Is it really about Education, or is there a hidden agenda?

Charter Schools V. Public schools would be an interesting argument if it was truly about education. But look at the legislation currently being promulgated by the Republican Party in Pennsylvania.

Senate Bill (S.B. 1115) would create a statewide charter school authorizer that would remove local control from school districts and place charter approval and oversight in the hands of an outside authorizer with no accountability to local taxpayers, parents or students.

If that is not bad enough consider this from the Morning Call newspaper on October 5, 2012.

State changed PSSA testing rules for charter schools without federal approval

Rules change appears to have inflated success rate of some charter schools.

•                        

Pennsylvania Education Secretary Ron Tomalis (DONNA FISHER/THE MORNING…)

// October 05, 2012|By Steve Esack and Eugene Tauber, Of The Morning Call

Gov. Tom Corbett’s education chief changed the PSSA testing rules in a way that makes it easier for charter schools to meet federal benchmarks than traditional public schools.

Education Secretary Ron Tomalis’ change, made without federal approval, might have skewed the results of the 2011-12 PSSA scores to make it appear charter schools were outperforming traditional public schools, according to a Morning Call review of publicly available test score data.

 

I’ll give my colleagues across the nation a chance to digest this information, post on it, and look forward to an interesting discussion.

 

A Policy to Promote Parental Involvement

In 2008 Presidential Candidate Barack Obama stated that parents have to step up. Parents have to turn off the television and make sure the home work is done. He challenged African American parents to value education for their children. He has done little to if anything to create policy that would move parents in this direction.

Below is a plan to do just what President Obama called for, create involved parents.
Individual College Account Plans (ICAs) will treat all families the same regardless of zip codes. It rewards those who achieve by helping pay for college. It treats all families equally, but those who most need funding for college benefit the most. ICAs return taxpayer money to taxpayers and benefit all of society.

Here is how ICAs work. When a child is born, $5000 is placed one time into an Individual College Account (ICA) in the child’s name. The ICA matures as a 401K or 403 B would. When the child enters first grade, assuming the child is reading ready, the parents receive $2000. If the child is not reading ready, the $2000 goes right to the district the child is enrolled in to help pay for the extra costs associated with enabling this child to be at grade level reading by grade 3.
The remaining money in the account continues to mature until the child enters college or technical training school. At that time, a percentage of the matured funds based on grades, behavior, and parental involvement, are sent to the college or trade school the child will be attending.

ICAs reward taxpayers. According to national statistics, a high school graduate earns $392,000 more than a non-high school graduate. Children who read at grade level are more likely than those who do not read at grade level to finish high school. Assuming a 40 year working career at a conservative 20% income tax rate, the high school graduate will pay more than $75,000 in taxes to the federal government than a non-high school graduate. The payback to society from this investment in our public well-being is huge.
The difference in earnings between a college graduate and a non-college graduate nationwide is approximately $1.1 million. Assuming the same conservative tax rate a college grad pays more than $135,000 in taxes over the course of a career than a non-college grad.

Clearly ICAs pay for themselves!
And with a high school drop rate in many cities approaching 50% and greater, the returns from the ICA program between a college graduate and a high school graduate are even greater. This is just looking at the numbers without counting the reduction in crime and the increase in family stability which strongly correlate to high quality early education.
This program is win win for all involved. At the beginning levels of education incentives are offered to improve the raw materials. Parents are rewarded for doing their job as parents, and college becomes more affordable as the matured amount of money available is likely to be between 10 and $15,000.
Schools will be serving their clients: families and students, the people for whom school exists. Families and children will be rewarded according to their own success. Employers will have a greater selection of qualified employees. Neighborhoods will benefit from reduced crime. The family unit will be cherished, encouraged, and promoted.
Recently, Kalamazoo Mi. introduced a program similar to ICAs. An anonymous donor made a contribution promising all students who qualify a free college education. What happened after just two years is so promising the Governor of Michigan is trying to spread the program statewide.

In two years enrollment in Kalamazoo Public Schools increased by 900 students. Property values rose by 7% and 10% increasing city revenues.

