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The Kentucky Education Digest is a collection of ideas focused on four general themes:
Basic school choice information
Alternative teacher-certification methods lead to school choice.
Best practices from other states
Arizona accelerates its drive to promote choice in education.
Home schooling is not a new concept. A vast majority of Americans were taught at home until Massachusetts implemented a law requiring school attendance in 1852.
Answering objections to school choice
Keep debate focused on the effectiveness of vouchers.
We invite your input and feedback because we know that healthy debate is the mechanism that produces the ideas that ultimately work.
For as long as there have been teachers, there have been different methods of teaching.
Of course, teacher-certification requirements are meant to set the bar for quality teaching, which is occurring in several states. But teacher-certification rules in some places may keep the otherwise qualified from ever teaching. That’s where alternative certification policies can help ensure that classrooms have skilled instructors.
For instance, Connecticut, New Jersey and Texas permit alternative certification in all academic subjects at all grade levels. About 20 percent of New Jersey’s teachers qualify through alternative-certification routes.
David Kirkpatrick, a researcher for the Buckeye Institute and the U.S. Freedom Foundation, delineates the solidly positive results of allowing alternative routes for qualified teachers to arrive in the classroom:
Officials report teacher quality improved, the number of minority applicants doubled and nontraditional applicants scored higher on the National Teacher Exams. In the first year, new hires included a Fulbright scholar, five Harvard graduates and a scientist with two patents to his credit. Evaluators concluded that those who moved into teaching from other careers were, in fact, better teachers and role models because they were more mature and had more varied life experiences.
Nor is New Jersey alone in its findings. Texas found no difference in quality between teachers with education degrees and those without. California concluded that “properly” certified teachers were no better than those with alternative certification, or even those with emergency certificates. It also became easier to obtain teachers to fill the sometimes-critical shortage of science and math teachers.”
Kentucky already recognizes the importance of getting qualified teachers in the classroom by allowing a variety of alternative certifications. Education leaders deserve credit for allowing qualified professionals from other fields to more easily enter teaching.
So, if less-traditional teachers seem acceptable to school officials, why aren’t less-traditional means of student assignment – school choice – still so totally unacceptable to education bureaucrats and unions? Why do schools get an increasing variety of choices about who educates children, while parents must often take what they get?
Sources:
“KY: Alternative Routes To Certification Bring Teachers To High-Need Schools,” U.S. Department of Education, Nov. 16, 2004. l
“Schools Succeed With Nontraditional Teachers” by Ben DeGrow, School Reform News, March 1, 2007.
“Expert Outlines Keys to Success in Alternative Certification” by Robert Holland, School Reform News, March 1, 2007.
Sometimes envy isn’t such a bad emotion – especially when it pushes you to work for something better.
School-choice advocates in Kentucky should look to Arizona with envy. The state appears to have all its education ducks in a row.
For example, Arizona offers more charter schools per capita than any other state. Kentucky? Zero charter schools.
And Arizona sees more opportunity for school choice:
• Arizona took two major steps in the past year, particularly on behalf some students who often have trouble in traditional public schools. Legislation signed by Gov. Janet Napolitano would expand school choice for Arizona’s foster children, providing them vouchers to attend schools more able to meet their needs. Another bill grants similar vouchers to Arizona’s special-needs children.
• The public seems to agree with these moves. A recent poll in Arizona showed that 76 percent of respondents liked the idea of giving vouchers to special-needs children, and 64 percent liked the idea of giving vouchers to foster children.
• Another program created in 2006 would provide tax credits for businesses that donate money to organizations that provide student tuition.
• Arizona previously offered a dollar-for-dollar tax credit for these donations, a program that already has raised more than $4 million for tuition organizations.
In recent years, Kentucky lawmakers have failed to act when given the opportunity to create tuition-tax credits and a scholarship program for special-needs children.
What the Grand Canyon State demonstrates is that good policy often produces good politics. The public support for these programs make them no-brainers for lawmakers.
The Kentucky politician who makes school choice a key aspect of a campaign for office will likely reap large political rewards.
Sources:
“Topline Data; Survey of 503 Adults in Arizona,” Alliance for School Choice, December 2006.
“Poll Shows Statewide Support for Choice in Arizona” by Hilary Masell Oswald, School Reform News, March 1, 2007.
“Arizona Continues Reform Efforts” by Arizona state Rep. Mark Anderson, School Reform News. March 1, 2007.
Many Kentuckians have mistaken notions that home schooling is a recent phenomenon or that the practice was forbidden in the past. Actually, home schooling existed long before our modern system of public education was created. In fact, there has never been a law forbidding home schooling. All 50 states allow parents the choice of educating their children at home.
A vast majority of people were taught at home until Massachusetts implemented a law requiring school attendance in 1852. Early supporters of home schooling cited religious or philosophical differences with public schools.
After initially working to reform public education to no avail, writers like John Holt created a newsletter – “Growing Without Schooling” – as a forum for advising parents on how to home school legally.
One early home-schooling source was Baltimore’s Calvert Day School, which began providing a “curriculum-in-a-box” by mail order in 1897. The school, which is still going strong, grew from 300 students within the first five years to more than 350,000 annually today. As a result, many other mail order or correspondence schools sprouted up through the years.
With the advent of the Internet, the curriculum resources are now virtually limitless for providing a strong, effective education at home. Whereas distance and numbers once isolated home schoolers, today’s students have support groups in most communities that provide how-to advice, resources and forums for activities.
Kentucky has 12 home-school groups listed on the “A to Z Home’s Cool Homeschooling Web site,” including Teaching Homes In Northern Kentucky (THINK) and the Bluegrass Home Educators.
Public opinion of home schooling has risen during the past several decades and remains a valid school choice to public schools and private schools that do not satisfy parent’s desires for their children’s education.
– Florence resident Stephanie Graham, a home-schooling parent, wrote this article.
Sources:
“History of Homeschooling” by Helen Hegener, Home Education Magazine, May-June 2006.
“A to Z Home’s Cool Homeschooling Web site”
Leaders in the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives promise that changes to the No Child Left Behind Act will not include any form of education vouchers.
Ironically, the prospect of a voucher-driven NCLB might earn these Democrats some strange political bedfellows. In order to dispel objections to vouchers appearing in the planned reenactment of No Child Left Behind, we should clarify what the debate really focuses on.
Those who support educational choice are often those who also support a strict adherence to Constitutional principles. The Constitution states nothing about whether the federal government should regulate local public schools and exact penalties when they fail to meet federal guidelines. So, many voucher backers support school choice so much that they wouldn’t force any state to adopt it through a federal mandate.
In short, a strong libertarian case can be made against federalized vouchers. Then again, those same libertarians would likely oppose NCLB, the federal Department of Education or any federal controls over education.
But a debate about federally sanctioned vouchers should remain separate from the debate about the morality and efficacy of vouchers in general. The evidence regarding vouchers generally points to their ability to get results.
A Harvard University study compared Florida schools facing public-school choice governed by NCLB to schools teetering toward inclusion in the Sunshine State’s school-choice program. What did they find? The schools facing the prospect of state-sanctioned school choice performed better than those facing NCLB sanctions.
The researchers emphasized that the study wasn’t meant to measure NCLB’s effectiveness – except as it relates to Florida’s school-choice provisions.
When objections arise to school choice in the form of vouchers, some do so out of a disdain for choices and some out of contempt for mandates. Advancing the debate demands that participants know the difference.
Sources:
“Democrats Pledge: No Vouchers in NCLB” by Dan Lips, School Reform News, March 1, 2007.
“Voucher Threat Helps to Raise Test Scores in Florida,” Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, April 5, 2005.
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