Jay P. Greene's Blog

(Guest Post by Jason Bedrick)

Yesterday, the New York Times told the tragic story of a student tormented for his ethnicity and sexual orientation who stabbed to death another student who had been harassing him and punched him in class:

“He was constantly taunted at school,” Ms. Hornback said. “I guess he felt his only way out of it was to resort to what he did.”

Ms. Hornback said Mr. Cedeno’s family was not trying to diminish what he did. But she said Mr. Cedeno’s mother had pleaded with staff members at the school for help protecting her son and had met with a guidance counselor there.

“There was no action from the school,” Ms. Hornback said.

Of course, it is impossible to say what would have happened in a different situation. But it’s also not far-fetched to imagine that things would have played out differently had Cedeno’s family had other educational options. Perhaps they could have used a voucher, tax-credit scholarship, or education savings account to place him in a safer learning environment. Alternatively, perhaps just knowing that parents had such options, the school might have taken the situation more seriously and intervened before reaching the boiling point.

Sadly, bullying is all too common. Can expanding school choice options help reduce bullying? That is the question Dr. Kevin Currie-Knight and I addressed in a recent blog post for EdChoice:

It appears that private schools have more robust anti-bullying programs, have students who are more likely to report bullying and fewer reported instances of bullying.

Why do bullying rates appear lower and responsiveness to bullying higher in private schools? We can speculate that when schools are selected by their students, they are more responsive to their needs and to family feedback. We do know for a fact that parents and students who are using the K–12 voucher program in Washington, D.C., believe their private schools are much safer, and parents often list safety as a top reason for choosing a private school.

Obviously, no parent wants to send her children to a school where they feel unsafe, and we are certain public school employees want the best for their students. But at the end of the day, a school system where students are assigned by geographic boundaries simply cannot have all the right answers for every child—and the results can be heartbreaking.

We are not here to pit public schools against private schools against other schooling types. We take a different approach: What might our communities’ schools—whether public, private or otherwise—learn from one another?

There’s no policy intervention that can possibly eliminate all bullying, but expanding educational options would create stronger incentives for schools to address instances of bullying and — if and when schools fail to address it — give bullied students a way out.

(Guest Post by Jason Bedrick)

Florida’s tax-credit scholarship program is the largest in the country, serving more than 100,000 students. Those students tend to be among the most disadvantaged–nearly 70 percent are black or Hispanic and their average household income is only about $25,000.

New research from the Urban Institute finds that participating in the program boosts college enrollment:

Participation in the FTC program increased college enrollment rates by 6 percentage points, or about 15 percent, for students who participated in the FTC program at some point during their education. Of students who entered FTC in elementary or middle school, 45 percent enrolled in college, compared with 39 percent of their non-FTC counterparts. For students who entered FTC during high school, college enrollment rates were 48 percent for FTC students and 42 percent for non-FTC students.

Of course, opponents of choice are straining mighty hard to dismiss these findings.

Samuel Abrams, director of the National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, criticized the study’s methodology as flawed, saying that students who had the energy and motivation to get accepted and remain at private schools may already have an edge compared to their peers in public schools. Abrams said the American education system must be improved by addressing income inequality, accessible childcare and health care and teacher pay in public schools and not by putting more students in private schools.

“This is a solution for some kids, but it can hurt other kids because it concentrates underperformers in their default neighborhood public school,” Abrams said.

Actually, every claim Abrams made is flatly contradicted by previous research.

False Claim #1: Scholarship Students Were More Advantaged

Annual studies by Dr. David Figlio and later by researchers at Florida State University found that participating students were more disadvantaged before entering the program. The most recent study found:

[C]ompared to eligible non-participant students, new FTC students had poorer test performance both in ELA and math before entering the FTC program.

Contrary to Abrams, the scholarship students did not “have an edge compared to their peers in public schools” — they were behind those peers.

False Claim #2: Scholarships Concentrate Poor Performers in District Schools

As noted above, rather than “concentrate underperformers in their default neighborhood public school,” the program gave the most disadvantaged students the opportunity to attend new schools where they caught up to their peers academically (indeed, the FSU research shows that they were competitive with the national average, outperforming their low-income peers), and then were more likely to go to college.

False Claim #3: Scholarships Hurt Nonparticipants

Abrams claimed that the supposed concentration of underperformers in district schools would then hurt those students, presumably via peer effects (as he alluded on Twitter). However, not only was there no such concentration of underperformers, an earlier study by Dr. Figlio and Dr. Cassandra Hart found in that competition from the choice program improved the performance of district school students. Far from hurting them, as Abrams claims, the research shows that increased choice and competition helped everyone.

And on top of it all, the tax-credit scholarship program achieves all this while saving taxpayers money.

That’s a win-win-win situation if there ever was one.

[Note: This blog post was edited slightly for clarity.]

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

Just in time for the Ben Shapiro non-Ragnarok in Berkeley, OCPA’s Perspective carries my article on diversity and community on campus:

The dominant group, on the political Left, learns from these episodes that getting offended brings power. Stigmatizing people and destroying their lives pays off. By crushing their victims, they establish themselves as the people who must be kept happy if peace is to be maintained.

The oppressed minority group, on the political Right, is also incentivized to escalate the conflict. Increasingly, conservative students conclude that they are desperately besieged, and fighting back with equally divisive tactics is the only realistic response to their oppressed state. Worse, conservative websites and activists make big bucks circulating stories of on-campus outrage for clicks and donations.

I dissent from criticism of Harvard’s “black graduation” on the Right:

It was a student-run, unofficial event that took place two days before the official ceremony, and thus did not affect it. Anyone was permitted to attend the event.

In other words, a private student group held its own event on campus, celebrating something it wanted to celebrate—its positive sense of its own identity and achievements. That’s a perfect example of what happens in real communities. It’s no more a threat to the solidarity of the broader, multiethnic university than a “Kiss me, I’m Irish” button.

Thankfully Harvard hasn’t done anything monumentally stupid in the meantime that might make me regret defending them.

I also offer thoughts on how colleges can strengthen both community and free speech. Your free speech in response is welcome!