I’ve created a small portal of information and links about school choice. I hope to expand this as I become aware of more school choice resources and success stories. Particularly, I want to include more information about school choice initiatives in Kansas.
The link to the page is here: School Choice Resource Center.
The “Kansas Political Action Committee,” a group associated with the Kansas National Education Association (KNEA, the teachers union) has a questionnaire it asks candidates for the Kansas legislature to complete. After reading a few of these questions, it became clear to me that the questions are formulated to advance the interests of the teachers union and others wrapped up in — and profiting from — the public school bureaucracy and its monopoly on the use of state education funds.
Here’s a question they asked:
KNEA opposes private school vouchers or tuition tax credits. Such proposals will divert needed resources from public schools. KNEA believes that every child in Kansas deserves a quality public school.
Here’s what is wrong with this question: School choice programs like those mentioned in the question save states money!
Recently the The Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice released the study School Choice by the Numbers: The Fiscal Effect of School Choice Programs, 1990-2006. According to the executive summary: “Every existing school choice program is at least fiscally neutral, and most produce a substantial savings.”
How can this be? The teachers union and education bureaucrats would have us believe that vouchers would kill public education. That’s the premise of the question illustrated above: Such proposals will divert needed resources from public schools.
Here’s the answer, from the same study: “In nearly every school choice program, the dollar value of the voucher or scholarship is less than or equal to the state’s formula spending per student. This means states are spending the same amount or less on students in school choice programs than they would have spent on the same students if they had attended public schools, producing a fiscal savings.”
So at the state level, school choice programs save money. They don’t cost money to implement; they save money.
At the local level, schools districts have more money, on a per-student basis, when school choice programs are used: “When a student uses school choice, the local public school district no longer needs to pay the instructional costs associated with that student, but it does not lose all of its per-student revenue, because some revenue does not vary with enrollment levels. Thus, school choice produces a positive fiscal impact for school districts as well as for state budgets.”
Also, when schools are overcrowded, school choice programs can provide a way to solve this problem at no cost. This is illustrated in my article Will the Wichita Public School District Consider This Method of Reducing School Overcrowding? (The arithmetic of school choice in Wichita)
Why does the teachers union and Wichita school board ignore evidence like this? Whose interests are they looking out for?
On September 15, 2008, Helen Cochran of Citizens for Better Education gave a talk before a Wichita civic group. Her talk was fabulous. Here are some highlights:
Helen (like myself) has tried to get test scores from USD 259 (Wichita public school district), but it’s a difficult process. There’s always a delay or reason why figures aren’t available. But, as Helen noted in her talk, school board president Lynn Rogers and Wichita Eagle columnist Mark McCormick seem to have access to the data. Openness and transparency, as I noted in posts like Wichita Public Schools: Open Records Requests Are a Burden isn’t a competency at USD 259.
Helen mentioned what USD 259 doesn’t: new facilities will incur increased maintenance costs. It’s really worse than that, as new facilities need to be heated, cooled, and lighted. New classrooms, built to support class size reduction, need new teachers and perhaps more staff and bureaucracy.
Here’s something important in Helen’s talk:
The defeat of this school bond could be a beneficial springboard to realizing that business as usual is not succeeding in preparing our kids for the future and we must look to the numerous failures and successes in other communities if we are truly committed to giving our children the necessary tools to compete in a global economy.
Vouchers, school choice, charter schools, home schools are not dirty words. The Wichita Eagle editorial board recently dismissed a group of bond opponents as “you people just want vouchers” as if that was all the more reason not to take opponents seriously in their concerns. These alternatives strike fear into the hearts of educational bureaucrats and teacher unions. Well you know what? It is not about them. It is about the children.
Why is the existing education establishment and the Wichita Eagle editorial board afraid of school choice in Kansas? Their standard response is that school choice programs drain money from public schools. But this fear is unfounded. Recently the The Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice released the study School Choice by the Numbers: The Fiscal Effect of School Choice Programs, 1990-2006. Their finding? “Every existing school choice program is at least fiscally neutral, and most produce a substantial savings.”
