Required Reading

One of the BEST things ever written about public education here at The Answer Sheet at The Washington Post.   This is a guest post by Jeff Bryant, a marketing and communcation consultant for nonprofits.  He writes about public education policy.

Here's his bottom line (to me - emphasis mine):

Furthermore, nothing about school choice, regardless of the form, guarantees parents get the kind of school quality they desire. Studies have shown that in a typical school choice program, the private school services that parents mostly desire — small class sizes, well-rounded curriculum, individualized services — will still be out of reach for most parents.

He  talks about people getting a laugh over the Texas GOP's education plank of their platform but goes on to say we really should be worried about Dems.  He's right.  If Obama doesn't watch out charters/TFA will be his NCLB (as NCLB is the tattered legacy of George W. Bush).

Speaking of Bush, here's something about Jeb:


Like so many “signs of progress” that school “reform” enthusiasts like to crow about, Bush’s recipe for “reform” is little more than a policy checklist that invariably includes instituting some form of school choice (Parent Trigger, charter schools, etc.), grading schools A-F, and evaluating teachers based on test scores.

Hardly ever do Bush and his followers connect this checklist of reforms to actual positive impacts on children — because, in fact, they can’t.

For example, the "miracle" in Florida:

It turns out that the scores for Florida fourth graders had improved mostly because the state suddenly started flunking large numbers of third graders, so low-achieving third graders were still in third grade when the fourth grade test was given. “With only the higher-achieving students taking the test, the scores jumped,” according to an article in NEA Today.

“What’s more,” the article continues, “the state flunked a much higher proportion of black than white students — no wonder the achievement gap shrank.”

And vouchers?  Diane Ravitch weighs in on our longest voucher experiment, Milwaukee:
 
In Milwaukee, after 21 years of vouchers, black students have among the lowest scores of any city tested, ranked at the bottom along with Detroit, Fresno, and Cleveland. Independent research has shown that the black and low-income students in Milwaukee’s voucher schools have the same low scores as the black students in the public schools. Their scores are about the same as those of poor black kids in the Deep South. Vouchers and competition did nothing for the children of Milwaukee.

(He also writes about Ravitch's finding of a $75 class in NYC that teaches parents how to pick a charter school.)

 Choice?

Exhibit A in Democrats’ inability to think critically about school policies is the recent rush by many in the party’s leadership to embrace “parent trigger” laws. These are measures that allow a majority of 50 +1 parents to shut down a local school and provide an alternative that usually involves turning the school over to a private management company, instituting a privately operated charter, or getting vouchers to send children to private schools.

(Note: I-1240 would allow 50%+1 of parents OR teachers in a schools - there is NO other parent trigger law in the country as drastic as what is in this initiative.)

Democrats couch their support of parent trigger laws in the lofty rhetoric of “a civil rights fight,” as former California state senator Gloria Romero, who now runs that state’s branch of Democrats for Education Reform, likes to put it. But regardless of whether backers of the trigger are Democrats or Republicans, the argument for this policy idea always boils down to “choice” and the belief that the responsibility of educating the nation’s children needs to shift from community to family, and parents need to be treated more like consumers in the educational marketplace.

The idea of education policy driven solely by “choice” has been pushed by Republicans since the Reagan presidency. Once upon a time Democrats opposed school choice efforts, especially when these efforts were called “vouchers.” But now, not so much. Why?

Nevertheless, many see choice as a panacea for underserved communities to escape the traditional public schools that are struggling with overcrowding and underfunding. Proponents of school choice maintain that it poses as a solution for families to “escape their zip codes” — a reference to the strong tendency in this country for school quality to correlate with the relative wealth of the parents where the school is located.

But a recent article in The New York Times revealed that the benefits of school choice often accrue to the well-to-do.

The article reveals that in eight states, choice programs -- operating under the auspice of offering “scholarships” to needy students -- “have been twisted to benefit private schools at the expense of the neediest children.”

“Spreading at a time of deep cutbacks in public schools,” the article notes, the programs have redirected some $350 million that would have gone into public budgets to supplement tuition paid by families who already send their kids to private and religious schools and pay administrative fees to new privately operated groups who manage the scholarships.

Another very real outcome that Democrats are not thinking of is how choice tends to increase segregation.

In fact, a recent review conducted by the OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) looked at the more than two-thirds of OECD countries that have increased school choice opportunities for parents in the last 25 years. The review found that “providing full parental school choice results in further student segregation between schools, by ability, socio-economic and ethnic background, and in greater inequities across education systems.”

Writing at Next New Deal, blog site for the Roosevelt Institute, Amy Baral lays out a school choice landscape that includes inter-district, intra-district, and charter schools.

Regardless of the scenario, her conclusion is that “for poor families, immigrants, or students without stable homes, the amount of engagement and information required to make an informed decision is difficult to come by.” And “middle-class parents are often better equipped” and “have the education, skills, and resources necessary to make an informed choice.”

Republicans versus Democrats?

But now, education policy has moved firmly into the post-NCLB era, and technocratic approaches, like NCLB spawn Race to the Top, are growing in increasing disfavor.

As always, in times of policy confusion, Republicans, with their deep-pocketed backers, are at the ready to fill the void with rhetoric about choice, competition, and markets. But Democrats don’t have to meekly fall into line.

In fact, if you’re a parent who has ever waited in line, during the wee hours of the morning, to be first in the door to enroll your three-year old in the most prestigious pre-school program in your community, then you already know what “school choice” is all about. It sucks. Now imagine having to do that, in some form, for every child, in every grade, until they finally graduate from high school. That is, indeed, the logical consequence of school choice. So Democrats need to think critically if that is what they really want.