Given a Choice, Parents Go Elsewhere
Score another one for dynamic non-presidential candidate Mitch Daniels, a truly conservative governor. Indiana has the most robust school choice system in the country -- it's a voucher plan, and it's having a real effect.
You know it's working because the usual suspects are hysterical. From HuffPo:
Weeks after Indiana began the nation's broadest school voucher program, thousands of students have transferred from public to private schools, causing a spike in enrollment at some Catholic institutions that were only recently on the brink of closing for lack of pupils.
It's a scenario public school advocates have long feared: Students fleeing local districts in large numbers, taking with them vital tax dollars that often end up at parochial schools. Opponents say the practice violates the separation of church and state.
That's one way to put it. Another way is, "It's a scenario public school advocates have long feared: parents, when offered a choice, choose to move their children out of a failing and monolithic bureaucracy and into a better, more responsive school."
And now, right on time, the tears:
In at least one district, public school principals have been pleading with parents not to move their children.
"The bottom line from our perspective is, when you cut through all the chaff, nobody can deny that public money is going to be taken from public schools, and they're going to end up in private, mostly religious schools," said Nate Schnellenberger, president of the Indiana State Teachers Association.
Nowhere in that press release are the words parents need to hear from an arrogant, coddled, deeply corrupt educatocrat: "We're sorry. We're going to do better." Instead, it's "You can't do this to us."
Nearly 70 percent of the vouchers approved statewide are for students opting to attend Catholic schools, according to figures provided to The Associated Press by the five dioceses in Indiana. The majority are in the urban areas of Indianapolis, Fort Wayne, South Bend and Gary, where many public schools have long struggled.
John West, an attorney for a group suing to stop the Indiana program, said during a hearing on the issue that only six of the 240 private schools that have signed up for the voucher program are secular.
The message should be: do better, reform the system, fire bad teachers, win back parent confidence. The message the education monopolists seem to have received is: hire lawyers; sue the governor.
And that says everything you need to know about the state of public education.
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Nov '10
Re: Given a Choice, Parents Go Elsewhere
Rob Long:
Yeah. And the funny thing is, many of these parents have been pleading with that same principal to teach their kids math, instead of spending that time teaching them how super-duper homosexuals are.
Savor the irony.
Jun '10
Re: Given a Choice, Parents Go Elsewhere
East Germans who worked in (attended daily) the Trabant factory can relate.
Apr '11
Re: Given a Choice, Parents Go Elsewhere
The issue of school vouchers always makes me think of how hypocritical it is that 'progressives' call themselves by that name. And the separation of church and state argument, Puh-Leaze!
Jul '10
Re: Given a Choice, Parents Go Elsewhere
Gov. Daniels has messed up "the system". Suddenly the "cannon fodder" can hold the educators, and I use that term with significant trepidation, accountable. Isn't it interesting that while ALL the pols and government employees bleat the term, "accountable", when it actually arrives, they scream and holler "Foul!"
Dec '10
Re: Given a Choice, Parents Go Elsewhere
Rob Long:
The message should be: do better, reform the system, fire bad teachers, win back parent confidence. The message the education monopolists seem to have received is: hire lawyers; sue the governor.
And that says everything you need to know about the state of public education. ·
Follow the money. Yes, public funds are being depleted from public schools by the public choosing to spend public funds as the public sees fit. And who's got a problem with it? Public school educators. Ain't it grand?
May '10
Re: Given a Choice, Parents Go Elsewhere
All those Catholic schools and not one yeshiva!
May '10
Re: Given a Choice, Parents Go Elsewhere
The participating schools are Catholic only because of the price point. Most Catholic schools are priced between $8-$12K. Other private schools that receive no parish subsidy are generally more expensive. But if private school operators trust the politics of the program to remain stable, by next year there will be a slew of new arrivals priced to the vouchers. And the year after, more still.
Jul '10
Re: Given a Choice, Parents Go Elsewhere
The message should be: privatize. Eliminate the NEA.
Oct '10
Re: Given a Choice, Parents Go Elsewhere
The Commissar of Education will put a stop to these uppity citizens. Do they not realize that subjects are what they are, and they had better not step out of line.
Nov '10
Re: Given a Choice, Parents Go Elsewhere
Go Indiana!
Aug '10
Re: Given a Choice, Parents Go Elsewhere
That's a bug? Sounds like a feature to me.
Jan '11
Re: Given a Choice, Parents Go Elsewhere
Agreed. Actions have reactions. Markets respond.
