Small victory: DC school vouchers approved
It’s unfortunate that President Obama agreed to extend a school voucher program in the District of Columbia only as an 11th-hour concession to avoid a shutdown of the federal government. It gives the impression that the vouchers program was not effective enough to stand for approval in the light of day.
Under the leadership of Arne Duncan, the U.S. Department of Education opposed the program, saying it had not raised student achievement. But the department’s own study had a startling result: 91 percent of the students who accepted the scholarship graduated from high school, 21 percentage points better than other students. All of these students were black or Hispanic, and came from families earning under $20,000 a year.
Since improving high school graduation rates is a major goal of Duncan and the president, it’s hard to see how they can justify dismissing the D.C. voucher program. Many studies have found that high school graduation is closely associated with future success. The study also showed that reading scores were higher for the voucher students, although not at a statistically significant margin. Parental satisfaction with the child’s school was also higher, as was the parents’ sense that students were safe.
Duncan has championed charter schools, which have produced mixed results. At the same time, these schools have drawn many students away from Catholic schools in urban areas, further endangering Catholic education. Given the huge amounts of money the administration is pouring into charter schools, the very least it could do is to support a successful experiment in school vouchers without having to be coerced into it.
Unlike the Department of Education, the lead researcher in the agency’s study of the school voucher program, Professor Patrick J. Wolf of the University of Arkansas, took an upbeat view of the voucher program. In testimony before a Senate panel in February, he said that:
… many federal education programs targeted at disadvantaged students have been the subject of rigor0us evaluations. Most of these programs have failed to demonstrate the ability to move disadvantaged students to significantly higher levels of academic outcomes such as achievement and high school graduation. In my opinion, by demonstrating statistically significant impacts on boosting high school graduation rates and generating a wealth of evidence that students also benefited in reading achievement, the DC OSP has accomplished what few educational interventions can claim: It markedly improved education outcomes for low-income inner-city students.
Wolf said that thanks to the voucher program, 449 more students graduated from high school than would have without the vouchers. Statistically speaking, this will produce a benefit to government worth $116 million in higher taxable earnings and lower social service costs over the course of the students’ lives, he said.
He concluded, “the research evidence and testimonials of parents confirm that the District of Columbia is a better place because of the Opportunity Scholarship Program.”
The article fails to give appropriate credit to House Speaker Boehner, who has championed this issue from the very beginning (even having students and Card. Wuerl sit in his personal box at the State of the Union). This is an example of Republican politics SERVING THE COMMON GOOD!
Boehner’s role is spelled out in the link.
“This is an example of Republican politics SERVING THE COMMON GOOD!”
And the Democratic Party again serving, as much as the political situation will let them, the NEA?
I receive e-mails from Credo Action asking me to sign onto various progressive advocacy campaigns. A little while back, I received an action alert from them asking me to weigh in with my electeds to protest this voucher program. (They didn’t think it should be a priority considering the cuts other programs were facing). I e-mailed back saying I couldn’t sign onto this one, I actually support voucher programs.
A little to my surprise, I received an e-mail back from Credo saying they had received a lot of e-mails similar to mine and they take their members priorities seriously. I don’t know if they dropped the petition, but I was impressed they were so forthright in saying many of their members didn’t agree with the campaign (and also surprised that there were other liberals like myself out there who support school vouchers).
On another note, let’s not get so excited about the Republicans or anyone else serving the common good in this budget. The Catholic Bishops sent a letter to the House expressing a lot of concern about how this budget the House passed could cause a lot of harm to the poor and vulnerable. http://www.usccb.org/sdwp/2012-Budget-Letter-to-House-04-13-11.pdf
Irene, thanks for that link to the bishops’ letter. And thanks for calling attention to Credo. That they were responsive to your email is impressive. I will try to check them out.
While I truly do not want to take the position on dotCom as Public Enemy No. 1 of public-sector unions, I do espouse the principle that union activities must be directed toward the common good. All advocates of public-sector unionization have a moral obligation to call the unions to accountability for their morally problematic opposition to voucher programs. Commonweal was quick to raise its public voice in support of public sector unions in Wisconsin; let it be equally quick and courageous to raise its voice in opposition to union policies that hurt our children.
