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The Kentucky Education Digest is a collection of ideas focused on four general themes:
Basic school choice information
Ohio’s charter schools, vouchers explode in popularity.
Best practices from other states
Pay-for-performance success gets needed attention
Education driven by students works best.
Answering objections to school choice
School choice is constitutional – at least in some form – in every state.
We invite your input and feedback because we know that healthy debate is the mechanism that produces the ideas that ultimately work.
When Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland recently announced his opposition to charter schools and education vouchers, he might not have realized just how popular the programs had become.
Strickland referred to Ohio’s charter schools as a “dismal failure” and pledged to end the state’s voucher program. Now he must contend with the more than 8,500 parents who have chosen to send children to charter schools in Ohio’s capital city.
The Columbus Dispatch reported that the number of Columbus parents applying for vouchers (the program known as EdChoice) increased dramatically this year:
“Columbus Public Schools students filed 1,410 applications this spring to use private-school vouchers, twice as many as they did last year. Statewide, the numbers more than doubled, too. Nearly 8,000 voucher applications were filed by the deadline, compared with 3,667 for the current school year.”
The newspaper reported that Ohio’s EdChoice program has grown faster than just about any other voucher program in the country:
“In Milwaukee, which has the oldest voucher program in the United States, interest in the program grew by 53 percent between the first and second years. In Washington, D.C., which has a newer voucher system, interest grew by about 16 percent between years one and two. In Ohio, it’s 116 percent.
What’s most interesting about Ohio’s experiment with school choice is that the bulk of voucher applications have come from parents with incoming kindergartners – children in school for the first time. The second-largest group making these applications is comprised of parents of current kindergartners. It’s clear that many parents want children to avoid the traditional public-school environment altogether.
Kentucky should quickly adopt a pilot program allowing charter schools in its most urbanized school districts. If parents in low-income households were to get first crack at charter schools, opponents’ fears that choice will cause public schools to lose students in droves will come to naught.
Sources:
“1,410 apply for vouchers in Columbus” by Jennifer Smith Richards, The Columbus Dispatch, May 3, 2007.
“Should states put brakes on charter school growth” by Tim Jones, Chicago Tribune, May 3, 2007.
“Charter school backers rally at legislature” by Frank Norton, The News & Observer, May 2, 2007.
Most people agree that job compensation should be based on performance. The question that public-school officials and researchers rightly ask is, “How do you measure performance?”
In public schools, the answer is both simple and complex. The proper measure of teacher performance is achievement gains made by students. The rub is in how policymakers measure student gains and how those increases translate to compensation for teachers.
A recent study from the University of Arkansas shows that one such attempt holds promise in the Razorback State.
The Achievement Challenge Pilot Project (ACPP) took a broader approach than one might expect. Instead of merely studying the incentive structure for teachers and the resulting student achievement, the researchers also examined the attitude of teachers toward their jobs, salaries and challenges they face in the classroom.
As to student performance, the researchers found the ACPP significantly improved student test scores on a nationally “normed” math test.
“This gain in achievement after one year’s time is roughly equal to one-sixth of the nationwide average test score gap between black and white students,” the researchers reported. “If the observed benefit of the merit pay program were to compound for six years, it would close the black-white test score gap.”
As to teacher attitudes, the teachers in the ACPP program didn’t report working harder than teachers not in the program, but did express greater satisfaction with their salaries. Teachers in the program also said that they became more effective at producing student achievement.
Critics of merit-pay proposals often argue that such programs reduce collaboration among teachers. The researchers found just the opposite. Forty-seven percent of all respondents (83 percent of ACPP teachers and 19 percent of comparison teachers) said “merit pay programs increase collaboration among teachers.”
In other words, teachers in the program tend to believe that a merit approach encouraged collaboration.
Kentucky continues to toy a bit with differential-pay proposals, and only then to attract teachers into particular disciplines. Giving local authorities the means and financial incentive to drive better performance in the classroom is a big part of improving our schools. How we get there, as always, remains the issue.
Sources:
“Merit Pay for Teachers Improves Student Achievement in Arkansas” by Mary Susan Littlepage, Heartland Institute, School Reform News, April 1, 2007.
“Evaluation of Year One of the Achievement Challenge Pilot Project in the Little Rock Public School District” by Joshua H. Barnett, Gary W. Ritter, Marcus A. Winters and Jay P. Greene, University of Arkansas, Heartland Institute, Policybot, Jan. 16, 2007.
The term “unschooling” might be new, but the premise is not.
People have always learned best by observing and then doing. Unfortunately, the public-education model used in the United States typically doesn’t maximize the natural desire of children to learn and do simultaneously.
Public-school teaching usually involves tired timelines and staid curriculums. And because the traditional model produced most parents, those same parents must rethink learning if they want to choose a different path for their children.
“Unschoolers” generally guide children to learn by relying on their innate curiosity about the world and their natural desire to make sense of things. The “unschooling” parent becomes a facilitator, helping the child to find resources to satisfy needs. The “unschooling parent” becomes an observer, watching to ascertain what the child learns and anticipating future needs. –
“Unschooling” operates on the premise that children learn best when they need to learn something and are ready to learn it. Before need arises, learning often becomes forced and tedious, which can cause a long-term aversion to certain subjects and souring a child to many areas of study.
“Unschooling” figures prominently in Nancy Wallace’s books “Better Than School” and “Child’s Work: Taking Children’s Choices Seriously.” By recognizing the specific needs and learning styles of each of their children, she and her husband provided a thorough, personalized learning experience for them.
Students may be interested in nature, and starting there, they learn reading, science, geology, math, chemistry and physics. They learn to become good readers to satisfy curiosity. They learn chart-making and math because that helps them organize information.
They acquire other skills as those abilities pertain to interests and the need to express that information to others. The students become the directors of education, just the way adults take charge new things they choose to learn.
“Unschooling” equates to a process unique to each student. It is also universal in that it appeals to our natural desire to learn as a service to our achievements.
– Florence resident Stephanie Graham, a home-schooling parent, wrote this article.
While the constitutional merits of any school-choice legislation may deserve public debate, a new report sheds some light on steps Kentucky can take to make it even more difficult for opponents of choice to mount constitutional challenges.
The report, produced by the Institute for Justice and the American Legislative Exchange Council, indicates that a tax-credit plan likely represents Kentucky’s best option for creating a constitutionally sound school-choice program.
However, while the report states that a voucher program would be “difficult, if not impossible” to implement considering the current language of the state constitution, it indicates that a Kentucky Supreme Court decision “may create a limited exception for programs directed to special education students. The funding for such a program should explicitly come from a source other than the ‘common school fund,’ and the money should be allotted to parents rather than schools.”
The report cites the case of Butler v. United Cerebral Palsy of Northern Kentucky Inc., 352 S.W.2d 203 (Ky. 1961), which set up a distinction between providing funds for the education of exceptional children and educating children. As such, the report indicates that a disabled-student scholarship program should be termed as one that supports child welfare rather than education.
The current language of Kentucky’s constitution appears to limit school choice. However, other options – public-school choice, tax credits, charter schools and programs that provide better services for learning-disabled students – remain strong and viable options under the commonwealth’s constitution.
Sources:
“School Choice and State Constitutions,” Institute for Justice and American Legislative Exchange Council, April 2007.
“Scholarship program would help special-needs children” by Stan Lee, Bluegrass Institute, Oct. 2, 2006.
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