THE NEW SAT. First there was the original, then there was the one they rescored years later to soften the blow, then they added writing, and subsequently many more essay questions (and took out that pesky “if this then that” analogy section). Now there’s the wholly new test – results of which are out today – that the College Board has created to measure more than just test taking skills and aptitude but to gauge readiness for college. It’s a noble goal, but still not entirely clear what it all means. However, the number of students who take the test continues to increase, the “readiness” of students for college is only 46%. Why these scores should mean something is well known, but for a refresher read CER’s New Opportunity Agenda.
Newswire September 26th, 2017
September 27, 2017 By
THE NEW SAT. First there was the original, then there was the one they rescored years later to soften the blow, then they added writing, and subsequently many more essay questions (and took out that pesky “if this then that” analogy section). Now there’s the wholly new test – results of which are out today – that the College Board has created to measure more than just test taking skills and aptitude but to gauge readiness for college. It’s a noble goal, but still not entirely clear what it all means. However, the number of students who take the test continues to increase, the “readiness” of students for college is only 46%. Why these scores should mean something is well known, but for a refresher read CER’s New Opportunity Agenda.
AFT HYPOCRISY. AFT president Randi Weingarten continues to astound audiences with incredible pronouncements of absurd and/or offensive nonsense. To re-cap: this past summer she characterized pioneers of education opportunity as segregationists and racists. Then, when called on to apologize for the insult, doubled down, pointing to actions from the Jim Crow era as proof of her offensive conclusion. Then in reaction to a study on absentee teachers which found 28 percent of teachers in traditional public schools miss more than ten days of work each year versus just 10 percent of charter school teachers, instead of calling it a crying shame and calling for revised public school policies she suggested charter schools needed to give their own teachers more time off. Finally, as Hurricane Irma battered Florida, she declared that the state’s charter schools were shirking their social responsibilities because their buildings weren’t required to be constructed as storm shelters. Clearly our friend is grasping at straws to come up with reasoned, reasonable – or even relevant – talking points on education issues. Either that, or she’s gone completely off the rails. Regardless, she should resign as head of the AFT.
LET MIKEY DO IT. “Former Michigan Gov. John Engler has a solution for Detroit’s ailing public schools – let Mayor Mike Duggan, or any successor, run them.” The Governor makes a good point. As Detroit schools continue to struggle to escape the morass of, well, themselves, Engler notes that when on a road to recovery, accountability is key: “The mayor is a political figure who is held accountable. You couldn’t get 50 people in Detroit to be able to successfully name who is on the Detroit public school board.” And while we’re on the subject of Detroit schools, Forbes recently carried an article rebutting a skewed analysis published in the New York Times about charter schools in Motor City. The piece points major errors – some factual and other errors of omission. It’s worth your time.
THE PHILADELPHIA STORY, STARRING… Charter advocacy in Philadelphia got a big boost last week with the appointment of Sylvia Simms as the first executive director of Educational Opportunities for Families an organization that represents parents seeking more charter schools and educational choice. Simms, a longtime parent advocate and former member of the Philadelphia School Reform Commission will be leading “an aggressive new initiative to engage more parents in support of school reform, particularly in North Philadelphia.” Simms hopes to create opportunities for parents and community members to talk and ensure that families, especially those in low-income neighborhoods, have high-quality schools for their children. Or, as she puts it, “We always talk about having high-quality schools close to where you live [but] there are no high-quality schools close to where I live, so what are we going to do about that?”
LET’S GET PERSONALIZED. According to the non-profit group EducationSuperHighway https://www.educationsuperhighway.org/ America inches ever closer to its dream of high-speed internet access for all students with 94 percent of public school districts having connectivity that supports 100 kbps per student of Internet access. This is great news for anyone living in the 21st century, and a boon for advancing opportunities, and creating a wide range of learning environments for personalized learning (through self-directed discovery, with their peers, and with the guidance of adults). It also puts a nice crack in the brittle 150-year-old education mold by favoring learning experiences that are adaptable to the needs, potential – and that support the highest possible outcomes – for each and every learner.”
