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South Carolina Education superintendent race comes back to vouchers
When the dust settled on the 2006 statewide election, private school voucher opponents claimed victory — after all, a Democrat won the race for Education Superintendent. During the campaign, Republican candidate Karen Floyd, now the state Republican Party chairwoman, was understandably cagey about her support for vouchers or tax credits for private school tuitions. But thousands of dollars poured into her campaign from voucher supporters outside of the state, while her opponent, Jim Rex, ran largely on his opposition to the proposal.
Four years later, tax credits are back at the forefront of the superintendent’s race. This time, Democrat Frank Holleman is facing an electorate much more skeptical of Dems, while Republican Mick Zais isn’t shy about his support for private school tax credits.
Rick Scott’s education plan would cut taxes, increase private school vouchers
Marc Caputo and Sergio Bustos:
Pledging to cut taxes and increase school choice for parents, Republican Rick Scott rolled out his education plan Tuesday in what could presage a long fight with the state’s teachers union.
“Parents ought to have a right to choose a school for their kids,” said Scott. ”Competition is good.”
To accomplish his education plan, Scott wants to increase taxpayer-backed private school scholarships, charter schools, home schooling and virtual, online education. At the same time, Scott wants to trim $1.4 billion in property taxes for schools and cut up to $700 million more in corporate income taxes — a main vehicle to fund a state educational voucher program.
School Voucher Breakout A bipartisan endorsement in Pennsylvania.
This is an encouraging season for education reform, and the latest development is a bipartisan political breakout on vouchers in the unlikely state of Pennsylvania.
Last month, and to widespread surprise, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Dan Onorato came out in support of school vouchers for underprivileged kids. Mr. Onorato said that education “grants”–he avoided the term vouchers–“would give low-income families in academically distressed communities direct choices about which schools their children should attend.”
Mr. Onorato’s Republican opponent, state Attorney General Tom Corbett, is also a strong backer of education choice, which means that come November Pennsylvania voters will get to choose between two candidates who are on record in support of a statewide school voucher program.
Mr. Onorato, the Allegheny County Executive, adopted his new position at the urging of state lawmaker Tony Williams, a voucher proponent whom he defeated in a May primary. The speculation is that Mr. Onorato, who trails Mr. Corbett in the polls, is looking to attract financial support from pro-voucher businessmen who backed Mr. Williams in the primary.
The New Orleans School Voucher Program
Before Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans in 2005, Orleans Parish public schools were failing miserably. After the storm shut down the public school system completely, there was little reason to be optimistic.
But then something amazing happened.
The state of Louisiana took control over most of the schools in the district and has been chartering those schools ever since. This fall, more than 70 percent of the students in New Orleans will attend charter schools. (Check out reason.tv’s Katrina’s Silver Lining to learn more about the New Orleans charter school revolution.)
And then in 2008, Louisiana enacted the Student Scholarship for Educational Excellence Program, a pilot voucher program designed to allow students in failing schools to attend private schools in the area.
School Vouchers in DC Produce Gains in Both Test Scores and Graduation Rates
One should not under-estimate the impact of the DC school voucher program on student achievement. According to the official announcement and the executive summary of the report, school vouchers lifted high school graduation rates but it could not be conclusively determined that it had a positive impact on student achievement.
Something about those findings sounds like a bell striking thirteen. Not only is the clock wrong, but the mechanism seems out of whack. How can more students graduate from private schools if they weren’t learning more? Are expectations so low in the private sector that any one can graduate?
Peering beneath the press release and the executive summary into the bowels of the study itself one can get some, if not all the answers, to these questions.
Let’s begin with the most important–and perfectly uncontested–result: If one uses a voucher to go to school, the impact on the percentage of students with a high school diploma increases by 21 percentage points (Table 3-5), an effect size of no less than 0.46 standard deviations. Seventy percent of those who were not offered a school voucher made it through high school. That is close to the national average in high school graduation rates among those entering 9th grade four years earlier. As compared to that 70 percent rate among those who wanted a voucher but didn’t get one, 91 percent of those who used vouchers to go to private school eventually received a high school diploma.
Scary things in U.S. report on school vouchers: “The Program significantly improved students’ chances of graduating from high school”
This isn’t actually about vouchers. It’s about a new government report (pdf) on a school vouchers program in Washington, D.C., that reveals just how perversely narrow our view of “student achievement” has become.
Issued this week by the Education Department, the report is the final evaluation of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program ordered by Congress.
The program was the first federally funded private school voucher program in the country. Since 2004, more than 3,700 students — most of them black or Hispanic — have been awarded scholarships, each worth up to $7,500 tuition. Since Congress refused to reauthorize the program, no new students are being accepted.
The new evaluation of the program is remarkable for how it describes student achievement. It says: “There is no conclusive evidence that the OSP affected student achievement.”
What is student achievement? In this report it is all about standardized test scores. The evaluation says:
“On average, after at least four years students who were offered (or used) scholarships had reading and math test scores that were statistically similar to those who were not offered scholarships.”
I wonder how much was spent per student in the voucher schools vs the traditional public districts?
Somewhat related: Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold voted to kill the DC Voucher program, along with the Democrat majority.
Special Needs Voucher Program passes in Louisiana
A bipartisan group of legislators in Louisiana have passed a pilot voucher program for children with special needs in Louisiana.
I think this makes Louisiana the sixth state to pass a private choice program for special needs children (Florida, Ohio, Utah, Arizona, Oklahoma having already done so).
D.C. school vouchers — the last word?
On Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Education issued its final evaluation of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program — aka school vouchers.
To review, the federally funded voucher program is on life support. The Democratic Congress has thus far resisted attempts to reauthorize the program. The Obama administration last year budgeted enough money to allow current voucher holders to complete their high school educations, but not enough to allow new applicants; Congress has maintained that approach since.
So will the study move the ball? Here’s what it found: (a) “There is no conclusive evidence that the [voucher program] affected student achievement.” (b) The program “significantly improved students’ chances of graduating from high school” — by 12 percent. And (c), the program “raised parents’, but not students’, ratings of school safety and satisfaction.”
An initial glance at those results — no rise in test scores, but a significant rise in graduation rates — would fall into the category of mixed results. And mixed results, given the heated political climate under which the voucher program operates, means plenty of room for spin.
DC Vouchers Boost Graduation Rate
The Department of Education released the final report of the evaluation of the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program today. The major finding of this report, and it is MAJOR, is that students who were randomly selected to receive vouchers had an 82% graduation rate. That’s 12 percentage points higher than the students who didn’t receive vouchers. Students who actually used their vouchers had graduation rates that were 21% higher. Even better, the subgroup of students who received vouchers and came from designated Schools in Need of Improvement (SINI schools) had graduation rates that were 13 percentage points higher than the same subgroup of students who weren’t offered vouchers-and the effect was 20 percentage points higher for the SINI students who used their vouchers!
This is a huge finding. The sorry state of graduation rates, especially for disadvantaged students, has been the single largest indicator that America’s schools are failing to give every student an equal chance at success in life. Graduating high school is associated with a number of critical life outcomes, ranging from lifetime earnings to incarceration rates. And, despite countless efforts and attempts at reform, changing the dismal state of graduation rates has been an uphill battle.
Of course, the uphill battle will continue. As most are aware, Congress voted to kill the DC voucher program last year, despite evidence that the program had significantly improved reading achievement for students who received scholarships. That evidence didn’t count for much when faced with opposition from teachers’ unions.
Vouchers and the Rising Tide
I haven’t had a chance to read the details yet, but from the executive summary of the new results released today by the School Choice Demonstration Project, it looks like vouchers have done a good job of improving education for all students in the city of Milwaukee.
What? That’s not the way you heard it?
Of course not. Because the new result, taken in isolation from other information, simply says that after two years, the voucher students are making learning improvements about the same as public school students. The scores for the voucher students are higher, but the difference is not statistically certain.
However, let’s plug that into the larger universe of information. We know – from the very same research project – that vouchers are improving education in Milwaukee public schools. The positive incentives of competition and the improved matching of student needs to school strengths are causing public schools to deliver a better education.
TIP/School voucher study results
Reports on the third-year evaluation of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program will be released in Madison on Wednesday, April 7.
The reports on growth, school switching, testing, integration and other measures of the 20-year-old program will be released by the evaluation team at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Room 313 of the Pyle Center, 702 Langdon St., from 9:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
The evaluation team includes professor John Witte of UW-Madison’s La Follette School of Public Affairs; Patrick Wolf, Jeffery Dean, Jonathan Mills and Brian Kisida, all of the School Choice Demonstration Project at the University of Arkansas; Joshua Cowen of the University of Kentucky; David Fleming of Furman University; Meghan Condon of UW-Madison; and Thomas Stewart of Qwaku & Associates.
The Wisconsin Legislature authorized the evaluation in 2005 to learn how well the program, the oldest and largest urban educational voucher program in the United States, is working. The maximum voucher amount in 2007-08 was $6,607, and approximately 20,000 children used vouchers to attend secular or religious private schools.
The general purposes of the evaluation are to analyze the effectiveness of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program in terms of longitudinal student achievement growth and grade attainment, drop-out rates and high school graduation rates. The former will be primarily accomplished by measuring and estimating student growth in achievement as measured by the Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Examinations in math and reading in grades three through eight during a five-year period.
Illinois State Senate OKs school vouchers
Parents with students in the lowest-performing elementary schools in Chicago could obtain vouchers to move their children into better-performing private schools under a plan that passed the Illinois Senate on Thursday.
The voucher legislation pushed by Sen. James Meeks (D-Chicago) passed 33-20, with three voting present, could affect thousands of children in the lowest-performing 10 percent of city schools. It now moves to the House.
“By passing this bill, we’ll give 22,000 kids an opportunity to have a choice on whether or not they’ll continue in their failing school or go to another non-public school within the city of Chicago,” Meeks said.
“Just as we came up with and passed charter schools to help children, now is an opportunity to pass this bill so we can help more children escape the dismal realities of Chicago’s public schools,” Meeks said.
Senate votes against reopening D.C. voucher program
The D.C. voucher program’s future appeared limited Tuesday after the Senate voted down a measure that would have reopened the initiative to new students.
The voucher program, which since 2004 has provided low-income D.C. students with as much as $7,500 in scholarships to attend private schools, has foundered in the Democratic-controlled Congress. President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan have signaled their opposition to the program, instead advocating charter schools as alternatives to poorly performing conventional public schools.
Tuesday’s 55 to 42 vote was widely seen as one of the final chances for the program to be extended beyond the students who are already currently enrolled. Funding will continue for current students until they graduate high school, but has been cut off to new students for a year.
Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) introduced an amendment to a reauthorization bill for the Federal Aviation Administration that would have extended the voucher program for five years and funded it at $20 million a year, opening it to new students. The Senate killed Lieberman’s attempt to amend a different bill earlier this month.
Washington, DC: $28,000 per student, gives Voucher Students $7,500
On my show last night — which re-runs at 10pm tonight on FBN — I said that Washington DC gives voucher schools $7,500 per student, but DC’s public schools cost twice that much: $15,000.
The $15,000 number has been cited by congressmen and newspapers like the WSJ and the Denver Post. It comes from the the National Center for Education Statistics, and the Census.