Where Catholic schools demonstrate a) the ability to keep tuition affordable for low-income families, b) a level of education that EXCEEDS that of available public instruction, and c) accept children regardless of their parents’ race, creed, religion, and gender preference, I say vouch away.
I have no interest, however, in supporting vouchers for Catholic schools that cannot meet these minimum requirements. Inferior Catholic schools ought not to be propped up by redistributing government funding.
Jean, I would expect that almost every Catholic school strives to keep tuition affordable (however that is determined) for low-income students. Vouchers, I’d think, would go a long way to helping them succeed.
Although Catholic schools as a whole are often shown to outperform neighborhood public schools, whether a private school should be required to exceed available public instruction as a condition for voucher eligibility strikes me as problematic. Parents can have reasons other than academic excellence for wishing to place their children in a Catholic school, e.g. they may perceive that the Catholics school is a safer environment or that its values are more in accord with the parents’.
The philosophy of vouchers is that parents are given multiple choices and need to make an educated choice on behalf of their children. Part and parcel of that, istm, is that the parents become educated consumers, and get a handle on how effective the various public and private choices are in their area. I do think it would be reasonable to expect private schools, including Catholic schools, to present parents with clear, accurate and consistent information that informs the parents about the school’s academic standards and accomplishments. (I’d expect that at least some Catholic schools would resist this.)
Most Catholic schools (Denver’s excepted, of course) wouldn’t have an issue with your last requirement.
It seems to me that where there is a voucher system that denying vouchers to children attending religious schools is religious discrimination. A private school is simply a non-public one. And I am for vouchers where the system works. ( The current voucher system in New Orleans seems to be working extremely well in many schools, but perhaps that’s because the schools started so far behind.)
I do think that it is unconstitutional for the state to pay for the religious instruction in religious schools. The amount of a school’s tuition deducted to religious instruction should be deducted from its voucher payments.
Oops — should have been : the amount of a school’s tuition *dedicated* to religious instruction should be deducted from its voucher payments.
Jim, I can’t agree with “Most Catholic schools (Denver’s excepted, of course) wouldn’t have an issue with your last requirement.” Race, yes but creed, religion and especially gender are extremely problematic and the last is becoming like abortion a defining issue that the bishops will go to the wall on.
A good example is currently happening in a Mississauga Catholic High School, named St. Joesph’s where students want to form a GSA club and have been told they can only form a general equity club. (check Facebook, St. Josephs GSA)
If the kids ever get organized and create a walkout across schools and/or the government mandates the creation of the GSA or a lower court does, the Trustees & Bishops will fight it all the way to the Supreme court.
Gender equity includes lgbtq issues and the Church leadership which is becoming more reactionary by the day and not just in Denver is quite prepared to sacrifice every “liberal” Catholic in its quest to remain pure as in puritanical.
Hi, John B, I believe that GSA is an organization that advocates policies that the Catholic Church opposes (I could be wrong about that, it’s just my impression). If that’s true, it’s not surprising that the church wouldn’t support it in one of its schools. Itsm that part of the point of vouchers is that the private school be allowed to be private, including adhering to its mission.
I took Jean’s list of criteria to include situations like the controversial one in Denver where a child’s parents were two lesbian women. Presumably those women wanted their child in the Catholic school because they wanted their child to learn Catholic values. I don’t see that situation as parallel to the GSA situation you described.
Jim P: yes, I can see that DEFINITELY the RCC would oppose anything as sensible and supporting as a GSA. My goodness, what would be expected next?
http://www.gsanetwork.org/about-us
GSA Network supports young people in starting, strengthening, and sustaining GSAs and builds the capacity of GSAs to:
1. create safe environments in schools for students to support each other and learn about homophobia and other oppressions,
2. educate the school community about homophobia, gender identity, and sexual orientation issues, and
3. fight discrimination, harassment, and violence in schools.
I think what Jean said is sensible!
I think Jim P.’s comment underscores how many young people are turning from the Church because they see its approach as bigoted.
But of course, we must “defend’ marriage…..
I don’t expect religious schools that teach homosexual acts are sinful to allow GSAs or to accept kids who are openly homosexual, though I think Catholic schools, with the right leadership could walk that line between teaching and upholding human dignity if they really wanted to.
