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School Choice is Good For America; round 3


Muda69

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8 minutes ago, DanteEstonia said:

And I’m sorry that you live so high up in an ivory tower that you have no idea how the world works.

I have worked in the private sector for 30+ years, friend.  I know a lot more about how the real world works than an academic like yourself, safe behind your public sector union and pension.

 

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Private Schools Are Adapting to Lockdown Better Than the Public School Monopoly

https://reason.com/2020/07/17/private-schools-are-adapting-to-lockdown-better-than-the-public-school-monopoly/?itm_source=parsely-api

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More than 120,000 American schools have closed since March, a change affecting more than 55 million students. As we approach August, an intense debate about reopening schools has been brewing. One side argues that schools should reopen so that families can return to work and children can receive the education taxpayers have paid for. The other side says that schools cannot reopen safely without $116 billion more in federal funding, on top of the $13 billion already allocated to states to reopen schools.

This debate wouldn't be so contentious if we funded students instead of school systems. The funding could follow children to wherever their families feel they would receive an effective education, be it a district-run school, a charter school, a private school, or a home setting. In that situation, if an individual school decided not to reopen—or if it reopened unsafely or inadequately—families could take their children's education dollars elsewhere.

 

That is how food stamp funding currently works. If a neighborhood grocery store refuses to reopen, it may be inconvenient, but families wouldn't be devastated; they could take their money elsewhere. Imagine if you were forced to pay your neighborhood Walmart the same amount of money each week regardless of whether they provided your family with any groceries. The store would have little incentive to reopen in an effective or timely manner.

It sounds absurd. But you have essentially just imagined today's compulsory K–12 school system.

And it's even worse than that. Even if the institution were required to provide goods and services through online or other platforms, it would still have weak incentives to get things right, because families would still be powerless.

New data show that's precisely what happened with the K–12 school system during the lockdown. 

A nationally representative survey conducted by Ipsos Public Affairs found that private and charter schools were substantially more likely to continue providing students with meaningful education services during the lockdown than traditional public schools.

The survey found that private and charter school teachers were more than twice as likely to meet with students daily than teachers at district-run schools. Private and charter schools were about 20 percent more likely to introduce new content to their students during the lockdown. About 1 in every 4 traditional public schools simply provided review material for what students had already learned before the closures. Arlington Public Schools, for example, decided in April not to teach students any new material for the rest of the school year.

Another national survey, this one conducted by Common Sense Media, found similar results. Private school students were more than twice as likely to connect with their teachers each day, and about 1.5 times as likely to attend online classes during the closures.

A recent report by the Center for Reinventing Public Education found that only 1 in 3 school districts examined required teachers to deliver instruction during the lockdown, and less than half of all districts expected teachers to take attendance or check in with students regularly.

And just yesterday, The New York Times reported that in many towns, private schools are reopening while public schools are staying closed.

Traditional school systems' failure to adapt to COVID-19 helps explain why many families are turning toward homeschooling. A new nationally representative survey by EdChoice and Morning Consult just found that the pandemic has made families about 2.4 times as likely to have a more favorable view of homeschooling as they are to have a less favorable view. Another national poll, this one by RealClear Opinion Research, found that 40 percent of American families say they are now "more likely" to homeschool after the lockdowns end. So many families in North Carolina committed to homeschooling this month that they crashed the state government's website.

This might also explain why the new national Education Next survey found that parents were substantially more satisfied with private and charter schools' responses to the pandemic than they were with those of district-run schools. Parents of children in private and charter schools were at least 50 percent more likely to report being "very satisfied" with the instruction provided during the lockdown than parents of children in traditional public schools.

These results aren't surprising. Private schools can adapt to change more effectively because they are less hampered down by onerous regulations than their government-run counterparts. Choice schools also have real incentives to provide meaningful educations to their students while reopening safely. Private and charter schools know that their customers—families—can walk away and take their money with them if they fail to meet their needs.

K–12 students have been getting the short end of the stick for far too long. But it doesn't have to be this way: We could fund students directly and truly empower families. Legislators in Pennsylvania and Maryland have already made proposals to partially fund families directly in the fall. Hopefully they'll succeed—and hopefully more states will follow.

 

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A Pod for Every Child

https://www.cato.org/blog/pod-every-child

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There is a powerful tendency in education policy to immediately ask about any idea, “will it be equitable,” and condemn anything that looks like it might help wealthier people more than poor. It is a laudable instinct, but condemning parents–even rich ones–who are trying to do what is best for their children is divorced from human reality, and worse, seems geared more toward shaming the wealthy than empowering the poor.