Unfortunately, it’s also wrong. Or at least very misleading, since it ignores major sources of spending. As CATO Education scholar Andrew Coulson explains:DC also has a “state” level bureaucracy that spends nearly $200 million annually on k-12 programs, and the city spends another $275 million or so on school construction, school facilities modernization, and other so-called “capital” projects.
But those aren’t included in the regular spending figures.
Related: Education: Too Important for a Government Monopoly. Joanne has more as does Mark Perry.
Locally, the Madison School District has 24,295 students and a 2009/2010 budget of $418,415,780. $17,222 per student. The DC budget morass illustrates the necessity of K-12 budget clarity in all cases, including Madison.
On School Vouchers
From Dennis to Eric:
State Sen. James T. Meeks, D-Chicago, one of the most influential voices in the city’s black community, recently stood before a group of mostly white, free-market conservatives to passionately plead for their support.
It was an unlikely meeting of the minds at an Illinois Policy Institute lunch session, but when Meeks was finished, he had his audience cheering. Might this be the launch of a political alliance that would unshackle Chicago kids from the tyranny, dangers and incompetence of Chicago Public Schools?
Meeks, pastor of Salem Baptist Church, was pitching Senate Bill 2494, his proposed Illinois School Choice Program Act that would give vouchers to students in the worst public schools to attend non-public schools of their choice.
Meeks, a recent voucher convert, came to talk political reality: Legislation that would free children from their bondage would be hard for African-American lawmakers to oppose. Combined with the support of Republican voucher supporters, they might be able to create a coalition that could make vouchers available for the first time in Illinois.
Credibility of UW-Madison Voucher polling project questioned
One Wisconsin Now argues:
** UW-Madison is receiving nearly $18,000 from the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute — which One Wisconsin Now calls a “conservative think tank” — for the polling project to cover a part of Goldstein’s salary.
** Poll results showed a 46.6 percent to 42.4 percent statewide opposition to private school vouchers. However, due to political concerns, it appears WPRI President George Lightbourn was able to keep these numbers from being played up. In the end, references to statewide opposition to private school vouchers were not used in a press release touting the poll. Instead, a press release talking about the poll results put out on the UW-Madison website included only figures from Milwaukee County, where the majority supported vouchers.
“This is a lesson about the credibility and the trustworthiness of materials produced by the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute,” Scot Ross, executive director of One Wisconsin Now, says in the press release. “If polling results don’t fit its pro-voucher agenda, then those polling results are erased from the final analysis. Most unfortunately, the UW is now tied directly to this manipulation to serve the political agenda of WPRI.”
One Wisconsin Now does extensive voter data collection and mining for certain candidates.
Strongest voucher Milwaukeeschools thrive
Michelle Lukacs grew up in Mequon and worked as a teacher in Milwaukee. Then she was a teacher and guidance counselor in Jefferson. She got a school principal’s license through a program at Edgewood College in Madison.
She moved back to Milwaukee and decided to open a school as part of the publicly funded private school voucher program. She called it Atlas Preparatory Academy because she liked the image of Atlas holding the whole world up and because it was the name of a refrigeration company her husband owns.
On the first day of classes in September 2001, Atlas had 23 students in leased space in an old school building at 2911 S. 32nd St.
This September, Atlas had 814 students, a growth of 3,439% over eight years. It now uses three buildings on the south side and has grown, grade by grade, to be a full kindergarten through 12th-grade program.
Atlas’ growth is explosive, even within the continually growing, nationally significant voucher program. Voucher enrollment over the same period has roughly doubled from 10,882 in September 2001 to 21,062 this fall.
The Atlas story underscores an interesting trend: The number of voucher schools in recent years has leveled off, and this year, fell significantly. But the total number of students using vouchers to attend private schools in the city has gone up, and a few schools have become particular powerhouses, at least when it comes to enrollment.
Washington, DC School Vouchers Have a Brighter Outlook in Congress
The District of Columbia’s embattled school-voucher program, which lawmakers appeared to have killed earlier this year, looks like it could still survive.
Congress voted in March not to fund the program, which provides certificates to pay for recipients’ private-school tuition, after the current school year. But after months of pro-voucher rallies, a television-advertising campaign and statements of support by local political leaders, backers say they are more confident about its prospects. Even some Democrats, many of whom have opposed voucher efforts, have been supportive.
At a congressional hearing last month, Sen. Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat and vocal critic of the program who heads the subcommittee that controls its funding, said he was open to supporting its continuation if certain changes were made. They include requiring voucher recipients to take the same achievement tests as public-school students.
The senator’s comments were a “really positive sign,” said Jeanne Allen, president of the Center for Education Reform, a group that supports vouchers and charter schools — public schools that can bypass many regulations that govern their traditional counterparts. “It’s clear the momentum is coming our way,” added Kevin Chavous, a former Washington city councilman who has appeared in television ads supporting the voucher plan, known as the Opportunity Scholarship Program.
Democrat Senator (Illinois) Dick Durbin and Washington, DC School Vouchers
Low-income families in the District of Columbia got some encouraging words yesterday from an unlikely source. Illinois Senator Richard Durbin signaled that he may be open to reauthorizing the Opportunity Scholarship Program, a school voucher program that allows 1,700 disadvantaged kids to opt out of lousy D.C. public schools and attend a private school.
“I have to work with my colleagues if this is going to be reauthorized, which it might be,” said Mr. Durbin at an appropriations hearing Tuesday morning. He also said that he had visited one of the participating private schools and understood that “many students are getting a good education from the program.”
Earlier this year, Mr. Durbin inserted language into a spending bill that phases out the program after 2010 unless Congress renews it and the D.C. Council approves. A Department of Education evaluation has since revealed that the mostly minority students are making measurable academic gains and narrowing the black-white learning gap. D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee and a majority of the D.C. Council have expressed support for continuing the program.
Obama, Education, DC Vouchers & Senator’s School Choices
Give Mr. Obama credit for much of what he said, and continues to say, about educational reform. In rhetorical defiance of that major Democratic Party constituency, America’s unionized schoolteachers, Mr. Obama deserves credit for talking a good game on merit pay, charter schools, and breaking down the “tenure” barrier that bars removal of ineffective educators.
Unfortunately, in a now familiar pattern, Mr. Obama does not fare as well when one examines his actual actions, in contrast to his rhetoric.
If Mr. Obama favors innovation designed to increase competition and the range of educational options, particularly for underprivileged kids, why on earth did he stand silent on the sidelines last winter as senators from his own party took the fledgling, highly celebrated Washington, D.C., voucher program out behind the barn and shot it?
Families, Activists Rally to Restore 216 Rescinded Washington, DC Tuition Vouchers
Classes in District public schools start Monday, and 216 students are hoping they won’t have to go back. About 70 parents, children and activists joined Thursday in front of the U.S. Department of Education to encourage Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to award vouchers to help the students pay for private school.
The students, who were offered vouchers worth as much as $7,500 toward tuition from the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program this spring before Duncan rescinded them in the face of the program’s uncertain future, were left to find placements in public and charter schools. Some families have complained that by the time the vouchers were rolled back, there were few spots available at competitive public schools.
“We’re hoping that Secretary Duncan is going to look out the window so he can see how strongly the parents support it,” said Virginia Walden Ford, executive director of D.C. Parents for School Choice, one of the groups that organized the protest. “They just put families into a bad situation.”
Rejected Milwaukee voucher schools sue
Eleven organizers who planned to open new voucher schools this fall but were rejected by the recently formed New Schools Approval Board have sued State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Evers and Marquette University.
In a lawsuit filed this month, the organizers contend that Evers and Marquette University violated the due process clause of the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment by turning over the legislative authority to approve voucher schools to a private party, the Institute for the Transformation of Learning at Marquette.
The school organizers are asking for an injunction restraining Evers from enforcing the new provisions passed by the Legislature this summer that tightened regulations on schools within the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, or voucher program.
Those provisions required that plans for new voucher schools be approved by the New Schools Advisory Board, part of the Institute for the Transformation of Learning, which is led by voucher and charter school advocate Howard Fuller.
Special-Education Stigmatization
School vouchers may be the best way to curb abuse of public funds.
Federal law first insisted in 1975 that public schools educate disabled students. Since then, the portion of students receiving special education services has increased 64%. Today, 13.5% of all public school students have been diagnosed with a disability. Special education, it turns out, is no longer particularly special at all.
Taxpayers pay a substantial price for the growth in special education. In New York state, for instance, in 2007, the average special education student cost $14,413 more to educate than a regular-enrollment student.
What has produced such rapid growth in the percentage of American students identified as disabled? Don’t worry–it’s not “something in the water.”
Better means of identification explain part of special education’s expansion. However, a growing body of research points to a less benign cause: Schools see a financial incentive to designate low-achieving students as disabled, while they may not actually be disabled at all.
Hillsborough schools and teachers’ union join hands with Florida voucher advocates to train private school teachers
On a normal day, oil and water just don’t mix.
Public schools and teachers’ unions don’t say nice things about those who support school vouchers, sending kids to private schools with public money. Most of the time, such folks just don’t get along.
But Wednesday wasn’t a normal day.
In a move that experts are calling nearly unprecedented, the Hillsborough County schools and teachers’ union have joined forces with a nonprofit Florida voucher group to help train private school teachers.
Step Up for Students — which runs the state’s tax credit voucher program — plans to spend at least $100,000 on classes for teachers who serve its scholarship students, among the county’s most economically disadvantaged children. The school district and union will provide space in the jointly developed Center for Technology and Education.
Special Education Vouchers
In 1975, Congress passed legislation giving students with disabilities the right to an appropriate education at public expense. But having a right is only as good as your ability to enforce it. In New York City and elsewhere, public schools regularly delay and frustrate disabled students seeking appropriate services–everything from tutoring to speech therapy to treatment of severe disabilities–making their federally protected right all but meaningless. Rather than compelling families with disabled children to contend with obstinate public school systems, we should give them the option of purchasing the services they need for their children from a private provider. That is, we should give them special-ed vouchers–good for the same amount of money that we already spend on them in the public school system–that they could then use to pay for private school. Not only would this bring better services to disabled New York students; it could also save the public money.
Many parents of disabled students have a lot of trouble ensuring that public schools give their kids an appropriate education. The parents have to know what they’re entitled to, and most do not. They must negotiate services from the local schools–but the schools are experienced in these negotiations, while the parents generally aren’t, so the schools often get away with minimizing their responsibilities. And even if parents win at the negotiating table, getting the schools actually to deliver on their promises is enormously difficult.
Nearly 75% of DC Residents Want Vouchers: Where Does Washington, DC Go in K-12 Education?
Historically, the District of Columbia has struggled to improve the educational opportunities available to students living in the nation’s capital. Over the past decade, District residents have witnessed signifi cant changes in the D.C. education system. New reforms have included the creation of nearly sixty public charter schools on approximately ninety campuses; Mayor Adrian Fenty and Chancellor Michelle Rhee’s overhaul of the traditional public school system; and the creation of the federal D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program.
As policymakers in District government and on Capitol Hill consider the future of these and other education reform initiatives, attention should be paid to the views of D.C. citizens. In July 2009, the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice commissioned Braun Research, Inc. to conduct a statistically representative survey of 1,001 registered voters in the District of Columbia.
Why conduct a survey on education issues in the District of Columbia? Why now?
