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The Kentucky Education Digest is a collection of ideas focused on five general themes:
Basic school choice information
School-choice advocates are piling up victories in several states by focusing on issues that few politicians dare to oppose.
Home-schooling families sacrifice financially to provide their children with a quality education. Why shouldn’t they get a tax break?
Best practices from other states
Scholarships ensure that Florida’s special-needs kids have the educational opportunities they need to thrive in life. Kentucky’s kids deserve the same.
Support groups give home-schooling parents confidence, networking opportunities and exposure to helpful resources.
Objections to school choice that form the misguided arguments against more educational alternatives.
Competition is what makes our country great. It can make our schools better, too.
We invite your input and feedback because we know that healthy debate is the mechanism that produces the ideas that ultimately work.
Shrewd strategies by school-choice advocates are helping secure some amazing victories for educational liberty nationwide by garnering the support of policymakers previously opposed to school choice.
Rather than going full-steam ahead by attacking the enormous teachers-union dragon, school-choice advocates are focusing on issues that few politicians dare to oppose.
For example, advocates for more educational freedom in several states are proposing more choices for their state’s neediest children. They are also working to expand existing school-choice programs that offer opportunities for more students to receive a better education.
Of the seven school-choice plans passed last year, six were in states that already had choice. The seventh plan was in Utah, where a program for disadvantaged children was expanded to include choice this year.
Arizona has become the poster child for school choice. With successful open-enrollment agreements, more charter schools per capita than any other state and flourishing scholarship tax-credit program, it’s nearly impossible for critics to oppose the successful school-choice programs in the Grand Canyon state.
Even Democrats, who generally do not support school-choice measures, are responding to parents’ increasing demands for more school choice. All of the states that introduced school-choice programs during the past year – Arizona, Iowa, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania – have Democratic governors.
And in what could be an indication of the coming apocalypse, Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., supported a federal voucher program designed to help thousands of students displaced by Hurricane Katrina attend private school.
Kentucky will eventually have full educational options for all parents. However, such policies will be enacted in Frankfort sooner if school-choice advocates across the commonwealth adopt the strategies of other states that have blazed a path of school-choice victories.
Sources:
“Arizona proves popularity of school choice” by Clint Bolick, Azcentral.com, June 26, 2006.
“Parents know best: Kentucky’s quest for school choice” by Joel Peyton and Jim Waters, Bluegrass Institute, May 2006.
Each month, the Kentucky Alliance Digest features a look at school choice from a parent’s perspective. This month’s testimony is from Bowling Green residents Jim and Tracy Waters
As Kentucky parents, we have woefully few choices when it comes to providing a quality education for our children. Before Arianna, the oldest of our three daughters, was ready to begin school, we considered all available options.
Since we were not independently wealthy, we could not follow the path of well-to-do families and enroll her in an expensive private school. Yet we want Arianna to receive a quality education that allows her to have the kind of firm foundation she needs to succeed in life and face challenges that await her generation.
As we considered our options, we were amazed at how few choices we actually have in Kentucky. Without charter schools, vouchers, tax credits or parent-controlled open-enrollment agreements, we could either put our daughter in the public school located in the neighborhood where we lived, or teach her at home.
Since we as parents feel responsible for our children’s futures and want to give them the best possible chance for success, we chose to accept the challenge of home schooling.
It was a good decision. Our daughter learns in a safe environment – absent the bullying, violence and drug activity that goes on in too many public schools. And she has a strong curriculum that neither is dominated by historical revisionists nor teaches values contrary to our family’s beliefs. Who knows? If Kentucky had offered quality choices, then perhaps we would have found a public or charter school that met our standards for Arianna, or that would be ideal for her two younger sisters, who begin their schooling in a few years.
At the very least, parents like us who choose not to send our children to public schools should receive a tax deduction for the money we spend on purchasing curriculum and other home-schooling items. Allowing such deductions likely would encourage more parents in our state to choose the home-schooling path and give their children a better education.
Parents interested in contributing their story can e-mail it to jwaters@bipps.org.
Could Florida’s ultra-successful McKay Scholarships program for special-needs students now be endangered as a result of a ruling by that state’s Supreme Court in January declaring another state voucher program unconstitutional?
It should not, considering McKay’s popularity with parents and the progress learning-disabled children are making as a result of attending schools tailored to meet their needs.
Around 16,000 children currently use McKay Scholarships to attend a public or private school of their choosing. Polling continues to confirm strong parental support for the program, including a recent survey indicating a 93-percent satisfaction rate with the McKay project.
