'Felonious' school choice

When rich people do it, it's called "school choice by realtor." It's the process of choosing a home based on school district quality. Lower-income people rarely have this luxury.

Kelley Williams-Bolar, an African-American mother of two used her father's address to get her kids into a better school. For this act on behalf of her children, she was charged with felonies. Kentucky has taken similar action against parents who have done the same thing.

Michael Flaherty, producer of "Waiting for Superman," talks about how some states are engaged in criminalizing the theft of "free public education."

From California to Massachusetts, districts are hiring special investigators to follow children from school to their homes to determine their true residences and decide if they "belong" at high-achieving public schools. School districts in Florida, Pennsylvania and New Jersey all boasted recently about new address-verification programs designed to pull up their drawbridges and keep "illegal students" from entering their gates.

Other school districts use services like VerifyResidence.com, which provides "the latest in covert video technology and digital photographic equipment to photograph, videotape, and document" children going from their house to school. School districts can enroll in the company's rewards program, which awards anonymous tipsters $250 checks for reporting out-of-district students.

Only in a world where irony is dead could people not marvel at concerned parents being prosecuted for stealing a free public education for their children.

In August, an internal PowerPoint presentation from the American Federation of Teachers surfaced online. The document described how the AFT undermined minority parent groups' efforts in Connecticut to pass the "parent trigger" legislation that offers parents real governing authority to transform failing schools. A key to the AFT's success in killing the effort, said the document, was keeping parent groups from "the table." AFT President Randi Weingarten quickly distanced her organization from the document, but it was small consolation to the parents once again left in the cold.

Kevin Chavous, the board chairman for both the Black Alliance for Educational Options and Democrats for Education Reform, senses that these recent events herald a new age for fed-up parents. Like Martin Luther King Jr. before them, they understand "the fierce urgency of now" involving their children's education. Hence some parents' decisions to break the law—or practice civil disobedience.

These people shouldn't be in jail. They are doing what parents do. They are fighting for their children. Should parents be punished for seeking out ways to get their kids a better education?

Does School Choice Matter? If your daughters are trapped in a failing and dangerous school, it does.

"They are still affected. They still have moments when they think Mommy is going to be taken away.” – Ohio mother Kelley Williams-Bolar, explaining her daughters’ reaction when she was jailed for enrolling them in a school district based on her father’s address.

The power of choice, free-markets in education

The Wall Street Journal recently published a great discussion about free market solutions to pressing education problems. The video also dispels a lot of myths about school choice.



The power of choice is amazing.

Click here to see 10 reasons why Kentucky's children deserve school choice!

Cafe Hayek on government schools

Economist Donald Boudreaux discusses the importance of competition in education. A line that stuck out to me:

"...each government school has a captive pool of students, and that government schools get their revenues not from paying customers but from taxed property owners."

The Bluegrass Institute has long been an advocate of more competition in the education system.

CREDO study finds Indiana charter schools superior to traditional public schools

In the spirit of Milton and Rose Friedman, Indiana recently expanded on its historic school voucher program by passing legislation linking teachers’ pay with student performance. But in the wake of these victories for school-choice, yet another example for Kentucky from neighboring Indiana has fallen under the radar.

CREDO, the group that brought you the methodologically flawed “Multiple Choice: Charter School Performance in 16 States,” recently released a follow-up report which focuses on charter schools in the state of Indiana.

Although sticking with the same quasi-experimental structure, CREDO finds that Indiana charter school students show significantly higher gains than their traditional public school counterparts in both reading and math. 98% of charter schools showed similar or superior academic growth in reading compared to traditional public schools, while a full 100% showed similar or superior growth in math.

Charter school detractors, such as KY Rep. Carl Rollins (D), may now think twice when using the dubious 2009 CREDO study as proof against charter school performance. If Rep. Collins wants assurance that charter schools “are really going to help us make progress,” he need only ask Dr. Margaret Raymond, Director of CREDO at Stanford University: “At a time where there is acute attention to quality in the charter sector, the charter schools in Indiana are proving to be a high quality option for students and parents.”

Click here for the full report on Indiana.

BIPPS' education efforts get boost from national organizations

Two national groups have come alongside the Bluegrass Institute to help bring true education reform, including parental school choice, to Kentucky.

On May 13, Kevin Chavous, the new chairman of the Black Alliance for Educational Options, spoke at a dinner officially announcing BAEO's presence in Kentucky. Pastor Jerry L. Stephenson, an inner-city Louisville minister, has been named the first state coordinator of BAEO, which now has chapters in eight different states.

Chavous, a former Washington, D.C. city councilman, joined Joel Adams, the new state coordinator for the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, to pledge their support in working with the Kentucky Education Restoration Alliance coalition to convince lawmakers to bring charter schools to the commonwealth.

