As some of you know, I have in the past indicated that education was the most important issue surrounding a free people. Both knowledge and propaganda are power. While one allows us the freedom of original thought, the other allows us to be the vehicle for someone else's agenda. Having long been an advocate of what I call "responsible school choice", I was intrigued when I encountered a column by George Will at Realclearpolitics.
Like the Conservative in-roads into liberal media bias that were gained after it's deregulation by Ronald Reagan, there is hope that we will someday see the taming of "Big Education" via a voucher system. Of course, standing in the way of this are the usual detractors the Teachers Unions, whose concerns seem to be more about whats in their benefits package instead of the education of our children, and who (as Will puts so aptly) are not progressive at all and are instead champions of the status quo.
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It is stunning to realize that people support the public-school education monopoly despite believing the best schools are the private ones.
Ask anyone for the names of the best colleges and almost every name mentioned will be a private college. There are a number of excellent public colleges. But when the argument boils down to naming the best college in the country -- which probably means the best college in the world -- the names are always private-college names.
When it comes to private schools educating students from pre-school through 12th grade, the same is true. New York City has lots of them. It's understood by an elite and informed segment of NY City's parents that admission to certain pre-schools is the key to admission to Harvard -- that university most people think is the best.
However, for those parents who haven't got the big dough for NY City's best private schools, there is a segment of the NY City public school system that opens door too: The Gifted Program.
The Gifted Program educates the top six or seven percent of NY City kids. It is divided into two parts. The Eagle Program, which accounts for the majority of Gifted Students, and the CIG program, which takes only the top one percent. CIG stands for Community of Intellectually Gifted.
Here's how it works. The kids in the Gifted Program are educated in a system within a system. The usual everyday NYC goofball students attend general education classes. But the Gifted kids are cut from the herd and educated in classes populated only by Gifted kids. Thus, there are very few discipline problems in this segment of the school community.
These kids are in the program because they are smart, enjoy school, have the right attitude and are mature enough to do what's expected of them.
Intelligence alone isn't enough. Disruptive kids are booted, a practice unknown in the general population.
It works. These kids are the ones who eventually attend NY City's best public high schools. Among them are Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, Brooklyn Tech, Midwood Med/Sci and Hunter. To get in, prospective students take a test. One test. If they score high enough, they are offered a seat.
The demographics of the student bodies of these high schools probably won't surprise anyone. Take Stuyvesant, considered the best. Fifty percent of Stuyvesant students are asian. About 43% are white, and all the other racial and ethnic groups account for the remaining 7%.
Here's the less obvious part. Department of Education expenditures. The yearly expenditure per student in NY City in the latest year was about $14,000. But the yearly expenditure per student at Stuyvesant High School was $9,500.
In other words, it costs a lot less to educate good students.
Why? A lot of reasons. But most of them boil down to attitudes students have acquired at home. In other words, qualities that schools themselves cannot infuse or regulate.
Thus, what do public schools really need? They need more students like those who populate the gifted classes. But the supply of them is limited. Many of them have parents who would rather send them to private school over public school. There are over 1.1 million students in the NY City public school system. There are about 250,000 others who attend private school.
What should public-school systems do to improve their appeal? They should get over the fact that they are not capable of providing top-quality services to every kid in town. They should concentrate on doing what they do best.
In NY City, the Gifted Program is excellent. The specialty schools are great. Like LaGuardia High School -- The Performing Arts high school made famous by the TV show "Fame."
But the public-school system is not good with Special Education. The students in that segment of the school population have bounties on their heads. Why? Because the school system allocates an average of $34,000 per Special Ed student per year. Over two and a half times the amount for a mainstream student. Thus, to pad budgets, schools take in Special Ed students.
However, since the school system accepts no responsibility for the lives of students after they leave the system, there is no institutional concern for the educational outcomes experienced by these students. But their presence brings a lot of revenue to the schools they attend. Their presence subsidizes other students.
