President Barack Obama announced Monday that $900 million in federal grants in the proposed FY 2011 budget would be available to school districts and administrators who work to transform roughly 5,000 failing school across the nation. While the proposal encourages transformation of the few thousand schools that produce half of America’s yearly 1.2 million high school dropouts, the reliance on federal government resources and direction to rescue America’s educational system falls short of true reform.
The President’s proposal, detailed in a subsequent press release, encourages early intervention programs for students at risk of dropping out and an emphasis on college readiness programs like advanced placement courses and dual enrollment. Specific accountability measures include replacing the management and half the teaching staff of a low-performing school, closing the school, restarting a school under a charter’s management, or transforming a school through increased teacher training and support. The President went on to emphasize the role of government in reforming failing schools, while noting the part parents, teachers, and the community can play in education America’s students. He stated:
Government has a responsibility. Government can help educate students to succeed in college and in a career. Government can help provide the resources to engage dropouts and those at risk of dropping out and, when necessary, the government has to be critically involved in turning around the lowest performing schools. …Education is not and cannot be the task of government alone. It’s going to take non-profits and businesses doing their part through alliances like America’s Promise. It will take parent’s getting involved in their child’s education consistently. Going to parent-teacher conferences, helping their children with their homework.
While the plan announced by President Obama expressed a laudable motivation to reform failing schools and lower dropout rates, the continual dependence on federal aid and discretion for salvation from poorly performing high schools misses the heart of effective reform found most often in greater competition and parental choice. Rather than spend almost $1 billion of additional federal grants, states and school districts can encourage and implement meaningful reforms that expand access to good teachers and increase parental involvement in students’ education.
An expansion of effective virtual schools and the use of online classrooms may address many of the concerns outlined by the President at a reduced cost to taxpayers. Virtual schools not only increase students’ access to high quality and advanced classes and educators, they also foster the innovation that President Obama sees as integral to keeping students engaged in academics and on track to graduation.
As the President noted, increased parental involvement in students’ education will dictate the success of any school reform effort. But rather than relegate a parent’s role to conference attendee and homework helper, why not empower families with a meaningful choice in their child’s education through school voucher programs? As demonstrated in the Washington, D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, providing parents the ability to choose a safe and effective school for their children means better performing students. The use of voucher programs and other school choice initiatives also increases competition among schools, which may lead to a natural reformation or closure of failing schools.
President Obama concluded his remarks by saying:
The stakes are too high – for our children, for our economy, for our country. It’s time for all of us to come together – parents and students, principals and teachers, business leaders and elected officials – to end America’s dropout crisis.
Agreed. All of those parties, from students to principals to representatives, should work together for effective reform that keeps money in the wallets of taxpayers and educational choice in the hands of parents and students.
Sarah Torre is currently a member of the Young Leaders Program at the Heritage Foundation. For more information on interning at Heritage, please visit: http://www.heritage.org/about/departments/ylp.cfm
While China rings in 2010 as the year of the tiger, American families and taxpayers might soon be able to refer to 2010 as the year school choice became the norm. Five states in particular are worth watching: Illinois, Indiana, Florida, Virginia and New Jersey.
Ironically perhaps, Illinois is home to the most notable opponents of school choice in D.C. – Senator Durbin, the chief architect of the plan to eliminate the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, Education Secretary Arne Duncan who exercised school choice by purchasing a home in northern Virginia where the schools – unlike those in the District – are acceptable, but who opposes school choice for low-income students in that same District, and President Obama, himself a scholarship recipient as a child and who has enrolled his two children in the poshest private school in D.C. Yet in Illinois, a robust voucher initiative has been introduced by an unlikely champion: the Rev. James Meeks, a Democratic state senator. Bill McGurn writes in the Wall Street Journal:
James T. Meeks does not fit the usual stereotype of a voucher advocate. To begin with, he is founder and senior pastor of Salem Baptist Church of Chicago, the largest African-American church in Illinois. He serves as executive vice-president for Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow/PUSH Coalition. Oh, yes: He is a Democratic state senator who chairs both his chamber’s education committee and the legislature’s Black Caucus.