"What we are saying is, it's time for Kentucky to step up," Chavous said at the event. "There is a movement in America to change education. You can either get on the train or you can get left at the station. We need you to commit for these kids."

Read more »

An education comparison that never gets old

Don Boudreaux asks, "What if supermarkets were run like local public schools?"



Read Bluegrass Institute education work here.

Charter schools: What do 41 other states and the District of Columbia know?

Kentucky remains one of 10 states without a law allowing charter schools, "and I think we're probably going to remain one of the states without charter schools," Carl Rollins, D-Midway, recently stated on KET's "Kentucky Tonight" program.

Rollins claims that nobody has convinced him that charter schools "are really going to help us make progress.”

Yet why is it that 41 other states and the District of Columbia -- including six of seven of Kentucky's neighboring states -- allow charter schools while 43 other states have some type of school choice law. Kentucky has neither.

States without a charter school law: Kentucky, Washington, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Alabama, West Virginia, Vermont and Maine.

States with no school choice law: Kentucky, Washington, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Alabama and West Virginia.

Indiana’s frustration with slow school improvement may lead to private school vouchers

WAVE-3 reports that Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels is one step closer to the enactment of the nation’s most aggressive school voucher law. This law would allow parents to use part of the public school money to send their child to a private school, instead.

Ebony James, an Indiana mom, says the change can’t come soon enough. She is frustrated by slow progress of improvement in the public school system, saying, "We've been improving for how many years now?”

James’ frustration is interesting. Whites in Indiana outscored Kentucky by a statistically significant amount in the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) Grade 8 math assessments. Indiana’s poor whites also outscored our poor whites on that same math assessment.

In fourth grade reading in 2009 – one of Kentucky’s strongest areas in the NAEP – Indiana’s whites and blacks had scores that were not statistically significantly different from whites and blacks in Kentucky, respectively.

Thus, while our state wallows along, content with the slow improvement in our schools, at least one parent in Indiana and the Indiana State Senate say similar or better progress to that in Kentucky is not enough. It’s time to do something radically different.

Sadly, while Indiana moves forward to give parents more choices in schools, here in Kentucky we don’t even have public charter schools, let alone vouchers, as a parent and student school choice option. Instead, Kentucky’s public school system seems to be run more to protect the jobs of adults in it rather than to meet the needs of the students.

And, adults working in those public school adults seem to be doing everything they can to keep the system running in exactly that same old way.

School choice programs boasting higher graduation rates

The evidence showing students in school-choice programs are benefiting from the competition continues to mount.

A new report for School Choice Wisconsin by University of Minnesota sociologist John Robert Warren shows students participating in Milwaukee's nationally acclaimed school choice program were 18 percent more likely to graduate than students from all economic backgrounds in Milwaukee Public Schools.

In six of the seven years of data studied by Warren, Milwaukee Parental Choice Program voucher students had higher graduation rates than their public-school peers. During that time period, graduation rates rose for both choice and public-school students.

Another group of researchers at the University of Arkansas following the MPCP's success reached the same conclusion. A report released March 30 by a team led by professor Patrick J. Wolf found that Milwaukee's school-choice program "increases the likelihood of a student graduating from high school and enrolling in college."

How these researchers did it:

"At the start of our evaluation, we carefully matched the entire group of 801 9th-grade students enrolled in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program with a similar group of 801 9th-graders in Milwaukee Public Schools," Wolf said. "Four years later, the students in the voucher program were more likely to have graduated from high school and enroll in a four-year college than were their public school counterparts. Our estimates of the higher rates of college enrollment for the students in the voucher program ranged from 5 to 7 percentage points and were statistically significant in most of the comparisons."

The Beshear administration and its naive supporters in the legislature support a policy to force students to remain in high school until they age 18.

Of course, that is a politically correct, less-risky approach for politicians than offering parents a choice. Yet, the research increasingly shows that parental choice is working not only to keep kids in school, but also to move on to college.

Our education leaders claim their top priority is getting students college/career ready, yet they work to avoid the controversy surrounding school-choice programs -- mainly provided by teachers unions and bureaucrats who are staunch defenders and their fellow staunch defenders of the status quo in the Legislature.

But that's where the rub comes.

If the research shows that school choice programs are resulting in more kids graduating and going to college, but the teachers unions don't want it because they will lose control and power, whose interests are we going to go with: the kids or the adults?

A change KY needs

Charter schools are a change Kentucky needs - plain and simple. Parents deserve a choice and a say in where their children attend school.

Charter school shootout on KET, Part 3

Over the past few days, I’ve been commenting on KET’s Monday night show on charter schools (which is on line here).