Parents seem especially pleased with the fact that 86 percent of the children who are recipients of McKay Scholarships can finally attend a school with specialized disability services – programs parents spent years trying to obtain in regular public schools.
Students also welcome the benefits of McKay schools noted in a Manhattan Institute report, including:
• Average class size is about half that of traditional public schools, allowing more personal contact between teachers and students.
• Behavior problems among children with disabilities dropped 20 percent.
• Reports of teasing from other students declined by more than 40 percent.
Considering the success of McKay Scholarships in helping provide better educational opportunities for Florida’s special-needs kids, legislators in Kentucky should offer similar school-choice programs.
Without options, parents of Kentucky’s 87,500 special-needs students must depend largely upon their assigned public schools to provide specialized services.
Research by the National Center for Culturally Responsive Education indicates that schools are failing to provide such opportunities in Kentucky, where there was an alarming 7-percent increase in the number of uncertified special-education teachers between the 2001-02 and 2002-03 school years.
Children with disabilities struggle enough without Kentucky’s public schools creating additional difficulties through inadequate services and unqualified staff. It’s time to grant these kids their educational liberty.
Sources:
“Vouchers for Special Education Students: An Evaluation of Florida’s McKay Scholarship Program” by Jay P. Greene, Ph.D. and Greg Forster, Ph.D., Manhattan Institute, June 2003.
“Fla. Supreme Court declares vouchers unconstitutional” by The Associated Press, The Florida Times-Union, Jan. 5, 2006.
“Overall trend: Kentucky,” National Center for Culturally Responsive Education Systems.
Home-school support groups give parents – especially those new to home schooling –the opportunity to network with other home-schooling families. They also offer exposure to a wide range of helpful resources.
Dick and Peggy Gautraud of California (in northern Kentucky), who have home schooled for 15 years and currently teach six kids at home, say their support group helped them connect with other home-schooling families and build confidence in their decision to home school their children.
“The group has helped give us realistic ideas and goals about what works and what does not,” said Peggy Gautraud. “It gave us confidence to move forward down the path of home schooling.”
While home-school groups vary in size and focus, most parents can usually find a group that harmonizes with the values and influences they want to instill in their children. Some groups have a specific religious aspect at their meetings and events; others are intentionally non-religious.
If a group is not found nearby, the Internet provides an abundance of online support groups.
For example, the Lexington Homeschool Workshop offers workshop-enrichment classes in biology, writing, theater and selected topics in history. The site also includes information on how home-schooled children can participate in a variety of activities – from field trips to archery clubs and science fairs. It even offers ideas about hosting family dinners.
About.com contains information for 13 home-schooling groups, including mission statements and links for those groups with Web sites. Most of these sites contain information about academics, special events and when groups meet, which is typically monthly with smaller groups often getting together weekly for activities.
Still, the most valuable information provided by these groups may be the “confidence they give you that you’re the best teacher for your children,” Gautraud said. “You are, after all, their first teacher.”
Florence resident Stephanie Graham, a home-schooling parent, wrote this article.
Sources:
“Group lists – Kentucky,” About.com.
Teachers unions, public-education bureaucrats and school-board members who oppose school choice try to frighten parents by suggesting that competition will harm public schools. Such blathering is nonsense.
It’s unlikely these same school-choice critics would claim that having more than one brand of laundry detergent or peanut butter to choose from when we go to the supermarket is harmful. Or, that having more than one supermarket in which to make those choices is harmful. In fact, it’s just the opposite.
When, then, shouldn’t parents have a variety of choices when deciding where their children attend school? Doing so would improve the quality of public education and result in more good schools being created, just as competition has impacted other sectors of our society. For example, the government-run U.S. Postal Service was the only service that mailed packages for many years. Customers often complained about the bad service, slow delivery times and damaged packages delivered through the post office.
However, when competitors such as Fed Ex and UPS were allowed to begin making deliveries, the government-run post office improved its customer service and started getting packages delivered quicker and in better condition.
Competition would have the same effect on public schools. Schools that fit children’s needs would pop up, including those tailored to serve special-needs children or students interested in the arts, computers and technology and other academic areas.
When competition was banned in the former Soviet Union, people often had to wait in line all day just to get a loaf of bread. That system was rejected and dubbed a failure. By denying Kentuckians school choice, we are applying the same broken model to our education system.
Competition makes our country great in so many ways. Likewise, offering parents more choices can be a catalyst toward making Kentucky’s schools the envy of the entire nation.
Sources:
“Free to Choose” by Milton Friedman, The Wall Street Journal, June 9, 2005.
“The teachers unions are mad at me” by John Stossel, Bluegrass Institute, May 8, 2006.
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