Case in point, the response to the suddenly emerging phenomenon of education “pods,” small groupings of children and a teacher paid for by parents who want in‐person education with minimized COVID-19 risk.Washington Post report shone a light on this development last week, but more from an “is it fair” than an “interesting approach to dealing with COVID” perspective. Framed the headline, “For parents who can afford it, a solution for fall: Bring the teachers to them.” The Post has since run other pod pieces, featuring the following headlines:

Private ‘school pods’ are coming. They’ll worsen inequality

And

The huge problem with education ‘pandemic pods’ suddenly popping up

The problem dealt with in the latter: “these new pandemic education pods replicate white flight.”

As lamentable as it is when something exacerbates inequality, it is simply unrealistic to think parents with means will refrain from doing what they think is best for their kids. Heck, it is biologically ingrained. Nor should they be shamed for doing what they can for their children, especially when it comes to matters as important as health and education. They have a responsibility to do what is best.

Our inclination should not be to shame well‐off families, perhaps in hopes they will feel sufficient social pressure not to pursue their plans. Instead, we should empower poorer families to seek out the best for their kids. They, too, are biologically driven to care for their children, and were education funding given to them instead of directly to public schools they could afford to create their own pods.

Nationally, we spend about $13,000 per public‐school student, excluding capital costs. Were families with 10 children to receive that funding and pool it, they could pay a teacher up to $130,000 for the year – more than double the average public‐school teacher’s base salary of about $62,000 and leaving ample money for benefits.

What about a high‐cost place like Washington, DC?

The District of Columbia spends about $24,000 per student in current funds, which would allow a group of 10 to pay $240,000. The average DC public school teacher’s salary is around $78,000.

Our history provides more than ample reason to fixate on equity. But it is government that has driven much of the inequity we have seen, and it has especially dominated education—funding, running, and assigning people to schools—for well more than a century. It is time to do something different than lament the advantages of the wealthy. It is time to empower the poor to do the same things as the rich, by letting them control the funding that is supposed to educate their children.

 

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Viewpoint Diversity Gets a Boost as Families Flee Public Schools

https://reason.com/2020/07/29/viewpoint-diversity-gets-a-boost-as-families-flee-public-schools/

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Earlier this year, The New York Times looked at different editions of the same public-school textbooks published in California and Texas and found them spun in opposite directions to suit the ideological tastes of the dominant political factions in those states. It was a handy summary of the long-raging curriculum wars that have seen politicians and activists battling to present their preferred interpretations of the world to the captive audiences in America's classrooms.

Those are wars which many families will escape this fall as the pandemic and school closures push parents to assume responsibility for teaching their own children and, not incidentally, to pass along their own views and not those prepackaged by government officials. For all the damage COVID-19 and the fumbling human responses to the virus are doing, viewpoint diversity may actually get a boost.

America's public-school textbooks, the Times story explained, reflect the country's polarization.

"The books have the same publisher. They credit the same authors. But they are customized for students in different states, and their contents sometimes diverge in ways that reflect the nation's deepest partisan divides," Dana Goldstein wrote for the Times in January of this year. "Classroom materials are not only shaded by politics, but are also helping to shape a generation of future voters," she added.

Shaping a generation of future voters is exactly what many government officials have in mind. Children taught to believe the "correct" things will grow up to vote the "correct" way—or so authorities hope.

Goldstein's own newspaper joined the fray with its tendentious 1619 Project, which portrays the United States as irreparably stained by racism and slavery, and free-market economics as rooted in human bondage. The project has been turned into classroom materials over the objections of historians who charge it with "a displacement of historical understanding by ideology" and despite the insistence of Nikole Hannah-Jones, the reporter who led the project, that "the 1619 Project is using history and reporting to make an argument. It never pretended to be a history."

No wonder, as the Cato Institute points out in the intro to its Public Schooling Battle Map, that "rather than build bridges, public schooling often forces people into wrenching conflict."

But government-run schools are going to have a smaller captive audience this year. While they've been slowly losing ground for a long time to charter schools, private schools, and homeschooling, many of them alienated large numbers of families this spring with clumsy responses to the spread of COVID-19. Fumbled implementation of distance learning, cavalier attitudes toward work done remotely, and confusion over when and how (and even if) schools will reopen have parents looking to alternatives.

Interest is way up now across the country in charter schools, private schools, and, especially, various DIY approaches including homeschooling and learning pods or microschools. To millions of families, these independent options hold out a better chance of delivering education safely and effectively than government institutions that keep dropping the ball and are too bureaucratic to handle a world in flux.

Independent education also means a wide range of approaches as to what children are taught, far beyond the red vs. blue, Texas vs. California choice in government-selected textbooks. Parents choosing their children's education select options that suit them and, to the extent that they care, convey their values or, at least, don't offend their sensibilities.

