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The Kentucky Education Digest is a collection of ideas focused on five general themes:
Basic school choice information
While families across America support the introduction of a federal bill providing scholarships for low-income students stuck in failing schools, the proposal is especially welcomed by parents in Kentucky, which has no school-choice law.
Mothers of special-needs children implore all Kentucky parents to support school choice.
Best practices from other states
Florida has extracted control of charter schools from local school districts by creating a new commission to authorize and oversee charter schools. Kentucky legislators should pass a law allowing charter schools while following the Sunshine State’s new oversight model.
Home schooling allows for flexible schedules, curriculums and learning styles.
Objections to school choice that form the misguided arguments against more educational alternatives.
School choice provides solutions. Opponents offer excuses.
We invite your input and feedback because we know that healthy debate is the mechanism that produces the ideas that ultimately work.
A bill introduced in the U.S. Congress that would allow low-income students the option of improving their educational experiences could help kids stuck in Kentucky’s failing schools.
The America’s Opportunity Scholarships for Kids Act authorizes $100 million worth of competitive grants for state and local educational agencies and nonprofit organizations to provide scholarships allowing low-income students to escape failing schools.
Recipients who qualify as low-income students attending schools that have failed to meet No Child Left Behind (NCLB) requirements for at least six years could receive up to $4,000 for tuition costs at a better school or $3,000 for individual tutoring to improve academic performance.
NCLB results indicate a growing number of students across the nation could be eligible for such assistance. There were 1,065 schools that met the criteria as a result of their performances during the 2004-05 school year. Another 1,000 schools could be added to this group based on their 2005-06 results.
While parents in all states will welcome the news of successful passage of this legislation, Kentucky parents should probably be among the happiest of all. Our state has no innovative school-choice legislation, which greatly limits the options available to the growing number of children trapped in Kentucky’s failing schools.
Sources:
“America's Opportunity Scholarships for Kids: School Choice for Students in Underperforming Public Schools” by Dan Lips, The Heritage Foundation, May 30, 2006.
“Act gives low-income families opportunities” by Lamar Alexander, The (Gallatin, Tenn.) News Examiner, Aug. 2, 2006.
Each month, the Kentucky Alliance Digest features a look at school choice from a parent’s perspective. This month’s testimony is from Diane M. Kennedy and Rebecca S. Banks.
As authors of “The ADHD-Autism Connection,” we have witnessed the success that special-needs children experience when schools address their most pressing social, emotional and educational needs. For instance, charter schools with programs targeted specifically for special-needs children are having a tremendous impact nationwide.
However, as mothers of children diagnosed with ADHD, autism, learning disabilities, bipolar and mood disorders, we knew the Jefferson County Public Schools would be hard-pressed to accommodate our children’s most urgent social, emotional and behavioral needs. These needs must be met before learning can ever take place.
So we turned to private schools. In Jefferson County, the annual cost of a private-school education for a special-needs child can range from $3,500 to $11,000 or more – a price tag that is out of reach for many Kentucky families.
But far more costly in terms of a child’s quality of life is our discovery that most of these schools do not take the multidimensional approach required by children with special needs. Such an approach accommodates individual learning styles and interests while providing training in basic social, behavioral and communication skills necessary to succeed in life.
We also discovered that very few educational alternatives exist for children with special needs, especially for older children. Even the few private programs that target this population are ill-equipped to meet the changing emotional, social and educational needs of children as they mature.
Because no competition exists, these programs have little reason to improve or to change.
As mothers of special-needs children and as authors who understand the challenges these children face, we urge – no, we implore – all Kentucky parents to support school choice. The quality of life for thousands of gifted, yet challenged, children depends upon having access to educational environments that are tailored to meet their special needs.
Parents interested in contributing their story can e-mail it to jwaters@bipps.org.
Sources:
“The ADHD Autism Connection” by Diane M. Kennedy with Rebecca S. Banks, WaterBook, 2002.
Ohio Department of Education, Autism Scholarship Program (ASP), Guidelines 2006-2007.
Florida lawmakers recently passed legislation that wrests control of charter schools away from local school districts, where officials often are unenthusiastic about most kinds of competition. Instead, a new state-level commission will now be responsible for authorizing charter schools, which some experts say could create more and better charters.
By establishing The Florida Schools of Excellence Commission, the Sunshine State becomes the seventh state to establish a statewide entity to authorize charter schools. And Jeanne Allen, president of the Center for Education Reform, predicts that Florida’s new policy “is likely to be a model for other states.”