This is a critical moment for the District and its residents. With so many proposals being suggested in the public domain – to initiate, expand, scale back, or eliminate programs and policies – it can be dizzying to policy wonks and casual observers alike. We hope that this survey can bring a pause for perspective. Each of the organizations endorsing this survey’s fi eldwork felt it was important to take a step back and refl ect on the wishes of
D.C. citizens regarding their city’s education system.
Just 3 new Milwaukee voucher schools approved
A board authorized by the state Legislature to control the entry of schools into Milwaukee’s controversial private school voucher program is beginning its life with a powerful statement that it will stop any school it doesn’t think is prepared to provide a quality education from getting off the ground.
The New Schools Approval Board, part of the Institute for the Transformation of Learning at Marquette University, voted last week to give a green light to only three new voucher schools for this fall. Each of them involves an existing education program that has not received public voucher payments previously.
The board stopped 16 schools from opening, generally start-up operations that were on track to meet the requirements for opening that existed prior to this year.
Leaders of some of those organizations were angered by the decisions and say they will meet soon to consider further action, such as a lawsuit. The new state law provides no appeals process for decisions by the New Schools Approval Board.
Three schools will be the smallest number of new voucher participants in years. In the past five years, there have been between eight and 15 new schools in the voucher program each September. Combined with the closing of other schools, the total number of participating schools has stayed in the range of 120 to 125.
Tax Credits, Not Vouchers, Are Keeping School Choice a Viable Option
Many school choice supporters are discouraged after having suffered a series of setbacks on the voucher front, ranging from the loss of Utah’s nascent voucher program last year to the recent death sentence handed to the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program. A rambling and inaccurate article in the normally supportive City Journal got the chorus of naysayers rolling more than a year ago with the cry “school choice isn’t enough.”
The bright spot for vouchers in recent years has been the success of special-needs programs. Yet the Arizona Supreme Court ruled recently that school vouchers for disabled and foster children violate the state constitution, which forbids public money from aiding private schools.
Naturally, the pessimists and opponents of choice are forecasting the death of the voucher movement. They’re wrong, because there never was a voucher movement to begin with. It has always been movement for educational freedom, and it is still going strong.
Over the past several years, there has been a gradual shift in focus from vouchers to an alternative mechanism: education tax credits. Illinois, Minnesota and Iowa already provide families with tax credits to offset the cost of independent schooling for their own kids. Florida, Pennsylvania, Arizona and three other states provide tax credits for donations to nonprofit scholarship organizations that subsidize tuition for lower-income families.
‘Voucher’ rider stirs fight over education
A scholarship tax credit provision inserted into Gov. Mitch Daniels’ budget proposal has ignited a philosophic debate about public and private education in Indiana.
And some opponents say the timing of the move is inconvenient, as lawmakers are trying to pass a new state budget in a special legislative session amid plummeting state tax collections.
Opponents call the provision a back door to vouchers, but supporters say it simply provides an opportunity for low-income students struggling in traditional schools to attend a private school.
“It’s scholarship money. Call it vouchers. Call it what you want,” said Sen. Marlin Stutzman, R-Howe. “I’d call it an opportunity for a child.”
During the regular season, Stutzman was the co-author of a bill authorizing the program. Even though it passed the Republican-controlled Senate on several occasions, the Democratic-led House declined to move it forward.
The idea surfaced again in late budget negotiations but ultimately was left out of a compromise between the House and Senate.
Milwaukee makes gain, wants more, in school voucher funding
Milwaukee officials got a hit when they went to bat for a better deal for city taxpayers on how the private school voucher program is paid for, but they definitely didn’t hit a home run.
That’s one way to summarize state budget deliberations when it comes to fixing the so-called voucher funding flaw.
Decisions by the state Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee endorsed last week by the Assembly, would give the city a better deal when it comes to paying for the program, which is costing the state and city about $130 million this year for about 20,000 students to go to about 120 private schools.
But the outcome will not make a sharp difference in the forecast for property taxes to pay for schools for next year – which is to say, there remains a definite possibility that the Milwaukee School Board will wrestle with the prospect of a double-digit increase in the tax levy this fall.
The budget now goes to the Senate, which is expected to vote this week.
Jennifer Gonda, senior legislative fiscal manager for the city, estimated that provisions in the new state budget would save a typical Milwaukee homeowner $20 next year and $38 the next year. That’s based on the average home assessment in the city, $127,500.
With Critics Quiet, Hearing Praises D.C. School Voucher Program
The Senate’s most outspoken supporter of the D.C. voucher initiative orchestrated more than two hours of uniformly glowing testimony for the program at a committee hearing yesterday and said the dissenting voices he invited turned him down.
Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.), chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, is pushing for reauthorization of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, which provides up to $7,500 a year in federally funded tuition to 1,700 D.C. children from low-income families to attend private schools.
Congressional Democrats, supported by teachers unions and other liberal education groups that generally oppose using public money for private education, included language in the recent omnibus spending bill that would end the program in 2010. Last week, President Obama proposed continuing the scholarships so the students currently receiving money can finish high school. The program would be closed to new students.
Lieberman wants to fully revive the program and said yesterday that he has a commitment from Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) to bring the matter to the floor for debate and a vote this year.
More black lawmakers open to school vouchers
Back when he was on the city council for the District of Columbia, attorney Kevin Chavous would occasionally run into fellow Democrats concerned about the state of the USA’s urban schools.
They were open to a lot of ideas, but most Democrats have historically rejected taxpayer-supported private-school vouchers, saying they drain precious cash from needy public schools. Chavous, who served from 1992 to 2005, openly supported vouchers. He would ask others why they didn’t.
“Several of them would whisper to me, ‘I’m with you, but I can’t come out in front,’ ” Chavous says.
That was then.
While vouchers will likely never be the clarion call of Democrats, they’re beginning to make inroads among a group of young black lawmakers, mayors and school officials who have split with party and teachers union orthodoxy on school reform. The group includes Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, Newark Mayor Cory Booker and former Washington, D.C., mayor Anthony Williams.
Many Views on Obama and Vouchers
The Post asked education and political experts to assess the president’s plan for D.C. students. Below are contributions from Andrew J. Rotherham, Dick Durbin, Tom Davis, Randi Weingarten, Michelle Rhee, Michael Bennet, Lanny J. Davis, Margaret Spellings, Andrew J. Coulson, Ed Rogers, Michael J. Petrilli, Anthony A. Williams, Joseph E. Robert Jr., Harold Ford Jr. and Lisa Schiffren.
No choice in D.C.
Congress supports vouchers for cars but not schools
Fighting to save the District’s popular school-voucher program, some 1,000 parents, pupils and politicians gathered near Mayor Adrian Fenty’s office on Wednesday to protest Congress’ plans to end school choice in Washington.
That same day, the Senate approved a $4,500 voucher for cars, encouraging citizens to trade in their old automobiles for newer ones that burn less fuel.
So, Congress thinks that vouchers for schools are bad, but vouchers for cars are good.
Slashing school vouchers spares teachers’ unions from competition. On the other hand, car vouchers are supposed to boost demand for cars built by the United Auto Workers. The obvious explanation for this schizophrenia: Congress does whatever helps unions.
A closer look reveals that Congress has it wrong in both cases – which is what happens when lawmakers let interest groups trump common sense.
Obama to Eliminate New Washington, DC Voucher Students, Continue Current Students
Bill Turque & Shailagh Murray:
President Obama will propose setting aside enough money for all 1,716 students in the District’s voucher program to continue receiving grants for private school tuition until they graduate from high school, but he would allow no new students to join the program, administration officials said yesterday.
The proposal, to be released in budget documents today, is an attempt to navigate a middle way on a contentious issue. School choice advocates, including Republicans and many low-income families, say the program gives poor children better access to quality education. Teachers unions and other education groups active in the Democratic Party regard vouchers as a drain on public education that benefits relatively few students, and they say the students don’t achieve at appreciably higher levels at their new schools.
More on the Obama Administration’s Opposition to Washington, DC Vouchers
The Institute of Education Sciences (IES) within U.S. Department of Education released a study on April 3 of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, which provides up to a $7,500 annual voucher for students from low-income families in the District of Columbia to attend private schools. Notably, the study found that students who won the lottery to receive the limited number of available vouchers had significantly higher reading achievement after three years than students who lost the lottery.
Yet last month Congress voted to eliminate funding for the program. Columnists for the Wall Street Journal and the Denver Post, accompanied by the blogosphere, have alleged that Secretary of Education Arne Duncan sat on the evidence of the program’s success. The WSJ writes that, “… in November preliminary results were presented to a team of advisers who work with the Education Department to produce the annual evaluation. Since Education officials are intimately involved in this process, they had to know what was in this evaluation even as Democrats passed (and Mr. Obama signed) language that ends the program after next year.” The Denver Post questions the Secretary’s denial of having known the results of the study prior to congressional action, asserting that he was, “at best … willfully ignorant.”
As director of IES through November 2008, I was responsible for the evaluation that is at the center of the controversy. Given the established procedures of IES it is extremely unlikely that Secretary Duncan would have known the results of the study until recently.
Secretary of Education Arne Duncan argues that we have an obligation to disregard politics to do whatever is “good for the kids.”
Well then, one wonders, why did his Department of Education bury a politically inconvenient study regarding education reform? And why, now that the evidence is public, does the administration continue to ignore it and allow reform to be killed?
When Congress effectively shut down the Washington, D.C., voucher program last month, snatching $7,500 Opportunity Scholarship vouchers from disadvantaged kids, it failed to conduct substantive debate (as is rapidly becoming tradition).
Then The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board reported that the Department of Education had buried a study that illustrated unquestionable and pervasive improvement among kids who won vouchers, compared with the kids who didn’t. The Department of Education not only disregarded the report but also issued a gag order on any discussion about it.
Study Supports Washington, DC School Vouchers
A U.S. Education Department study released yesterday found that District students who were given vouchers to attend private schools outperformed public school peers on reading tests, findings likely to reignite debate over the fate of the controversial program.
The D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, the first federal initiative to spend taxpayer dollars on private school tuition, was created by a Republican-led Congress in 2004 to help students from low-income families. Congress has cut off federal funding after the 2009-10 school year unless lawmakers vote to reauthorize it.
Overall, the study found that students who used the vouchers received reading scores that placed them nearly four months ahead of peers who remained in public school. However, as a group, students who had been in the lowest-performing public schools did not show those gains. There was no difference in math performance between the groups.
On Milwaukee’s Voucher Schools
Over the years, I’ve often expressed my reluctance to join Howard Fuller in embracing the private school voucher program.
Fuller is a longtime Milwaukee educator and a nationally known leader of the school choice movement. He’s been involved in efforts to improve the education of black children since long before the program’s inception in 1990.
I have tremendous respect for Fuller but never really agreed with his advocacy of this particular educational policy due to my suspicions of where it would ultimately lead. There are a handful of solid private voucher schools in town, but I’ve seen too many examples of failed schools run by well-meaning adults – and in some cases by charlatans and hustlers – that eventually have left students with their studies temporarily interrupted.
There’s also the corrosive political atmosphere that has turned support for school choice into a partisan litmus test – Republicans for, Democrats against. I’ve often wondered why this community spends millions of dollars in taxpayer money to fund two separate school systems when it’s clear there’s not enough money to fund one properly.
