Obama's Voucher Decision Troubling

This Washington Post piece lays out Secretary Education Arne Duncan's decision to end the Washington D.C. voucher program.

EDUCATION SECRETARY Arne Duncan has decided not to admit any new students
to the D.C. voucher program, which allows low-income children to attend private schools. The abrupt decision -- made a week after 200 families had been told that their children were being awarded scholarships for the coming fall -- comes despite a new study showing some initial good results for students in the program and before the Senate has had a chance to hold promised hearings. For all the talk about putting children first, it's clear that the special interests that have long opposed vouchers are getting their way.

Officials who manage the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program sent letters this week to parents notifying them that the scholarships of up to $7,500, were being
rescinded because of the decision by the Education Department. Citing the political uncertainty surrounding vouchers, a spokesperson for Mr. Duncan told us that it is not in the best interest of students and their parents to enroll them in a program that may end a year from now. Congress conditioned funding beyond the 2009-10 school year on reauthorization by Congress and approval by the D.C. Council. By presuming the program dead -- and make no mistake, that's the insidious effect of his bar on new enrollment -- Mr. Duncan makes it even more difficult for the program to get the fair hearing it deserves.

The decision is troubling for several reasons. First, as the article cites, there is evidence that the voucher program was improving education. This should surprise no one. Any program that expands school choice and increases competition leads directly to better education. The voucher program allows low income families vouchers to allow their kids to attend private schools. Giving them these vouchers allows parents access to more schools. Furthermore, the extra layer of competition forces public schools to increase their own performance in a way that their monopoly does NOT.

Of course, private schools employ teachers not in the teacher's unions, and so this is one of the many school choice programs opposed by the teacher's union. As I have pointed out, Arne Duncan has a history of taking on the teacher's union when CEO of the Chicago Public Schools. So, this action which is a clear lay down to the unions is more than troubling.

President Obama has an aggressive and sweeping education policy and there is much of it that I like. If it is to be successful, the administration would have to take on the teacher's union directly on several issues including merit pay, and the expansion of charter schools. There is a lot in President Obama's educational agenda that the teacher's union doesn't like. In order for him to succeed, he will soon enough have to take them on directly. If the administration laid down so weakly on the relatively unimportant issue of D.C. school vouchers, it doesn't bode well for the rest of his agenda.

President Obama Makes Broad Educational Strokes

Today, President Obama laid out his educational platform.

After weeks of pleasing Democrats by overturning policies set by the previous administration, President Barack Obama Tuesday for the first time confronted a powerful constituency in his own party: teachers’ unions.

Obama proposed spending additional money on effective teachers in up to 150 additional school districts, fulfilling a campaign promise that once earned him boos from members of the National Education Association.

“Good teachers will be rewarded with more money for improved student achievement, and asked to accept more responsibilities for lifting up their schools,” he said in a wide-ranging education speech before a meeting of the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in Washington.

Obama’s embrace of merit pay won’t go over well among a group that often provides key funding and foot soldiers for Democratic campaigns.

Obama has laid out a lot of broad strokes and many of them I agree with. I am in great favor of merit pay. To me though, merit pay suffers from what Yogi Berra once referred to

in theory there's no difference between theory and practice, but in practice there is

I agree with merit pay in theory. In practice though, I am weary of its application. How do we ensure that merit pay is applied in something that resembles fairness? How will merit pay be applied when comparing a teacher teaching in the inner city compared to one teaching in a posh suburb? So far, President Obama has not given any such specifics.

President Obama also made his intention to back the increase of charter schools. This is another policy that I support. That said, I believe that we shouldn't favor one alternative school over another. I would be much more in favor of expanding the D.C. voucher program to the entire nation than simply expanding charter schools. Vouchers give parents a choice, whatever they want. Expanding charter schools merely expands one alternative.

On the other hand, President Obama has also announced a major expansion of federal spending on education. This is a very dangerous endeavor. So far, it is unclear how all of this will be spent. Will it be spent to build more classrooms and increase salaries for teachers, or will it be spent to increase bureaucracy? Once again, President Obama has not been specific about how it will be spent.