Some people, of course, don't want children to be taught parents' ideas rather than those of the local ruling party.

"Parents who are ideologically committed to raising children in isolation from the larger society, with views and values counter to much of the education provided in public schools, are not going to be willing or able to provide an education comparable to what schools provide," argues Harvard Law School's Elizabeth Bartholet in a much-discussed Arizona Law Review article.

Bartholet favors a "presumptive ban" on homeschooling and believes "policymakers should impose greater restrictions on private schools for many of the same reasons that they should restrict homeschooling."

Interestingly, Bartholet's attack on parents who teach their kids "views and values counter to much of the education provided in public schools" was published around the same time The New York Times revealed the spin different textbook review committees put on the materials with which students are taught in government schools. Clearly, she and her allies are OK with ideological content in education—so long as it's chosen by political officials, not children and parents.

Specifically, opponents of independent education often decry religious and reactionary views among homeschoolers and private schoolers. Those are the viewpoints most typically fingered as being at odds with what is taught in government schools.

But families opting for different educational paths are increasingly likely to be secular. The percentage of homeschoolers identifying themselves as religious in North Carolina, which keeps especially detailed statistics, dropped from 78.3 percent in 1988-1989 to 56.5 percent in 2019-2020 even as the total number of registered home schools (many serving multiple students) rose from 1,385 to 94,863.

And rather than serve as conduits for reactionary views, very often "black parents homeschool to remove their children from what they see as a racially hostile environment" in government schools, reports Mahala Dyer Stewart, a professor of Sociology at Hamilton College. "The middle-class black mothers I interviewed say that despite their college education, salaries and advocacy on behalf of their children, they were unable to protect their children from the racial hostilities at school."

Importantly, "greater exposure to private schooling instead of traditional public schooling is not associated with any more or less political tolerance, and greater exposure to homeschooling is associated with more political tolerance," according to research published in 2014 by the Journal of School Choice.

In fact, families that choose independent education are much more diverse in many ways than their critics pretend. So are Americans in general, who possess a range of views more varied and interesting than you'd guess if you went by the two legacy political parties that battle over school curricula and dominate the boards that review textbooks.

This year, as growing numbers of those diverse American families take responsibility for their children's education away from failing government institutions, they'll also take responsibility for the contents of that education. The result is going to be an increased range of opinions, values, and interpretations to be shared and debated by students who otherwise would have been doomed to a force-feeding of officially approved ideas. The pandemic may be threatening our health and breaking our economy, but it may, ultimately, expand our minds.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Teachers Unions Try To Protect Their Monopoly as Parents Flee Traditional Schools: https://reason.com/video/teachers-unions-try-to-protect-their-monopoly-as-parents-flee-traditional-schools/

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Los Angeles was the first major city to announce that its public schools wouldn't be re-opening for in-person instruction in the fall, and districts across the country have followed suit.

A coalition of California parents is suing the state on the grounds that poor and special-needs children in particular have received inadequate instruction during the shutdown.

School districts around the country are weighing students' education needs against the danger that in-person instruction could cause COVID-19 to spread. And teachers unions are understandably concerned about protecting their members' health.

But in Los Angeles, the teachers union is exploiting the COVID-19 crisis to prevent competition from charter schools, which are seeing a surge of new applicants from desperate parents.

The United Teachers Los Angeles co-signed a document with nine other unions and the Democratic Socialists of America calling for a moratorium on all new charter schools and private voucher programs. A union-backed bill signed into law last October might accomplish that, as it gives local school boards more power to stop new charter schools from opening and existing ones from renewing their charters.

"It's about protecting a monopoly from losing any students and the funding that goes along with those students," says Corey DeAngelis, director of school choice at the Reason Foundation, the nonprofit that publishes Reason TV.

He says entrenched interests are trying to stop families from exercising choice.

"If you really care about students and their safety, you should want more options for more students to be able to spread out in different locations," says DeAngelis. "And this doesn't do that. But what it does do is it allows the teachers unions to block students from switching to their competition."

Families are flocking to charters in part because they were poorly served by district schools in the spring. The United Teachers Los Angeles, which declined our interview request, successfully pressured the district to limit their members to 4-hour workdays and to give them the choice of opting out of live video instruction. In Chicago, nearly half of the district's elementary school teachers logged in to the virtual learning system less than three days a week.

One recent survey found that private or charter schools were more than twice as likely to meet with students daily than teachers at district-run schools and 20 percent more likely to introduce new content.

In addition to the charter school moratorium, United Teachers Los Angeles is insisting that before the district can reopen it needs an additional $250 million in overall funding, a federal bailout, Medicare for All, a new wealth tax, a new millionaires tax, and defunding of the police, among other demands.