Fuller always had a ready answer. For him, the main issue was giving low-income children a quality education. If the public schools couldn’t do that, he reasoned, why not give voucher schools a chance?
Last week, the debate over school choice reached another level after a long-awaited report – based on several studies of Milwaukee’s parental choice program and Milwaukee public schools – found essentially no major difference in the academic success of students in both systems. Fuller said those conclusions, along with recent proposals by Gov. Jim Doyle to increase accountability of choice schools, represented a significant moment for his movement.
Milwaukee’s Howard Fuller & School Vouchers
c Schools, he was seen by some liberal critics as a right wing-toady who had betrayed his old ideology by getting in bed with conservative school choice supporters. That view was always simplistic, as his bold call for reform of school choice, announced last week, proved once again. His new position – which could greatly alter the politics of school choice – raises many questions.
For starters, why the seeming flip-flop by Fuller? The answer is that he’s never been an ideologue. The old Fuller, after all, was a Democrat. He worked to get Democrat Tony Earl elected in 1982 and was rewarded with a position running the state’s Department of Employment Relations. And his commitment to public schools was personified by his work as MPS superintendent from 1991-1995, which included championing an über-liberal referendum to spend some $400 million to construct new schools, which was defeated by the taxpayers.
But Fuller was more often a critic of MPS, among other things proposing (in the late 1980s) to create an all-black school district that would be carved out of MPS. (That idea, too, went down in flames.) Fuller was always a supporter of alternative schools – or any schools, really – that would provide a good education for minority and low-income students. And he was always willing to work with business leaders and politicians of either party to accomplish his ends. For at least the last 10 years, that has meant mostly Republicans, as he embraced school choice as the solution to urban education in Milwaukee.
But the latest results of the five-year study on school choice, reported last week in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, showed there is no statistically significant difference in achievement between MPS and voucher schools. The schools are cheaper, but because of the partisan legislation battles over voucher funding, the program’s complicated funding formula awards most of the savings (some $82 million a year) to every place in the state but Milwaukee. This city’s property taxpayers are paying $45 million more annually for a program that appears to be having little positive impact on education.
Key Milwaukee voucher advocate says more regulation, standards for program needed
Calling this a potentially historic moment in Milwaukee education, a key leader of the private school voucher movement called Thursday for major increases in regulation of the participating schools and for a new focus on quality across all the channels of schooling in the city.
Howard Fuller, the former Milwaukee Public Schools superintendent who is now a central figure nationally in advocating for school choice, said he wants school leaders to join with Gov. Jim Doyle, legislative leaders and others in working out new ways to assure that students of all kinds have quality teachers in quality schools.
“We can’t just keep wringing our hands about these terrible schools,” Fuller said. “We have a moral responsibility to our children to not accept that.”
He said that he believes Doyle is seeking higher quality and more accountability and transparency for the 120 private schools in Milwaukee that have more than 20,000 students attending, thanks to publicly funded vouchers. Fuller said he was in general agreement on those goals.
Doyle has presented “an opportunity to come together and do something that is truly constructive for our children,” Fuller said. “I think it is one of those historic moments that don’t come all the time.”
Fuller was reacting both to a new set of studies of the voucher program and to a dramatically different situation for voucher supporters in the state Capitol.
When Private Schools Take Public Dollars: What’s the Place of Accountability in School Voucher Programs?
Chester E. Finn, Jr., Christina M. Hentges, Michael J. Petrilli and Amber M. Winkler [458K PDF]:
Of all the arguments that critics of school voucher programs advance, the one that may resonate loudest with the public concerns school accountability. Opponents say it’s not fair to hold public schools to account for their results (under No Child Left Behind and similar systems) and then let private schools receive taxpayer dollars–however indirectly–with no accountability at all. We at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute don’t buy that argument entirely. Private schools participating in voucher programs, tax-credit programs, scholarship programs and such are accountable to parents via the school choice marketplace. But we don’t dismiss it, either. For both substantive and strategic reasons, we believe it’s time for school choice supporters to embrace accountability, done right.
For too long, school choice supporters have been stuck in a tired internal debate that hobbles the advance of vouchers and other worthy forms of school choice. Staunch free-marketers say “leave the schools alone and let the parents decide.” More left-leaning critics say “if they won’t play by the same rules as public schools don’t give them any assistance at all.” Yet this debate has become ever more archaic in a society preoccupied with student achievement, school performance, results based accountability, international competitiveness and institutional transparency.
It’s time for the school choice movement to wake up–and catch up to the educational demands and expectations of the 21st century. It’s paradoxical to us that even as the demands on K-12 education are escalating and important new forms of choice are emerging (not just vouchers for choice’s sake but private schooling as a decent option for kids otherwise stuck in failing public schools, means-tested scholarships for low-income families, corporate and individual tax credit and deduction programs, specialized vouchers for disabled youngsters, and more) the accountability and-transparency discussion seems mired in the 1970s.
Let’s restart the discussion. But what does “accountability, done right” looklike in practice? To find out, we sought the assistance of 20 experts in the school choice world–scholars, advocates, program administrators, private school representatives–to help us wrestle with the thorny issues that together embody the accountability question writ large. In this paper, we present their insights, opinions, and advice about how accountability for voucher programs should be structured. We then synthesize their views and offer our own take. Here’s an overview.
School-Voucher Movement Loses Ground After Democratic Gains
The school-voucher movement is under assault, as opponents have cut federal funding and states move to impose new restrictions on a form of school choice that has been a cornerstone of the conservative agenda for education overhaul.
Vouchers — which give students public money to pay private-school tuition — have grown since a 2002 Supreme Court decision upheld their use in religious schools. About 61,700 students use them in the current school year, up 9% from last year, according to the Alliance for School Choice, a voucher advocate.
But earlier this month, Congress voted to stop funding a voucher program for the District of Columbia. Two other prominent voucher programs — in Milwaukee and Cleveland — are facing statehouse efforts to impose rules that could prompt some private schools to stop taking voucher students.
Pressure is mounting from other corners as well. President Barack Obama has said he opposes vouchers, and the stimulus bill he signed in February bars its funds from being used to provide financial aid to students attending private schools. On Wednesday, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled that two state voucher programs, benefiting foster children and disabled students, violated Arizona’s state constitution.
Saying “When” on DC School Vouchers
I’m not trying to be a hypocrite. I have supported D.C. school vouchers. The program has used tax dollars well in transferring impoverished students to private schools with higher standards than D.C. public schools. But it has reached a dead end. Congress should fund the 1,713 current voucher recipients until they graduate from high school but stop new enrollments and find a more promising use of the money.
That exasperation you hear is from my friend and former boss, the brilliant Washington Post editorial writer who has been eviscerating Democrats in Congress for trying to kill D.C. vouchers. We don’t identify the authors of our unsigned editorials, but her in-your-face style is unmistakable and her arguments morally unassailable.
My problems with what is formally known as the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program are political and cultural, not moral. The program provides up to $7,500 a year for private-school tuition for poor children at an annual cost of about $12 million. Vouchers help such kids, but not enough of them. The vouchers are too at odds with the general public view of education. They don’t have much of a future.
57 apply to operate new Milwaukee voucher schools
In each recent year, the number of people saying they are opening voucher schools was similar to this year’s total and the number who made it into operation was in the single digits. The schools have substantial hurdles to clear, including getting a building that meets codes and signing up students and teachers.
In addition to the 57 new applicants, just about all of the current roster of voucher schools – around 120, including a few that do not appear to be operating at the moment – have applied to remain in the program next year.
Rising ranks of students
Put it all together and DPI is forecasting the number of low-income students using the state voucher program next year will be equal to about 20,500 full-time students, up from about 19,500 this year, an increase that is line with the pattern of recent years. (The actual number of students is higher than the “full time equivalent” figure because four-year-old kindergartners are funded at a fraction of other students. The actual number in September was 20,244.)
Sweden’s School Choice: Vouchers for All
“Education is so important that you cannot leave it to just one producer” – Sweden’s former Education Minister, Per Unckel; Video by Lance Izumi. Izumi is co-author of “Not as Good as You Think: Why the Middle Class Needs School Choice“.
Vouchers vs. the District with ‘More Money than God’
Andrew Coulson, via a kind reader’s email:
This week, education secretary Arne Duncan referred to DC public schools as a district with ” more money than God.” Perhaps he was thinking of the $24,600 total per-pupil spending figure I reported last year in the Washington Post and on this blog. If so, he’s low-balling the number. With the invaluable help of my research assistant Elizabeth Li, I’ve just calculated the figure for the current school year. It is $28,813 per pupil.
In his address to Congress and his just-released budget, the president repeatedly called for efficiency in government education spending. At the same time, the Democratic majorities in the House and Senate have been trying to sunset funding for the DC voucher program that serves 1,700 poor kids in the nation’s capital. So it seems relevant to compare the efficiencies of these programs.
According to the official study of the DC voucher program, the average voucher amount is less than $6,000. That is less than ONE QUARTER what DC is spending per pupil on education. And yet, academic achievement in the voucher program is at least as good as in the District schools, and voucher parents are much happier with the program than are public school parents.
In fact, since the average income of participating voucher families is about $23,000, DC is currently spending about as much per pupil on education as the vouchers plus the family income of the voucher recipients COMBINED.
On Obama’s Proposed Termination of Washington, DC’s Voucher Program
Letters to the Wall Street Journal:
Regarding William McGurn’s Main Street column “Will Obama Stand Up for These Kids?” (March 3): The Opportunity Scholarship program was created in 2003, as a five-year pilot project designed to give District of Columbia students federally paid vouchers to attend private schools. More than 1,700 students are enrolled in a wide range of private institutions, some world class and others with substantial problems.
Reviews of the program by the Department of Education and Government Accountability Office have found “schools” (sometimes consisting of a single room in a church basement) with significant health and safety issues; teachers lacking basic college degrees or teaching credentials; and no demonstrable evidence that students are performing better than their public school counterparts.
……
President Barack Obama was fortunate to attend the most elite private high school in Hawaii. Without that educational option, it is highly unlikely that our country would today have the first black president in the White House.
After giving hope to so many, and while serving as a role model for what can be accomplished with educational striving, it is unconscionable that the president would allow his party to kill the very same opportunities he enjoyed and upon which he built his accomplishments.
….
Dick Durbin (D., Ill.)
Carol Penskar
Orinda, Calif.
More on DC Vouchers: “Will Obama Stand Up for These Kids?”
Dick Durbin has a nasty surprise for two of Sasha and Malia Obama’s new schoolmates. And it puts the president in an awkward position.
The children are Sarah and James Parker. Like the Obama girls, Sarah and James attend the Sidwell Friends School in our nation’s capital. Unlike the Obama girls, they could not afford the school without the $7,500 voucher they receive from the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program. Unfortunately, a spending bill the Senate takes up this week includes a poison pill that would kill this program — and with it perhaps the Parker children’s hopes for a Sidwell diploma.
Sarah and James Parker attend Sidwell Friends School with the president’s daughters, thanks to a voucher program Sen. Dick Durbin wants to end.
