From the Washington Posts Answer Sheet
By Paul Thomas
"Accountability," "merit," "choice," and "competition" are compelling to most Americans because they speak to our faith in rugged individualism.
As South Carolina faces yet another year of budget shortfalls that jeopardize many aspects of the state budget—notably education—we must look especially close at new policies and proposals that are driven by ideology but not supported by evidence. Two ideas being considered now that deserve our skepticism are merit-based teacher pay and increased funding for charter schools.
From President Obama and Secretary of Education Duncan to the misleading documentary "Waiting for Superman" to the new reformers (Bill Gates, Geoffrey Canada, and Michelle Rhee), the public is bombarded by a false claim that teacher quality is the most important element in student learning and public education is failing because of an inordinate number of "bad" teachers.
Evidence, however, shows that teacher and school quality accounts for only about 10-20% of measurable student achievement and that out-of-school factors are the dominant source of education problems.
Yet, teachers do matter, often in ways that cannot be measured, and since teacher pay accounts for the greatest percentage of education budgets — which continue to dominate state budgets — political leaders and the public feel compelled to call for greater teacher accountability.
Reformers such as Gates and Canada have been beating the drum for teacher accountability and weeding out the claimed "bad" teachers, and this media-driven mantra is turning many states to consider dropping traditional teacher pay scales based on experience and degrees for merit-based systems that are linked to claimed objective data, such as test scores.
Again, "accountability" and "merit" are compelling concepts, especially when we are talking about adults who are charged with educating our children. But merit-based teacher pay should be rejected for the following reasons:
• Studies show value-added methods (a popular form of merit pay) to be statistically flawed as tools of assessing a teacher's impact on student learning. In short, research refutes the effectiveness or accuracy of merit-based teacher pay.
• Teaching and learning are not singular and direct relationships between one teacher and one student. Any measure of student learning is a reflection of that child's entire life and entire education experience (including all teachers and learning experiences in that child's life). The impact of one teacher on one student, in fact, can be hard to measure for many years.
• To identify a direct and thus causational relationship between teachers and students, all other factors impacting student achievement, including out-of-school factors, would have to be controlled, resulting in a process that would cost more money and time than the state can fund.
• Decades of research show that teachers are not motivated by merit pay. Teachers are motivated by better teaching conditions, administrative and parental support, and collegiality.
• Accountability must be connected to autonomy and to the behavior of the person being held accountable. Currently, teachers are mandated to implement standards that they did not create, and their students are assessed by tests that those teachers did not design. To hold a person accountable without honoring that person's professional autonomy is unethical and invalid. And to hold one person (the teacher) accountable for the actions of another person (the student) is just as unethical.
If we believe teacher pay should be tied to merit and accountability, we must first honor teacher autonomy, and then design a system that addresses teacher behaviors—not student outcomes.
Charter schools appear to offer the choice and competition—which we have idealized—we believe can raise the quality of education, but increasing funding of charter schools proves to be as flawed as teacher merit pay.
The overwhelming body of evidence on charter schools shows that they are essentially the same as public schools. Also problematic is the inequity common in charter schools:
"The analysis found that, as compared with the public school district in which the charter school resided, the charter schools were substantially more segregated by race, wealth, disabling condition, and language. While charter schools have rapidly grown, the strong segregative pattern found in 2001 is virtually unchanged through 2007," reveals a review from the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder (NEPC).
Another review from NEPC cautions: "Federal policies that will strengthen charter schools in the longer run—rather than expanding the number of charter schools in the short run—need to be based on a more accurate and representative body of evidence." SC would do well to delay expanding charter support, especially in a difficult budget year.
The teacher merit pay and charter school movements are being driven by false claims, clearly refuted by the weight of evidence. SC's political leaders must be careful not to be swayed by our ideologies and to seek policies and funding that serve our students well.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/accountability/the-2-false-claims-that-drive.html?wprss=answer-sheet
Showing posts with label accountability. Show all posts
Showing posts with label accountability. Show all posts
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
How to assess
From the Washington Posts Answer Sheet
By Anthony Cody
A colleague at the Teacher Leaders Network raised a provocative pair of questions.
1. In an era where numbers are currency, what alternative set of metrics and numbers (beyond assessment) can we suggest that reformers and policymakers consider when weighing teacher/school effectiveness? (i.e: parent/student satisfaction surveys, levels of funding, graduation rate, rate of enrollment in AP classes, rate of employment or enrollment in college after graduation)
2. Given the limits of numerical accountability, what alternatives can we offer to reformers who are open to considering results that cannot be accounted for by a number? What are the softer variables that cannot be easily measured? (i.e: student engagement, attitudes towards school, divergent thinking)
I have heard different forms of this conversation several times over the past few weeks. On the one side we have people, largely from the world of business, who have developed what seems to them a perfect way to improve our work. This method amounts to a four step cycle. First, set some measurable goals for ourselves. Then do our best to meet our goals. Then review our outcomes and see where we fell short and where we succeeded. Use this data to guide a revision to our methods so that our outcomes will improve.
This logic, coupled with the accountability mechanisms built into No Child Left Behind, have amounted to an almost irresistible set of pressures on teachers to become "data driven." Some have succumbed, but many of us still resist, clinging to quaint ideals about the value of the whole child, the need for critical thinking and curiosity, and other things which are difficult to measure on standardized tests. But then we face a challenge, which my colleague has captured in these two questions.
What could possibly be wrong with the improvement model offered above? Lots of things. First of all, the data most readily available for measuring outcomes is usually standardized test scores. This leads us into the test preparation sinkhole most of our high needs schools find themselves, where instruction is continually narrowed to focus on improving those scores - to the detriment of many other learning goals that we value.
So then we get to the next question, which my colleague posed above. If we do not accept the test scores as an adequate marker of our effectiveness, what do we wish to offer in their place, since we must be accountable for student learning in some concrete and measurable way?
I believe that any answer to this must encompass the complexity of learning, and of our goals as educators.
The way I get my mind around this is to think about the ways that I have seen teachers take responsibility for student learning in meaningful ways. I cannot discuss this in the abstract. So here are some real models of authentic assessment.
Lesson Study: In this process teachers begin by discussing what it is that they desire for their students. What do they value most? What do they want to see from their students at year's end? But this is a truly open-ended question. It is not "which standards do we want to choose to emphasize." If the teachers are most concerned about how their students are treating one another, this would be a perfectly acceptable focus for their lesson study. Once they select the focus for their work, then they collaborate to create a set of lessons that will result in students learning this. The lessons are taught, and carefully observed, with close attention being paid to evidence of student learning. This, to me, is an example of teachers taking responsibility for student outcomes.
