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The Kentucky Education Digest is a collection of ideas focused on four general themes:
Basic school choice information
Kentucky is looking for a new education commissioner. Here are a couple of possible candidates who are clearly qualified … and who have more than proven themselves.
Best practices from other states
Charter schools strut their stuff in Georgia.
It used to be difficult for home schoolers to be accepted by college-admissions boards. Times have changed.
Answering objections to school choice
Opponents fail to keep Utah from moving ahead with bold school-choice initiative.
We invite your input and feedback because we know that healthy debate is the mechanism that produces the ideas that ultimately work.
As part of its process for choosing a new education commissioner, the Kentucky Department of Education (KDE) recently finalized a list of characteristics it hopes to find in a new leader.
Topping the list were a demonstrated “ability to articulate a clear vision of quality education with documented evidence of consistent, positive results” and the proven talents in meeting the “challenges of leading a large organization dedicated to ambitious goals, high standards, and continuous improvement.”
Two candidates excel in these areas, along with many others listed by the department:
Angus McBeath
By providing universal school choice when he was superintendent of public schools in Edmonton, Alberta, McBeath made sure each student could attend whatever school was chosen by the child’s parents.
As a result, McBeath says: “Schools failing their students stand out like a sore thumb, and attract a range of interventions from the school board focused on supporting improved performance, not punishment. But schools that fail their students consistently are closed – not just in theory, but in reality.”
Arlene Ackerman
Ackerman introduced a massive choice program that improved student performance at all levels when she headed San Francisco’s public-school system.
According to Ackerman, “As a school’s academic performance index gets better, the school becomes more desirable to parents. We had schools that were 8s [in their academic performance index rating] that are now 10s and schools that were 3s that are now 6s and 7s. When I arrived six years ago, those were not schools that parents were choosing. Now they are, because their academic performance has increased and they are much more desirable.”
McBeath and Ackerman (or a candidate with corresponding high standards) may have a bitter pill for bureaucrats to swallow … but they are leaders who are serious about improving student performance and know how to get results.
Sources:
“Characteristics for the next Kentucky Commissioner of Education,” Kentucky Department of Education, Jan. 29, 2007.
“How to have school choice and a happy teachers union” by Angus McBeath, Bluegrass Institute, Feb. 9, 2006.
“Meet Arlene Ackerman” by Lisa Snell, Reason Magazine, April 2006.
Georgia education officials have been elated with the results of a new study praising the performance of charter schools (public schools free of many state restrictions) in comparison with the rest of the state’s public schools.
The “Annual Report on Georgia’s Charter Schools” found dramatic improvement in charters when it comes to meeting goals laid out by the No Child Left Behind Act:
In 2006, Georgia charter schools made adequate yearly progress (“AYP”) at an unprecedented rate. As in 2004 and 2005, Georgia charter schools made AYP at a higher rate than traditional public schools, but in 2006 the gap between charter school and traditional public schools increased substantially. In 2006, fully 87.8% of Georgia charter schools made AYP, compared to 78.7% of traditional public schools.
These results are especially dramatic when you consider that Georgia’s charter schools have a much larger proportion of students who qualify for free-and-reduced-cost lunches than traditional public schools.
More than half of Georgia’s charter schools rank “distinguished,” which means the schools made adequate yearly progress for at least three consecutive years.
When researchers looked at trend data, they found dramatic improvement on the state’s high school graduation test (GHSGT):
In 2004, for instance, only 60% of charter schools students passed the Social Studies section of the GHSGT, compared to 82% of traditional public school students. While traditional public school student performance remained relatively stable over the subsequent two-year period, charter school student performance increased dramatically, to a 92% pass rate.
That 92 percent pass rate exceeds the pass rate for traditional public schools.
Kentucky should also adopt a policy allowing charter schools. Parents – especially the poor – should be given the option of sending their children to these new schools.
Charter schools are a clearly constitutional way to bring 21st-century reforms to the commonwealth's education system.
