Mr. Gibbons’ Report Card: Clueless in St. Louis, EPI ignores data, and are tax-credits tax dollars collected?

MrGibbonsReportCardSt. Louis Post-Dispatch

Missouri state Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadal, a Democrat and school board member from University City, Mo., supports allowing students in unaccredited public school districts (low-performing) to receive vouchers to attend private, non-religious schools. When she questioned the fairness of forcing parents to pay taxes to fund public schools and, at the same time, tuition to pay for their children’s private education, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch declared that to be a selfish motivation for school choice. (Note: students in University City would be ineligible for private vouchers based on the current proposal.)

The newspaper editors declared Sen. Chappelle-Nadal to be “clueless on the value of public schools.” They expounded on that value by discussing the ways public schools benefit the general public, including increasing home values, greater economic development, higher incomes and more. Naturally, an educated population improves the greater public good.

But those public benefits don’t magically disappear if more kids are educated at private schools using publicly funded vouchers (or even privately funded tax-credit scholarships). The benefit ensues WHEN students are educated, NOT because of WHERE they are educated.

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Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadal

If privately funded vouchers improve educational options for children (and the vast majority of research says they do), then society is better for it. Society is worse off if we eliminate options for students struggling in schools simply because newspaper editors and politicians are concerned about the geography of where the education occurs.

Ultimately, parents have another selfish motive beyond double paying tuition – they want the best education possible for their own children. That’s just good parenting. Why do these editors want to stand in the way of that?

Grade: Needs Improvement

 

Gordan Laffer – Economic Policy Institute

Last week Gordon Laffer, an associate professor at the University of Oregon and research fellow at the Economic Policy Institute, made a case against charter schools in a report titled “Do poor kids deserve lower-quality education than rich kids?”

Well obviously, the answer is “no,” but the title offers a clue as to how the report unfolds. The main thrust of the report is to study the impact of “privatization” (aka charter schools) on low-income students.

However, Laffer ignores what other researchers say about that subject. In fact, when he cites the CREDO report on charter school performance, he only mentions the results for all students of all income levels.

But what does CREDO actually say about the charter school impact on low-income students?

CREDO finds “charter students in poverty gain the equivalent of an additional 14 days of learning in reading and 22 more days in math than [traditional public school] students in poverty” (page 76).

CREDOpovertyThe positive gains for low-income African-American and Hispanic students attending charter schools are even more pronounced.

Obviously, important findings like that shouldn’t be ignored, especially in a paper about charter school impacts on impoverished students.

Grade: Needs Improvement

 

The Concord Monitor editorial board:

Just last month, the New Hampshire Supreme Court reviewed a lower court decision to prohibit students from choosing faith-based schools while participating on the state’s tax-credit program. The Concord Monitor editorial board wants the Supreme Court to go further and strike down the law altogether.

The newspaper didn’t hide its feelings when it called the tax-credit program an “accounting trick” that would “hijack money” from public schools and is an “end run around the constitution.” But the Concord Monitor is missing some key historical context, an appreciation for the law and an understanding that words have meanings.

The state’s “Blaine Amendment” prohibiting tax dollars from funding sectarian schools was originally passed to stop the spread of non-Protestant sectarian schools sprouting up across the U.S. as more and more immigrants moved to the U.S. from Catholic nations. But as terrible as that heritage is, it is still the law of the land. As such, the New Hampshire constitution does state that “money raised by taxation” cannot go to faith-based schools and that the public cannot be compelled to support them.

The tax-credit scholarship, however, does nothing of the sort because the program is funded by private donations. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that private donations are private dollars and this means New Hampshire’s program is constitutional.

The Concord Monitor and the lower court see things differently. They believe tax-credits for private donations are in fact tax dollars. That is a potentially slippery proposition, as such a ruling could have an impact beyond school choice. But more importantly, it would strip away a program where 91 percent of the participants are eligible for free- or reduced-price lunch and 97 percent of the parents are satisfied with their chosen private school.

Grade: Needs Improvement


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BY Patrick R. Gibbons

Patrick Gibbons is public affairs manager at Step Up for Students and a research fellow for the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice. A former teacher, he lived in Las Vegas, Nev., for five years, where he worked as an education writer and researcher. He can be reached at (813) 498.1991 or emailed at pgibbons@stepupforstudents.org. Follow Patrick on Twitter: at @PatrickRGibbons and @redefinEDonline.