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School Choice is Good For America; round 3


Muda69

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hot Take: Elizabeth Warren’s K‑12 Education Plan: https://www.cato.org/blog/hot-take-elizabeth-warrens-k-12-education-plan

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This morning, presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren released her plan, or at least its general contours, for K-12 education. There are a few marginal positives in it, but for the most part, at least based on my first, quick reading, it is exactly what you’d expect: spend a lot and attack school choice. All this while ignoring the Constitution, which simply does not authorize the vast majority of what Warren wants to do.

...

The primary problem with the Warren plan—other than its root failure to obey the Constitution—is its promise of massive increases in federal spending, especially quadrupling funding under Title I, from about $16 billion per year to $61 billion. She would also use the lure of extra federal taxpayer funding to coax increased state taxpayer outlays, though I couldn’t find specific figures for what the matching ratios might be.

In addition, she would increase federal spending for students with disabilities from about $13 billion annually to $33 billion. She would also create new “Excellence Grants” at $10 billion per year for districts to spend on programs they believe are important. Last but not least among the big ticket items, she would spend an additional $50 billion on school infrastructure. Assuming the last item would be over 10 years—the plan doesn’t say—all told, that’s about $80 billion in new funding per year, or $800 billion over a decade.

A big problem is that there is little evidence that massive increases in federal spending will produce anything like commensurate improvements in outcomes. We also know that reports of crumbling schools are greatly exaggerated. And with a $23 trillion national debt, how will this all be paid for?

Warren’s answer is a wealth tax. It’s a proposal that not only demonizes the wealthy and fuels division, but which will almost certainly fail to produce the revenue she needs for this and many other plans. Taxpayers who are targeted will likely find loopholes and take their wealth to other countries, just as we’ve seen elsewhere.

The other Big Bad is the plan’s attack on school choice. Were Warren to propose having no federal funding for choice, that would be fine, though she should do the same for traditional public schooling. But she would go further. It appears that Warren would try to outright force charter schools to follow the same rules and regulations as traditional public schools, ignoring the whole idea of innovative schools freed of red tape in exchange for unique accountability plans and a need to attract students.

She would also, apparently, fight to make sure only school districts—those with whom charters try to compete—could authorize charters. She would also work to ban for-profit charter schools, and would sic the IRS on nonprofits that politicos suspect are acting like for-profits. This despite studies suggesting charters tend to work pretty well, especially in urban areas and on a cost-per-pupil basis, and that management companies can be beneficial. And for many charters, just responding to taxpayer-funded IRS fishing expeditions could prove to be crippling administrative and legal burdens.

At the same time Warren opposes choice that enables people to obtain education commensurate with their values and identities, she would put federal taxpayer money into curricula dealing with hot-button, values-laden topics as sex education and Native American history. This could easily inflame zero-sum culture wars and ensure the whole country is forced into combat.

Finally, among the plan’s larger problems, Warren promises to “eliminate the ability of states to pass anti-union ‘right to work’ laws.” She would have no presidential authority to do that, and it would seem to be a direct challenge to the recent Supreme Court Janus decision, which prohibited forced payment of non-member “agency fees.” Forced unionization would be an even greater violation of freedom of association and speech.

 

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  • 3 weeks later...

Arizona’s Success with Charter Schools Is a Model Other States Would Be Wise to Follow: https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/11/arizona-charter-schools-success-model-other-states/

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Americans remain deeply committed to the goal of a public-education system that promotes class mobility and equality of opportunity. We want such a system so badly that we have continued to support increases in public-education funding despite decades of disappointing academic results. The looming retirement of the Baby Boomer generation may mark the beginning of the end of these spending increases, as our desire for a strong public-school system is overtaken by our demands for more and more health-care spending. Increasing the learning bang for the education buck will be vital in years ahead. And Arizonans have managed to do so on a large scale with charter schools, open enrollment, and families taking the lead on accountability.

Year after year, glum news about American schooling repeats with a deadening regularity. Politics, as opposed to voluntary associations, dominate the current American K-12 landscape. Districts assign students to schools by ZIP code. Turnout in district school-board elections is notoriously low, often falling into the single digits. This leaves such elections highly susceptible to “regulatory capture” by highly motivated special-interest groups, particularly public-employee unions and district contractors. Well-meaning efforts by federal and state authorities have attempted to address this problem by imposing universal standards on our sprawling, decentralized system of schools from far away. These efforts have failed to substantially improve outcomes while draining local communities of control over their schools.