I also remain concerned about vouchers siphoning off money from public schools, leaving special needs children even worse off than they are now. Many parents whose kids need special ed can’t take advantage of vouchers because a) special needs kids often need extra medical attention which makes Catholic school oo expensive, and b) Catholic schools don’t offer special ed.
We’ve already had the argument here that parish money might be better spent improving CCD programs than keeping inferior Catholic schools limping along, so I’ll spare everyone my rant on that.
I doubt if many Catholic schools, private or publicly supported as they are in many countries, would not say that they were in full agreement with GSA club objectives (as quoted by Jimmy Mac above). What the Church leadership can’t abide, however, is either the term “Gay” or “Straight”. Fundamentally the church simply, irrespective of what is in the CCC, rejects the distinction. It is in fact a component of the leaderships’ “homophobia”.
This rejection of the term “Gay”is necessary in their minds because the very term means that the “Gay” person is practicing a sexual relationship with a person of the same sex. Hence they can not permit it to be uttered in an official capacity within our schools. To accept the term “Gay” is to accept “homosexuality” as normal, or even acceptable or even heaven forbid, good!
What I find after a lifetime of supporting Catholic education, I no longer care if they survive or thrive because as the Church becomes ever more reactionary, I know the schools will follow and I believe we do not need, nor want, Catholic Madrassas in a pluralistic democratic country.
Jimmy Mac – I suppose it comes down to what is encompassed by #2. If teaching that gay marriage is wrong, or teaching what the church teaches about homosexuals (e.g.. that homosexual sex is sinful and that homosexuals are called to celibacy) counts as homophobia or are considered sexual orientation issues in the eyes of GSA members, then those are points of disagreement and conflict with the church.
If GSA isn’t interested in those issues (are they?) or agrees with the church on those issues (doesn’t seem likely) then I’m not sure what the church’s beef would be.
Hmmm, sounds like the purpose of the GSA is to explain how the S in GSA have it all wrong, but I don’t want the thread to get off track so I would just like to point out that vouchers are not for Catholic schools, they are for parents, particularly poor parents, so that they do not have to pay twice to educate their children once. So, remind me again, who is it that cares more for the poor?
Mark, from my perspective vouchers are a very strange beast. It seems to me they have no place in a publicly funded education system.
I think you describe them reasonable well. “…they are for parents, particularly poor parents, so that they do not have to pay twice to educate their children once…
I see no reason for poor parents or rich parents for that matter to even need them… In America poor parents have public schools for which they may pay some tax…which I doubt other than some municipal portion even happens.. because in even a minimalist progressive tax system the “poor” are not likely to pay much in the way of an education tax being below the taxation threshold at the state and federal levels.
So why is the voucher seen as a panacea, because the more students that the rich and corporations can remove from the public school system the less they have to pay in education taxes. Catholic schools regrettably buy into this because it economically benefits them… it only looks like justice, it isn’t because what it really does is bleed off the most talented poor and leaves the public schools looking even worse if all you count is test scores. And sorry, it is not the church caring for the poor… it is a case of the rich foisting the poor onto the Church and the Church rationalizing their acceptance of them in order to hide the reality in which they are complicit.
When you combine vouchers with charters it only gets worse because charters add the concomitant element of union busting in order to lower teacher salaries something that occurs naturally in a transfer to private Catholic schools.
Vouchers and charters in America are a devils bargain; I for one, can’t buy into and it is one of my very few disappointments with Commonweal over the years when they do.
What vouchers and charters are is a failure on the part of America’s citizens as a national body to properly address the needs of the poor within society and within education in particular. Vouchers and charters are fake solutions, masking other agendas within the body politic and need to been seen for what they really are. That is a way to cut taxes while keeping poor Blacks and Hispanics, poor and in their place.
Hi, Jean, in Illinois (and I understand it is the same in at least some other states), it is state law that all children are entitled to the special ed programs provided by the public school district, whether the children are enrolled in a district school or not. So here, vouchers would not siphon away any special needs funds (if we had vouchers. We do have a tax credit, which is not quite the same thing but still a pretty good deal).
Hi, John, sorry to quibble with such a fine rant :-).
“So why is the voucher seen as a panacea, because the more students that the rich and corporations can remove from the public school system the less they have to pay in education taxes.”
