Wednesday, February 07, 2007

Utahns win a hard-fought victory for school choice

The late Milton Friedman, who was the nation's foremost advocate for school choice, would be more than pleased with the news coming out of Utah. By a vote of 38-37, the Utah House last Thursday approved the first-ever statewide universal school choice plan. Despite the close vote, the program now faces relatively smooth sailing. The bill now goes to the state Senate, which twice before has voted for a similar program. Gov. Jon Huntsman, a Republican, won election in 2004 in part by campaigning for school choice, and he has said he will likely sign the final bill.

Until now, school choice has been an idea that works but has only been spottily implemented, in part due to the fierce opposition of teacher unions and the rest of the educational-industrial complex. Maine and Vermont have allowed students in rural districts without their own high school to attend private schools for over a century. Struggling inner-city school districts in Milwaukee, Cleveland and Washington allow low-income parents to obtain vouchers. My colleague Jason Riley has noted the extensive academic research finding that where choice is allowed, parents are much more satisfied with their children's education, and local public schools have improved their performance.

Utah's plan is modest, and at the same time revolutionary. It would reimburse parents sending their children to private schools between $500 and $3,000 a year based on their family income. Parents whose kids currently attend private school would not be eligible unless their income was low enough. But all new kindergartners would qualify, so that by 2020 all private school students would be eligible for vouchers.

State Rep. Steve Urquhart, the bill's chief sponsor, says the breakthrough in winning House approval was the realization that it wouldn't harm public education. The bill stipulated that for five years after a voucher student left the public system, the district would get to keep much of the money the state had paid for his education. Given that the average district gets $3,500 from the state and the average voucher is expected to be $2,000, a typical school district would gain some $1,500 every time a student left its system.

Mr. Urquhart was so confident of his math that he started an interactive Web site modeled after the interactive encyclopedia Wikipedia. He posted his bill on it and invited comments. Thousands of people logged on to www.politicopia.com and participated. "If anyone can show evidence (not just alarmist rhetoric) that public education does not come out financially ahead with this bill, post your arguments and data in the comment section," Mr. Urquhart challenged his readers. No one was able to effectively rebut him.

By the time the bill came up for a floor vote, the debate was more philosophical and substantive than demagogic. "The debate was of the highest caliber that I've seen in my 13 years here," said Speaker Greg Curtis. "I find it fascinating that not a single person spread the myth that [choice] would be harmful to public education."

There are other reasons that school choice supporters were able to surmount the political odds and win in Utah. It's worth pondering them as the battle to offer parents alternatives to the one-size-fits-all public-school model moves to other states.

* School choice supporters were persistent and relentless. Doug Holmes, chairman of Parents for Choice in Education, and Patrick Byrne, chairman of Overstock.com, are both passionate believers that every child deserves a quality education. Although Utah is known for its large Mormon population (62% as of 2004), Mr. Holmes points out that the biggest beneficiaries from the enhanced options parents will have in Utah will be the state's surging Hispanic population, now about one-ninth of Utah's 2.6 million people.

Mr. Byrne gave $500,000 last year to fund private scholarships for low-income children. He also gave money to a political action committee that leveled the playing field in education politics by ensuring that school choice supporters wouldn't be steamrollered out of office by the powerful Utah Education Association. "It's no longer a question of legislators asking if they should vote their conscience or vote with the union," says Elisa Peterson, the director of Parents for Choice in Education. "Legislators who vote for school choice know we will be there to defend them--and if they vote against choice, they know there will be consequences. The teachers union isn't the only game in town anymore."

* A profile in courage. The choice bill would have gone down to defeat had Rep. Brad Last not changed his vote. Just last month, Mr. Last, himself a former public-school official, voted against the bill as a member of the Education Committee. Last Thursday, he voted "yes," prompting gasps from the visitor's gallery. "I believe history will demonstrate to supporters and detractors that this is a good choice," he told a hushed chamber. "To those of you in public education who want to kill me right now, I'm really sorry. I understand your pain. I would ask you, go read this bill, and don't say a word to me until you read this bill."

Another surprise supporter of the bill was freshman Rep. Keith Grover, a vice principal at a junior high school, who said during the floor debate that "everyone knows how I make a living" and that he had wrestled with his conscience on how to vote. He said he believed public education needed the innovation that choice could bring.

