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Sara Stevenson, Librarian, Corrects Wall Street Journal Choice Zealots

By dianeravitch
April 3, 2017 //
14

If there is one issue where the WSJ is fanatical, it is school choice. It published an editorial this morning (behind a pay wall) declaring that all the recent negative studies of the effects of vouchers must be wrong, because the Milton Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice says so, and whatever the Friedman Foundation says on the subject of vouchers must be right. Right?

Wrong! The Friedman Foundation lobbies and advocates for vouchers. They are not an unbiased source.

Sara Stevenson, librarian at O. Henry Middle School in Austin, Texas, rides herd on the WSJ editorials and once again corrects them. She is on the honor roll of this blog for her determination and fearlessness as an advocate for a better education for all.

She writes:

“It’s no surprise that the Wall Street Journal accuses progressives of cherry-picking negative data about the effectiveness of private school vouchers. On the other hand, I can turn around and accuse the editorial board of doing the same thing with its positive data. Your bias is so transparent when you quote aggregated data by the Friedman Foundation, failing to report its full name: Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, as in Milton Friedman, the father of school choice.

“Here is some additional data to the “cherry-picked” studies you attempt to refute in your editorial. You get objectivity points for admitting that the voucher experiment in Louisiana, the largest to date, is a failure.

“Please consider these. Full disclosure: I do not work for a think tank nor am I a lobbyist. I am a public middle school librarian who taught for ten years in a Catholic high school.

“According to a Brookings Institute Report by Mark Dynarski in May 2016, both Louisiana and Indiana students who received private school vouchers scored lower on reading and math tests compared to similar students who remained in public schools. As Mr. Dynarski wrote:

“In education as in medicine, ‘first, do no harm’ is a powerful guiding principle. A case to use taxpayer funds to send children of low-income parents to private schools is based on an expectation that the outcome will be positive. These recent findings point in the other direction.”

“Let’s look at some longer-term studies. In 1989, Milwaukee began its Milwaukee Parental Choice Program. That’s over 25 years ago. According to a Public Policy Report, in the years 2012 – 2014, students in Milwaukee public schools were more proficient than their private school choice counterparts in statewide reading and math tests at every grade level (3 – 10).

“Even the DC Opportunity Scholarship program shows no benefits in math, after three years, between students who applied and were selected for a voucher and those who applied and instead continued at public schools.

“Instead of pushing “market choices,” which means winners and losers, let’s work towards a quality education for every child.

Sara Stevenson
Austin, Texas”

Categories Lies, Vouchers

Arizona: Legislators Want to Expand Vouchers, Despite Audit Showing Misspent Funds

By dianeravitch
April 3, 2017 //
5

Arizona Republicans are renewing a drive to expand that state voucher program, despite a recent state audit reporting misspent funds and despite a survey showing that most voucher students are leaving high-performing schools in wealthy districts. In last year’s legislative races, Betsy DeVos’s lobbying group spent heavily to elect pro-voucher candidates, more than any other independent political organization.

“Republican lawmakers are renewing their efforts to expand a program that allows parents to use public money to pay the educational expenses of children who attend private schools or are homeschooled.

“The push to expand Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Account program comes in the wake of a state audit that found officials had identified that more than $102,000 in ESA funds were misspent during a six-month period, from August 2015 to January 2016, in addition to other improper purchases, as well as spotty oversight.

“The examples cited by auditors include parents who kept the state’s money after enrolling their children in public school, parents who bought items that are not allowed under the program, such as snow globes and sock monkeys, and parents who didn’t submit required expense reports to the Arizona Department of Education…

“Empowerment Scholarship Accounts allow parents to take money that would otherwise go directly to their local public school, and put it toward private-school tuition, homeschooling, tutoring, therapy, and other education-related expenses. Critics of the program say it siphons money away from public district schools, and over time, could substantially erode school funding.

