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The Kentucky Education Digest is a collection of ideas focused on five general themes:
Basic school choice information
Is the No Child Left Behind Act leaving even more children in the rear-view mirror?
Each month, the Kentucky Education Digest features a look at school choice from a parent’s perspective. This month’s testimony is from Cynthiana resident Susan Bramel.
Best practices from other states
Other states are reaping the reform benefits of school choice. When will Kentucky join them?
Parents, not the state, are responsible for what, how and where children learn.
Answering objections to school choice
A new report gives Kentucky an “F” for educational liberty.
We invite your input and feedback because we know that healthy debate is the mechanism that produces the ideas that ultimately work.
The federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) was enacted in 2001 because Congress recognized there were unacceptable achievement gaps in America’s public-education system.
However, NCLB has fallen far short of fulfilling the promises heralded by its proponents at its passage. As a result, few were impressed when U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings recently cited dubious statistics from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in a futile attempt to depict NCLB as a notable success.
The truth is, while the need for action remains great, the actual implementation of NCLB has been terribly ineffective. After five years:
• Parents remain confused about their right to transfer children from failing to succeeding schools. Parental notification of these rights often is inadequate and untimely.
• The U.S. Department of Education (US Ed) remains highly ineffective in implementing and enforcing NCLB. State education departments, including the Kentucky Department of Education (KDE), use waivers, special exemptions and statistical voodoo evade NCLB’s accountability provisions.
• There is no reporting consistency from state to state. US Ed didn’t even set a uniform formula for computing high-school graduation rates.
• On more complex issues such as requirements for reporting test scores for various minority groups, US Ed’s performance has been appalling. While one state such as Maryland reports scores with as few as five students in a subgroup, another state – Kentucky, for example – suppresses the scores of minority student groups … even with as many as 30 students in that subgroup.
The unfortunate result of these problems is that many kids are still being left behind. In addition, doubts are growing that the federal government can ever overcome the intransigence of educators to make really good things happen for students.
Sources:
“‘No Child’ Law on Track, Spellings Says” by Amit R. Paley, The Washington Post, Jan. 4, 2007.
“Schools Turn to Private Firm to Meet NCLB Reporting Requirements” by Joel Peyton, School Reform News, Jan. 1, 2007.
“Utah Stands Up for the Children” by Marie Gryphon, Reason Magazine, May 6, 2005.
Each month, the Kentucky Education Digest features a look at school choice from a parent’s perspective. This month’s testimony is from Cynthiana resident Susan Bramel.
Without a choice, many parents of Kentucky’s special-needs children have run out of options.
Even though my son Casey is now 25, what he endured during events that took place in schools where he attended several years ago still cause a lump in my throat.
While Casey got good grades, his behavior left something to be desired. However, the issue was never adequately addressed by the schools he attended.
The problems began in the second grade when I was informed that Casey wanted to roll around on the floor while his fellow students sat quietly and did their work. This happened each year for several years. Teachers would usually go ahead and pass Casey on to the next grade, saying – as they did at the end of his second-grade year – that he probably just needed a summer to mature and that he would be fine.
But he wasn’t fine. This went on year after year. Nothing we tried seemed to work.
Our struggles were magnified by a school system that failed to give us options that could have led to our son receiving a much-better education and more opportunities.
We had Casey tested for ADHD during the eighth-grade – after the principal said that’s the only way he could keep attending school. Casey took his medicine and had few incidences during the ninth and 10th grades. But by then, he had a reputation of being “a bad kid,” despite the fact that tested 141 on an IQ test.
His junior year went very badly. Finally, after having him tested again, a psychologist discovered the root of the problem: Casey was BORED!
We were optimistic that this could be easily overcome by trying to find a place where our child could learn without disturbing others. The special-ed director said he would check into it. After being forced to schedule another meeting with him, I (like many mothers, Casey’s father, David, was working and not able to attend school meetings) was told that there was no place for Casey and that we should take him out of school.
I went back to the special-ed director and begged him to try and find a place for our son. Instead, he said: “You know Einstein was a dropout … and look how he turned out.”
With this comment, I immediately withdrew my child from a school system that had failed us.
Recently, I’ve discovered that about 40 students in the 900-student high school in our community have problems similar to Casey’s. They deserve to receive a good education and needed services.
We cannot turn our backs on Kentucky’s special-needs students while they quit and simply do the best they can for the rest of their lives. We must give them a chance to do better.
Parents interested in contributing their story can e-mail it to jwaters@bipps.org.
For most Kentucky parents, receiving a public education usually means accepting one of two choices: Take the current system or leave it.
But if what’s happened in other states is any indication, the commonwealth will not experience meaningful education reform until parents are re-empowered to make decisions about their children’s education.
• In issuing a report on Florida’s charter schools, that state’s education commissioner John Winn said: “Charter schools can no longer be considered an educational experiment, but a vital and integral part of Florida’s public school system.” Among the report’s findings: Hispanic children at charter schools tend to show greater proficiency in reading and math than Hispanic students at traditional high schools.