National Board certification likewise asks candidates to gather solid evidence of the impact their instruction has had on students, and document this with student work samples. Candidates must show concretely how student work reflects growth over time, and how their instruction made a difference. Videotapes of student-teacher interactions also shed light on this.
Oakland history teachers have been working for more than a decade on an assessment system where teachers district-wide give their students a common writing task, to respond to a question while drawing on evidence from a selection of primary historical documents. Students are given editorial cartoons, photographs, and written documents from the period in question, and asked to apply what they have learned about the events as they answer the question. Teachers then bring samples of their students' work to district-wide scoring sessions, which allows them to compare the work their students are doing to work being done elsewhere in the district. This has helped to create a rich environment for collaboration and the sharing of strategies, as teachers whose students' work is especially strong, can share the techniques they found effective.
In the mentoring program I help direct, TeamScience, we use the Formative Assessment Tools associated with the Beginning Teacher Support and Assessment program (BTSA). Central to this process is a protocol called Assessment of Student Work, in which we collect all the student work from a given assignment, sort it into different levels of accomplishment, then work with our mentee to figure out how to move students at each level forward, based on the evidence we see.
All four of these are meaningful ways that teachers are learning about their teaching from looking closely at the work their students are producing. This is raw data come to life, as we delve into what our students are producing, and seek to overcome the obstacles we uncover.
From my point of view as an educator, the best reason to look at data is in order to get useful feedback to guide us in becoming better as teachers. We want to know, if we have a goal that our students are able to write a coherent analysis of a historic event, citing evidence, what is it they are actually able to do? Where are they falling short? How can we build these skills so they are successful?
The entire structure of No Child Left Behind has created a whole other purpose for gathering and looking at data, and that is to hold teachers and schools "accountable" for student test scores. Thus we have high stakes consequences - and ever more of them - for student achievement. This is a different purpose than we have as teachers, and unfortunately, when accountability drives assessment, we get a whole host of unintended consequences that we have become all too familiar with.
Assessment for accountability is, by necessity, going to look very different from assessment for the improvement of instruction. It must be standardized, it must be taken by large numbers of students at the same time in order to allow "fair" comparisons, and it must be cheap to score. Teachers are far more interested in the more authentic assessments I describe here, because they actually help us improve and better serve our students. But we are deeply concerned with data that shows how our students are learning, and our best professional growth often revolves around collaborative reflection on our instruction and the student work that results from it.
This does lead us in an improvement cycle similar to the one offered by the business model. But in the test-score driven cycle above, the question is almost always the same: "How can we boost these scores?" In the inquiry cycle that is represented by the examples I offer, the questions really vary, according to the challenges we have identified as teachers. The collection of data remains a critical step, but the data is more varied, and sometimes more qualitative. The teachers' role as an active agent of change is much stronger, as they must play an active role in determining the focus of their inquiry, and figuring out the strategies they will pursue in order to improve their outcomes. We must look at student outcomes, but we cannot let the constraints of assessment for accountability purposes determine the nature of those outcomes.
And what might an evaluation look like connected to this? How about one that asked, as National Board portfolios do, for a teacher to share a collection of student work that demonstrates growth over time? How about one that took into account evidence that a teacher is engaged in the reflective processes described above? How about an evaluation where the evaluator spent time in the teacher's class to see how he was applying the lessons he learned from examining last year's student work?
-0-
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/teacher-assessment/how-can-we-fairly-assess-teach.html?wprss=answer-sheet
By Anthony Cody
A colleague at the Teacher Leaders Network raised a provocative pair of questions.
1. In an era where numbers are currency, what alternative set of metrics and numbers (beyond assessment) can we suggest that reformers and policymakers consider when weighing teacher/school effectiveness? (i.e: parent/student satisfaction surveys, levels of funding, graduation rate, rate of enrollment in AP classes, rate of employment or enrollment in college after graduation)
2. Given the limits of numerical accountability, what alternatives can we offer to reformers who are open to considering results that cannot be accounted for by a number? What are the softer variables that cannot be easily measured? (i.e: student engagement, attitudes towards school, divergent thinking)
I have heard different forms of this conversation several times over the past few weeks. On the one side we have people, largely from the world of business, who have developed what seems to them a perfect way to improve our work. This method amounts to a four step cycle. First, set some measurable goals for ourselves. Then do our best to meet our goals. Then review our outcomes and see where we fell short and where we succeeded. Use this data to guide a revision to our methods so that our outcomes will improve.
This logic, coupled with the accountability mechanisms built into No Child Left Behind, have amounted to an almost irresistible set of pressures on teachers to become "data driven." Some have succumbed, but many of us still resist, clinging to quaint ideals about the value of the whole child, the need for critical thinking and curiosity, and other things which are difficult to measure on standardized tests. But then we face a challenge, which my colleague has captured in these two questions.
What could possibly be wrong with the improvement model offered above? Lots of things. First of all, the data most readily available for measuring outcomes is usually standardized test scores. This leads us into the test preparation sinkhole most of our high needs schools find themselves, where instruction is continually narrowed to focus on improving those scores - to the detriment of many other learning goals that we value.
So then we get to the next question, which my colleague posed above. If we do not accept the test scores as an adequate marker of our effectiveness, what do we wish to offer in their place, since we must be accountable for student learning in some concrete and measurable way?
I believe that any answer to this must encompass the complexity of learning, and of our goals as educators.
The way I get my mind around this is to think about the ways that I have seen teachers take responsibility for student learning in meaningful ways. I cannot discuss this in the abstract. So here are some real models of authentic assessment.
Lesson Study: In this process teachers begin by discussing what it is that they desire for their students. What do they value most? What do they want to see from their students at year's end? But this is a truly open-ended question. It is not "which standards do we want to choose to emphasize." If the teachers are most concerned about how their students are treating one another, this would be a perfectly acceptable focus for their lesson study. Once they select the focus for their work, then they collaborate to create a set of lessons that will result in students learning this. The lessons are taught, and carefully observed, with close attention being paid to evidence of student learning. This, to me, is an example of teachers taking responsibility for student outcomes.
National Board certification likewise asks candidates to gather solid evidence of the impact their instruction has had on students, and document this with student work samples. Candidates must show concretely how student work reflects growth over time, and how their instruction made a difference. Videotapes of student-teacher interactions also shed light on this.
Oakland history teachers have been working for more than a decade on an assessment system where teachers district-wide give their students a common writing task, to respond to a question while drawing on evidence from a selection of primary historical documents. Students are given editorial cartoons, photographs, and written documents from the period in question, and asked to apply what they have learned about the events as they answer the question. Teachers then bring samples of their students' work to district-wide scoring sessions, which allows them to compare the work their students are doing to work being done elsewhere in the district. This has helped to create a rich environment for collaboration and the sharing of strategies, as teachers whose students' work is especially strong, can share the techniques they found effective.
