I remember how it was -- JR
Thursday, February 15, 2024
Teacher Strike in Los Angeles Underscores Need for Education Choice
Public school teachers in Los Angeles are on strike, affecting half a million children attending some 900 public schools in the district.
Although students in the Los Angeles Unified School District—the second-largest school district in the country—can still access the schools, classes are being taught by substitute teachers while teachers outside are striking.
Many students are staying home—leaving some parents scrambling for child care.
Students who are going to school during the strike are passing the day playing games on iPads. Missing school or being relegated to busy work as a result of public education employee strikes are critical learning days lost.
Students in Los Angeles can ill afford that: Just 18 percent of fourth-graders can read proficiently, a figure which jumps just one point to 19 percent for eighth-graders. Only one-quarter of Los Angeles fourth-graders score proficient in math, a figure that declines to 18 percent for eighth-graders.
Among the striking teachers’ demands are increased pay and smaller class sizes, along with regulations on charter schools and a push to increase the number of nonteaching personnel, such as librarians and counselors.
Yet since 1992, nonteaching staff in California has increased nearly 50 percent, greatly outpacing the 24 percent increase in the number of students.
As economist Ben Scafidi of Kennesaw State University in Georgia found, had California just kept the nonteaching staff levels on par with increases in student enrollment, the state would have saved nearly $3 billion—which could have gone toward unfunded pension liabilities.
The state’s unfunded pension liability—the gap between benefits owed and funding available for that purpose—was $107 billion in 2018.
That $3 billion also could have funded 373,000 children with $8,000 education savings accounts.
The increase in nonteaching personnel only exacerbates existing spending issues in the district.
As Chad Aldeman points out, from 2001 to 2016, the Los Angeles Unified School District increased overall spending by more than 55 percent. Public employee benefits in the district increased 138 percent.
My colleague Jonathan Butcher closely followed teachers union strikes, which last year disrupted learning in Colorado, Arizona, Kentucky, Oklahoma, and West Virginia. He draws three important lessons from those strikes.
First, Butcher notes, strikes are hard on families, and send parents scrambling. Strikes can test parents’ patience, even when they support the demands of the strikers.
Second, it’s school districts, rather than state lawmakers, who are ultimately responsible for teacher salaries. Third, tax increases on California taxpayers will not necessarily lead to increased teachers’ salaries.
Ultimately, school districts should be transparent in their spending, making administrators’ salaries publicly available, and they should reduce—not increase—the number of nonteaching personnel.
Furthermore, they should reward excellent teachers by basing teachers’ compensation on job performance.
During the strike, more than 117,000 students in Los Angeles are still able to attend school without being affected by the walkouts; namely, those in charter schools.
So, most critically, parents should be empowered with choice, including more charter school options and private school choice options.
Increasing spending and the number of nonteaching personnel, and further regulating education choice options, such as charter schools, will only amplify a failed status quo in California.
Instead, California should immediately empower families to choose learning options that are effective and meet their needs by moving toward increased school choice opportunities.
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Why Universal Access to Education Freedom Accounts Is the Best Choice for New Hampshire
Nearly 1 million American students participated in a school-choice program last year, according to data compiled by EdChoice. Across the country 72 choice programs operate in 32 states. And who has the most popular program in the nation? New Hampshire.
With an Education Freedom Account (EFA), parents can customize their child’s education. Families can use EFA funds for private school tuition, tutoring, textbooks, special-needs therapies and more.
According to EdChoice, New Hampshire’s EFA policy is the most popular education choice policy in the nation. It has had the most growth per capita nationwide over the past academic year—a whopping 58%. The number of ESA students has grown from 3,025 in 2022–23 to 4,770 scholarships awarded in 2023–24.
Those numbers show that a lot of New Hampshire families want an education that better fits their children’s individual needs. No New Hampshire student who needs a better educational fit should be denied access to this popular and effective program, especially because of politics.
Unfortunately, politics is keeping most students out of the program right now.
Expanding Education Freedom and Choice to All
Though EFAs were intended to be accessible to all students, legislators agreed initially to enroll only children from lower-income families. That was necessary to address concerns that the program would struggle to succeed in its early years or, conversely, would prove too popular to manage effectively.
Now that New Hampshire’s EFAs are an undeniable success, it’s time to take off the training wheels.
