What happens in schools and school districts consolidate? Some scholars at the University of Arkansas ask that question, and find some results that are both predictable and interesting.
May 23, 2008
May 22, 2008
How Good is Your Public School?
Richard John Neuhaus writes that school choice is a moral issue, but that many middle-class families, with some justification, fear that vouchers would harm their own children’s schools. We certainly think those fears are misplaced, but the question got us thinking: How good are those schools, anyway?
The Pacific Research Institute asked that question of schools in some of California’s upscale cities. Granted, there are many differences between California and Kansas, but the findings of the Institute’s recent book Not as Good as You Think: Why the Middle Class Needs School Choice is illuminating, and suggestive.
First, the authors consist of individuals with deep roots in education. One, who has taught mathematics in high school and middle school, has also served as a principal and district superintendent. Another taught elementary school children for 18 years, and also worked in both talented and gifted as well as Title I programs. A third, who has taught school for two years, is currently a Ph.D. student in American history. A fourth has a Ph.D. in political science, and has taught at the U.S. Military Academy (West Point). The fifth author, who is actually the lead author, has written extensively on education policy and has worked in a number of public offices, such as the governing board of California’s community colleges.
So these folks know research, and they know education.
In their conclusion–not a bad place to start reading the book, by the way–the authors point out that the wealth of the coastal communities such as Orange County and San Francisco do not translate into superior test scores. Neither do conservative social values of the Central Valley and other inland areas of the state.
Part of the blame, they say, goes to an inappropriate model of management and labor relations. Principals lack the ability to assign teachers on the basis of need, and they can’t get rid of inept teachers. Further, wealthy communities are certainly not immune to having school officials who embezzle, commit fraud, and simple manage poorly. Existing reform efforts such as the state accountability system and No Child Left behind are inadequate and subverted.
A Key to Better Charter School Performance
When the laws governing charter schools allow for a diversity of authorizers, charter schools tend to have stronger academic performance. That’s the conclusion of the Center for Education Reform in this (PDF) report.
Pre-K Recommendations
The Texas Public Policy Foundation offers some recommendations on pre-K programs that might be of interest to Kansans. It comes from a new report published this month. The title, Do Small Kids Need Big Government? (PDF) may strike some observers as unnecessarily antagonistic. But the report offers up a history of pre-K initiatives
May 21, 2008
And the Top Public High School is … A Charter School
If you think we’re on an all-charter all-the-time routine here, fear not; it’s just that there’s a lot of interesting stuff in our in-box these days.
But moving on, did you know that the top public high school in the country is a charter school? You can read about it in Newsweek. The Arizona Daily Star has more on this school.
Not all charter schools can be #1, and there’s certainly not all in the top half. But they do present parents and community members an opportunity to reinvent and improve education.
Charter Schools Work in Chicago; Georgia
The Rand Corporation has come out with a new study of charter schools in Chicago.
The results? Charter school students are more likely to graduate from high school and attend college. Link here.
There’s also some evidence that charter schools in Georgia are outperforming their peers. Click here.
More than 115,000 New Students in Charter Schools
The public demand for charter schools keeps growing:
“In the past four years, 1,600 new public charter schools opened and 500,000 additional public school students chose to enroll in public charter schools. This past fall, more than 350 new public charter schools opened and an additional 115,000 public school students enrolled in these schools.”
You can download the survey here.
Public Support for School Choice
A national survey conducted for the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools shows some significant support for school choice: “More than three out of four voters (77%) favor giving parents more options when choosing a public school for their children.”
Regulations Governing Private Schools
It’s commonly assumed that private schools are not subject to regulations. Not so, says the Friedman Foundation, which offers a review of the laws governing private schools in the 50 states.
(To the extent that private schools face a competitive advantage due to a lighter regulatory burden, that might serve as an argument for cutting some red tape in public schools.)
The State of Online Schools in the State of Washington
How are online schools doing? The Washington Policy Center takes a look (PDF) at online schools.
Charter School Database
The Center for Education Reform has released a new database that lets you find a charter school near you. Take a look at the front page of YourCharterSchool.com, and you’ll see that Kansas is underserved by charter schools.
May 20, 2008
Vouchers Help Special Education Kids
A new report from the Manhattan Institute says that special education vouchers have helped children in Florida. Some programs of choice in that state have been struck down due to lawsuits, but the McKay Scholarship Program lives on–and appears to have some benefits.
Accountability and Open Records
The demand for accountability from public officials is rising across the country. A number of states have already put their spending–or at least some of it–online. (See, for example, the Nevada Open Government Initiative).
Without transparency, citizens cannot know if government agencies are doing their jobs well–or if corruption is taking place.
It does take some cost to be transparent. It take staff time to assemble records, for example, and make them in a format that is widely accessible.
But who should bear the cost? Too often, it’s individual taxpayers, who may be scared off by quotes for excessive charges under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
Bob Weeks, the blogger behind Wichita Liberty, recently tried to get budget information from USD 259 Wichita (see here), with less than assuring results. He points to the example of a school district in exurban Chicago as a model for disclosure.
A group in Michigan has put together some online databases for school districts in that state. Kansans would benefit if someone put together a similar, publicly available source of information.
May 15, 2008
Expansion of Charter Schools — in Georgia
Gov. Sonny Perdue (R-Georgia) has put his approval on three laws to make more use of charter schools. Among the measure: The state will create a state charter commission to review charter school applications. It also does more to make sure that charter schools get a fair share of public money spent on schools.
May 11, 2008
Innovative Charter School Operator
Want to see what sorts of innovations a charter school can allow? The Washington Post has a profile of a married couple who head Imagine Schools, which operates over 50 charter schools.
May 5, 2008
Leave Some Children Behind?
The ever-iconoclastic Charles Murray says in a new essay that both conservatives and liberals live in “the age of educational romanticism.”
He defines it as “the belief that just about all children who are not doing well in school have the potential to do much better.” And of course, you’ll find teachers and people who write in the field of education saying that it’s vital for teachers to have such a belief,” and act on it.
Murray heaps scorn on the No Child Left Behind Law: “The United States Congress, acting with large bipartisan majorities, at the urging of the President, enacted as the law of the land that all children are to be above average. I do not exaggerate.”
Now, when politicians, especially those far away from the situation, make grand promises, some skepticism is in order.
But then we must ask: If Murray is right, what does that mean for policy? If you belief in the moral value of enhanced school choice, not much. It’s still valuable in and of itself, regardless of how far specific children can advance themselves. In fact, school choice and the competitive market for education, in which schools keep on their toes for the right to educate children, may be even more important in such a setting.
He has this to say about No Child Left Behind:
In the early years, I didn’t need the experts to tell me [that the law was causing trouble]. I was watching the demoralized teachers in my children’s school, wearied by endless preparation for the exams and frustrated by demands from on high to concentrate on students who were at the cusp of being able to pass the state’s proficiency benchmark at the expense of everyone else.
That rings true with what other observers have said, and shows the limits of standards-based reform efforts.
Murray also uses the NAEP (“the nation’s report card”) as a checkmark against No Child Left Behind:
If students were progressing at the rate implied by the Act, more than 60 percent of them would have been at the proficient level by 2007. In math, the actual percentages for NAEP were 39 percent for fourth-graders and 32 percent for eighth-graders.
And yet how many schools have been restructured in response to poor scores, as the law demands? Very few.
