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
Creating Great Schools: Ohio’s example
In recent years, Ohio has become another leader in the school choice movement, providing parents and students with more educational options.
According to the Alliance for School Choice:
Ohio is one of the most active states in the school choice movement. The state offers three distinct private school choice programs: the Educational Choice voucher program for students in failing schools, the Cleveland Scholarship and Tutoring Program, and the Autism Scholarship Program. Additionally, the state has a relatively strong charter school law.
Parents should visit the Web site of School Choice Ohio for detailed information on school choice in the state: www.scohio.org
This recent op-ed, “Lawmakers should support all schools that work well,” written by Terry Ryan, takes a closer look at how Ohio’s Ed Choice program benefits students in the state and urges lawmakers to continue to support these options as both a benefit to families and a benefit to taxpayers. It also underscores something we have talked about here before- this isn’t a matter of “public versus private,” but rather about creating great educational options for all students- whether those choices be public, private, charter, religious or home schooling.
What’s less known, however, is that many of the individuals and organizations that supported PACE also supported Dayton Public Schools’ reform efforts, as well as those of a handful of the city’s charter schools.
Frankly, these benefactors diversified their philanthropic investments across school sectors — district, charter and private — because what they wanted were great schools for all children. They saw competition and diverse reform efforts as the best hope for getting there, and were not doctrinaire about these sector distinctions.
Because Dayton has three great high schools (one district, one charter, and one private), we have evidence that the city can provide high-quality school options for its children. Lawmakers and others — no matter where they went to school themselves — should be encouraged to focus their support on those schools that work for children, regardless of label.
Dayton, like the state’s other cities, needs all hands on deck if we are serious about educating all children well.
Another option: vouchers
We haven’t talked a lot about vouchers here at School Choice Virginia, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t one option that is already benefitting many students across the country.
In this op-ed for the Appeal-Democrat in California, the author, Douglas Binderup, argues that vouchers are working already in localities across the country.
Having been in place now for more than a decade the results are in: publicly-funded vouchers have proven to be successful in Milwaukee, Cleveland, Dayton, San Antonio and most recently the state of Florida. The voucher system has been so successful in our nation’s capital that the democrat-controlled congress, under pressure from the National Teacher’s Union, is trying to outlaw it.
He continues that those who oppose vouchers use scare tactics, rather than facts to try and defeat choice measures.
The opponents of the school voucher system have used ad hominem arguments to scare the public and keep the rank and file in line. The idea that vouchers would condemn the worst performing students because the private schools would recruit the best students has been proven wrong and actually, the reverse is true. The costs to educate a voucher student are half of what it takes to educate a public school student, thereby affording teachers more time with struggling students in smaller classes. Another myth that has been dispelled is the fear that there would be mass teacher layoffs under the voucher system. What has actually happened in that a lot of teachers have decided to open up their own private schools. Teachers in areas where vouchers have been established have reported that because of the competition, the yoke of bureaucratic regulations have loosened and they are able to exercise more creativity. When schools must compete, it is our youth that are the winners.
Finally, he concludes with three challenges:
• It is time to put the interests of our youth over special interests.
• It is time to embrace the change that will give our youth a leg up in a competitive world.
• It is time to assume our roll as leaders in an ever-changing world.
These are 3 key steps that should be embraced by all who want to improve education and create more affordable choices for all.
The Proof is in the Results
Last month we noted the latest findings by the Friedman Foundation’s study of Ohio’s EdChoice program, which found empirical evidence that the choice program was benefitting students as well as public schools.
Paul Weyrich, Chairman and CEO of the Free Congress Research and Education Foundation, takes another look at this in his latest column, “Some Empirically Proven Value in School Choice.”
He writes:
One of the arguments which opponents of school choice always make is that it would adversely affect the public school system. Opponents claim that the alternative schools would siphon off the best students, leaving those who remain who are the least able and the poorest and most disadvantaged students. Just as all of the rest of the arguments which opponents have made have proven false, so also has this argument.
Once again, research shows school choice helps to improve public schools, too!
So we’ve all heard the opposition’s argument about how school choice will hurt public schools. Unfortunately for them, time and time again, the evidence proves just the opposite- showing that choice actually helps public schools improve.
The latest study of Ohio’s EdChoice program has found that once again, public schools in areas participating in school choice programs, have improved as a result of the competition.
“This suggests that, far from harming students in public schools, scholarship programs like EdChoice can actually spur improvements in student learning for those students who remain in the low-performing public schools.”
The study, conducted by the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, found many encouraging results of the newly implemented Ohio school choice program:
– In 2006-07, its first year of operation, the EdChoice program produced some academic improvements in Ohio’s most stubbornly underperforming public schools. Positive effects were detected in three grades, and no negative effects were detected in any of the other seven grades studied.
– The positive effects were substantial in size, though not revolutionary. If the effects accumulate over time, in three to four years the public schools studied will have improved by one standard deviation (equal to one-sixth of the distance between the top-scoring and bottom-scoring schools in Ohio).
– The EdChoice program was more restricted in its first year of operation than it is today. Since previous research suggests that the positive impact of vouchers on public schools increases when the programs grow, it is reasonable to expect that the program’s current benefits probably exceed those detected in this study.
UPDATE: Club for Growth also notes these (not so surprising) results on their blog. You can view the full report from the Friedman Foundation online.
School Choice Gives EVERYONE a Reason to Celebrate
So says the Buckeye Institute for Public Policy Solutions’s “Buckeye Blog.” They announce that the Friedman Foundation is set to release a new report by Greg Forster on the Ohio EdChoice Program that demonstrates how school choice benefits everyone.
“In fact, the only losers here are the opponents of school choice. When an EdChoice child succeeds at a private school – he’s a winner. When a public school student succeeds because competition improved her school – she’s a winner.
So when will the naysayers stop with the ‘doom and gloom’ reports school choice harming the public school system and get on the freedom bandwagon? When they decide kids should be the priority in education.”
We look forward to reading the report.