“Senate Bill 1281, sponsored by Smith, requires the Department of Education to contract with an outside firm to help administer the ESA program, and makes various changes to the program. Read the bill summary here.
Senate Bill 1431, sponsored by Lesko, would make all Arizona students eligible for the ESA program by the 2020-2021 school year. Read the bill as introduced here.

“The Legislature created the program in 2011, limiting it to disabled children. Since then, lawmakers have expanded the program to children in failing schools, children living on tribal lands, siblings of children who have participated in the ESA program, and others. There are currently about 3,200 children in the program in 2017, said Ross Begnoche, the Department of Education’s chief financial officer. The program is currently capped at about 5,000 students. The budget is about $40 million this year.

“Under legislation introduced by Republican Sen. Debbie Lesko, of Peoria, all students would qualify for the ESA program by the 2020-2021 school year.

“Senate Bill 1431 proposes phasing in eligibility, starting in the 2017-2018 school year with students in kindergarten, first grade, sixth grade and ninth grade. Within four years, all students would qualify. A separate bill, Senate Bill 1281, by Republican Sen. Steve Smith, would require the Department of Education to contract with a private firm to manage ESA accounts and require random, quarterly and annual audits of the program….

“Last year, she also sponsored legislation to allow all 1.1 million public schoolchildren to qualify for the ESA program by 2020. That expansion effort came as Gov. Doug Ducey was campaigning for a ballot initiative to put more money into public schools — a message seemingly at odds with legislation that would divert taxpayer money away from public schools. The bill died after an Arizona Republic investigation showed most children using the program were leaving high-performing public schools in wealthy districts.

“Some supportive lawmakers say an ESA expansion could have more momentum this year, given President Donald Trump’s nomination of school-choice advocate and billionaire Betsy DeVos for U.S. secretary of Education. A non-profit she chaired until recently, American Federation for Children, spent nearly $218,000 during the primary for legislative races last year, the most of any independent expenditure committee seeking to influence the outcome of such races.

“The group advocates for school-choice measures across the country and at the Arizona Capitol, where those efforts have included pressing for ESA expansion. On Monday, the group touted Lesko’s legislation, saying it would mean “no Arizona child will be trapped in a school that isn’t working for them.”

Arizona has the best legislature that DeVos money could buy.

Categories Arizona, Betsy DeVos, Fraud, Vouchers

Trump-DeVos Suck Up Watch: PBS Is Showing a Series Attacking Public Schools

By dianeravitch
April 2, 2017 //
42

Laura Chapman wrote the following expose of a new series that will appear on PBS. It must be public television’s effort to curry favor with the Trump administration, as it reflects the extremist agenda of Betsy DeVos, who is intent on creating a free market in publicly-funded schooling. Since Trump’s budget has proposed to eliminate funding for public television, this series may be a demonstration that even PBS will give a showcase to libertarians who want to destroy public institutions.

More than ten years ago, PBS ran a four-part series called SCHOOL, produced by Sarah Patton, Sarah Mondale, and Vera Aronow. It was a history of public education that documented the role of public education in welcoming generations of immigrants and leading the way to a better society. For the past four years the same team has been creating a one-hour documentary exposing the corporate assault on public education. They have struggled to find funding, but they are near completion. The very least that PBS could do to compensate for featuring a one-sided rightwing diatribe against public education would be to show “Backpack Full of Cash,” which portrays the bitter forces of reaction that seek to destroy one of our most treasured democratic institutions, public schools funded by all and open to all.

It is ironic and sad that public television would lend credibility to an attack on public education. Encouraging the forces intent on destroying everything “public” will not save public television.

Chapman writes:

“I just posted about the SCHOOL, INC. television programs on PBS. I did not do enough research. Here is what you really should know about the programs.

“These programs are pure propaganda for so-called free market education. They have been produced courtesy of Free to Choose, a promoter of all things that the late Milton and Rosa Friedman would love.