Most of them would receive far better services from private schools aimed at these kids. There are a growing number around NY City. Due to laws requiring the city to provide an "adequate" education for every student, most parents who send their kids to these schools can sue the city for tuition reimbursement, which currently runs around $26,000 a year at these schools.
Best of all, the city saves money this way. The $26,000 it costs to send a kid to a private Special Ed school is less than the $34,000 the Department of Education now allocates to do the same job. However, the private schools get the results parent want and the kids need.
The tuition reimbursement process for Special Ed is nothing less than a school voucher. It works. Everyone is happy, including taxpayers, who spend less by letting competent people manage this aspect of education.
If every kid were equipped with a voucher, the public school system in NY would see an interesting shift in its population. Very likely many kids who now attend private school would enter the public school system if they were to pass the entrance exam for the Gifted Program, one of the public-school's strengths.
The public school system would lose some Special Ed kids, however. And there is no doubt the system would lose some kids from the general education population.
The private sector would attract and enroll more kids because vouchers would give their parents a mechanism to obtain the best possible education for their kids.
It's all about competition. That's the thing that anti-voucher teachers claim should not exist in education. But if schools hope to end competition, why give grades? Why not admit everyone to Harvard? Why not pretend were are all intellectually equal?
A Few More Words on Vouchers and the lunacy of Teachers and their Unions
The Union Libel
Utah's children may not excel in math or English, but their teachers are very good at instructing them in how to run a political campaign. As 2007 achievement test data show another disappointing year for the state's children, the teachers union is running a multi-million-dollar campaign to insulate itself from competition.
On Tuesday, Utahns will vote on whether to proceed with a statewide voucher program enacted in February. The plan passed both houses of Utah's legislature after a rough-and-tumble debate, and was signed by Governor Jon Huntsman, Jr. But the teachers union immediately launched a ballot initiative to overturn the law and succeeded in blocking it from taking effect prior to Tuesday's vote.
A new report from the Utah Foundation shows the state's public education could certainly use a shake-up. The states most similar demographically to Utah, by measures such as student poverty and parental education, are Iowa, Montana, Nebraska, South Dakota and Wisconsin. Utah finishes last in this group, based on eighth-grade scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Utah youngsters trail the pack across the range of core subjects -- last in math, last in reading, last in science.
Still, the unions are banking that fear of the unknown will trump demonstrated incompetence. The opponents have raised a bundle to disseminate their predictions of doom, including more than $3 million from status quo headquarters, the National Education Association. They're stoking that fear with antivoucher TV ads that aren't winning high marks for honesty. Salt Lake's KSL-TV, an NBC affiliate that has editorialized against vouchers, nonetheless felt compelled to label as "false" the central claims in two recent attack ads against vouchers.
One ad featured the "Utah teacher of the year" claiming that vouchers "take resources away from public schools." In fact, the law provides only up to $3,000 per child toward private school tuition, depending on family income, and the voucher money comes from the state's general fund, not the education budget. The average voucher will cost $2,000, but the state now spends $7,500 per student. The public schools get to pocket the difference, $5,500, without an obligation to provide any services. So the more parents choose vouchers, the higher per-student spending will rise in the public schools.
Another attack ad claimed that private schools would have "no accountability," when in fact they are required under the law to report to parents how their children in voucher-supported schools do each year on nationwide achievement tests. Market-based competition will force exactly the kind of accountability that the unions fear in public schools.
Judging from recent polls, the scare campaign is winning. Still, supporters of school choice say that the voucher law could still survive, thanks to expected low turnout among the general population and higher-than-normal turnout among Utah Latinos, who make up roughly 12% of the population. Nonprofit Hispanics for School Choice reports an aggressive get-out-the-vote effort of personal visits and phone calls, and increased attention on Spanish-language radio, and at community events and church services.
Allowing the landmark voucher law to go forward would be a victory for students of all races, with more choices for parents and more opportunities for students. Halloween is over; Utahns should ignore the horror stories from unions trying to protect themselves, no matter the consequences for kids.
Excellent points all. It will be interesting to see if any other "educator" will be willing to take up the debate.
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