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?

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.

School Choice group fights for Florida's private school tax credit scholarship program

The Save Our Scholarships Coalition has launched a public relations campaign against the lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Florida's tax credit scholarship program. 

The state's teacher and education workers union, the Florida Education Association -- the largest union in the state and the Florida School Board Association, among others, brought a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the tax credit scholarship program. 

The "save our scholarships" campaign has released a powerful video entitled "Drop the Lawsuit," which ran as a commercial during last night's Florida gubernatorial debate. 

In the video, Denisha Merriweather, a college graduate who urges watchers to save tax credit scholarship program that gives families like hers "more options to find a place that works best for their child's education." Merriweather says the lawsuit "just wrong" and points out that the more than 68,000 children now using the scholarships, come from "mainly minority from low-income families." 

The video ends with her asking for help:

 "Please don't kick them out. Drop the suit and save Florida's tax credit scholarship."

The video was produced by the  Black Alliance for Educational Options, a Washington, D.C. based group that advocates for more school choice and is part of the Save Our Scholarships Coalition.

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Franklin School Choice Fellow

 

New report evaluates performance of public charter schools

 

The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools has released a report that evaluates the performance of public charter schools in Washington, D.C. and 25 states. "The Health of the Public Charter School Movement: A State-By-State Analysis," looks at the progression and performance public charter school movement. 

The report is the first to provide an assessment specifically focused on each state’s public charter school movement. It ranks the strength of each locale using 15 indicators in three categories: growth, or the overall number of schools available and students served; innovation, defined as the “use of various innovative practices,” such as an extended school year; and quality, measured in additional days of learning for both reading and math. 

Washington, D.C. and Louisiana came in first and second, respectively, earning high marks for offering multiple charter school options for families, serving high numbers of economically disadvantaged youth, and showing strong student achievement gains. Nevertheless, the report suggests that both states ought to make efforts to secure equitable operational funding.

At the other end of the spectrum, Oregon and Nevada occupied the bottom two spots because they serve a low percentage of the state’s population of public school children, and their charters aren’t producing gains in reading and math. For these low performers, the report suggests changes in law that would allow for more in-school autonomy and more accountability.

To be included in the report, states had to participate in the 2013 CREDO study and have at least 1 percent of public school students served by charters.

Nina Rees, president and CEO of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, hopes the Health of the Public Charter School Movement report will serve as a "yearly benchmark of progress in the charter school movement" and that "policymakers will view it as a valuable annual assessment of their state" and consider the policy recommendations to help strengthen their charter schools.

According to Rees the report will assist parents and school choice advocates:  

"The report will help parents by serving as a meaningful indicator of how well charter schools are performing in their state. Most importantly, we believe parents will be interested in the quality metrics each year. As parents decide where to send their children to school, they may also be interested in looking at the growth of their public charter school movements and how innovative their schools are.

Charter school advocates should see the new report as an opportunity to have an honest conversation about the charter school movement in their state. Where there are strengths or weaknesses, this report highlights them, paving the way for future policy discussions and advocacy around growing and strengthening their charter school movement."

The report will also help legislators Rees says, "By taking a look at the ways public charter schools are effectively serving students and identifying opportunities for growth, legislators will be able to design and implement policies that address the needs of the families, students, and charter school communities in their states."

The Alliance acknowledges that improvement can still be made in identifying and collecting comprehensive data on public charter schools. But, in the meantime, the new report offers clarity to a movement that is too frequently plagued by misunderstanding.

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Franklin School Choice Fellow

School choice the hot nonpartisan midterm election issue

 Photo credit: j neuberger via photopin cc

Less than a month until November's midterm election and school choice has become a hot issue. We see it in states such as Arizona  Connecticut, Florida, North Carolina and Wisconsin, to name a few. 

Kevin Chavous, Executive Counsel for the American Federation for Children, says that school choice is not a partisan issue -- it is increasingly an issue that is bringing Democrats and Republicans together. Chavous is quoted in the Washington Times saying the momentum lies with those in favor of school choice programs:

"Everywhere we have these programs, there’s really the demand to grow them. It is a movement that is not going anywhere. It’s going to continue to grow."

