(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)
I double dare Congressional opponents of the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program to watch this video to the end.
The aspirational ideals of the Democratic party, or for that matter any decent person, simply cannot be reconciled with the filthy reality of repealing the program.
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vouchers | Tagged: DC Opportunity Scholarships, Juan Williams | 
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Posted by matthewladner
I know, I know. I’ve been writing a lot recently about special ed vouchers. But if you’ve missed it or are just looking for a convenient one-stop place to get the latest info, arguments, and evidence on special ed vouchers, check out the piece Stuart Buck and I wrote for the current issue of Education Next. It’s filled with links, so it should be a useful resource for anyone interested in special ed vouchers.
Leave a Comment » | special ed, vouchers | Tagged: Jay Greene, Jay P. Greene, McKay, special ed | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene
(Guest post by Greg Forster)
In the new National Review, Jay and Marcus review the research on special education funding incentives, including the findings of their recent study on the impact of vouchers in Florida.
Financial incentives are particularly important in low-level disability categories like SLD, where a diagnosis is easily fudged. While you need pretty solid evidence to diagnose a child with a traumatic brain injury or other severe disabilities, schools have plenty of leeway on SLD. Some research suggests that public schools use low achievement alone to serve as an indicator of SLD. Studies dating back to the 1980s found that SLD students are indistinguishable from low-achieving regular-enrollment students, with one study estimating that over half the students identified as SLD in Colorado did not fit either federal or state definitions for SLD.
Digital subscribers go here; paper-only subscribers go here; non-subscribers go here.
Leave a Comment » | special ed, vouchers | Tagged: Greg Forster, Jay Greene, Jay P. Greene, Marcus Winters, special education vouchers | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster
(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)
ABC quoted Arne Duncan yesterday on DC vouchers:
“The children who were in school, we fought hard to keep them in their schools. Congress has made it clear they are not accepting any additional students,” Duncan told ABC News last month. “So, kids that were in schools, we wanted them to go. Kids who weren’t yet in when the program ended, according to Congress, it didn’t make sense. … I encourage them to come in and look at what’s going on with the public schools here in D.C. It’s pretty exciting.”
Duncan strongly opposes vouchers and has made clear his belief that the money is better spent investing in lasting reforms.
“Vouchers usually serve 1 to 2 percent of the children in the community. And I think we, as the federal government, we as local governments or we as school districts, we have to be more ambitious than that,” Duncan said in a speech before the National Press club last May.
“I don’t want to save 1 or 2 percent of children and let 98 to 99 percent drown. We have to be much more ambitious than that. And we have to expect more,” he added. “This is why I would argue … rather than taking three kids out of there and putting them in a better school and feeling good and sleeping well at night, I want to turn that school around now and do that for those 400, 500, 800, 1,200 kids in that school, and give every child in that school, in that community, something better and do it with a real sense of urgency.”
Oi vey…
Duncan’s logical flaws smell so overwhelming that there isn’t really any need for me to point them out. Duncan’s absurd claptrap does however remind me of a joke:
So one day a great flood came, and the sheriff went to the house of a man to tell him that he needed to evacuate to higher ground. “No, God will save me” replied the man.
So the storm raged on. The man’s house flooded, forcing him to flee to his roof. Rescue workers came in a canoe to save him, but the man again refused, saying “No, God will save me.”
Finally, the man stood desperately atop of his chimney. A rescue helicopter flew by and threw him a rope ladder, which he refused. “God will save me!” he screamed to the helicopter crew.
So the water rose and the man drowned.
After entering the Pearly Gates, the man asked “God why didn’t you save me from the flood?”
God replied “What do you mean? I sent you a police car, a canoe and a helicopter.”
If Duncan thinks DC schools are “exciting” then why doesn’t he enroll his own children in them? Strangely enough, they are off in the suburban Virginia schools. Admittedly, checkbook school choice does serve way more than “1 or 2 percent” of students.
“I don’t want to save 1 or 2 percent of children and let 98 to 99 percent drown. I am however willing to let 30-40 percent buy their way out and let the other 60 to 70 percent drown, so long as my kids are among those safely sequestered in the leafy suburbs.”
What’s that? He didn’t say that?
You forget: actions speak louder than words.
3 Comments | vouchers | Tagged: Arne Duncan, D.C. vouchers, DC Opportunity Scholarships | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner
(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)
Robert Enlow brings it in today’s Indianapolis Star. Money quote:
Bush argued for a comprehensive package of reforms, all of which were critical to Florida’s success. In his remarks to the Education Roundtable, clear accountability (grading schools), good incentives (merit pay) and real consequences (school choice) were inextricably linked. Without each component working together, success would not have been possible, a fact evidenced by a recent study showing that improvement among failing public schools went from double digits to zero after the Florida Supreme Court removed the school voucher option.
Moreover, it was critical to assign each school a letter grade. Without that clear and easy-to-understand letter grade, there simply would not have been the same level of academic improvement among schools.
