British private schools may relinquish charity status to escape hostile Leftist bureaucrats

SOME independent schools may voluntarily give up charitable status to escape the threat of "hostile voices" and "sabre-rattling" by regulators at the Charity Commission. Schools exploring the move believe it would have only a limited impact on their finances and would free them from rules that could prove intrusive and bureaucratic. From next year the presumption that all education is charitable and so can enjoy tax breaks will end. Instead, schools will have to prove they provide a "public benefit", for example, access for poor families.

Many head teachers have complained at what they see as threats from some Charity Commission executives. "Someone, somewhere [in the Charity Commission] has got an antiindependent school agenda," said Bernard Trafford, chairman of the Headmasters' & Headmistresses' Conference, which represents more than 250 independent schools. Trafford, headmaster of Wolverhampton grammar school, said that while abandoning charitable status would "go against our heart", the possibility was now being considered by his school and others. "A lot of us will explore this option now these kind of crazy, hostile voices are being floated again," he said.

Rosie Chapman, executive director of policy and effectiveness at the commission, has said it could freeze bank accounts and "go nuclear" against schools that fail to meet the public benefit test.

Steps being taken by schools to prove public benefit include increasing bursaries for pupils from poorer families and opening sports facilities. Moves such as sponsoring city academies are also being explored. Lord Adonis, the schools minister, will use a speech next week to the Girls' Schools Association of independent schools to promote academies.

Charitable status brings independent schools an estimated 100m pounds in tax breaks a year. But schools have been advised that if they turn themselves into companies, Vat could not under European law be imposed on school fees. They have estimated that the other tax benefits of charitable status could be replaced by a fee increase of 2.7%-5%.

Chris Woodhead, the Sunday Times columnist who chairs the education firm Cognita, said he was in discussions to acquire a number of schools worried about whether they could survive as independent charities under the law. He said: "If the public benefit test means, as it seems it will, that [charity] schools have to devote more and more time and resources to propping up state schools, what does that mean for the education of their own children and how will their parents react?"

Andrew Hind, chief executive of the Charity Commission, said: "The public benefit requirement is not something any charity should fear. It is an opportunity for charities to articulate even more clearly the value they bring."

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Israel in the classroom

Much of the discussion on university campuses places Israel in a uniquely hostile and one-dimensional framework, using special criteria and double standards, while erasing the context of terror, war threats of mass destruction. The bulk of courses, guest lectures, conferences, rallies, film festivals, boycott and divestment campaigns, and other activities related to Israel focus on "the occupation", as if history began in June 1967, or, in other cases, with the spontaneous creation of the Palestinian refugee crisis in 1948. Palestinians are consistently and patronizingly portrayed as hopeless victims, Israel is painted as the arch villain.

To counter these distortions, courses, lectureships, debates, and other special programs in Israel Studies must confront this false paradigm. These and related activities need to place Israel back into context, if not as an ordinary country, at least as part of history and in a comparative framework among the countries of the world. Israel is not perfect and should not be portrayed in an idealized manner, no more than it should be demonized by boycotts and through terms such as "apartheid" and "ethnic cleansing".

While the Arab-Israeli context cannot and should not be ignored, it is important to expand the discussion to include many other dimensions. These include culture, economics, society, politics and law - all standard elements in the examination of any nation. The Jewish cultural renaissance, including literature, art, dance, architecture and film is a central part of the Israeli reality. In this realm, the role of the revival of the Hebrew language and the tension resulting from 4000 years of history placed into a modern secular framework provides important insights that are not restricted to Israel. Different aspects serve as an interesting basis for comparison with other societies attempting to bridge the ancient and modern, such as India, Turkey and China. And while the generations of conflict and violence certainly impact on Israeli culture, and are reflected in the writing of Agnon and Oz, for example, these are not the only significant factors, and should not be over-emphasized.

Similarly, in examining the complexities of Israeli society, there are many aspects that can be analyzed usefully in a wider comparative framework. The tensions over the role of religion in modern Israel can be assessed alongside similar situations in countries with a dominant Moslem context, particularly Iran but also Egypt and the North African nations; or relative to Christian dominated societies in North America and Europe.

In the political realm, Israel provides an interesting and significant case study among parliamentary democracies. The party system, which is a relic from the pre-state period and the Zionist movement, was developed in the context of European democratic movements of the 19th century, and can be compared and analyzed in this framework. The instability of a multi-party system and the influence of these groups on the economy and in social life are often compared to modern Italy and some of the newly democratic countries of Eastern Europe. Here too, Israel is by no means sui generis, and should not be presented as such.

The double standards, myths and singling out of Israel have spilled over to economics, including recent allegation by Naomi Klein and other ideologues that stress and overemphasize the military factors (more demonization). Some of the factors that explain the steady growth in the Israeli economy are relatively unique - such as the Russian aliya that increased the population by one-quarter in a decade. Many olim are well educated and skilled workers, and this contributed to rapid growth. But broader factors are involved, including the ideological transition from a socialist system controlled by political operatives in labor unions to a more open economy, a significant decrease in government control, and increased competition.