No doubt these were already interested, concerned, effective parents taking advantage of an opportunity. A similar program years back in an inner city school in Philadelphia known as the Belmont 112 did not produce similar results. The challenge in education is to create interested, effective parents. It takes more than money: It takes educating parents as to how to educate their

ICAs require no experimental or expensive charter schools. ICAs eliminate the controversy involved with unproven, indeterminable concepts such as merit pay for teachers.

While standardized tests can be part of determining the percentage of the ICA sent to the college or trade school of the child’s choice, grades, behavior, and effort can be taken into account to obtain a more accurate and complete picture of the child. The ICA is all carrot and no stick. It eliminates the fraud so prevalent in Charter Schools, Voucher Programs, Merit Pay for Teachers, and with Educational Management Organizations.

We can create parental involvement with policies that demonstrate government can be effective in solving complex problems. Individual College Accounts nurture families, something politicians of both parties can stand behind. Let’s hope it gets done.

 

Socio/mental Exams: A School’s Responsibility

The Mental Exam

I remember when I moved to a new town and switched schools. I had to provide a birth certificate and a physical exam.  This proved my parents were not kidnappers and that I was healthy with no communicable diseases. In this regard not much is different from my day and today.

It is about time that changes.

A physical exam does not indicate how well prepared a child is for the social emotional rigors of school. It doesn’t indicate whether or not a child reads at grade level or is anywhere near where they should be chronologically. A physical exam does not address the needs of an education system consumed with making AYP.

We know the academic achievement gap begins at home, that it arrives at school. By using exams designed to track the emotional health, the academic ability of young children, we could implement educational programs more specifically engineered for individual students. By assessing social/emotional health we can identify children as young as kindergarten and first grade who are likely to fall behind their peers. The technology and the knowledge of how to do this has existed since the early 1990s. In short, schools must address the emotional well-being of children if we are truly to leave No Child Behind. That we have not done this yet reminds me of the words of Ronald Edmonds, that we educate only the children we choose to educate. In other words we teach the easy ones and leave the rest behind. We are leaving too many behind.

It’s time we developed Individual Education Plans (IEP) that have relevance, applicability, and are achievable.

Good Parenting Leaves No Child Behind

It is a given that the academic achievement gap begins before children reach school. It’s been documented so often that only those who don’t believe in public education would argue that the home environment makes no difference in a child’s education. Only the profiteers like many Charter School operators would argue that schools can educate any child effectively regardless of the home or neighborhood environment they come from. Fortunately researchers like Lareau, Duncan, Steinberg, and of course Coleman demonstrate how foolish they are.

But the most powerful modern documentation that parenting matters comes from a Charter School. Look at the Harlem Children’s Zone.  Their secret isn’t in the curriculum or the teaching; it’s in the neighborhood outreach. Geoffrey Canada’s schools are successful because of the parenting program he put in place. It’s run by parents from the neighborhood that he trained to educate others in the neighborhood on how to successfully raise children.

Parenting is the most important job in the world. Most parents learn how to do it from on the job training or from their own parents, who most likely learned on the job or from their parents etc. We know how important good parenting is. Isn’t it about time that high school children learned how to be good parents? Isn’t it about time that parenting 101 became part of the curriculum? Isn’t this the real test and meaning for No Child Left Behind?

Technology, the new disciplinary measure for violent schools

Technology will dramatically change the way home schooling occurs. Not only will the quality of home schooling improve as technology is implemented, the quantity of parents choosing home schooling will increase and even school districts may pursue home schooling as an option for students who are socially/emotionally unprepared for the classroom setting. Another child who may opt for home schooling is the victim of bullying.

The child who is constantly bullied despite the school’s best efforts is a prime example of a child who can benefit from home schooling. So to would be the perpetrators of such inexcusable behavior.

Home schooling can be tailored more easily to the individual than what a classroom educator can do with 17-33 children in the room. Some inner city classes have been known to have as much as 45. Not much individualized instruction can happen in that setting.  Home schooling can be personalized to a child’s and in some cases to society’s specific needs.

