Child Development Center; St. Joan Antida Day Care Center; and the Mission of Christ Day Care and Child Development Center.
"... Concordia University ‘seeks to develop mature Christian students by sharing the teachings of Jesus Christ in all of its educational programs.’ [I shudder just writing it!]
"At Lakeland College, the ‘concern for humankind exemplified in the life of Christ is reflected in the core curriculum of the college...’
"If students may use taxes to attend religious-affiliated colleges and early childhood programs, why haven’t our constitutional pillars crumbled? Because these students and their parents do so voluntarily, with no state coercion."
Reluctant Debutante or Courageous Soul?
Arthur Levine, president of Teachers College at Columbia University, made national news amid reform circles when his op-ed "Why I’m Reluctantly Backing Vouchers," was featured June 15 on The Wall Street Journal opinion page.
It doesn’t take rocket science to know how we’d feel about his thoughtful and heartfelt piece. Read the whole article for yourself. But for now, we hope Dr. Levine doesn’t mind us quoting him a bit, and that you can abide our indulgence:
"Throughout my career I have been an opponent of school voucher programs...because I feared they would undermine public schools... [A]fter much soul-searching, I have reluctantly concluded that a limited school voucher program is now essential for the poorest Americans attending the worst public schools.
"Despite a 15-year long national school improvement movement, many urban public schools are still falling apart physically and produce dismal results when it comes to teaching students. These schools show no signs of improving; some are even deteriorating. They are the worst schools in America. Walking through their halls, one meets students without hope and teachers without expectations. These schools damage children; they rob them of their futures. No parent should be forced to send a child to such a school. No student should be compelled to attend one.
"...What I am proposing is a rescue operation aimed at reclaiming the lives of America’s most disadvantaged children.
"I offer this proposal not as a detractor of public schools, but as a champion who wants them to be as strong as they can be."
Taking a "Paige" From a Choice-minded District Superintendent
Houston Superintendent Rod Paige is following almost exactly Dr. Levine’s prescription for educationally-abandoned children. This May, he led Houston trustees to approve a plan to allow children in failing schools to attend one of several private or alternative schools with the Houston district paying their way. Children in at least three Houston-based schools would qualify and be permitted to go to private, non-sectarian schools that agree to meet the conditions other public schools must adhere to, such as open access.
Here’s the real irony; we’ve all heard and seen the unions and other choice opponents arguing that one reason they oppose choice is because private schools can be selective. Paige’s plan changes all that; but still, the BLOB opposes. Thankfully, some bold trustees and well-focused people are in control in this instance.
The opponents of choice, led and fostered by the teachers union, view the above examples as major obstacles to their multi-million efforts to eradicate choice. Thus, we found AFT president Sandy Feldman’s comments particularly interesting this time, given what they really mean.
"For the same amount of money that Milwaukee has spent to send fewer than 2,000 kids to private school, you could put a program like Success for All — with its long track record of success, especially with disadvantaged youngsters — in every public school elementary school in Milwaukee. You’d be helping nearly 60,000 students — and still have $1 million left over."
Of course, Sandy, the point is, you could, but you haven’t and you won’t, unless something compels you to do so. And that’s the beauty of choice.
The extraordinary commitment of New York financier Ted Forstmann and California reformer John Walton to kick off the Children’s Scholarship Fund has brought smiles to many a parent, child and educator, and perhaps a bit of that hope that is often lost on poor children to which Dr. Levine so accurately refers. The new nationwide scholarship fund is bold and comprehensive in its approach: five cities this year targeted, with the potential for 50,000 additional children than we have today attending a school of their choosing. For our part, we hope the Fund’s organizers will choose venues where the necessity for choice is clear, not just popular. East St. Louis comes to mind...among others.
By our own accounting, this new Fund brings the total number of scholarship children in such programs nationwide to just over 90,000 amongst the 57 programs that currently serve those children. And that doesn’t include the various charitable programs that boost school scholarship funds directly.
Speaking of charitable giving, the good vibrations of this program didn’t stop choice opponents from crowing that the money would’ve been better spent in the public schools. Oh yeah? Then explain why the well-intentioned generosity of the Annenberg Challenge has made little difference to the education of children.
While we’re on the subject of choice...
Back in February, we reported on the evolution of a program, Project Choice funded by the Kauffman Foundation of Missouri, in which, we said, students promised a college scholarship for maintaining good grades did not fare significantly different from children not in the program. Project Choice is similar to the I Have A Dream approach, but adds several social services to each child’s experience.