The Times also points out that former state Sen. Ann Duplessis, who helped kill an early voucher bill that came before the state legislature nearly a decade ago, now thinks the tide has shifted since Hurricane Katrina:

"I believe we are at a point now where the traditional, say, African-American Democrat, they get it — we get it now,” she said. “We get it. The goal here is just to ensure that as we innovate, that we can try to get as many of the kids who are being impacted — that we’re trying not to leave anybody behind."

You can watch the Wall Street Journal's Mary Kissel discuss the role school choice is playing in the midterm Senate and gubernatorial elections with American Federation for Children Executive Counsel Kevin Chavous in the following video:

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Franklin School Choice Fellow

North Carolina students win as court allows scholarship payments

 Photo courtesy Institute for Justice

On Friday, the North Carolina Court of Appeals issued a decision lifting part of Judge Robert Hobgood's preliminary injunction blocking the state’s Opportunity Scholarship school choice program.

The Court of Appeals' decision allows the payment of scholarship funds to the families of the 1,878 students who accepted Opportunity Scholarships through the before Judge Hobgood declared the program unconstitutional.

Institute for Justice Senior Attorney Dick Komer said, "The decision lifts a huge burden of uncertainty off the shoulders of hundreds of North Carolina families and private schools."

"Although today’s decision isn’t the final word on the program, it bodes well for full vindication. More importantly, it bodes well for the families whose only wish is to find the best education for their children."

No other funds may be distributed until the appeals, which claims that Judge Hobgood’s ruling was improper, are decided. 

North Carolina’s Opportunity Scholarship Program, which was enacted in 2013, allows low-income parents to afford private school for their children whose needs aren’t being met by public schools.

You can watch parent Cynthia Perry and Institute for Justice Senior Attorney Dick Komer discus the case and North Carolina's Opportunity Scholarship school litigation program in the following video:

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Franklin School Choice Fellow

The Michael Brown saga offers school choice lessons

 Photo credit: j neuberger via photopin cc

The Washington Post's Emily Wax-Thibodeaux, writes about Michael Brown's high school and makes the case for school choice. 

If education is the gateway to a better future, the door at Normandy High School was shut long ago, fueling a mix of resignation and rage. Wax-Thibodeaux writes that the school system’s entrenched dysfunction helps explain the street anger that has unfolded in neighboring town of Ferguson since Brown was killed. 

Imagine not just your neighborhood school, but your school district is failing. That your High school is considered the most dangerous school in the city, has abysmal test scores, under performing teachers, a student body in which nine of every 10 students qualify for subsidized or free lunches, and the graduation rate is less than 50 percent. 

How's your imagination? Think about things getting even worse, so bad that the school district loses its state accreditation. That actually results in a little bit of hope. With the lose of accreditation, state law permits the students to transfer to other districts and the cost of the tuition and the transportation to and from the new school has to be paid by the no-longer accredited school district.

Then things get worse still. The additional expense for the students who transferred out of the unaccredited school, about $1.3 million a month, nearly bankrupts the school district. 

That causes the state to take over the school district to protect it from bankruptcy. The state takeover eliminates the rationale for the transfers. So after spending a year adjusting to new schools — many predominantly white and more wealthy, students were told they would have to return to Michael Brown's terrible high school. Marva Robinson, a clinical psychologist, says this sends a message to the students, "Stay in your place. You don’t matter." 

It gets even worse. When they return to Normandy High School, students find that 40 percent of the teachers are new. As a condition of taking over the failing school district, the state required that all the teachers were dismissed and forced to re-interview for their positions.

As Wax-Thibodeaux puts it, "The Normandy school district is on the front lines of the national school-choice debate."

School choice is all about public policy enabling families stuck with low-performing schools to being able to choose to attend higher-performing public and private schools in other districts. School choice encourages healthy competition among schools to better serve students. Parents are allowed to use the public funds set aside for their children's education to choose schools that work best for them.