Returning to the conflict, the responses of Israel to terror and warfare should be broadened from the simplistic approach in which Palestinians are victims and Israel is uniquely evil. Instead, in this as in other areas of academic research and teaching, a comparative approach is called for, based on examining other ethno-national conflicts and peace making efforts (more or less successful). Terms such as "occupation", demands for a "right of return", a separation barrier (or "apartheid wall") and similar dimensions also apply to the conflict in Cyprus between Greek Christians and Muslim Turks. In Sri Lanka, the majority Sinhalese have been attempting to prevent minority Tamils from forming a breakaway state. As in the Israeli case, this conflict includes suicide bombing attacks and more conventional forms of warfare. Other examples with similarities, as well as important difference, include Northern Ireland and the Balkans (Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia).

The same approach is applicable when dealing with human rights claims and in discussions of Israeli responses to terror within the framework of international law. The vast majority of such discussions on university campuses again treat Israel as a singular case, without context or comparative perspective. Instead of segregation and discrimination based on ideology and interest, the study and teaching of Israel, across the various disciplines, needs to be re-integrated into the general academic discourse. The sooner this happens, the better.

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Lessons from India

School choice only helps education

Illinois schools got bad news recently: About 30 percent more schools failed under the federal No Child Left Behind Act this year than last. But to fix these schools, the act first needs to be fixed.

The act's objective is to ensure basic reading and math competency in every child. But it is failing even in this modest task because it is applying a totally backward strategy: Instead of promoting national standards and parental accountability, as is the case in many countries, including India, it is doing the reverse: fostering local standards and federal accountability. This has consigned kids to a low quality education while disenfranchising schools and teachers, the very opposite of what the act set out to do.

Since 2002, the act has required the 90 percent or so of school districts nationwide that receive federal money for at-risk kids to test 3rd- to 8th-graders in reading and math. The schools also are required to report their test results broken down by income, ethnicity, disability status and other categories.

The act mandates what proficiency gains schools must post every year to receive a passing grade or face penalties. For instance, the Illinois schools that passed this year increased their proficiency rate both overall and in every subgroup to 55 percent from 47.5 percent last year. By 2014, all kids in all subgroups have to be proficient for their schools to receive Uncle Sam's blessing. Schools that fail a few years in a row can lose federal funding.

This is nothing to sneer at given that this funding constitutes more than 10 percent of Illinois' $20 billion-plus education budget. But the huge loophole in the act is that it allows states to define what constitutes "proficiency." This has triggered a wholesale "dumbing down" of standards. The Chicago Tribune recently reported that 572 more Illinois schools would have failed this year if the state had not tinkered with its math and reading exams. This means that many Illinois kids are still stuck in failing schools but don't even know it. What's more, given that not all states have lowered their standards equally, it has become far more difficult to tell how kids in one state stack up against another. This is contrary to trends elsewhere in the world.

In India, every kid in every school must take a national board exam after the 10th and 12th grades (before that, schools administer their own annual exams at the end of each grade). The "boards" are far from perfect. But they ensure basic learning and allow apples-to-apples comparisons across schools. For example, students who score 75 percent on a math exam all can safely be assumed to have the same proficiency level regardless of whether they went to a big or small, city or rural, school.

But, unlike the United States, the Indian government does not penalize schools that don't meet its expectations. Parents do. India has a robust private kindergarten through 12th-grade market that almost all middle-class and above families use. James Tooley, an education professor in England, found that 75 percent of children even in some urban slums attend private schools. The upshot is that parents can yank their kids out of substandard schools that don't prepare them adequately for the "boards" and enroll them in ones that do. The exams simply put crucial information in their hands to make comparisons.

This might seem counterintuitive to the American teaching establishment given its legendary hostility to school choice, but parental accountability is actually empowering for teachers as well. Because parents in India pick the schools their children attend, they are far less prone to blame teachers when their children underperform -- and far more to prod their kids to take responsibility. Even when a few disgruntled parents do pull their kids, they don't threaten the financial health of the whole institution. This is in stark contrast to No Child Left Behind, where a few failing kids could jeopardize federal funding for the entire school.

The No Child Left Behind Act is up for renewal this year. Lawmakers serious about its promise of leaving no child behind ought to look for reforms that give parents a yardstick by which to measure school performance and school choice.

There are many candidates for a national exam that are superior to India's "boards" which, thanks to the ossified federal bureaucracy that administers it, are based on outdated pedagogy. America's private testing industry has produced stellar high school exams, such as the ACT, that give a fairly accurate measure of student knowledge. These can be adapted to lower grades.

Meanwhile, obstacles preventing many states from embracing school choice are federal regulations that bar federal money from flowing to schools that don't meet the gazillion regulations concerning teacher training, lunch programs and so on. Rolling back these regulations should be top on the list of the No Child Left Behind reforms.

None of this will be easy. But legislators can't shirk this assignment if they want American students to compete with their global peers.

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