Did you see T. Willard Fair’s piece in USA Today last week? Here’s another chance to read this civil right’s icon’s plea for choice for children in need across the land.
School choice is crucial for African-American students’ success
September 25, 2017 By
The article below, written by T. Willard Fair, appeared in USA Today on September 21st, 2017.
The NAACP refuses to acknowledge the benefits that come from school choice and expects all people of color should follow their lead. I won’t.
Once upon a time it may have been unheard of for the head of an urban league dedicated to the improvement of lives for African-American children to partner with a Republican to work on school reform. As part of one of his education reform efforts, Florida governor Jeb Bush convinced me to help him go around that state in an attempt to get school choice legislation passed. I leapt at the opportunity because I was desperately concerned about the lack of quality educational options for children in Liberty City, a neighborhood of the city of Miami where a branch of the urban league is headquartered.
But that one achievement 30 plus years ago created a path that has changed lives for the children not only for Liberty City but children across the state. That is why I am compelled to speak up with deep concern and opposition to the statements of late by the NAACP, whose leadership has begun to ignore the reality of communities like mine, and indeed the conditions of African American students all over the country.
Here’s what I need to say to them, to the people of this nation, to people of color — I am involved in the school choice movement because the future of my life and your life depends upon it. Starting the state’s first charter school was one of the most significant accomplishments of my life. Because of our willingness to look beyond traditional divisions and leave beyond our tendency to only work with those with whom we are comfortable, our children of color are closing the achievement gap. African-American students in charter schools are scoring 4% higher on reading tests than those in traditional public schools and Florida charter school students are more likely to attend college.
Hispanic students do 12% better than their peers at traditional public schools. These are but two of the many indicators that point to increased success for students of color because their families were empowered to find schools that better met the needs of their children.
Far too many people and organizations, like the NAACP, refuse to acknowledge this. Their recent recommendations to curb charter schools, reduce their numbers and their independence, are wrong, and they expect falsely that all people of color should follow their lead because the color of your skin should dictate who you believe. I have worked a lifetime to change this misperception, to help people see that good policies for our kids do not have a color.
Too many of our African-American leaders simply defer their beliefs to organizations like the NAACP which once represented our people well. What they must do however is recognize times have changed and we have to have the honest discussions about what we were going to do about our children who continue to be failed by traditional institutions and bureaucracy.
Most important, even when trusted leaders talk about our children, the restoration process can be articulated only by those to whom the children belong, the parents. We can fight. We can mobilize. We can train. We can energize community members. But at the end of the day we have to have informed and trained and energized parents enough and in the right way to lead the charge for what is right for their children.
Time is running out. Choice now!! “Choice now” has to be one of the new refrains to “we shall overcome.”
We can’t wait 20 more years. Time is most certainly running out. The circumstances that we deal with every day in Miami — and I dare say in every major urban area in the United States — are getting worse, not better. Time is running out for our communities, and we cannot wait another moment, let alone another decade to live without the kind of good choice among good schools that will eventually make a world of difference.
We need to give parents real power over the education available to their children, power that will take many different forms. Choice is at the top of the list.
T. Willard Fair is president and chief executive officer of the Urban League of Greater Miami, Inc. A powerful voice in the effort to improve his community, he has worked for the Urban League since September, 1963.
Newswire September 19th, 2017
September 19, 2017 By
BLUE STATE CELEBRATION. Leaders of education opportunity in Illinois gathered last night in Chicago to celebrate the first school choice program to ever grace a blue state. One Chance Illinois, the local advocacy group whose work contributed to the historic accomplishment, will lead the effort to implement the tax credit scholarship program, which permits businesses to contribute to organizations whose sole job is to provide scholarships to poor and at-risk kids who would not otherwise have access to private schools. In a city like Chicago, there is no shortage of need, or demand. The school funding bill – which was negotiated by Gov. Rauner and Senate Minority Leader Bill Brady, and in the end had the support of the speaker – also equalized funding for public schools and increased support for charter schools that have been underfunded. For more information go to INCS. Our hearts are full knowing more kids will have opportunity in the Land of Lincoln.