Arizona charter schools, an outlier experiment in liberty, provide the template for a better approach. Arizona is unusual in that it is both a border state and a retirement destination and has large average family sizes. The aforementioned retirement of the Baby Boomers and immigration have helped create decades of strong population growth in the state. In the mid-1990s, Arizona lawmakers found themselves financially struggling to build district schools fast enough to keep up with enrollment growth, and the academic results left a great deal to be desired. In 1994, they decided to roll the dice on charter schools.

Minnesotans had passed the nation’s first charter-school law a few years earlier. The state funded charter schools on a per-student basis, they were public schools governed independently from district boards, and any state resident could attend. Struggling to keep up with enrollment growth and frustrated by languishing academic performance, Arizona was drawn to Minnesota’s innovation, which created new school space without state funds. The idea of giving educators the opportunity to build their own schools also appealed to Arizona’s libertarian political culture. With little to lose and much to gain, a coalition of Hispanic Democrats and Republicans passed one of the nation’s most liberal charter-school statutes.

Arizona charter schools took root in urban, rural, and suburban communities across the state. This was a departure from most other state charter programs, which focused primarily on inner-city schooling. And it created unexpected benefits for inner-city children by helping to unlock opportunities for open-enrollment transfers to suburban districts.

Housing construction is a large industry in Arizona, and a national housing downturn that deterred people from selling their homes and moving to the state hit its economy early and hard. Times were very tough, but the dire circumstances led to a flourishing of charter organizations that could still access private financing and remained in high demand among parents. As property values dropped, the availability of high-demand places in charter schools grew to meet family demand. The main impact of this increase, ironically, was to make suburban district seats available through open enrollment.

Part of the 1994 Arizona reforms forbade districts to charge tuition to out-of-boundary students wishing to transfer to a new school. State law requires districts to have an open-enrollment policy, but that doesn’t mean there will always be a place at every school for whoever wants it. Competition from charter schools and to a lesser extent private-choice programs created a growing incentive for suburban public-school districts to participate in open enrollment. The first suburban open-enrollment participants increased the incentive for others to accept transfers to schools farther from their homes. Today, unusually, almost all Arizona districts accept open-enrollment transfers. Scottsdale Unified, a district of 22,000 students, has 4,000 students who live outside the district boundaries. The 9,000 students who live within the district’s boundaries but choose to attend schools elsewhere have a great deal to do with the district’s decision to accept out-of-boundary transfers.

Arizona has the largest state charter sector in the country, but open-enrollment transfers between and within districts are larger still, outnumbering charter enrollment almost two-to-one in the Phoenix metropolitan area. Rather than withering under a theoretical tyranny of family autonomy, Arizona’s overall academic performance has improved across student subgroups. Arizona’s white, Hispanic, and black eighth graders demonstrated a mastery of math equivalent to what their peers would have shown as ninth graders in 2003, the first year the Nation’s Report Card exams included all 50 states. Arizona charter schools contributed directly to these gains.

The increase in academic diversity and pluralism is even more important than the improved test scores. Freed to pursue their own vision of a high-quality education, Arizona educators have created successful schools focusing on classical education, the arts, sports, and science and technology, as well as specialized schools for students with autism and other disabilities. Federal efforts to standardize American schools have had the unfortunate consequence of diminishing the autonomy of educators and the distinctiveness of the education that students are provided. States have dictated what teachers should teach grade by grade, homogenizing schooling in hopes of improving it. Arizona’s smarter, demand-driven approach has allowed schools to specialize and to meet the desires of families in the process.

 

Take, for instance, the closure of underperforming charter schools. In other states, whose charter systems don’t unlock open enrollment, competition is constrained. Elaborate accountability systems run into various roadblocks as educators and families (often understandably) resist bureaucratic school closures. Arizona’s system, by contrast, allows families to quickly and easily shut down charter schools based upon their own priorities, rather than those of the state. There are no appeals, no protests, no lawsuits: If Arizona families fail to develop confidence in their kids’ charter schools, those schools will quickly find that they lack the students necessary to operate.

Freedom is never more than a single generation away from extinction, of course. Arizonans must fight in order to prevent their schools from being undermined or smothered by unnecessary regulation going forward. If Arizonans rise to this challenge, a brighter future of schools led by educators and shaped by families awaits. Issues to work on include student transportation, transparency in open enrollment, and financially incentivizing schools to prepare students for post-secondary success whether in college or a career. The next frontier in Arizona’s story should be to liberate district schools rather than putting educators in regulatory chains.

 

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50 minutes ago, Irishman said:

By ANY means necessary I guess. 

Yep. If it helps to move towards the ultimate goal.

 

50 minutes ago, Irishman said:

You would think a civil libertarian would not be so supportive after reading this. Published in 2017.
https://www.acluaz.org/sites/default/files/field_documents/schools_choosing_students_web.pdf

I have never said I supported every initiative the ACLU the supports, nor am I a member of the institution.