"Normal wasn't working for us before," the union asserts, and "we can't go back."

Oregon and Pennsylvania have also cut off additional funding for charter schools. DeAngelis points to comments from the president of the state's association of school administrators in Pennsylvania, who stated his intention to handicap virtual charter schools.

"We're seeing this in a lot of different places, and it's putting the system in front of the needs of families—and in the worst time possible," says DeAngelis.

Los Angeles is already home to more charter schools than any other district in America, and it was a battleground in the school choice movement before COVID-19. Over the past decade, the percentage of students attending charters has surged, taking market share from traditional schools that employ unionized teachers.

United Teachers Los Angeles is using its political clout to keep COVID-19 from accelerating that trend. California schools have traditionally received most of their state funding based on the number of students enrolled. But in July, California froze school budgets in place at the behest of the state's largest lobbyist—the California Teachers Association. That means schools experiencing surges in enrollment won't get additional funding and schools hemorrhaging enrollment won't lose money.

That's limiting the extent to which the California charter network APlus Schools can scale up. It has already increased enrollment by 5,000 for 2021 but had to wait-list an additional 24,000.

Jeff Rice, president of APlus Schools, attributes surging demand to the network's experience with virtual instruction.

"We're seeing a significant increase in parents who under normal circumstances may not choose our school, but…they're turning to us because they want to put their children in a school that has proven track record of providing successful learning in those settings," says Rice.

The budget freeze is also impacting South Sutter Charter School in Sacramento, where Shauna Anderson works as an education specialist.

"And so that benefits these brick and mortar schools where the kids are just leaving in droves, because that's not what they want. And it really penalizes schools like ours because we have all of these students that want to enroll, but we're not going to be able to get funding for them," says Anderson.

Anderson, who also runs a homeschooling resource network called Unschool.school, says that the traditional schooling model is increasingly outdated and particularly ill-suited to virtual learning.

"Education really needs to change, this model of education where kids can choose what they want to learn and how they learn best in a truly personalized individual plan is really, I think, the wave of the future," says Anderson. "If we could do it in a public setting, great. But if not, people are going to do it privately."

DeAngelis has reported on a new phenomenon called "pandemic pods," in which groups of parents are pooling their resources to hire their own teachers.

"It's essentially the idea of the one-room schoolhouse," says DeAngelis. "You essentially outsource the process of homeschooling."

He says the rise of the pods, or micro-schools, could permanently change the way Americans think about schooling. It's mostly upper-middle-class families who have the resources to fund these arrangements—leading to criticism in the Washington Post and New York Timesbut DeAngelis says that the solution to this problem is to change the structure of education finance so that the money follows the child even outside of traditional, government-certified schools.

"Fund the families directly, so less advantaged families can take advantage of these options as well," says DeAngelis.

President Donald Trump has called for more school choice as a response to shuttered schools. Sens. Tim Scott (R–S.C.) and Lamar Alexander (R–Tenn.) have introduced the School Choice Now Act, which would earmark COVID dollars for parents to spend directly on education. And Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.) has introduced a bill that would require states to give parents direct access to federal education dollars to spend on tuition or homeschool materials.

Oklahoma and South Carolina have already begun to redirect money earmarked for schools in the emergency CARES Act directly to parents to cover private school tuition, and some Colorado legislators are proposing to put the money right into parents' hands.

In California, the political power of the union will likely prevent that. But DeAngelis says the current moment could be a turning point for school choice regardless.

"I think people are waking up to this idea…that families have been getting the short end of the stick when it comes to K–12 education," he says. "And I think they're waking up to this idea…that there's no good reason to fund the system instead of the students directly."

 

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When Teachers Call the Cops on Parents Whose Kids Skip Their Zoom Classes

https://reason.com/2020/08/17/teachers-zoom-classes-parents-child-services-coronavirus/

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If there's one thing the public school system shouldn't be doing right now, it's making life even more hellishly difficult for parents. And yet many teachers in the state of Massachusetts are contacting the authorities to report parents for suspected child abuse when kids fail to show up for Zoom classes.

"Massachusetts school officials have reported dozens of families to state social workers for possible neglect charges because of issues related to their children's participation in remote learning classes during the pandemic shutdown in the spring," The Boston Globe reported on Saturday.

The infuriating article is worth reading in full. The Globe spoke with several parents who have received calls and visits from the state Department of Children and Families (DCF). The department has the power to remove children from their homes and place them in foster care if agents suspect that kids are being mistreated, abused, or neglected—and DCF considers distance-learning no-shows to be possible abuse cases. DCF lists numerous circumstances in which teachers should feel obliged to call the cops, among them kids appearing tired or hungry during Zoom sessions.