NEWARK’S BACK IN CHARGE. After 20 years of state intervention, the Newark public schools are being “returned” to the district, the same one that sent it into disarray and was largely responsible for corruption, plummeting achievement and permitting unions to control the show. While David Chen writes in “After More Than 20 Years, Newark to Regain Control of Its Schools,”that some things have improved in Newark’s schools (especially since the growth of charters caused a response and the state pushed hard for results), the old district model isn’t the solution. School systems that look like they did 150 years ago don’t solve the problem of students lacking the personalization of education they need. Just read Ted Kolderie’s The Split Screen Strategy if you want to understand that and what to do about it. While “local control” has a nice ring to it, beware of what it really means and who it helps – or hurts.
DC DOES IT. Newark might take a page out of DC, where the move to mayoral control some 10 years ago, following a dramatic expansion of new schooling opportunities through charter schools and subsequently low income-based scholarships, kicked a system long in disarray into high gear. In fact, it’s so noteworthy that even John Oliver (who usually spends most of his time ineffectually maligning great education reforms) sent #DCPublicSchoolstrending on Twitter with one comment on the Emmys. DC Schools immediately responded to the applause of its supporters and fans. If only Oliver really knew how much trending DC Schools really means in the landscape of education reform and the model it is for other communities – especially its charter schools.
WE DON’T NEED NO… INNOVATION. The list of schools eligible for takeover from the North Carolina’s Innovative School District (ISD) was released last week, and the effort is on to narrow the list of nearly 50 schools down to just a few that the state will take and partner with an innovative charter school partner in an effort to improve their academic performance. “Don’t come to us,” says Durham and Johnston counties, which have asked to be excluded from consideration. The schools are being considered for the ISD because their performance scores are among the lowest five percent in state, so it’s not like this is a case of mistaken eligibility that they don’t need help. It’s more a matter of who gets control. As Lt. Gov. Dan Forest puts it, ‘some turf wars’ between the ISD and local school systems were probably inevitable. But, he said, taking a ‘calculated risk’ was necessary to help low-performing schools. “It’s a brand new strategy in our state [and] a brand new opportunity to look at how do we really create a model that I think others can follow in how state and local communities partner together to improve outcomes for kids.”
PARENT POWER IN MINNESOTA. In an interesting (although not surprising) look at the impact of parental choice on public school enrollment in Minnesota, The Star-Tribune reports that “Last year, about 132,000 Minnesota students enrolled in schools outside their home district, four times the number making that choice in 2000.” Among the many “wow” data points discussed in the article is the fact that “In Minneapolis and St. Paul, the number of students leaving has almost doubled in the past decade, and total enrollment is plunging. Both cities now lose a third of their school-age population to other districts or charter schools.” Joe Nathan, director of the Center for School Change, says that parents for do what’s best for their children and “people of all races deserve options.” Well said.
SPEAKING OF PARENT POWER: CER’S latest Index of Parent Power in the states is coming soon, with detailed analysis of what states offer it, how and what you can do to seize control of your own education. Stay tuned!
Newswire September 12th, 2017
September 12, 2017 By
A SILVER ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION. While the establishment and others are crowing over charter schools and trying regulate, slow or limit their growth, you may want to pause a moment to read the Wall Street Journal piece, “Charter Schools Are Flourishing on Their Silver Anniversary.” As we noted last week, City Academy, the nation’s first charter school opened in St. Paul, Minn. on Sept. 8, 1992. “Since then (charters) have spread and proven their success [as today] some 7,000 of these schools serve about three million students around the U.S.” Let’s take this occasion to remember just what the charter movement is all about: Freedom, innovation and opportunity for kids; not bureaucracy, the status quo, or a 19th century model of education. It’s talked about in CER’s book, released this summer, Charting a New Course – The Case for Freedom, Flexibility & Opportunity Through Charter Schools. Another great source is the numerous important research and analysis done by the Godfather of charter schools, Ted Kolderie, his work available at educationevolving.org.