“The PBS website says that funding for these programs has been provided by the Texas-based Rose-Marie and Jack R. Anderson Foundation. See http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Rose-Marie_and_Jack_R._Anderson_Foundation
The Anderson Foundation s one of several ultra conservative funders, but the series is also sell-funded by being part of the Free to Choose Network. That Network is a non-profit set up by the one of the Executive Producers Bob Chitester

“Bob Chitester is chairman, president and CEO of Free To Choose Network, a 501-c-3 public foundation housing Free To Choose Media, an award-winning, global entertainment company which produces and distributes thought-provoking public television programs and series. In 1977, Chitester and economist Milton Friedman and his wife, Rose, undertook a film project which became Free To Choose, an award-winning PBS TV series and an international best-selling book based on the series. You can learn more about the connection of this non-profit to the Friedman doctrine of market-based education here and elsewhere on the internet. http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Free_to_Choose_Network

“Among the others responsible for the series is Andrew Coulson. Coulson is the Creator, Writer, and Director. His bio, posted on PBS, says Coulson studied mathematics and computer science at McGill University and worked as a Microsoft software engineer. In 1994, he became ” troubled by the fact that teaching and learning were being left behind by the relentless progress in other fields. His book, Market Education: The Unknown History, received endorsements from Washington Post columnist William Raspberry, Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman, Harvard political scientist Paul Peterson, and University of Chicago education psychologist Herbert Walberg. His 2009 paper for the peer-reviewed Journal of School Choice was the most comprehensive review of the worldwide scientific literature comparing alternative education systems. In 2011 he conducted a statistical study titled “The Other Lottery: Are Philanthropists Backing the Best Charter Schools?” Coulson has ….testified before the United States House and Senate on the state of American education and co-authored amicus briefs for the United States Supreme Court. He was senior fellow in education policy at the Washington, D.C.-based Cato Institute, and contributed chapters to books by the Hoover Institution and Canada’s Fraser Institute. Prior to his death in February 2016, Coulson made arrangements to ensure School, Inc. would be completed for broadcast television.”

“There are many reasons why I support my local PBS broadcasters. This programing is not one of them.

“Overall, I think that PBS has done a miserable job of seeking spokespersons for public education, especially parents, students, administrators and politicians. Diane Ravitch has appeared on Tavis Smiley, Charlie Rose, Bill Moyers and a few other programs, but I have seen no real coverage of the issues facing public education right now.

“I wonder if PBS scheduled this series to coincide with the Betsy DeVos/Trump agenda that will pour money into vouchers and set in motion market-based education as if the new norm for American education. I wonder if Milton and Rosa Friedman smiling. Did PBS intend to insult many of their supporters, including me, by scheduling this series now?

“Please be aware that this PBS series is a propaganda machine for market-based education. The programs are not presented in a context that makes that obvious.

“I intend to let my local PBS stations know that this series looks like a well-planned and perfectly timed promo for the DeVos/Trump agenda.

“I will also ask for them to take affirmative steps to support public education and the public schools in their viewing areas.

“PBS seems to be satisfied with educational programming for use by teachers and cartoony programs for children. Sesame Street is hosted after it has made money elsewhere. Unless I am mistaken, Trump’s proposed budget for PBS will bring a 20% cut, not total elimination.

“PBS needs all the support it can get. This is not a way to support the public schools who serve the majority of our students and with uncommon ingenuity and devotion in the midst of budget cuts and unwarranted, unsupported attacks from billionaires, including the funders of these programs.”

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, School Choice, Trump, Vouchers

North Carolina’s Largest Voucher School Embroiled in Financial Scandal, Files Incomplete Returns

By dianeravitch
March 31, 2017 //
7

Veteran journalist Lindsay Wagner writes that Fayetteville’s Trinity Christian School–the state’s largest recipient of taxpayer-funded vouchers–is involved in a major financial scandal. North Carolina places no accountability for how taxpayer money is used or whether students make academic progress. The voucher schools get taxpayer money with neither accountability nor transparency.