In the mentoring program I help direct, TeamScience, we use the Formative Assessment Tools associated with the Beginning Teacher Support and Assessment program (BTSA). Central to this process is a protocol called Assessment of Student Work, in which we collect all the student work from a given assignment, sort it into different levels of accomplishment, then work with our mentee to figure out how to move students at each level forward, based on the evidence we see.
All four of these are meaningful ways that teachers are learning about their teaching from looking closely at the work their students are producing. This is raw data come to life, as we delve into what our students are producing, and seek to overcome the obstacles we uncover.
From my point of view as an educator, the best reason to look at data is in order to get useful feedback to guide us in becoming better as teachers. We want to know, if we have a goal that our students are able to write a coherent analysis of a historic event, citing evidence, what is it they are actually able to do? Where are they falling short? How can we build these skills so they are successful?
The entire structure of No Child Left Behind has created a whole other purpose for gathering and looking at data, and that is to hold teachers and schools "accountable" for student test scores. Thus we have high stakes consequences - and ever more of them - for student achievement. This is a different purpose than we have as teachers, and unfortunately, when accountability drives assessment, we get a whole host of unintended consequences that we have become all too familiar with.
Assessment for accountability is, by necessity, going to look very different from assessment for the improvement of instruction. It must be standardized, it must be taken by large numbers of students at the same time in order to allow "fair" comparisons, and it must be cheap to score. Teachers are far more interested in the more authentic assessments I describe here, because they actually help us improve and better serve our students. But we are deeply concerned with data that shows how our students are learning, and our best professional growth often revolves around collaborative reflection on our instruction and the student work that results from it.
This does lead us in an improvement cycle similar to the one offered by the business model. But in the test-score driven cycle above, the question is almost always the same: "How can we boost these scores?" In the inquiry cycle that is represented by the examples I offer, the questions really vary, according to the challenges we have identified as teachers. The collection of data remains a critical step, but the data is more varied, and sometimes more qualitative. The teachers' role as an active agent of change is much stronger, as they must play an active role in determining the focus of their inquiry, and figuring out the strategies they will pursue in order to improve their outcomes. We must look at student outcomes, but we cannot let the constraints of assessment for accountability purposes determine the nature of those outcomes.
And what might an evaluation look like connected to this? How about one that asked, as National Board portfolios do, for a teacher to share a collection of student work that demonstrates growth over time? How about one that took into account evidence that a teacher is engaged in the reflective processes described above? How about an evaluation where the evaluator spent time in the teacher's class to see how he was applying the lessons he learned from examining last year's student work?
-0-
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/teacher-assessment/how-can-we-fairly-assess-teach.html?wprss=answer-sheet
Saturday, February 5, 2011
The solution to the class size amendment? Get rid of accountability
Another solution might be properly funding the amendment. -cpg
From Tampa Bay.coms gradebook
by Jeff Solochek
Dump Florida's school class size penalties, senator proposes
You knew it was just a matter of time.
With school boards threatening to sue, and many lawmakers still looking for ways to ease the sting, Miami Republican Sen. Miguel Diaz de la Portilla has filed a bill to eliminate the fines imposed on districts that fail to meet constitutional class size standards.
The legislation would not add a word to current statute. Rather, it would strike out the entire section of section 1003.03 that titled "Accountability." That's an interesting thought for a GOP-dominated Legislature that lately has been hellbent on adding more and more accountability measures on teachers and students, isn't it?
.
From Tampa Bay.coms gradebook
by Jeff Solochek
Dump Florida's school class size penalties, senator proposes
You knew it was just a matter of time.
With school boards threatening to sue, and many lawmakers still looking for ways to ease the sting, Miami Republican Sen. Miguel Diaz de la Portilla has filed a bill to eliminate the fines imposed on districts that fail to meet constitutional class size standards.
The legislation would not add a word to current statute. Rather, it would strike out the entire section of section 1003.03 that titled "Accountability." That's an interesting thought for a GOP-dominated Legislature that lately has been hellbent on adding more and more accountability measures on teachers and students, isn't it?
.
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Schools can't be run like bussinesses
by Michael J.
To all of those experts out there:
The business world is always trying to hold the world of education to their standards. As educators we believe that it is time to hold businesses to the same standards that we are responsible for upholding.
So from this moment on, this is what we expect from the business world! We would like your business to be held accountable for the success of other businesses that purchase your product.
When you are selling your product to other businesses we demand that you are accommodating the needs of your customers so that you can meet the demands that each of your customers have. We would like you to design your sales presentations to fit the needs of nonreaders, visual buyers, auditory buyers, kinesthetic buyers, deaf people, blind people, people in wheel chairs, people with all physical and mental handicaps, people that speak every other language other than English.
We would like to base your pay and your compensation on how successful the people that use your product are! It is your job to prove your success with real sales data and numbers.
We would like you to find a way to sell your product to all customers regardless of their income, their intelligence, and how successful they are in using your product. And we are mandating that you must do this for all of the above mentioned people and make it against the law if you do not fulfill these conditions.
We would also like to hold you accountable for selling your product to people that have no use for your product, and that have told you right up front that they have no use for your product. And we mandate that you must make up your sales presentation to all customers that do not show up to your sales meeting regardless of the excuse such as family emergencies, personal health issues, or any other reason even including that they just didn’t feel like it!
We demand that you must try to sell your product to other companies even if the boss of their company thinks that you are a complete joke and have no value to anyone! We also demand that you try to sell your product to customers that have unrealistic expectations as to how your product should work or actually does work.
We demand that you must consider the input of your customers even if they tell you how to run your company and you know their ideas are bad ideas!
We demand that you have no choice who you can sell your product to.
We say that it will be OK if the public distorts the truth about how your company works and that it is OK to put these distortions all over the media in anyway that the public chooses and they may release these opinions for every one to see. There shall be no connection to reality when it comes to spreading opinions and it should make no difference how inaccurate these opinions are because that is the freedom of speech and it is exactly what our forefathers would have wanted!
If someone with no knowledge of how your product actually works or is produced, you must let their opinion take priority over what you know as an expert on your product even if you have been building and selling your product for more than 20 years!
We demand that you must try to sell your product to customers that are not even having their basic needs met. You must try to sell your product to starving people, people with no shelter, and to people living in horrific living conditions. We demand that you sell your product to people that are abusive, that are criminals, that could care less about anything but drugs and alcohol!
Your performance rating on all of the above conditions will depend on how you well you meet all of the above stated conditions! And lastly your pay will be determined by your success! In addition, any additional costs that may be incurred meeting these conditions shall not be reimbursed, you must take it out of the company budget!
