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Ask Me Anything About School Choice
It’s National School Choice Week, which means there’s lots of buzz about expanding educational options — 2017 presents some great opportunities for doing so — but also a lot of “alternative facts” about choice policies being peddled by groups interested in protecting their bread and butter the district schooling status quo.
That’s why, in the tradition of previous reddit-style #AskMeAnything forums on Ricochet, I will be available until about 5:00pm EST today to (hopefully) answer any question you have related to school choice policies, such as charter schools, vouchers, tax-credit scholarships, and education savings accounts. (I’ll come back Sunday if there are some remaining questions.)
As a bit of background, I’m a policy analyst with the Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom, and I will soon be joining EdChoice as their National Policy Director. I have a master’s degree in public policy with a focus on education policy, and I’ve been working to advance educational choice for more than a decade. If I can’t answer your question, there’s a good chance I can at least point you to something written by someone smarter and more eloquent.
So go ahead: Ask away!
Published in Education
Yes. Being in a free society means respecting the freedom of others to think differently, believe differently, and teach their kids differently. And I think the “jihad school” thing is a red herring.
(sigh) It’s a good question.
I didn’t say “jihad school”. You made up that red herring.
I agree that the state can regulate schools in ways that are harmful. However:
You might want to see these reports:
You wrote “a ‘school’ at the local mosque who’s leader is known to be hard-liner.” I was paraphrasing with a term that too-often comes up during school choice discussions. But I did not intend to mischaracterize your argument.
Thanks, I’ll take a look at these over the weekend.
I’m a huge fan of school choice, and I’ve long argued that, if done right, it is the single biggest issue that can permanently defeat the Democrats. It crosses all demographic and economic boundaries, and the GOP should be fighting hard for school choice.
But, I’ve personally seen the downsides of homeschooling parents with zero accountability. The results aren’t pretty. There has to be some balance built into whatever the solution turns out to be.
I am for complete vouchers and no public school system at all. I would assume that some system of private certification. If students have certified special needs, their vouchers would be worth more. This eliminates Charter Schools and Public Schools. To me it is the ultimate in Parent Choice.
What are your thoughts on how we might move to it?
Thank you for this outstanding information. I only have one overarching question: How would a charter school system meet the needs of mentally and physically challenged students? Are there successful examples? (Or will this population always need to be served by a form of public education?)
I’m not sure what the “best” system would be. I could see a system in which geographically based district schools no longer exist and parents either choose a charter (which is open to anyone who applies) or use their ESA to enroll their child at a private school (which can be selective-admission) or customize their child’s education with homeschooling, tutoring, online courses, etc.
The key is to expand the options available for parents by supporting the expansion of choice policies, particularly ESAs.
There are all sorts of charter and private schools just for students with special needs. There are also some mainstream charter and private schools that have services for such students.
In Arizona, students with special needs can get education savings accounts that they can use to purchase a wide variety of educational products and services, including educational therapy. The state deposits into the accounts 90% of what it would have spent on that child at a public school, so it’s a win for both the student and the taxpayers. See this report re: how it works and how parents are satisfied:
Schooling Satisfaction: Arizona Parents’ Opinions on Using Education Savings Accounts
Thank you for the excellent link concerning special needs students; I will read it this evening. I have one other question that I hope isn’t too far off the mark. What is your opinion about teacher preparation and credentialing? I have read different arguments that the current state credentialing system should be scrapped entirely (along with university departments of education) and replaced with everything from master’s degrees in content areas to exit exams to basic apprenticeships. Should there be any universal standard for teachers – or is that choice left entirely to the individual school and the parents?
I don’t have a very high opinion of it. See the chart on page 8 of this report from Brookings. It shows that there is no difference in teacher impacts on student math performance between traditionally certified, alternatively certified, and uncertified teachers. On average, there were just as many great, good, mediocre, and poor teachers in each category.
I am not confident in the ability of schools — let alone bureaucrats — to predict whether someone will make a good teacher in advance, so I wouldn’t want any universal standard imposed. But the lack of a government-imposed standard does not imply the lack of any standards. As I’ve written before, the absence of a single standard creates space for competing standards.
There are obviously many good teachers. Are there any good teachers’ unions?
I’ll just say that absence of evidence does not equal evidence of absence.
I know your question was rhetorical but it is just another opportunity to remind ourselves that the Progressive Left is not animated by principles other than “whatever it takes to prevail”.
“Pro Choice” is a slogan, a marketing gimmick and a dodge. It is demonstrably not a principle being applied by those who shout it. They don’t operate on principles.
Has anyone studied how well vouchers work in more rural areas with limited school choice options? Heard Jeb Bush and colleagues discuss school choice options at a Tallahassee forum last year and it did not seem to me that those choices would be viable in rural south central Florida.
My apologies for kicking off with snark, but I think discussion on education should know the difference between “whose” and “who’s.”
As I’ve said before somewhere on Ricochet, more choice in education provision might make public schools “worse” (by average student performance) – but the end of education is not to protect the school, it is to improve the student!
Also, a school with a narrower academic spectrum might well be easier to lead and to teach in. It is a polite fiction that low-achieving students benefit from the ‘example’ of high-achieving students. This is not to say that it never happens, but anyone who’s worked in schools probably recognises the opposite.
Following from that point, ‘socialisation’ is also a polite fiction. Schools constitute a very artificial environment.
A personal anecdote: I worked for a year in Discovery Centre, w44th St in NYC. We hated the arrival of school parties. Simply put, I would look at them in amazement and think “who told you it was ok to behave like that?” (which may be another discussion about NYC).
