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By Jeanne Allen
The New Yorker
February 16, 2015 Issue

I read Alec MacGillis’s piece on the education reforms of Jeb Bush with a careful eye (“Testing Time,” January 26th). In my twenty-five years of experience in education, I have found that Florida’s success story surpasses that of all other states. When Bush became governor, in 1999, more than sixty per cent of minority and low-income fourth graders couldn’t read at a basic level, which doomed them to failure in future grades. Barely half of Florida’s high-school seniors were graduating. After Bush’s programs were enacted, Florida’s gains in math and reading, according to the federally funded Nation’s Report Card, were larger than they were anywhere else in the country—save Washington, D.C., which also used rigorous accountability systems and choice to improve education. The graduation rate has improved twenty-five per cent, and is at an all-time high. This reversal came about because Bush measured results, held schools accountable, and exposed them to competition. As adults vested in the system protested, student achievement accelerated. Business does have something to gain from this—an educated citizenry.

STOSSEL
February 6, 2015

Senior fellow and president emeritus of The Center for Education Reform, Jeanne Allen, appears on STOSSEL, debating the role of unions in charter school efforts.

Watch Jeanne Allen at 25:20 minute mark.

Editorial Board
Investors Business Daily
February 4, 2015

Budget: President Obama proposed a gargantuan $4 trillion 2015 budget on Monday, with beefy 7% spending increases for most of his pet social programs. So why did he cut one successful program for poor kids to the bone?

Every Child Left Behind

Yes, Obama’s in a spending mood. But he couldn’t find the money to fund a tiny, $20 million program that provides vouchers for poor and mostly black and Hispanic children in Washington, D.C. It is one of the few programs that Obama supports terminating, even though the vouchers are a microscopic bit of the massive federal spending machine.

This is one of the rare cases of a government program that actually works. The D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, as it is called, began under President George W. Bush in 2003 and has allowed thousands of children to enroll in private and Catholic schools by helping cover tuition costs, $8,000 to $10,000 a year.

Parents love the wide range of educational alternatives it provides their children, especially because many D.C. public schools are notoriously rotten and even dangerous. Research by Patrick Wolf at the University of Arkansas found that the program raised graduation rates of voucher students by 21 percentage points (from 70% to a whopping 91%).

“Every year since he has been president, Barack Obama has tried to shut down this education program,” Center for Education Reform President Kara Kerwin says. “He just doesn’t support private school choice.”

The irony here is that Obama is rich enough that he and Michelle can afford to send their own kids to the elite private academy Sidwell Friends.

His girls sit in the same classrooms as some of the kids who benefit from the program he wants to shut down.

If he has his way, only the rich will be able to attend schools like this. Remember that the next time the president gives a lecture on income inequality and fairness.

The hypocrisy doesn’t end there. This is a president who keeps lecturing us on supporting “the science.” The science tells us indisputably that these voucher programs improve educational achievement.

But Obama has decided to side with teacher unions, not minority kids. So much for putting children first.

This is a disgrace. Every year four times as many D.C. minority children sign up for the voucher program than there are funded slots available.

Republicans in Congress should expand this program and give even more kids a shot.

By Andrew Ujifusa
Education Week
February 3, 2015

Jeb Bush’s decision to turn over leadership of the prominent K-12 organization he founded to Condoleezza Rice as he mulls a White House bid could signal a new phase for the Foundation for Excellence in Education—and for a broader network of advocacy groups seeking to challenge what they view as the status quo in education.

When Jeanne Allen, the founder and longtime leader of the Washington-based Center for Education Reform, which supports school choice, heard the news of Ms. Rice’s new position, she thought it was a “brilliant move.” But Ms. Allen warned against seeing any connection between Ms. Rice’s post and Jeb Bush’s possible presidential ambitions.

Read the rest of the article here.

By Blake Neff
The Daily Caller
February 3, 2015

School choice advocates are irate with President Obama after his proposed 2015 budget, released yesterday, refused to propose any additional funding for a District of Columbia voucher program that is extremely popular with the city’s poorest residents.

The D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, created in 2003,  was allowed to expire by Obama in 2009 and was then reborn in 2011 after the bipartisan passage of the SOAR Act. The program provides scholarships to cover tuition and fees at participating D.C. private schools.

Due to limited funding, demand for the scholarships far outstrips supply. Last year, over 1,700 students applied to received the scholarships, but limited funding means that only 285 were given out through a lottery system. Advocates of the program have urged the president to let it expand to meet some of this overwhelming demand, but the president’s budget proposal leaves them hanging, including only enough money to continue the administration of existing scholarships while cutting off the prospect of any new ones.

“Opportunity Scholarships are a lifeline for some of the neediest students in our nation’s capital,” Center for Education Reform president Kara Kerwin said in a statement sent to The Daily Caller News Foundation.. “The demand for this program is clear from the numbers alone. Parents want, and deserve, this choice for their children.”

Overall, more than 6,000 students have received Opportunity Scholarships throughout the program’s lifespan. According to the federal government’s own research, the program has substantially increased graduation rates for participants, as those given scholarships graduated at an 82 percent rate compared to 70 percent for a control group of those who applied for the scholarships but did not receive them.

“It’s inexcusable that the proven benefits of this program for students and parents are still being ignored,” said Kerwin.

Notably, almost all the beneficiaries of the program come from strong Democratic constituencies. Over 97 percent of participants are either black or Hispanic, and most are in poverty or barely above the poverty line.

“It really is political,” Kerwin told TheDCNF. “It’s the tendency of the status quo to constantly try and put pressure on [Obama] to not support school choice.”

By Deborah Simmons
Washington Times
February 3, 2015

The president of the United States is fond of saying it.

The president of the American Federal of Teachers is fond of saying it.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan has said it.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid has said it.

They talk about a “level playing field.”

And they talk about improving education for “all” students.

Not all of them talks at the same time, and not all them of uses the words “level playing field” and “all” every time they speak.

But that doesn’t mean they aren’t trying to fool most of the American people most of the time.

Take what was and wasn’t said on Monday, the day President Obama submitted his budget proposal to Congress.

Mr. Obama reminded poor parents, black parents and D.C. parents who pray and dream of a better education for their children that they are undeserving. He did that by defunding the city’s voucher program, a program designed and appropriated by Congress to allow low-income parents to receive small stipends to send their children to a private school of their choosing.

Kara Kerwin, president of the Center for School Reform, called “inexcusable” the president’s decision to omit funding for new students in the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program.

Ditto her characterization — especially since there’s always a waiting list for the scholarships and since 90 percent of voucher recipients matriculate to two- and four-year colleges and universities.

And here’s what Randi Weingarten, a leading anti-choice voice, had to say about Mr. Obama’s denial to low-income families: “Public education should expand opportunity for students,” she said. “We must give all students the opportunities and resources they need — from computers to counselor even if their communities can’t afford them.”

Note that she used the words “should expand opportunity for students” and that she said “all” students should be given opportunities.

She’s faking sincerity.

Indeed, Miss Weingarten has even pulled Mr. Duncan’s strings. In 2010, she persuaded the education chief to back away from holding a press conference at a New York public school whose principal held teachers accountable. (The proof is in this New York Post article.)

Miss Weingarten made her post-budget comments in a letter to Sens. Lamar Alexander and Patty Murray, the chairman and ranking member, respectively, of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. In the letter, Miss Weingarten’s sincerity shone through, saying that “portability” of Title I funds is a “first step” toward voucher programs like the D.C. one.

So, the next time you hear Miss Weingarten and others use “all” or “level playing field” know that means neither black families nor poor people.

It’s that simple.