A few years back, Barack Obama named him someone he looked to for “spiritual counsel.” Now the man they call “the Reverend Senator” has done the unthinkable: He’s introduced a bill to provide vouchers for as many as 42,000 students now languishing in Chicago’s worst public schools. He tells me he thinks he can get enough Democrats on his coalition to get it through.
’I’m banking on the difficulty Democrats will have telling these parents, ‘No, you’re not going to have choice. Your kids are locked into these failing schools’
In Indiana, Governor Mitch Daniels has taken note of the successful education reforms that were implemented in Florida under former governor Jeb Bush’s tenure, and has decided to bring a little of the Sunshine State’s success to the Hoosier State. In September, Governor Bush participated in an education roundtable event with Daniels and Indiana Education Secretary Tony Bennett. Indiana passed an education tax credit program in 2009, and Governor Daniels seems eager to embrace many other reform measures. The Indiana Star Press notes:
The new tax credit scholarship program is important educational news to all families in Indiana. The tax-credit scholarship program came about from the special session of the 2009 Indiana Legislature, and it is a small step in the right direction for school choice for Indiana parents.
The fact is that the program is also a tax saver for the taxpayers of Indiana. The program offers private tax credits to donors up to $2.5 million to help fund lower income families who want to choose a school that the parents feel is the best education for their child.
The tax credit scholarship program will allow Indiana to save thousands of taxpayer dollars that normally would be paid to public schools at a much higher cost per child. This saving to the state is at a time when virtually every other interest group in education is clamoring for more funding.
And speaking of Florida, the state that has been at the forefront of education reform over the past decade has not slowed down its efforts to improve academic achievement. Education Week writes today:
State lawmakers from both sides of the aisle in Florida are already voicing support for new legislation that would increase the value of the state’s tax-credit vouchers, which are funded by private corporations that, in exchange for their contributions, receive dollar-for-dollar tax credits.
Significant opposition to vouchers remains in Florida—chiefly from the Florida Education Association—but a growing number of Democrats in the Republican-dominated legislature and around the state have begun to shed their opposition to the usually politically polarizing issue, observers say.
And while Virginia has always been “for lovers,” the commonwealth may soon be able to amend that slogan to “Virginia is for education lovers”. Governor Bob McDonnell and education secretary Gerard Robinson are pushing to increase the number of charter schools operating in the state – which has a mere three such charters at present – and will do so this week. The Washington Post reports:
Instead of the current practice that invests all chartering authority with local school boards, Mr. McDonnell wants charter school applicants to receive a pre-certification of quality from the state. He also would allow charter applicants rejected by their local board to appeal to the state Board of Education. Both changes would support the development of quality charter schools.
But New Jersey is perhaps the most exciting state to watch in 2010, and may well end up being the unlikely poster child for sweeping education reform. Education Week again writes:
New Jersey, a heavily unionized state dominated by Democrats, could become the next high-profile battleground over vouchers. Newly inaugurated Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican, championed vouchers and other forms of school choice in his successful campaign against incumbent Gov. Jon Corzine, a Democrat who was a staunch opponent of vouchers.
Mr. Christie also just appointed Bret Schundler, a pro-voucher former mayor of Jersey City, as New Jersey’s education commissioner… School choice advocates hope Mr. Christie’s leadership will revive a push by a group of influential Democratic urban lawmakers and community activists to bring vouchers to the eight cities in New Jersey where the public schools are most troubled…
A committee appointed by Mr. Christie to make recommendations on education policy advised the governor in January to back that effort, and to expand it beyond the eight cities.
And if you’d like to put a human face to the power of vouchers for New Jersey students, check out the trailer for The Street Stops Here, which enjoyed a private screening at Heritage last night and will air on PBS March 31st at 10:00 p.m.
Despite the promising state efforts afoot across the country, Washington, D.C. families are still fighting for the one bright spot in an otherwise dismal education outlook: the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program. Perhaps President Obama will see what’s happening around the country – and take a close look in particular at his home state of Illinois – and afford the same opportunities to the children in the nation’s capital.