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Thinking and Linking

Rhodes scholar: Mom finagled a better school

Joanne Jacobs

Nov 23, 2017
1 min

Rhodes scholar: Mom finagled a better school

“Hazim Hardeman’s mother wanted a better school than the family’s North Philadelphia neighborhood could offer her son,” writes Susan Snyder on Philly.com. “So she falsified the family’s address and sent him to Shawmont in Roxborough.” Hazim Hardeman is Temple’s first Rhodes Scholar. Photo: Tom Gralish/Philly.com Hardeman, 23, a 2017 magna cum laude graduate of Temple University, has been awarded a Rhodes scholarship to study at Oxford University in England. Hardeman “got off

Let teachers control training, classroom $

Joanne Jacobs

Nov 19, 2017
2 min

Let teachers control training, classroom $

Choice is good for teachers too, argues Mike Goldstein, founder and former CEO of Match Education in Boston, and former Chief Academic Officer of Bridge International Academies. Mike’s subbing for Rick Hess in Education Week. As it is with charter schools, teacher accountability should be linked to flexibility, he wrote six years ago. He proposed letting teachers control “100 percent of his/her share of the professional development budget.” In some districts, we’re talking ab

How parents choose schools

Joanne Jacobs

Nov 14, 2017
2 min

How parents choose schools

One daughter goes to a small, fast-paced STEM-focused school with few arts, language, sports or extracurricular options, Fordham’s Jeff Murray writes in Education Next. Her twin sister has moved to a private school that doesn’t care about test scores or AP courses, but offers independent projects, theater, sports and a study trip to Russia. Did he make the right choice? Metro Early College High School in Columbus, Ohio focuses on science and math. Parents know how to choose s

The best school? Or the one with the best students?

Joanne Jacobs

Oct 29, 2017
2 min

The best school? Or the one with the best students?

Parents don’t choose the most effective schools, according to an analysis of New York City’s high school application system, reports Gail Cornwall in The Atlantic. Parents judge schools by test scores, according to the working paper. Schools that do an OK job with high achievers look good; schools that do a great job with low achievers look just OK. (Researchers) looked for similar students—ones who shared the same gender and race, lived in the same neighborhood, and got the

Florida vouchers boost college-going

Joanne Jacobs

Oct 5, 2017
1 min

Florida vouchers boost college-going

Low-income Florida students who used a tax-credit-funded scholarship to attend private school were more likely to enroll in college, according to an Urban Institute study. Compared to similar students who stayed in public school, Florida Tax Credit participants came from lower-performing schools and had lower test scores before receiving a scholarship, the study reported. #choice #Florida #taxcreditscholarships

Parents have high hopes, but not always realistic

Joanne Jacobs

Oct 2, 2017
1 min

Parents have high hopes, but not always realistic

Parents have high, but not always realistic, hopes for their children’s futures, reports Sarah D. Sparks on Education Week. Nearly 70 percent expect their children to earn a bachelor’s degree or higher, according to the 2016 federal Parent and Family Involvement in Education Survey. Thirty-nine percent expect a master’s degree. Only 1 percent of middle or high school parents thinks their child won’t make it through high school. One third of U.S. adults and 37 percent of those

Joanne Jacobs

Sep 27, 2017
1 min

Blacks leave Minneapolis district schools

Parents cite “safety concerns” and “a belief that academics elsewhere are better,” they write. MPS “has struggled for years to close the more than 50-percentage-point gap between white and black student achievement.” By contrast, Asian students — predominantly from Cambodian and Burmese immigrant families — are the most likely to leave St. Paul schools. I’m not “fleeing” district schools, writes Marguerite Mingus. She’s choosing better options. Mingus tried MPS schools, but e

Millennials support school choice

Joanne Jacobs

Sep 26, 2017
1 min

Millennials support school choice

Millennials strongly support school choice — including taxpayer-supported tuition vouchers and charter schools — according to surveys by the American Federation for Children and by USA Today, writes Tommy Schultz in the National Review. (Millennials are 18 to 35 years old.) In the USA Today poll of the same age group, 79 percent of African Americans, 76 percent of Asian Americans, 77 percent of Latinos, and 66 percent of whites support vouchers for low-income students, report

PDK: 1/3 of parents prefer public schools

Joanne Jacobs

Aug 31, 2017
1 min

PDK: 1/3 of parents prefer public schools

Fifty-two percent of Americans oppose “allowing students and parents to choose a private school to attend at public expense” in the 2017 PDK Poll. However, only 54 percent of public-school parents would turn down a full-tuition voucher to send their child to a private or religious school; 39 percent would use the voucher and the rest are undecided. Overall, “if cost and location were not issues, just one-third of parents say they’d pick a traditional public school over a priv

Charters lose support, but fewer oppose choice

Joanne Jacobs

Aug 15, 2017
1 min

Charters lose support, but fewer oppose choice

Public support for charter schools has fallen among Democrats and Republicans, but opposition to school vouchers and tax-credit-funded scholarships also has declined, reports the 2017 EdNext Poll on School Reform. The “sharp drop” in support for charters “could reflect the waning influence of the Obama administration,” Ed Next concludes. Once a charter supporter, Hillary Clinton said in her campaign that charters “don’t take the hardest-to-teach kids or, if they do, they don

