Thursday reads
Couple quick headlines to start off the morning.
WISH-TV 8: Bush backs governor on education reform
Governor Mitch Daniels recruited a big name politician to help him sell education reform ideas Wednesday.Jeb Bush came to the Governor’s Education Roundtable to tell a success story of improved test scores in Florida schools. He told Indiana educators looking for similar results to start out by taking the ISTEP test themselves.“Take it,” said Bush. “Take the test and then say, ‘Is this what you want your children to aspire to?’”Bush then told how teacher bonuses, charter schools and virtual schools helped improve learning in his home state.Afterward, the brother of former President George W. Bush made a pitch for school choice.“I think if you created a system where the money follows the child, sometimes that child might go to an option that may not be a public option and that’s alright with me too, that’s kind of the American way,” said Bush.
And for more on Florida and special needs education vouchers:
Jay P. Greene Blog: Tampa Tribune Op-Ed
In Florida, as in most other states, schools receive additional funding for each student identified as disabled. Often, these additional resources are greater than the actual cost of providing special-education services, giving schools a financial incentive to increase their diagnoses.
The financial incentive to misdiagnose is particularly apparent when classifying students as having a specific learning disability (SLD). That’s because SLD is the most common, the most ambiguous, and the least costly category of special education. In many cases, school officials might simply be trying to get extra resources to help struggling students. But the net effect is the misclassification of a huge number of students as having an SLD.
The McKay program reduces the financial incentive for Florida’s schools to misdiagnose learning disabilities by placing revenue at risk whenever a student is placed into special education…
And, from the School Choice Ohio Blog: Back to School with Scholarships. (While Ohio is still working out the kinks in the system, wouldn’t it be nice if some of Virginia’s kids had a choice as they headed back to school this fall?)
Nearly 2 million students across Ohio have headed back to school. Around 20,000 of these precious little Buckeyes are attending local private schools thanks to tax-funded scholarships they receive from the state of Ohio.
Families always tell us how excited they are to choose where their children go to school, rather than relying on default options.
“I feel like I’ve won the lottery!” - Rose, grandmother from Lorain
“EdChoice has empowered me to sustain that my children will have a strong foundation on which to build their lives. It has opened a door of opportunity for a community of children whose parents may not be as successful as they want to be, but they work hard everyday trying to get there!”- Angelnique, parent from Dayton
Indiana Joins Growing List of School Choice-States
Great news coming out of Indiana late last night, as the legislature approved and Governor Mitch Daniels signed into law a new scholarship tax credit program, giving students and families access to educational choices.
This is great news for Indiana families, as their state becomes the 11th (including DC) to provide school choice programs.
Let’s continue working to add Virginia to that growing list and provide Virginia families access to meaningful school choice options!
Charter schools providing options
Earlier this week we discussed the situation in Richmond over the proposed charter elementary school. As we have noted, thousands of students all across the country are already benefitting from charter schools. Unfortunately for Virginia families, education bureaucrats are still standing in the way of those types of choices.
Some charter school headlines from across the country:
New Chandler charter has kids aiming high (Arizona):
Parent Lynn Leih said she researched Paragon’s sister schools and liked that they ranked high on statewide standard tests, along with the emphasis on math, science and technology. She enrolled her third-grader, Joshua, who attended a traditional public school, and her kindergartner, Jonathan.
“He’s already learning Spanish,” the mother said. “It’s not that we didn’t like the (public) elementary school, but this was an opportunity for a more advanced education.”
Charter school focuses on individuals (Indiana):
“All of these students, pretty much, at some point were turned off to the idea of learning,” Lukens said. Learning was “something that was done to them, so we want to help them love learning again.”
Charter school can improve education for all (Texas):
There are 196 charter schools operating throughout the state in predominately urban areas. Many have been in business since 1996. Historically, competition from charter schools has encouraged higher standards in traditional public schools. The charter school model is one of the most important advances in public education, and we feel it is absolutely the most appropriate model for this area of Texas, public education and the kids who will attend from the designated geographic boundaries. We feel charter schools improve public education by providing competition as well as a new venue to test new theories and implement the best practices for public schools.
Charter school offers enrichment classes (New Mexico):
Some Cottonwood Valley Charter School students have to answer those questions as part of “The Big Idea,” one of five new enrichment classes. This year, Cottonwood offered an enrichment program for its sixth- through eighth-graders.
“Education is one of the best weapons against entrenched poverty”
A thoughtful blog post from a Gary, Indiana pastor, who asks, “Should Parents Determine Their Children’s Educational Path?”
He writes:
“Not much seems to raise the ire of our current public school system more than the two simple words “school choice”. This is primarily because these words represent a shift in thinking, which public schools do not seem to want. As long as the approach is unchanged, public schools may continue to fail, spend our tax dollars as they please with little or no accountability. Evidence suggests that the status quo of urban education condemns many of our children to a life of poverty or incarceration.”
He challenges those who oppose choice on the ground that children will fail because parents will not be able to navigate the educational system, citing successful examples of charter schools in his community.
Pastor Dix concludes:
“If we are going to spend tax dollars on educating our young, then it requires us to receive the most return on such an investment. Each parent deserves the fundamental right to invest his or her own tax dollars in a public, charter or private educational institution for the benefit of his or her own child. Forcing economically challenged parents to send their children to failing schools is a sentence to poverty for children and the community.”