Make no mistake, in this speech President Obama absolutely laid down a marker. He is ready to take on the teacher's union. All those that cynically claim that President Obama never bucks his party much acknowledge that he plans on taking on a major constituency on this issue. True, it's only one speech, but in his Education Secretary, Arne Duncan, he has an individual with scars of taking on the teacher's union.

So far, President Obama has my support on his education policy, however he's going to need to fill in the blanks soon, or he will have a lot of good ideas with no practical way of implementing them.

An Endorsement of Sorts for Arne Duncan

In the Sun Times today, there is this article by Deborah Lynch excoriating Obama's pick for Education Secretary, Arne Duncan. So, how is this an endorsement? Well, Lynch is the former President of Chicago's Teacher's Union. If the teacher's union is against Duncan, then those are exactly the sort of enemies that make him endearing to me. Of course, it isn't merely the source but rather the substance of her opposition.

How can Mr. Duncan be so rewarded for a strategy of giving up on low-performing schools serving primarily low-income children? It is ironic that Duncan is now moving to the Cabinet post when he essentially has admitted that he does not know how to manage low-performing schools. His entire approach has been to close underperforming schools and turn their management over to outside organizations, many with no track records of school reform. Yet during his tenure, the Chicago Public Schools graduation rate remained stubbornly at barely 50 percent.

...

This philosophy of viewing the problem as bad teachers, and their union contract as an obstacle to reform, resulted in the Renaissance 2010 model, unveiled in 2004. Since then, Duncan has closed dozens of schools and created a private district-within-a-district of 80,000 former CPS students, all funded by public education dollars.

These schools have no union staff members and no local school councils and, for the most part, no accountability. Charter and contract schools do have to take state-required tests. CPS claims that many of these schools do better than our neglected neighborhood schools, yet reputable, independent, national studies of charter schools yield inconclusive results.

Duncan's latest twist on closing underperforming schools is called the school "turnaround." About two dozen school closures and turnarounds are about to be announced this month. Parents, staff and students pleading for a reprieve year after year became an embarrassment to Duncan and Mayor Daley. Now they just fire all the staff in designated schools.

Frankly, even though Duncan is from Chicago, I hadn't heard much about him until he was selected. I just assume that Chicago's Public Schools are in perpetual decline. That said, I had heard that Duncan implemented a policy in which failing schools were closed down. Only now that I read how the Teacher's Union feels about the policy do I see just how effective it was. Duncan is also in favor of alternative school choices like charter schools as well as merit pay. All of this is opposed by the Teacher's Union.

Yet, it is one thing to be for some policy. It is quite another to actually implement in a way that matters. That will earn you friends and enemies. Duncan's support for merit pay, charter schools, and closing failing schools had to be effective for that's the only way he could have made such an enemy of the Teacher's Union. Any enemy of the Teacher's Union is immediately a political ally of mine.

Obviously, it is one thing to implement policy in the City of Chicago and quite another in the whole U.S. Yet, earning the ire of the Teacher's Union means he must have been quite effective here, and that bodes well for his effectiveness nationally.

With less than a week before taking over, it appears that Obama's education policy will be the one that I most endeared to. While I believe he will rely far too much on government spending, he is also serious about merit pay, school choice and closing schools that fail. All of those are policies that the Teacher's Union virulently opposes and all not coincidentally that I am strongly in favor of.

Barack Obama's Unconventional Education Policy

If ever Barack Obama's campaign theme that he rises above politics has a resting place it is his educational policy. Whatever one says about his educational policy, one thing you can't do is place it into any ideological box. In unveiling his education policy, Barack Obama offered a little bit for just about everyone. In a direct challenge to the teacher's union, Obama once again backed the concept of merit pay.

Merit pay is a term describing performance-related pay, most frequently in the context of educational reform. It provides bonuses for workers who perform their jobs better, according to measurable criteria. In the United States, policy makers are divided on whether merit pay should be offered to public school teachers, as is commonly the case in the United Kingdom

Merit pay is a concept that I support as well as long as the standards critieria to measure merit is clearly defined and it can be fairly applied to teachers of varying school districts and student profiles. While that is an easy concept to talk about, it is one that is much more difficult to apply in the real world. The key to this portion of the policy is Obama's ability to define fairly the measure by which merit pay will be done.