UNION WATCH. Exercising lobbying muscle and throwing around political weight the NEA and AFT have long been a roadblock to change, a maddening thorn in the side of education reformers and pro-opportunity advocates, and a sharp-clawed force to be feared by anyone with political ambitions. But all across the country – in some very unlikely places – leaders are standing up to the unions and dramatically changing the dynamics of education reform. Read about it in Jeanne Allen’s Washington Examiner op-ed “How teachers’ unions became the paper tigers of education reform.”
WITH THAT SAID … Union activities are far from dead as witnessed by this headline: “Teachers At Chicago’s Largest Charter School Network Renew Push To Unionize.” The AFT affiliate can’t stand the fact that a successful charter network has educated scores of at risk kids without their input, or their ongoing member losses. Fear mongering of teachers is ongoing, but we trust principle will prevail.
WILD WEST OUTPERFORMS. “If Arizona’s public charter students were separated and measured as their own state, it would rank among a handful of the top-performing states in the entire country on the Nation’s Report Card,” says the Arizona Charter Schools Association. For the third straight year Arizona’s charter school students have beaten the averages in the state’s AzMERIT scores in virtually every subject area and at every grade level. And, we’ll also note, per the item above, that Arizona was not far behind Minnesota in launching charters – opening their first school in 1995. The state now has 556 schools that serve 185,000 students. No wonder both Arizona and Minnesota score high on the 17th Edition of CER’s National Charter School Law Rankings & Scorecard.
MEANWHILE IN WASHINGTON, D.C. … Rumors that a federal effort to expand parent power has stalled are premature and exaggerated. A story today in Politico quoting insiders and those claiming to be in the know about the issues is, well, out-of-the-know. Interest in ensuring that more Americans have real access to parent power remains high on active issue on Capitol Hill and throughout Washington. How and who participates, and when it gets done actually takes a long time when dealing with a complex representative democracy (NB: readers may want to consult Tocqueville about this). Indeed thousands of supporters from around the country have been flooding Washington, meeting with their members of Congress within their own communities and working to educate the policy makers and policy leaders about why this issue matter. As they say in politics, “those who say don’t know, and those who know, don’t say.”
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AND IN CASE YOU MISSED IT. Log onto EdReform.com for the latest on the AFT Chronicles or the ongoing effort by African-American leaders to show they have a different point of view on educational opportunity than many established organizations who claim to represent their views.
How Teachers’ Unions Became the Paper Tigers of Education Reform
September 11, 2017 By
Written by Jeanne Allen, Founder and CEO of the Center for Education Reform
The Chinese term “paper tiger” (zhilaohu) describes someone who appears to have power but who is actually weak and conquerable. It’s a perfect description of the nation’s largest teachers’ unions, something to bear in mind when National Education Association President Lily Eskelsen García speaks Friday at a National Press Club luncheon in Washington.
Although the NEA and its smaller rival, the American Federation for Teachers, have long used political donations, political intimidation, and organizing to control Democratic Party education policy nationwide, they’re the very embodiment of a paper tiger.
The latest evidence of their vulnerability is Illinois’ education funding compromise, signed into law last week, which has huge national ramifications. The bill was adamantly opposed by teachers’ unions, yet their opposition crumbled as Republicans and Democrats came together to boldly improve Illinois’ education system.
Since 1987, when then-U.S. Secretary of Education William J. Bennett described Chicago public schools as the worst in the nation, little to no education reform has been enacted there.
Deep-blue Illinois has long been dominated by the Democratic Party and few institutions wield as much control in Democratic politics than teachers’ unions. And as a result, Illinois has been impervious to education reforms happening in every other surrounding state.
That all changed last week. The bipartisan agreement created Illinois’ first private school choice program, aimed at helping low-income and working-class families attend a school of their parents’ choice.
The agreement also addressed equitable funding for public charter schools, taking the innovative schools of choice from 75 percent of per pupil funding to 90 percent. Finally, the bipartisan law created a new funding formula to benefit traditional public schools and fund teacher pensions.