I’m not sure you’ve got the correct understanding of vouchers here (although I’m not sure what you’re saying here). Vouchers are supposed to take the per-student portion of public education funding and give it to the parents to spend how they choose. For the governments, it is supposed to be (more or less) a wash; they would spend (roughly) the same whether the child is enrolled in a public or a private school. (I’m using terms like “roughly” and “more or less” because I’m not completely certain how the voucher formulas work; but the theory is that, for the state and local governments, it should be pretty much a break-even proposition). Corporations, the rich and everyone else who pays taxes ends up paying about the same amount (supposing the fiction that what the state pays out bears some sort of relationship to its tax receipts – in my state, Illinois, it pays out much more).
” Catholic schools regrettably buy into this because it economically benefits them… it only looks like justice, it isn’t because what it really does is bleed off the most talented poor and leaves the public schools looking even worse if all you count is test scores. And sorry, it is not the church caring for the poor… it is a case of the rich foisting the poor onto the Church and the Church rationalizing their acceptance of them in order to hide the reality in which they are complicit.”
Again, I’m not sure what you’re saying here. My understanding of vouchers is that they don’t engage in “creaming” the top-performing kids from the public school; I believe vouchers are pretty democratic in that regard. In Chicago and some other large cities, we do have a concept called the “magnet school” that does segregate the best and brightest from the kids in the neighborhood. But that’s a public school program.
“When you combine vouchers with charters it only gets worse because charters add the concomitant element of union busting in order to lower teacher salaries something that occurs naturally in a transfer to private Catholic schools.”
Charter schools have significant leeway in setting up their schools. In theory, a charter school could choose to permit its teachers to unionize if those who run the school have no objection. It’s instructive that few or none permit it. But it’s not surprising, because those who take the trouble to get a charter and start up a school are typically extremely motivated to provide a good education to the community’s children, and everyone knows that teachers unions are just about the very worst thing for that project.
“What vouchers and charters are is a failure on the part of America’s citizens as a national body to properly address the needs of the poor within society and within education in particular. Vouchers and charters are fake solutions, masking other agendas within the body politic and need to been seen for what they really are. That is a way to cut taxes while keeping poor Blacks and Hispanics, poor and in their place.”
Again, vouchers are not a money-saving device; they don’t result in lower taxes – the per-head student expenditure is about the same. It is possible that, if they’re implemented widely, i.e. if as many vouchers are made available as are demanded by the poor parents of big city public schools, it’s possible that public school class sizes could shrink significantly enough that fewer public school teachers would be needed. But then, private school enrollment would expand by the same proportion, and maybe any public school teachers out of work could go to those schools to find employment.
I can also tell you that the one thing that has absolutely been tried, over and over again for decades in American education, is to throw more money at the problem. Lack of funding is not the issue, at least for large cities. (It can be a real issue in poor rural areas, at least in my state, because we have a very unjust property-tax system for funding public schools). Perennially underperforming public school systems seem impervious to money – whatever problems money can solve doesn’t seem to get at the root causes of whatever it is that ail bad school systems.
FWIW – the political divide that I’ve observed pretty consistently over school funding in the US is not rich vs. poor; it is empty nesters and retirees, i.e. those without a houseful of kids, vs. young families. The former don’t believe they have a direct stake in education in their community and frequently aren’t willing to pay for it.
“Again, I’m not sure what you’re saying here. My understanding of vouchers is that they don’t engage in “creaming” the top-performing kids from the public school; I believe vouchers are pretty democratic in that regard.”
Jim P. –
It certainly isn’t siphoning off the poorest students in New Orleans. For the first time, many of these poor family have a chance to get their kids into decent schools. And the bad schools are failing, which is good. We’ll see how the system works in the long run, but in the meantime it looks quite good for the poor.
Nunz: many young people are turning from the Church because they see its approach as bigoted
Every lost soul is a tragedy, but the truth is the truth.
“…because what it really does is bleed off the most talented poor and leaves the public schools looking even worse …”
John–What does it say about our public school system that the most talented want to leave it?
Actually, Jim, voucher plans to date have provided much less funding than the public schools get. The DC voucher plan since 2002 allowed for a max of $7,500 per student, which is less than half of what the DC public schools spend.
John Borst, almost all the empirical evidence to date suggests that vouchers encourage public schools to improve. Your claim to the contrary is baseless.
