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The Kentucky Education Digest is a collection of ideas focused on five general themes:
We invite your input and feedback because we know that healthy debate is the mechanism that produces the ideas that ultimately work.
Utah, Arizona and Ohio have either created or expanded school-choice programs during the month of March.
Ohio expanded its EdChoice program so children in schools on “academic watch” – the second-lowest rating a school can have – are now eligible to transfer. In the past, only children attending schools that failed for at least three years and were in “academic emergency” had the option of picking a new school. The expansion of Ohio’s program will make 20,000 additional students eligible to participate.
Utah expanded its Carson Smith Scholarship program for autistic children by no longer requiring schools to specialize in serving special-needs students before becoming eligible to receive scholarships.
Arizona’s legislature approved a corporate tax-credit law that allows businesses to donate to nonprofit organizations that distribute vouchers to private schools for children who need them. The program has a $5 million cap and will serve between 3,000 and 5,000 low-income children. Gov. Janet Napolitano allowed it to become law without her signature.
Florida, New Hampshire, Virginia and Wisconsin have also passed school-choice bills this year. Wisconsin also expanded another current school-choice program.
While many other states implement and expand school-choice programs, Kentucky offers no way out for its children who are trapped in failing schools. Parents who cannot afford to home school or to pay private-school tuition are forced to send their children to institutions that are not fostering a good education.
It's time to put the parents back in charge of their children's education. Parents in Kentucky should let their voices be heard so that lawmakers in Frankfort will follow other states’ examples and introduce choice and competition into the commonwealth’s ailing public-education system.
Sources:
“School Choice Expanding in Three States” by Karla Dial, Heartland Institute, May 1, 2006
“Ten great reasons why Kentucky children deserve school choice” Bluegrass Institute, Nov. 10, 2005
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 Tim and Kim Waggoner, who home school their two children, Tabitha and Gabriel.
As parents who have home schooled for 12 years, we have a multitude of experiences to support our strong conviction that all Kentuckians deserve school choice.
For one thing, the individual attention given to our children continues to pay off in the advancement of their skills in reading, language arts and social studies. Our 16-year-old daughter Tabitha runs her own Web site and has goals of being a published author. The site includes portions of a new book – her third work of fiction – that Tabitha, who aspires to study in London, is writing.
Some might say that these are unrealistic goals for a teenager, but we believe it is totally foolish to put limits on a child’s goals. We also believe it is unwise to oppose school choice for all Kentucky parents. School choice offers the promise of expanding the horizons of thousands of Kentucky youngsters as public schools are forced to change their thinking in order to compete with private programs and home-schooling parents.
Because of the flexibility of home schooling, we were able to continue with Tabitha’s schedule even when we had to spend a great deal of time at Vanderbilt University Medical Center for one of eight surgeries performed on our 8-year-old son Gabriel, who was born with spina bifida. Now the storm has lifted and Gabriel has shown tremendous improvement to the point that he leads a full life, including participating in basketball, baseball, 4-H, spelling and geography bees.
Since we have the choice of schooling Gabriel at home, we can make sure he has the social, medical, physical, moral and psychological support he so desperately needs.
Expanding school choice is important. We believe all Kentucky families deserve the opportunity to choose the path that best fits their needs while providing their children with a quality education and brighter future.
Parents interested in contributing their story can e-mail it to jwaters@bipps.org.
Kentucky’s neighbors to the north are discovering that charter schools work. Nearly 7,000 students are now attending 29 different Indiana charter schools – seven of which opened in 2005.
Students and their parents can choose any of Indiana’s charters since the schools are exempted from district regulations. This non-restrictive policy allows parents to choose from schools with a variety of teaching methods and curriculum.
The plethora of educational experiences available – as noted in the following descriptions of some of Indiana’s charters – can be especially beneficial in offering an escape route for children trapped in failing one-size-fits-all schools:
• East Chicago Urban Enterprise Academy uses curriculum targeted at helping at-risk Hispanic and black youngsters.