Known as the “Durbin language” after the Illinois Democrat who came up with it last year, the provision mandates that the scholarship program ends after the next school year unless Congress reauthorizes it and the District of Columbia approves. The beauty of this language is that it allows opponents to kill the program simply by doing nothing. Just the sort of sneaky maneuver that’s so handy when you don’t want inner-city moms and dads to catch on that you are cutting one of their lifelines.
Deborah Parker says such a move would be devastating for her kids. “I once took Sarah to Roosevelt High School to see its metal detectors and security guards,” she says. “I wanted to scare her into appreciation for what she has at Sidwell.” It’s not just safety, either. According to the latest test scores, fewer than half of Roosevelt’s students are proficient in reading or math.
That’s the reality that the Parkers and 1,700 other low-income students face if Sen. Durbin and his allies get their way. And it points to perhaps the most odious of double standards in American life today: the way some of our loudest champions of public education vote to keep other people’s children — mostly inner-city blacks and Latinos — trapped in schools where they’d never let their own kids set foot.
Killing DC Vouchers
President Obama made education a big part of his speech Tuesday night, complete with a stirring call for reform. So we’ll be curious to see how he handles the dismaying attempt by Democrats in Congress to crush education choice for 1,700 poor kids in the District of Columbia.
The omnibus spending bill now moving through the House includes language designed to kill the Opportunity Scholarship Program offering vouchers for poor students to opt out of rotten public schools. The legislation says no federal funds can be used on the program beyond 2010 unless Congress and the D.C. City Council reauthorize it. Given that Democrats control both bodies — and that their union backers hate school choice — this amounts to a death sentence.
Republicans passed the program in 2004, with help from Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein, and it has been extremely popular. Families receive up to $7,500 a year to attend the school of their choice. That’s a real bargain, given that D.C. public schools spend $14,400 per pupil on average, among the most in the country.
To qualify, a student’s household income must be at or below 185% of the poverty level. Some 99% of the participants are minority, and the average annual income is $23,000 for a family of four. A 2008 Department of Education evaluation found that participants had higher reading scores than their peers who didn’t receive a scholarship, and there are four applicants for each voucher.
Offer vouchers for special education: It would save money and improve quality
About 13% of public school students in New York State are enrolled in special education. Educating each of them costs taxpayers many thousands of dollars more than it does to educate a regular student. With the financial crisis compelling Gov. Paterson, Mayor Bloomberg and other officials around the state to make cuts that have the least impact on services to which we have become accustomed, now is the time for them to give a special-education voucher program a second look. Aside from offering better educational outcomes, such a program would significantly reduce expenditures.
Contrary to popular belief, tuition charged by private schools, where vouchers can be used, is actually lower than public school per-pupil expenditures. Take Florida, which is home to the nation’s first voucher program for disabled students. Under the program, all disabled students are eligible for a voucher that is worth the lesser of the amount the public school would have spent on them or the tuition at a chosen private school. The value of the average voucher for disabled students there is $7,295. Not only is this far less than what the state spends to educate a disabled student in a public school, it is even below the state’s much lower average per-pupil cost of educating all students, both disabled and regular enrollment.
In other words, the public system actually saves money when it pays for students to attend private school, and even more money when those students are disabled.
Milwaukee Voucher Funding: Fairness is in the Eye of the Beholder
The voucher funding flaw is a bigger problem than ever and is costing Milwaukee property taxpayers millions of dollars a year.
The voucher funding flaw effectively no longer exists, and the publicly funded program that allows children to go to private schools is saving Milwaukeeans property tax dollars.
Can both of those things be true?
Decide for yourself.
When Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett and leaders of the Milwaukee Public Schools system look at the issue, one number jumps out: 14.6%. That’s how much the property tax levy to pay for schools in the city is going up this year.
They associate a lot of that increase with the impact on local taxes of the school voucher program, which is allowing 20,000 low-income Milwaukee children to attend private schools this year.
The way vouchers are paid for now, through a combination of money from state government and Milwaukee property taxes, is a major reason why the property tax increase is so large, they say. If the formula were fair, in the eyes of Barrett and the MPS leaders, the school tax increase would be in the neighborhood of 4%, and maybe less. They say changing the voucher funding system is an urgent priority for the Legislature to tackle.
When leaders of School Choice Wisconsin, an influential group of supporters of the voucher program, look at the issue, a different number jumps out: $123. That’s how much more is being spent in property taxes this year on each student in MPS than on each voucher student.
Vouchers in Texas, A Worthy Experiment
THE Edgewood independent school district covers an unassuming part of west San Antonio, a district of fast-food joints and car-body shops, with houses that run from modest to ramshackle. It is mostly poor and mostly Hispanic, and in 1968 its government-funded public schools were so bad that a parents’ group sued the state, prompting a debate over school funding that lasted for decades. By 1998 the situation had improved. The National Education Association, America’s largest teachers’ union, said that Edgewood could be a model for other urban school districts.
Then its voucher programme started. In 1998 the Children’s Educational Opportunity Foundation, a private group, announced that it would put up $50m over the next ten years to provide vouchers for private education to any low-income Edgewood student who wanted one. The “Horizon” plan was meant to show legislators that vouchers could help students and motivate schools through competition.
Critics said the programme would take money from a school district that was poor already. One teacher wrote an angry editorial comparing Horizon to Napoleons invasion of Russia“>Napoleon’s invasion of Russia, destined for “history’s trash heap of bad ideas”.
But a report published in September [3.5MB PDF Report] by the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), a conservative think-tank, argues that the programme was a hit over its ten-year span. More than 4,000 students claimed the vouchers; their test scores jumped, and only two dropped out.
20,000 Milwaukee Students Now Use Vouchers
The number of Milwaukee children attending private schools using publicly funded vouchers has crossed 20,000 for the first time, according to data released by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction.
At the same time, the number of students in the main roster of Milwaukee Public Schools elementary, middle and high schools has fallen below 80,000 for the first time in well over a decade and declined for at least the 10th year in a row.
Amid a host of other factors shaping the school landscape in Milwaukee, those two trends point to some of the key stresses and looming issues for both MPS, which remains one of the nation’s larger school systems, and the voucher program, the largest, oldest and arguably most significant urban school voucher program in the United States.
For MPS, declining enrollment means greater financial pressure, a need to close school buildings and a continual search for ways to attract students and raise overall levels of achievement.
For the voucher program, the increase means the state-imposed cap on its size is coming into view, and issues related to the property-tax impact of the funding program are becoming more urgent. In addition, with Democrats having gained control of the state Legislature, efforts to impose more regulations on schools with voucher students are likely to become much more serious.
Nationwide, the momentum behind support for voucher programs such as the one in Milwaukee has been limited, and most likely has lost further steam with the election of Sen. Barack Obama to be president. Although Obama favors charter schools – generally, independent publicly funded schools that have more public accountability than private schools – he has not favored vouchers, and the Congress, controlled firmly by Democrats, is not going to support such plans either.
Somewhat related: A Madison School District enrollment analysis discloses an increase in outbound open enrollment.
Obama Questioned on Vouchers
MANY MINORITY PARENTS ARE AT ODDS WITH THE DEMOCRATIC NOMINEE ON THE ISSUE OF SCHOOL CHOICE.
Minority voters have long favored the Democratic Party’s push for increased federal funding for public schools. But over the past few years, some of these voters have embraced the conservative-backed idea of private-school vouchers for low-income students.
Pro-voucher voters among racial minorities overwhelmingly support Barack Obama, but they are baffled by the Democratic nominee’s opposition to vouchers. They also say they are frustrated that Democratic leaders appear to be more concerned about keeping the peace with teachers unions — which adamantly oppose vouchers — than about finding alternatives that could advance desperately needed education reforms for minority students.
Obama’s “change” message has attracted millions of minorities, particularly African-Americans. Yet he cannot afford to lose minorities who are demanding greater school choice for their children.
In February, Obama seemed open to the idea of private-school vouchers. In an editorial board meeting with the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, he was asked about his opposition to Wisconsin’s voucher program. If he saw more proof that vouchers are successful, Obama said, he would “not allow my predispositions to stand in the way of making sure that our kids can learn…. You do what works for the kids.”
But at the American Federation of Teachers convention this year, Obama repeated his attack against spending government money to help low-income students attend private schools. He criticized John McCain’s school-choice reform as “using public money for private-school vouchers,” and he called instead for overhauling public schools.
“Let’s You and Him Fight over School Vouchers”
David Poythress called. The only announced Democratic candidate for governor wanted to pick a fight with Eric Johnson over school vouchers.
“To re-direct public money from public education into unregulated private entities with the magical expectation that somehow the private sector was going to remedy all the education problems in the state — that’s just wrong. It’s not going to happen,” Poythress said.
Johnson, currently the Senate president pro tem, has seized on the voucher issue as a likely ticket to the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor in 2010.
To set the stage:
Another Milwaukee view: Voucher schools are part of the problem
You want truly radical education reform in Milwaukee?
Form a countywide system so that Milwaukee children can, without restrictions, attend schools in Whitefish Bay and Greendale. Or launch a regional onslaught against the economic, housing and transportation disparities that, in the absence of locally owned breweries, now make Milwaukee famous.
Unfortunately, it’s not likely to happen. If you even mention the region’s divides, you are labeled as anti-suburban.
Luckily, the U.S. Census Bureau isn’t afraid of Milwaukee’s culture of silence about such realities. Once again (I’ve lost count of the many similar reports) Milwaukee made the news last week, for having the seventh-worst poverty rate of any major city. Waukesha County, in contrast, had the fifth-lowest poverty rate of any major county.
“Magical Thinking on Education and Vouchers”
This week’s summit — as sponsors call it — of Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education might seem like a mere “school choice” pep rally with a bonus excursion to the Magic Kingdom, but it’s happening at a time when the Legislature has decimated school funding. Moreover, this is an election year.
Headliners at the conference at the Disney World Contemporary Resort include New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, a slew of usual suspects from the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute, plus Barbara Bush and state Sen. Dan Webster, whose valedictory piece of legislation was a resolution instructing Floridians to pray away hurricanes on June 1.
And, of course, Jeb Bush himself.
Three of the nine amendments Floridians will vote on this November will determine the course of public education in this state. Amendment 5 (Clusty / Google) gets rid of local property taxes designated for schools, requiring the Legislature to raise sales taxes or perform some other voodoo economics to make up the funding gap. Amendments 7 (Clusty / Google) and 9 (Clusty / Google) would demolish Florida’s separation of church and state and repeal the part of the Constitution that calls for a “uniform, efficient, safe, secure, and high quality system of free public schools that allows students to obtain a high quality education.” The state would simply be obligated to provide education “fulfilled at a minimum and not exclusively” by public schools.
Out of office ain’t out of power — Amendments 7 and 9 come courtesy of Jeb Bush and his band of true believers.
Diane Roberts is professor of English at Florida State University.
Louisiana Senate Approves Voucher Program
Gov. Bobby Jindal moved one step closer Wednesday to final approval for a $10 million pilot program that would pay private school tuition for some children in Orleans Parish public schools.
The 25-12 Senate vote sends House Bill 1347 by Rep. Austin Badon, D-New Orleans, back to the lower chamber for its reconsideration. Some form of the measure, one of Jindal’s top legislative priorities, is now certain to reach the governor’s desk, with the plan slated to start this fall.
The vote represents another victory for social conservatives since Jindal took office in January. The grants also would pierce a philosophical veil, adding Louisiana to the list of states willing to direct public money to private K-12 schools.