Kauffman Foundation officials contacted us to correct a few misunderstandings, and to provide us with some more background. Since then, we’ve had a chance to go over their literature. They find the program is not lacking in success at all, but that the measure of success conventionally used is not the one they would choose to judge their program. The presence of a mentor or caring adult apparently does support the proposition on which Project Choice was based. Individual success stories abound, although the program reports that the "high school retention rates of the first cohorts of Choice students...were not better than the retention rates of students in the comparison groups." Yet the Kauffman folks report that participants demonstrate more long-lasting successes in a myriad of ways than those not treated to the benefits of their program.
Kauffman found that a good education not only depends upon a caring individual in the life of a child, but good support services and follow-through.
Our beef with programs like Project Choice is not that they don’t help in some way. The work of school reformers should be about creating a system where the current power structures are changed, so that individual schools begin to breed more achievement as a result of the right incentives, right programs, and right accountability in place. We mean no offense to well-intentioned programs. But how about getting the whole system to start off by doing the right thing in the first place?
Top Ten Ways to Spend Your Budget Surplus
Here are ten recommendations from a few thoughtful state educational leaders — and a few from us — about how the pensive Governor might spend his/her state’s budget surplus to the benefit of children and for the cause of real education reform:
1) Provide one-time only, no strings-attached grants of half-a-million dollars to charter school resource centers to grow training, information and networking activities to support and nurture charter schools.
2) Provide capital funding that would follow students who choose to attend charter schools to help new charter schools emerge at a faster rate and expand educational choices for parents. Lisa Keegan, Superintendent of Public Instruction, Arizona
3) Provide funding for schools directly for K-3 students scoring below grade level on reading assessments to focus on research-based reading instruction, including explicit and systematic phonics, for the majority of the school day and for regular assessments to monitor their progress. Linda Schrenko, Superintendent of Schools, Georgia
4) Provide monetary incentives to school superintendents to contract with successful private schools to educate children not succeeding, ala Rod Paige in Houston. (see "Taking a 'Paige'..." above.)
5) Implement Teachers College president Arthur Levine’s recommendation and allocate several million dollars to support research that tracks the students and their progress individually. Require teacher education students at each publicly-funded college of education (or private one that receives state money) to spend a semester assisting a classroom teacher in a voucher or district-contracted school (including those private schools that serve special ed children on contract with the school district).
6) Contract for a wholly new, and specially-tailored state assessment to match the state’s standards, and vest authority for the specifications and contracting with a quasi-independent body. Administer the assessment annually to children starting with their first days in school, and at the end of the year every year thereafter. Publish the standards and results regularly, and award college scholarships to children in the twelfth grade who score consistently in the top percentile.
7) Using the above as a guide, institute a pilot project that would reward stipends of $10,000 per year to teachers whose work yields repeated progress among students, in terms of the greatest gains each year, not the highest number of high performing children. Half of the stipend would come in the form of a voucher to be used at any accredited college to take courses in the discipline in which the teacher is credentialed.
8) Establish regional "Best Practice Centers" staffed with trained professionals with expertise in curriculum and instruction, assessment and accreditation and instructional technology for teachers. As the results from assessments based on state standards become available, these centers can assist local schools and school divisions in the use of test results for diagnosing areas of weakness, identifying areas for improvement and in the development and implementation of plans for action. Will Bryant, Secretary of Education, Virginia
9) Create a new, one-year supplemental program that sunsets automatically, but which would provide $1,000 grants to families whose children score overall below the 50th percentile on any norm-referenced test. The grants would be paid directly to the tutor of one’s choosing for the subjects of math and reading only.
10) Rediscover the K-8 grade configuration which research demonstrates to be infinitely more effective than the middle school approach; recognize that the Hirsch Core Knowledgecurriculum is the finest total package in the U.S. today by far [i.e. buy it!]; control education’s single most powerful variable, "time," and implement the academic day recommendations in [the federal report] Prisoners of Time. William Moloney, Commissioner of Education, Colorado.
Don's Miss: Monthly Letter Special
Charter School Supplement: Just When You Thought It Was Safe...
North Carolina · Arizona ·
New York · New Jersey ·
Virginia · Ohio ·
Illinois · Michigan ·
California · Minnesota ·
Texas · Ohio (again) ·
Pennsylvania · North
Carolina (again) · Arizona (again)
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Thanks for your patience. We hope you continue to enjoy your summer, and send our thoughts and encouragement to anyone gearing up for a reform-minded school year. Coming soon: our thoughts (and some of theirs) on the failed union merger attempt, and more.
Jeanne Allen
MONTHLY
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