What’s most telling about the teachers’ unions defeat in Illinois is that this is not a unique story, but that it’s taking place in a state they would have never dreamt of “losing.” After all, the AFT was founded in Illinois. The reason for teachers’ union decline in influence is rooted entirely in its status as a paper tiger.
Over the course of the past 30 years, teachers’ unions have become increasingly political and even within their sole support for Democratic candidates, they strongly oppose any dissent.
The NEA once called on President Barack Obama to fire his secretary of education, Arne Duncan, a native of Illinois, claiming, “He’s destroying what it means to teach, what it means to learn.” When then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton spoke at the 2016 NEA convention and referenced “charters,” she was booed.
Like many paper tigers, the unions’ bark is always bigger than their bite.
In May, teachers’ unions lost a series of major races in another deep-blue state in a deep-blue community — the Los Angeles Unified School District. Pro-public charter candidates secured their first-ever majority on the LAUSD school board, with upsets that included defeating the union-supported school board president.
Several years ago in Wisconsin, another state dominated by union politics, Gov. Scott Walker pledged to expand school choice and advocated for a series of reforms as part Wisconsin Act 10.
The teachers’ unions (along with other public sector unions) protested relentlessly, but not only was Walker able to expand education options in Wisconsin, his Act 10 was passed and he would later go on win re-election twice, once as part of a recall and later re-election.
Within the education arena, the key to overcoming a paper tiger is simple: Remain principled and always put students first. That’s precisely what Gov. Bruce Rauner, R-Ill., did in the weeks leading up to adoption of the final school funding bill.
He saw the possibilities and worked with the legislative leadership to understand that accepting the status quo as the state has done year after year was untenable. And, as a result of bold leadership, pragmatism prevailed and Republicans and Democrats came together.
In the end, the union showed its inability to repel principled positions, and a bipartisan majority created substantive, structural changes in education in Illinois that will dramatically improve lives for millions of students.
Governors and legislative leaders from across the country should take note – success is possible, even in the face of teachers’ unions.
To date, public charter laws and private school choice laws continue to attract support from both parties, from conservatives who oppose the education monopoly, and liberals who are tired of blindly supporting the teachers’ union agenda at the detriment of children. It happened in Wisconsin, Florida, California, New York, and now Illinois.
Newswire September 5th, 2017
September 5, 2017 By
REINVENT IT. A lot of people still don’t know that the #edreform movement is supported by a varied group of actors: From researchers to practitioners; and, thought leaders to parents. Since its inception, the cause of school choice, in particular, has been a mutual affinity among left, right, center and none of the above. That’s why David Osborne’s latest contribution to the story of what and why we must reinvent education is a critical read.
First off, Osborne makes a compelling argument about what reinvention of education actually is and why it is critical. Second, by using charters as a lens about how to recreate the governance and incentives of education, Osborne is one of the few in the influencer class that actually recognizes that some comparisons of averages is meaningless in the presence of varying factors guiding each charter law. As Osbourne writes, “…[W]hen it comes to charter schools, ‘average’ has little meaning, because the 43 states (and the District of Columbia) with charters all have different laws.”
Each school is highly dependent on a startup tapestry, with unique operational and renewal processes that have become more complex over time, and have often been misapplied by human elements. (But that’s another story and one we have covered in Charting a New Course).
END OF AVERAGE. All the talk about misunderstanding averages reminds us: If you haven’t read “The End of Average” by Harvard Professor Todd Rose, run, don’t walk, to your nearest bookstore or visit Amazon.com. You can also learn more about Rose’s work by visiting Center for Individual Opportunity.
STUCK IN AVERAGE? Both Osborne and Rose in their own way make the case against using snapshots, incompatible data and assumptions about average trends. The authors of two articles published today in the Washington Post and the New York Times would benefit a lot by reading the works from Osborne and Rose.
