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The Kentucky Education Digest is a collection of ideas focused on five general themes:
Basic school choice information
Kentucky schoolchildren deserve the same benefits enjoyed by children in Florida and other states where charter schools thrive.
Each month, the Kentucky Alliance 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
Leaders in two Asian countries are taking a close look at expanded school choice. When will Kentucky’s leaders do the same?
Home-schooling groups build confidence.
Objections to school choice that form the misguided arguments against more educational alternatives.
After a big wave of Democratic wins, school choice may have just gotten another boost.
We invite your input and feedback because we know that healthy debate is the mechanism that produces the ideas that ultimately work.
Florida is known for its aggressive school-choice initiatives. A new report by Education Sector, a Washington think tank, gives plenty of reasons for Kentucky to consider Florida’s model of allowing charter schools, which have often been effective in addressing achievement gaps and funding issues.
The report found:
• Students who attend charter schools in Florida typically lag behind their district-school counterparts at the time of transfer. However, a study by economist Tim Sass found that “charter school students catch up to their non-charter peers by the school’s second year of operation in reading and by the fourth in math.” The report surmises that these studies confirm that “while student achievement overall is lower in Florida’s charter schools, given their particular student populations, charter schools are serving their students as least as well as district schools overall.”
• Competition provided by charter schools may have a positive impact on the performance of schools forced to compete with the charters.
• Florida charters typically receive less funding than district schools. Statewide, charters collect nearly $900 less per-pupil than district schools.
Kentucky needs an aggressive school-choice policy that allows academically deficient students to reap the kind of benefits charter schools provide to children in Florida and other states where charters thrive. The commonwealth is currently among just four states that have no state-sanctioned school-choice programs.
Charter schools would represent a forward-thinking policy to help Kentucky’s schoolchildren catch up to those in other states who have benefited from school-choice programs for decades.
Source:
“Florida Charter Schools: Hot and Humid with Passing Storms,” by Bryan C. Hassel, Michelle Godard Terrell & Julie Kowal. Education Sector. May, 2006.
“When will conventional public schools be as accountable as charter schools?” by Brian L. Carpenter, Bluegrass Institute, Nov. 15, 2004.
Each month, the Kentucky Alliance 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.
Susan Bramel
Cynthiana
Parents interested in contributing their story can e-mail it to jwaters@bipps.org.
While Kentucky’s education establishment adamantly refuses to admit the value of allowing parents to choose the schools their children attend, other countries are giving vouchers serious consideration.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has proposed “a system of government vouchers to enable children to attend private schools regardless of their parents’ income, which may force public schools to become more competitive to win students from their private rivals,” according to The Japan Times.
Prime Minister Abe’s attempt to give parents more choices and increase competition between schools already has an excellent model to show what choices may emerge: Japan’s massive tutoring industry. These “juku” schools are often credited with helping Japanese students trounce American students on standardized testing.
In southern Asia, a report from a key planning commission in India suggests that vouchers may increase accountability of schools and urges that families be offered school choice to spur a more competitive education sector. The report specifically points to the success of Milwaukee’s school-choice program in serving families of limited means.
“We need to experiment with this possibility by undertaking pilots that provide suitable education entitlements to children which are reimbursable to the school,” the report states. “This will create competition by allowing people to choose between public and private schools.”
Many of Kentucky’s lawmakers tremble at the thought of being tied to a school-voucher proposal. Still, when students in India and Japan already regularly pummel American students in key measures of academic performance, isn’t it time for a little more courage in catching up?
Sources:
“Abe to play hardball with soft education system” by Akemi Nakamura, The Japan Times, Oct. 27, 2006.
“Abe gets in touch with his pragmatic side” by Justin McCurry, Guardian Unlimited, Oct. 30, 2006.
“Voucher scheme stays in Plan panel approach paper” by Anita Joshua, The Hindu, Oct. 13, 2006.
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 nonreligious.
If a group is not found nearby, the Internet provides an abundance of online support groups and materials.
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.
School choice is something often championed by self-described “conservatives,” particularly in the Republican Party. However, after large-scale losses in congressional mid-term elections and governors’ mansions, it’s worth noting that the school-choice movement is becoming much less partisan.
For example:
• Key Democrats in the New Jersey legislature now support a tax-credit plan for educational scholarships. According to the Newark Star-Ledge, “The bill, which has been stalled in the Legislature, would allow corporations or others to receive dollar-for-dollar tax credits for contributions to the scholarships or other unspecified school improvement funds. The scholarships would be limited to 4,000 low-income students in the pilot districts in the first year and up to 20,000 by the fifth year. Each child would receive up to $6,000 for elementary school tuition and $9,000 for high school.”
• Newly-elected New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, a Democrat, made it clear during his campaign that he supported New York’s child tax credit for education and bemoaned the fact that private schools educate so many students and yet qualify for very few state dollars.
• In Massachusetts, where recent data indicate the successes of charter schools, incoming Democratic Gov. Deval Patrick views charters as part of a larger strategy to make schools more accountable for student performance.
Why have these and other Democrats chosen to publicly endorse school choice measures? Perhaps because they recognize that such policies do tend to produce results that these politicians would like to tout in future elections. It’s also clear that school-choice programs quickly gain a constituency among parents difficult for any politician to undermine.
In this case, it seems clear that good policy can coexist with a smart political strategy.
Sources:
“A Lesson in Adaptation” by Ryan Boots, EdSpresso, Nov. 8, 2006.
“Will Democrats Become the Party of Educational Liberty?” by Andrew J. Coulson, Cato-at-Liberty blog, Nov. 8, 2006.
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