“In Illinois (and I understand it is the same in at least some other states), it is state law that all children are entitled to the special ed programs provided by the public school district, whether the children are enrolled in a district school or not. So here, vouchers would not siphon away any special needs funds (if we had vouchers. We do have a tax credit, which is not quite the same thing but still a pretty good deal).”
Jim, how could vouchers NOT siphon money away from public school programs? We send our kid to a public school in an adjacent district under Michigan’s “schools of choice.” That means the local district doesn’t get his tax allocation, the adjacent district does.
A voucher is essentially the same thing; it allows you to redirect your tax money to a private entity and away from the public schools. How can the public system provide special ed (and music, sports, art, bus transportation, and the many other “extras” private school students enjoy), if there is less money for the public system?
Moreover, special ed isn’t one class that you bus a kid to for an hour and then take him back to his private enclave; it’s day-long instruction woven into the curriculum for kids with a variety of different needs such as dyslexia, ADD, cerebral palsy, Down syndrome, etc. it’s intensive, expensive, and essential if we’re going to allow these kids to live life with any degree of indepenence and dignity.
Please understand that where there is widespread failure and danger in the public schools (D.C., New Orleans, Detroit), I think parents ought to have the right to spend their education money elsewhere.
But in order to preserve services for special ed students, private schools should have to prove they are affordable, accessible, and can do some things BETTER than the public schools against which they compete.
We could, of course, dismantle public education entirely and allow nonprofits and for-profits to handle all education at every level. It’s an interesting notion, but my concern is that leaving this to religious schools or the free market would price some parents out of education altogether, especially for special needs children.
Under the DC voucher program, impoverished students chosen by lottery have the option of accepting a $7,500 education voucher. The program isn’t taking the “cream” of the students. It’s also a fairly low cost for the public. And it works for the students, since 9 out of 10 of them graduate from high school – an outstanding result for students whose families earn under $20,000 a year.
There’s good evidence to show the program should continue. Is there any evidence to show that a modestly sized voucher program such as this one is destroying the public school system?
Jean –
With a voucher system there is less money for the public schools, but there are also fewer students to educate so not as much money is needed by the public schools.
I don’t think NEw Orleans schools were particularly dangerous. They were just particularly bad.
Jim P., thanks for the time you took to reply to my post.
Studebaker, I respectfully request that you show me where I make any claim as to whether vouchers improve or make public education worse. I simply did not address that issue. However, the figures you supply re: Vouchers vs. the per pupil expenditure in public schools corresponds with what I have read about in other jurisdictions. It has been some time since I followed the issue.
Paul Moses, no one here has made the claim that vouchers are “destroying the public school system”. There size is simply not that great.
What I do believe is that both vouchers and charters are false panaceas to a much larger problem which is not being addressed. And that as I have said before is that public education is no longer conceived as a means for ALL citizens regardless of color, creed, nationality, mother tongue or gender as a means out of poverty. That bargain which has sustained the rise of American education standards for generations has been broken by an ideology which now puts corporate needs before citizens needs. That in turn permits the empty nesters and retirees to break their part of the education bargain as well. Is it not a return of a new form of tribalism?
Both vouchers and charters are tinkering at the edges and provide an excuse to make it look like something is being done to improve America’s failing schools.
Finally, I think someone made the claim that unions are the problem and prevent schools from improving. That simply is not true. It is propaganda a myth the privatizers and governments want you to believe. A discussion of the recent Wisconsin mess proved that.
A review of other countries with strong education unions where governments work with them a co-partners in public education rather than as adversaries proves otherwise if PISA scores are compared.
Ann and Paul,
I appreciate your discussion points, and I am not against vouchers unilaterally; when public education is terrible, parents have a right to demand their money back and spend it as they see fit.
I would say that the notion that fewer students means that the public system can get by with less money is a little simplistic. Certainly it means fewer books and teachers. But it may mean increased transpo costs to take students to school buildings that remain open. And closed schools can be millstones around the necks of school systems, requiring some maintenance and heating unless they can be sold. Closed schools often become blight areas in already stressed neighborhoods.
As a parent, I found transparency, accountability, or even common courtesy utterly lacking at my kid’s Catholic school and within the diocese. That lack of accountability is one reason I would be chary of ever sending a kid to Catholic school again. But, then, many public schools suffer from similar problems.