First, an op-ed authored by longtime ed reform opponent, Tom Toch, takes the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program (DC OSP) to task for failing to meet Toch’s idea of success. Conveniently, Toch ignores parental support for the program, and while criticizing DC OSP, he disregards any of its successes as insignificant in size. But here are the undeniable facts: Nearly 90 percent of all DC OSP students graduate from high school and an estimated 90 percent of those graduates go on to attend college.
Meanwhile, Mark Binelli uses the New York Times to recycle a variety of falsehoods and misrepresentations to attack charter schools in Michigan. Like many critics of education reform, Binelli writes from a silo, disregarding the failure, corruption and existing struggles present in the traditional system – and in the case of his story, Detroit public schools. Instead, Binelli selectively picks and chooses which schools to highlight, while not sharing with readers that Detroit’s public charter school students far outperform their peers in the city’s traditional public schools. Furthermore, the data continues to pile up from MSTEP, U.S. News & World Report, Stanford University, and Temple University finding the highest performing high schools in Michigan are charter schools. Finally, like many of his peers in the anti-ed reform community – Binelli ignores the fundamental flaw in his argument – charters depend on parents making a choice, and overwhelmingly, more and more parents in Michigan are choosing charter schools over the traditional school because they’re tired of the broken one-size-fits-all model.
25 YEARS: CELEBRATING THE FIRST CHARTER SCHOOL: The Twin Cities Pioneer Press celebrated the 25th birthday of the nation’s first public charter school. City Academy opened as one school with only 100 students and so began a movement spirited by innovation, customization and personalization. Today there are 7,000 charter schools serving more than 3 million students nationwide. At CER, we are proud to have been championing and fighting for the expansion and growth in the charter movement, and we celebrate the achievements of City Academy and all operators of parent power working to serve the needs of every child.
OPINION JOURNAL: Jeanne Allen, CER’s founder and CEO, joined the Wall Street Journal’s Mary Kissel on Thursday to discuss the ramifications of Illinois’ education funding compromise. Signed into law last week by Governor Bruce Rauner, the new law creates the state’s first private school choice program, increased funding for public charter schools, support for teacher pensions and funds traditional public schools. The compromise demonstrates that even in the darkest of blue states, education reform remains a bipartisan issue.
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AND IN CASE YOU MISSED IT. Log onto EdReform.com for the latest on the AFT Chronicles or the ongoing effort by African-American leaders to show they have a different point of view on educational opportunity than many established organizations who claim to represent their views.
Newswire August 29th, 2017
August 30, 2017 By
MAKING LINCOLN PROUD. Tomorrow, August 30, Governor Bruce Rauner (R-IL) could sign into law new path-breaking legislation creating the state’s first tax credit scholarship program, part of the state’s new education funding bill. The $75 million tax credit scholarship program could serve as many as 20,000 students and will be the nation’s largest first-year school choice program. Designed to help low and working-class families, the program is a result of a bipartisan compromise and demonstrates that even in the darkest of blue states, legislative leaders, with strong leadership from the Governor, can produce real results for kids.
CER’s Jeanne Allen issued the following statement:
“Illinois joins dozens of other states that have put partisanship aside to address the needs of thousands of students. Gov. Rauner, Speaker Madigan, Majority Leader Cullerton, and Republican Leaders Durkin and Brady all deserve applause for their leadership and commitment to children.”
IL Secretary of Education Beth Purvis applauded the General Assembly, saying,
“Today the Illinois General Assembly passed historic education funding reform that will ensure that Illinois public schools are adequately and equitably funded. In addition, this legislation — which is a direct result of Governor Rauner’s School Funding Reform Commission — provides school choice in the form of equitable funding for charter schools and tax credit scholarships.”
For more information about the program, contact our friends at OneChanceIllinois
IN LINCOLN’S OWN WORDS.