For liberal fans, Barack Obama offered up promises of increased federal government spending. From funding to alternative schools to teacher's salaries, Barack Obama clearly sees a larger federal role in education. In fact, Barack Obama's main criticism of No Child Left Behind.

No Child Left Behind is a Bush administration law that set out new standards for public schools, although critics say it is inadequately funded and causes some schools to concentrate on test scores instead of learning.

Obama touched only on funding in his criticism of the law. He also said he favors parents having more choice of schools within the public system, but not the use of vouchers for private schools.

Here, I move away from Obama's philosophy. I believe that education should be primarily a local and state issue. The less that bureaucrats in Washington D.C. direct teachers in Boise, Idaho in the way in which they should direct their classrooms the better, in my opinion. Barack Obama has identified a series of issues in education: teacher's pay and quality, school choice, funding, and he believes that it is the role of the federal government to fix all of these issues.

Finally, Barack Obama addressed the issue of choice as well by promising to double federal funding for charter schools.

Charter schools are elementary or secondary schools in the United States that receive public money but have been freed from some of the rules, regulations, and statutes that apply to other public schools in exchange for some type of accountability for producing certain results, which are set forth in each school's charter.[1]

Charter schools do not charge tuition and frequently have lottery based admissions. They therefore provide an alternative to public schools. Some charter schools provide a curriculum that specializes in a certain field-- e.g. arts, mathematics, etc. Others simply seek to provide a better and more efficient general education than nearby public schools.Some charter schools are founded by teachers, parents, or activists who feel restricted by traditional public schools.[2] State-run charters (schools not affiliated with local school districts) are often established by non-profit groups, universities, and some government entities.[3] Additionally, school districts sometimes permit corporations to open chains of for-profit charter schools.

For full disclosure, I am a huge fan of charter schools primarily because I have volunteered at one for several years and have been impressed by the manner in which it operates. That said, I am in favor of school choice rather than the government favoring one concept of schooling over another. While I believe that helping the growth of charter schools will have a positive impact on education, I am not so comfortable with the federal government isolating one type of school and favoring it. Beyond that, an added $200 million dollars works out to $4 million dollars per state, if it is distributed equally. That sort of funding would add maybe one extra charter school per state. To me, this added funding is nothing more than a trojan horse and much more a campaign slogan than a policy that will actually do anything substantive to increase school choice.

While I find plenty to criticize in Obama's educational policy, it is on this policy that I see in Obama a politician that is really trying to live up to the idea that he will do what works. Unlike much of his other policy positions, on education he really is examining each issue in a manner to formulate the right policy. While he continues to stick to his liberal orthodoxy that the federal government is always the best source of change, he also recognizes the real life problems of education (like incompetent teachers on tenure). I think that on the issue of education Barack Obama has a real chance to contribute in a positive manner, whether as President or otherwise.

Teacher's Unions Vs. Charter Schools

Introduction: Because I volunteer at a charter school myself, I have a natural bias that must be disclosed.

There is one thing that everyone agrees on. Chicago Public Schools are failing the kids. What people can't agree on is how to solve the problem.

The Illinois Hunger Coalition (IHC) finds that the Chicago Public School’s participation in the School Breakfast Program is deficient. On Tuesday, August 7, IHC released the School Breakfast in America’s Big Cities survey conducted by the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC) that finds Chicago is in last place out of 23 of the nation’s largest cities. In the Chicago Public School system only 28.7% of low-income students that participated in the National School Lunch Program actually participated in school breakfast in the 2005-2006 school year.

Diane Doherty, Executive Director of the Illinois Hunger Coalition, stated that “Everyone agrees, school breakfast increases school attendance, student attentiveness and achievement, and lowers the risk for childhood obesity. By describing the successes of other large school districts, this report prescribes a positive plan that can be implemented here in Chicago which includes; free breakfast for all students, inclusion of breakfast into the regular school day served in the classroom and “grab and go” programs, along with widespread promotion of the program, collaboration with anti-hunger advocates, and strong support and leadership within the schools. We talk about hosting the Olympics—lets talk about producing kids who can be future Olympians!”

