School choice week is freedom week

By Bobby Jindal, governor of Louisiana.

This week marks one of the most important weeks of the year — for reasons that have nothing to do with Sunday’s Super Bowl. For this week is National School Choice Week, in which parents, teachers, policymakers and legislators from both sides of the aisle rally to support the right of parents to choose the best education for their child. I couldn’t agree more with the important principles that National School Choice Week represents — namely, equal opportunity in education for millions of Americans.

On the most basic level, school choice represents the freedom to choose — empowering parents to select the best educational options for their sons and daughters. That could be a charter school, a private school, a religious school, home schooling, or even online learning. Governments should provide parents with the personalized and individualized tools they need to help their children excel academically.

That freedom to choose in turn will provide children with the freedom to succeed. With the right educational environment, teachers and academic training; students from all locations, income brackets and demographic groups will have better tools to compete in the global economy. We need to develop the talents of every American — no matter where he or she is from, and no matter the color of his or her skin — to maximize our country’s potential.

School choice also serves another important purpose — freeing low-income children from failing schools. No child should see his God-given talents go to waste because he is stuck in a failing school — and no parent should face the disempowerment that comes from knowing her son or daughter remains trapped in a poor school, and she lacks the financial means to move that child elsewhere. We can do better — and, by allowing parents dissatisfied with their school to move with their feet, school choice gives both high-performing and low-performing schools more incentive and motivation to improve their offerings.

Finally, school choice provides parents with freedom from the status quo — an educational-industrial complex that thinks bureaucrats, not parents, can best make decisions about the lives and futures of America’s children. It’s about pushing back when the then-head of Louisiana’s largest teachers’ union said low-income parents had “no clue” how to choose the right school for their children. And it’s even about standing up to the Attorney General of the United States, when the Department of Justice asked a court to block Louisiana’s school scholarship program on civil rights grounds — even though 90 percent of the program’s participants come from racial minority groups.

For here in Louisiana, we’ve put those principles to practice. Since we removed the cap on charters in 2009, we’ve authorized almost 200 charter schools throughout the state — that’s 70,000 kids who now have a choice about where they go to school. This last year, our Recovery School District became the nation’s first school district with 100 percent charter school enrollment. And the results are dramatic: The graduation rate in New Orleans has increased from 54.4 percent before Hurricane Katrina in 2004 to 72.8 percent; the percentage of New Orleans students scoring basic and above has increased from 35 percent to 63 percent; and the percentage of failing schools in New Orleans has dropped from 67 percent in 2005 to 17 percent.

We expanded our school choice scholarship program, which was initially confined to New Orleans, statewide. Parental satisfaction with the statewide scholarship program stands at a whopping 91.9 percent. We went even further though and created a dollar for dollar rebate for donations used to fund nonpublic school scholarships low-income students through our “school tuition organizations." Between 2008 and 2013, the percentage of students in the scholarship program who are proficient in third grade English language arts has grown by 20 percentage points and in math by 28 percentage points. Again and again, we’ve proven that giving more choice to parents is not only vital, but it gets results.

We also expanded access to online and dual enrollment courses for students across the state. This year, we’ve had over 19,000 students take advantage of our Course Choice program enrolling in advanced placement courses and career and technical courses that they otherwise wouldn’t have access to.

Because of our work in Louisiana, and the work of many hard-working legislators, teachers, and parents across the country, literally millions of young Americans now have school choice options. But we should not stop until all Americans have the same opportunities available to them. That’s why I fully support National School Choice Week — to bring that educational and economic freedom to every student, and every parent, across this great land. For freedom is a lamp that should not be left under a bushel basket.

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How to discredit official statistics in one easy lesson

Britain's most exclusive private schools have plummeted to the bottom of the performance league table after a change in the way GCSE scores are measured.

Not a single pupil at £30,000 a year boarding schools Eton, Harrow and Marlborough attained the Government's benchmark of five GCSEs at grades A*-C, including maths and English.

They schools fell foul of the Department for Education's decision not to measure the 'international GCSE' taught at Eton and other fee-paying institutions.

But Eton and other famous public schools were not the only ones to be caught by the Government's overhaul of the exams system.

Overall, the number of schools considered to be under-performing has doubled, figures published by the Department for Education revealed this morning.

The Department for Education insisted that the rise is down to two key reforms - a decision that only a teenager's first attempt at a GCSE would count in the annual performance tables, and a move to strip poor quality vocational qualifications out of the rankings.

But the increase is likely to cause concerns among school leaders, who have voiced fears that schools will be considered failing not just due to changes in the system but also 'volatility' in last summer's GCSE results.

The new league tables, published today, are based on data provided by the DfE and show how every school and college in England performed at GCSE, A-level and other academic and vocational qualifications in 2014.

They also indicate that dozens of secondaries, the majority of them private schools, have seen their results plummet to zero because some combinations of English GCSEs and some IGCSEs do not count in the rankings this year.

The IGCSE - or international GCSE - is sat by candidates overseas, but has long been favoured by many private schools and some leading state schools as a more rigorous assessment.

They were once heavily promoted by the coalition government as a way of increasing rigour in the exams system, but now it wants pupils to take the new 'more ambitious' GCSEs currently being phased into schools.

Many leading schools - such as Cheltenham Ladies' College, Eton, Harrow, Winchester, Oundle and Marlborough - are now reported as having 0 per cent of pupils attaining the government's benchmark of five GCSEs at grades A*-C including maths and English.