John — what you said was this: what it really does is bleed off the most talented poor and leaves the public schools looking even worse if all you count is test scores.
What you said is empirically false. Vouchers do not make the public school test scores look worse. The evidence virtually all points the other way: public schools improve under the competitive pressure from vouchers.
Since you point to other countries, you might be surprised to learn that the United States is something of an outlier in how rarely we fund private schools with public money. As Diane Ravitch once pointed out:
And yet the sky hasn’t fallen in any of these countries.
Jean –
HEre the charter schools use the public school buildings that are no longer in use. I don’t know how the financing works.
Even before Katrina the State had moved to take some drastic steps about the N. O. schools. After the storm everyone agreed (except some bad teachers) that it would be good to start the whole program over from practically scratch. There are very few publlic schools left — only the good ones, of which there were a few.
One thing that seems to be making a huge difference is the participation of parents in the schools, including poor parents. It’s really quite heartening.
Studebaker, I won’t argue with you on the first point; perhaps I am mixing my knowledge of vouchers & charters.
Your second point however is not the important one. What I would rather see is the percentage change in enrollment in private verses public schools in the USA and in the other countries on your list over the past 30 years.
My guess would be that the Public school system has been bleeding students to private schools as the propaganda machine has declared public schools a lost cause.
The constant rhetoric about “bad schools”, bad teachers, parents right to choose even among the people in this group is extremely depressing. What you are all doing is looking for alternatives to the public school system. The goal should be to fix the public school system not by finding alternatives but by making all public schools “good” schools what ever that means.
Here’s an article from the New Orleans Times-Picayune on 3-19-11 about the Stanford University study of the New Orleans charter schools since Katrina.
http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf?/base/news-16/1300516240214770.xml&coll=1
I find it extremely encouraging, although it’s true that some charters have failed. Now to find out why many are succeeding.
Ann, several Michigan universities that offer education degrees have gone to N.O. to study how well their charter schools have worked. Here they don’t have a great track record, though the state has watched them closely and has closed several that were doing poorly.
Catholic schools are another matter. The assumption is that the quality of education is at least at or above that of public schools. But I found it impossible to get any hard data out of the diocese. You can get a lot of anecdotal evidence about famous alumnae from local schools, or how many boys go on to seminary. But the diocesan superintendent did not answer phone calls or e-mails asking for hard data.
Moreover, in my immediate area, there is no Catholic high school. My sense is that the drop-out rate among kids who went to Catholic primary schools is lower than the general population–parents willing to spend extra for education tend to value it wherever it occurs–but I don’t know for sure.
Seems that if Catholic education is exceptionally good that the diocese would want to tout those numbers. The fact that it doesn’t makes me want to know more.
Jean, there may be something else a work too.
I was very surprised when my mother and father sent me to a private Catholic high school in Toronto. It was 1955. It meant catching a train at 7:00 am each morning and not getting home until 6:00 pm.
One factor that worked on me was knowing my parents were paying tuition and the costs of the train and streetcar that followed.
Our classes were huge, 45-50 kids. I think if I’d gone to a public school I’d more than likely have dropped out or at least never progressed into Grade 13 which then existed in Ontario (no more). Gr. 13 was what you had to get through to go to university.
As I did take my Grade 13 but at my home town public high school…that’s another story…I can say the teachers and education were just as good and perhaps better; certainly the classes were smaller, much smaller.
Knowing your parents care enough to pay has a big influence.
Anne O,
Why do you think New Orleans did not rebuild a public education system when they had the change.? Why did they think they had to go to charter schools? What were the forces at play, politically?
Had the same thing happened in a Canadian city I just can’t see such a thing happening. I think it is symptomatic of what ails American efforts to improve its education system.
American wants out of a public education system where all citizens and corporations accept a common responsibility for educating the next generation. That is the bond which is broken.
Why is that note the focus of the debate? Are religious schools, especially Catholic schools not then a apart of the problem. From this side of the border, supporters of Catholic schools see an opportunity through vouchers and charters to gain for themselves thus do whether they intend to or not become part of the problem.
“Why do you think New Orleans did not rebuild a public education system when they had the change.? Why did they think they had to go to charter schools? What were the forces at play, politically?”