Currently, fewer than half of students in the state are eligible for an EFA, which is limited only to students from families that earn no more than 350% of the federal poverty level. That comes to $109,200 for a family of four—less than the average annual household income of a firefighter married to a registered nurse in New Hampshire. Three House bills this year would expand access to the program. One, House Bill 1634, would remove that income cap so that any student eligible to enroll in a K-12 public school in the state could qualify for an EFA.
That income cap suppresses participation. Though New Hampshire’s EFA program ranks first in the country in administration and popularity, it ranks just 42nd in eligibility nationwide.
Other states have been expanding educational opportunities. Over the last three years, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Utah, and West Virginia all either enacted new universal education choice policies or expanded existing choice policies to all K-12 students.
Some people fear that universal education choice will cause a mass exodus from public schools. But that’s not what’s happened in other states. Though roughly 20 million students nationwide are eligible to participate in a school-choice program, fewer than 1 million students do.
The two largest school-choice programs in the country are Florida’s and Arizona’s. In both states, 100% of students are eligible for school choice. But only 10% of Florida students and 9% of Arizona students participate.
Here in New Hampshire, where 48% of students are eligible for EFAs, only 3% of students participate.
Education Freedom Accounts Save Taxpayers Money
Critics claim that making EFAs available to every student is unaffordable. That’s not true. U.S. Census estimates from 2022 (the most recent available) put the state’s school-age population at 189,600. How many of those students can be expected to use an EFA if all students become eligible?
Florida has the highest school choice take-up rate in the country, at 10%. Every other state with an education savings account or scholarship program has a lower take-up rate. New Hampshire’s rate of EFA use is about 3%. If we use New Hampshire’s current rate as the baseline and Florida’s as the high end, we could see a range of somewhere between 5,688 and 18,960 students enrolling in the program, though the higher number would take years to achieve and certainly would not happen overnight.
Currently, about 28% of EFA users were previous public-school students. As they received their per-pupil allotment from the Education Trust Fund before taking an EFA, they are not a new cost. Assuming the same switch rate if EFAs are expanded, a reasonable cost estimate would run somewhere between $21.5 million (at a 3% take-up rate) and $71.7 million (at a 10% take-up rate).
That might sound like a lot, but New Hampshire taxpayers spend $3.4 billion a year on K-12 public schools, and the state’s current Education Trust Fund ended the 2023 fiscal year with a surplus of $161 million. State budget officials project the Education Trust Fund to end the current fiscal year with a surplus of $232 million. Even at the high-end estimate, New Hampshire can easily afford universal EFA expansion.
And those figures don’t include local taxpayer savings. New Hampshire spends an average of $20,322 per pupil, with more than 60% of that coming from local taxation. That local portion will not be spent to educate students who use an EFA to purchase an education elsewhere.
Based on take-up rates between 3-10%, taxpayers can roughly estimate local government savings of between $86 million-$286 million were all students to become eligible for EFAs. Subtract the state costs of $21.5 million-$71.7 million and taxpayers would be looking at a net annual savings of somewhere between $64.5 million and $214 million.
Those are back-of-the-envelope calculations, but they give a general idea of the size of taxpayer savings possible if New Hampshire educates students for $5,255 per pupil instead of $20,322 per pupil. Far from a net loss for New Hampshire, Education Freedom Accounts are clearly a net gain.
School Choice Improves Public School Performance
Critics also falsely claim that school choice harms students who remain in traditional public schools. In fact, of 29 studies on the academic outcomes of public school students whose schools were faced with competition from policies, 26 found a net positive outcome for those students, one found no visible effect, and only two found a negative effect.
Moreover, the families of lower-performing students tend to be more attracted to school choice programs than those of higher-performing students. Florida State University research on Florida’s tax-credit scholarship program found that students who chose to enter the scholarship program had lower test scores in the year before they took a scholarship than did their classmates who opted not to participate. But after just a few years of using the scholarship, those students were out-performing their demographic peers.
Claims that school choice programs “cream” the best students and leave low-performing students behind in under-funded schools are false. Indeed, the reality is the very opposite: school choice benefits disadvantaged students most.
Fulfilling the Promise of Public Education
When they aren’t fear mongering about empty public schools, EFA opponents demagogue the issue by shouting that EFA expansion would have taxpayers foot the bill for educating the children of “millionaires and billionaires.”
But, of course, that’s exactly what public schools do. Every child, regardless of income, is eligible to attend his or her district public school. No one argues that the public education provided by district schools should be means tested.
Neither traditional public district schools nor public charter schools have income caps. Education Freedom Accounts shouldn’t either.