Joe Moore alderman of the 49th ward seconded Doherty’s remarks by commenting, “When I learned that children who eat school breakfast consume more fruits, drink more milk and eat less saturated fat than those who don’t eat breakfast or eat at home, I agreed to introduce a resolution in the City County for a universal school breakfast program in CPS. The time has come for Chicago to move from last to first place in providing breakfast to our kids.” Rick Munoz alderman of the 22nd Ward noted, “The Chicago City Council voted unanimously to direct the Chicago Board of Education to provide breakfast to all CPS students; this study illustrates precisely why we need breakfast for all children in the Chicago Public Schools.”

Everyone has an opinion about what to do.

Harvard is one of several public schools here to get a top-to-bottom housecleaning in recent years – including replacing the principal and most teachers – in a bid to lift student achievement out of the nation's academic basement. The drastic approach is known as "turnaround," and Chicago is embracing it more than any US city, though it's unproven and is controversial among teachers, many parents, and students.

"It's risky in that it's new and has an untested track record," says Andrew Calkins, senior vice president at Mass Insight, a nonprofit group focused on school reform, and coauthor of a report on turnaround schools. "It's logical in that the other choice is to keep on doing what's been tried before, and we know what the results of that will be. What you try to do if you're Chicago is to minimize the risk and maximize the possibility of a good outcome" by thinking through everything that's needed to improve the climate for learning at a school.

As Principal Cowling sees it, the risk paid off. Until Harvard Elementary went through turnaround, the school was like "Beirut," he says – 50 kids running through the halls at any time, holes in the floors and peeling paint on the walls, fights on or near campus, no order in the classrooms.

"Now, you can tell it's a school," Cowling says.

In fact, the entire state is ranked 49th out 50 according to A+ rankings. So, the state's educational system is in crisis and every idea is up for debate no matter how radical.

State Sen. James Meeks (D-Chicago) plans to sponsor such legislation in the Illinois General Assembly next week in a special session called by Gov. Rod Blagojevich to address education funding.

I don't expect either measure to pass.

Meeks believes abolishing the property tax is an idea that could gain significant support.In any event, the ideas are likely to spark a new round of newspaper editorials and public debate about school funding in Illinois, and that's really the senator's initial goal as he attempts to force his colleagues in the Legislature to actually address the unfair and inadequate school funding system in this state.

One of the few bright spots in the state's educational system, and frankly in the country entirely, is the proliferation of charter schools in Illinois. Charter schools are smaller, with less bureaucracy, and allow for more flexibility and innovation. For instance, in my voluntary role, I have students "shadow" me while I work and thus each year a group of high school students get first hand experience in the mortgage business. Yet, an Illinois law recently limited the number of charter schools in Illinois to 100.

Now, one of the biggest opponents of charter schools is the teacher's union.

So teacher unions support charter school laws, right? Not quite!

Both major teacher unions, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers view the charter school movement as a direct challenge, perhaps the greatest from any source. Thus they have opposed laws authorizing the establishment of charter schools, weakening charter school laws as much as possible and limiting the number of such schools that are authorized.

Even after all of this has failed, they continue to try to sweep back the sea. In Ohio where charter schools are called community schools, the Ohio Federation of Teachers wants the authorizing legislation to be found unconstitutional. Why is this so?

Primarily because of one thing that wasn't mentioned in the preceding positives about the charter school movement. That one thing is that charter school teachers, in overwhelming numbers, do not vote to affiliate with the teacher unions, nor do they tend to join the unions as individuals.

More than anything else the charter school movement is illustrating that teacher union rhetoric about teacher autonomy, professionalism, and conducive working conditions are just thatrhetoric.

Because charter schools are by nature smaller, often times teachers at such schools are usually paid better than their counter parts at traditional public high schools. Furthermore, charter schools, as this piece points out, have no trouble attracting and keeping the best teaching talent.

Even where others start a school, it is common for far more teachers, including large numbers of public school teachers, to apply for jobs than there are teaching positions available. This has been a common, almost universal, experience, from Marblehead, Massachusetts where a new charter school had 500 teachers apply for seven positions, to Arizona, where 200 sought one of ten openings.

Once hired, teachers also frequently find a better teaching environment, such as a school in Boston where teachers have their own room, a computer, e-mail, telephone, and no more than two preparations, four classes or 80 students daily. This enhanced autonomy and improved educational climate for teachers are all things that teacher unions say they advocate.

