You are here: Home / Archives for vouchers

Florida vouchers draw lowest achievers

February 3, 2012 By 7 Comments

Voucher schools don’t “cherry pick” the best students, writes Jon East on redefinED.  Students who use the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship are among the lowest performers at the low-performing public schools they leave behind, according to a new study (pdf) by Cassandra Hart, a UC-Davis education professor.

Compared to other low-income students at their public schools, voucher students are poorer and earn lower test scores. They’re more likely to be black. They’ve left schools with low scores and high rates of violence. In addition, voucher-using students tend to have few public school choices nearby, but a variety of accessible private schools.

Parents have to go to effort and some expense to qualify for a Florida Tax Credit Scholarship, so these are the children of committed parents. However, that commitment hasn’t translated into academic success, Hart finds.

Filed Under: Education Tagged With: , , , , ,

School choice and public schools

January 21, 2012 By

Learning Matters asks: Are charter schools and vouchers a good thing for American public schools?

Filed Under: Education Tagged With: ,

New York tops school choice index

December 2, 2011 By

Brookings’ interactive Education Choice and Competition Index rates the nation’s 25 largest school districts. The index will be expanded to the largest 100 districts in the future.

New York City earns the highest choice score with Chicago in second place, notes Grover (Russ) Whitehurst. Both received a B grade. The low scorer was Orange County, Florida, which received a grade of D.

New York performed particularly well in its assignment mechanism, its provision of relevant performance data, and its policies and practices for restructuring or closing unpopular schools.  Chicago, in contrast to New York, has more alternative schools, a greater proportion of school funding that is student-based, and superior web-based information and displays to support school choice. If the best characteristics of Chicago were transferred to New York and vice versa, both would receive letter grades of A.

Orange County students must attend their local school — unless they opt for the Florida Virtual School, which is open to all students in the state.

Some of the nation’s biggest choice districts, such as Milwaukee and New Orleans, aren’t included because of size, but will be in the expanded index.

The index doesn’t distinguish between vouchers, charters and magnet schools, complains RiShawn Biddle.

 Because magnets have largely been geared towards desegregation instead of offering families high-quality school options, those forms of choice have done little to improve student achievement. Given that magnet offerings often end up skewing in favor of wealthier households (who can use their political clout within districts in their favor) at the expense of poor and minority families (who cannot), magnets aren’t exactly a high-quality form of choice.

Adding a Parent Power category such as ability of families to overhaul an existing school in their community would also make sense; this could be done simply by looking at which states and cities have Parent Trigger laws already in place.

But the Brookings does reveal the “sobering” reality, Biddle writes. “Far too many families and their children have far too few choices of any kind, much less those of high quality.”

Filed Under: Education Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Steve Jobs: Computers won’t fix schools

October 7, 2011 By

Technology can’t fix education, Steve Jobs said. He also strongly supported school choice, notes Jay Greene on Ed Next.

“I used to think when I was in my twenties that technology was the solution to most of the world’s problems, but unfortunately it just ain’t so,” Jobs said in a 1995 Smithsonian interview.

We need to attack these things at the root, which is people and how much freedom we give people, the competition that will attract the best people. Unfortunately, there are side effects, like pushing out a lot of 46 year old teachers who lost their spirit fifteen years ago and shouldn’t be teaching anymore. I feel very strongly about this. I wish it was as simple as giving it over to the computer….

As you’ve pointed out I’ve helped with more computers in more schools than anybody else in the world and I absolutely convinced that is by no means the most important thing. The most important thing is a person. A person who incites your curiosity and feeds your curiosity; and machines cannot do that in the same way that people can. The elements of discovery are all around you. You don’t need a computer.

As an entrepreneur, Jobs fired people who didn’t come up to his very high standards. He thought schools should not tolerate mediocre teachers.

Jobs attended public schools in Cupertino, California — now a very high-performing district — but dropped out of Reed College in his first year.

