public education

Earlier this week, I encouraged the use of a more sophisticated approach to education policy: a set of principles to pitch beyond vouchers and "school choice." Today, David Brooks tells the story of New York City charter schools operated by the the Harlem Children's Zone:

"[A study from Harvard economists Roland Fryer and Will Dobbie] found that the Harlem Children’s Zone schools produced “enormous” gains. The typical student entered the charter middle school, Promise Academy, in sixth grade and scored in the 39th percentile among New York City students in math. By the eighth grade, the typical student in the school was in the 74th percentile. The typical student entered the school scoring in the 39th percentile in English Language Arts (verbal ability). By eighth grade, the typical student was in the 53rd percentile.

"Forgive some academic jargon, but the most common education reform ideas — reducing class size, raising teacher pay, enrolling kids in Head Start — produce gains of about 0.1 or 0.2 or 0.3 standard deviations. If you study policy, those are the sorts of improvements you live with every day. Promise Academy produced gains of 1.3 and 1.4 standard deviations. That’s off the charts. In math, Promise Academy eliminated the achievement gap between its black students and the city average for white students."

Fryer was so impressed that he said, "The results changed his my life as a researcher because I am no longer interested in marginal changes," and argued it was the "equivalent of curing cancer for these kids. Why was there so much success? These schools focused on the human elements of a school: (1) strengthening and empowering students, and (2) strengthening accountability for teachers.

"Basically, the no excuses schools pay meticulous attention to behavior and attitudes. They teach students how to look at the person who is talking, how to shake hands. These schools are academically rigorous and college-focused. Promise Academy students who are performing below grade level spent twice as much time in school as other students in New York City. Students who are performing at grade level spend 50 percent more time in school.

"They also smash the normal bureaucratic strictures that bind leaders in regular schools. Promise Academy went through a tumultuous period as Canada searched for the right teachers. Nearly half of the teachers did not return for the 2005-2006 school year. A third didn’t return for the 2006-2007 year. Assessments are rigorous. Standardized tests are woven into the fabric of school life."

And remember, President Obama was all about charter schools in his address to Congress:

"We'll invest in innovative programs that are already helping schools meet high standards and close achievement gaps. And we will expand our commitment to charter schools."

The Harlem Children's Zone is a model for other areas to follow because it puts into practice some of the principles that I've talked about before: (1) More money does not equal better results. (2) The goal should be to move every child forward instead of "leaving no child behind." (3) Schools are more able focus on kids' strengths, not weaknesses, when local control is restored. (4) It should be easy to recruit the best teachers, and it should be easy to fire bad teachers.

I love it when good stories are told. And often times, it's good storytelling that makes for persuasive politics. Here's the story of Mercedes Campbell, one of the 1,700 students in the Washington, DC Opportunity Scholarship Program, otherwise known as the school voucher program passed by Congress in 2004. The video was produced by Nick Gillespie and Dan Hayes of Reason.tv.

We all know the why vouchers are good, and we all know the arguments for school choice. Yet, "voucher" seems to be one of the only words coming out of the Right when it comes to education policy. President Obama has already made clear what his policy goals are for energy and health care: cap-and-trade and universal government-mandated coverage, respectively. But he hasn't outlined his plans on education. Now would be a good time for Republicans to get out in front of the President and present him, and voters, with common sense principles and policies on education reform.

Yes, we should fight to save the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program. But as great as vouchers are, if all we present to the public is "pro-vouchers," we will once again be struck down by the other side of the aisle as just peddling "old, tired ideas tied to the past eight years."

So what can we do? We should present the public with some simple principles, and ask the President to abide by those principles:

