SPOTLIGHT ON… THE STATE OF THE UNION

What We Can Expect. Will the State of the Union address include the state of the union’s education? We should hope so! And we urge the president to use his office and his bully pulpit to make the inextricable link between the most important precondition for success for all Americans — individually and as a nation — education. All indications point toward an emphasis on immigration, the economy, tax reform, infrastructure and national security, using the theme, as one administration official put it, “Building a safe, strong and proud America.”

That strength, as we all know, requires a strong, unequivocal commitment to education opportunity and innovation. “There is only one issue that unites all the rest – education,” said Jeanne Allen, CER’s founder and CEO. “Helping all our people accumulate the broad knowledge and foundation for educational advancement in myriad ways is a precondition for our economic success.”

What We Need to Hear. Making America’s education great again must be a priority! And voters agree. According to the latest POLITICO/Morning Consult poll, most voters – 75% — want to hear the president talk about improving the education system.

For Your Reference. Thirty-five years ago, the seminal report, A Nation at Risk, demonstrated the integral connection between strong education and a strong nation:

“If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war. As it stands, we have allowed this to happen to ourselves … We have, in effect, been committing an act of unthinking, unilateral educational disarmament.”

A year ago, the president celebrated the accomplishments and school choice success story of Denisha Merriweather (recipient of Florida’s tax-credit scholarship), who’s now an official with the Department of Education. Fantastic! There are more success stories to tell and more work to do. So, watch tonight and hold the president accountable! Engage and share your comments and ours. Jeanne Allen will be live-tweeting; follow her @JeanneAllen.

DID YOU KNOW?

✔ There’s a shocking gap between our Global Competitiveness ranking overall and where we rank in education?

✔ The World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Index for 2017-2018 ranks the United States as the 2nd out of 137 countries. Yet compared with other top-ranked countries, the US performs poorly in health and primary education, coming in 29th.

✔ It’s clear that the US can’t spend its way out of inequity. The US spends more per pupil (28% more) than most OECD countries: $11,800 per pupil, on average, compared to $9,200 in other OECD countries. Countries where students consistently outperform their peers on math and reading tests, such as Finland and Japan, spend less than $10,000 per pupil.

✔ Find out more in an upcoming CER report: “The Case for an Education Revolution.”

IN THE NEWS

✔ In less than a month, the Supreme Court will hear final oral arguments in Janus v. AFSCME. This case could have a huge impact on public workers, and that means teachers. And by “huge impact,” we mean a positive impact. A verdict in favor of Janus would overturn a 1977 ruling that extracting compulsory union “agency fees” from public employees does not violate their First Amendment rights if the fees don’t finance political activities. Newswire is your source for updates on this case and its impact on education.

✔ More voices speak out for our students and empowering individuals and communities. As part of our continuing “Voices of Color, Voices for Opportunity” series, an op-ed by Senator Anthony Williams, David Hardy and Sharif El-Mekki appeared in today’s RealClearEducation.

✔ And, as we say farewell to National School Choice Week 2018, remember that every week is school choice week. Choice is just the beginning, and being the loudest parent for all kids is a good thing. Read more by parent Reggie Barbour.

TELL US YOUR STORY!

Families all over the country have school choice stories to tell. Send us yours!

SPOTLIGHT ON… EDREFORM HISTORY

What Would Dr. King Say? It’s a week when history is very much on people’s minds. For starters, MLK Jr. Day reminded millions that the struggle for freedom and equality continues. As LEAP Innovations’ CEO Phyllis Locket puts forth, If Dr. King were alive today, “He would look for fairness and find inequity in funding. He would look for hope and find inequity in student achievement. He would challenge us to work harder, rise above our differences and march forward together.” In the incredibly thoughtful and forward-looking piece, Phyllis reminds us that expecting great results when we believe we can educate all students with the same uniform approach is shortsighted.

Don’t Know Much About? Meanwhile, after the thousands of forums, remembrances and celebrations ensued around the country, Washington, DC was the site of some talking-heads discussions around whether we’ve progressed educationally as a nation. At AEI, pundits and politicians debated the merits of the signature education efforts of the Bush and the Obama Administrations (as if they were interrelated vs. cumulative and reflective of the times — and the needs of those times). Education Secretary Betsy DeVos took to the stage to argue that neither No Child Left Behind (NCLB) nor Race to the Top accomplished the promised successes, because Washington doesn’t have the answers: “NCLB did little to spark higher scores. Universal proficiency, touted at the law’s passage, was not achieved. As states and districts scrambled to avoid the law’s sanctions and maintain their federal funding, some resorted to focusing specifically on math and reading at the expense of other subjects. Others simply inflated scores or lowered standards.”

True, some say, but what of the enormous changes it spurred in parents’ behaviors when they learned they could hold their schools to account? Suddenly parents had “rights” under a federal law — rights that caused them to ask questions, seek options and helped 12-15% increases in charter school enrollments nationwide.