Anti-choice folks choose for their own kids

Joanne Jacobs

Jun 19, 2017
2 min

Anti-choice folks choose for their own kids

People who exercise choice in educating their own children want black parents to exercise patience, writes Sharif El-Mekki, principal of Mastery Charter School in Philadelphia. Mastery Charter School in Philadelphia is open to all students. His middle-class friends choose their children’s schools, exert pressure to get their children the best teachers and pay for “tutoring, trips, camps, and experiences that can supplement what they believe their children need,” writes El-Mek

Indianapolis innovates

Joanne Jacobs

May 5, 2017
1 min

Indianapolis innovates

Indianapolis is expanding school choice, writes David Osborne in Education Next. In addition to having a mayor who can authorize charter schools, the city now has “innovation network schools” authorized by Indianapolis Public Schools (IPS). Some are charters, some are startups, and some are existing IPS schools that have converted. All are not-for-profit organizations with independent boards, operating outside the teachers union contract. But all use IPS school buildings and

If charters work, do vouchers fail?

Joanne Jacobs

May 4, 2017
2 min

If charters work, do vouchers fail?

Washington, D.C. students who win the voucher lottery earn lower math scores than lottery losers, especially in elementary school, concludes a U.S. Department of Education study. There was no significant difference in reading scores. “Parents overwhelmingly support this program,” said Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, a big fan of school choice in all its forms. Actually, the study didn’t find that, except in one area. Parents believe private schools are safer. “Previous resea

Well-off liberals choose mostly white schools

Joanne Jacobs

May 1, 2017
1 min

Well-off liberals choose mostly white schools

Parents who have a choice tend to choose high-scoring schools! And those schools usually have lots of affluent and middle-class white and Asian-American students and few low-income blacks and Latinos. Liberal parents say they value diversity but choose majority white schools for their children, reports Katie Taylor in the New York Times. A look at the history of District 3, which stretches along the West Side of Manhattan from 59th to 122nd Street, shows how administrators’ d

Special ed vouchers help some, but not all

Joanne Jacobs

Mar 24, 2017
2 min

Special ed vouchers help some, but not all

Many states offer vouchers for students with disabilities, writes Christina Samuels on Ed Week. “Many parents who accept those options say that the powers and protections that are outlined in the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act existed for them only in theory,” she writes. “Battling a school district over their child’s education was something they didn’t have the time, money, or knowledge to take on.” Cynthia Greaux uses vouchers to send her children to a Florida

Sowell’s rise: Eddie told him to switch schools

Joanne Jacobs

Mar 20, 2017
2 min

Sowell’s rise: Eddie told him to switch schools

Thomas Sowell Thomas Sowell was born poor and black in North Carolina in 1930. In a Wall Street Journal interview with Tunku Varadarajan, Sowell explains how he made it to the Ivy League and a career as an economist, social theorist and writer. When he was 9, his mother moved with him to Harlem “to live with relatives who promised a better life for the boy.” He visited a library for the first time. It was “wondrous.” A boy named Eddie, a family friend, became his guide. “I wa

Choice wars

Joanne Jacobs

Mar 6, 2017
2 min

Choice wars

New America’s Kevin Carey lamented “dismal voucher results” in the New York Times, which followed with an editorial calling choice an academic “failure.” However, “the vast majority of random-assignment studies of private school voucher programs — the “gold-standard” research method that even controls for unobserved factors like parental motivation have found choice producing equivalent or superior academic results, usually for a fraction of what is spent on public schools,”

Trump backs choice, but what’s the plan?

Joanne Jacobs

Mar 6, 2017
1 min

Trump backs choice, but what’s the plan?

President Trump wants to spend $20 billion on school choice for “disadvantaged youth.” Families “should be free to choose the public, private, charter, magnet, religious or home school that is right for them,” he said in his speech to Congress. Last week, Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos visited an Catholic school in Orlando, where most of the students, who are predominantly black and low-income, use Florida’s tax-credit scholarships to pay tuition. According to Pol

Choice saves millions in Milwaukee

Joanne Jacobs

Feb 16, 2017
2 min

Choice saves millions in Milwaukee

Milwaukee’s school voucher program will save taxpayers half a billion dollars in the long term, writes Jason Crye, executive director of Hispanics for School Choice. Graduation rates are higher for Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP) participants compared to comparable students who attended district schools, notes a Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty study by William D. Flanders and Corey DeAngelis. Crime rates are lower. By 2035, because of higher high school graduat

Old-time politics explains anti-DeVos crusade

Joanne Jacobs

Feb 9, 2017
2 min

Old-time politics explains anti-DeVos crusade

Against a nominee for a not-very-powerful Cabinet job, Democrats “went to the barricades,” writes Ross Douthat in a New York Times. Old-fashioned, pre-Trump politics explains the “holy war” against Betsy DeVos, he concludes. Once an ally of Betsy DeVos, Sen. Cory Booker opposed her nomination to head the Education Department. “The bulk of DeVos’s school-choice work places her only somewhat to the right of the Obama administration’s pro-charter-school positioning, close to cen

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