Working parents who have no choice but to leave their young children in the care of a sibling, or let them fend for themselves, will be particularly vulnerable to unfounded child services investigations. This isn't a theoretical concern. Consider the case of Em Quiles, who

struggled to work her full-time job while overseeing her young son's schooling. During remote class time, her 7-year-old was largely supervised by his teenage brother, who had his own school work to do.

Quiles said she told staff at Heard Street Discovery Academy in Worcester in the spring that her work schedule made it tough to assist with virtual schooling and she struggled to navigate the school's online platforms. "They didn't offer any help," she said.

Then in June, Quiles was stunned to receive a call from the state's Department of Children and Families. The school had accused Quiles of neglect, she was told, because the 7-year-old missed class and homework assignments.

Another mother, a Spanish-speaking immigrant, requested a virtual meting with a school councillor to discuss her son's behavioral difficulties, which had worsened during pandemic-induced isolation. A few days after she spoke with the counselor, DCF called the mom. Someone at the school—possibly the counselor—had accused the mom of "general neglect" based on "behaviors observed or disclosed during remote learning." The agency spent weeks investigating the matter, interrogating the mother and her son on everything from "the contents of her refrigerator to her son's sleeping location." The allegation was eventually dismissed.

A third parent—Christi Brouder, a single mother of four kids—faced frequent threats from teachers that DCF would intervene if the children didn't improve their virtual attendance. Once, when her 10-year-old daughter was tuned in to Zoom class, Brouder's autistic six-year-old son leapt naked in front of the screen. Predictably, the school called the cops:

Later that day, Brouder received a call from the Department of Children and Families. The social worker informed her that school staff had reported a naked adult male exposing himself on the computer.

Brouder explained that she lives alone with her four young children and that the nude male was only 6.

She was relieved when the social worker told her the case wouldn't go anywhere. The school district, however, wasn't ready to drop the issue. The head of Haverhill's special-education department told Brouder that afternoon they had contacted the city police department "due to the severity of the allegations," according to Brouder.

A plainclothes police officer came to her home that evening; that case, too, was eventually dropped.

Massachusetts's DCF is not radically different from the child services departments in the other 49 states, and similar issues are probably cropping up elsewhere. The harm is likely to be worse for poorer families, though economic security is by no means a guarantee of safety from predatory child services investigations.

The decision to rely partly or entirely on virtual learning has created a horrible situation for many working parents who depend on school for day care. Public school officials should be treating such families with empathy and patience, not putting the authorities on speed dial.

 

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Chicago-Area Leaders Call for Illinois to Abolish History Classes

https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/chicago-area-leaders-call-for-illinois-to-eliminate-history-classes/2315752/

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Leaders in education, politics and other areas gathered in suburban Evanston Sunday to ask that the Illinois State Board of Education change the history curriculum at schools statewide, and temporarily halt instruction until an alternative is decided upon.

At a news conference, State Rep. LaShawn K. Ford said current history teachings lead to a racist society and overlook the contributions of women and minorities.

Before the event Sunday, Rep. Ford's office distributed a news release "Rep. Ford Today in Evanston to Call for the Abolishment of History Classes in Illinois Schools," in which Ford asked the ISBOE and school districts to immediately remove history curriculum and books that "unfairly communicate" history "until a suitable alternative is developed."

The representative instead suggested that schools devote greater attention toward civics and ensuring students understand democratic processes.

"It costs us as a society in the long run forever when we don’t understand our brothers and sisters that we live, work and play with,” Ford said.

The state representative is sponsoring a bill that would require elementary schools to teach students about the civil rights movement.

The full news release is below:

Rep. Ford Today in Evanston to Call for the Abolishment of History Classes in Illinois Schools

Concerned that current school history teaching leads to white privilege and a racist society, state Rep. La Shawn K. Ford, D-Chicago, will join local leaders today at noon at the Robert Crown Center in Evanston to call on the state to stop its current history teaching practices until appropriate alternatives are developed.

“When it comes to teaching history in Illinois, we need to end the miseducation of Illinoisans,” Ford said. “I’m calling on the Illinois State Board of Education and local school districts to take immediate action by removing current history books and curriculum practices that unfairly communicate our history. Until a suitable alternative is developed, we should instead devote greater attention toward civics and ensuring students understand our democratic processes and how they can be involved. I’m also alarmed that people continue to display symbols of hate, such as the recent display of the Confederate flag in Evanston.”

Attendees at Sunday’s press conference will discuss how current history teaching practices overlook the contributions by Women and members of the Black, Jewish, LGBTQ communities and other groups. These individuals are pushing for an immediate change in history changing practice starting this school year.