One of the more interesting comments came at 41 minutes and 41 seconds into the on line broadcast version when show panelist Phil Moffett said:

“The real reason that the public schools don’t do well now is because there is no incentive for them to do well. They continue to get the kids. They continue to get the funding regardless of what the results are.”

Is this the case in every school in Kentucky?

I don’t think it applies to a few upscale communities where pressure from well-educated parents insures that schools are motivated, and do ‘carry the mail’ for their students. Those parents can afford to send their kids to private schools, and the public schools know it. That creates real competition – and better schools.

However, in Mr. Moffett’s hometown Jefferson County Public School System, and in far too many other school systems in the state, there are extensive examples that when parents are not well educated, well-to-do and organized, schools have continued to under-perform ever since our expensive education reform was enacted in 1990.

But, those schools still get our money – and our kids.

This is one of the things charter school proponents hope can be changed by creating some competitive motivation with charter schools. Competition works in upscale communities, so why not try it elsewhere in Kentucky?

After 20 years of KERA, given the state’s overall generally very slow rate of progress when data is fairly considered, we need to do something different. If not charters, then what?

Certainly, just throwing more money at the existing system doesn’t seem hopeful. We tried that already for the past 20 years.

More education issues in Knox County Public Schools

The Knox County Public School District popped up frequently in the press and in this blog after the school system ended a long-standing student transfer agreement with the Corbin Independent School District in January.

That squabble has now degenerated into a lawsuit in Frankfort District Court.

Now, Knox is back in the press, again, but this time a totally different issue is involved.

With virtually no notice, the Knox County Board of Education voted this past week to merge the Lynn Camp High/Middle School with West Knox Elementary School to form one P to 12 school.

In the process, comments captured in the Times Tribune make me wonder if there is an attempt here to maneuver around state laws regarding such things as the state accountability program and the laws regarding the authority of superintendents versus School Based Decision Making Councils (SBDM).

The Knox County superintendent actually discussed how the merger could maneuver around No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and other federal school accountability laws.

Read more »

Bluegrass Institute on NBC affiliate's coverage of charter schools

Kudos to anchor Jennifer Horbelt of WPSD-TV, Paducah's NBC affiliate, for doing some good reporting on charter schools. Horbelt and a photographer traveled to a KIPP Academy in Nashville.



Watch and read the story here.

Watch my full interview with Horbelt here. The teachers union refused to grant Horbelt an interview, but the Bluegrass Institute happily made the trek to Paducah.

The KEA's probably too busy issuing threats that make cowardly politicians in Frankfort cower at the thought of losing the union's 30 pieces of silver, even if doing so would change the course of our neediest children.

UK economist John Garen on school choice

This is a great discussion with John Garen, Ph.D., professor of economics at the University of Kentucky and adjunct scholar with The Bluegrass Institute for Public Policy Solutions, about school choice and the current education system in Kentucky.

Maybe more than rhetoric in possible spring session?

Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear has announced that he plans to call a special session later in spring to deal with the current lack of a budget.  In addition he is doing a of campaigning to discuss what life would be like without a state budget: a government shutdown.

Beshear recommended to lawmakers that they not raise taxes as well as not increase state debt.  This sounds like a desire to be accountable and fiscally responsible.  I can only hope that this rhetoric carries through to action in the special session.

Charter school legislation is also a possible topic of discussion for a special session making this a potentially interesting spring in Frankfort. Let's hope the state legislature can do it's constitutionally mandated job this time as we pay them more money since they couldn't get it done during the regular session.

Scholarships enable the disabled

During a debate in Texas over proposals to offer scholarships to learning-disabled children, the contrast between those who understand that schools, districts and education systems were made for children – not children for the system – could not have been starker. Note the distinction in responses to the proposals:

Real leaders like Houston Rep. Dan Patrick pounded their desks (literally) and ask: “What about just doing the right thing” for children?

However, bureaucrats blather about money and try to pit groups against one another. They whine about anything but the kids, as demonstrated by the response of Craig Tounget with the Texas Coalition of Public Schools: “We don’t want the public funds coming out of the public school system.”

But at least they’re having the debate in Texas. In Kentucky, the politicians in charge of the House Education Committee won’t even give school choice for the learning disabled a hearing, despite research conducted for the Bluegrass Institute by Pacific Research Institute’s Vicki E. Murray, Ph.D. -- one of the foremost authorities on special-needs scholarships in the country.

Murray’s report, “Enable the Disabled,” indicates that a special-needs scholarship program would help Kentucky’s schools, kids and communities.

Who will “pound the desk” for the children in Frankfort during the 2010 legislative session?