This is the world as an educator sees it and maybe people would have compassion for educators if they could see the world through the eyes of a teacher!
A concerned teacher in 2011!
To all of those experts out there:
The business world is always trying to hold the world of education to their standards. As educators we believe that it is time to hold businesses to the same standards that we are responsible for upholding.
So from this moment on, this is what we expect from the business world! We would like your business to be held accountable for the success of other businesses that purchase your product.
When you are selling your product to other businesses we demand that you are accommodating the needs of your customers so that you can meet the demands that each of your customers have. We would like you to design your sales presentations to fit the needs of nonreaders, visual buyers, auditory buyers, kinesthetic buyers, deaf people, blind people, people in wheel chairs, people with all physical and mental handicaps, people that speak every other language other than English.
We would like to base your pay and your compensation on how successful the people that use your product are! It is your job to prove your success with real sales data and numbers.
We would like you to find a way to sell your product to all customers regardless of their income, their intelligence, and how successful they are in using your product. And we are mandating that you must do this for all of the above mentioned people and make it against the law if you do not fulfill these conditions.
We would also like to hold you accountable for selling your product to people that have no use for your product, and that have told you right up front that they have no use for your product. And we mandate that you must make up your sales presentation to all customers that do not show up to your sales meeting regardless of the excuse such as family emergencies, personal health issues, or any other reason even including that they just didn’t feel like it!
We demand that you must try to sell your product to other companies even if the boss of their company thinks that you are a complete joke and have no value to anyone! We also demand that you try to sell your product to customers that have unrealistic expectations as to how your product should work or actually does work.
We demand that you must consider the input of your customers even if they tell you how to run your company and you know their ideas are bad ideas!
We demand that you have no choice who you can sell your product to.
We say that it will be OK if the public distorts the truth about how your company works and that it is OK to put these distortions all over the media in anyway that the public chooses and they may release these opinions for every one to see. There shall be no connection to reality when it comes to spreading opinions and it should make no difference how inaccurate these opinions are because that is the freedom of speech and it is exactly what our forefathers would have wanted!
If someone with no knowledge of how your product actually works or is produced, you must let their opinion take priority over what you know as an expert on your product even if you have been building and selling your product for more than 20 years!
We demand that you must try to sell your product to customers that are not even having their basic needs met. You must try to sell your product to starving people, people with no shelter, and to people living in horrific living conditions. We demand that you sell your product to people that are abusive, that are criminals, that could care less about anything but drugs and alcohol!
Your performance rating on all of the above conditions will depend on how you well you meet all of the above stated conditions! And lastly your pay will be determined by your success! In addition, any additional costs that may be incurred meeting these conditions shall not be reimbursed, you must take it out of the company budget!
This is the world as an educator sees it and maybe people would have compassion for educators if they could see the world through the eyes of a teacher!
A concerned teacher in 2011!
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Scott's vouchers-for-all plan still has accountability gap
From the Palm Beach Post
By Jac Wilder Versteeg
Gov.-elect Rick Scott should get ready to call in the Home School Police. Such a force will be necessary if the vouchers-for-all dream of his transition advisers comes true.
Mr. Scott's education team proposes to give vouchers worth thousands of dollars to parents who can use them at the public or private school of their choice, but also for "private tutoring" and "private virtual schooling." It also proposes separate state aid for home schooling. But if it happens, expect lots of "private tutoring" and "private virtual schooling" money to go for what otherwise would have been called "home schooling."
Some parents would spend that money on materials to enhance their child's at-home schooling. Other parents would stick their kid in front of a TV and spend the money on drugs.
How are we going to catch parents who do that? "Open up! It's the Home School Police!"
Gov.-elect Scott's education brain trust is guided by Patricia Levesque, one of the leading thinkers in shaping former Gov. Jeb Bush's education agenda. Mr. Bush and Ms. Levesque accomplished a great deal of what they set out to do, including a growing acceptance of vouchers and a growing reliance on standardized testing to measure every aspect of public education. Don't underestimate Ms. Levesque's ability to achieve her vision.
A major flaw in that vision has been a double standard for accountability. Private schools paid through Florida's corporate voucher programs do not have to give the FCAT and report their performance for all the world to see. They do have to administer an achievement test, but individual private schools have not been required to report their progress or lack thereof.
The rationale for exempting private voucher schools from FCAT accountability continues to be that parents know what is best for their child. Seems to me that if private-school parents are empowered to judge a school that doesn't use the FCAT, public-school parents deserve the same courtesy. I always have suspected that Gov. Bush and Ms. Levesque, in pushing for vouchers, were afraid to make it easy for Floridians to make an apples-to-apples comparison between student achievement at public schools vs. student achievement at private schools.
Voucher proponents counter that such comparisons wouldn't be fair because voucher schools often take students who have not done well in traditional public schools. The attitude that Florida should have different standards for struggling students is jarring, though, coming as it does from groups that tend to criticize public schools for having low expectations for some children.
I'll concede that many private schools prepare their students well for college and life. The trouble is that there's no easy way to judge which schools are in that category and which private schools keep parents happy through grade inflation. A parent naturally is going to be happier with a private school that gives his daughter A's, compared with a public school that doled out C's. And that choice would be none of the public's business except that, for voucher students, private school tuition is being paid for by "donations" from corporations that are able to write off the entire amount from their Florida taxes.
At least the voucher schools have been subjected to a gradual increase in accountability. Most of the schools give their students the Stanford Achievement Test or the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. Starting next year, the public will be able to see how voucher schools are doing overall on those tests. Of course, if the results turn out to be awful, the schools still won't lose their eligibility to receive vouchers. Contrast that with public schools that can be closed if they don't improve state scores.
How is "private virtual schooling" going to be accountable? I don't see the Scott team or the Legislature requiring those students to show up at the public school to take the FCAT. I suppose they could require some kind of national test . But what is the penalty if students fail it? Will the state then require those students to go to public school or a private school of their choice? Imagine the outcry among home-schooling parents if they could lose the right to a home-school voucher based on the results of one high-stakes test.
But then imagine the outcry on that day when The Post publishes the first exposé of parents ripping off the home-school voucher program.
Gov.-elect Scott wants to kick down traditional structures of public education. He'd better be prepared for Home School Police to kick down some doors as well.
Jac Wilder VerSteeg is the deputy editor of editorial page of The Palm Beach Post. His e-mail address is jac_versteeg@pbpost.com. Randy Schultz's column will return next week.
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/opinion/columnists/versteeg-scotts-vouchers-for-all-plan-still-has-1154837.html
By Jac Wilder Versteeg
Gov.-elect Rick Scott should get ready to call in the Home School Police. Such a force will be necessary if the vouchers-for-all dream of his transition advisers comes true.