• More money does not equal better results. Of course, this principle is true of many things government does, but it is especially true in education. Part of the reason the voucher program was created in DC was the fact that DC public schools were receiving one of the highest amounts of funding per pupil, yet had some of the worst results. President Obama might agree with this principle, but I find it hard to believe that he'll be practicing it. We should hold him accountable, and demand specific results: a return on the taxpayers' investment. Speaking of results ...
• The goal should be to move every child forward instead of "leaving no child behind." The premise of No Child Left Behind was a good one: accountability. Yet the means by which the federal government demanded accountability were bad: federal government control of the metric of success and relying on standardized testing as the baseline. The idea of trying to get every student to meet a certain baseline of knowledge measured by test results flies in the face of the fact not every child learns the same way. What should be measured is whether or not an individual student improved from where he or she was previously, whatever level of knowledge he or she started out with. This should be presented as a principle that is a drastic change from President Bush, therefore one that President Obama should embrace.
• Schools are more able focus on kids' strengths, not weaknesses, when local control is restored. Usually when the federal government gets too involved in domestic policy, it snuffs out creativity and entrepreneurship in that area. Local control of schools, on the other hand, means more local understanding of the cultural and socioeconomic issues the schools are surrounded by. This usually means more creativity in teaching different types of students and more options for parents, whether it's building special programs for Alaska Native students in the Anchorage School District or allowing folks like Ron Clark to build academies to help disadvantaged students in Harlem and North Carolina. We'll see how much control President Obama is willing to give up.
• It should be easy to recruit the best teachers, and it should be easy to fire bad teachers. It's a classic battle: common sense vs. teacher union leadership. I'm all for increasing teacher salaries, but school districts around the nation need to have the courage to rethink teacher tenure. Will President Obama agree with treating teachers like professionals?
• Not every child can, or should, go to college. As Charles Murray said in an NYT op-ed in December, "It’s what you can do that should count when you apply for a job, not where you learned to do it." The overemphasis by public school teachers, counselors and administrators on getting into college leads to a dangerous elitism that can instill a permanent sense of underachievement in many students. I understand that putting this principle into practice will take more cultural change than political action, but it doesn't mean that lawmakers can't make the effort to start the paradigm shift. At the state and local level, more options should be provided to students at the secondary education level so that they can start on a path of learning that suits their learning needs and potential career goals, including charter schools (which President Obama mentioned in his address to Congress.) At the federal level, more can be done to encourage vocational post-secondary education (another policy that Obama should agree with.)

Republican lawmakers on the Hill should offer these principles and corresponding policies to the White House and, for once, get out in front and make the President react to something we present instead of reacting to him. Just as important: like-minded conservatives need to be on the lookout for opportunities and ideas for reform in local school districts, and pay attention to local school board races.

Teachers Beat Students President Obama's hometown:

'Painful Lessons': Abuse At Chicago Schools Hundreds Of Kids Beaten, Whipped, Even Choked By Teachers, Coaches ReportingDave Savini CHICAGO (CBS) ―

Click to enlarge

Treveon Martin, 10, is one of at least 818 Chicago Public School students, since 2003, to allege being battered by a teacher or other staff member.

CBS

1 of 1

 Hundreds of students have allegedly been beaten by teachers, coaches and staff at Chicago Public Schools. 2 Investigator Dave Savini continues his ongoing investigation involving the illegal use corporal punishment. Treveon Martin, 10, is afraid of a teacher at his school. "I've seen him hit five of them in the classroom," Martin said. Martin says he and others have been hit, grabbed and even struck with a belt. "He's threatened almost all the kids in his classroom," Martin said. He says it happened at Robert Emmet Academy in November but a Chicago Public School investigator didn't talk to him until last week - 70 days after the case was reported, and not until after we started asking questions. "He holded my arms and he picked my body up, and then he just slammed me on the desk," Martin said. An exclusive CBS 2 investigation discovered Treveon Martin is one of at least 818 Chicago Public School students, since 2003, to allege being battered by a teacher or an aide, coach, security guard, or even a principal. In most of those cases - 568 of them - Chicago Public School investigators determined the children were telling the truth. "I'm thinking that I don't really feel safe," Martin said. The 2 Investigators found reports of students beaten with broomsticks, whipped with belts, yard sticks, struck with staplers, choked, stomped on and pushed down stairs. One substitute teacher even fractured a student's neck. But even more alarming, in the vast majority of cases, teachers found guilty were only given a slap on the wrist. CBS 2 informed former Chicago Public School CEO Arne Duncan of our investigative findings shortly before he was promoted to U.S. Secretary of Education. "If someone hits a student, they are going to be fired. It's very, very simple," Duncan said. Before heading to Washington, he vowed to take action. "Any founded allegation where an adult is hitting a child, hitting a student - they're going to be gone," Duncan said. But that's not what happened under Duncan's watch. Of the 568 verified cases, only 24 led to termination. Records show one teacher who quote "battered students for several years" was simply given a "warning" by the Board of Education. And another student was given "100 licks with a belt." The abuse was substantiated, but the records show the teacher was not terminated. Alderman Pat O'Connor is on the City Council Education Committee. He wants all these cases re-examined including the way Treveon Martin's was handled. "I'll tell you what it is - it's deplorable," O'Connor said. "I really believe that the Board has dropped the ball in this instance." He says this information was never brought to the committee's attention until now. "You rely on them to follow the law, and clearly here, it doesn't appear that they have," O'Connor said. There is a state law that bans corporal punishment. But as our 2 Investigators first exposed in September - students are being hit by coaches too. Paddles were confiscated, and CBS 2 exposed gym security tape at Simeon Career Academy showing a coach paddling volleyball players reportedly for missing serves. Martin says the teacher injured him after he got into a scuffle with a classmate over an eraser. "My back really hurted, and then at the end of the day, I had to go the hospital," Martin said. His mother, Courtney Smith, says he was taken by ambulance and treated for a contusion on his back. It is children around his age who appear to be most at risk. The 2 Investigators found the students with the most complaints are in kindergarten through 8th grade. "He doesn't have very much faith in anyone at his school," Smith said. "He hurt my feelings," Martin said. So why did it take over two months to look into Martin's case? School officials say it's because they have many cases to investigate. But just a few hours ago, an investigator determined the allegations against the teacher were unfounded. We are also told only two students were interviewed. Incoming Chicago Public Schools CEO Ron Huberman is troubled by all these cases, including the case of Treveon Martin and promises to further review them, and that includes the process by which they are examined and investigated. Alderman O'Connor is drafting a resolution and will bring our findings to the attention of the entire City Council this week.