• Incoming New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer pledged to raise the cap on the number of charter schools in New York in his first “State of the State” address. The Empire State currently has a cap of just 100 charter schools. In response to the expected spike in charters in New York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg has taken steps to assure that many of those new charters open in the Big Apple.
• Virginia lawmakers will consider a bill offered by state Sen. Walter A. Stosch to give special-needs students up to $10,000 toward private school tuition. Tuition amounts would be based on the severity of children’s needs. Stosch also has penned a bill to provide $3 million in tax credits for donations to nonreligious schools serving the disabled. The program could generate $9 million in contributions.
The commonwealth’s lawmakers have an opportunity this year to give special-needs children a boost while saving the commonwealth’s taxpayers millions of dollars. By approving the Kentucky Students with Special Needs Scholarship Program, policymakers could take a huge step toward showing their commitment to effective education reform.
Sources:
“Florida’s Charter Schools: A Decade of Progress,” Florida Department of Education, Dec. 19, 2006.
“With Spitzer at Helm, Mayor Will Push for Charter Schools” by Jill Gardiner, New York Sun, Jan. 3, 2007.
“Proposal offers disabled students money for tuition” by Dionne Walker, Associated Press, Jan. 1, 2007.
“Enable the Disabled: An analysis of the Kentucky Students with Special Needs Scholarship Program” by Vicki E. Murray, Ph.D., and Arwynn Mattix, M.A., Bluegrass Institute for Public Policy Solutions, Nov. 11, 2006.
Kentucky parents who are considering home schooling their children should know that state law favors their cause.
Parents must simply advise the local school board they will be home schooling their children. And even this requirement is not to ask permission, but rather to let the board know that these students are not truant. Boards do not approve curriculum or teaching methods.
Also, parents must consistently evaluate their children’s progress, ensure that core subjects are taught and keep attendance records to indicate students meet state requirements for being “in school” for a certain number of hours. The Kentucky Department of Education has established procedures for determining if a student is actually “in school.”
Since Kentucky has no standardized testing or review of home-schoolers’ progress, critics who don’t understand home schooling express concerns about the state not knowing if home-schooled children are getting an adequate education.
This appears to be a logical concern. Who is making sure these children know the “right” things? How do they perform compared to other children? What kind of jobs will they be able to get if they don’t have the same educational experience?
Home-schooling students have answered many of these questions through their performance. They exhibit solid results in the workforce and are sought after by many universities. Their achievements indicate what can happen when parents, not the state, are responsible for their children’s education.
The state does have a legitimate interest in developing an educated workforce. But that concern does not supersede the rights of parents to determine how their children learn.
While there are basic subjects that must be mastered to achieve academic and employment success, what is learned in school is an infinitesimally small amount of the sum of human knowledge, history and literature.
Parents, not governments, should help children determine the “right” things for them to learn.
– Florence resident Stephanie Graham, a home-schooling parent, wrote this article.
Sources:
“Kentucky Home School Requirements & Information,” Kentucky Department of Education.
“Academic Statistics on Homeschooling” by J. Michael Smith and Michael P. Farris, Home School Legal Defense Association, Oct. 22, 2004.
“Home Schoolers in Ivy League Universities,” Home School Legal Defense Association, May 3, 2000.
Outgoing Jefferson County Public Schools (JCPS) Superintendent Stephen Daeschner said nearly a year ago that “our district has been a strong proponent and provider of managed school choice for many years.” But is that claim remotely true?
Daeschner’s “managed school choice” has been tested recently in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. A woman who wanted her son to attend a certain school found her choice “managed” by JCPS to the point of a total rejection of her preference based solely upon the child’s race. Sad to say, Jefferson County’s race-based choice program represents the best Kentucky has to offer in the realm of an education marketplace.
A new report bluntly concludes that Kentucky’s overall education market is nonexistent.
Cato’s “Education Market Index,” which seeks to evaluate the amount of educational freedom available in states and those states’ policies in fostering free markets, found that only six states fared worse than Kentucky for the market rating while the commonwealth’s policies earned a “market friendliness” ranking lower than any other state except Alabama. In fact, the state’s policies are considered downright hostile to such a market’s development.
Even worse for Kentucky is the fact that no state has what is considered to be a strong educational marketplace. Most states show poorer ratings than either Sweden or the Netherlands – countries not known for economic liberty.
Kentucky should recognize its policies deny more educational freedom than those of almost any other state. A policy of “managed school choice” – especially when it regularly denies choices for parents – is no substitute for a free market in education.
Sources:
“The Cato Education Market Index” by Andrew J. Coulson, Cato Institute, Dec. 13, 2006.
“‘Mission: Possible’” by Jim Waters, Bluegrass Institute for Public Policy Solutions, May 11, 2006.
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