Mr. Scott's education team proposes to give vouchers worth thousands of dollars to parents who can use them at the public or private school of their choice, but also for "private tutoring" and "private virtual schooling." It also proposes separate state aid for home schooling. But if it happens, expect lots of "private tutoring" and "private virtual schooling" money to go for what otherwise would have been called "home schooling."
Some parents would spend that money on materials to enhance their child's at-home schooling. Other parents would stick their kid in front of a TV and spend the money on drugs.
How are we going to catch parents who do that? "Open up! It's the Home School Police!"
Gov.-elect Scott's education brain trust is guided by Patricia Levesque, one of the leading thinkers in shaping former Gov. Jeb Bush's education agenda. Mr. Bush and Ms. Levesque accomplished a great deal of what they set out to do, including a growing acceptance of vouchers and a growing reliance on standardized testing to measure every aspect of public education. Don't underestimate Ms. Levesque's ability to achieve her vision.
A major flaw in that vision has been a double standard for accountability. Private schools paid through Florida's corporate voucher programs do not have to give the FCAT and report their performance for all the world to see. They do have to administer an achievement test, but individual private schools have not been required to report their progress or lack thereof.
The rationale for exempting private voucher schools from FCAT accountability continues to be that parents know what is best for their child. Seems to me that if private-school parents are empowered to judge a school that doesn't use the FCAT, public-school parents deserve the same courtesy. I always have suspected that Gov. Bush and Ms. Levesque, in pushing for vouchers, were afraid to make it easy for Floridians to make an apples-to-apples comparison between student achievement at public schools vs. student achievement at private schools.
Voucher proponents counter that such comparisons wouldn't be fair because voucher schools often take students who have not done well in traditional public schools. The attitude that Florida should have different standards for struggling students is jarring, though, coming as it does from groups that tend to criticize public schools for having low expectations for some children.
I'll concede that many private schools prepare their students well for college and life. The trouble is that there's no easy way to judge which schools are in that category and which private schools keep parents happy through grade inflation. A parent naturally is going to be happier with a private school that gives his daughter A's, compared with a public school that doled out C's. And that choice would be none of the public's business except that, for voucher students, private school tuition is being paid for by "donations" from corporations that are able to write off the entire amount from their Florida taxes.
At least the voucher schools have been subjected to a gradual increase in accountability. Most of the schools give their students the Stanford Achievement Test or the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. Starting next year, the public will be able to see how voucher schools are doing overall on those tests. Of course, if the results turn out to be awful, the schools still won't lose their eligibility to receive vouchers. Contrast that with public schools that can be closed if they don't improve state scores.
How is "private virtual schooling" going to be accountable? I don't see the Scott team or the Legislature requiring those students to show up at the public school to take the FCAT. I suppose they could require some kind of national test . But what is the penalty if students fail it? Will the state then require those students to go to public school or a private school of their choice? Imagine the outcry among home-schooling parents if they could lose the right to a home-school voucher based on the results of one high-stakes test.
But then imagine the outcry on that day when The Post publishes the first exposé of parents ripping off the home-school voucher program.
Gov.-elect Scott wants to kick down traditional structures of public education. He'd better be prepared for Home School Police to kick down some doors as well.
Jac Wilder VerSteeg is the deputy editor of editorial page of The Palm Beach Post. His e-mail address is jac_versteeg@pbpost.com. Randy Schultz's column will return next week.
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/opinion/columnists/versteeg-scotts-vouchers-for-all-plan-still-has-1154837.html
Friday, December 31, 2010
Education needs more accountability, from parents
By Mark Goulston, M.D.. Vice Chairman at Steele Partners
In today's world of blame and finger-pointing, we're teaching our kids that accountability and responsibility are slippery slopes that don't mean what they used to. For example, have you witnessed a parent-teen conversation that went anything like this:
Teenager: "Please, Mom and Dad, just let me do this, and I promise that I will take full responsibility for it."
Parent: "Do you realize that taking full responsibility means that if it backfires and goes wrong, you will own up to it, pay back whatever it takes to make up for it going wrong and learn from it so that it doesn't happen again?"
Teenager: "I didn't agree to that."
Parent: "Well, then what do you think taking full responsibility means?"
Teenager: "That if it goes wrong, I will say, 'I'm sorry.'"
If you have witnessed such a conversation, do you agree with the following?
Among our main roles and responsibility as parents is to teach, coach, guide and pass on to our children the character (and I do mean character) traits of self-reliance, resourcefulness, initiative, taking responsibility for one's actions and learning from one's mistakes (see "How to Raise a Self-Confident Child").
If at age 18 they are lacking these, they are going to find success, happiness and life in general a challenge and even overwhelming.
To bring it into sharper focus, consider that at the exact moment that you as a parent bail out your child from facing the consequences of their screw-ups and taking full responsibility for them, literally millions of children in this world the same age as your child are taking full responsibility for their actions and becoming smarter, stronger and wiser. Within the next 10 to 20 years, those children (from China, India and elsewhere) will become your child's boss, and they won't bail out or accept your child's excuses. Instead, they will fire your children.
How Did America Mess Up Its Kids?
One explanation might be what preceding generations had to endure and what they wanted for their children.
For instance, Americans born between 1900 and 1924, referred to as the G.I. Generation, were born to parents who endured coming to the United States, then heard and watched how the countries that they came from became embroiled in World War I, then enlisted to fight in the Great War and then lived through the Great Depression. It's understandable how these parents who lived through such difficult times would want their children to have it better. Having it better was about having a life where they didn't need to fear for their lives or livelihoods. It wasn't about sexual freedom or accumulating disposable income to conspicuously consume with.
The G.I. Generation grew up during the Great Depression, went to fight in World War II and then gave birth to the Baby Boomer Generation, born between 1946 and 1964. It's understandable that wanting their Baby Boomer children to have it better, especially during the prosperity and relatively peaceful years in the 1950s, would go beyond mere economic survival. Instead, it crossed over into giving their children more of what they had less of, from more sexual freedom to more drugs to more rock and roll to hot cars and especially more mobility as Baby Boomers left home to settle down across the country.
Next, early Baby Boomers gave birth to Generation X, and later Baby Boomers gave birth to Generation Y/Millennials. Although Baby Boomers experienced much more freedom than their parents, as a generation they still largely took responsibility for their actions and did not expect to be bailed out. Baby Boomers may have been tolerated and moderately indulged by their parents, but they didn't take it to the level of entitlement. That required another generational turn.
