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School Choice and Government Education Realities
Blog-fight! Very stimulating. My thanks to Sara Mead at The Quick and the Ed, who responds to my response to her post about how advocates of educational freedom are hawking snake-oil.
First, I’d like to happily and wholly agree with one of Mead’s points: “[School choice programs that target students with disabilities] create perverse incentives for parents and schools that could exacerbate one of the biggest problems in special education: overidentification of students with disabilities.” No argument there at all, and I would simply add that there are perverse incentives for disability over-ID in the public system right now. Getting your kid classified as ADHD, or Asperger’s, etc. allows your child to receive extra consideration and a more individualized education. If your child is difficult to control and only responds well in a particular educational environment, your only recourse may be a special classification. Wouldn’t it be great if parents could just choose a school that works for their child in the first place, without the need to label them?
Now, on to the good stuff.
Mead admits that these special programs “seem to be working okay,” but that “they don’t seem to be solving the problem they ostensibly were intended to solve–parent difficulties getting needed services or out-of-district placements for their children.” I’m sorry, but I fail to see how giving parents another choice isn’t a general step forward. No one ever claimed that vouchers would make the government system perfect, only that it would allow parents easily to look elsewhere for the services their child needs. The program does that, and there’s nothing disingenuous about saying choice solves a lot of problems for thousands of families. The report Mead cites claims only that children with less severe disabilities are the ones helped most by the program, not that it doesn’t help children with disabilities.
I’d also like to point out that although political support is difficult to come by for any school choice program, the public actually supports universal over targeted programs by huge margins, often with two or three times the support. This is a very consistent finding (I’ve found the same thing in my own recent opinion research). And I think the school choice movement’s myopic obsession with hyper-targeted programs is both a tactical and a strategic mistake.
Drop the Excuses for Poor Coverage of School Choice
Jay Mathews, education reporter for the Washington Post, urges everyone to drop the voucher issue because:
1. “I am tired of the voucher issue.”
Mathews may feel like he’s had to write about vouchers too much, but most of the public hasn’t heard a thing about them, and certainly doesn’t know much about education tax credits, which get far less coverage and are usually called “vouchers” by journalists covering the education beat in any case.
Being tired of covering an issue is a sorry excuse for a journalist to call for its dismissal. Although, I have to say that it’s difficult to see how he could be tired of vouchers when he mentioned them in only 3 out of about 121 articles over the past year. That’s just over 2 percent of his articles.
Perhaps Mathews could look into the bipartisan promise of education tax credits, which he mentions not at all over the past year. Arizona, Rhode Island and Iowa passed tax-credit programs last year, and Pennsylvania expanded its existing business-tax credit program. The Arizona, Iowa, and Pennsylvania bills became law with Democratic governors, and the Rhode Island business-tax credit was born in a legislature controlled by Democrats. Finally, Democratic Gov. Eliot Spitzer in deep-blue New York proposed an education-tax deduction in his first state budget.
Government Monopoly is our Educational Disease
Sara Mead over at The Quick and The Ed laments the one-note, “pro-voucher conservative insistence that choice will solve any and all educational problem one can imagine*,” including what she thinks is a phony “boy crisis.” The asterisk there is for sex ed – she is under the misapprehension that supporters of educational freedom want to make an exception here to force all children to be taught “abstinence-only.”
I really wonder whether Mead understands what choice in education means . . . it certainly doesn’t mean a state-mandated curriculum, conservative or liberal. A state mandated curriculum means no effective choice. That’s what we have right now, and choice in education is the way to change it.
The larger point here, though, is found in the utterly exhausted trope Mead trots out: our education problems can’t be solved with a “silver bullet” (she uses the hammer-nail metaphor, but you get the point).
Why don’t I try my hand at this: A single disease can cause many symptoms.
Brain cancer may cause debilitating headaches, but the cancer is the cause and the headache is a symptom of that disease. Some treatments of breast cancer might cause heart failure, but the cancer is still the root problem. If there’s no cancer, none of these problems exist.
The major educational problems in this country – poor student achievement, the achievement gap, low efficiency, high and climbing costs, social conflict, even discipline and safety – are not independent of each other. These problems are symptoms caused by the same disease: a government controlled and operated educational system.