John B. –
I”m no authority on the local schools, but you don’t have to be to know that they had been failing miserably for at least two generations. Why? I’m not sure, but I suspect that women’s lib had a great deal to do with it — when the really smart women could get into other fields, they left teaching in droves. The better professisonal opportunities and pay of doctors, lawyers, executives, etc. had a lot to do with their simply not going into teaching.
Even before Katrina the State had started to put pressure on the local schools. You just have no idea how bad they were — among the worst in the country. With Katrina many of the building were destroyed or made non-functional, and at least a third or half the kids weren’t returning to the city at that time, so great reorgnizations had to take place anyway. As I understand it, an educational leader, Paul Pasternak, seemed to have made some headway before the storm, and he became the head honcho of reform.
I don’t know if he was the one who insisted on charters, but whomever proposed it, nobody objected very much, except the education unions who wanted to protect the jobs of teachers, many of whom were simply not competent. (I’ve remarked on that here before — and have since read confirmation in the media — that nowadays the least good college graduates go into teaching. And that’s not just here. This, I think, more than anything, contributed to the miserable state of local education. The slow teachers no doubt tried very hard, but too many just weren’t up to it.)
Anyway, most people were willing to try anything. There had been a few charter schools started before the storm, and they seemed to be doing better on average than the old schools. So the great experiment started.
We have had an enormous amount of outside help, including funding from NGSs. Plus kids who want to help the poor, kids who want to help the storm victims, have come in droves to help. No doubt their enthusiasm has helped enormously. Some innovative principles have been given free rein. Help with such things as curriculum is being supplied from such first rate places as Yale. Perhaps most important, parents have shown enormous interest in many of the schools, even helping to physically rebuild some of the damaged schools. I think the latter has happened simply because they now have some hope that change can occur.
The whole thing has become a sort of laboratory for a hybrid of charter and regular schools. There are still about a half-dozen regular schools. They are the best/better of the old bunch, and the new charters are being compared with them on a student by student comparison. (See the Stanford study.)
Some of the charters have already failed. So there is and will continue to be a process of weeding out — and this, perhaps is the key. With the old system there was no weeding out.
We’ll see how things turn out in another 10 years or so, after these kids get into college. Enough really capable, objective researchers are looking at the developments to try to discover just what causes the changes for good and ill. But so far, it’s been a lot more good than ill.
I don’t think politics had anything to do with any of this. Everybody was just sick of the old system. It seems that all the other alternatives had been tried before. We were desperate, and that includes people who didn’t go to public schools.
Here’s an article about Paul Pastorek, the State superintendent of schools, from last August. I hadn’t read it before. He’s a real bulldog. Note: he says he thinks there are other successful models besides charters, but doesn’t say what they are.
http://www.nola.com › … › Breaking News
“The goal should be to fix the public school system not by finding alternatives but by making all public schools “good” schools what ever that means.”
Why is your vision so limited? What’s wrong with a school system (such as in several European countries) where the government pays for all kinds of schools?
D.C. is not like New York. There aren’t that many Catholic churches, let alone Catholic parish schools. D.C. proper has less than 10% of the population of New York, and most of that is not Catholic. When people talk of Catholic schools, they mean the well-heeled tony Catholic high schools that major in sports for a living (Gonzaga), but that also have a very high academic reputation. I have no idea why D.C. taxpayers should be on the hook for people who send their kids to Gonzaga. For one thing, they are among the wealthiest in the city (maybe there is an income limitation on qualification for the voucher).
Anyhow, one of the things that is apparent when you talk about schools is that people paint with a very broad brush. Every jurisdiction that surrounds D.C. has mostly terrific public schools with a markedly declining Catholic school enrollment, even without competition from charter schools. I really fail to grasp why a local jurisdiction should feel bad when lower income (here, that would be mostly Hispanic) parents realize that the expense of Catholic schools is not worth it because the local public schools are so good, especially since, at least here, the schools have to plan their space needs “as if” those kids might be attending anyway. I say this personally, I have absolutely no animosity towards Catholic schools, but if you fund Catholic schools via vouchers then you have to fund Islamic schools and all manner of other schools. I would prefer not to and I don’t see a whole lot of groundswell around here in favor of Catholic schools.
j.a.m said: “Every lost soul is a tragedy, but the truth is the truth.