Two schools were impeccably behaved: Monsignor Farrell Catholic school from Staten Island, and a overwhelmingly-black Academy from Harlem.
To expand a little on Jason’s response, I’m not aware of a single instance of such a thing happening. If school choice expands sufficiently, I expect we will, sooner or later, see some examples of Muslim schools getting funding. But accreditation requirements, etc., will make it harder. The religious schools are almost the only ballgame in town in private education, to be honest. Without them the voucher discussion is mostly just theoretical.
The question is not whether government money is going to promote someone’s agenda. It’s a question of whose agenda, because the public schools are not neutral. Is it all going to a system dominated by political correctness and often aggressive Leftism, or do we give parents the right to redirect it?
If the money is going to promote someone’s agenda I’d prefer that be the parents’, even if I might find a few choices deeply troubling.
Two questions, if I’m not too late:
I’m going to quibble with you here too: it simply isn’t the state’s role to ensure that parents do their job. They should protect the children from actual abuse. They can’t force educational success.
Even in public education, accountability only goes so far: it’s completely failing to ensure that children actually learn to read and write. The state is no better equipped to evaluate whether a parent is homeschooling well or poorly. This is a deeply unpopular thing to say — and so no politician will say it — but education is like healthcare: there is no perfect arrangement that truly meets the needs of all. That is a bitter truth, because the children have no say.
The other thing I’d add is that the family environment is the primary key to educational success even for a child in school. There are exceptions: there are children who do better in school than when homeschooled (I can think of examples); there are children who bloom with certain teachers. But in most cases, if homeschooling was a failure — then, in all honesty, that home probably left those children set up for failure in any educational setting.
Tom, on Friday, I was critical of the free-market crowd (my tribe), but I should also have expressed criticism of the social-justice crowd. Their approach — focusing on the poor — is not good policy or politics. As Milton Friedman observed, “Programs for the poor tend to be poor programs.”
This past November, the technocratic progressive crowd pushed for school choice initiatives in Massachusetts, Georgia, and Tennessee using the rhetoric of social justice, which basically came down to hectoring people about “doing the right thing.” Meanwhile the unions were claiming that supporting charters was against the interests of white suburbanites. Guess which approach worked. (Hint: the social-justice ed reformers suffered crushing defeats despite spending tens of millions of dollars.)
Universal choice policies are both politically more popular — everyone is in the same boat — and better policy, because the true benefits of choice are realized only at scale. If the social justice crowd really cares about helping the poor rather than mere virtue signaling, they should embrace the universal approach.
Certainly there are fewer options in rural areas, but 1) at minimum, they’re no worse off; 2) choice policies would, over time, expand options even in rural areas; and 3) there are actually more options already there than you might imagine.
There are already a growing number of rural charter schools. Also, Mike McShane of the Show-Me Institute in Missouri had an informative piece about this a while back focusing on “course choice” in rural areas.
It certainly hasn’t lived up to expectations, and politically it is on the ropes. Frankly, I think that’s a good thing. For too long, we have confused top-down government regulations for “accountability,” when real accountability is making schools directly accountable to parents. That’s accomplished by empowering parents to choose the schools that work best for their kids.
My view is that school choice is great, but we should keep the feds out of it. I was a bit nervous that DeVos would try to push choice at the federal level — we should have learned our lessons for the failures of NCLB/RTTT/etc. — but her statements at her confirmation hearing re: leaving it to the states were encouraging. That said, she should push for choice policies in D.C., on military installations and Native American reservations, and other areas where the feds have constitutional jurisdiction.
Ok your whole Socialization argument is complete ignorance. Socialization should be about teaching kids to be polite and civilized human beings that are able to get along with their neighbor. There is no worse group who have barbaric uncivilized socialization skills taught by than from a bunch of kids or teenagers. I can’t think of a more socialized dumb and vicious group to be taught by. Young kids are impressionable and actually having older mature adults that kids take almost all their cues from is how you raise upstanding kids. Yes they might have issues at time relating to their peers but that is because their is a huge maturity gap. Until they learn how to interact with various levels of maturity successfully (which many adults complete lack the skill and have absolutely no desire to even try to related to different levels of maturity when they socialize).
I assume you realize you one example is anecdotal and that their will be failures when it comes to homeschooling. However what about all the Public school socialization, and education failures? At lest with homeschooling it the parents who are failing in raising their kids not someone else. Therefore because a huge majority of parents care about their kids more than any-other person in the world they will be more successful because love compels them.
As regards to your bubble argument, it is complete B.S. You don’t think kids going to getto schools are living in a bubble? You don’t think kids that good to Urban Private schools live in a bubble? If you don’t want your adults kids living in a bubble have them get a job working in a getto area fast food restaurant or Wal’Mart. That will really give them a great look under pressure and real life conditions of people outside their social status. Why anyone thinks it anyone job other than parents and family member to teach kids socialization skills is beyond me. There is no evidence that I know of that even shows what technicians are best at teaching socialization or what objective criteria is even considered properly socialized. The whole Socialization argument is a complete Straw man.
This is a valid concern, but it must be kept in perspective. After all, we have millions of examples of 21-year-olds who have come out of government schools that aren’t properly educated.
This point is frequently made in these discussions, but I’ve never seen anyone provide any compelling evidence to back up the assertion that home schooled kids suffer from poor socialization skills at a higher rate than government schooled kids.
It takes parents with discipline and rigor to ensure that kids coming out of government schools receive a well-rounded education also. The track record of our public schools is less than stellar. Education is a tough nut to crack.