Vouchers and Low-Income: Reality Check

November 10, 2011

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

Have school vouchers moved away from their historic focus on low-income students? The political hacks at the Center on Education Policy think so. And as we know, whenever CEP weighs in, that’s reason enough to check the facts.

Paul DiPerna of the Friedman Foundation did a headcount and found that as of now:

  • 11 of 17 existing voucher programs have no income limits
  • 7 of these are statewide special-needs programs (FL, GA, LA, OHx2, OK & UT), 3 have geographic caps (ME, VT & OH) and one has a numeric cap (CO)
  • Of the 6 programs with income limits, 5 have limits that are above 200% of the poverty line

What do you know? CEP is right!

Of course, other kinds of limitations can be equally problematic. If our goal is to create a thriving marketplace of innovative options, the key is to provide enough students with enough choice to support new entrants – educational entrepreneurs – so we get beyond just moving kids from existing public schools to existing private schools. We don’t really have any existing programs that do that.

On the other hand, even among poorly designed programs there are better and worse forms. The income limitation was worse for educational entrepreneurship than, say, a straight numeric cap or a straight geographic limitaiton. As Milton always said, show me a program for the poor and I’ll show you a poor program. The hard reality is that lower-income people are not the population that throws its support behind truly innovative ventures. They have too much at risk. It’s the well-off, educated parents who are most likely to feel secure trying newer or more specialized schools. (Programs like EdChoice that are not “straight” geographic limitations but shift eligibility areas from year to year based on public school performance are another matter – they’re hugely problematic from this standpoint.)

The quickest way to unlock educational innovation and deliver better education to low-income students is to give vouchers to everyone. That way the innovations will, you know, actually happen.

Since I know you’re wondering, here are the tax-credit scholarship numbers for comparison purposes:

  • 3 of 10 tax-credit scholarship programs have no income limits
  • One of the three (AZ) is a statewide special-needs program
  • 6 of the 7 programs with limits have limits that are above 200% of the poverty line

13 Comments | tax-credit scholarships, vouchers | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

The End of the Beginning

October 14, 2011

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

The new School Choice Advocate just arrived, and it contains a short interview with Janet Friedman Martel and David Friedman – Milton and Rose’s children.

I thought this was especially well put:

We’ve seen uprecedented strides forward in school choice this year. How does the progress of this year measure up against Milton and Rose Friedman’s vision?

We are still short of the vision of a school system where private schools compete on equal terms with public schools. Measured by the fraction of students with access to vouchers, our achievement is still small. But measured by the rate at which that number is increasing, it has been large. As Churchill put it, this is not the beginning of the end, but it might be the end of the beginning.

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

Nominated for the Al Copeland Award: Charles Montesquieu

October 5, 2011

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

As of last month, it is illegal in the state of Wisconsin to go out to your own barn, milk your own cows, and then drink the milk.

Yes, you read that right. The case arises out of the ongoing controversy here in Wisconsin over unpasteurized or “raw” milk. Some people prefer to drink milk unpasteurized for various reasons – for some it’s a taste preference, for others it’s an “organic health” thing, for others it’s just a longstanding tradition of farm life. Personally, I’ve never tried it and don’t care to, but if it comes down to a choice between the foodies, hippies and agrarians on the one hand, and the Heath and Safety Narcs who want unlimited political control of all aspects of human life on the other – well, sign me up with the hippies. (Yes, Matt, you can link back to this post any time you want.)

Last year, when the tumultuous governorship of Scott Walker was still just a twinkle in the electorate’s eyes, we had a huge nuclear war up here over raw milk. I mean, this was the big controversy of the year last year here in dairy country. (Which is why you don’t normally read about what’s going on in state politics in other states. Back when I lived in Indiana, one year the biggest controversy of the year was over switching the state to daylight savings time. No kidding, it was Ragnarok down there.)

Last year they left it that you’re not allowed to sell raw milk. But the raw milk crowd inexplicably failed to submit to the Dictatorship of Health and Safety, and found numerous ways of continuing to exchange raw milk for economic goods. In some cases, you could come do an hour of farm work and get paid in raw milk. In others, farmers would leave raw milk and a locked box with a slot in the top out in the barn; periodically they’d check and find out that all the raw milk had been stolen, and in a totally unrelated development, people had left money in the box. (Perhaps they’d read Matt’s post about this fellow.)