The miseducation of our children must stop,” said Meleika Gardner of We Will. “It is urgent that it comes to an end as we witness our current climate become more hostile. Miseducation has fed and continues to feed systemic racism for generations. If Black History continues to be devalued and taught incorrectly, then it will call for further action.”

Evanston Mayor Steve Hagerty notes “As Mayor, I am not comfortable speaking on education, curriculum, and whether history lessons should be suspended. This is not my area. Personally, I support House Bill 4954 because I am interested in learning more and believe the history of Black people should be taught to all children and include all groups, Women, LatinX, and Native Indians who helped to build America.”

<rolleyes>

 

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Why Parents Love ‘Pandemic Pods’ for School — but Bureaucrats Hate Them

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/08/coronavirus-education-pandemic-pods-offer-parents-real-choice/

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It’s back-to-school season, yet millions of children won’t return to in-person instruction for the foreseeable future. But this fall, some families are improvising to provide some kind of in-person instruction for their children. Earlier this year, when school districts proved unwilling or unable to meet families’ desires for safe, in-person instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic, parents across the nation banded together in “pandemic pods” to take their children’s education into their own hands. In many places, the pods are continuing this school year. And some school districts are not amused.

 

“In recent weeks, discussions have surfaced on creating well-meaning ‘pandemic pods’ and ‘micro-schools’ that un-enroll children and hire private teachers,” read an August 13 statement from the Denver Board of Education. “We want to strongly encourage our families to keep the connection they have to their school and educators.”

The statement also asked families to “consider the equity implications of creating or joining pandemic pods,” noting that “for pods to reflect the demographics of the district, there must be three students-of-color for every one white student, two students who qualify for free-and-reduced price lunch for everyone who does not . . .”

“Families have an absolute right to work together and pool resources to provide instruction or tutoring,” reads a Fairfax County, Va., public-school press release to families forming pandemic pods. It should have stopped there.

The district — which will be online-only this fall — is quite displeased that parents are finding alternative learning arrangements for their children. Although the district conceded it “can’t control these private tutoring groups,” it wanted parents to know that it does “have concerns that they may widen the gap in educational access and equity.”

 

This argument is curious. Public-school proponents generally argue that education is a “public good” — an individual’s level of education affects others in the community beyond themselves. Americans have broadly agreed to socialize the cost of education because a functioning republic requires an educated citizenry capable of self-government and of the republic’s maintenance. Another societal benefit is that better-educated individuals are more likely to be productive workers who pay taxes and less likely to be dependent on welfare. The proliferation of education also fosters advancements in science and technology that benefit everyone, and leads to a more enlightened society overall.

Yet in arguing that pods will exacerbate inequity, public-school proponents are not only treating education primarily as a private benefit, but they’re also treating education as a zero-sum game: If some children know more, that will hurt other children.

Buried in this argument is an implicit admission by the districts that the crisis online learning the districts are providing is inferior to the education students could be receiving in pods. Inequity is only an issue if the pods are superior to what the district schools provide while simultaneously being inaccessible to some students based on their socio-economic status. Yet rather than expand access to the pods, districts are trying to shame better-off parents into refraining from providing their children with a superior education.

If education truly benefits the public at large, then it makes no sense to hold some kids back from achieving their true potential. Disadvantaged kids need to be lifted up. They aren’t helped by keeping other kids down. The best way to improve the lot of disadvantaged kids is to empower their parents to choose the learning environment that works best for them. Having educated citizens is in the public interest; it shouldn’t matter where that education occurs.

Indeed, those concerned about educational inequity should turn a critical eye to the existing district system. In Virginia, children from low-income families are more than two and a half grade levels behind their non-poor peers in eighth-grade reading, and black students are nearly three grade levels behind their white peers. What about education “equity” for these children?

Fairfax County currently spends more per pupil than the national average of $15,000 annually. Denver is slightly under national figures at $12,200, and, astonishingly, Washington, D.C., spends $31,000 per child per year. If those education dollars followed the child, low-income families would have much greater access to a wide variety of learning options.

Yet defenders of the status quo have worked incessantly to prevent families from accessing alternatives to the residentially assigned district system — the doors to which are largely closed at the moment to in-person instruction. That’s because, due both to school-district myth-making and status-quo bias, we’ve come to believe that this is how education must delivered. Any failure of the one-size-fits-some system to achieve its stated goals is blamed not on a flaw in the system but rather on a lack of sufficient funding, as though D.C. schools would perform at the level of Massachusetts if only they spent $35,000 or $40,000 per pupil instead of $31,000.