Filed Under: Education, technology Tagged With: , , , , ,

Vouchers spike Catholic school enrollment

August 29, 2011 By

Catholic schools are attracting voucher students in Indiana, AP reports. Nearly 70 percent of students using the vouchers are choosing Catholic schools.

Our Lady of Hungary Catholic School in South Bend was at risk of closure because few parents could afford tuition.  Voucher students have increased enrollment by 60 percent.

The enrollment boom has forced the school to hire three more teachers. It’s also allowed all but the seventh and eighth grades to be separated into single classes. In years past, the school has combined grade levels because of low enrollment.

Catholic schools attract about 70 percent of voucher students in Ohio, which  gives vouchers to children who’d otherwise attend low-performing public schools.

Urban Catholic schools have a long history of educating children from tough neighborhoods.

 

Filed Under: Education Tagged With: , , ,

Judge lets Indiana vouchers go ahead

August 16, 2011 By

Indiana’s 2,800 voucher students can start private school: A judge rejected an effort by the state teachers’ union to enjoin the voucher program on grounds the state constitution requires “uniform schools.”

High schoolers who qualify for free or reduced lunch will be able to take 90 percent of the per-pupil funding that would have gone to their public schools and spend that money on private school tuition instead.

Those whose families earn up to 150 percent of that mark can take a smaller voucher, worth 50 percent of that per-pupil funding. And students in grades 1 through 8 can get up to $4,500 to apply to a private school’s tuition.

More legal challenges are expected.

So far, 83 percent of voucher applicants come from low-income families, but the program is open to middle-income families.

Filed Under: Education Tagged With: , ,

Judge halts vouchers in Colorado

August 13, 2011 By

Days before the start of school, a Colorado judge has blocked a voucher plan. Denver District Judge Michael A. Martinez issued a permanent injunction of the Douglas County district’s pilot Choice Scholarship Program.

“The prospect of having millions of dollars of public school funding diverted to private schools, many of which are religious and lie outside of the Douglas County School District, creates a sufficient basis to establish standing for taxpayers seeking to ensure lawful spending of these funds,” Martinez wrote in his ruling.

The pilot program allows up to 500 students already enrolled in Douglas County public schools to receive up to $4,575 toward tuition at a private school.  The district already had made the first payment to parents of 265 of 304 students who’d applied.

 

Filed Under: Education Tagged With: , , ,

Public, teachers’ views split on reform

August 5, 2011 By

Teachers’ views on education issues have diverged from public opinion in the last year, concludes a Harvard survey. Take the survey here.

The public splits on whether teachers’ unions have a positive or negative influence; teachers defend their unions more strongly.

Public opposition to teacher tenure edged upward; teachers support tenure more than ever. Public support for basing tenure on student academic progress increased from 49 percent to 55 percent, but only 30 percent of teachers agreed.

The public supports merit pay by a 47 to 27 percent margin. Only 18 percent of teachers favor merit pay and 72 percent oppose it.

The public agrees with teachers on one issue: 55 percent of the public and 82 percent of teachers favor higher pay. Only 7 percent of the public would cut teacher pay.

However, public support for higher teacher pay falls to 42 percent when those surveyed are told how much the average teacher in their state is currently paid.

Given a choice between increasing teacher salaries and reducing class sizes, the public opted for smaller classes. Told that “reducing average class sizes by three students would cost roughly the same amount as increasing teacher salaries by $10,000,” 44 percent chose class-size reduction and 28 percent selected increasing teacher salaries.

Teachers split on whether to opt for higher pay or smaller classes.

By a strong margin, the public favored teachers paying a percentage of their benefit costs, while teachers overwhelmingly reject this cost-cutting measure.

Public support for vouchers increased: 47 percent backed “a proposal to give families with children in public schools a wider choice, by allowing them to enroll their children in private schools instead, with government helping to pay the tuition.”

Forty-three percent of the public — and 45 percent of teachers — supported charter schools; a minority are anti-charter and many are undecided.

Filed Under: Education Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Do vouchers boost achievement?