“Upon the subject of education, not presuming to dictate any plan or system respecting it, I can only say that I view it as the most important subject which we as a people can be engaged in. That every man may receive at least, a moderate education, and thereby be enabled to read the histories of his own and other countries, by which he may duly appreciate the value of our free institutions, appears to be an object of vital importance, even on this account alone, to say nothing of the advantages and satisfaction to be derived from all being able to read the scriptures and other works, both of a religious and moral nature, for themselves. For my part, I desire to see the time when education, and by its means, morality, sobriety, enterprise and industry, shall become much more general than at present, and should be gratified to have it in my power to contribute something to the advancement of any measure which might have a tendency to accelerate the happy period.”
– March 9, 1832, First Political Announcement
ANNUAL ATTITUDES. Sadly Lincoln’s sentiment is not the theme of the 2017 PDK Poll of the Public’s Attitudes Toward the Public Schools, the headline of which is, “Academic achievement isn’t the only mission” of public schools. If you take the questions and answers literally, Americans do indeed appear united in numerous ways in their belief that schools must prepare students more fully and broadly for life. But while that’s the theme, it’s not at all clear from this poll that they reject the value of knowledge as important for that preparation.
Read CER’s Special Report on the PDK poll to learn more about how to make sense of the latest in public opinion, and what you need to know to help all students learn, in the words of Honest Abe, to “duly appreciate the value of our free institutions.”
AND IN CASE YOU MISSED IT. Log onto EdReform.com for the latest on the AFT Chronicles or the ongoing effort by African-American leaders to show they have a different point of view on educational opportunity than many established organizations who claim to represent their views.
CER Response to 49th Annual PDK Poll
August 28, 2017 By
August 28th, 2017
Statement from the Center for Education Reform
A Special Report issued today by the Center for Education Reform critiquing the annual PDK poll on the public’s attitudes toward the public schools finds poll questions remain highly misleading, the public’s attitudes highly mixed, and perhaps most important and least prevalent in the PDK report, that one’s own experiences highly influence what they want for theirs or others’ children.
“While PDK is a widely respected organization dedicated to supporting and advocating for the traditional public education system, and its annual survey a good opportunity to take the public’s temperature, it nevertheless fails to reflect the reality in American education,” said CER Founder & CEO Jeanne Allen.
“And that reality is that fewer than 60 percent of our nation’s students lack proficiency in core subjects,” added Allen.
CER’s Special Report details the often cumbersome and confusing PDK questions which tend to reinforce the organization’s mission while ignoring the broader challenge – that millions of US children are failing an education that can provide them an opportunity to participate in the future.
To read CER’s report click here.
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On September 26th, Jeanne Allen will participate on a panel sponsored by PDK reviewing the poll results at the National Press Club’s Holeman Lounge, beginning at 9:00 a.m.
For additional details on this and the poll, please visit http://pdkintl.org.
The EdNext Poll: The Case for a Moral Imperative
August 16, 2017 By
By Jeanne Allen
In the wake of the national disgrace known simply on social media today as #Charlottesville, and in the face of so many students and families being ill-served by our public institutions (the least of which is public education), it’s hard to get worked up about polling data that shows mixed and, in some cases, declining public support for the very reforms intended to expand effective education to more students — particularly students of color. But worked up we were at the Center for Education Reform (CER) when by 7 am on the day of its release, we began to analyze the results of the annual Education Next poll. By mid-day, we’d issued a statement showing that the news reports figuratively declaring the death of charter schools were wildly exaggerated.
But we made a big mistake. We were comparing the wrong years. And as the founder and CEO of the institution that helped start the charter-school movement, I’m responsible and accountable for the work we do, and it wasn’t good. Our friends at the AP and Politico were right in their coverage, and now, given some time to reflect on the findings of the Education Next poll, there is much more to say.
First, I am gratified that EdNext has conducted these surveys in recent years. CER conducted survey research annually for nearly 15 years, and they were a bear to manage. EdNext’s poll is balanced and reliable. That said, the only role for public-opinion polls in education reform is to diagnose whether the public’s perception is itself balanced and reliable, and to learn exactly what it is that their opinions are based on.
