Parents Scrub Toilets So Their Kids Can Attend This Christian School

One Christian school in Texas provides such a great education opportunity for children that parents are cleaning toilets at the school to afford tuition.

Braveheart Christian Academy in Arlington, Texas, provides children in preschool through sixth grade with an individualized approach to education and classroom sizes with a student-teacher ratio of 8 to 1.

Administrators say Braveheart focuses on a holistic approach, attempting to build both content knowledge and Christian character in each student.

Headmistress Chrystal Bernard told The Daily Signal that Braveheart individualizes education by assessing students’ gaps in reading, math, and social skills when they arrive at the school via placement tests—then each student’s teacher and parents work together over regular meetings to ensure those gaps are filled.

Bernard says that parents are thrilled to have such individualized feedback.

“We go over what specific skills the student has mastered, what they’re familiar with, and what they need to be introduced to,” the headmistress said. “Parents then know what needs to be addressed, supported, and worked on at home.”

Student classrooms are comprised of grade bands, rather than individual grades. Preschool and kindergarten are grouped together, along with first through third grades and fourth through sixth grades. Students are sorted regularly into subject-tasked small groups where teachers provide specialized instruction.

Braveheart students practice their skills in small, focused groups. (Photo courtesy of Braveheart Christian Academy)
Bernard, who used to teach math in public school, provides detailed instruction in math while others provide science projects, history lessons, physical education, and so on.

Bernard explained that grouping students into these “bands” provides a model of mentorship and discipleship among the students.

“It’s very community-heavy,” she said.

Bernard shared an example of her students’ success while testifying last week before the Texas Senate Education Committee. When one fourth grade student joined Braveheart, she said, his academic performance lagged at a first grade level. In just over a year, he has caught up academically with his peers.

Braveheart Christian Academy also runs a summer program to prevent learning loss between the spring and fall semesters. In the mornings, students participate in reading and math exercises to keep their minds sharp—then enjoy an afternoon full of fun activities such as moviegoing or swimming.

These “academic retention summer camps,” Bernard told The Daily Signal, are well attended by local children enrolled in both private and public schools.

Braveheart was founded amid the fallout from the COVID-19 school-closure disaster. The Bernards had just started homeschooling their children before COVID-19 reached pandemic status. As schools were closed and students in public schools suffered, word of the Bernards’ homeschooling approaches began to travel.

Before long, parents were asking the Bernards to tutor their children. Tutoring children individually was a stellar success, and the demand continued to grow until the Bernards founded Braveheart Christian Academy in autumn of 2021.

“If we don’t help these kids, life is not going to be the best for their kids or their generation, or the following generation,” Bernard said. “It’s a legacy we’re investing in.”

Tuition at Braveheart is $7,000 per year, which goes toward paying teacher salaries and building costs. Bernard told The Daily Signal that neither she nor her husband Joshua draw a salary from the school.

Chrystal and Joshua Bernard also are co-pastors at Believer’s Connection Church in Arlington.

Although many parents desire to see their children attend Braveheart Christian Academy, they are unable to afford it. In an effort to provide some assistance, Braveheart runs a program in which parents may volunteer at the school for up to eight hours per month at a rate of $25 an hour.

Parents do office work, clean classrooms, scrub toilets and restrooms, and perform other tasks to make sure their kids can take advantage of the opportunities at Braveheart.

Parents aren’t the only ones willing to make sacrifices to be a part of Braveheart. Two teachers took pay cuts by leaving the Dallas public school system to teach there. Bernard laments being unable to pay her teachers more, requiring some to DoorDash, babysit, and nanny after hours.

For both her students and teachers, Bernard says, she is hopeful Texas will pass a bill providing education savings accounts for families to spend on opportunities such as Braveheart:

https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/04/05/parents-scrub-toilets-so-kids-can-attend-christian-school/

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Higher Education and the Law of Diminishing Returns

Early in the introductory college economics course, instructors talk about the Law of Diminishing Returns. An illustration: A farmer has a 100-acre field on which he wants to harvest wheat. If he does all the work himself, he can get 5,000 bushels of grain. With a second worker helping him, he can get 8,000 bushels, and with two helpers, 9,000. As more workers are added, output rises, but by sharply diminishing amounts.

Another example: The first ice cream cone a consumer eats adds a lot of pleasure (what economists call “utility”), but if the consumer is forced to eat lots of them, by the sixth or seventh cone the consumer may actually be uncomfortable from consuming too much of a good thing.