North Carolina’s largest recipient of private school vouchers has filed a financial review that lacked basic information consistent with “generally accepted accounting principles,” according to the agency overseeing the taxpayer-funded program.

Because Fayetteville’s Trinity Christian School—also currently embroiled in a separate embezzlement scandal—received more than $300,000 in voucher funds during the 2015-16 academic year, it is required to submit a financial review of their organization.

According to records provided by the State Education Assistance Authority (SEAA), the agency tasked with overseeing the voucher program, the financial review submitted last December lacked crucial elements typically found in such statement including a statement of cash flows and a balance sheet. What was included instead was a brief “statement of activities” that only listed top line revenues and expenses as well as a supplemental schedule of functional expenses.

***
It is remarkable to omit a more detailed balance sheet from a set of basic financial statements, said Mig Murphy Sistrom, a Durham-based accountant whose firm specializes in preparing financial reports for nonprofit organizations.

Because the accounting firm that prepared the financial review for Trinity Christian—Edwards Pechmann & Packer, Inc.—did not include a balance sheet, “it raises a concern that the organization may not have accounting records adequate to produce a balance sheet,” said Murphy Sistrum.

Since 2014, Trinity Christian has received more than $1.2 million in taxpayer funds through the Opportunity Scholarships Program, which provides low-income families money to attend private schools. For the academic year 2016-17, school voucher recipients comprised 60 percent of Trinity Christian’s enrollment, according to state records. The voucher school’s overall school enrollment grew by 25 percent between 2015-16 and 2016-17.

The state places few requirements on private voucher schools to account for how the taxpayer dollars are used to educate students, demonstrate achievement of the students who receive the aid or any transparency to assure the funds are used as intended.

What would Betsy DeVos say? Let the free market figure it out?

Categories Accountability, North Carolina, Scandal, Vouchers

Texas: The Resistance Movement Against Vouchers is Growing and Looking Good

By dianeravitch
March 31, 2017 //
9

On Tuesday evening, I flew to Texas to keep a promise to myself. Three years ago, I was chosen for the annual award of the Friends of Texas Public Schools. The day I was supposed to fly to Austin, there was a huge blizzard in New York City and my flight was canceled. All flights were canceled the next day as well. I Skyped in to the event the next evening, and a few weeks later received a beautiful large wooden plaque with my name on it. But I never felt I earned it because I wasn’t physically there. So, I arranged to meet with them again this week. The gods of the air decided not to make it easy, so there was a huge rainstorm, delaying my flight for four hours, and I arrived at 2:30 am the day before I spoke.

This is the talk I gave, no notes, just an informal conversation. I am sorry to say it is posted on Facebook so if you are not on FB, you can’t hear it. I can’t hear it myself as I am not on FB.

After I spoke, I participated in a panel where I learned very encouraging news. I sat with three members of the Texas House of Representatives, two of whom are Republicans. All of them understand the importance of public schools, and all are opposed to vouchers.

To my right was Representative Dan Huberty, the chair of the House Public Education Committee. He is a Republican from Humble, Texas, near Houston. He recently told the news media that voucher legislation would be “dead on arrival” if it passed the Senate. The Tea Party has put a target on his back, and when he runs again, I will do everything in my power to support him because he is a principled supporter of public education. He announced during the panel discussion that his committee had approved a new appropriation of $1.6 billion for public schools (in 2011, the legislature cut more than $5 billion from public schools and never restored the cuts when the economy revived).

Next was Representative Diego Bernal, a Democrat from San Antonio. He is charming, smart, and a strong supporter of public schools.

Last to speak was Representative Gary VanDeaver from New Boston, who was a career educator and a superintendent in his community. He has said that he supports school choice in principle, but does not support public money being taken away from public schools to fund private schools, faith-based schools, or homeschooling.

