CER NEWSWIRE
Vol. 4, No. 5
February 5, 2002

* THE PRESIDENT'S PROPOSED BUDGET for 2003 gives teeth to existing choice provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act and expands options for children by providing tax incentives for families who choose to move their children to private schools from failing public school. It is estimated that the vast majority of the 4.5 million children currently trapped in bad schools because of the housing patterns are low-income and thus the credit would support their ability to buy a better education for their children.

Within moments of the details of the budget being revealed, officials at the National School Boards Association who were meeting on federal issues with school board members from around the country asked board members to speak to their Congressional representatives and urge them not to support the proposal. Because school board members are more diverse than their association may suggest, this did not sit well with many of the local leaders, and, we suspect, will not go over well with the rank and file once the word goes out.

Other choice proposals in the budget include: A $50 million program to support the testing and evaluation of choice programs, and $25 million to help states create public school choice programs.

* CHARTERS: The President's budget also includes increases for the charter schools program which provides start-up and stimulus grants for new and growing charter schools. The $200 million would help an additional 1,800 schools.

However, state charter leaders report that the state education departments often withhold the federal charter funds, often until months after the schools have opened. There are also reports from some states that officials are applying for money that exceed the number of schools they have authorized. These abuses from education bureaucracies will have to be addressed before additional charter monies can have the meaningful effect intended by the Administration's budget request. (If you have similar examples of state funding being withheld from charter schools, please send an email to cer@edreform.com.)

* UNIONS: The Evergreen Freedom Foundation in Washington State has been in hot pursuit of the public school employee union, the Washington Education Association, for its illegal political spending of dues payments. Over the last few years, the case has quietly made its way though the courts with the WEA and many of its top officials being fined and found guilty of wrongdoing. Recently, a state judge declared that the state affiliate was guilty of intentionally violating teachers political rights and paychecks. After the state attorney general prosecuted the WEA, rather than face the courts, the group's parent organization— the NEA — voluntarily reimbursed 4,000 Washington teachers money that would have been the object of further court action. The checks arrived in teachers' mailboxes without explanation, which the EFF later happily supplied to the delight of the 1,000 teachers who responded to their email message. For more, go to: http://www.effwa.org/.

* PARENTS: The Baltimore PTA Council adopted a resolution asking the state of Maryland to suspend its MSPAP test and instead find a tool that will help the state comply speedily with the No Child Left Behind Act -- a position that contrasts both the state and national PTA's negative reviews of the new federal accountability program. As reported last week, the MSPAP test was released after a long review of "irregular" results, only to unveil dramatic drops by some Maryland counties. Since then, more of the test scorers have criticized the scoring process for requiring less than adequate accuracy in scoring. The Baltimore PTA Council's resolution reads, in part:

"The PTA Council of Baltimore County supports year-end statewide assessments that would provide timely results to parents and schools for individual children in Maryland's public schools. The Baltimore County PTA Council supports rapid compliance with the new, federal No Child Left Behind Act in this regard.

"The MSPAP, in its current form, does not provide necessary results regarding yearly student progress.

"The MSPAP is not currently valid or reliable for the purpose of tracking individual student progress from year to year, and additionally is not valid or reliable for the purpose of monitoring school-wide or system-wide instructional changes from year to year."

The group deserves kudos for daring to step outside the box and into more substantive matters than is the normal fare for PTAs. For more on the MSPAP mess see last week's Newswire.

* UPCOMING EVENTS:

As you know, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on the constitutionality of the Cleveland Scholarship program on February 20th. If you'd like to know how to support school choice for all parents, call CER for more info at (800) 521-2118.

March 7-9, Nashville, TN: The 11th Annual Core Knowledge Conference. For more information, call (800) 238-3233. Website: http://www.coreknowledge.org.

March 14-16, San Francisco, CA: Annual California Charter Schools Conference. Sponsored by California Network of Educational Charters (CANEC). Contact: 650-654 6003. Website: http://www.canec.org.

April 29-30, Galveston, TX: Sixth Annual Texas Charter School Conference at the Moody Gardens Hotel. Sponsored by the Charter School Resource Center of Texas, 210-348-7890. Website: http://www.charterstexas.org/.

Your copy of the National Charter School Directory, 7th Edition, is waiting for you! This compendium features profiles of 2,431 open and approved to open charter schools. The Directory includes new and updated information in the growth and development of charter schools in the decade since the passage of the first charter law in 1991.

Call to order the Nation's only charter school directory today by calling 800-521-2118 or right here on-line.

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The CER Newswire may be redistributed in its entirety with proper attribution. The CER Newswire is published by The Center for Education Reform, the nation's leading authority on school reform. CER is dedicated to making schools better for America's children by improving educational access and excellence for all. CER works with parents, teachers and policymakers to advance meaningful education improvement initiatives.

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