July 29, 2011 By

Vouchers have “no clear positive effect” on student achievement and mixed outcomes overall, according to a review of 27 studies by the Center on Education Policy. From Ed Week‘s Inside Schools Research:

Low-income students receiving vouchers made similar achievement gains to comparable public school students in district schools in several studies, the report found.

The report also noted that some research found that voucher students graduate at a higher rate than their public school peers, and that overall achievement at public schools was higher in those schools most affected by voucher competition. However, the report said it is difficult to tease out causation in those results, because schools most affected by vouchers often are targeted for other intensive school reform efforts.

The CEP review did not include privately funded vouchers or tax credits or voucher programs for students with disabilities or students in foster care.

“CEP’s study narrowly cherry-picks school choice studies in a handful of states and inaccurately characterizes the results of these studies,” said Andrew Campanella, a spokesman for the American Federation for Children, a voucher advocacy program based in Washington.

A rival analysis of voucher research by the Foundation for Educational Choice found large benefits for some programs, but modest gains for most.  No voucher studies have found a negative effect, said Greg Forster, a senior fellow at the foundation. “When the small, restricted programs produce moderately positive results, that indicates we should be trying bigger things,” Forster said.

 

Filed Under: Education Tagged With: , , , , ,

Gates: Was the $5 billion worth it?

July 25, 2011 By

After spending $5 billion on education grants and scholarships, Bill Gates tells the Wall Street Journal’s Jason Riley,  “It’s been about a decade of learning.”

The Microsoft co-founder’s foundation is worth $34 billion, more than the next three largest foundations (Ford, Getty and Robert Wood Johnson) combined.

Small schools, an early Gates Foundation initiative, didn’t improve achievement. I was impressed by the foundation’s willingness to admit that.

Small schools improved students’ attendance and behavior, but “didn’t move the needle much” on college attendance, which is a foundation priority, Bill Gates told Riley.  “We didn’t see a path to having a big impact, so we did a mea culpa on that.”

The foundation decided to focus on curriculum — Gates strongly backs a core curriculum — and teacher quality — the foundation is researching what makes good teachers effective.

Many worry that a multi-billionaire has too much power, even if his intentions are noble. (And not everyone thinks they are.) And Gates tells Riley he’s trying to use his money to influence how public money is spent.

 Instead of trying to buy systemic reform with school-level investments, a new goal is to leverage private money in a way that redirects how public education dollars are spent.

However, the foundation’s approach is scientific, not political, Gates say.

“I believe in innovation and that the way you get innovation is you fund research and you learn the basic facts.” Compared with R&D spending in the pharmaceutical or information-technology sectors, he says, next to nothing is spent on education research. “That’s partly because of the problem of who would do it. Who thinks of it as their business? The 50 states don’t think of it that way, and schools of education are not about research. So we come into this thinking that we should fund the research.”

Gates supports charters — he’s a KIPP fan — but not school vouchers.

. . .  the politics, he says, are just too tough right now. “We haven’t chosen to get behind [vouchers] in a big way, as we have with personnel systems or charters, because the negativity about them is very, very high.”

Gates’ approach is doomed to fail, responds Jay Greene. While trying to influence education policy is sensible, “education does not lend itself to a single ‘best’ approach.” The foundation invokes science “to advance practices and policies they prefer for which they have no scientific support,” Greene charges.

Attempting to impose particular practices on the nation’s education system is generating more political resistance than even the Gates Foundation can overcome, despite their focus on political influence and their devotion of significant resources to that effort.

Greene’s part 2 on the Gates Foundation is here.

In a new mini-book, Greene advocates school choice as the way to create incentives for school improvement.  Here’s his interview with Jason Riley.

Community College Spotlight, which I write for the Hechinger Institute, is funded, in part, by Gates money. Gates is funding almost every innovative idea involving community colleges, notably research on how to improve remediation and boost graduation rates. I think it’s money well spent, though the research isn’t likely to find a silver bullet.

Filed Under: Education Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
« Older Posts