Like most things in life, higher education is subject to the Law of Diminishing Returns. Unfortunately, academics often ignore it, which leads to a massive misallocation of resources as government policy pushes us past the point of diminishing returns with college attendance.

Let’s start with the most fundamental question: How long should a student go to college in order to be certified as having “graduated,” or as having had a learning achievement justifying granting a bachelor’s degree? At America’s first university, Harvard, and nearly all others, the answer typically is four years, with a “year” in academia (unlike for the rest of humankind) defined as roughly 32 weeks of instruction. (The other 20 weeks in the calendar year were originally devoted to helping plant and harvest crops on the family farm.)

Yet at Britain’s first university, Oxford, a bachelor’s degree is typically awarded after three years of even more abbreviated (24 weeks of instruction) annual terms.

Why did it take Thomas Jefferson, a formidable intellect and prodigious bibliophile, only two years to graduate from the College of William and Mary, when our most recent presidents, with far lesser reputations for erudition, took twice as long to earn their degrees?

During a traditional liberal-arts education (which, increasingly, is being shunned in favor of more vocational-type training), students take foundational courses in their freshman and sophomore years, perhaps developing a good familiarity with literary titans and even mastering the rudiments of a foreign language or solidifying their knowledge of basic science and math. Students usually also gain at least a core understanding of the subject of their “major.” The junior and senior years are then devoted to deeper study of the major and the completion of a variety of electives.

All of that may be enlightening, but at some point, diminishing returns set in.

Using my subject of economics as an example, the critically important concepts are introduced in the first course or two: the importance of scarcity and opportunity costs, how market prices and competition help allocate resources efficiently, how and why output varies over time, and so forth. In the third and fourth year, students take specialized courses in relatively narrow areas of economics: money and banking, public finance, game theory, international trade issues, labor economics, statistics, and econometrics.

Rarely do graduating students use much of the knowledge gained in these latter classes extensively in the postgraduate world—with the exception being some students who go on to get advanced economics degrees.

On the basis of six decades of teaching, I would say that probably 60 percent of the important economic insights for the average student are learned in the first Principles of Economics survey course. The next 10 courses provide the other 40 percent. The Law of Diminishing Returns is at work here, and I think the same applies to most other academic disciplines.

Nevertheless, the cost to the student of college remains roughly the same in the senior year as it was in the first year of study. But the educational benefits sharply decline. Many students might want to leave after, say, three years, but the monetary “sheepskin effect” of having a diploma is substantial. Most employers are dazzled by the degree itself, not the student’s useful knowledge. If degree-completion were shortened to the European three-year standard, student costs would decline about 25 percent, and student borrowing to finance college would fall dramatically.

So why doesn’t it happen?

For one thing, money: Colleges want four years or even more of tuition fees per student, not just three years. For another, faculty want to teach relatively esoteric, low-demand advanced courses that seniors might feel compelled to take rather than packed courses with freshmen or sophomores.

Moreover, the colleges control the accrediting organizations that help enforce the four-year graduation standard. A school wanting to switch to a three-year degree would likely get flack from its general accreditor, which is essentially controlled by the competing schools it accredits. Accreditation reeks of monopoly elements, disastrous conflicts of interest, and other maladies that are worthy of a few essays of their own on another day. [Editor’s note: Read the Martin Center’s most recent take on the subject here.]

If colleges went to a three-year bachelor’s degree with internship/apprenticeship opportunities, students could get a good general education and solid training in a major field of study, along with practical experience in the real world of work.

Earnings data suggest that a large part of the human capital of our workers comes not through their formal study as children and young adults but via their on-the-job training. College graduates at age 50 typically make much more money (often at least double) than what their similarly trained 23-year-old counterparts make. Getting students out into the world a year or so earlier via three-year degrees would reduce education costs, increase the working proportion of the population, reduce student debt, and improve the national output. Let’s do it.

One caveat is in order. Some college education at present is effectively high-level vocational training, which may take four years to do correctly. I am thinking of degrees in engineering or architecture, for example. The optimal amount of higher education probably varies by discipline.

For students learning to do computer coding, a rigorous one- or two-year course works beautifully and avoids the unproductive diminishing returns associated with taking a plethora of largely irrelevant courses. I read stories of students who, after a couple of years of intensive training, get extremely well-paid jobs in computer-intensive fields. No extraneous coursework, no brainwashing in diversity and equity—just useful training. Such programs evidently do not go past the point of diminishing returns.