Parochial education has been dying on the vine because the public school system has driven competition out. If vouchers restore competition, the market will respond ...very very quickly. Why so quickly? Because it's an industry where the talent pool is pretty widespread in the first place.
The public school unions want to portray all teachers, even the chipper 22-year old post-coeds, as highly-trained working psychologists, who happen to also hold Nobel-quality expertise in physics and history. (Those pre-Einsteins are usually the worst teachers anyway.) Instead, with even a small core of experienced teachers, you can offer a effective education with a fraction of the staff and expense.
Catholic schools did it for centuries, and some still do. In Baltimore and Chicago, the Cristo Rey programs show that everyday.
Treat education as a market, and people will come ... they will most definitely come.
May '10
Re: Given a Choice, Parents Go Elsewhere
I know many civil rights activists have sold out to the Left-wing machine but I'm really surprised we haven't heard more about the desegregation aspects of school choice. I know Gary, South Bend, and Indianapolis well and I know the Catholic schools in those areas. It looks like Governor Daniels is in the process of making the single biggest leap for socio-economic desegregation in Indiana history.
Re: Given a Choice, Parents Go Elsewhere
Terrific post Rob.
Back when I was active in county politics, they used to tap me once in awhile to do an outreach program to the black community (I was from there and had the contacts).
The "outreach" they usually had in mind was some pandering program about Lincoln and Republican civil rights leaders.
Before I would respectfully decline, I would urge them to put together a campaign in black neighborhoods just about school vouchers.
Once I realized county politics was just about who gets what job, I became uninvolved. They weren't really thinking on their feet about how to register black voters.
I still maintain the point. If we want to eat into that 90% support blacks give to Democrats, we can do it with the school voucher issue.
Black folks are the nation's biggest stakeholders in the issue, because their neighborhoods have the worst schools.
Go to any poor black nieghborhood and you will find the parents are 100% in favor of vouchers. They want it more than anyone.
Why the Republican party doesn't blitz the school voucher issue to blacks is beyond me.
Imagine elections where the black vote is split 50/50.
Edited on Aug 31, 2011 at 5:06amJun '10
Re: Given a Choice, Parents Go Elsewhere
There's a lesson in this. The entire federal Department of Education needs to be de-funded by Congress. Replace with federal block grants to the states for a national voucher program administered by Congress. We can then sit back with pleasure as markets react to meet the demand for private education. So simple even an ivy league graduate could understand.
Apr '11
Re: Given a Choice, Parents Go Elsewhere
Tommy De Seno:
The "outreach" they usually had in mind was some pandering program about Lincoln and Republican civil rights leaders.
Fascinating glimpse to the idiocy of local leadership, Mr De Seno!
I have heard people say gay marriage is the "civil rights issue of the day" - we should immediately counter with "no, its the de facto segregation of inner city students" A suburban/upscale private school is the new water fountain.
Jul '10
Re: Given a Choice, Parents Go Elsewhere
?Why have the federal government involved at all. Education is a local issue, and there really ISN'T a role for feds. When you cut out the Dept of Education (and Energy, and other useless "departments" you save huge coin, and so you need to tax less. That leave more money for people to spend as they see fit - and schools are one area.
Jul '10
Re: Given a Choice, Parents Go Elsewhere
Re: Given a Choice, Parents Go Elsewhere
ljt
Tommy De Seno:
The "outreach" they usually had in mind was some pandering program about Lincoln and Republican civil rights leaders.
Fascinating glimpse to the idiocy of local leadership, Mr De Seno!
I have heard people say gay marriage is the "civil rights issue of the day" - we should immediately counter with "no, its the de facto segregation of inner city students" A suburban/upscale private school is the new water fountain. · Aug 31 at 5:57am
Great use of metaphor! I agree with you entirely.
Jan '11
Re: Given a Choice, Parents Go Elsewhere
Rob Long: Nowhere in that press release are the words parents need to hear from an arrogant, coddled, deeply corrupt educatocrat: "We're sorry. We're going to do better." Instead, it's "You can't do this to us."
Words we will never hear.
I've long been frustrated by the degree to which public schools are not accountable to parents. There may be some problems with school vouchers (what happens when they're used to fund private, jihad-teaching madrassas?) but anything which elicits such agonized squeals from public school bureaucrats has to be a good thing.
And yeah - this should definitely be a Republican issue in 2012. We just might be able to reach some of the black parents who are desperate for their children to escape dysfunctional schools.