Checker Finn
Mitt Romney’s plan to voucherize (though he doesn’t call it that) Title I and IDEA has considerable merit - but it’s not the only way the federal government could foster school choice and it might not even be the best way.
It’s not a new idea, either. I recall working with Bill Bennett on such a plan - which Ronald Reagan then proposed to a heedless Congress - a quarter century ago.
It had merit then and has even more today. As America nears the half-century mark with Title I, we can fairly conclude that pumping all this money into districts to boost the budgets of schools serving disadvantaged kids hasn't done those kids much good, though it has surely been welcomed by revenue-hungry districts (and states). Evaluation after evaluation of Title I has shown that iconic program to have little or no positive impact, and everybody knows that the No Child Left Behind edition of Title I hasn't done much good either. It has, however, yielded an enormous number of schools that we now know, without doubt, are doing a miserable job, particularly with disadvantaged kids, but we're having a dreadful time "turning around" those schools. One may fairly conclude that Title I in its present form isn't working and probably cannot.
So why not try strapping the money to the backs of needy kids and letting them take it to the schools of their choice? This would help them escape from dreadful schools. It would make them more "affordable" for the schools they move into. It would remove one of the main barriers (the non-portability of federal dollars) that discourages states and districts from moving toward "weighted student funding" with their own money. And it would certainly go a long way to change the balance of power in American education from producers to consumers.
Having said that, a word of caution is needed. Few federal education initiatives work nearly as well as intended. (NCLB is again a large, recent, case in point.) Legitimate questions persist about what, exactly, is the federal role in the K-12 sphere, particularly in reforming it. A good case can be made for Washington to generate sound data, safeguard civil rights, support research, and assist with the costs of educating high-risk kids - but setting the ground rules for schools and operating the system is really the job of states. Moreover, the federal share of the school dollar - a dime - isn’t big enough to yield much leverage over how the system works. That’s why the Romney plan is apt to do some good in states (and districts) that want to extend more school choices to their students - the federal dime can join the state/local 90 cents in the kid’s backpack - but won’t make much difference in places that aren’t willing to put their own resources into this kind of reform.
Similar caveats must be attached to other possible methods by which Uncle Sam could try to foster school choice. Which isn’t to say such possibilities don’t exist. Indeed, I can think of four more opportunities. (more…)
Education reform, for some of us, is full of tough calls. And for some of us, there can be particular agony in the gray area where race, poverty and both types of accountability – parental choice and regulatory – intersect.
Last week, the school board in Pinellas County, Fla., voted 4-3 against their superintendent’s recommendation to begin the process of closing a charter school in the city of St. Petersburg. The Imagine elementary school, serving predominantly low-income, African-American kids, had just earned its third F grade in four years of operation because of painfully low standardized test scores. Only 29 percent of its students were reading at grade level, according to the state test; only 13 percent were reaching the bar in math. Only one school in the district had performed worse – another charter – and the board had already voted to shutter it.
In the case of Imagine, the board was knotted by a a number of entangling factors, including a vote two months ago – before the release of school grades – to renew the school’s contract. Before the second vote, nearly 20 parents, teachers, administrators and company officials pleaded with the board to keep the school open. They were passionate, thoughtful, respectful – and collectively powerful. We thought their comments were worth sharing, and we excerpted a number of them below. (You can see the speakers on this video here; their presentations begin just before the 41 minute mark. The board debate begins at 3:18:39).
As you weigh the pros and cons, a few points to keep to mind: Black students in Pinellas perform worse than black students in every other urban district in Florida. The number of charter schools has grown rapidly in Pinellas, but not in neighborhoods with large numbers of low-income families of color. The district still isn’t home to a known quantity like KIPP or YES Prep with a record of success with minority kids. And the school board, like many of its counterparts across Florida, recently passed a resolution critical of standardized testing.
Here are the excerpts, edited for length:
Qiana Scott, parent: “You can’t make a decision to close down an institution that is there for the kids based on a standardized test. Because all of our kids are not standard. Kids learn differently. They are taught differently. And at Imagine, that is something that is definitely recognized. So the teachers take that extra time and the extra care to say, “You learn this way, I will teach you the way that you learn best.” So therefore, our kids are learning. It definitely hurts a lot of the parents and a lot of the staff because everybody has worked so hard all year, and to hear that Imagine could possibly be closed down – that’s like splitting up a family. And that’s what we are at Imagine. We are family.“ (more…)
Nobody invoked Ronald Reagan this week and demanded that somebody (Randi Weingarten? President Obama? The local school board?) “tear down this wall,” but two school choice champions got close. Step Up for Students President Doug Tuthill used the Berlin Wall analogy yesterday in a redefinED post about the big-picture trends in ed reform. And in a beautiful coincidence, Robert Enlow, president and CEO of the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, did so today in an op-ed for CNN.
Wrote Enlow: “Just like the millions of East Germans who demanded freedom, we know that there are millions of parents that want to be removed from a system that uses a zip code to determine where their children must attend school.” He concluded, “Vouchers should be made available to children no matter if they are poor, disabled, from the middle class or from a family of 10, or from a rural, suburban or urban area. There should be no restrictions on who gets to choose, just like there were no restrictions on who could escape tyranny once the Berlin Wall fell.”
Also by coincidence, one of the nation’s biggest pollinators for school choice, Jeb Bush, delivered an ed reform speech in Colorado this week. He didn’t explicitly urge anyone to tear down any walls, either, but according to Education News Colorado he did implore the audience of 1,700 to “join reformers to make school choice both public and private the norm in our country."
Hmmm. Anyone else see speech potential here? Tampa. August. Fired-up delegates shouting "Tear down this wall!" as millions watch ...