On the issues of charter schools and voucher/scholarship efforts that we believe provide the most immediate relief and support to parents, the results of public opinion are mixed. But the most troubling results relate to the respondents’ perceptions on charter schools. The EdNext poll finds only 39% of respondents support charter schools when the schools are defined as “publicly funded but not managed by local school board … expected to meet promised objectives … but exempt from many state regulations.” Fully 25% have no opinion, and 36% oppose. What, you might ask yourself, and why? Before one can diagnose that, consider some contrasting findings.
An AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll in April 2017 found that 47% of respondents favor more charter schools as defined as “public schools that function independently of local school district control, while only 23% oppose. 30% have no opinion.” And those who don’t believe they have enough options support charter schools at higher rates.
However, we are surveying a nation where most people are still largely unaware of what a charter school is. In the AP-University of Chicago poll, “58% of respondents say they know little or nothing at all about charter schools and 66% report the same about private-school vouchers.”
According to EdWeek’s Ariana Prothero, in writing about the 2014 annual PDK poll, “48% of respondents said charters were not public schools and that they could teach religion, while 57% believe charters could charge tuition and 68% think they can select their students based on ability.”
Ten years ago, CER’s survey research found that only 20% of respondents correctly identified charter schools as “public” schools when asked to pick from a list that also included private, religious or parochial, and magnet schools.
In the past decade, despite more laws, approximately half of all Americans know what a charter school is on a good day, and that number swings depending on what is asked and when.
This is perhaps the most troubling data to come out of polls. For all the laws, the work, and the effort, we not only have confusion in the marketplace, but also a perceived sense of negativity by some measures of public opinion.
Charters were called the “grassroots revolt” by Time in 1994, as well as the most bipartisan education effort by Education Week. They’ve been applauded by both Republican and Democratic Presidents and lawmakers. Advocates seized on changes in state capitals that were ripe for education reform (not unlike today), and real strides were made.
But today, while there remains a strong, grassroots component to the movement, much of its energy has dissipated and progress has slowed dramatically. The reality is that more was accomplished in the first nine years of the education-reform movement than in the past 16. So what happened?
To be sure, the strategy and tactics of charter opponents — relentlessly portraying the reform movement as rich, separatist corporatists who want to privatize our public schools — have had an impact. And their inflammatory attacks continue to skew perceptions and warp the debate (see American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten’s ugly characterization of choice as a form of racism).
But another part of the problem can be traced to a split within the charter community itself. Instead of being bold in supporting and promoting the true role and value of charter schools, too many leaders in the community have been timid. While some held tightly to the philosophical principles and distinguishing characteristics that are the foundation of the charter movement — independence, innovation, and entrepreneurship — others worked to move charters into the mainstream, adopting policy positions designed to avoid controversy, broaden support from the establishment, and make charters “more acceptable.”
The retreat from the philosophical front lines of the charter fight has blurred the public’s perception of what charters are — in some cases they’re being described as “public school-light” — and, as importantly, what they can be for children, parents, and communities. That, as much as anything, is one of the biggest reasons for the muted public response found in the EdNext poll.
We have talked about this a lot since CER did a refresh in 2016, most notably in the manifesto we released entitled The New Opportunity Agenda. We have also pointed out, in op-eds and reports, how regulatory barriers to charter growth have caused a backlash in states.
Public opinion, of course, is only as good as the information the public receives and only matters if it impacts the flow of good education to all kids — most of all those who are disenfranchised. Doing what is right is always more difficult that doing what is popular. That the tide of public opinion seems to have turned is a wake-up call, but it in no way suggests or signifies that we should slow down. On the contrary — doing what is right and just for the millions of students who are stuck in failing schools with no opportunity to participate in the future is a moral imperative.
Jeanne Allen is an entrepreneur, an innovator, and a leader. Her entire career has been devoted to education reform, and, as a result, she is the most recognized and respected expert, thought leader, speaker, and writer in the field. She founded the Center for Education Reform in 1993 and leads the nationwide fight to ensure that the bedrock of U.S. schooling is innovation, freedom and flexibility. She’s active on Twitter, at @JeanneAllen.