Sen. Ann Duplessis, D-New Orleans, called that a great victory for 1,500 children who she said are more important than doctrinaire allegiance to public schools.
Fate of D.C. Voucher Program Darkens
Valerie Strauss & Bill Turque:
The groundbreaking federal voucher program that enables nearly 2,000 D.C. children to attend private schools is facing an uncertain future in the Democrat-controlled Congress and may well be heading into its final year of operation, according to officials and supporters of the program.
Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) said this week that she is working on a plan to phase out the controversial D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, the first in the country to provide federal money for vouchers. Norton said she wants to proceed in a way that will not harm recipients. But she added that she regarded the program, narrowly approved in 2004 for five years by the then-Republican majority, as on its last legs.
“We have to protect the children, who are the truly innocent victims here,” said Norton, who like many Democrats opposes vouchers as a threat to public school systems. “But I can tell you that the Democratic Congress is not about to extend this program.”
Vicki McKenna visits with Jay Greene on School Vouchers
Study echoes MPS, voucher findings
Graduation rates higher among voucher students
A second round of results comparing high school graduation figures for Milwaukee Public Schools and a group of private schools in the city’s publicly funded voucher program has reached the same conclusion as a report issued in January: Students who attend voucher schools are more likely to graduate than those who attend MPS.
The second report, issued today, adds data for the class of 2007 to its figures. The earlier report had figures for the classes of 2003 through 2006.
The report was funded by and released by School Choice Wisconsin, the main organization for advocacy for Milwaukee’s voucher program, which is the oldest and largest of its kind in the United States. About 19,000 students attended about 120 private schools in the city this year, with public funds of up to $6,501 per student going to the schools.
Press release and complete report – PDF
Vouchers & Achievement
Unfortunately, in a recent editorial regarding the Taxation and Budget Reform Commission, the St. Petersburg Times employs worn-out diversionary tactics to obfuscate the issues and conceal its true position — the paper’s editorial board despises the concept of providing school choice options to low-income students. Let’s end the theatrics and address the real questions going before the Florida people on November’s ballot. This debate is on keeping the promise of a quality education for all of Florida’s students.
Florida students are no longer just competing with students in Georgia, California, New York and Texas for coveted high-wage jobs. They are competing with their peers around the world. Countries like China, Sweden and Singapore are focusing on tomorrow’s economy and placing a premium on education and innovation to ensure they can keep pace with their rivals. For decades, America set that pace, and now we are falling behind.
We need all schools — here and in the 49 other states — to get better for our country’s future. The only way to improve student performance is through continual and perpetual reform of education. Florida needs a 21st century education system for a 21st century world, and school choice can be an important catalyst to make this vision a reality.
Texas panel nixes talk of school vouchers for dropouts
A special state committee on high school dropouts on Tuesday appeared to nix the idea of a private school voucher program for those students, but left open the possibility of the state contracting with private firms to help dropouts complete their education.
Before adopting its long-range plan to reduce the dropout rate and improve the college and workforce readiness of high school graduates in Texas, the nine-member state panel reacted to widespread criticism from education groups that it was opening the door to a limited voucher program.
Key members of the High School Completion and Success Initiative Council said they don’t believe a traditional school voucher program could be launched without approval of the Legislature. Under a voucher program, students can attend any school their parents choose – private or public – at state expense.
“I do not read this language in any way supporting a voucher program,” said Don McAdams, a member of the council and former president of the Houston school board.
His reference was to language in the council’s plan that states, “All students should have the opportunity to select from multiple pathways, including alternative delivery systems, to achieve postsecondary success.”
MPS chief sees voucher inequities
The rising number of special education students in Milwaukee Public Schools is having a growing financial impact and should be given greater recognition in any comparison of MPS and private schools in the voucher program in the city, MPS Superintendent William Andrekopoulos said in a statement Wednesday.
Andrekopoulos was reacting to research about voucher schools released Monday.
He said concerns about the impact of the voucher program on property taxes in Milwaukee had been verified by the research.
Researchers based at the University of Arkansas said that city property taxes go up for each student who uses a voucher, compared to what would be the case if that student went to MPS, while state income taxes go down, as do property taxes in most of the rest of the state.
Related editorial.
A Report on Voucher, Milwaukee Public School Performance
The first full-force examination since 1995 of Milwaukee’s groundbreaking school voucher program has found that students attending private schools through the program aren’t doing much better or worse than students in Milwaukee Public Schools.
The researchers gave a sample of voucher students the same tests given to public school students in Wisconsin and compared the results to those of a scientifically matched group of MPS students. Overall, they found, fourth-grade voucher students scored “somewhat lower” than MPS students but eighth-grade voucher students scored “somewhat higher.”
At all grades, both MPS and voucher students had overall test scores well below the 50th percentile nationally, and generally around the 33rd percentile, meaning they were generally scoring lower than two-thirds of students.
Results for individual voucher schools were not released as part of the study, despite calls from several legislators and others to see the private school results.
The study was conducted by the School Choice Demonstration Project, part of the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas. The main researchers included John Witte, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor who conducted studies of the Milwaukee voucher program in its early years from 1990 to 1995, before the Legislature dropped the requirement for such studies.
“The Power of Vouchers”
Many studies of education vouchers have looked at the achievement of children who are given vouchers and who transfer to private schools. Generally these studies have found small but meaningful improvements (e.g. here and here). A voucher program, however, is about much more than transferring students from lousy public schools to better private schools it’s about creating incentives to improve the public schools.
Florida’s Opportunity Scholarship Program rated schools. Students at schools that received an F in multiple years became eligible for a voucher that allowed them to attend a private or higher-rated public school. In Feeling the Florida Heat? (ungated version) a paper sponsored by the Urban Institute Rouse et al. look at what happened at failing schools.
“Touting an Asset: Voucher Schools”
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Editorial:
The debate on school choice in Milwaukee is often punctuated with a whole lot of fingers poking the air and decibels assaulting the eardrums. The two sides are that far apart on the merits of the program, which allows parents of the city’s low-income students to opt into private education if they believe public schools aren’t serving their children’s needs.
A promotional campaign on television, radio and in print over the next four months will not settle the issue. We hope, however, that it enlightens policy-makers, particularly those in Madison, that this is a program that enjoys broad support locally and contains an abundance of success stories.
Yes, the same can be said of students and schools in the Milwaukee Public Schools system. That’s the point. Both deserve enthusiastic support. This should not be an either/or proposition. We’re way past that.
At least we should be. The fear from those behind this campaign is that the program is still vulnerable – that it might not be some bold legislation that undoes it but a death of a thousand cuts, legislatively speaking.
The fear is not unreasonable. The reaction to a memo sent by Rep. Fred Kessler (D-Milwaukee) to the governor was overblown. The proposals to diminish choice contained therein were meant as starting points for a discussion with the governor. Still, it’s understandable that the choice community would react the way it did given that the discussion even would start at some of those points. And Senate Majority Leader Russ Decker (D-Weston) has been a foe of school choice.
Vouchers for Disabled Students Popular but Limited
Georgia’s new Special Needs Scholarship program was built on the promise that public school families of disabled children would get more schooling options. It was, nonetheless, a disappointment for most first-year applicants. According to state Department of Education figures, of 5,750 families who applied for a tuition voucher, 85 percent either couldn’t find a campus to accept their children, couldn’t afford the additional private school costs or didn’t meet all of the scholarship’s eligibility criteria. Nearly 900 families are getting financial aid, however, and supporters are convinced more children will be helped next year if more schools are willing to accept the vouchers. State lawmakers narrowly passed Georgia’s first K-12 school voucher program in the spring. Modeled after a Florida program, the plan was to give families of public special-education students more educational choices by offering them tuition vouchers to use at participating private schools. When the program opened this summer, education department and school officials were flooded with telephone calls, e-mails and applications. By the September deadline, thousands had applied. Late last month, 899, or 15 percent, of them received tuition checks. Families looking for vouchers were stymied partly by timing. Still, families, special education advocates and private school administrators say one of the biggest obstacles to finding a new school was the cost. Parents are expected to pick up the tab for any tuition the voucher does not cover, as well as expenses such as transportation and physical therapy.
Utah: At $8.4M, school voucher fight costlier than last governor’s race
The campaign clash over education vouchers has run up a tab that easily would fund Utah’s voucher program well into its second year.
The more than $8 million in campaign expenditures, reported to the Lieutenant Governor’s Office on Tuesday, included $2.6 million alone from Utah-based Overstock.com’s Chief Executive Officer Patrick Byrne and family.
The contributions from Byrne and his parents, John and Dorothy, made up three-quarters of the $3.5 million pro-voucher forces raised since September. Earlier in the campaign, Byrne gave $290,000.
“I have been lucky to be the recipient of the American dream,” Byrne said. “Whether you want to become a teacher or artist, an entrepreneur or doctor, having a great education is one of the keys to reaching dreams.”
The voucher program, which narrowly passed in the Legislature, must survive a referendum on Tuesday to be enacted.
Fundraising and spending between Oct. 27 and the election won’t be disclosed until January, under requirements of Utah law.
Most of the spending on both sides went to pay for the relentless campaigns that have targeted residents through TV, radio, newspapers, billboards and direct-mail ads.
Notes on Charter/Voucher Options and Public Schools
The program Friday included a tour of some choice schools in Milwaukee. I’ve done tours like this in other places, including Washington, D.C., New Orleans and Michigan. They are always enlightening. We had one especially inspiring visit to a school called the Milwaukee College Preparatory School.
The school began as a Marva Collins concept school (using the teaching strategies of the famous Chicago educator) and has evolved into a K-8 program that seeks to place its graduates in top high schools in Milwaukee and prep schools around the country.
Principal Robert Rauh is a former teacher in a prep school who wanted to take the high expectations and rich curriculum he was used to into poor neighborhoods and challenge low income kids to achieve.
A new study concludes that Milwaukee’s voucher program has improved public schools; another study questions the benefits of competition. says improvements leveled off after a few years.
In a forthcoming paper in the Journal of Public Economics, economist Rajashri Chakrabarti, find that public schools were motivated to improve after 1999, when religious schools were allowed to take vouchers and the public schools lost more money for every student who used a voucher to leave.
Utah Voucher Politics Update
Utah’s powerful Republican legislative leaders have quietly formed a political issue committee aimed at defeating a referendum on November’s ballot that would repeal a private school tuition voucher law passed by the 2007 Legislature.
That is not the only quiet move in the voucher battle. Loopholes in Utah campaign law are also allowing some groups on both sides of the fight to hide exactly who is providing hundreds of thousands of dollars of their funding.
The state’s voucher law would provide tuition payments of between $500 to $3,000 per child, based on parents’ income, to private schools. An anti-voucher citizen referendum petition drive last spring was successful, and the question of whether to repeal the new law will be on the November ballot.
With anti-voucher sentiment winning in recent public opinion polls in Utah, the GOP legislative leaders decided to take action to “educate citizens” on what the voucher law would really do, said Jeff Hartley, who has been hired by the Informed Voter Project PIC to run the leaders’ campaign.
Moving Students Out of Poor Inner Cities Yields Little, Studies of HUD Vouchers Say
Many social reformers have long said that low academic achievement among inner-city children cannot be improved significantly without moving their families to better neighborhoods, but new reports released today that draw on a unique set of data throw cold water on that theory.