The trouble maker: The child that is or should be suspended can now do lessons at home. School no longer stops when punishments are handed out. Teachers have control over their class and students who want to be in school with their friends will be. Those who are out of school need to be monitored and technology can certainly do that. Mom and Dad may have to miss work, stay home and parent their child. I doubt they would like that, suspect the family income may suffer, and what better way to get parents involved insuring their child behaves well and does their work.

Use of already existing technology such us Blackboard and Moodle are the keys to increasing parental involvement with non-engaged parents and the solution for unruly children who in these modern times school districts are afraid to discipline.

Beware but go Forward: Embrace Technology in Education

While the NFL has an app out for phones and tablets, text books are yet to appear with such helpful devices. These improvements are long overdue.

Like many other teachers, I have visited the websites of text books I have used. They are frequently, truly difficult to negotiate. I don’t recall a one that was organized like the book, where additional activities had a strong correlation to the text. Nor are these activities easy to find.

It is time this changes. I work with some students who have tablets with a kindles app where we can read the books required for literature. We also have an application for some math problems. This saves the district money as the books don’t wear out and don’t get lost. Books on Kindle are cheaper than in print and allows for easy modifications to the curriculum. Students at different reading levels can be provided texts at different levels to truly offer individualized instruction.

Importantly, using technology is how today’s generation learns. Many schools have done away with cursive writing and spelling. While I personally think this is a mistake, just as not memorizing times tables are, I can see where apps will cause schools to not teach handwriting at all. So yes, we need to be sure we don’t go overboard in using this new technology. None the less, reducing the weight of children’s back packs, insuring that students always have their school work with them wherever they go, and having textbook publishers organize their websites so they are more conducive for both teachers and students, are all worthy reasons why school districts should embrace technology as a serious means of improving education.

Education Engineers

It seems everyone is an education critic. After all, most people spent years in school so they know all about it right? On that same avenue of thinking, I know all about cooking:  I’ve been eating my entire life.

Eating doesn’t make one a cook just as going to school doesn’t make one an education expert.

Expert teachers are what some education critics are calling for. Marc Tucker, in an excellent essay dealing with teacher quality in the U.S., points out that in Finland, teachers must be expert in their field.  He goes on to point out that in high achieving education countries, teachers must be good enough out of high to school to attend the best research universities, and while in college, obtain mastery in pedagogy and their subject.  In Singapore, another high achieving education country, teachers are paid well, comparable to engineers.

The longer I live the more I think it’s all about marketing.  The guy or gal who picks up garbage is a sanitation engineer. They generally make a good buck and have benefits.  I’m only jealous in the sense that we folks in education have not caught on to the marketing scheme. I propose that we no longer call ourselves teachers. We are Education Engineers.

I am actually quite serious. I believe that contrary to Mr. Tucker’s opinon, the vast majority of teachers in our country are well educated and are expert in their field.  But we lack the pay other professionals receive. This then is the difference between the U.S. and the top performing countries in regards to education.

Mr. Tucker makes the case that if we value education in our society, we must pay teachers well. Doing so will attract the best and brightest into the field. This is the way the free market works, or perhaps in our situation, there are instances where the free market does not work.

What will the Tea Party do? To make the market work public education must be abandoned. Thus competition in education will insure lowest cost for citizens seeking to educate their children, suppressing wages, and keeping the best and brightest from pursuing education as a viable source of employment. As Rick Santorum says, we either believe in the market or we don’t.

 

The Enemy Within

In three prior posts I have demonstrated how Charter Schools and the Privatization movement result in higher taxes, more government bureaucracy, and failure in its objective to raise academic achievement.

So why does this movement persist?

One theory is that politicians have become more enamored with breaking unions than they have been with educating children. Wisconsin is the poster child for that story. Another reason is that business’s hold on education has become pervasive. We have seen the purpose of education change in recent years. Instead of education as a path toward good citizenship as a constitution honoring citizen, the goal of education has become to raise good corporate citizens. Education’s job is to enable individuals to participate in our economy, not in our style of government.

An example of this is Newt Gringrich’s rise in the poll. Prior to this election, a politician guilty of ethics violations would not have a serious shot at winning his party’s nomination. Just a few months ago a disgusting and sad figure of a man, Anthony Weiner, was forced from office. How is it that Newt with his congressional ethics violations, his hypocrisy, absence of morality and empathy, is any less of a bad example than Anthony Weiner?

