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
Who will think of the children?
As we mentioned yesterday, back-to-school time means education is making headlines. A few more for your consideration today:
From the Commonwealth Foundation for Public Policy Alternatives’ PolicyBlog: Won’t Somebody Think of the Children!?
Jim Roxbury brought to my attention a quote by Governor Rendell that “the one group that has no lobbyist here in Pennsylvania is our children” as well as too a commenter, who suggest that children have plenty of lobbyists, including those from school boards, agencies that get taxpayer funding for programs ostensibly serving children, and the PSEA lobbyists.
Sorry “edstem”, but Governor Rendell and I agree on this. And I am glad he has finally come around to the view that those that feed at the trough of taxpayers – and in particular the PSEA – are no friends of children. In fact, outside of child predators and Miley Ray Cyrus, no one does more to exploit children than the teachers’ unions. The PSEA uses its influence to undermine school choice, promote strikes, and oppose merit pay and reforms to improve school performance.
From The Examiner: Study backs vouchers for special education
Offering vouchers for students diagnosed with special needs to attend private schools leads to fewer diagnoses and could save state and federal dollars, according to a new study by the pro-school-choice Manhattan Institute.
More than 20 percent of D.C. public school students are diagnosed with learning disabilities, compared with about 12 percent in Montgomery County and about 14 percent in Fairfax. Educators have long worried that failing districts label students as disabled when, in reality, they are behind academically for other reasons.
Vouchers could help the District, according to the study’s authors, because the city has a disproportionate number of special needs students and is obligated to send about 2,400 of them to private and boarding schools, which sometimes cost nearly $100,000 per student per year.
And from the Heartland Institute, September’s School Reform News is now available online. School Reform News is a great publication sharing lots of news and information about education reform and school choice efforts from around the country. Check it out- lots of great articles including:
- Fight Underway to Save DC Voucher Program
- Florida Expands Corporate K-12 Tax Credit Program
- Iowa Expands Tax Credit Scholarship Program
- Private Choice Program in Colorado Beats State Graduation Rate
Pennsylvania’s EITC
Spending the weekend in Pennsylvania got me thinking about their Educational Improvement Tax Credit- EITC- program, that has become a model for school choice and has given tens of thousands of PA families access to educational options they wouldn’t have had in the past.
The EITC program was approved by an overwhelming bipartisan majority of the PA legislature in 2001, making the state the first to approve a tax credit for education aimed at corporations.
The PA REACH Foundation (Road to Educational Achievement through Choice) is a great resource for lawmakers, parents, or anyone interested in learning more about the program, how it is set up and how it benefits students and families.
HB 996, the Educational Improvement Tax Credit (EITC), provides companies with a 75% tax credit for donations to a non-profit scholarship or educational improvement organization. The tax credit increases to 90% if the company commits to making the same donations for two consecutive years.
The program has proven so successful over the past 8 years, that it has continued to gain bi-partisan support as lawmakers have continued to expand the size of the program, helping more families to access educational options that best meet their needs.
$44,666,667 million is appropriated annually for scholarship organizations, $22,333,333 million for innovative educational improvement programs in public schools and $8,000,000 for a separate pre-kindergarten scholarship program.During 2007-08, 44,000 children across Pennsylvania benefited from EITC scholarships and countless numbers of children in public schools benefited from innovative programs that would have likely have gone unfunded.
Hello, my name is Sekou and I’m a sixth grader at the Nativity School. It is much different from public school and I enjoy going to there for many reasons. One reason is because there are smaller class sizes so you can hear more. Also, there are no girls to distract you or get you in trouble since there are all boys who can play rough. Another difference is that the classes are hard, and you have to study more and if you don’t do your homework, you get detention. Additionally, some of the teachers are nice, especially Mr. H, who talks about football for boys who like sports. I also like homeroom because we talk about sports and can talk to our friends.
Friedman Foundation: Dramatically higher parental satisfaction in Florida tax credit scholarship program
The Friedman Foundation has released a study of parental satisfaction with the Florida tax credit scholarship program, and the results speak for themselves. Parents are report signifcantly more satisfaction with the schools that they are able to choose versus their prior public schools.