On Thursday, the state senate passed the voucher bill, which will take money from public schools that educate all children and give it to parents for private or religious schooling or homeschooling, with no accountability. The bill passed 18-13. Here is the statement on the bill by our steadfast ally, Pastors for Texas Children.

The usual opposition to vouchers comes from a bipartisan coalition of rural Republicans, who understand the importance of their community public schools, and urban Democrats, who don’t want their schools to be privatized or defunded. The day I arrived, the Senate sponsors of vouchers added an amendment to exclude any district from the voucher legislation with fewer than 50,000 students, to win votes from rural legislators. Experience in other states shows that once a voucher bill is passed, the exemptions drop away and eventually every school district will be starving its public schools, even rural districts.

The bill that passed exempted counties with fewer than 285,000 people, to fool the rural legislators. It excludes homeschoolers. It has no accountability for students with vouchers, so public money will fly out the window with no one knowing how it is spent.

I learned that there is big money promoting vouchers, namely a group called Empower Texans, an organization created by billionaire Tim Dunn to push for lower taxes, less governments, school choice, and the usual Tea Party platform of less for all. Empower Texans has a PAC that endorses local and state candidates, including school board candidates. Anyone who opposes their agenda has to worry about a well-funded primary fight from their right. Empower Texans, to say the least, does not support public education.

Texas has two great forces working on behalf of public schools: one is parent-led organizations like Friends, TAMSA (Texans Advocating for Meaningful Student Assessment), Texas Kids Can’t Wait, and many more. The other force is the Pastors for Texas Children, a group of more than 1,000 pastors across the state who support separation of church and state and who actively help their local public schools.

The Facebook page of FOTPS has a photo of Blake Cooper, a recently retired superintendent who now works as a volunteer for Friend of Texas Public Schools, and FOTPS founders Leslie and Scott Milder. Leslie taught high school for 10 years; their children attend public schools.

I had a great time. I even had great barbecue for lunch.

I have great hopes for Texas public schools because it has many organizations of parents and teachers who will fight for what is right, and it has strong bipartisan support in the House. Ninety percent of the children in the state attend public schools. In the 2018 elections, if parents and educators turn out to vote, the face of Texas could change, and it could do right by its 5.4 million students in public schools.

PS: I heard that two pro-voucher Republican legislators held a meeting today in Dallas, and the audience beat them up (rhetorically)

Categories Resistance, Texas, Vouchers

Bruce Baker: Why #PublicGoodsMatter

By dianeravitch
March 31, 2017 //
45

Bruce Baker employs a series of tweets to demonstrate the fallacy of “the money follows the child.” Public money is collected for the public good. Public money supports services and institutions for future generations, not just for those now using them. The oft-heard demand that “the money follows the child” is fallacious. It is used to privatize institutions created for all.

https://schoolfinance101.wordpress.com/2017/03/28/public-goods-the-money-belongs-to-the-child-fallacy-in-tweets/

Categories Charter Schools, Democracy, Education Industry, For-Profit, Privatization, School Choice, Supporting public schools, Vouchers

DeVos Thinks She is Promoting the “Common Good” by Attacking Public Schools

By dianeravitch
March 30, 2017 //
87

I am writing this post for the journalists who cover education. Please fact-check every word that DeVos says. She literally doesn’t know what she is talking about.

This is the New York Times’ report on Betsy DeVos‘ press conference at Brookings.

She claims that the Bush-Obama policies of test-and-punish failed because throwing money at the problem doesn’t work. Any teacher could have told you that NCLB and Race to the Top were failures, not because they threw money at the problems, but because they spent money on failed strategies of high-stakes testing, evaluating teachers by test scores, closing schools, and opening charters.

She is so ill-informed that she would be well advised never to speak in public.

Her comparison of selecting a public school to hailing a taxi is offensive: schooling is a right guaranteed in state constitutions, taking a cab or car service is a consumer choice. She was echoing her mentor Jeb Bush, who compared choosing a school to buying a carton of milk, when he addressed the GOP convention in 2012.