 Do you support every initiative the ISTA or NEA supports?  Oh wait...................

 

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6 minutes ago, Muda69 said:

Yep. If it helps to move towards the ultimate goal.

 

I have never said I supported every initiative the ACLU the supports, nor am I a member of the institution.

 Do you support every initiative the ISTA or NEA supports?  Oh wait...................

 

 

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25 minutes ago, Irishman said:

 

12CED2EF-1D29-473F-984E-73F23825062D.jpeg

Since you seem to be fixated on your latest graphic find (maybe you resemble the Joker IRL, I don't know), what exactly is "dangerous" about my opinion concerning school choice?

 

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https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-education/2018/06/08/charter-enrollment-policies-changed-after-report-finds-illegal-practices/645419002/

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An ACLU charter-school report that exposed "clearly illegal or exclusionary" enrollment practices in Arizona has forced documentation and policy changes at nearly 100 charter schools in six months, state officials said.

The Arizona Board for Charter Schools — which is charged with ensuring the publicly funded schools comply with the law and their charter contracts — has also revised its review and advisory processes to prevent enrollment violations going forward.

"The Board took the ACLU’s analysis seriously," Executive Director Ashley Berg said by email. "As of today, 97 percent of the schools the ACLU claimed were not in compliance with the law have been (deemed) compliant by the Board."

Berg said the remaining schools with violation letters from the ACLU "continue to work with Board staff to ensure their enrollment documents and policies adhere to the law."

"The sense we got was that many charter operators appreciated the opportunity to review and, if necessary, to update their enrollment policies and documents," she said.

.....

Arizona Charter Schools Association President and CEO Eileen Sigmund described compliance as "a process of continuous improvement."

"Essentially, what we found out (after the ACLU report was released) is what may have been in writing was not in practice by our schools," she said.

"They were happy to update policies and enrollment because our charter doors are open for all students," she said. "That is actively what our leaders want to do. They want to make sure that everything they present is for all students — on their websites, in their greetings with schools and families."

Both the Charter Schools Association and state board have issued detailed guidelines, including legal briefs and FAQ sheets, to help schools develop and scrutinize enrollment documents and processes. The association also offers free training sessions. 

"Our school leaders are busy educating students, so we just want to be a bridge and make sure there's communication about what needs to be in place," Sigmund said.

In the weeks ahead, parents said they will continue to push for a more user-friendly complaint process to report compliance issues or unfair treatment at charter schools — an area they feel charter officials have yet to adequately address.

Many parents don't know they can submit complaints online on the state charter board's website, Salomon said, and those who do find the process to be a convoluted "disaster."

"I'm hoping we can work together on this, both from their perspective being the ones who have to receive and review these complaints and from our perspective as parents who have to go through the process," she said. "I'm really proud that our efforts are finally manifesting something."

A good result. No institution is perfect, especially relatively new charter schools. 

And I'm absolutely positive that a traditional government school has never, ever, ever done anything remotely considered illegal.  Ever.  They are as pure and pristine as the winter snow.

 

Edited by Muda69
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19 minutes ago, Muda69 said:

Since you seem to be fixated on your latest graphic find (maybe you resemble the Joker IRL, I don't know), what exactly is "dangerous" about my opinion concerning school choice?

 

I will respond this one time, because engaging in discussion with you is fruitless. In past posts, you have found it acceptable that the legal rights of citizens in this country be violated for the purpose of furthering an agenda you support. The ACLU report I linked highlights some specific civil rights violations going on in many AZ charter schools. When I posted and added by any means necessary; you approved of that. it is a dangerous mindset to say it is ok for laws to be broken to achieve an end. You often rail on law enforcement and the tactics they employ to achieve an end; and I will add, rightfully so. We also both agree that the seizing of private property to build a wall is unacceptable, but the wall is the goal, so why should laws matter, right? Again.....just because it is a cause you support, does not make it ok in this nation, to willfully violate the laws in place to achieve an end. That is what is dangerous. So go ahead and keep posting your nonsense....and I will keep on laughing at your posts.....hypocrite. 

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2 minutes ago, Irishman said:

I will respond this one time, because engaging in discussion with you is fruitless. In past posts, you have found it acceptable that the legal rights of citizens in this country be violated for the purpose of furthering an agenda you support. The ACLU report I linked highlights some specific civil rights violations going on in many AZ charter schools. When I posted and added by any means necessary; you approved of that. it is a dangerous mindset to say it is ok for laws to be broken to achieve an end. You often rail on law enforcement and the tactics they employ to achieve an end; and I will add, rightfully so. We also both agree that the seizing of private property to build a wall is unacceptable, but the wall is the goal, so why should laws matter, right? Again.....just because it is a cause you support, does not make it ok in this nation, to willfully violate the laws in place to achieve an end. That is what is dangerous. So go ahead and keep posting your nonsense....and I will keep on laughing at your posts.....hypocrite. 