From their press release:
Parents participating in the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship program report dramatically higher levels of satisfaction with academic progress, individual attention, teacher quality, school responsiveness, and student behavior when compared to the public schools their children previously attended, according to a study released today by the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice.
Some of the highlights of their finding include:
- 80 percent of the parents are “very satisfied” with the academic progress their children are making in their current private schools, compared to 4 percent in their previous public schools.
- 80 percent are “very satisfied” with the individual attention their children now receive, compared to 4 percent in public schools.
- 76 percent are “very satisfied” with the teacher quality in their current schools, compared to 7 percent in public schools.
These is good news- especially for these families who seem to be much happier with the schools that they are able to select for their children. We think that all families deserve to have the chance to feel “very satisfied” with the education their child is receiving. To take a look at the rest of the findings, the full report is available on the Friedman Foundation’s website.
“D.C. residents want school choice and reform”
… AND they “overwhelmingly support the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program.”
Not that it comes as much of a surprise, but a recent poll found that 74% of DC respondents favor or strongly favor the scholarship program. More than 80% of parents of school-aged children support the program- and 79% of parents oppose ending the program- as proposed by Congress and the current Administration.
”While Congress and the Obama administration are allowing fewer scholarships, this poll shows D.C. families want even more,” said former D.C. Council member Kevin P. Chavous. “They need to wake up. This program needs to be continued and expanded, not shut down.”
For the full article from the Washington Times, visit online here.
School choice for military dependents?
The Marine Corps Times is reporting a federal proposal to provide school choice to children of military men and women.
A key senator has come up with a proposal to subsidize attendance at private or charter schools for military dependents.
Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, ranking Republican on the Senate armed services subcommittee on personnel, proposes a pilot program where the Defense Department would give “scholarships” to selected elementary and secondary school students that could be used to pay for private schools or the charter schools.
One military spouse testified:
“To have our children in one area with quality blue ribbon schools and then be reassigned to a location where the schools are rated below average is distressing to families,” Davis said. “Our kids’ education should not have to suffer because of military obligations.”
Read the full article online here.
Video: Another face of school choice
One of the things we’ve tried to do here on our blog is show you the faces of school choice- the real children and families who benefit from school choice programs around the country.
Here is another moving story, shared by the Institute for Justice, from a family in Arizona whose special needs daughter has seen tremendous progress from a school choice scholarship.
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!
Florida Reports on Cost Savings from School Choice
The folks over at Virginia’s Cost Cutting Caucus (a bipartisan group of state legislators working for a more transparent, accountable and competitive government that will yield better services at a lower cost to the taxpayers) reported today on the report released by Florida’s Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability on the fiscal impact of their tax credit scholarship school choice program.
The results are not so surprising to us, but still impressive nonetheless: “The Corporate Income Tax Credit Scholarship Program Saves State Dollars.“
One key finding worth noting, the report concludes that for “Fiscal Year 2007-08, taxpayers saved $1.49 in state education funding for every dollar loss in corporate income tax revenue due to credits for scholarship contributions.”
As we have said before, school choice works. It gives parents choices, it gives kids opportunities, and it saves taxpayers money.
Take a look at the report online here: http://www.oppaga.state.fl.us/reports/pdf/0868rpt.pdf
Choices for special needs
School choice a special pick parents make
Public schools do an excellent job of providing a free and appropriate education for most children who are enrolled in special education programs. Every special needs child deserves the best education possible.
But as Leon has experienced, one difficulty in the public school can ruin a child’s future —- and an entire life.
That’s why we will continue to see parents flock to school choice programs such as the Georgia Special Needs Scholarship.
Parents can make the best decision where their son or daughter should attend school and what environment is best.
It is enormously challenging to be the parent of a child with special needs.
Hopefully the Georgia Special Needs Scholarship is bringing some sense of normalcy to children and their parents who are finding hope in smaller classrooms, different schools and happier educational environments