And does Newt know best? His idea for those receiving unemployment compensation is to have them retrained in order to maintain eligibility to collect unemployment compensation. The government in essence becomes the tool of business in engineering our population into a viable work force. Gone is the free choice of choosing your career. (Sounds like big government to me). Frankly, as a laid off teacher pursuing full time employment in a new district, laid off along with 1500 others, (the numbers continue to rise in Philadelphia as nurses are now being laid off as well)(another public school district being dismanteled), I find his solutions to be exactly the opposite of what the Republican Party says it believes in. But then again, do we really ever know what a politician believes? Heck, Gringrich, Santorum, Paul, and Obama will all tell us they believe in children while at the same time advocating for policies which have been proven to be not in the best interests of children. They value public education while they abandon it. They preach freedom and choice while Gingrich seeks to turn all us into peons controlled by government in our jobs, and Santorum would control our lifestyles, and both seek to control our loyalties. The United States is threatened from within in ways it has never been threatened when our enemies were external. I wish I could be certain that no matter who wins we would not be heading in the wrong direction, but my biggest fear is that train has left the station and is rolling downhill.

 

P.S. More about Newt’s bad idea.

Cisco Inc. knows employment can be cyclical. When Cisco laid off 6000 employees they offered them 1/3 of their salary plus benefits and stock options, promised them they’d be first in line to be rehired when economic fortunes and the company’s outlook improved, and gave them an additional nine months longer than usual to exercise stock options. This allowed Cisco to maintain ties to its talent pool. A Gingrich plan increases the cost of government while robbing employers of investments made in personnel. Gingrich’s plan appeals to the naïve. It’s an embarrassment they have such influence in their party, but look who really controls them: Big business in the form of the Koch Brothers. The effects of a corporate education are on display within our country.

One Question on Vouchers

Can you show me where vouchers have worked?

Many people think that vouchers have been enormously successful in raising achievement for children living in poverty. This was the group Milwaukee targeted in its voucher legislation. An article entitled “Project on Milwaukee Vouchers Shares Baseline Findings” in the March 4, 2008 edition of Education Week presented research that stated: “The one year snapshot of 2006-07 found little difference in state test scores between students who use the tuition subsidies to attend private schools and those who attend public schools” (Gewertz, 2008, para. 2) This report was co-authored by Jay Greene and John Witte. Green and Witte had previously been on opposite sides of the education voucher debate. In reality the study was nothing new. Since 2000 research groups such as the Economic Policy Institute (Carnoy, 2001) have consistently found no positive benefits for students using vouchers. The lone exception to this was the study by Paul Peterson of Harvard. His conclusions were ripped apart once it was revealed he simply didn’t count the 292 Black kids that the vouchers reportedly helped (Winerip, 2003).

And vouchers don’t save taxpayers money. Property taxes were higher in Milwaukee as a result of their education voucher program (Green, 2008).

A byproduct of vouchers is that regular education students have left the public schools and the percentage of special education students in Milwaukee Public Schools has increased (Ed. Week, 2008). Private schools seldom admit special education students yet their test scores do not exceed the test scores of public schools. This is surprising.

In Cleveland “voucher students enrolled in schools in response to the Cleveland program actually scored lower in all subject areas than their counterparts in the Cleveland public Schools” (Drury, 2000, p. 3) Perhaps this is why Cleveland abandoned their  voucher initiative. They realized education vouchers do not work.

The Arizona Republic neatly summarized the problems with vouchers:

1. Wherever vouchers have been tried scandals have erupted
2. When comparing students from similar demographics, Public Schools have repeatedly demonstrated superior academic results over other alternatives
3. Vouchers circumvent the separation of Church and State

(Martin, 2007)

 

In Cleveland like Milwaukee, vouchers increased private school enrollment (Zehr, 2003).  The movement to vouchers since it can’t be based on educational results can only be attributed to:

1. Politicians are trying to break unions and are using our children as pawns to do so
2. The religious right seeks vouchers as a method to reestablish the church’s authority

 

Whichever reason you believe, and it is indeed possible both are true, the bottom line is vouchers are not good for children, parents or society.  “The greater the proportion of our youth who attend independent schools, the greater the threat to our democratic unity. Therefore to use taxpayers’ money to assist such a move is, for me, to suggest that American society uses its own hands to destroy itself” (James Bryan Conent as quoted by Michael Martin, 2007).