Pods reject the assumption that residentially assigned and government-run schools are the best way to educate kids. Indeed, the near-infinite variety in the approach to podding calls into question the very notion of a “one best way.”

Kids can’t wait for district schools to reopen. States should immediately provide emergency education savings accounts (ESAs) to families, allowing them to take a portion of the money that would have been spent on their child in school to the learning environments of their choice. Five states — Arizona, Florida, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Tennessee — already empower families with ESAs to use for private-school tuition, tutors, textbooks, online learning, special-education services and therapies, and a host of other options. In Arizona, applications for ESAs this summer are triple what they were last year. They’re the perfect policy pairing with pandemic pods.

Adults should be doing everything in their power right now to provide education continuity to children. That goes for school-district officials, too. Embracing families’ decision to use pods or any other option that fits their children’s needs would demonstrate that districts really are interested in the “public good” of public education — regardless of where it takes place.

Rack this spot-on commentary.

 

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8 hours ago, Muda69 said:

Five states — Arizona, Florida, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Tennessee — already empower families with ESAs to use for private-school tuition, tutors, textbooks, online learning, special-education services and therapies, and a host of other options.

The bottom States, of course. 

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17 hours ago, DanteEstonia said:

The bottom States, of course. 

Links, please.

Your complete and utter disdain for empowering families to have real choices regarding the education of their children is noted.    And it's understandable, maintaining the government education near-monopoly keeps you, and others here on the GID, employed.

 

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This is for AZ

 

1 hour ago, Muda69 said:

Your complete and utter disdain for empowering families to have real choices regarding the education of their children is noted.    And it's understandable, maintaining the government education near-monopoly keeps you, and others here on the GID, employed.

I've taught at a charter school. I've seen school choice. ESAs are a tool first employed to bypass integration in MS back in the Eisenhower era. 

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On 8/23/2020 at 12:32 AM, DanteEstonia said:

You are putting words in my mouth.

Ok. What do you believe are valid criteria for a parent(s) to not have their child(ren) attend a traditional government school?  What are not valid criteria?

 

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Teachers’ Unions vs. the Poor

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/08/teachers-unions-vs-the-poor/

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My children were meant to be back in school today, but they’re still home instead. They attend New York City’s excellent charter Success Academies charter schools, public schools that are mostly free of the city’s Department of Education and its associated bureaucracies and unions, all of which exist primarily to protect the interests of the adults who constitute them. At Success Academy, teaching comes first, so our students spend far more hours being instructed than the DOE students. For example, our schools open two weeks or so earlier than the DOE schools each year. The kids are happy to go back to see their friends, the parents get to return to their normal schedules, and more learning time benefits everyone.

Nearly all Success Academy schools are located within existing DOE school buildings, though. So our kids’ schools are locked up tight: The DOE won’t open them. Success Academy is ready to begin in-person learning, having established protocols implementing reasonable safety precautions. Success Academy is Following the Science — or it would, if the city bureaucracy it exists to circumvent could be circumvented this time and we could get into our locked buildings. The CDC:

Extended school closure is harmful to children. It can lead to severe learning loss, and the need for in-person instruction is particularly important for students with heightened behavioral needs. . . . We also know that, for many students, long breaks from in-person education are harmful to student learning. For example, the effects of summer breaks from in-person schooling on academic progress, known as “summer slide,” are also well-documented in the literature.

The DOE may never open the schools at all this fall. Who knows? The head of the United Federation of Teachers, Michael Mulgrew, claims his squad won’t go back to work until it can be proven that every person entering a school building — everyone from children to visitors — has tested negative for the coronavirus. This is a fanciful goal and suggests that school employees alone are entitled to a level of protection that not even hospital workers enjoy. Mulgrew’s cries of “safety” are likely a pretext either for leveraging more goodies for his highly paid crew or to enable his teachers to glide on with the greatly reduced workload they enjoyed starting in mid-March. No recognition of the 1.1 million public-school students in the city as even an interested party registers in anything Mulgrew says.

Still, Success Academy students will do relatively well. Many DOE students may find that they are essentially taking correspondence courses this fall, as many of them did last spring. “School” for them means getting tossed a packet of Google Docs materials each morning while their teachers watch TV or head for the beach, but at Success Academy every student has been issued a new Chromebook and instruction will take place face-to-face on Zoom calls, with occasional breaks. The quality of online learning is impressive. Nobody at Success Academy is using the pandemic as an excuse to loaf. This is full-strength pedagogy, within the constraints of remote communication.