Higher education could learn from this experience. To be sure, we now offer professional degrees for those wanting to enter highly skilled vocations like medicine or law. But even here, I think reform is needed. I will save that for the second installment on this topic, coming next month.

https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=14471&omhide=true&trk=rm

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NYC school spending soars 33% as enrollment, test scores dwindle

Spending on the New York City school system skyrocketed nearly 33% since 2016 as enrollment plummeted and test scores struggled, according to new data released Tuesday.

The cost per K-12 city Department of Education student totaled more than $37,000 for the fiscal year 2022 — and that figure is only expected to rise, surpassing $41,000 by 2026 if enrollment continues to drop off, the policy briefing by the Citizens Budget Commission found.

The system lost more than 141,000 students between the school years 2015-’16 and 2021-’22, it said.

“Simultaneous spending increases and enrollment declines led to rapid increases in K-12 DOE per-student spending,” the CBC found.

The staggering data comes as the DOE faces a fiscal cliff — 30% of the recent spending increase was fueled by a one-time boost in federal pandemic aid, which is drying up, according to the report.

Because of enrollment declines, the government cost per student shot up 15% in the fiscal year 2022 from the prior year, to $37,136 per K-to-12 student.

That figure equates to an eye-popping 47% increase since 2016 when there were more than 1 million students in the public school system. Now there are 900,000 students.

Current public school spending is $37.6 billion, a nearly 5% annual increase over the past seven years.

“As projected enrollment continues to decline, per-student spending will increase to nearly $38,000 in fiscal year 2024 and more than $41,000 in fiscal year 2026, or nearly $44,000 with likely collective bargaining costs,” the CBC said, referring to a likely new labor contract with the teachers’ union that will include salary hikes.

“Decisions about the DOE’s budget should consider enrollment declines and the City’s precarious fiscal condition.”

Education spending in upcoming fiscal year 2024 budget is projected to drop by a modest $401 million to $36.5 billion, primarily due to a $243 million decrease in federal pandemic aid.

Despite the explosion in spending, students’ results on the state’s standardized test scores sunk or were flat last school year following shutdowns during the COVID-19 outbreak.

The number of third to eighth-graders proficient in math dropped nearly eight points from 45.6% of students to 38%.

Meanwhile, the pass rate on the English Language Arts exam was up a tad from 47% of students proficient in 2019 to 49%, though there was a considerable drop in proficiency among third and fourth graders.

One parent activist-turned-state lawmaker said the Big Apple is getting weak bang for its buck.

“This unchecked spending is a shame,” said Assemblyman Sam Pirozzolo (R-Staten Island), who formerly served seven years as parent president of Staten Island ‘s Community Education Council 31.

“We are pouring money into a school system that doesn’t work. Students are not performing well.”

When Pirozzolo was on the school panel, the city was spending about $25,000 per student.

“It’s the definition of insanity. It’s doing the same thing over and over again,” the Republican said.

“What’s the politicians’ response? They want to stop successful charter schools.”

Democratic lawmakers and the powerful teachers union have been fighting Gov. Kathy Hochul’s proposal to lift the regional cap to open up to 100 new charter schools in the city as part of the state budget.

The CBC said the Adams administration and the DOE will have to manage the impact of enrollment declines in individual schools by reducing staffing and funding while minimizing disruptions.

The budget watchdog also suggested the DOE be candid with the public if it plans to shrink or scrap programs currently propped up with federal pandemic funds.

The analysts said the mayor’s educrats must take a scalpel to ineffective or wasteful programs and “prioritize those that deliver maximum impact to the target populations.”

Hochul and state lawmakers have struggled to adopt a new state budget, which was due April 1.

The two sides have been so deadlocked in debate over changing bail reform and housing issues that serious talks about charter school expansion haven’t even begun.

Asked about the sobering CBC analysis, a mayoral spokesman said Adams and the DOE have prepared for the budget challenge.

“This administration has been open and honest about the long-term, combined challenges of declining enrollment, programs funded by one-time federal stimulus dollars, and rising costs tied to unfunded mandates from the state,” the City Hall rep said.

“Our mission for New York City Public Schools is to provide our students with exceptional foundational skills that will set them up for long-term social and economic success, and we will do so with all of our interested partners through the budget process.”

https://nypost.com/2023/04/11/nyc-school-spending-up-33-as-enrollment-test-scores-fall/

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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)

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http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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