So now, apparently, between one thing and another, we have a judge ruling that consumption of raw milk is illegal.

Worse, the judge has apparently percieved clearly that this opinion implies you have no right to own anything,  and feels perfectly comfortable about it. That this policy, if it were consistently upheld (we will see what happens next) does not merely lead us toward, but directly establishes, unlimited political control over all aspects of human life is apparently no barrier.

“No, Plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to own and use a dairy cow or a dairy herd,” he thunders in his decision. “No, Plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to produce and consume the foods of their choice.”

Admirably clear, that!

In response, I nominate Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu, for the Al Copeland Humanitarian of the Year Award. Montesquieu’s systematic collection of observations about modern government, The Spirit of the Laws, was the fruit of decades spent travelling and studying and was tremendously influential on the American Founders. If memory serves, Montesquieu is quoted more than any other source in the Federalist Papers. In fact, so authoritative was Montesquieu over the early Americans that papers 9 and 10 were composed to answer charges from the Anti-Federalists that the Constitution deviated unacceptably from Montesquieu’s views.

Many crucial innovations in what Hamilton called “the science of politics” emerged in the modern era, were systematically observed by Montesquieu, and then perfected by the Founders under Montesquieu’s influence. Representative democracy and greater rights for the accused in criminal trials were among them. Perhaps the most important was the separation of powers, an idea as old as Aristotle but one that didn’t reach maturity until the Glorious Revolution in 1688 and the U.S. Constitution a century later.

As a critical component of the emergence of this system, Montesquieu insisted that a republic cannot maintain its freedom unless judges restrain their influence as tightly as possible. The application of personal wisdom by individuals in authority, rather than clear and stable standards of public law, as a standard for settling disputes is the jurisprudential principle of monarchy. In the context of monarchy (which has other methods of restraining the willfulness of the rulers) it can be exercised in humane ways. It becomes tyrannical when exercised in a republic, where the traditional social restraints on power that prevail in monarchies have been removed, and the willingness of the rulers to rule by the law rather than their own wisdom is the only barrier to unlimited arbitrary exercise of power.

As Franklin famously observed, the Founders gave us a republic if we can keep it. It was Montesquieu who taught them how to create that republic, and if we have enjoyed the last two centuries of republican government we should be grateful to him.

9 Comments | Al Copeland Humanitarian Award | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

American School Reform

September 28, 2011

“The spirit of enterprise, which characterizes the commercial part of America, has left no occasion of displaying itself unimproved.”

-Federalist 7

“In a state of disunion…that unequaled spirit of enterprise, which signalizes the genius of the American merchants and navigators, and which is in itself an inexhaustible mine of national wealth, would be stifled and lost, and poverty and disgrace would overspread a country which, with wisdom, might make herself the admiration and envy of the world.”

– Federalist 11

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

Jay, Rick Hess and Paul Peterson have all recently made really impressive scholarly contributions that all point to the same conclusion: “It’s not all about poor kids,” so it’s time to overcome “our achievement-gap mania” and get our “globally challenged” total population of kids – including the middle-class suburban white ones – “ready to compete.” Because it’s clear that they’re not, and it’s clear that they need to be, more than ever before.

This is a really encouraging development and a badly needed message for school reformers. There is no law of nature that says America will always be a flourishing and successful nation, and it will not in fact remain so unless we overcome our myopia and confront the mediocre performance of all our schools.

Raising the “floor” is important. But it’s much more important to get rid of the “ceiling” – the sense that in most schools we’re already good enough, the sense that we don’t need improvement. In fact, removing the ceiling will do more to raise the floor than any of our direct efforts to raise the floor.

Here’s my concern. As we move to confront the middle-class white suburbanites with the inadequacy of their schools, it’s important that the message not be “your school sucks and I can prove it.” Not that I hear Jay, Rick or Paul saying that; they’re not. But that will be the cariacature our enemies will deploy against us. We have to take proactive steps to preempt that tactic.

