CALIFORNIA YANKEE

Education policy is all about the money

During the Franklin Center's Amplify Choice Conference, which was held at the end of January 2015 in Washington, D.C., Ben Scafidi, Professor of Economics at Georgia College & State University discussed the economics of school choice.

Professor Scafidi presentation was one of the most interesting. There were a number of points made by the professor that made a memorable impression.

According to professor Scafidi, many more academics are opposed to school choice than support it:

"For every professor, like me, who supports school choice there are probably forty that don't. They can't gin up one study that finds school choice harms one student."

When Professor Scafidi said that I thought he was joking. But it may help explain why there are a lot of studies that find positive benefits from school choice programs and a lot of studies that find no benefit from school choice programs.

The main take away from Professor's presentation was the huge public school hiring spree between 1950 and 2010.

To answer whether school choice harms local or state school budgets Professor Scafidi compared the growth in staffing in public schools to the increase in the number of students. During the sixty-year period of 1950 to 2009 the number of students doubled, yet the increase in school personnel was about four times greater than the increase in students. Teachers increased two and a half times the number of students and the number of non-teaching staff increased seven times the growth in the number of students. During the sixty-year period the student/pupil ratio went from 18 to eight students per employee.

Professor Scafidi also presented numbers showing the public school hiring spree has continued through 2012, the most recent year for which data is available.

Despite the 60-year hiring spree, student achievement did not improve. Public high school graduation rates are about the same as they were in 1970. Test scores have remained flat.

After getting participants in the Amplify Choice Conference to understand folly of continuing the public school hiring spree of non-teaching positions, Professor Scafidi asked participants to consider the opportunity continually adding staff with no evidence of any improvement in student achievement. What could be done with billions of dollars used to pay for all the additional non-teaching staff which have not improved student achievement?

Rand Paul wins the CPAC 2015 Straw Poll

Photo Credit: Cayankee

As I predicted yesterday, Rand Paul won the 2015 CPAC Straw poll for the third time in a row:

1. Sen. Rand Paul  - 26%
2. Gov. Scott Walker - 21%
3. Sen. Ted Cruz - 17%

Still surging, Scott Walker came in second without the benefit of any obvious CPAC Straw Poll campaign. That makes Walker's second place finish more meaningful than Paul's win. 

See my RedState article for the complete results.

You can watch Rand Paul's CPAC 2015 speech below:

Parents are the best messengers to communicate the school choice message

The school choice movement should be about giving parents the freedom to decide what is the best educational environment and program for their children.

To achieve that goal, it's necessary to be effective in communicating the importance of school choice to a broader audience, not just those that believe in the cause, but also to those who have questions about school choice.

During the Franklin Center's Amplify Choice Conference, which was held at the end of last month in Washington, D.C., attendees were treated to a panel discussing how market or communicate about school choice.

The key take away from the panel was that parents who have made the decision to use school choice to provide their children the education that works best for them are the best messengers to deliver the message that school choice is about giving parents the freedom to decide what is educationally the best for their children.

In communicating school choice we must separate the message from the messenger. School choice advocates are familiar with the message. The cost savings - vouchers and tax credit programs actually cost less while providing a better education. The innovation in educational techniques and programming that result from school choice programs. And the accountability - when competition is introduced higher quality education is produced.

Despite those benefits, there can be no better judge about what is the best educational environment and program for children than their parents. Parents are the best messengers to communicate these messages because you can hear their sincerity and how connected they are to school choice.

The panel demonstrated this fact by sharing videos. One, the Cato Institute's "Live Free and Learn: Scholarship Tax Credits in New Hampshire," is about the struggle over New Hampshire’s Opportunity Scholarship program and some of the families it has impacted.

A second, the Institute for Justice's "Let Kids Escape Failing North Carolina Schools," was highlighted in this article about a legal victory for North Carolina's Opportunity Scholarship program.

Watching the videos drives home the point that the parents who have made the decision to use school choice are much more compelling messengers than a professional school choice advocate in a suit, or a blogger.

School Choice is not a partisan issue

During last November's midterm election we noted that school choice is not a partisan issue -- rather, it is increasingly an issue that is bringing Democrats and Republicans and Conservatives and Liberals together.

This point was made abundantly clear during the Franklin Center's Amplify Choice Conference, which was held at the end of last month in Washington, D.C.

One big take away from the Amplify Choice Conference was that the school choice movement is really about more than school choice. It's about educational choice, parental choice really - parental choice to be able to provide for the educational needs of their children. More than one speaker made that point.

One of the speakers, Virginia Walden Ford, is a founding member of the Black Alliance for Education for Educational Options, which among many other things recently helped support a public relations campaign against the lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Florida's tax credit scholarship program by producing the "Drop The Lawsuit" video. Virginia passionately made the case that all children should have the chance to obtain a quality education and that parents should be able to choose and send their children to the schools that best meet their needs.

As a result of her experience of facing deteriorating public schools for her third child, Virginia obtained a private scholarship for her son to attend the Archbishop Carroll High School. She subsequently became an outspoken school choice advocate. She calls herself a "voucher purist" and is all about making sure that parents, regardless of their race, color or economic status have the necessary information to get access for the education their children need.

Another speaker, Joe Williams, spoke from the perspective of a White-Liberal reporter observing school choice evolve in Milwaukee:

"It was all about race and the distrust Black parents had for White Milwaukeeans, especially the White public school officials."

Joe jokes about what the name of his organization, Democrats for Education Reform, says about the Democrats' party. He pointed out there are a lot of White Liberals like him that support school choice and believe there is a marriage to be made between school choice and accountability. The charter school movement attracts those people to work with Conservatives and other choice activists

According to Joe, the Left/Right nonpartisan coalition around school choice works because people focus on their common school choice interest and disregard the issues about which they disagree.