Sources:
“Georgia Charter Schools: Engines of Educational Improvement” by Andrew Broy, The Georgia Public Policy Foundation, Jan. 19, 2007.
“2005-2006 Annual Report on Georgia’s Charter Schools” by Kathy Cox, Georgia Department of Education, Dec. 14, 2006.
Few college admission boards used to be willing to accept that home schoolers were prepared for university-level work. However, home schoolers determined to get a traditional degree were persistent.
Today, the process is not entirely unlike any other high-school student. Students interested in college should begin gathering and organizing information as soon as they decide that college is likely to be in their future. Colleges of specific interest should be contacted to find out if there are special requirements for home schoolers.
College applicants typically are evaluated on GPA, class rank, test scores, essays, portfolios, recommendations (possibly even interviews) and extracurricular activities. If the home-schooled student’s grading system was not objectively measured, it’s probably not applicable. Class rank doesn’t apply here, either. However, judging by the more than 900 colleges nationwide that regularly admit home schoolers, this doesn’t seem to be a hindrance to admission.
Many parents simply provide their own records of course work covered as a transcript. Still other home schoolers choose to get a GED; some colleges require it.
Standardized tests are heavily relied upon at many schools. To show competence above the basic levels, there are advanced SAT tests available, particularly in higher-level math. Home schoolers can take self-study courses online, which can be especially important if standardized tests are not a regular part of their education at home.
Documentation of science and history projects or any special activity in a portfolio will highlight home schoolers’ unique education. In addition, letters of recommendation by tutors, mentors or others working closely with home schoolers will be influential in showing those special qualities that may ensure admission into college.
Today’s home schoolers will often be sought after by some colleges, and are in a much-better position to succeed than they would have been even a few years ago. – Florence resident Stephanie Graham, a home-schooling parent, wrote this article.
Sources:
“How to Get Into College From Homeschool,” eHow.
“The Application Process for Four-Year Colleges” by Karen Allen, San Francisco Homeschoolers.
Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. signed the nation’s first universal school-bill into law on Feb. 12. The program provides scholarships of between $500 and $3,000 to every income-eligible parent with school-aged children in the state to be used for tuition at any eligible private school.
But the landmark choice program is not without opposition. Some critics have used the debate surrounding passage of this bill as an opportunity to dust off of their old, tired arguments in taking issue with school choice in general.
For instance, Utah Education Association President Kim Campbell called the initiative the “largest subsidy in the nation,” adding the debate “was never about private vs. public schools. This was about who pays for private schools.”
During the debate, Rep. Sheryl Allen, who also opposed the bill, said: “Let’s concentrate on public schools and make them better.”
Taken together, these objections constitute the oft-heard criticism that school choice takes money from the public schools and puts it in private hands. We couldn’t agree more. But far from being a bad thing, this particular shift from public to private can yield fantastic results.
What Campbell refers to as a massive “subsidy” is actually simply a shift of one kind of subsidy to another. Nobel laureate Milton Friedman made the point quite clearly. Friedman queried: If you want improvement in the creation and delivery of a product, do you subsidize the producer of the product or the consumer?
Clearly, subsidizing the product’s consumer assures that those patrons are more pleased with the product’s specifications. But subsidizing the producer of a product actually makes the manufacturer less accountable to the needs of the consumer.
When it comes to education, the producer is the public-school system and the consumer is the parent who chooses which school her child attends.
Properly stated, Campbell’s criticism of Utah’s universal voucher could become a rallying cry for proponents of school choice: School choice often takes money from the hands of public schools and puts it in parents’ hands.
Sources:
“Gov. Huntsman signs nation’s first universal school choice bill,” Alliance for School Choice, Feb. 12, 2007.
“House OKs school vouchers” by Jennifer Toomer-Cooke, Deseret Morning News, Feb. 3, 2007. l
“Legislation: Vouchers pass a House test” by Nicole Stricker, The Salt Lake Tribune, Feb. 3, 2007.
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