Researchers examining what happened to 4,248 families that were randomly given or denied federal housing vouchers to move out of their high-poverty neighborhoods found no significant difference about seven years later between the achievement of children who moved to more middle-class neighborhoods and those who didn’t.
Although some children had more stable lives and better academic results after the moves, the researchers said, on average there was no improvement. Boys and brighter students appeared to have more behavioral problems in their new schools, the studies found.
Florida’s “Flawed Special Ed Vouchers”
Students with disabilities have long had the right, under the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), to attend private schools at public expense if the public schools in their community are unable to provide them with appropriate special educational services. But less than 1 percent of students with disabilities have such private placements, in part because these placements can be costly, complicated, and time-consuming to obtain under the existing law.
Florida’s popular McKay Scholarships for Students with Disabilities Program seeks to tilt the balance in these students’ favor. The program provides parents with an alternative to expensive legal proceedings and complicated bureaucracy—a voucher that they can use at a public or private school of their choice. Florida’s legislature approved the program in 1999 and named it after a then-state senator, John McKay, who is also the father of a special-needs child.
New Jersey has become the new front in the fight for school vouchers
Now some supporters of school vouchers, frustrated with state legislators, are testing a new tactic: going to court. Last July a group of parents in New Jersey filed a lawsuit against the state and 25 poorly performing districts. In Crawford v Davy they are arguing that since public schools deny students their constitutional right to a proper education, the court should refund their money so they can spend it at any school they choose. This is not the first attempt to use courts to permit the use of vouchers: similar efforts failed in Illinois and California, for example. But in New Jersey, such a suit might actually succeed. New Jersey’s courts have no qualms about meddling in education—they have been doing so for decades.
In 1973 the New Jersey Supreme Court said the government was failing to provide poor children with the “thorough and efficient” education guaranteed by the state constitution, and that the school-funding formula must change. Since a 1985 case, Abbott v Burke, the court has issued rulings laying out its remedy in detail: the state must send more money to poor school-districts, so that their budgets match those of the state’s highest-spending areas.
State / Local Milwaukee Voucher Funding Changes Sought
Cheaper program, more cost.
Odd as that sounds, it summarizes the situation of Milwaukee taxpayers when it comes to paying for the school voucher program, which is expected to involve more than 18,000 students, at least 120 schools and almost $120 million next year.
It seems counterintuitive that, per student, the voucher program costs city taxpayers more than Milwaukee Public Schools – but it does.
Next year, each voucher will be worth up to $6,610, while the tab for each child in MPS will run to well over $10,000. But under current funding formulas, the state pays a much larger share of the cost of educating an MPS child than a voucher child. As things are projected now, the state will pay $7,500 or more per MPS student next year. Under the current voucher funding law, the state will pay $3,635 for each low-income student using a publicly funded voucher to attend a private school.
On Vouchers
1. The federal government will pay for vouchers, to some extent, and thus extend its control over schooling. Admittedly this is happening anyway.
2. No politically feasible vouchers program will apply immediate depth charges to current public schools or even reduce their initial budgets (“oh, you aren’t letting public schools compete…). That means the new money must come from somewhere. That means our taxes will go up.
Vouchers would create a new middle class entitlement, ostensibly aimed at education but often simply capitalized in the form of cash. In the meantime public schools would require additional subsidies to stay open. How pretty a picture is this?
“Vouchers for the Gifted”
Levi Clancy’s special needs can’t be met by his local public schools, so his mother enrolled him a school where he’s able to learn. But the district won’t pay the cost, because the 14-year-old boy (aka Levi Meir Levi) is a junior premed at UCLA. The mother’s suit for special ed compensation for the “profoundly gifted” — in this case college tuition — was heard by the California First District Court of Appeals in Sacramento two weeks ago. The suit asks for vouchers for gifted students whose needs can’t be met in the normal K-12 schools. The state says it has no “constitutional duty” to offer a free education beyond the high school level, even to students who are required by law to attend school.
The New York Sun tells the story of a progressive superintendent who eliminated classes for gifted and talented students in her New York City region, driving out middle-class families and radically reducing the number of students who qualify for specialty high schools. In the name of equity, smart kids are denied the chance to learn at their own level.
Janet Mertz has been following the Madison School District Administration’s curriculum reduction (without Board discussion/approval) initiatives.
“The Value of Vouchers”
The voucher system is still fighting its way through state legislatures and the courts. The concept of giving school money directly to parents and letting them choose schools for their children breaks the well established precedent in this country of sending almost all children to public schools, where they were given courses in traditional subject matter and taught patriotic and moral values common to most American citizens. Indeed, there is a case against vouchers.
Commentary on the New Jersey Voucher Lawsuit
Organizers called the suit an important step in the civil-rights movement, pointing out that many students in the defendant districts are poor and minorities.
“This lawsuit today is as important as the Montgomery bus boycott of the mid-1950s,” said the Rev. Reginald T. Jackson, executive director of the Black Ministers Council of New Jersey, which joined in the suit. “This, too, will launch a national effort.”
Also supporting the suit are Excellent Education for Everyone, a pro-voucher group with offices in Newark and Camden; the Latino Leadership Alliance of New Jersey; and the Alliance for School Choice, a national organization based in Phoenix.
Voucher programs have been implemented with varying success in Arizona, Florida, Ohio and Wisconsin. They have been unsuccessful in California, Georgia, Illinois, and New York.
Jim Wooten has more.
Friedman on Public School Centralization and Vouchers
“The schooling system was in much better shape 50 years ago than it is now,” says Friedman, his voice as confident as reinforced concrete.
A big fan of freedom, Friedman objects to public schools on principle, arguing — as he says most classic liberals once did — that government involvement by nature decreases individual liberty. But it’s the decline of schooling at the practical level, especially for the poor, that seems to exasperate him.
Friedman puts much of the blame on centralization.
“When I went to elementary school, a long, long time ago in the 1920s, there were about 150,000 school districts in the United States,” he says. “Today there are fewer than 15,000, and the population is more than twice as large.”
“It’s very clear that the people who suffer most in our present system are people in the slums — blacks, Hispanics, the poor, the underclass.”
When I ask him about the “achievement gap” separating low-scoring black and Latino students from better-scoring whites and Asians, he blames my “friends in the union.”
“They are running a system that maximizes the gap in performance. . . Tell me, where is the gap between the poor and rich wider than it is in schooling? A more sensible education system, one that is based on the market, would stave off the division of this country into haves and have-nots; it would make for a more egalitarian society because you’d have more equal opportunities for education.
Jonathan Kozol, author of “Savage Inequalities” and other books of education journalism, has noted that the parents who whine that “throwing money at education” doesn’t solve the problem are usually those spending $15,000 or $30,000 a year to send their kids to private schools. I ask Friedman about the obvious implications of that.
“In the last 10 years, the amount spent per child on schooling has more than doubled after allowing for inflation. There’s been absolutely no improvement as far as I can see in the quality of education. . . . The system you have is like a sponge. It will absorb the extra money. Because the incentives are wrong.
Additional LAT comments on this article.
Discussion, Notes and Links on Milwaukee’s Voucher Program
There’s been an increase in discussion recently regarding Milwaukee’s Voucher Program largely around Amanda Poulson’s recent article in the Christian Science Monitor:
Hers is the sort of story Milwaukee’s school-choice advocates cite when touting the oldest and largest voucher program in the country. Now it’s expanding, but 16 years after it began, the policy is still controversial and has shown few documented benefits.
Proponents say it gives options to low-income kids who might otherwise be stuck in failing schools, and that the competition for students is good for all Milwaukee’s schools, both public and private. Critics, meanwhile, cite the money the program drains from public schools and the highly uneven quality of the private ones, which aren’t held to the same standards.
Milwaukee Voucher School Accreditation
About 50 of 122 schools in the voucher program have no form of accreditation – no organization outside the school that is giving it a stamp of approval. Although some of the unaccredited schools should be able to get accreditation, the list includes almost all the schools that raise the most doubts among knowledgeable observers.
Some of those observers will be in positions to do something because they will be involved in accreditation, and generally, they are talking a tough game: They will be insistent that voucher schools demonstrate they meet genuine standards of quality.
The new law makes that more than idle talk. While attention focused on allowing the program to grow from less than 15,000 students to 22,500, the law also makes this clear: No accreditation, no money from the state.
Sarah Carr has more.
Program on Vouchers Draws Minority Support
Washington’s African-American mayor, Anthony A. Williams, joined Republicans in supporting the program, prompted in part by a concession from Congress that pumped more money into public and charter schools. In doing so, Mr. Williams ignored the ire of fellow Democrats, labor unions and advocates of public schools.
“As mayor, if I can’t get the city together, people move out,” said Mr. Williams, who attended Catholic schools as a child. “If I can’t get the schools together, why should there be a barrier programmatically to people exercising their choice and moving their children out?”
School-choice programs have fervent opponents, and here, public school officials worry that the voucher program will diminish the importance of the neighborhood school, though the program serves only a relative few of the district’s 58,000 students. National critics of school choice like Reg Weaver, president of the country’s largest teachers’ union, the National Education Association, accused voucher supporters of “exploiting the frustration of these minority parents to push for a political agenda” intended to undermine public schools.
School Voucher & SAGE Expansion?
An agreement is likely to be announced Thursday and is expected to include a substantial increase in state funding of the class size reduction program known as SAGE.
Two sources told the Journal Sentinel that the agreement will likely allow an increase in the number of low-income students using publicly funded vouchers to attend private schools and religious schools in Milwaukee from roughly 15,000 to about 22,500. It also reportedly calls for all schools using vouchers – currently 124 schools – to obtain one of several forms of accreditation within several years. Many have such accreditation now, but some, including some of the weakest schools, do not.
Borsuk on What You Need to Know on Vouchers
Amid a barrage of television and radio ads, stories in the newspaper almost every day and conflicting claims about Milwaukee’s controversial and precedent-setting program by which almost 15,000 low-income students attend private schools using public money, the basics of what is going on can be lost easily.
Here is a primer on the current, heated episodes in the long running battle over school choice.
More on Milwaukee Vouchers & TABOR
The irony is that public educators in Milwaukee believe choice has helped improve all the city’s schools. “No longer is MPS a monopoly,” says Milwaukee Public Schools superintendent William Andrekopoulos. “That competitive nature has raised the bar for educators in Milwaukee to provide a good product or they know that parents will walk.” The city’s public schools have made dramatic changes that educators elsewhere can only dream of. Public schools now share many buildings with their private counterparts, which helps alleviate the shortage of classrooms. Teachers, once assigned strictly by seniority, are now often hired by school selection committees. And 95% of district operating funds now go directly to schools, instead of being parceled out by a central office. That puts power in the hands of teachers who work directly with students.
Milwaukee schools are still struggling, but progress is obvious. Students have improved their performance on 13 out of 15 standardized tests. The annual dropout rate has fallen to 10% from 16% since the choice program started. Far from draining resources from public schools, spending has gone up in real terms by 27% since choice began as taxpayers and legislators encouraged by better results pony up more money.