 

 

 

 

References

Carnoy, M. (2001). School vouchers: Examining the evidence (Policy Brief). Washington D.C.: Economic Policy Institute.

Drury, D. W. (2000, Summer). Vouchers and student achievement []. National School Boards Association, 1(2).

(Ed.) (2008, February 28,). Study verifies funding disparity hurts Milwaukee residents . Education Week. Retrieved from http://edweek.or/ew/articles/2008/02/27/57660wivoucherschoolsmps_html?print=1

Gewertz, C. (2008, March 4,). Project on Milwaukee vouchers shares baseline findings. Education Week. Retrieved from http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles2008/03/05/26voucheh.27html?print=1

Green, E. (2008, February 26,). Mixed results on Milwaukee on voucher plan. The New York Sun. Retrieved from http://nysun.com/national/mixed-results-for-milwaukee-voucher-plan/71881?print=7

Martin, M. T. (2007, November 10,). Vouchers wars hit on 3 fronts. The Arizona Republic . Retrieved from http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/opinions/articles/1110satlets3-101.html

Winerip, M. (2003, May 7, ). On Education: what some much-noted data really showed about vouchers. New York Times.

Zehr, M. A. (2003, June 18,). Cleveand voucher aid no panacea for hard pressed Catholic schools. Education Week. Retrieved from http:://www.edweek.org/ew/ew_printstory.cfm?slug=41cleveland.h22

Vouchers = More regulation, more govt. spending

Years back Ralph Reed, unhappy with the removal of prayer from public schools, vowed to take America back. Their strategy was to seek elected positions on school boards.  Remember the “Christian Coalition”, the “Moral Majority.”

Today it’s “Family Focus.” This group is meeting in Texas this weekend to rally behind a conservative Republican other than Mitt Romney.  The slew of Republican candidates catering to them this year include: Santorum, Perry, Bachmann, and Gingrich.  Politicians from George W. Bush to Barack Obama have noticed that the religious right has been successful in influencing the direction our nation takes.

This is not an attempt to find fault, place blame or condemn anyone. These are just historical facts.

Education vouchers use public monies designated by legislative action to enable students who otherwise could not attend private schools to participate in a private school education. Much of this money ends up in religious education.  In Indiana public school vouchers are in their first year. Public Schools are bracing for an outflow of students as Catholic schools are deciding how many new teachers they need to hire.  In Philadelphia vouchers are being promoted as a way to save the parochial schools. In Milwaukee, the birthplace of vouchers, 1000 students use vouchers to attend St. Anthony’s making the church run school dependent on public financing. Having the church be dependent on government financing would be a fascinating discussion, but not for this particular blog.

The business community also seems to favor vouchers. Long embellished by noted economist Milton Friedman, they believe in the business approach to improving education. But the same business approach that brought us AIG and Enron does not work with children. In Milwaukee countless private schools emerged as a result of the voucher system, one even being run by a previously convicted pedophile.  Only now is Milwaukee considering legislative action to perform background checks on private school administrators and teachers. Several had to be closed for financial reasons.  Henry Tyler, Executive Administrator of the L.E.A.D.E.R. school was recently indicted on mail fraud. Cleveland Lee Sr., former chief financial officer of Harambee Community School, a voucher school, was convicted in state court of embezzling $642,000 from school coffers. Rosella Tucker, founder and director of the now closed Milwaukee’s New Hope Institute of Science and Technology charter school, was convicted in federal court of embezzling $300,000 in public money.

Additionally the ACLU has recently reported that schools benefitting from vouchers are discriminating against students with special needs

This blog hopefully demonstrated that the voucher system is ripe with fraud. To address and prevent this fraud more government regulation is required: New bureaucracies are needed and government spending will increase.

 

Next week I’ll address whether or not vouchers academically benefit students.