Mead doesn’t understand how the mechanism of educational freedom can solve specific educational problems, and that’s too much to fully explain in a blog posting. A better way of putting it is that educational freedom is a mechanism that allows specific educational problems to be solved. This is the core difference between market and command and control systems.
I am not saying that in a system of educational freedom we would wake to find a Lake Wobegon America, where all children are above average, education costs nothing, and social ills have disappeared.
I am saying that the serious problems prompting all of our policy debates will be greatly mitigated by educational choice, and to an extent greater than under any other possible reform.
Government monopolies are very poor providers of all services, but they are especially poor providers of something as nuanced, personal, and value-laden as education.
The education industrial complex, Big Ed, is the disease. Educational freedom is the cure.
Tipping Point for School Choice in AZ?
The Arizona Republic gave an unqualified endorsement of school choice today, coupled with a stinging rebuke of the state Education-Industrial Complex, also known as “Big Ed” (yes, I will continue repeating this gimmicky label) for challenging this and other school choice laws in court.
It’s difficult to pick just one quote, but their opening will do nicely:
Of all Arizona’s attempts over the years to provide education options for poor students, the law allowing corporations to take a dollar-for-dollar credit on their taxes is the best-structured reform effort so far.
And they pull no punches on Big Ed:
Despite the indisputable value it provides students and their parents — that of real education options — the program’s opponents have gone to court against it and other education-choice programs . . . . It would be a shame to see such programs flounder on the specious fear that if you give vouchers to disabled kids, or to kids at the rocky bottom of life’s well, that public education itself will crumble. Simply put, it won’t. Education choice strengthens the underlying system. Someday, with luck, opponents of reform will figure that out.
The NCLB Backlash
David Broder delivers a pile of Beltway Consensus in his column today. Broder insists that Bush fight his fellow Republicans on the Hill who have come back round to realizing that the Feds 1) Aren’t authorized by the Constitution to direct the education of the public, 2) Don’t improve education with their involvement, and 3) Just spend more money and make more trouble the more they’re involved. Return to the consensus, he admonishes. These folks, some of whom recently announced their legislative intentions at a Cato event, are leading what Broder refers to as a “backlash” against No Child Left Behind.
The column is rather unremarkable, but I love this closer:
“But the dissenting Republicans’ idea of letting every state set its own standards and measure its own progress is a certain way to consign many youngsters to second-class educations. And that would be a serious step backward.”
Getting a second-class education is bad, and sunny days are good! Indeed. But one can’t step backward if he doesn’t have the room.
The only way forward for education is to walk down the path of educational freedom. That means states putting parents back in charge of their children’s education and getting the Feds out of the issue entirely.
Just like Ohio’s Children, Gov. Strickland Needs a Good Education
Ryan Boots over at Edspresso hits Ohio’s new Governor Ted Strickland for claiming that vouchers are “inherently undemocratic.” Strickland thinks that vouchers are “inherently undemocratic” because “they allow public dollars to be used in ways and in settings where the public has little or no oversight,” and “those who are paying those tax dollars have no ability to vote for a board of education or to make determinations regarding curriculum, or discipline or admission policies or a whole range of things.”
As Ryan points out, this just isn’t the case with the highly (over)regulated EdChoice program, which encumbers participating schools with an array of restrictions that ensure no real market in education services will arise to serve the needs of the neediest children.
Even if Strickland’s fantasy voucher program did exist, however, the current system of government schooling is less democratic and more prone to corruption. The profligate spending, waste and outright fraud that characterize the government education system hardly suggest that it is subject to effective public oversight.
And for good reason . . . it is controlled by the education-industrial complex, aka “Big Ed,” which short-circuits all political attempts to direct it for the public good. Big Ed controls board of education elections as well as “determinations regarding curriculum, or discipline or admission policies or a whole range of things.” That’s why exasperated policy experts with no love of the free market are calling for parental choice in education and why parents are desperate to escape a system they pay for but can’t control.
But Strickland does hit on one good point, buried though it may be beneath a pile of misconceptions and delusions. “Those who are paying those tax dollars” for education should be able to direct their money to the kind of education that they support. Agreed.