The promise of public education is that every child should have access to an education that meets his or her individual learning needs. Education Freedom Accounts help fulfill that promise by empowering families with the freedom and flexibility to choose the learning environments that work best for their children.
Expanding this opportunity to every child would improve outcomes for students, including those who prefer traditional public schools, while saving taxpayers money. For families, students and taxpayers, it’s the best option.
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More Sydney parents than ever opt for private schools
Many government schools are so dire that you can't blame them
The state’s private schools are enrolling more students than at any time on record despite soaring cost-of-living pressures and fee hikes that have pushed tuition costs above $40,000 a year at numerous Sydney private schools.
Official data released on Wednesday shows the proportion of students enrolled in NSW public schools has fallen for the fifth year running, dropping to 62.9 per cent in 2023. It is the lowest share of students attending state schools in the past two decades of reporting.
The exodus from public schools in NSW is being driven in part by the establishment of low-fee private schools in Sydney’s north- and south-west growth corridors, where the construction of new public schools over the past decade has failed to keep pace with population growth.
Most other states and territories have experienced a similar trend, the figures released by Australian Bureau of Statistics show.
In NSW, 785,847 students were enrolled in public schools last year, 267,253 in Catholic schools and 195,356 in private schools. The proportion attending private and Catholic high schools is approaching half of all secondary students, rising to 43 per cent last year.
University of Sydney education researcher Helen Proctor said the issues public schools faced were widely publicised, such as teacher shortages, which could be contributing to parents considering private options.
“There has been a long-term disparagement of public schools, there’s been many people talking them down,” Proctor said. “It is very hard for public school leaders. If they don’t talk about the crisis and the resources, how are they going to get anything done? On the other hand, if parents hear about teacher shortages, they’re naturally going to get very worried.”
A separate snapshot of data provided by the Association of Independent Schools of NSW shows 65,000 students, or 28 per cent of those enrolled in the private system, are attending a school that charges $20,000 or more.
About 60,000 pupils, or a quarter of all those enrolled in the private system, attend a school with fees below $5000 a year. Another 72,000 pupils attend a school that charges between $5000 and $10,000.
Between April 2022 and March last year, repayments on a million-dollar mortgage increased by more than $2000 a month. A survey conducted by National Australia Bank in 2022 found one in 10 parents were relying on family members, including grandparents, to pay tuition costs.
Catholic Schools NSW chief executive Dallas McInerney said systemic schools have grown at the fastest rate since 2013. They typically charge up to $3000 a year, with substantial sibling discounts.
“These numbers are a huge vote of confidence from parents because parents know they get quality and affordable education, and that their children thrive in our schools,” McInerney said.
“We provide high job prospects, further study pathways and create great citizens. It’s a massive contribution to society.”
Association of Independent Schools of NSW chief executive Margery Evans said the bulk of the growth in independent schools was in the lower and mid-fee bands under $10,000.
“The main growth has been low and mid-fee schools, many in Sydney’s north-west and south-west growth areas. We’ve also seen increasing numbers in regional schools including in Tweed Heads. These schools are affordable for parents paying off mortgages, and appealing because they are kindergarten to year 12 campuses,” she said.
“There are also almost 20 faiths represented in the independent sector across 350 schools, including Christian, Buddhist, Islamic and Jewish schools. These schools provide an education that reflects parents’ values and beliefs. Forty years ago, there weren’t any Islamic schools. There are (now) 29, with 22,000 students.”
NSW Education Minister Prue Car said over the past five years, NSW has seen the biggest drop in the country when it comes to the share of students in government schools.
“It is no coincidence that we have had 24,000 students leave the public system at the same time the previous Government oversaw a teacher shortage crisis,” she said. “The government is undertaking urgent work to repair the states’ education system, by investing in our teaching workforce and addressing the chronic teacher shortage facing our state.”
Mother Jasmine De Leon chose to send her youngest two children to a local private school, Norwest Christian College, near her home in Quakers Hill, partly because it was a co-educational pre-school to year 12 campus.
“My kids have been going to the same school since they were four years old, and having that pre-kindergarten year was what really interested us,” De Leon said.
“There is also a big sense of community and a structured environment. They also offer smaller classes and a variety of extracurricular subjects.”
She considered having her two children sit the public selective high school test, but after five years at their current school they “had become comfortable and had established strong friendship groups.”
“It’s also at the lower end for private school fees, and it was affordable for us and worth it when considering what the school could offer”.
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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