The ESA took my College Debt Away

May 19, 2013

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

Interesting read in Governing about universal college savings accounts for kindergarten students.

Now if they would simply send the K-12 budget into these accounts with a meaningfully higher amount going to poor and otherwise disadvantaged children I could leave this whole edu-nerd business and open my own Alamo Drafthouse in Jackson Hole Wyoming while producing compilation cds for Rhino Records on the side. Do you think the world is ready for Rancid to cover the greatest hits of Dean Martin yet?

I’m thinking martinis in the mosh pit.

 

Leave a Comment » | Education Savings Accounts | Tagged: | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

Three Things Not to Miss in Wolf’s Post

May 16, 2013

Tyson-Spinks SI cover

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

Jay has already linked to Pat Wolf’s devastating knockout of the special ed smear campaign against Milwaukee vouchers. However, it’s such a long piece (there’s so much falsehood to debunk!) that I want to make sure the most important points don’t get overlooked:

  1. Pat catches the Department of Public Instruction lying about how many disabled students are in the voucher program. “Lying” is a strong word, but that is what happened here.
  2. USDOJ faults DPI for not requiring schools to report how many voucher students are disabled, so they can monitor discrimination against disabled students - but the reason is that state law gives them no power to do so, and regulations forbid them from doing so. The purpose of the regulation is to protect against schools using the information to discriminate against disabled students!
  3. “A statistical analysis that my research team conducted during our five-year evaluation of the program confirmed that no measure of student disadvantage – not disability status, not test scores, not income, not race – was statistically associated with whether or not an 8th grade voucher student was or was not admitted to a 9th grade voucher-receiving private school.  Our evidence is consistent with the expectation that private schools are admitting voucher students at random during that critical transition, as the law requires.”

Pat also points out, against the USDOJ’s claim that private schools in the voucher program are covered by Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act, that the U.S. Supreme Court has twice reviewed and let stand Wisconsin court rulings finding that voucher schools are not government contractors, and students in the program are “parentally placed” not “government placed” in their schools, so the schools are not within reach of laws that apply to government services. In my (non-lawyer) opinion that does not make it a slam dunk that the voucher schools aren’t covered by ADA, because the ADA is such a badly crafted law. But it’s still worth remembering.

Update: This post has been modified because the original version didn’t state point #2 quite right. My apologies!

1 Comment | special ed, vouchers | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

Wolf on Milwaukee School Choice and Disabilities

May 16, 2013

Pat Wolf does a beautiful job on the Ed Next blog of dispensing with a series of false claims about school choice and disabilities in Milwaukee.  You should really read it.  It’s a work of art.

1 Comment | special ed, vouchers | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

Two New Studies on How School Choice Impacts Students in Vulnerable Demographic Categories

May 15, 2013

Race Card w watermark

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

At Brookings, Matthew Chingos looks at a huge swath of CCD data and finds no evidence that charter schools increase racial segregation. No surprise there, as readers of Win-Win already know. It’s been a while since I had occasion to trot out the old race card graphic – my sense is that the segregation talking point has had its day in the sun.

In Education Finance and Policy, Rajashri Chakrabarti looks at Florida school data and contributes the latest in a line of studies showing that schools act in self-interested ways, responding to structural incentives, when classifying students into special programs. Chakrabarti finds that schools threatened with vouchers due to low test scores increased the classification of students as Limited English Proficient, removing them from the pool of tested students; however, schools did not increase classification of students into special education, where they would become eligible for McKay vouchers. The obvious conclusion? All students should be eligible for vouchers – then there’s no system to game.

PS Sorry for the awkward headline – I couldn’t come up with anything snappier or any pop culture references. Uh . . . release the kraken!

2 Comments | charter schools, civic values, special ed, vouchers | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

The Way of the Future: Georgia Tech and Udacity Announce $7,000 MOOC Masters Degree

May 15, 2013

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

Georgia Tech has partnered with Udacity to provide a $7,000 Masters Degree in Computer Science to 10,000 students. Check it out here. At one-sixth of the usual price for such a degree we are officially moving closer to this prediction:

Imagine if students in Bangladesh could earn a Princeton math degree, or a theology degree from Notre Dame for free, or more accurately for the time, computer and internet cost. The marginal players of the American academy would squeal as they are forced to reinvent themselves from making buggy whips, but this is a small price to pay for bringing opportunity to the world.

The only question in my mind is how long it will be until an elite player has the necessary vision to defect from the comfortable cartel. Several universities have the means to do this, and could receive philanthropic help to do so. Attention Oxford and Cambridge: it wouldn’t require an American university to pull this off. A British university could put out a low-cost version of this, and unlike their American counterparts, they aren’t swimming in resources.

Georgia Tech’s move does not qualify it as the defector, but things are moving quickly and in this direction. The loud noise that just shook the windows was the sound of the higher education cost bubble popping.

1 Comment | Digital Learning | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

Clash of the Petty Little Dictators

May 14, 2013

For Common Core to work — that is, for it to be more than a bunch of vague words in a document and to actually change what teachers do in their classrooms — it has to be aligned with new tests that impose meaningful consequences on individual teachers for complying with the New Educational Order.  As I’ve been expecting, teachers and their unions have no desire to be controlled by the Common Core standards-testing-accountability machine and are starting to rebel against it in earnest.  Randi Weingarten has called for a halt to efforts to link Common Core to high stakes assessments and Diane Ravitch and her army of angry teachers are mobilizing against this intrusion on their authority.

I have to admit that I am sympathetic with this resistance by teachers to having their classrooms controlled by a system of national standards, testing, and consequences.  If a giant machine controlled our nation’s schools it might become self-aware, obtain the launch codes, and then….  But I digress.  I don’t want a centrally planned education system, just as I don’t want a centrally planned economy.  It wouldn’t work and it would be incredibly oppressive.  So, I support teacher opposition to being controlled by the central planning of Common Core.  I understand that teachers don’t want to be ruled by the Petty Little Dictators behind Common Core.

The problem is that I also don’t want to be ruled by the Petty Little Dictators of teacher unions and localized public school monopolies.  The fight between teachers and Common Core backers is really a clash of the Petty Little Dictators.  Common Core wants to dictate what teachers do to make sure they are “doing it right.”  And teacher unions resist this because they want to be in charge.

I don’t think we have to choose between these Petty Little Dictators.  I favor a third way.  Why don’t we not have any dictators and just let families choose the education that they think is appropriate for their children?  No one has to tell them what a good education is.  They don’t need Common Core to restrict their choices and they don’t need teachers unions to confine them to public school monopolies.  I oppose both efforts at dictatorship and favor liberty.

Now it’s time to release the Kraken.

21 Comments | Uncategorized | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

The Common Core Culture War Intensifies

May 14, 2013

psychic-octopus-culture-war

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

In today’s Journal, Sol Stern and Joel Klein attempt to sell conservatives on national standards by 1) misleading them about the federal government’s role, both in ramming the standards through and in continuing to shape them going forward, and 2) portraying the national standards as a patriotic way to patriotically patriotize our vulnerable young patriots, who are now at the mercy of the eeeeeeeeeeeevil progressives and their social justice agenda.

Now, what do you think the major Democratic party effort to support national standards thinks of that?

Paul the psychic octopus looks more right every month - national standards are built on an anti-school-choice, one-size-fits-all worldview and are therefore a one-way ticket to the worst kind of culture war.

Update: I wonder what Stern and Klein would say about Heather Mac Donald’s warning that the national “science” standards endorse an unscientific and anti-human environmental agenda?

8 Comments | National Standards | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

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