I think we can improve our message by grounding it in an affirmation of what’s best about America. America is an enterprise society; always has been. America was founded as the country that looked at Europe, clinging (bitterly) to the last remaining remnants of a thousand years of feudalism on the assumption that the basic ways of the world could never be changed, and said: “The old ways aren’t good enough. We can do better. We will plant our roots in the past, but our branches must grow upward.”

We can draw on that as we speak into suburban complacency. A tree that isn’t growing is dying; for nations as for forests, there is no comfortable plateau. Nations that seek comfortable plateaus, like those in Europe today, wither. Americans have never wanted a comfortable plateau; we want every generation to be more blessed than the last. However, the data in our schools show that our national future is clearly not being prepared for growth. But this is America. We don’t accept complacency. We don’t shrug our shoulders and accept decline. We know we can do better. And there are models of reform that can unlock our potential.

Grounding this new direction for school reform in the American culture as an enterprise society will keep us from descending into squabbling over whether we’re “anti-public schools” and keep everyone’s eye on the ball: the flourishing of our national future.

6 Comments | politics, school accountability | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

Incomplete Report Is Incomplete

September 12, 2011

Education reform, like highway. Man walk left side of street, okay. Man walk right side of street, okay. Man walk middle of street . . . chhhhhheeerrrrrriiiik! Just like grape.

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

A think tank called Third Way has a new report out, titled “Incomplete,” on the mediocrity of middle class schools. And with a name like Third Way, you know it has to be good!

On the surface, the point of the report is to emphasize that we don’t just have an education crisis in “the inner city” (i.e. in somebody eles’s neighborhood); we have an education crisis in “middle class” schools.

And that’s true! Part of me wants to be positive about this report and say, “okay, people are starting to get that this isn’t just about the 10% of kids in the worst schools.” After all, we’ve always said around here that we won’t get the education reforms we need until white suburbanites see how inadequate their own schools are.

But this report frames everything all wrong. Here are the three “key findings” they list:

  1. Most students are taught in middle class schools (duh)
  2. Middle class schools spend the least per pupil, pay teachers the least, and have the highest enrollment to teacher ratios.
  3. Middle class students are underachieving in test scores and college graduation rates.

The report offers no action items and no conclusions of substance beyond “a second phase of education reform focused on middle-class schools can’t begin soon enough.”

Right! Because the assumption that we don’t need to think about the policy specifics since everything is about mo’ money, mo’ money, mo’ money worked so well in the first phase of education reform!

Normally I wouln’t bother highlighting yet another blob mouthpiece hawking the mo-money line, but I wonder if this is going to be a new trend. A focus on the black/white, urban/suburban achievement gap doesn’t translate to mo-money for them any more, because they’ve gotten mo-money for that for decades and have squat to show for it. Is the mo-money line going to start migrating to other issues now?

Perhpas they’ve discovered a perpetual motion machine. You spend decades complaining that we need to increase spending in the inner city because we spend less there than in the suburbs, then once you can’t say we spend less in the inner city any more, you start saying we need to increase spending in the suburbs – because, of course, we spend less there than in the inner city! Rinse and repeat in perpetuity.

1 Comment | money myth | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

Just Kidding! (Wink, Wink)

August 22, 2011

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

Duncan now triple-dog swears that you don’t have to sign up for Common Core to get a waiver . . .

. . . as long as you can “prove” you have “high standards,” as defined by Duncan.

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/campaign-k-12/2011/08/duncan_states_dont_need_to_joi.html

Wow, I never thought of that! Just think how much change we could effect with that method! And why let the government have all the fun? Anyone can play thus game – I hereby personally offer a million dollars cash to any school that can prove it has high standards, as defined by me.

In other news, the Legitimate Businessmen’s Neighborhood Business Protection Program hinted privately that I’d better join or my legs would be broken, but when the police asked them about it in public they said it was all a big misunderstanding. So I guess that proves they’re innocent! After all, what other possible explanation could there be?

More to the point: do you think people will stop fearing them now? A leak followed by a disavowal is a great way to intimidate people into doing what you want without getting called on it.