It’s possible — perhaps likely — that members of the public education establishment like Wichita school board president Lynn Rogers and the other board members don’t know this. Perhaps Wichita Eagle columnists like Mark McCormick and Rhonda Holman dismiss school choice without knowing facts like this. If so, here’s a chance to become informed.
Near the closing of her talk, Helen said this:
This proposed bond, like many bonds across this country, is a referendum on an administrative bureaucracy that equates progress to shiny and new. And however well intended, we have a school board that follows, rather than leads. The mantra would appear to be go along to get along.
In 2006, Wichita Eagle editorial Cartoonist Richard Crowson received an award from the Kansas teachers union. He’s a “friend of education.” Really. You can read about it here: KNEA’s Friend of Education is Wichita Eagle Editorial Cartoonist Richard Crowson.
I wonder if Crowson realizes the harm that teachers unions cause?
I wonder if he know that teachers unions try to block every attempt at meaningful reform?
Does he know how teachers union stifle creativity in teachers? How they block merit pay proposals, so that the best teachers are paid the same as the worst? No wonder many of the best teachers leave public schools.
Does he know how teachers unions very effectively block most attempts to introduce school choice? (He probably knows this, as his colleagues on the editorial board are firmly against school choice, even though it is a reform that is proven to hold public schools accountable.)
A while back the head of the NEA’s Kansas and Nebraska chapters said “The NEA has been the single biggest obstacle to education reform in this country. We know because we worked for the NEA.”
I’ve wondered why a group of workers who want to be treated as professionals rely on an industrial-style labor union. Some have told me that teachers need to be protected from arbitrary actions by administrators. That might be a valid reason. When an organization like the Wichita school district is not held accountable by a profit and loss system, they can abuse their employees in any way they like. Firms that need to earn a profit must keep their best and most productive employees on board. The Wichita school district faces no such discipline.
The Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice has produced the report Promising Start — An Empirical Analysis of How EdChoice Vouchers Affect Ohio Public Schools, which finds these results:
This study finds that the EdChoice program produced academic improvements in voucher-eligible public schools. … This study adds to a large body of empirical research that consistently finds vouchers improve academic outcomes at public schools. Vouchers allow families to choose the right schools to meet their children’s needs and introduce competitive incentives for improvement that are lacking in the traditional government-run education system.
In Kansas, several powerful political forces align to squash any hope that Kansas schoolchildren may be helped by programs such as this. These actors include Governor Kathleen Sebelius, the chair of the Senate Education Committee Jean Schodorf, the teachers union, and local school boards like the one in Wichita. Ask them why Kansas schoolchildren should not benefit as do Ohio’s.
Recently Wichita Eagle columnist Mark McCormick challenged Helen Cochran, spokesperson for Citizens for Better Education, a citizen group opposed to the proposed Wichita school bond issue, to answer a few questions. In Sunday’s column he presented Cochran’s answers.
I spoke to Ms. Cochran and exchanged a few email messages, and I asked her a few questions about McCormick’s column. Here’s what I learned:
Q. Helen, how much interaction did you have with Mark McCormick during this process?
A. I spoke with Mr. McCormick on the phone probably seven or eight times. I had hoped to interact with him face to face but he was unable to do so.
Q. I read the position paper that’s available on the Citizens for Better Education website. Do you think McCormick’s column fairly and accurately represented the information in your paper?
A. Mr. McCormick was only interested in covering what I deem to be the “emotional” issues of the proposal. Those are the only questions he formally and publicly posed to our group. And yes, I think, considering space constraints, he accurately represented our response. I was a bit disappointed that he chose to parenthetically counter our points with USD 259’s claims that many suggestions weren’t feasible such as nudging boundaries. They are not feasible because the district does not want to make them feasible. Boundaries will be nudged when, and if, new schools are built.
Q. In his column where McCormick presented your response, he countered many of your points using information from the Wichita school district. Do you think the school district be used as the authoritative source for all matters relating to the bond issue?