Richard Harman, chairman of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference (HMC), which represents many leading independent schools, said the decision to drop IGCSEs made a 'nonsense' of the tables.

'Several of the UK's most highly performing independent schools and others offering this excellent qualification will now appear to be bottom of the class in the government's rankings,' he said.

'This obviously absurd situation creates further confusion for parents as they cannot compare schools' performance accurately and transparently.

'Many HMC schools will continue to offer the IGCSE, as experience tells us it is rigorous and offers a good basis for sixth-form study.'

State secondaries are considered to be below the Government's floor target if fewer than 40 per cent of their pupils gain at least five C grades at GCSE, including English and maths, and students are not making good enough progress in these two core subjects.

In total, 330 schools fell below the benchmark this year, up from 154 last year.

Schools that fall below the threshold could face action, including being closed down and turned into an academy, or being taken over by a new sponsor.

However the DfE insisted that the floor standard is one of a number of factors that schools are judged on and falling below the benchmark does not automatically mean that a school will face intervention.

It also said that the two major changes to the exams system - which schools were told about around 18 months ago - do not affect pupils individual exam results.

Education Secretary Nicky Morgan said: 'For too long pupils were offered courses of no value to them and schools felt pressured to enter young people for exams before they were ready.

'By stripping out thousands of poor quality qualifications and removing resits from tables some schools have seen changes in their standings.

'But fundamentally young people's achievement matters more than being able to trumpet ever higher grades. Now pupils are spending more time in the classroom, not constantly sitting exams, and 90,000 more children are taking core academic subjects that will help them succeed in work and further study.'

Mrs Morgan added that the Government has 'raised the bar' and that schools are already rising to the challenge.

Earlier this week the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) claimed that the Government floor targets are 'pretty much irrelevant' this year due to the upheaval in the exams system.

ASCL general secretary Brian Lightman warned against judging the nation's schools on one set of exam results, saying too much has changed compared with 2013 to draw accurate comparisons from year to year.

Last summer's GCSE results showed a sharp drop in English grades, with 61.7 per cent of entries scoring A*-C, down 1.9 percentage points from last summer. This is believed to be the biggest drop in the qualification's history. Maths saw an opposite result, with 62.4 per cent of entries gaining an A*-C grade, up a massive 4.8 percentage points on 2013.

These are key subjects in the Government's floor target, and a lower-than-expected English result could push a school below the benchmark.

An analysis of the data indicates that this year's top school for GCSEs was King Edward VI Five Ways School, an academy in Birmingham. It entered 155 pupils for GCSEs and equivalent qualifications and all scored at least five C grades, including English and maths. It also had the highest average points score per pupil at 685.5.

The most improved school was the Charter Academy in Southsea which saw has seen its results rise from 39 per cent of students getting at least five Cs including the basics in 2011 to 83 per cent achieving this standard in 2014 - a 44 per cent rise.

Mr Lightman said: 'Performance tables should always be used with caution. They help parents to ask informed questions but they don't give the full picture.

'They highlight qualifications and aspects that the Government considers important, but which may not be relevant in a school's context.

'In addition, by only counting the first GCSE entry, for example, they may give a skewed picture of a school's performance.'

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said some schools appear to have been 'caught out' by the change in the way standards were measured, but believed they would quickly adapt to the new system.

He told LBC radio: 'When you change the measurement of school performance, you always get a dip and change in the relative standing of schools, and I think what happens is that some schools just aren't aware that the benchmark against which they are measured has changed, and then they adapt quickly and catch up.

'What we are seeing is partly a reflection not of schools slumping in the education they are providing kids, but that they are just not attuned yet to the new way in which they are being measured.'

A Department for Education spokesman said: 'As part of our plan for education we are making GCSEs more ambitious and putting them on a par with the best in the world, to prepare pupils for life in modern Britain.

'We have made important changes to a system that rewarded the wrong outcomes. We have stripped out qualifications that were of little value and are making sure pupils take exams when they are ready, not before.

'The changes may result in some variation across all types of schools, ensuring they are held to account for the right outcomes. We issued guidance to all schools on this.

'Young people can only succeed in life, and fulfil their potential, if they are given the tools to do so.'

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Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs): A Game Changer?

Comment from Australia

In 2013 the University of Queensland joined edX, the international consortium led by Harvard and MIT whose goal is to create and deliver learning through MOOCs, or Massive Open Online Courses. UQx, the University of Queensland's title for its MOOCs, was born.

By the end of 2014 there were nearly a quarter of a million enrolments from more than 250 countries and regions in UQx courses. That is nearly five times the University's current regular enrolment.In MOOCs all content, exercises and assessment are delivered on-line on the Web. The courses are free and available to anyone anywhere. They provide a marvellous way to showcase the University's teaching, and to help the University reach of the implied goals in its name: a universal learning resource.

But MOOCs also constitute a challenge to existing teaching and learning practices. Around the world many leading university teachers are putting their current course content on-line in mini-MOOCs, exploiting the "flipped classroom" to secure contact time with the students for discussion and tutorial work.

There is a broad shift towards student-driven "active" learning. Some MOOCs are now available for university credit. And there are degree courses taught entirely through MOOCs.

These are potentially disruptive influences. The University of Queensland is among an elite international group of universities leading the exploration of the possibilities of edX and online courses. But what will our University look like if the lecture is effectively replaced by online learning, and if students can study from anywhere on the planet?

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