* Public opinion matters. Over several years, school choice supporters were able to shift the debate in their direction. A poll taken last month for Salt Lake City's Deseret News and KSL-TV found that 48% of Utah residents favored a government voucher or tax-credit for private school tuition and 46% opposed the concept. A year earlier, the same poll gave choice opponents had the advantage by 54% to 40%.

Groups such as the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation were tireless promoters of the benefits of choice. They helped sponsor trips by public officials and civic leaders to Milwaukee, where they could see a functioning education alternative in action. "Public-school officials in Milwaukee told them that the city had redefined the concept of public education," says Robert Enlow, executive director of the Friedman Foundation. "It had become education that truly served the public, whether it be more flexible public schools, charter schools or private schools."

Gradually, the message sank in that choice was all about making public education work, rather than dismantling it. "I come from a family of eight children," says Ted Gardiner, a student from Taylorsville, Utah. "Each one of my siblings is a very unique individual. My mother has often said she wanted to sent me to a private school. However, eight children is a lot of mouths to feed, and it was never feasible for us." When school choice becomes law, it will be.

Rep. Urquhart said the public also responded to the argument that no school district would be docked money if students left for private schools, and indeed that such districts would actually gain income. He said it was a necessary political concession. "It doesn't make a lot of sense, if [districts] lose a student, to be financially rewarded," he told the Deseret News. But he said it was essential to communicate that the bill was about enhancing opportunity and not taking money from public education.

* Leadership counts. Rep. Curtis made it clear after he became House speaker in 2004 that school choice was a major priority for him. He steered a choice bill to within a few votes of victory in 2005 and vowed to try again. "We do not reward excellence in education," he told State Legislatures magazine. "We don't fund it, we don't demand it, and don't encourage it. If we did we would have every ability to compete at the global level in math and science."

Unions representing teachers and other government employees took notice of his apostasy and vowed to punish it. Last year, they mounted a concerted effort to defeat him. They came close; Mr. Curtis won re-election last November by only 20 votes. But far from being intimidated, the speaker realized that the best way he could survive politically was if he passed choice and made people realize it worked.

Rob Bishop is a former speaker of the Utah House who also worked as a high school teacher for 28 years before being elected to Congress as a Republican in 2002. He told me Mr. Curtis is demonstrating all the qualities of leadership voters say they want but don't always demand. "He understood he was on the right side of history," he says. After all, Mr. Bishop notes, that "choice in education is already all around us."

He's right. Kids under 5 now get federal day-care vouchers. College students get Pell grants. Even at the elementary and secondary levels, many kids with special educational or behavioral challenges are sent to private schools at state expense. Mr. Bishop says, "It makes sense to expand the existing choices we offer to every child in K-12, and that is what Utah is now leading the way in doing."

Source





Another brainstorm from Britain

The traditional school timetable should be abandoned and replaced by a radical approach in which subjects are taught together and entire weeks or days are turned over to single topics, the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority will say today.

The authority is to propose the changes as part of its plans to reform the Key Stage 3 curriculum for 11 to 14-year-olds. Mick Waters, its director, told The Times that schools needed to find better ways of managing time to ensure that children were not turned off learning in the crucial first few years at secondary school.

Teachers will be encouraged to engage in joint subject teaching across a range of subjects and lessons will be divided into different lengths, some lasting no more than a few minutes. The proposals have been prompted by concerns about pupil disaffection; a dip in performance among pupils in their first years of secondary school; and the high dropout rates at 16. Britain has one of the worst rates among industrialised countries for dropping out of school at 16.

Resolving this problem has to go farther than merely changing the subject matter that pupils are taught. It also needs to focus on the ways they learn, Mr Waters told The Times. "We have to show students the link between the subjects so that learning makes better sense to them," he said. "If we can make them see the relevance of what they learn in school to life outside school, they may want to stay on in education."

Science lessons on anatomy, for example, could be taught jointly by science and PE teachers, helping pupils to see the practical application and relevance, say, of theoretical learning about how muscles or ball-and-socket joints work.