Taxpayers should not be forced to pay for kids to learn about condoms in the 3rd grade or abstinence-only in the 12th grade. Forcing all parents to educate their children in the same way is a recipe for irresolvable value conflicts and civic strife. Disbursing general revenues for education forces some people to pay for education with which they disagree.
Education tax credits allow every taxpayer to support the kind of education they want to and force no one to pay for education to which they object. Tax credits create a public education system where schools are accountable to the parents who choose them and the people who pay for them . . . not through a corrupt political process beholden to Big Ed, but directly accountable to the people themselves.
That is true oversight. That is a democratic system of education. If Strickland can’t support vouchers, he certainly has no reason to oppose education tax credits. Other than fealty to Big Ed over our children.
Why, Oh Why, Oh Why, Oh – Why Did I Ever Leave Ohio?
I grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, so this is personal.
Ohio used to have one of the lowest tax burdens in the country. Now it has the third highest. And, yes, that sucking sound is all the jobs going to other states.
After more than a decade of mismanagement and malfeasance under the control of an unprincipled tax-and-spend Republican Party, Ohio finally gave up and tried the other party last year. They elected Democrat Ted Strickland as their new governor. (His opponent, Ken Blackwell, actually believes in and acts on the fiscal conservatism he ran on, but who can blame the voters for not buying it?).
Gov. Strickland laid out his budget plans in a speech yesterday, claiming he wants to do something the Republicans never did: cut spending! (Of course the speech laid out some big new spending items, so I’m sure Ohio can look forward to more ballooning budgets and higher taxes, anyway).
Unfortunately, Gov. Strickland also proposed paying for this by gutting Ohio’s tiny voucher program. Strickland is of course confused, because vouchers actually save money. No matter, I’m sure that .08% of the budget will cover the Medicaid expansion! Strickland also wants to put a moratorium on new charter schools and ban for-profit education management companies from running them. (Andrew Coulson reviewed some of the reasons why killing educational freedom is such a demonstrably bad idea yesterday.)
If the Ohio Republican Party finds its principles and its spine, this just might be a time of great opportunity. Read the rest of this post »
Education Tax Credits Keep Going and Going
and …
Yes folks, education tax credits keep rolling right through all of the court challenges that the anti-educational choice crowd can come up with.
On Wednesday, the Maricopa County Superior Court in Arizona dismissed another frivolous lawsuit against an Arizona tax credit program. Arizona’s individual tax credit was upheld by the state supreme court in 1999 with a wide-ranging decision, and the new corporate tax credit is different in no substantive way.
This is the latest in a long line of education tax credit victories, and opponents of educational freedom are running out of options – even frivolous options – for attacking them.
Although voucher laws have been overturned in two states, tax credits have survived every challenge to date (the Florida Supreme Court handed down an absurd and transparently political decision, and Colorado’s law went down over a “local control” provision).
Certainly, out-of-control judges can make law at will. But education tax credits have serious legal advantages that should prompt more consideration from school choice supporters. The fundamental difference is that vouchers are considered government funds and tax credits are not.
In many states with unsympathetic courts and strict “Blaine” or “compelled support” language prohibiting government funds from being use at sectarian institutions, vouchers are a moot point for legislators. Who wants to stick their neck out on a controversial issue only to have the law tossed out?
Even when a voucher law does survive a challenge – which many have – the legal obstacles are typically higher and more difficult to clear. For instance, the challenge to Arizona’s business tax credit was dismissed in short order (decision appealed of course) while the voucher case still awaits judgment.
The education industrial complex makes getting school choice hard enough . . . we should go with the more legally viable education tax credits when we can.
Three Cheers for Workers’ Rights
This year has seen a lot of attention paid to teachers unions, with the Supreme Court taking up the appeal from an outrageous Washington State Supreme Court decision that gutted the First Amendment rights of teachers and gave new “rights” to unions.