Rich Eggleston says that TABOR would subvert Democracy:
In Wisconsin, the ‘Taxpayers Bill of Rights’ is being billed as a tool of democracy, but it’s actually a tool to subvert the representative democracy that to reasonable people has worked pretty well. When Milwaukee-area resident Orville Seymeyer e-mailed me and suggested I “get on the TABOR bandwagon,” this is what I told him:
via wisopinion
“War Against Vouchers”
Unlike previous school-choice cases, Bush v. Holmes did not hinge on the use of public funds at religious schools. Instead, five of the seven presiding justices ruled that school vouchers violate the “uniformity” clause of Florida’s Constitution. Far from being an arcane and forgotten technicality, this clause was amended and reapproved by voters just eight years ago: It mandates, among other things, “a uniform, efficient, safe, secure and high quality system of free public schools that allows students to obtain a high quality education.” If only wishing could make it so.
What the new wording fails to consider is that a homogenized government bureaucracy is not necessarily compatible with efficiency and quality. By this point in American history, we should know better. After more than a century of honing its public school system, Florida has managed an on-time graduation rate of just 57%, placing it third from last nationally. Its composite SAT score is the fourth lowest among the states.
Florida Vouchers: Separate but Uniform
Black Students Lose Again is the headline on John Tierney’s Jan. 7 New York Times column on the Florida Supreme Court’s decision to throw out vouchers for students attending low-performing schools.
Democrats once went to court to desegregate schools. But in Florida they’ve been fighting to kick black students out of integrated schools, and they’ve succeeded, thanks to the Democratic majority on the State Supreme Court.
Most voucher recipients are black students who’ve used the tuition aid to transfer from nearly all-minority schools to integrated private schools that offer a college prep education. Tierney cites Adrian Bushell, who chose a Catholic school that is 24 percent black instead of Miami Edison, a large local high school that’s 94 percent black and 6 percent Hispanic.
His experience is typical. In other places that have tried vouchers, like Milwaukee and Cleveland, studies have shown that voucher recipients tend to move to less segregated schools.
Besides helping Adrian (who’s got a 3.1 average and plans on college), the Florida program has also benefited students in public schools like Miami Edison. Because each voucher is worth less than what the public system spends per student, more money is left for each student in the public system. And studies have repeatedly shown that failing Florida schools facing voucher competition have raised their test scores more than schools not facing the voucher threat.
The court majority ruled the vouchers are unconstitutional because Florida is required to provide a “uniform” system of education.
Rationing Milwaukee’s Vouchers
A rationing plan for enrolling students in more than 120 schools in Milwaukee’s private school voucher program will be imposed for the 2006-’07 school year, the state Department of Public Instruction said Tuesday in a letter to administrators of those schools.
Key advocates for the voucher program said if the rationing is imposed, hundreds, if not thousands, of students in voucher schools would be unable to continue in or to enroll in schools in the program, and substantial damage would be done to some of the schools.
DPI Letter [pdf]
Vouchers, Charters and Public School Accountability
Eduwonk rounds up a number of interesting comments on Milwaukee’s voucher program, including this:
Update: Concerning public accountability, one reader writes:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m not defending these voucher schools, or any schools that hide from legitimate public oversight. But I’ve spent years now working on projects that required interviews with school personnel, site visits, documentation from the central office, etc., etc. And if you think that refusing to submit to outside evaluation is specifically or even primarily a problem of private/voucher schools, you’re nuts. There’s no stonewaller like the public school stonewaller. Administrative assistants are the worst. And don’t give me all that FERPA xxxx, either; they just don’t want people snooping around.
That’s a fair enough point, it’s not just a voucher school problem (though not every public school stonewalls either).
Friedman on Vouchers
In 1955 future Nobel Prize–winning economist Milton Friedman kick-started modern education reform with an article titled “The Role of Government in Education.” Bucking the “general trend in our times toward increasing intervention by the state” in virtually all economic and social activities, Friedman argued that universal vouchers for elementary and secondary schools would usher in an age of educational innovation and experimentation, not only widening the range of options for students and parents but increasing all sorts of positive outcomes.
“Government,” wrote Friedman, “preferably local governmental units, would give each child, through his parents, a specified sum to be used solely in paying for his general education; the parents would be free to spend this sum at a school of their own choice, provided it met certain minimum standards laid down by the appropriate governmental unit. Such schools would be conducted under a variety of auspices: by private enterprises operated for profit, nonprofit institutions established by private endowment, religious bodies, and some even by governmental units.”
Sam Dillon, NY Times: For Parents Seeking a Choice, Charter Schools Prove More Popular Than Vouchers
CLEVELAND – When Ohio enacted a pilot program of school vouchers here a decade ago, David Brennan, an Ohio businessman, quickly founded two schools for voucher students.
Three years later, with voucher programs under attack, Mr. Brennan closed the schools and reopened them as charter schools, another educational experiment gaining momentum at the time.
Vouchers underwriting religious schools in Milwaukee
Well-reported story on the realities of school choice in Milwaukee. Vouchers are the lifeblood of religious schools in Milwaukee and religion permeates instruction.
http://www.jsonline.com/news/metro/jun05/333800.asp
Lessons From Milwaukee’s Voucher Schools
Friedman: After 50 Years, Vouchers Catching On
Little did I know when I published an article in 1955 on “The Role of Government in Education” that it would lead to my becoming an activist for a major reform in the organization of schooling, and indeed that my wife and I would be led to establish a foundation to promote parental choice. The original article was not a reaction to a perceived deficiency in schooling. The quality of schooling in the United States then was far better than it is now, and both my wife and I were satisfied with the public schools we had attended. My interest was in the philosophy of a free society. Education was the area that I happened to write on early. I then went on to consider other areas as well. The end result was “Capitalism and Freedom,” published seven years later with the education article as one chapter.
Tierney on Florida Vouchers
How can you claim the moral high ground when you’re denying him a chance to escape to a better private school?
Well, the public system did lose $4,400, but that’s actually $1,000 less than the cost of educating the average student and there was one pupil fewer to teach.
As enrollment has dropped at Edison, the student-to-teacher ratio has improved to about 22 from about 30. In the past two years, a new principal has revamped the administration and replaced half the teachers in the school. Under the new leadership, the average test score at the school last year rose dramatically – one of the largest increases of any high school in Florida.
Edison’s improvement is not an isolated example, as three separate studies have found in Florida. Test scores have gone up more rapidly at schools facing the threat of vouchers than at other schools. The latest study, by Martin West and Paul Peterson of Harvard, shows that Florida’s program is much more effective than the federal No Child Left Behind program.
DC Voucher Program Summary
After a one-hour bus trip, including one transfer, they reached the private Nannie Helen Burroughs School in Northeast Washington, which the children began attending in the fall under the D.C. school voucher program. Then their mother took a 45-minute bus trip to her job as a store clerk in Pentagon City.
In the evening, she did the same bus commute in reverse, picked up her children from the school’s day-care program at 6 p.m. and escorted them home. The next day, she would rise at 6:15 a.m. to do it all again.
Nine months into the experiment, it is too early to know how the nation’s first federally funded voucher program is affecting the academic achievement of the hundreds of D.C. children who won the private school scholarships. But spending time with the Hammonds provides a glimpse of the benefits and the sacrifices that the program entails for one family.
Notes on school choice: urban vs rural
School leaders in Hardin County — with its cornfields, solar panel installations and what was once one of the largest dairy farms east of the Mississippi — are deeply worried that vouchers stand to hurt county residents. Only a single small private school is within reach, one county to the south, which means that virtually no local taxpayers would see any of that voucher money themselves — it would be going to private school families in Columbus, Cincinnati and other large population centers. (And under Ohio law, the very public schools that are losing students must pay to transport any students who attend private institutions within a half-hour drive of the public school.)
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More.
Tiny and terrifying: Why some feel threatened by Wisconsin’s parental choice programs
In Madison, where the possibility of school choice arrived 23 years after Milwaukee, there are six private schools in the choice program that Smith calls “vouchers,” and those six schools enrolled 655 choice students in the school year just ended. The Madison Metropolitan School District, in comparison, has about 25,000 students.
Big ask
Perhaps Madison families will see some of the growth common elsewhere. Independent private schools in the city of Milwaukee educated about 29,000 children using choice grants last year, and those in Racine educated about 4,000. Nearly 19,000 kids throughout the rest of Wisconsin used choice grants.
Several more Madison schools have been cleared by state regulators to join the choice program in fall, including a second one to offer high school grades. This likely will be a blessing to Madison families looking for an alternative to a school district where, by the state’s most recent figures, only 41% of the students had been taught to read at grade level or better. By contrast, Madison’s largest private school in the choice program, Abundant Life Christian School, got 73% of its students to grade level or better in reading.
Why Senator Smith regards this as “failing” is baffling.
When families take their children to Abundant Life or other independent options, $10,237 of state aid will follow each one, or $12,731 if they’re high schoolers — the entirety of taxpayers’ outlay.
By contrast, in the most recent state figures, Madison Metropolitan School District spent a total of $17,944 per child in taxpayer money.
What’s more, the district may ask voters in November for another $600 million in spending, overriding the taxpayer-protecting limits set in law. The proposal would add $1,378 to the property taxes of a typical Madison home. The district says its budget is in dire straits because it used temporary pandemic aid for permanent expenses. It could have to cut its $589 million budget by about $2 million, or 0.4%.
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Madison taxpayers have long supported far above average K – 12 spending. Per student spending ranges from $22,633 to $29,827 depending on the spending number used (!)
Enrollment notes.
The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.
When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?
Notes on Madison K-12 Governance and outcomes
Contrast that with a public school system here in Madison in which so-called safety monitors try to prevent police from removing pistol-packing pupils from the hallways of La Follette high school in the name of diversity, equity, and inclusion. (Read & Weep!)
In the spirit of transparency, our new superintendent of schools gave an interview to our favorite local morning newspaper in which he manages to talk much and say little. Asked about Jennifer Cheatham’s Behavior Education Plan, however, Joe Gothard acknowledges:
“People would like to support a complete upheaval and change… but I haven’t been directed by the board and I certainly haven’t heard it as a priority.”
Blaska’s Bottom Line #1: And you won’t hear it as a priority if you’re a new hire who reports to the likes of school board members Ali Muldrow, Savion Castro, and their allies at Progressive Dane and Freedom Inc.!
Blaska’s Bonus Bottom Line: As we told Dave Zweifel of The Capital Times in the last thrilling episode, not exposing students to Woke ideology is a feature, not a bug.
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More:
My old boss at The Capital TimesDave Zweifel kvetches that “the school choice program is no longer limited to that altruistic approach championed by Thompson in 1990,” that being limiting participation to the poorest of the poor. Dave, you were opposed to Tommy’s altruistic approach even in 1990! BTW: The program is still income-limited.
Another supposed fly in the ointment, Dave sez, is that voucher schools can prevent students from being exposed (Dave’s word) or subjected (Blaska’s word) to Woke ideology. That’s a feature, not a bug, Dave. He writes:
Since the days of Thomas Jefferson, America provided public education to its citizens.
Still does, thanks to the voucher program! No mention of Milwaukee’s scandalous public schools, which do NOT provide public education to its citizens.
——
Madison taxpayers have long supported far above average K – 12 spending. Per student spending ranges from $22,633 to $29,827 depending on the spending number used (!)
Enrollment notes.
The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.
When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?