Other combinations could work just as well: languages and music (learning a song in French) or languages and financial literacy (learning how to convert different currencies); history and geography (studying patterns of local settlements); or maths and PE (collecting and charting scores and fastest times). "Wouldn't it be lovely if the PE teacher turned up in the history lesson to show examples of how great sportsmen through the ages had exercised leadership and control?" Mr Waters said. He added, however, that some subjects would need to be taught separately and in depth so that youngsters could build up a solid body of knowledge and facts in core areas.

He likened the new approach to the preparation of a mixed salad: "Imagine the programme of study in a school as the ingredients in a salad. The way you put them together to create the salad is the crucial bit in making it appetising. There is nothing to say that a school has to offer 40 minutes of tomatoes, followed by 40 minutes of lettuce, followed by double onions. "The challenge for schools is to work out which ingredients need to be taught separately, so that children quarry learning in real depth; which ingredients need to be taught by the drip-feed method for a few minutes every day; and which can be taught jointly."

Under guidance accompanying today's Key Stage 3 document, schools may also decide to adopt a total immersion approach to a subject, such as ICT, and to spend an entire week studying it, with teachers in every subject area focusing uniquely on the use of ICT in their own field for that week. Schools may also decide that some subjects, such as modern languages or maths, are best learnt by the drip-feed method, with constant repetition several times during the day. "They might be timetabled for a few minutes two or three times a day," Mr Waters said.

Timetables could also be adapted for different groups of children. Those who arrive at secondary school unable to swim, for example, could do only swimming in games and PE until they can swim. Those who can already swim could experiment with a range of new sports. Mr Waters said that schools also needed to adopt a new approach to skills. Pupils are currently taught research skills in each of their separate subjects, when equally these could be taught separately in a dedicated class to avoid repetition.

Source




The "dance of the lemons" in Australia too

A familiar "dance" to California and NYC -- where incompetent teachers are sent from school to school rather than being fired

Incompetent teachers are being shuffled between schools rather than being sacked while many new graduates are being put in charge of the most difficult students. And principals have little say in fixing the problem because they have little control over who they can hire and fire, according to Teachers and the Waiting Game, a new paper that argues for deregulation of teacher appointments in the public system. "Principals in NSW and other states have no say over who is dismissed from the school. They're not the person who decides whether a teacher is incompetent or whether they are guilty of misconduct," said the report's author, Jennifer Buckingham, from the Centre for Independent Studies.

Teachers who failed to prepare lessons or did not understand a syllabus were difficult to discipline or dismiss because a principal's "hands were often tied" by state education departments that were in the grip of teacher unions, Ms Buckingham said. "The process of examining a teacher's performance can take up to 12 months and it can happen in a couple of schools before eventually the teacher is dismissed."

Apart from Victoria, state and territory education departments often decide by whom and where teachers are recruited, often based on length of service at a school or seniority. Unlike Victoria, where principals can immediately advertise jobs, other state principals must choose from a department list of eligible teachers before advertising externally. "For example (in NSW) if a school needs a maths teacher, rather than advertising or selecting candidates from an employment list, the school will contact the department and they are sent a teacher, most of the time with no consultation," Ms Buckingham said.

The result had been a trend to send new graduate teachers to the most disadvantaged schools. "In order to work your way up to the top of the (school transfer) queue to be offered other jobs throughout the state, you have to put in time in a school that is hard to staff - and the reason those schools are hard to staff are because the kids are hard to teach," Ms Buckingham said.

In NSW, 30 per cent of graduate teachers were concentrated in 3 per cent of schools that were difficult to staff either because a high proportion of students had behavioural problems or were from non-English speaking backgrounds, she said.

NSW Education Minister Carmel Tebbutt rejected Ms Buckingham's thesis. "In 2005 we reformed staffing procedures to give local school communities more opportunities to choose their principals and, for the first time, their classroom teachers. In 2006, we introduced legislation to streamline the process of identifying, assisting, and if necessary, removing poor performing teachers."

Australian Education Union president Pat Byrne said the teacher shortage was not related to centralised recruitment processes. "The issue is not whether the school has the say or the selection, the issue is whether or not people perceive the position to be worthwhile in terms of the salary, conditions and accommodation," Ms Byrne said."

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"


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