The opposition to charter schools from the teacher's union is entirely about power and nothing to do with policy. Charter schools perform better. Furthermore, there is always a waiting list for students attempting to enter a charter school. (about 13000 in Illinois)

What this shows, more than ever, is that the bureaucracy and power structure within our educational system is not merely part of the problem, it is the problem. Charter schools succeed because they are small enough to limit the bureaucracy. Rather than some bureaucrat telling a teacher how teach math, science, etc. charter schools have a novel idea. They allow the teachers themselves the freedom to teach their own subjects. By being outside the sytem, and being successful doing it, they threaten the system. The system shows where their loyalties lie. It isn't in improving the system. No, it is in maintaining their own power.

Choice: Solutions for Education and Insurance

Imagine if our food choices only included fish, or meat, or only vegetarian foods. Of course, such a scenario is patently ridiculous. Our society encourages as much variety and choice within food as possible. We have so many varieties listing them here would take many blog posts. In fact, our society encourages variety and choice in almost every area of society. There are two glaring exceptions and in my opinion the lack of choice contributes to part of the problem in both.

In education, our government has in fact done everything it can to limit parent's choice as much as possible. Every innovation in education has been met with resistence and many times the government has even tried to put in roadblocks to choice. The failure of the public school system in most urban areas is no secret. Here in Chicago, we have over 600 public schools, and a handful, Whitney Young, Lake View, Lincoln Park, and a few others, can be considered anything but a total disaster. One of the beacons of hope in the Chicago public school system has been the emergence of charter schools. Charter schools operate outside the system in many ways. Their curriculum is freed from many of the chains that handcuff many traditional public schools. Furthermore, their teachers are not required to be part of the teacher's unions.

These very charter schools have given parents some much needed choice within the confines of the Chicago Public School system. So, what has the State government done to help charter schools flourish?

Legislators had plenty to keep them occupied this spring besides passing legislation. Distractions included primary races in new legislative districts, federal prosecutors who continued to tighten their circle around Gov. George Ryan's office and a budget crisis that grew worse as the session went on.

That didn't leave them much time or energy to deal with controversial issues, and the result was a fairly uneventful legislative session. The Chicago Board of Education got a bill through that limited student choice under the new federal No Child Left Behind law, but proposals to add more charter schools in Chicago and to tweak the Chicago School Reform Act to give teachers a greater leadership role in schools fizzled quietly.

The Chicago Teachers Union made surprising headway with its proposal to undo a section of the 1995 Chicago reform law that blocks the union from negotiating over class size, layoffs and other working conditions. It got Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley to move from strong opposition to negotiation. Sources say a compromise version might come up for a vote in this fall's veto session.

Many times parents take matters into their own hands, and they home school their kids. So, what has government done to help home schooling flourish?

Parents who lack teaching credentials cannot educate their children at home, according to a state appellate court ruling that is sending waves of fear through California’s home schooling families.Advocates for the families vowed to appeal the decision to the state Supreme Court. Enforcement until then appears unlikely, but if the ruling stands, home-schooling supporters say California will have the most regressive law in the nation.

“This decision is a direct hit against every home schooler in California,” said Brad Dacus, president of the Pacific Justice Institute, which represents the Sunland Christian School, which specializes in religious home schooling. “If the state Supreme Court does not reverse this . . . there will be nothing to prevent home-school witch hunts from being implemented in every corner of the state of California.”

The institute estimates there are as many as 166,000 California students who are home schooled. State Department of Education officials say there is no way to know the true number.Unlike at least 30 other states, home schooling is not specifically addressed in California law. Under the state education code, students must be enrolled in a public or private school, or can be taught at home by a credentialed tutor.

Finally, the third major tool of choice is vouchers. Vouchers allow parents to use credits to opt out of the public school system entirely and send their children to private schools. Yet, for the most part, vouchers have been resisted by politicians over the country.

Choice encourages competition. Competition encourages accountability, and it also eliminates those schools and programs that fail. When the government limits choice by placing undo restrictions on agents of change all it really does is encourage the status quo that has created a handful of public schools in Chicago being anything above a disaster out of over 600.