Charter schools are innovative public schools funded by taxpayers but operated by universities or private individuals and organizations without the burdensome regulations forced upon traditional schools by teachers unions, site-based councils and state education departments. In exchange for this greater flexibility in curriculum and methodology, charter schools must attain certain performance standards.
That the number of charter schools in Florida has increased from five in 1996 to more than 330 today provides solid evidence that parents in the Sunshine State increasingly view charters as providing opportunities for a better education for kids in failing schools.
But Florida’s new commission won’t be able to provide a model for Kentucky until lawmakers in Frankfort summon the courage to enact a law that allows charter schools in the first place.
Our state’s policymakers should follow Florida’s example from the beginning and skip the experimental step of placing the same local districts overseeing the failing schools – which created the need for alternatives in the first place – and establish a statewide authorizer for charter schools from the beginning.
Sources:
“Charter Schools Now To Be Run By New Statewide Commission” by Marilyn Brown, The Tampa Tribune, June 27, 2006.
“Florida's Groundbreaking Charter Law Creates New Authorizer.” Center for Education Reform, June 26, 2006.
“Parents know best: Kentucky’s quest for school choice” by Jim Waters and Joel Peyton, Bluegrass Institute, May 2006.
One of the most positive attributes of home schooling is the flexibility it offers parents in addressing their children’s needs.
Whereas students in traditional public-school settings may have more questions concerning a subject than teachers have time to answer, home-schooled children can stop the “teacher,” find the answers and learn at their own pace.
They can work longer in areas that interest them while accomplishing much more in a shorter amount of time than they otherwise might have in a traditional classroom setting. Home-schooled students also have the flexibility to spend more time working on concepts that are difficult to master.
Children do not all have the same learning style. When one method is not effective, home-schoolers can switch to a different system. Some parents choose a classical education while others may use a Montessori approach. Some may use unit studies while others choose a self-directed learning method.
And the curriculum choices are limitless. For example, the Robinson Curriculum utilizes a classical curriculum and combines it with a self-teaching method. And there are different curriculums available to match parents’ educational philosophies – everything from systems that teach from a religious perspective to different reading, math or science programs.
The positive effects of flexibility also provide the average home-schooled student with more time to pursue his or her own interests.
For some, this means a deeper concentration on a particular academic area. For others, it means the time needed to excel in athletics like ice skating or gymnastics. Home schooling has provided many Olympic hopefuls with a solid education while also allowing them the valuable practice time needed to excel in their sport. Still others just spend extra time being part of their family, participating in 4-H programs or community events.
Home schools are as flexible as the people who participate in them.
– Florence resident Stephanie Graham, a home-schooling parent, wrote this article.
“To be absolutely certain about something, one must know everything or nothing about it.” – Henry Kissinger
The Courier-Journal’s David Hawpe claims to understand the debate between public and private education. His recent column defending the current state of public education proves otherwise.
Hawpe wrongly classifies “advocates of the free market” as solely private-school proponents. Not all school-choice proponents send their children to private schools, but rather promote freedom for all parents to choose the best school – public or private – for their children.
Hawpe attributes the fact that most voucher recipients tend to send their children to private schools to those schools’ flexibility to accept only the best students. However, the excuse that students with “mental deficits, language barriers and unstable homes” place public schools at a disadvantage is only that – an excuse.
KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) Academies in the Bronx and Houston are filled with minority students from high-poverty neighborhoods. Yet they expect academic excellence without offering – or accepting – excuses. As a result, KIPP students consistently outperform public-school students from the same neighborhoods.
School-choice opponents emphasize the chronic problems that indifferent parents cause public schools. While school-choice supporters agree that involved parents are the “most important asset” in a child’s education, they also work to increase parent participation through giving parents more choices instead of claiming defeat like Hawpe.
Shockingly, Hawpe believes Jefferson County Public Schools as a district where public schools “flourish.” There might be a better way to describe this district where only 15 percent of seventh-graders are proficient in reading and 29 percent of eighth-graders are proficient in math. The word “failing” comes to mind.
Opponents of school choice like Hawpe continue to spread misinformation about the current condition of public schools. Citizens have a right to know the appalling quality of education in their local schools and deserve a solution to improve those schools: school choice.
Sources:
“Attack on public schools is undiminished by reason or research” by David Hawpe, The (Louisville) Courier-Journal, July 23, 2006.
“Education Myths” by Jay P. Greene, Rowman and Littlefield, 2005.
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