Imagine how different things might have been for the students of Normandy High School if they were allowed to choose better schools for longer than one term. It's hard to imagine a better case for school choice. It's unfortunate that some school administrators and teacher unions such as those we have written about in Florida, Georgia and North Carolina fear the competition of school choice and turn to the courts to fight choice instead of embracing the competition. 

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Franklin School Choice Fellow

Georgia’s Scholarship Tax-Credit Program challenged in lawsuit

Photo courtesy of Institute for Justice.

Georgia’s six-year-old Tax Credit Scholarship Program is the most recent school choice program to be challenged in court. The program provides tax credit scholarships for public school students to attend the private school of their parents' choice. 

In April, a lawsuit was filed by a group of Georgia parents backed by the Southern Education Foundation, claiming the scholarship tax credits violate both the state constitution and tax laws by, among other things, providing indirect public funding to religious schools, giving donors illegal benefits and allowing a publicly funded school program to be run by private groups.

In May, the Institute for Justice intervened on behalf of certain Georgia families seeking to dismiss the lawsuit. According to Attorney Tim Keller, who is the Institute for Justice's lead counsel in the case, "Georgia’s school choice program is one of the largest in the country for a reason: It gives thousands of Georgia parents an opportunity to find a school that best fits their kids’ needs without using a single cent of state funds." Keller is confident that the case will be dismissed.

Since its inception six years ago, the scholarship program has proven immensely popular. It currently provides scholarships to more than 13,000 students, making it the fourth largest school choice program in the country. The program is entirely funded by voluntary donations from individuals and businesses. Donations to the program are offset with a dollar-for-dollar tax credit, up to $1,000 for individuals, $2,500 for families, and $10,000 for businesses. Tax-credit-eligible donations are capped at $58 million annually. 

Writing in the Athens Banner-Herald, Mike Klein  editor at the Georgia Public Policy Foundation, explains that public support has overwhelmed the program. The 2012 tax credit cap of $58 million was reached in mid-August. This year’s budget cap was reached in the first three weeks. About 13,000 of Georgia’s 1.8 million K-12 school children receive tax credit scholarship assistance. The statewide average scholarship amount in 2012, the latest data available, was $3,388.

You can watch Georgia GOAL Scholarship Program founder and general counsel Jim Kelly explain how the state tax credit scholarship is funded in the following video:

____ Franklin School Choice Fellow

Judge blocks North Carolina's Opportunity Scholarship program

Photo credit: j neuberger via photopin cc

North Carolina County Superior Court Judge Robert Hobgood blocked the state's new school voucher program, saying it unconstitutionally diverted money from public education to private schools, some of them religious schools. 

The state's Opportunity Scholarship program, expands school choice in North Carolina by providing education scholarship grants of up to $4,200 per year for eligible children who choose to attend private school. The program is designed to give low-income families public funds to help pay private school tuition. It was passed by the state's Republican-controlled Legislature last year and had already begun operating. 

About 5,500 students applied for the annual grants of up to $4,200 per child. More than 1,800 students were chosen by lottery have already accepted Opportunity Scholarships, but not all have enrolled in private schools.

Those supporting the so-called voucher program, say it offers low-income children a choice for a private-school education that better meets their individual needs after the public schools failed to do so. To be eligible, parents had to have their children enrolled in a public school and meet federal income requirements for their children to receive subsidized lunches.

The program was challenged in lawsuits by the N.C. Association of Educators and the N.C. Justice Center, a left-wing advocacy group, and the N.C. School Boards Association, which was joined by 71 of the state’s 115 school districts.

 

Previously, Judge Hobgood had granted the plaintiffs an injunction that halted the voucher funds from being distributed to students. But in May, the state Supreme Court overturned that injunction.

 

An appeal of Judge Hobgood's decision was filed on Friday. Among other things, the appeal seeks a stay in the judge's decision. 

 

According to Reuters, school voucher supporters say voucher programs offer parents more choices on where to educate their children. About 20 states offer some form of school vouchers, with most of those programs having survived legal challenges. School vouchers have drawn criticism from some who claim they drain money from public schools and subsidize overtly religious education. 

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Franklin School Choice Fellow