But only the lucky students who were admitted to the system via lottery have earned places at Success or the other charter schools. Other fortunate parents whose kids are in public schools in New York City and all over the country are “podding up,” as the neologism goes. A friend in well-shod Westchester County says a group of half a dozen or so parents has hired an excellent tutor, at a cost of $60,000, to teach their kids this semester in person, in a rented space. Westchester already has punitively high real-estate prices and property taxes, and no parent writes a check for $10,000 without a second thought, but in America’s bastions of the prosperous, sacrifice on behalf of one’s children is a deeply ingrained value. If the teachers’ unions block learning, wealthy parents will find a workaround.

The longer the schools stay closed, the greater the gap that will open up between America’s most and least fortunate families. A moment’s contemplation about what each group looks like ought to make you cross: Black families are disproportionately to be found among the less fortunate, and not a lot of them can come up with an extra $10,000 for something they always assumed would cost them nothing. There exist stark divides between rich and poor, between white and black — and the teachers’ unions who refuse to go back to school are making those gaps worse. Educators are often to be found at demonstrations, waving a placard for this or that progressive principle. Yet their current policy is to inflict disproportionate pain on America’s struggling classes. Will they practice what they preach, or is all their marching just for show?

 

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11 hours ago, DanteEstonia said:

If it's a private school, pay full tuition yourself. 

So in K-12 education my tax dollars should only go to educate those children in my community that attend traditional government schools.  What is the logic behind that?  Shouldn't I as a taxpayer and member of the community be primarily concerned that these children are receiving a quality education regardless of the venue?

 

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The First Night of the RNC Offered a Full-Throated Defense of School Choice

https://reason.com/2020/08/25/the-first-night-of-the-rnc-offered-a-full-throated-defense-of-school-choice/

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Monday's opening night of the Republican National Convention provided a whirlwind tour of what the Trumpified GOP opposes: socialism, globalism, and anyone who might suggest that the president's response to the COVID-19 pandemic was anything other than stellar.

You have to look a little harder to find out what policies the Republican Party supports these days—and the RNC made it harder still by refusing, in the days before the convention opened, to publish an actual platform. But if the first day of the convention is any indication, school choice is going to get heavy rotation during the rest of the campaign.

It was telling that the Republicans chose to kick-off their convention with remarks from Rebecca Friedrich, the California public school teacher who became the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit that challenged teachers unions' authority to compel the payment of dues from teachers who disagree with a union's politics. Union-backed efforts aimed at stopping charter schools and school choice, she said on Monday, are responsible for "trapping so many precious, low-income children in dangerous, corrupt, and low-performing schools."

By contrast, Friedrichs said, Trump wants to give parents greater choice over where their children are educated.

It's true that "ensuring school choice for all children" is a part of Trump's second term agenda, a wishlist that the GOP is promoting this week in lieu of an actual platform. The document is devoid of any specific policy ideas. Since schools are mostly run by state and local authorities, there is probably limited potential for Trump to single-handedly implement school choice—which is itself a catch-all term for a wide range of ideas and not a singular policy to be switched on or off—at the national level.

Still, it's welcome to see Republicans embracing educational choice at the party's convention. If nothing else, what gets said at the RNC can provide a signal to the state and local officials who will be setting policy in the years to come.

And there was plenty of talk about the importance of school choice on Monday. The president's son, Donald Trump Jr., hit the theme as well.

Donald Trump Jr.: "I was fortunate enough to grow up in a family that could afford the best schools and the finest universities. But a great education cannot be the exclusive right of the rich and powerful. It must be accessible to all. And that's why my dad is pro-school choice" pic.twitter.com/8fy0lPhfZv

— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) August 25, 2020

 

Sen. Tim Scott (R–S.C.), in one of the better speeches of the convention's first night, outlined a powerful argument for why parents should have a greater say in their children's education.

"I don't care if it's a public, private, charter, virtual, or a home school," Scott said. "When a parent has a choice, a kid has a better chance."

Sen. Tim Scott tells the RNC how he overcame a difficult childhood: "I realized a quality education is the closest thing to magic in America. That's why I fight to this day for school choice" pic.twitter.com/7s6lfIH3In

— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) August 25, 2020

The GOP's embrace of school choice feels a little bit incongruous considering the party's turn away from freedom on so many other issues—from immigration to trade—and the Trump administration's general lack of concrete policy goals. So much of Monday's programming was dedicated to titillating Trump's base of supporters that Scott's argument about educational choice as an opportunity for all families to achieve the American dream may have been lost in the noise.

But with many traditional public schools remaining closed in response to COVID-19 and working families forced to consider alternative arrangements, now is a great time to talk about school choice. For anyone disheartened by the Republican Party's turn away from its traditional appeals for smaller government and greater individual responsibility, tonight's RNC suggests maybe that light has not fully gone out.

 

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