But battles are being fought all over the country. There have been union revolts in Washington, California, and Iowa, and the latest comes from Illinois, where the Century Education Association (CEA), representing Century School District in Ullin, IL, voted to sever their ties with the state and national union and become “local only.” And this official step comes after they were apparently harassed and lied to by their supposed representatives:
“We really felt that the IEA and the NEA were not organizations out to represent the best interests of teachers,” said Debra Goins, President of the CEA and a teacher at Century Elementary School. “We all felt we should have the right to choose to affiliate or not, without being harassed, bullied, lied to and intimidated.”
The Association of American Educators (the largest national, non-union, professional educators’ association) will step in to provide the benefits of a national without the burdens and baggage that come with NEA affiliation.
Keep an eye on Davenport v. Washington Education Association (WEA) and Washington v. WEA, which should be decided in June. The Washington court accepted the bizarre union argument that requiring the union to get permission from non-union-members before using their mandatory dues to engage in express advocacy for or against state or local candidates or initiatives is a violation of the union’s First Amendment rights. I think this is known as uber-chutzpah.
Friends of the First Amendment should hope the court will issue a broad ruling curtailing union tyranny. And that more union locals will demand to be treated like professionals rather than the political pawns of union bosses.
A Great Moment for the Nanny State or Legislative Satire?
A bill has been introduced in Texas that makes missing a parent-teacher conference a criminal offense.
Now, before everyone gets all upset, having a good excuse is an acceptable defense for parental misbehavior in being absent from the classroom. And it’s only Class C Misdemeanor. And the fines will be used strictly for educational purposes. Of course, there is no provision outlining what exactly constitutes a reasonable excuse, or whether a parent needs to get a signed note from his/her respective parents/doctor/boss, etc. But I’m sure all of these details will work themselves out in due time.
I applaud the civic-minded Wayne Smith (R- Harris County) for addressing the problems that a lack of parental involvement in education can cause, but it seems to me that this might run afoul of personal liberty and violate the integrity of the family.
In fact, this law seems to directly conflict with a quote Mr. Smith has prominently displayed on his website:
“Let’s continue the fight to lower our taxes, reduce government bureaucracy and waste, and return to traditional family values.”
Now, I might be wrong, but Mr. Smith’s proposal looks like it will cost more money, increase government bureaucracy and waste, and undermine the sovereignty of the family that is the center-piece of traditional family values! His bill would make parents as well as children a ward of the state. I guess Mr. Smith thinks it takes a government-mandated village to raise a child and discipline a family.
Hold on! Perhaps Mr. Smith is presenting a “modest proposal” in order to demonstrate the absurdity of our government-run school system. Surely Mr. Smith knows that the best way to get parents involved in their child’s education is to allow them to control their child’s education! Everyone should be on the lookout for a universal education tax credit bill on sales and property taxes to follow this intriguing foray into the new art of legislative satire.
Silver Lining in the National Science Standard Cloud
Andrew Coulson does a wonderful job illuminating just how misguided and doomed national curriculum standards are . . . but there is a silver lining! With national science standards, we can all look forward to a vicious national debate on Intelligent Design versus Evolutionary Theory!
Just think of the fun: instead of those boring discussions of national security, we’ll have presidential debates and party litmus tests on Darwin . . . and if we’re lucky, on judicial nominees’ position on Darwin! Perhaps each party can include an entire curriculum in their platform. A national discussion about precisely what every single child should learn in their first 12 years of schooling is exactly what we need to bring a bit of heat and life back into this snooze-fest “Era of Good Feelings,” Part II that we’re living in.
Once More Unto the Breach, Dear Friends
The forces of educational stagnation have launched a comprehensive attack on school choice in Arizona. The ACLU-and-friends lawsuit in September against the state’s new education tax credit was followed yesterday by a challenge to two new voucher programs. This is the first time that the education establishment has dared to turn its fire on school choice programs that help disabled and foster-care children. This recent move signals panic among school choice opponents, who now begrudge a few thousand of the most disadvantaged children in Arizona a choice in education, along with everyone else. Hopefully the court will go with recent precedent in Kotterman vs. Killian (1999), where the Arizona Supreme Court upheld personal donation tax credits, and find that vouchers supporting parental school choice isn’t government support of religion (which AZ’s anti-Catholic Blaine amendment prohibits).
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