As you will see if you read the account in the story, she has the unmitigated gall to say that her crusade for consumer choice in education–whether charters, vouchers, homeschooling, cyberschooling, whatever–serves the “common good.” What an outrage! Providing a high-quality public school,in every zip code serves the common good. Tossing kids to the vagaries of the free market subverts the common good. Anyone who has been reading this blog for any period of time has learned about the entrepreneurs who open charter schools to make money, about the sham real estate deals, about the voucher schools that teach science from the Bible, about the heightened segregation that always accompanies school choice. Wherever George Wallace and his fellow defenders of racial segregation are, they are rooting for DeVos.

Furthermore, she is utterly ignorant of the large body of research showing that charters do not get better results than public schools, voucher schools get worse results, and cybercharters get abysmal results.

Then she makes a crack about how America’s scores on international couldn’t get worse. She is wrong, and Grover Whitehurst should have told her so. Our scores on the international tests have never been high. Over the past Hal century, we have usually scored in the middle of the pack. Yes, our scores could get much worse. We could follow the Swedish free-market model and see our scores tumble.

Grrr. It is frustrating to see this kind of ignorance expressed by the Secretary of Education, although Arne Duncan should have lowered our expectations.

Please read “Reign of Error” and learn that test scores are the highest ever for whites, blacks, Hispanics, and Asians (although they went flat from 2013-2015, probably in response to the disruptions caused by Common Core); graduation rates are the highest ever; dropout rates are the lowest ever. When our students took the first international test in 1964, we came in last in one grade, and next to last in the other. But in the years since, our economy has surpassed all the other nations with higher scores. The test scores of 15-year-olds do not predict the future of the nation.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reform, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, School Choice, Teacher Evaluations, Vouchers

Betsy DeVos Suck-Up Watch

By dianeravitch
March 30, 2017 //
18

The website Chalkbeat posted an article about the sunny side of Secretary DeVos.

http://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/us/2017/03/28/rave-reviews-here-are-the-states-schools-and-programs-that-have-gotten-betsy-devoss-seal-of-approval/

She likes really good programs!

Like Florida’s tax credit programs for vouchers! (Which sucks tax dollars away from public schools)

Like Milwaukee’s school choice programs! (Which have produced no positive results for students in 26 years)

Like Nevada’s Achievement School District (which does not yet exist and is modeled on Tennessee’s failed Achievement School District; unmentioned: most of Nevada’s charters are failing schools by the state’s metrics–Nevada needs an Achievement School District for failing charters)

She is cheerleader-in-chief for school choice. Given her deep-seated antagonism for the democratically-controlled community public schools that 90% of our nation’s children attend, we should expect a change of heart.

By we should expect unsentimental, critical reporting.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Education Reform, Media, School Choice, Vouchers

Brookings Sullies Its Reputation By Aligning with DeVos Agenda for Privatization

By dianeravitch
March 29, 2017 //
35

The Brookings Institution used to be referred to as a liberal think tank. In reality, it was a nonpartisan think tank that hired former high-level officials from both Democratic and Republican administrations and produced valuable studies and reports. As I was ending my time in the first Bush administration in late 1992, the president of Brookings came to my office at the US Department of Education and invited me to accept the Brown Chair in Education Policy. Since I did not want to live permanently in DC, I declined his offer but agreed to be a Senior Fellow. I was in residence at Brookings until 1995, wrote a book on national standards, then returned to Brooklyn. I continued to be a Non-Resident Senior Fellow until 2012, when I was summarily fired from my unpaid position by Grover Whitehurst, who joined Brookings as chair of the Brown Policy program after serving as director of education research in the George W. Bush administration. Perhaps it was happenstance, but the email from Whitehurst came a few hours after the online release of my blistering critique of Mitt Romney, whom Whitehurst was advising. Whitehurst fired me because, he said, I was “inactive.”