(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)

 h/t Matt Drudge

After a pro-union superindentent and assistant superintendent of the Capistrano Unified School District were indicted last year on misappropriating public funds, voters in Orange County successfully recalled and replaced two pro-union school board members with nearly 70% of the vote last Tuesday. In a nearly two year campaign, the CUSD Recall Committee uncovered "gross financial mismanagement" and corruption, with the help of The Education Alliance out of Tustin, CA.

Two important observations that I've brought up in previous posts:

• The concept of collective bargaining isn't bad, and the future the conservative movement should not be completely anti-union. Rather, we should frame ourselves as part of a "pro-accountability" movement to make sure that unions aren't on both sides of the negotiating table.
• We need further discussion on how to build a GOP farm team in local and state legislative races, even school board races! There is importance in identifying local issues of importance, and local political talent that can be developed.

But now to the real question: When it comes to public education policy, what principles should be emphasized by the next conservative movement? We've gone through battles with teachers' unions, arguing over No Child Left Behind, and academic debates on school vouchers. While discussion on these matters is still healthy, what policy goals should we try to achieve? Let's take a look at the stakeholders:

When it comes to students, the status quo of a "one-size-fits-all" education system doesn't work. The system we have now caters to the top 10% and bottom 10% of students; we do a great job of challenging and supplementing the education of the most gifted and talented, and we have had similar success in remedial and special education programs. But the middle 80% seem to be getting exactly the same education, which doesn't make sense for either the students or the teachers educating them.

At the same time, we have an assessment system where we try to get students to achieve an arbitrary level of success to be considered competent. I would like to see an education system that targets students on various levels, and instead of having policies that try to achieve "No Child Left Behind," we should have policies that "Move Every Child Forward." These are policies that don't look at whether or not students achieve a certain standard; rather, they look at whether or not each student has improved from where they started.

When it comes to parents, it's all about providing more accountability and more choice. While this discussion should include vouchers, it should not be rooted in vouchers. The discussion needs to be extended to expanding choice within public education. While the system overall might seem bleak, individual schools and school districts have provided ideas that might work in other local areas.

What needs to happen within school district budgeting, as well as all government budgeting, is a comprehensive review of the performance of different programs. Each program, no matter how big or small, should be required to provide a very specific set of goals with the funding that they request. If those programs meet or achieve beyond their initial goals, they should be rewarded with more funding. If those programs make no significant progress on their initial goals, funding should be pulled. It's a simple principle of investment, and I see no harm in applying business principles into school districts.

When it comes to teachers, paying them like professionals should be tethered to making them accountable as professionals. Sounds simple, right? I'm all for paying teachers more, giving them more benefits, and initiating recruitment programs and incentives to hire more teachers. But I once asked a lobbyist for a teachers' union what improvements needed to be made in order to fire bad teachers; his answer: "There's no such thing as a bad teacher." Yeah, I guess there's no such thing as a bad employee. Everybody can point to a teacher or set of teachers that postively affected their lives; but everybody knows that there are also teachers that seem to just show up for a paycheck. There has to be some sort of assessment system where good teachers are rewarded and bad teachers are fired.

Should they be assessed on their students' test scores? No. Should they be assessed by administrators inside or outside of the school that don't necessarily know the daily workings of a classroom? No. So how should they be assessed? In the private sector, a senior employee in a certain division of a company usually assesses the performance of a junior employee in that same division. Will there always be politics in the workplace? Yes. But I see no problem with an experienced social studies teacher assessing the performance of a less experienced social studies teacher.

This all revolves around the central debate over government's role in education. How can the next conservative movement help students, parents, and teachers while also retaining the principle of local control? Maybe this is another argument for paying more attention to local politics and building the farm team that we desparately need.

Thoughts and disagreements are more than welcome!

- MM

While all America breathed a collective sigh of relief when Jimmy Carter left the White House, (looking forward with real anticipation to the Presidency of Ronald Reagan which would bring common sense and respect back to government) little did we know that the latent ticking time bomb that Carter left behind would ultimately destroy all that Reagan would build.