So, why is the government doing its damndest to discourage competition? The answer unfortunately lies only in nefarious reasons. Most agents of choice also challenge one of the most powerful lobbying groups in education, the teacher's union. Because much of government is more beholded to the teacher's union than to the kids, most of the agents of change that would expand choice within education oppose it. They oppose not because it is bad policy, but because their allegiance lie with the unions rather than good policy.

On health insurance the story is much the same. Much of the exploding costs of health insurance could be resolved if folks were given more choice. Of course, the way that health insurance is structured limits choice. Most people don't know this but health insurance providers enjoy limited immunity from the Sherman Anti Trust. Furthermore, it is illegal for folks of one state to buy health insurance from a provider located in another state. These two relatively unknown statutes combine to create regional monopolies within health insurace. As such Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Texas controls one third of the market in Texas. Since health care providers enjoy limitied immunity and it isn't allowed for folks in Texas to look out of the state for their insurance, BCBS enjoys a near monopoly in that state. In fact, most states face a similar monopolisitic force.

Monopolies drive up prices. They are a corrupting influence and they contribute to a lack of innovation. Yet, that's exactly what we have in health insurance, and once again, we have it because our politicians are beholden more to a special interest (health insurance providers) than they are to good policy. We could expand choice ten fold by simply reversing these two things. If health insurance providers were no longer given limited immunity from Sherman and folks could buy insurance from outside their home state, we would see competition expand ten fold. Competition would drive down costs. It was increase choice, and it would punish corrupt and failing health insurance providers. Because, in part at least, we have no choice in health insurance, here is an example of how Blue Cross/Blue Shield has corrupted the market in Texas..

Choice is such a simple concept. It makes life better in nearly every field and endeavor, and yet our government has gotten behind the concept of status quo in two very important fields, insurance and education, and unfortunately, they have done it because they have been corrupted by special interests looking to line their own pockets rather than make good policy.

My Morning at Perspectives Charter School

I spent this morning at Perspectives Charter School. I was one of ten speakers that spoke in groups of five to two classes about my current career and how I got to where I was at. In my group was a personal injury lawyer, a chef, a professor of nursing, and a consultant with Ernst and Young. We spoke in front of a class that Perspectives calls internships.

In this internships class, the kids learn such things as interviewing, job applications, resumes, body language, and even proper behavior in meetings. Among other assignments, the students spend nine separate days with a professional "shadowing" them. This is something that I have volunteered for the last three years.

In my business, mortgages, my students did such tasks as: pricing loans, creating spreadsheets, researching FHA loans on the internet, and grading an interviewee. They also had lunch with several of my friends, my most successful friends: a scientist, a sales executive, another mortgage broker, and a party planner to name a few.

Furthermore, after spending time with the kids (I had three each of the last two years), I learned that they (surprise, surprise) hated school. What was interesting was some of the reasons. First, they hated wearing a uniform. Second, because Perspectives is relatively small, less than 50 students per grade, they couldn't "hang out with their friends". In other words, they hated it for every thing that makes it great.Besides this internship class, the students also go on college tour. This is a two week tour that they take with their classmates by bus. They see schools in several different states and of varying size and quality.

Since I don't work at Perspectives, my knowledge is only of that which I have had contact with. Perspectives does all sorts of innovative things. I bring this up not merely as a plug for Perspectives but rather as a plug for innovative education and school choice. I know that those that wind up going to a traditional public school in Chicago never have the opportunities the students had at Perspectives.Even at Glenbrook North, my alma mater, I never did many of the things that the students at Perspectives are exposed to. The person in charge of the internship program mentioned to me that one of the students had never been in an elevator, let alone in downtown Chicago, before they came for their first day of their particular internship which just happened to be located in the Sears Tower.

I know that in Utah school vouchers were recently voted down. I know that any program that allows school choice gives parents a better chance to send their kids to charter schools and other innovative schools. I am not educator and my knowledge of policy related to education is limited to my experience at Perspectives, however, I have enough experience at Perspectives to know that they are revolutionizing education. While I may have personal and emotional attachment to Perspectives, I do know that there are schools all over the country doing similar things to Perspectives. I know that we as a society should do everything we can to give parents the opportunity to send their kids to such schools.