Whitehurst served for a few years as head of the Brown Center but was quietly removed as the Chair. Now, he uses Brookings and its prestige to promote the Republican agenda of privatization.

Here is the latest, in which Whitehurst plugs charters because “We do not know how to create or sustain uniformly great neighborhood schools.” He should have added that “We also don’t know how to create or sustain uniformly great charter schools.” There is no existence proof, even though charters choose their students and exclude students with serious disabilities and ELLs and push out behavior problems. Residents of Clark County, Nevada, may be surprised to see that he raised their grade, since most charters in Nevada are failing schools, concentrated in Clark County, and the funding for the voucher program (which he hails) has been halted by state courts. Columbus, Ohio, got good marks even though the scandal-ridden charters in Ohio have become a bad joke.

To make sure that everyone noticed that Brookings was linking its reputation to the most controversial, least qualified member of the Trump cabinet, DeVos was invited to speak at the press conference on the only subject she knows: the glories of school choice.

The press release reads:

School Choice Increasing Nationally; Secretary DeVos to Speak at Release of Brookings’ Annual School Choice Rankings
Proportion of large school districts allowing choice has nearly doubled since 2000; Denver wins top spot for large districts for second year in a row

Rankings from Brookings’ 2016 Education Choice and Competition Index (ECCI)—an annual ranking of school choice in the nation’s 100 largest school districts—will be unveiled today at a Brookings event featuring keynote remarks by U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. You can watch a livestream of the Secretary’s remarks at 9:30 AM EDT.

In a summary of the results (PDF), ECCI’s author and Brookings Senior Fellow Grover J. “Russ” Whitehurst highlights the growth of choice across the nation’s school districts according to trends tracked by ECCI, many of which can be observed since 2000. Whitehurst notes that the proportion of large school districts allowing choice has nearly doubled over the past 16 years. That coincides with other measures of the growth of school choice, including that the number of large districts for which charter school enrollment is at least 30 percent of total public enrollment has increased from one to ten.

Whitehurst writes: “There is no question empirically that opportunities for parents to choose among traditional public schools for their children, to choose a charter school, and to receive a financial subsidy to attend a private school have grown leaps and bounds in the last 15-20 years. The traditional school district model is no longer the monopoly it used to be.”

The ECCI is not designed to answer causal questions about what system or education delivery mechanism works best, but to reveal what’s happening on the ground by providing a snapshot of choice and competition in each district and allowing for comparisons of specific policies and practices across districts. The rankings are based on objective scoring of 13 categories of education policy and practice. School choice options considered by the rankings include: the opportunity of choosing any traditional public school in a district (open enrollment), charter schools, magnet schools, virtual schools, and affordable private schools.

Whitehurst notes that critics of school choice often assert that the alternative to choice is to assure that every public school is of high quality, but that “universal access to a great neighborhood school is a pipedream.”

“We do not know how to create or sustain uniformly great neighborhood schools. There is no existing proof that we do, and there is strong empirical evidence that the performance of schools varies substantially everywhere there are large numbers of schools to compare…School choice is one way of addressing the reality of the normal curve of school performance by giving parents the opportunity of moving their children out of schools that are in the lower tail of the distribution.”

Students in the nation’s 100+ largest school districts are overwhelmingly (91 percent) in public schools, with 56 percent of the ECCI districts allowing choice within the traditional public schools. According to Whitehurst, “advocates of school choice should take note of the reality that for the foreseeable future the greatest opportunities for the expansion of choice are in the public school sector through furthering the reach of open enrollment.”

Denver, which received the highest score on this year’s ECCI, and the Recovery District serving New Orleans are the only two districts in the ECCI that receive grades of A on school choice. Both are characterized by: open enrollment and a centralized assignment process requiring a single application from parents for all public schools; a good mix and utilization by parents of alternatives to traditional public schools; rich information to parents to support school choice, including a school assignment website that allows parents to make side-by-side comparisons of schools; funding that follows students to the school in which they enroll; a fair and efficient formula for matching school assignments for students to the expressed preferences of their parents; and provisions for transportation of students to schools of choice outside their neighborhoods.