“Truth does not consist simply in formulated norms by which reality is judged. It is also found in the way the whole human person responds to a reality in those cases where any other response would falsify the existence of that reality.”
Xavier John Seubert, OP, The Sacramental of Metaphors: Reflections on Homosexuality (article), Cross Currents, Spring 1991.
“The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie … deliberate, contrived, and dishonest … but the myth … persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic … Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought”.
John F. Kennedy
I think this is a better link to the article Ann cited above:
http://www.nola.com/opinions/index.ssf/2011/04/be_careful_limiting_choice_for.html
Barbara — there are 15 Catholic schools in DC that participate in the voucher program, and they are not rich schools by any means. .
Studebaker,
That is exactly what I am proposing should happen in America. Not by stealth which is what I think vouchers and charters are but up front through the grant structure, which by necessity in the U.S. includes a repeal of the Church-State divide.
It is no longer relevant. I say that because I live in such a country, specifically, Canada.
Anne O, I find your theory re: Women’s lib interesting, but it begs the question. Women’s lib was an international phenomena so why would it not lead to the same decline in teacher standards in other countries such as my own. I would posit that here it had no effect at all. In fact in my experience and I was responsible to see it happen women became the majority of principles, superintendents and directors of education (in Ontario = chief superintendent) a situation which continues to exist today. The problem here is a lack of men.
I do think it is very much a political thing. Very much all tied up with the Reagan era whose driving force was to eliminate unions and/or vilify them if that was not possible a process which continues to this day.
Is not part of the problem the fact that Louisiana was then and still has now one of the lowest expenditures per pupil in the USA. As the saying goes you get what you pay for!
“Anne O, I find your theory re: Women’s lib interesting, but it begs the question. Women’s lib was an international phenomena so why would it not lead to the same decline in teacher standards in other countries such as my own. I would posit that here it had no effect at all.”
John B. –
I suspect that there are considerable reductions in quality. It just so happens that this very morning I read this in a work by an Ontario English professor:
“The Ontario school system, though admirable in many ways, currently deprives its students of basic knowledge of grammar and poetics. Other jurisdictions apparently do so too.” Eleanor Cook. “A Reader’s Guide to Wallace Stevens” (Princeton and Oxford, 2007), p. 318.
At least the students in New Orleans’ bad schools have the opportunity to learn some grammar. And I will also note that comparisons of students from all over the world, the Asians ones are generally shown to excel, not the Western ones. Wonder why.
As to money spent, no doubt the amount of money spent can make a great difference — but only if, I maintain — enough is spent on teachers’ salaries to make them comparable with other professionals’ salaries. How do they compare in Canada?
P.S. Mississippi, with the worst school system, used to spend less on education than any other states, but spent the highest proportion of its income on education than any other state. (Perhaps it still does.) Not sure about Louisiana, but we try. It’s a vicious circle — poor education yields low income, low income yields poor education.
AnneO, I certainly agree about the vicious circle and i tend to think that the cycle has worsened in the USA rather than improved as the gap between the rich and other classes has grown over the past few decades. It is the reason why I have been trying to present an alternative narrative to a discussion on vouchers and charters which in my opinion avoids the true reasons why America’s school system as a national institution is not improving.
I rally want it to improve. I am not trying to be critical. I am trying to be constructive in a hard-nosed sort of way.
As to the opinion of one university professor, I have become most distrustful of professors who believe students arrive in university with a knowledge of grammar not at the same standard as they , the professors now have.
One of the most profound improvements a student makes in university is in the ability to write at a very high level. That is why you go to university. To learn to think and write critically and well.
In the past week I too read an article about a university professor, who recently wrote a book and the critique was about the professor’s inability to say anything intelligible in a few words. Yes she wrote a whole lot but didn’t really say anything. We have all read works like that.
The key to improvement in elementary and high school education is not just in writing, grammar and mathematics but in the total ability to think, analyze and think creatively. America has become great because it achieved a unique status in the world with the balance it achieved in all those areas.
It is declining now because it has done to education what the communists tried to do with its economy. Everything became a statistic. The human and humane became secondary to the data being recorded. I think this is part of the problem facing US education.
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