35 Years Since a Nation at Risk. Assuming you know all about it (and if you don’t, here’s your very own copy), the nation has come a long way in changing the conventional notion of schooling: correcting a generation of mythology that once posited that districts were superior to parents when it comes to educating kids, dispelling the notions that poverty was an excuse for failure, and that just requiring certain subjects to be taught would result in mastery, and on and on. To be sure, progress is slow, but it’s been steady, and the last 35 years have seen schools closed for failing for the first time in history, while whole communities choose to find other schools (Detroit and DC come to mind), because there were other schools to be chosen.

One-hundred-eighty years of uniform, top-down schooling will take a few more years to bust — that is, if we’re willing. And on that note, we were interested to see the Reagan Institute is planning a 35th anniversary review of A Nation at Risk in Washington, DC. Details are forthcoming. Meanwhile, here’s your own personal library of various revisits to A Nation at Risk that we and others have conducted over the years.

It all underscores that no one effort — be it federal, state or local — is enough. They are all necessary to stem the tide of failing, or mismatched, or underachieving, or irrelevant, or mediocre, bureaucratic schools and systems!

CURRENT EVENTS

The nation is pumped for National School Choice Week, which will take place from January 21 – 27. A special double edition of Reality Check with Jeanne Allen will feature Voices of Opportunity — parents, teachers, leaders in the field and advocates — and will be available on January 22.

DID YOU KNOW?

According to the Washington Post’s Jay Matthews, an Education Trust study of 1,876 literacy assignments in 6 urban middle schools revealed that 18% required no writing at all; about 60% demanded only some note-taking, short responses or a sentence or two; 14% required students to write a single paragraph, and only 9% went beyond that. Almost no U.S. high school students are required to do long research papers, except students in private schools or public schools with International Baccalaureate programs.

TELL US YOUR STORY!

Is your state or city missing a big piece of the puzzle? Are you involved in an effort to make significant changes? Maybe you’re running a school. Maybe you’re driving change in your school or community and have hit a roadblock. The bottom line is that no effort is too small.

Share with CER how you are helping deliver the promise of an excellent education for all children. Together we can show how innovative education opportunities are bettering students’ lives.

The Education Grinch Who Stole Christmas — Or So They Try

A special holiday Newswire!

The parents and teachers they wanted reform.
They looked for solutions to break from the norm.
They wanted things better, that’s why they were fighting,
to make sure their kids would learn reading and writing
and science and math and history too
for everyone’s children, not just a few.

But the Blob and its Grinches, they hated reform.
“Imagine,” they sniffed, “trying to break from the norm.”
“Standards, and charters, and school choice and such.
This edreform nonsense is much, much too much.”

“Who are they, these people, this reform-minded crew,
who think they know better than us what to do?
We’ll fix them, we’ll teach them, we’ll show them who’s boss.
We’ll make doubly sure that they suffer a loss.
We’ll stop all their harping and carping and cries
we’ll tell all the people their numbers are lies.
We’ll say that they’re wrong and, without hesitation,
we’ll say that they’re out to destroy education.

“We’ll say that their efforts are all out of place,
that options and choosing are just about race,
that charters in cities all over the nation,
are simply a ruse to promote segregation.

“Oh, we’ll offer solutions, the people will buy them,
We’ll say ‘give us money, and more time to try them.’
‘Yes, we’ve spent decades, and trillions in cash,
But with a few trillion more, you’ll see changes at last.’

And for those who ask questions or say it’s a waste,
with great condescension, they’ll be put in their place.
We’ll stop the reformers, we’ll stop them, we will.
Because, after all, we’re the kings of the Hill.

So the Blob and its Grinches embarked on their task
to make sure that all things reform finished last.

But the parents and teachers and grandparents too,
went on with their work, they knew what to do.
The Blob might have money and power and might
but that didn’t mean that they knew what was right.

And no matter the odds, or how long it might take,
the reformers were steadfast: a difference they’d make.
They wouldn’t be quiet and they wouldn’t give in
and whenever they lost, they would just start again.

They offered suggestions and wrote legislation
and some ran for office (to the Blob’s consternation).

“We’ll stop these reformers” the Blob-Grinches blustered
“and what we can’t stop we will just filibuster.
We’ll do all we can, oh we’ve got a few tricks,
after all it’s our business to play politics.”

“Against the reformers we’ll spend, spend galore,
and for those who are with us, we’ll spend even more.”

We’ll finance elections, and fund our proponents
We’ll launch a campaign that will smear our opponents.

But the parents and teachers and grandparents too,
just smiled at the Blob, because everyone knew
that for all its millions and for all its might,
the Blob could not manage to carry the fight.

And for all their ranting and raving and storm
they’ve really done nothing to stop edreform.