As the G.I. Generation gave their Baby Boomer children more freedom from oppression and repression, the Baby Boomers have given their Generation Y/Millennials freedom from responsibility and accountability for their actions. They have moved past indulging them directly to spoiling them. And rather than letting their children face the consequences of their actions, Baby Boomers have more often bailed out their Gen Y/Millennial children. And when children feel no responsibility or accountability for their actions, the next step is for them to feel and act entitled -- entitled to act according to how they feel and to what will immediately gratify them, and entitled to not do whatever they don't want to do. It is this attitude that would give rise to the Parent-Teenager dialogue that opened this blog.
What We Can and Need to Do About It
An initial step that might be helpful is to reach a consensus between parents and their children as to what terms related to personal responsibility mean. Here are ten terms that come to mind for me:
1.Commitment: the level of dedicated action(s) you continue to take after your enthusiasm for an enterprise stops.
2.Accountability: taking full responsibility for your actions by owning up to the negative or failed results, taking action to make up for it to the person(s) you let down, and learning what you did wrong so that it doesn't occur again.
3.Maturity: how well you are able to resist an irresistible impulse and instead have and exercise judgment and do the reasonable thing. In the brain we refer to this as exercising one's executive function.
4.Honesty: this is simply telling the truth according to the facts as you understand them. You know honesty best, when you tell a lie. Pathological liars lie whenever they are trying to get their way and take advantage of a situation. Compulsive liars lie both when the are trying to get their way and when they are trying to get out of facing the consequences of their actions.
5.Forthrightness: this is coming forward and telling the truth and revealing untruths that you become aware of. It's believing and following Justice Louis Brandeis words: "Sunlight is the greatest disinfectant."
6.Character: what you do when you are frustrated, angry, annoyed, afraid and/or bored and nobody is watching and your chance of getting caught is close to nil.
7.Sacrifice: what you do unto others who will not (immediately) be able to pay you back by doing unto you.
8.Compassion: what you feel unto others who will not be able to do more than say, "Thank you."
9.Thinking ahead and planning: overcoming the aversion to anything that causes you to forego immediate gratification.
10.Listening: and then pausing to consider what you've heard before rejecting it, tuning out or competing with it (a skill every generation needs to learn).
What additions or corrections would you make to this list? What terms come to your mind regarding personal responsibility and being accountable and what would be your definitions?
Next step...
As soon as it's possible, parents, teachers and children need to begin having an ongoing discussion of these terms at the beginning of every school year from the third grade forward. That is because these concepts will take on different meanings as children grow. Include as much interactive and experiential exercises as possible. And finally, make a central part of those discussions: a) why children should care about these ideas and values (one reason being that if they don't, they will be unhirable at age 22 when they finish college); and b) how to implement these values into curriculums and schoolwork.
Here is the challenge: People don't do what's important, they do what they care about. So children will only take personal responsibility and be accountable for their actions when parents care enough to start saying "no" instead of "yes" and then stick to it.
It's also helpful for parents to keep in mind the advice I provide managers and leaders: "If you sacrifice being respected for being liked, you won't be either."
Additional Resources:
•Character Counts at the Josephson Institute Center for Youth Ethics
•The Blessings of a Skinned Knee (Scribner,15.00) by Wendy Mogel
•Get Out of Your Own Way: Overcoming Self-Defeating Behavior (Perigee,13.95)
•"Potential is a Terrible Thing to Waste: How to Get Out of Your Own Way and Help Others Do the Same" (Worldwide Association of Business Coaches)
•"Just Listen" Discover the Secret to Getting Through to Absolutely Anyone (Amacom,24.95)
•Change Your Thinking Forever in 8 Minutes
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-goulston-md/how-america-messed-up-its_b_802137.html
In today's world of blame and finger-pointing, we're teaching our kids that accountability and responsibility are slippery slopes that don't mean what they used to. For example, have you witnessed a parent-teen conversation that went anything like this:
Teenager: "Please, Mom and Dad, just let me do this, and I promise that I will take full responsibility for it."
Parent: "Do you realize that taking full responsibility means that if it backfires and goes wrong, you will own up to it, pay back whatever it takes to make up for it going wrong and learn from it so that it doesn't happen again?"
Teenager: "I didn't agree to that."
Parent: "Well, then what do you think taking full responsibility means?"
Teenager: "That if it goes wrong, I will say, 'I'm sorry.'"
If you have witnessed such a conversation, do you agree with the following?
Among our main roles and responsibility as parents is to teach, coach, guide and pass on to our children the character (and I do mean character) traits of self-reliance, resourcefulness, initiative, taking responsibility for one's actions and learning from one's mistakes (see "How to Raise a Self-Confident Child").
If at age 18 they are lacking these, they are going to find success, happiness and life in general a challenge and even overwhelming.
To bring it into sharper focus, consider that at the exact moment that you as a parent bail out your child from facing the consequences of their screw-ups and taking full responsibility for them, literally millions of children in this world the same age as your child are taking full responsibility for their actions and becoming smarter, stronger and wiser. Within the next 10 to 20 years, those children (from China, India and elsewhere) will become your child's boss, and they won't bail out or accept your child's excuses. Instead, they will fire your children.
How Did America Mess Up Its Kids?
One explanation might be what preceding generations had to endure and what they wanted for their children.
For instance, Americans born between 1900 and 1924, referred to as the G.I. Generation, were born to parents who endured coming to the United States, then heard and watched how the countries that they came from became embroiled in World War I, then enlisted to fight in the Great War and then lived through the Great Depression. It's understandable how these parents who lived through such difficult times would want their children to have it better. Having it better was about having a life where they didn't need to fear for their lives or livelihoods. It wasn't about sexual freedom or accumulating disposable income to conspicuously consume with.
The G.I. Generation grew up during the Great Depression, went to fight in World War II and then gave birth to the Baby Boomer Generation, born between 1946 and 1964. It's understandable that wanting their Baby Boomer children to have it better, especially during the prosperity and relatively peaceful years in the 1950s, would go beyond mere economic survival. Instead, it crossed over into giving their children more of what they had less of, from more sexual freedom to more drugs to more rock and roll to hot cars and especially more mobility as Baby Boomers left home to settle down across the country.
Next, early Baby Boomers gave birth to Generation X, and later Baby Boomers gave birth to Generation Y/Millennials. Although Baby Boomers experienced much more freedom than their parents, as a generation they still largely took responsibility for their actions and did not expect to be bailed out. Baby Boomers may have been tolerated and moderately indulged by their parents, but they didn't take it to the level of entitlement. That required another generational turn.
As the G.I. Generation gave their Baby Boomer children more freedom from oppression and repression, the Baby Boomers have given their Generation Y/Millennials freedom from responsibility and accountability for their actions. They have moved past indulging them directly to spoiling them. And rather than letting their children face the consequences of their actions, Baby Boomers have more often bailed out their Gen Y/Millennial children. And when children feel no responsibility or accountability for their actions, the next step is for them to feel and act entitled -- entitled to act according to how they feel and to what will immediately gratify them, and entitled to not do whatever they don't want to do. It is this attitude that would give rise to the Parent-Teenager dialogue that opened this blog.