Notably, Camden City School District in New Jersey and Clark County School District in Nevada saw substantive enough changes to move them from receiving an F in the previous year to a B- and C-, respectively. Clark County’s increase in score was largely due to Nevada’s Educational Choice Scholarship program, which was enacted and launched in 2015. Camden, NJ experienced a dramatic increase in score and grade on the 2016 ECCI by virtue of rolling out a new process for school search, application, and assignment.

New to the top 10 list this year are Columbus, Ohio, and Chicago, while Baltimore and Tucson dropped off. Chicago showed a score increase due to its decision to include data on student growth among the information on school performance provided to parents on its website. The score for Columbus increased, in part, because the district documented a student-based funding formula for schools.

Almost one-quarter, or 26 of the 112 school districts scored on the 2016 ECCI, received a grade of F, meaning that families have very little in the way of school choice other than what they can exercise by choosing to live within the geographical assignment zone of their preferred public school. Or, if they do provide school choice, the process is hidden from parents.

You can learn more about the 2016 ECCI rankings by exploring an interactive breakdown of results or reading a report of topline takeaways (PDF).

CONTACT
Delaney Parrish
Assistant Director of Communications, Economic Studies
202-797-2969 | DRParrish@brookings.edu | @DParrish
BROOKINGS
1775 Massachusetts Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20036

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Nevada, Privatization, School Choice, Vouchers

Ohio: Study Sponsored by Pro-Voucher Group Shows Negative Effects of Vouchers

By dianeravitch
March 28, 2017 //
16

I was a founding board member of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation (now, Institute). It is a pro-choice organization. I opposed the decision to sponsor charter schools in Ohio, because I thought it was outside the work of a think tank. My ideal think tank would exercise independence in reviewing government policy and gain respect for avoiding doctrinaire conclusions. On that issues, I was out voted, but was not surprised when most or all of the charters we sponsored were failing schools.

I left TBF in 2009 when I realized that I no longer shared its commitment to choice, testing, and accountability.

I appreciate the fact that TBF Is more willing to acknowledge its failings than other rightwing advocacy groups.

Last July, TBF released the results of a study of the Ohio voucher program, commissioned by TBF and conducted by Northwestern professor David Figlio. Here is the full study.

The study was not an endorsement of vouchers.

The students who won the vouchers were not the most disadvantaged:

“Student selection: The students participating in EdChoice are overwhelmingly low-income and minority children. But relative to pupils who are eligible for vouchers but choose not to use them, the participants in EdChoice are somewhat higher-achieving and less economically disadvantaged.”

Voucher schools can choose their students and did not accept the neediest

“Competitive effects: EdChoice modestly improved the achievement of the public-school students who were eligible for a voucher but did not use it. The competition associated with the introduction of EdChoice appears to have spurred these public-school improvements.” This strikes me as a gargantuan leap of logic. The students who did not use the vouchers improved their test scores. But nothing in this study ascertains that they improved because of competition with vouchers. It is just as reasonable to conclude that they had better teachers than those in the voucher schools.

“Participant effects: The students who used vouchers to attend private schools fared worse on state exams compared to their closely matched peers remaining in public schools. Only voucher students assigned to relatively high-performing EdChoice eligible public schools could be credibly studied.”

The spokesman for TBF called attention to the modest gains of students who didn’t use the voucher.

So here is the logic of Ohio’s voucher program:

If you use the voucher, your academic performance will go down.

If you don’t use the voucher, you academic performance will modestly improve.

This is a bizarre argument for vouchers. Take the medicine and you will get sicker. Don’t take the medicine and you will feel better.

Why is Ohio wasting millions on a program that doesn’t work? Unless you are not in it?

Categories Education Reform, Failure, Ohio, Vouchers
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