As someone who fought alongside Gov. Bush in 1999 as he passed his reform package, I can state with confidence that both letter grades and parental school choice were essential to eventual success of the Florida accountability plan. The Star should consider supporting the whole package of common-sense reforms, not just some of the pieces.
4 Comments | vouchers | Tagged: Friedman Foundation, Robert Enlow | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner
The WSJ hasn’t been distracted by controversy over President Obama’s school speech. They rightly recognize that the real scandal in the Obama education efforts revolves around the DC voucher program. They write in today’s paper:
“The D.C. voucher program has proven to be the most effective education policy evaluated by the federal government’s official education research arm so far,” writes the Education Department’s chief evaluator Patrick Wolf in the current issue of Education Next. “On average, participating low-income students are performing better in reading because the federal government decided to launch an experimental school choice program in our nation’s capital.”
Democrats had pledged that if the D.C. Council supported the voucher program, they’d revisit it. “The government of Washington, D.C., should decide whether they want [the voucher program] in their school district,” declared Illinois Senator Dick Durbin, who sponsored the provision to kill the program. Well, a majority of the D.C. Council has since sent lawmakers a letter expressing support. Yet Democrats are still preventing Congress from living up to its end of the deal and voting to restore funding. Meanwhile, Mr. Obama sends his own daughters to the best private school in the District.
2 Comments | vouchers | Tagged: voucher | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene
Can you sell school choice to monopolists?
(Guest post by Greg Forster)
We’ve been tracking the increasing movement on the political left toward school choice.
Now, Arianna Huffington repackages school choice for the lefty crowd, connecting it to the health care debate by calling choice “single payer for education,” i.e. you choose the provider and government pays.
The association is distasteful, given that the pending government takeover of healthcare is a knife at the throat of our freedom. But if this is how some people need to think about it in order to see the point about school choice, that’s fine as far as it goes – in education, moving to a “single payer” system would be a step in the right direction, as opposed to a step in the wrong direction as with health care.
HT Eduwonk
8 Comments | vouchers | Tagged: Arianna Huffington, Eduwonk, Greg Forster | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster
(Guest post by Greg Forster)
ALELR draws attention to some problematic details in the Gallup/PDK poll finding on Americans’ support for charter schools.
I hate to draw attention to the PDK poll, since its voucher support question has been shown to be misleading in a way that drives down the appearance of voucher support by an astonishing 23 percentage points. But I feel pretty safe because the PDK voucher question has lost so much credibility that it’s not really very dangerous any more.
So back to the charter school question. PDK finds 64% of Americans support charter schools. That’s the topline. But guess what else you find if you look below that?
A majority of Americans don’t think charter schools are public schools.
57% believe charter schools charge tuition.
71% believe charter schools can select their own students.
Perhaps vouchers and charters were separated at birth.
Bear that in mind the next time you hear charters are more popular than vouchers. First of all, I doubt that it’s true – I’ve seen plenty of polls with around 64% support for vouchers. But on top of that, how sure are we that when people say they support charters they don’t think they’re supporting sending children to private schools of their choice using public funds, which is the very definition of a voucher?
Image HT I Think I Believe
1 Comment | charter schools, vouchers | Tagged: EIA, Greg Forster, Mike Antonucci | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster
Economist Maria Marta Ferreyra of Carnegie Mellon University has a new article coming out in the American Economic Review that models what would happen in a multi-district urban area if there were universal vouchers. She finds that universal vouchers would generally improve income and racial integration and improve educational outcomes.
She explains it all in this excellent video:
UPDATED to correct typo
6 Comments | civic values, competitive effects, vouchers | Tagged: Jay Greene, Jay P. Greene, Maria Martya Ferreya | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene
Marcus Winters and I have an op-ed in this morning’s Tampa Tribune on how Florida’s McKay voucher program for special education students has restrained the spiraling growth in special education enrollments in public schools. We write:
In Florida, as in most other states, schools receive additional funding for each student identified as disabled. Often, these additional resources are greater than the actual cost of providing special-education services, giving schools a financial incentive to increase their diagnoses.
The financial incentive to misdiagnose is particularly apparent when classifying students as having a specific learning disability (SLD). That’s because SLD is the most common, the most ambiguous, and the least costly category of special education. In many cases, school officials might simply be trying to get extra resources to help struggling students. But the net effect is the misclassification of a huge number of students as having an SLD.
The McKay program reduces the financial incentive for Florida’s schools to misdiagnose learning disabilities by placing revenue at risk whenever a student is placed into special education…
In our new study, we found as the number of nearby, McKay-accepting private schools increases, the probability that a public school will identify a student as having an SLD decreases significantly. The program reduced the probability that a fourth-, fifth-, or sixth-grader in a school facing the average number of nearby private options was diagnosed as SLD by about 15 percent.
6 Comments | special ed, vouchers | Tagged: Jay Greene, Jay P. Greene, Marcus Winters, McKay, special education, vouchers | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene
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