Yes, I am evil.  And just as much of a hypocrite as you, Irishman.

 

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except one of us is intelligent enough to do some actual research, and avoid spouting off on a topic he knows nothing about. And yes, it does not change that you have openly supported that breaking laws and violating civil rights is ok to fit an agenda. 

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17 minutes ago, Irishman said:

except one of us is intelligent enough to do some actual research, and avoid spouting off on a topic he knows nothing about. And yes, it does not change that you have openly supported that breaking laws and violating civil rights is ok to fit an agenda. 

Civil disobedience in the quest to makes things better has a long and storied history in this country.  Some historians even contend the writing of the Declaration of Independence was illegal, an act of treason against the British Crown.

And I find it puzzling you still continue to use the "a topic he knows nothing about".  I do know something about it sir,  you yourself have provided critical information on this very forum over the years. I also have friends and relatives who are government school employees, and have discussed the issues with them multiple times.

But you continue to believe in your altruism, that your way is the only pure way to educate children.   After all, it supports the status quo and helps keep the ISTA/NEA in business, right?

 

 

 

 

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Soooo, violating a person’s civil rights, deliberately is now defined by you as civil disobedience? But teachers taking a personal day to o to the Statehouse should not be allowed? Yeah ...I got it. I guess people who burn crosses and carry confederate flags fall into your definition of civil disobedience as well then huh? 

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19 minutes ago, Muda69 said:

that your way is the only pure way to educate children.

Now you're projecting your opinion onto those who don't believe that. I've never seen anyone on this forum say that government schools are the only pure way to educate children.

You, however, believe NO government schools are the only way to educate. 

Who's being altruistic?

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5 minutes ago, gonzoron said:

Now you're projecting your opinion onto those who don't believe that. I've never seen anyone on this forum say that government schools are the only pure way to educate children.

You, however, believe NO government schools are the only way to educate. 

Who's being altruistic?

Both of us, in our own way.  I firmly believe in the less government the better.

Do you believe government schools are the best way to educate children?

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23 minutes ago, Irishman said:

Soooo, violating a person’s civil rights, deliberately is now defined by you as civil disobedience? But teachers taking a personal day to o to the Statehouse should not be allowed? Yeah ...I got it. I guess people who burn crosses and carry confederate flags fall into your definition of civil disobedience as well then huh? 

When do the amount of "personal days" become a de-facto strike, which IIRC is illegal for public sector unions under Indiana law?  How many government school corporations are going to be shut down due to these 'personal days', Irishman?  The last count  I saw says 17, and that will probably climb.

 I believe burning crosses and carrying confederate flags, while distasteful and nothing I personally approve of,  are allowed under the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

 

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3 minutes ago, Muda69 said:

Do you believe government schools are the best way to educate children?

I've never said they were the only way, nor have I ever said they were the best way.  I think eliminating them would be a complete educational disaster though. You can't pigeonhole education into one method and expect a perfect result.

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1 minute ago, gonzoron said:

You can't pigeonhole education into one method and expect a perfect result.

Agreed. So why does government education pigeonhole/own something like 90% of the K-12 education market?

And I have never advocated for one method of education.   Without the government school hegemony private schools, parochial school, homeschooling, co-op schools, etc. will flourish and grow.  All potentially different methods of education.

 

 

 

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9 minutes ago, Muda69 said:

Without the government school hegemony private schools, parochial school, homeschooling, co-op schools, etc. will flourish and grow. 

They flourish now. Why eliminate any type of education? Education doesn't come from one source to begin with.

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20 minutes ago, Muda69 said:

When do the amount of "personal days" become a de-facto strike, which IIRC is illegal for public sector unions under Indiana law?  How many government school corporations are going to be shut down due to these 'personal days', Irishman?  The last count  I saw says 17, and that will probably climb.

 I believe burning crosses and carrying confederate flags, while distasteful and nothing I personally approve of,  are allowed under the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

 

 

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7 minutes ago, gonzoron said:

They flourish now. Why eliminate any type of education? Education doesn't come from one source to begin with.

Approx. 10% of the K-12 education market is not "flourishing", no matter how you cut it.    And the public sector unions like the ISTA and NEA are fighting school choice away from traditional government schools tooth and nail.

 

9 minutes ago, Irishman said:

 

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*yawn*  Whatever you say Joker.

 

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