Of all the far-left liberal programs and policies that Carter brought into the government, the stealth bomb that has had the most damaging impact on the stability and character of the country was Carter's establishment of the National Education Agency. Little by little over the last 30 years, America's public schools have been turned from expressions of the community's concerns for their children into propagandized, federally-controlled government schools. While the populace still want to believe that their neighborhood little red school house is still the best place for their children, the facts suggest otherwise. Just consider the stories of teachers sexually abusing the kids, which started popping up yearly, then monthly and now weekly. School shootings, which used to surprise and horrify us, are now a uniquely American rite of spring. Half the freshmen in most schools do not graduate. They had no choice but to go to school when they were six, but by the time they're 16 they've grown up enough to walk out.

What do these kids who are fleeing school in unprecedented numbers know about those schools that their parents either don't know or refuse to acknowledge? The kids know that the teachers are not teaching the core elements of education: reading, writing and arithmetic. The kids know that schools are teaching Sex Ed in kindergarten - and teaching sexual techniques to grade-schoolers that their parents never heard of. The kids know that their teachers are reading magazines in chemistry classes instead of teaching chemistry. Finally, these school kids know that so-called educators are using psychology methods to change how the children think - as well as what they think - about issues; pushing a perverse morality that would horrify their parents if those parents really stopped to think things through. Teachers and "educators" are more interested in changing kids' minds away from their parents' archaic principled conservative ideas than they are in teaching these kids about the real, heroic and ultimately noble history of the United States. Public school children no longer learn about the actual words in the Constitution, instead they are told how that the old white guys who wrote the Constitution are the real reason for all our problems.

So, when Obama claims that he has gone to 57 states - with one yet to go - no one notices the gaff, or if they notice, nobody cares. Jay Leno has found a plethora of people on the street to interview week after week who cannot identify countries, leaders of nations, or know about basic United States historical events.

As America's solid-citizen conservative parents continue to send their children to Federal-pattern government schools, they don't seem to realize that they are putting their children under the influence of the socialistic ideas that are routinely and "officially" taught in those schools. After all, children are expected to respect and learn from their teachers. It's been long noted in all cultures that students will become just like their teachers.

When concerned parents volunteer at their kids' schools, they are given busy work
- or they are used as cheerleaders intent on helping the already bloated school districts to bring in even more money by sending their children door to door to sell popcorn or gift wrapping for play equipment. Oddly, that 300 million bond issue was able to build palaces for administrators and to buy "blame American first" history textbooks, but it was just not enough to buy dodge balls for the school.

All the while, the courts have issued one decision after another, building an impenetrable body of case law that increasingly rules against parents having any influence on the instructions of their children - from a distorted history of America to sex-ed classes that include "safe-sex" how-to instructions. It has gone to the point that, in one Massachusetts decision, courts have ruled that parents have no say in when the child will be taught what. In essence, parents are told - basically - to hand their child over to the schools, at the door, and trust that Big Brother Knows Best.

Thanks to Jimmy Carter, we now have government schools which have been teaching state-sponsored liberalism for about 30 years, controlling the knowledge and attitudes of America's generations under 40 years of age. Those public school graduates are the *young people* who believe what Obama has to say when spews his socialism. When Congresswoman Maxine Waters advocates nationalizing an industry, or when Clinton demands Universal Health Care, these mis-educated now-young-adults have no idea that these extreme measures are not authorized in OUR constitution, but they are enshrined as public policy in the constitution of socialist nations around the world.

The ideals of individualism, of limited government, of self reliance and self responsibility are increasingly foreign to our citizens - especially citizens under age-40 - because this Jimmy Carter stealth bomb has, in fact, exploded in every school in America.

Yet, American business which are forced to spend over $9 billion dollars a year just to educate their employees - because those employees, victimized by our bloated education system were not educated - continue to support and send money to publicly funded institutions called public schools.

Schools across American have the nation's citizens under the gun - they take our property taxes with promises of improving education - yet fail to deliver educated citizens. These public schools are not educating our children - high school graduates cannot support themselves or their future families without further training and education.

Yet in spite of the evidence of a total breakdown of the country's educational system, most people will not even consider alternative systems or alternative educational choices. Instead, they patriotically continue send their children to public schools, and their tax dollars to school administrators. After all, that's what made this country great in the past: a good education system.

Welcome to the post-Carter era - an age when public education does more harm than good.

But this is ridiculous:

After the boy misbehaved last week, teacher Wendy Portillo "decided to bring him in front of the class and let the other kids tell him what they didn't like about him, kind of ridiculed him," Michelle Steele, a police spokeswoman, tells the Palm Beach Post.

The newspaper says students then voted 14-2 in favor of having the boy removed from Portillo's classroom.

Actually, that title is grossly unfair. This is the sort of thing Mao did, not Hitler. The whole "voting out" business is also a gruesome example of totalitarian Democracy. For shame. I know teachers are Leftists, but when they start acting like commissars, matters have been carried too far.