• Students from outside the county and even from other states are allowed to enroll at Decatur Discovery Academy in Indianapolis. Most of Decatur’s students had trouble in traditional high schools.
• The fine and performing arts are an integral part of the curriculum at the Lighthouse Charter School in Indianapolis. The school works with organizations such as the American Pianists Association, Indiana Chamber Orchestra and Indianapolis Symphonic Choir to challenge its students.
Kentucky’s policymakers need to step forward and advance charter-school legislation during the 2007 General Assembly. At the very least, the state’s education policy should include allowing charter schools in urban areas like Jefferson County – where the academic and graduation gaps between white and black students continues to widen.
Charters would provide an avenue for addressing severe educational deficiencies – including low test scores and expectations – in many of Jefferson County’s public schools. Successful charter schools in Louisville – the state’s largest district – could also result in more educational liberty for students across the commonwealth.
Sources:
“Coleman says Louisville needs charter school” by Chris Kenning, The Courier-Journal, April 30, 2005.
“New Educational Opportunities: From East Chicago to Richmond, Seven New Schools Join Indiana's Charter School Family in 2005” by Rachael J. Cook, Indiana Charter Schools Today, Fall 2005.
When it comes to our children’s education, the fact that it’s the student who does the learning often gets overlooked. Even great teachers with genuine concern cannot do the learning for students. And while policies or curriculum can help create a more conducive atmosphere, they cannot make learning occur.
In his book “Learning All the Time,” John Holt claims the best way to promote a life-long love of learning is to use a self-directed style of learning that has come to be known as “unschooling.”
Holt says a child’s desire to learn is encouraged when we respect his interests and ability to figure things out on his own, but is diminished when we tell a child what to learn for exactly how many minutes a day.
Why is it that we often see no difficulty in managing children this way? While it appears logical, the outcome often is not considered. The message we inadvertently send is that individual interests do not count. And in the interest of efficiency, learning has to take place at the times and places on the schedule.
However, most adults would not tolerate being told to immediately stop an activity and do something else. We expect to be respected.
If we choose to learn something new, we research the topic on our own. We might read books or seek out someone with experience in that field. Sometimes we learn by experimentation. It should be no different for children.
The underlying assumption we often make is that children will not learn what we fail to teach them. In reality, elaborate techniques are not needed. Children want to emulate the adults they know.
Successful unschoolers will tell you that they learn what they need to know when they are ready. And that’s when they learn it best.
For more information visit http://www.holtgws.com/index.html http://sandradodd.com/articles
“I Lean Better by Teaching Myself” by Agnes Leistico, Home Education Press, 1990.
School-choice opponents often claim that competition sucks money and talent away from public schools. For example, both the New York Times and Boston Globe opine that vouchers and other school-choice initiatives will ruin public schools yet provide no facts to support these erroneous claims.
Supporters of educational liberty should fight back using facts provided by Harvard economist Caroline Hoxby, who found that Milwaukee’s voucher program actually improved public schools. Her study concludes that Milwaukee’s public schools exposed to more voucher competition made better gains on test scores than those less challenged.
In addition to vouchers, Hoxby also found that charter school have a positive effect on public schools. She found that students attending traditional public schools located near a critical mass of charter schools in Arizona and Michigan performed better than students in schools that were not as close to such competition.
Another instance where school choice is improving public schools is in Maine and Vermont, which provide vouchers to students living in towns without a high school. Students can use the vouchers to attend other towns’ public or private high schools. Christopher Hammons, a Houston Baptist University professor, found public high schools closer to towns offering vouchers performed better than those farther away.
The myths spouted by media outlets and teachers unions are intended to intimidate parents and dampen support for school-choice programs. Parents can resist such opposition by being aware of the conclusions offered by rigorous and credible research: School choice improves public schools – whether they are in California, Florida or Kentucky.
Sources:
“Coalition calls for more education accountability, school choice,” Bluegrass Institute, April 28, 2005
“Education Myths” by Jay P. Greene, Rowman & Littlefield, 2005.
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