What We Can and Need to Do About It
An initial step that might be helpful is to reach a consensus between parents and their children as to what terms related to personal responsibility mean. Here are ten terms that come to mind for me:
1.Commitment: the level of dedicated action(s) you continue to take after your enthusiasm for an enterprise stops.
2.Accountability: taking full responsibility for your actions by owning up to the negative or failed results, taking action to make up for it to the person(s) you let down, and learning what you did wrong so that it doesn't occur again.
3.Maturity: how well you are able to resist an irresistible impulse and instead have and exercise judgment and do the reasonable thing. In the brain we refer to this as exercising one's executive function.
4.Honesty: this is simply telling the truth according to the facts as you understand them. You know honesty best, when you tell a lie. Pathological liars lie whenever they are trying to get their way and take advantage of a situation. Compulsive liars lie both when the are trying to get their way and when they are trying to get out of facing the consequences of their actions.
5.Forthrightness: this is coming forward and telling the truth and revealing untruths that you become aware of. It's believing and following Justice Louis Brandeis words: "Sunlight is the greatest disinfectant."
6.Character: what you do when you are frustrated, angry, annoyed, afraid and/or bored and nobody is watching and your chance of getting caught is close to nil.
7.Sacrifice: what you do unto others who will not (immediately) be able to pay you back by doing unto you.
8.Compassion: what you feel unto others who will not be able to do more than say, "Thank you."
9.Thinking ahead and planning: overcoming the aversion to anything that causes you to forego immediate gratification.
10.Listening: and then pausing to consider what you've heard before rejecting it, tuning out or competing with it (a skill every generation needs to learn).
What additions or corrections would you make to this list? What terms come to your mind regarding personal responsibility and being accountable and what would be your definitions?
Next step...
As soon as it's possible, parents, teachers and children need to begin having an ongoing discussion of these terms at the beginning of every school year from the third grade forward. That is because these concepts will take on different meanings as children grow. Include as much interactive and experiential exercises as possible. And finally, make a central part of those discussions: a) why children should care about these ideas and values (one reason being that if they don't, they will be unhirable at age 22 when they finish college); and b) how to implement these values into curriculums and schoolwork.
Here is the challenge: People don't do what's important, they do what they care about. So children will only take personal responsibility and be accountable for their actions when parents care enough to start saying "no" instead of "yes" and then stick to it.
It's also helpful for parents to keep in mind the advice I provide managers and leaders: "If you sacrifice being respected for being liked, you won't be either."
Additional Resources:
•Character Counts at the Josephson Institute Center for Youth Ethics
•The Blessings of a Skinned Knee (Scribner,15.00) by Wendy Mogel
•Get Out of Your Own Way: Overcoming Self-Defeating Behavior (Perigee,13.95)
•"Potential is a Terrible Thing to Waste: How to Get Out of Your Own Way and Help Others Do the Same" (Worldwide Association of Business Coaches)
•"Just Listen" Discover the Secret to Getting Through to Absolutely Anyone (Amacom,24.95)
•Change Your Thinking Forever in 8 Minutes
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-goulston-md/how-america-messed-up-its_b_802137.html
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Vouchers: there should be parity and accountability for all
By Julie Delegul
Gov.-elect Rick Scott announced that he wants to offer every student in Florida a private school voucher.
Currently, the state offers vouchers to low-income students through a tax diversion called the Tax Credit Scholarship. Florida also offers vouchers straight from the state treasury to students with disabilities, the McKay voucher.
Scott’s new policy push calls for a review of what’s right and wrong with the two voucher programs.
Never mind that the Florida Supreme Court threw out a less ambitious voucher program than Scott’s when Jeb Bush was governor. (The court said then that public education dollars could only be spent on “uniform” public schools.)
Something much more important than the law is at stake: educational quality for students.
Empirical studies belie the notion that private schools educate our children better than public schools do. When socio-economic status and race are accounted for, studies from the U.S. Department of Education say that private schools don’t get better results.
Further, Florida’s own studies showed that private voucher school students performed no better than their closest-matched public school peers on standardized test gains during the two years the state took data on the issue.
Arguably, we need more studies. But we can’t compare voucher schools to public schools because the Legislature slashed the norm-referenced Stanford 10 for Florida’s public schools.
Perhaps lawmakers don’t want researchers, voters, taxpayers and parents to make those comparisons. After all, if private schools were actually better, wouldn’t they want to demonstrate it on a common playing field?
Parity in accountability should also extend to McKay vouchers. Providing progress for individual students with disabilities, based on commonly accepted scientific standards as embodied in individual education plans, is the law of the land.
For the sake of students, their families, and taxpayers, private schools receiving state money must not be deemed exempt from laws which protect disabled students.
Until we devise systems by which private schools are held accountable in exact parity to public schools — using apples-to-apples testing instruments — we ought not be directing any more taxpayer money their way.
Gov.-elect Rick Scott announced that he wants to offer every student in Florida a private school voucher.
Currently, the state offers vouchers to low-income students through a tax diversion called the Tax Credit Scholarship. Florida also offers vouchers straight from the state treasury to students with disabilities, the McKay voucher.
Scott’s new policy push calls for a review of what’s right and wrong with the two voucher programs.
Never mind that the Florida Supreme Court threw out a less ambitious voucher program than Scott’s when Jeb Bush was governor. (The court said then that public education dollars could only be spent on “uniform” public schools.)
Something much more important than the law is at stake: educational quality for students.
Empirical studies belie the notion that private schools educate our children better than public schools do. When socio-economic status and race are accounted for, studies from the U.S. Department of Education say that private schools don’t get better results.
Further, Florida’s own studies showed that private voucher school students performed no better than their closest-matched public school peers on standardized test gains during the two years the state took data on the issue.
Arguably, we need more studies. But we can’t compare voucher schools to public schools because the Legislature slashed the norm-referenced Stanford 10 for Florida’s public schools.
Perhaps lawmakers don’t want researchers, voters, taxpayers and parents to make those comparisons. After all, if private schools were actually better, wouldn’t they want to demonstrate it on a common playing field?
Parity in accountability should also extend to McKay vouchers. Providing progress for individual students with disabilities, based on commonly accepted scientific standards as embodied in individual education plans, is the law of the land.
For the sake of students, their families, and taxpayers, private schools receiving state money must not be deemed exempt from laws which protect disabled students.
Until we devise systems by which private schools are held accountable in exact parity to public schools — using apples-to-apples testing instruments — we ought not be directing any more taxpayer money their way.