A. Absolutely not! What about a newspaper conducting its own investigation and research? I do believe in miracles. To McCormick’s credit I think he, too, believes that academic achievement and drop out rates are the number one priorities. My hope was to provide him with enough information and data to question the district’s existing propaganda.
Q. Do you think that McCormick understands the issues surrounding this bond? I ask because in his column Open letter to Citizens for Better Education he talks about “students at eight or nine schools would have to be displaced in a falling-domino fashion” then immediately talks about busing kids across town. Do things like this give you cause to question his understanding of the issues?
A. Once we interacted I think McCormick realized that we (CBE) were responsible people and not against everything. I hope a relationship for the betterment of the children in our community comes out of this. And that McCormick will begin to question some of these “critical needs” in his own mind.
Q. Do you think that McCormick holds citizen groups like yours to a high standard that he doesn’t hold the school district to?
A. Yes, to a much higher standard as far as being specific to alternatives.
Q. McCormick has termed bond issue opponents the “naysayers.” Does this describe you and your group? Are you in fact one of the “standard-bearers of this cynicism” as he has called you?
A. I suggest that anyone unwilling to explore cost effective alternatives is the real naysayer! CBE does not believe bricks and mortar will buy higher test scores, lessen dropout rates or affect the academic performance of our children. And those are, in our estimation, what the district should be focusing on as well as any opportunity that gives children and their parents a choice in how best to educate their children.
Someone I know is running for a seat in the Kansas House of Representatives, and as a candidate he was sent a questionnaire from the “Kansas Political Action Committee.” This group is associated with the Kansas National Education Association (KNEA). A teachers union, in other words.
This candidate asked me for help in answering the questions. After reading them, it became clear to me that the questions are formulated to advance the interests of the teachers union and others wrapped up in — and profiting from — the public school bureaucracy and its monopoly on the use of state education funds.
The questions contain many statements expressing support for more taxing and spending by the State of Kansas. They serve to illustrate very well the biases and thinking of our state’s educational bureaucracy. Over the next few weeks, I want to present some of these questions and how difficult it is to answer them. Then I think Kansans will then know more about the true agenda of the people running the public school machine in Kansas.
Under the heading “Ensuring Quality Public Schools for All Kansas Children”, read question 1:
KNEA opposes efforts to enact tax and spending limitation such as the so-called “Taxpayer Bill of Rights” (TABOR) or “Taxpayer Empowerment Act” (TEA) on the Kansas State Legislature or local units of government. Such proposals will severely limit the state’s ability to meet the needs of citizens and react to unforeseen circumstances. Will you oppose efforts to pass tax and spending limitations including TABOR and TEA? (Yes or No)
Answer that I proposed for the candidate: I must respectfully disagree with the premise of this question. Limiting the rate of growth of Kansas government leaves more money in the hands of its citizens, so that they can decide how to meet their own personal needs. Legislators have shown that left to their own devices, they are incapable of holding down spending to responsible, affordable levels. Something else besides the personal discipline of legislators is needed to control the rate of growth of government.
In the post titled State SAT scores continue a gradual decline, Kansas Liberty reports on the latest Scholastic Aptitude Test scores for Kansas college-bound students. The results? Scores are declining.
The post connects the decline in scores to the Kansas Supreme Court’s 2005 mandate to increase spending on Kansas schools by a large amount. A huge increase in spending, it would seem, should not cause test scores to go down, at the very least.
I have complete confidence in the ability of public schools to squander and waste the money we entrust to them. As the post reports, critics of the increased spending noted that “the increases were so large that schools systems had admitted they wouldn’t be able to devise plans for spending the money quickly enough to accommodate the new funding.”
But the truth may be more subtle than this. Students taking the SAT are a self-selected group: those who are thinking about attending college, and only certain colleges, as Kansas state schools don’t require prospective students to take the SAT. So there could be a selection bias factor. I would be interested to learn if there is a way to measure this and correct for it.