Like I said last week, now that the self-appointed champions of high standards have foolishly chosen to start a war over nationalization, this won’t really be over until that war has been fought to a clear conclusion. Way to go, guys!

Leave a Comment » | instructional reform | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

Big Shock! Nationalization Sparks Culture War

August 19, 2011

Paul the psychic octopus sez: “Toldja so!”

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

With the shooting war that’s emerging betweeen Arne Duncan and Rick Perry over national control of education, some of the people who helped facilitate the movement toward nationalization are now saddened to see that creating a giant lever in DC that has the power to impact every school in the nation leads directly to a vicious, snarling political war over education policy, such that education can’t be discussed and debated dispassionately because culturally aliented partisans who don’t trust each other are all too busy trying to be the first person to seize the lever.

Surely no one could have predicted this unforeseeable outcome! Oh, wait.

National control over curriculum creates a single lever you can pull to move every school in America. Would conservatives trust progressives, and would progressives trust conservatives, not to try to seize control of that lever to inculcate their religious and moral views among the nation’s youth? And if you don’t trust the other side not to try to seize the lever, is there any reasonable alternative to trying to seize it first?

And this would not be just a single conflict that would happen and then be over. Like the Golden Apple or the One Ring, national curriculum and testing will continuously generate fresh hostility and cultural warfare as long as they exist. And once you forge this ring, there’s no Mount Doom to drop it into.

See also. Plus Neal here. Not to mention Neal’s eternal platonic beauty queens.

The whole idea of “high standards” is now irreversibly associated with nationalization. Now that the standards people – most of them, anyway – have been foolish enough to start it, this war over nationalization is going to have to be fought to its conclusion before we can circle back and talk about “high standards” in any other context.

6 Comments | instructional reform, politics | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

Carr Makes It 19-0

August 17, 2011

This finding’s been replicated more often than Picard’s Earl Grey.

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

Still clearing the backlog: I haven’t had a chance yet to tout this new empirical study of Ohio’s EdChoice voucher program, by my old colleague Matt Carr, finding that – guess what, you’ll never believe this – vouchers improve outcomes at public schools!

Building on a large body of previous studies, this makes it nineteen (19) high-quality empirical studies finding school choice improves public schools and zero (0) studies finding it harms public schools.

Interestingly, Carr finds the positive impact is concentrated among the highest and lowest performing students. Since EdChoice is a failing schools voucher, you might expect schools to respond by improving service to those “bubble” students who are near the state proficiency cutoff. However, Carr finds the opposite.

Matt hypothesizes – plausibly enough – that schools are responding by improving services to the students who are most likely to use the voucher to leave. Low-performing students have the most obvious motivation to seek better services, while high-performing students are the most likely to have actively involved parents.

I do have one quibble with the study. Matt writes that his study “provides an analysis of a voucher program that has not yet been rigorously studied for its competitive effects on traditional public schools.”

Oh, really?

2 Comments | research reports, vouchers | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

Podcast on Power

August 16, 2011

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

Still catching up on a travel backlog – in case you missed it, here’s my latest pod-type casting module over the inter-net system of tubes via Heartland. Main topic: the delicate balance between truth and power, and how the late unpleasantness shows the dangers to which some education reformers are already succumbing as they displace the minions of the blob as gatekeepers to the center of the conversation. Our old friend Jack Jennings, aka the human torch, also makes an appearance!

9 Comments | instructional reform, politics, research reports, tax-credit scholarships, vouchers | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

Arne Duncan, Suuuuuuuuuper Geeeeeeenius!

August 12, 2011

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

Before he goes ahead with the plan to set himself up as America’s first one-man legislature, Arne Duncan might want to read this detailed, devastating takedown by Rick Hess.

This is pretty much what I was trying to get at in the comments earlier this week, except a whole lot better both on substance and humor value. I couldn’t stop laughing, and I also couldn’t stop crying.

(Although I do think I should get points for working in an Iron Chefs reference.)

If Duncan doesn’t pick up the clue Rick is putting out on the table for him, here’s how his tenure might be remembered:

 

10 Comments | instructional reform, politics, school accountability | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

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