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Where education reform is heading: From extreme to extremum
By Valerie Strauss
If you want to understand where public education reform is heading, look south and east to Florida, where the governor-elect, Rick Scott, is talking about a new funding student formula that is more likely to destroy the public school system than accomplish anything else.
Scott wants to expand a voucher program that allows low-income and disabled students to use public money to go to private schools to ALL students.
Here’s how it would work, according to a preliminary plan: Vouchers, euphemistically termed “education savings accounts,” would be created and the state would deposit public education funds into them for each eligible students. Parents would shop for the school they like -- public or private -- and help pay for it with 85 percent of the state’s per-student funding figure -- which this year is $6,843.
State public education money would no longer flow through a public education system.
The idea may well be the most radical public education idea any state has ever considered, as the St. Petersburg Time noted.
Once upon a time in America, it may have sounded preposterous not only in concept but in chances of implementation.
But the Republicans in Florida, who just tightened their control in the state capital in the last election, are making in clear that they are determined to push for such a system in the state legislature next year.
There are legal, constitutional and other hurdles, but in today’s political and education atmosphere, no bad idea is impossible to implement.
There have long been those who have advocated for the destruction of the current system; in a 2007 Weekly Standard article, author David Gelernter argues for a system of private schools that would be paid for with public funds. Sound familiar?
A 2009 paper by the conservative Goldwater Institute in Arizona, outlined how a universal voucher program could work, and it was supported by the Foundation for Florida’s Future, one of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s vehicles for promoting change. Bush is still the most powerful politician in the Sunshine State.
The notion that private schools would inherently be any better than a system of public schools overlooks all the key factors -- poverty being the first but not the only one -- that affect our most troubled public schools right now.
Such a system in Florida faces a number of obstacles. The Florida Constitution calls for a “uniform system of free public schools.” The state Supreme Court in 2006 struck down one voucher program, the Opportunity Scholarships, based on this language; two other voucher programs -- for low-income families and for disabled students -- have yet to be tested in court.
Nobody knows how much such a system would cost, or how the state would pay for it; Florida already has a $2.5 billion budget-deficit, and Scott is talking about cutting school property taxes almost 20 percent and eliminating the corporate tax, according to the St. Petersburg Times.
One of the ironies of this whole idea is that the folks who support it are big supporters of “accountability” in education. That means grading schools and students and teachers on standardized test scores. But private schools aren’t subject to this type of accountability. And some public charter schools aren’t either.
According to a summary on charter schools from the Florida Legislature’s Office of Program Analysis & Government Accountability: “Due to grade configurations and small enrollment, 124 out of 382 charter schools (32%) did not earn a grade or school improvement rating as part of Florida’s accountability system during the 2008-09 school year. In contrast, 353 out of 3,138 (11%) traditional public schools did not receive a grade or school improvement rating.”
The public school systemin the United States, however flawed, has been the country’s most important civic institution.
From education historian Diane Ravitch:
“There is a strong rationale for public support of public education. As Robert Hutchins once wrote, they are part of the res publica, the public thing. Like public parks, public libraries, and fire departments, they are part of our communal responsibility. We must strengthen them, make them far better than they are now. To blame them for all the ills of our society, for all the demographic changes of the past generation, for all the burdens imposed by courts and legislatures, is wrong. To destroy them would be a civic crime.”
Yes, it would. But that’s where it seems like we may be headed
Taken from the Washington Post:http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/charter-schools/where-reform-is-heading-from-e.html#more
If you want to understand where public education reform is heading, look south and east to Florida, where the governor-elect, Rick Scott, is talking about a new funding student formula that is more likely to destroy the public school system than accomplish anything else.
Scott wants to expand a voucher program that allows low-income and disabled students to use public money to go to private schools to ALL students.
Here’s how it would work, according to a preliminary plan: Vouchers, euphemistically termed “education savings accounts,” would be created and the state would deposit public education funds into them for each eligible students. Parents would shop for the school they like -- public or private -- and help pay for it with 85 percent of the state’s per-student funding figure -- which this year is $6,843.
State public education money would no longer flow through a public education system.
The idea may well be the most radical public education idea any state has ever considered, as the St. Petersburg Time noted.
Once upon a time in America, it may have sounded preposterous not only in concept but in chances of implementation.
But the Republicans in Florida, who just tightened their control in the state capital in the last election, are making in clear that they are determined to push for such a system in the state legislature next year.
There are legal, constitutional and other hurdles, but in today’s political and education atmosphere, no bad idea is impossible to implement.
There have long been those who have advocated for the destruction of the current system; in a 2007 Weekly Standard article, author David Gelernter argues for a system of private schools that would be paid for with public funds. Sound familiar?
A 2009 paper by the conservative Goldwater Institute in Arizona, outlined how a universal voucher program could work, and it was supported by the Foundation for Florida’s Future, one of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s vehicles for promoting change. Bush is still the most powerful politician in the Sunshine State.
The notion that private schools would inherently be any better than a system of public schools overlooks all the key factors -- poverty being the first but not the only one -- that affect our most troubled public schools right now.
Such a system in Florida faces a number of obstacles. The Florida Constitution calls for a “uniform system of free public schools.” The state Supreme Court in 2006 struck down one voucher program, the Opportunity Scholarships, based on this language; two other voucher programs -- for low-income families and for disabled students -- have yet to be tested in court.
Nobody knows how much such a system would cost, or how the state would pay for it; Florida already has a $2.5 billion budget-deficit, and Scott is talking about cutting school property taxes almost 20 percent and eliminating the corporate tax, according to the St. Petersburg Times.
One of the ironies of this whole idea is that the folks who support it are big supporters of “accountability” in education. That means grading schools and students and teachers on standardized test scores. But private schools aren’t subject to this type of accountability. And some public charter schools aren’t either.
According to a summary on charter schools from the Florida Legislature’s Office of Program Analysis & Government Accountability: “Due to grade configurations and small enrollment, 124 out of 382 charter schools (32%) did not earn a grade or school improvement rating as part of Florida’s accountability system during the 2008-09 school year. In contrast, 353 out of 3,138 (11%) traditional public schools did not receive a grade or school improvement rating.”
The public school systemin the United States, however flawed, has been the country’s most important civic institution.
From education historian Diane Ravitch:
“There is a strong rationale for public support of public education. As Robert Hutchins once wrote, they are part of the res publica, the public thing. Like public parks, public libraries, and fire departments, they are part of our communal responsibility. We must strengthen them, make them far better than they are now. To blame them for all the ills of our society, for all the demographic changes of the past generation, for all the burdens imposed by courts and legislatures, is wrong. To destroy them would be a civic crime.”
Yes, it would. But that’s where it seems like we may be headed
Taken from the Washington Post:http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/charter-schools/where-reform-is-heading-from-e.html#more
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