But conscience asks the question,  ‘Is it right?’ 

January 15, 2018

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

JPGP reader Charles Miller, a great Texas education reformer that we lost in 2017, authored one of my favorite guest posts back in 2010, reprinted below. Miller rose to the defense of the DC Opportunity Scholarship program during the days in which the Obama administration was attempting to kill it. Miller quoted the great Martin Luther King Jr. in defense of the program, making it an opportunity to remember both men. Happy trails Charles, and thank you for taking time to share your wisdom to the next generation:

Early in the Obama administration I was surprised and deeply disappointed by their decision to kill the “DC Voucher” Program.  I wrote most of the piece below at that time and the decision brought me back into the public K-12 debate.  The U.S. Senate recently voted 55-42 to confirm that decision, essentially on a party line vote, so I am sending this to go on record about something I think is horrendously wrong. –Charles Miller
————————————————————————————————————————————————–
April 4, 2010

What Martin Luther King Said About Speaking Out

“Our Lives Begin to End the Day We Become Silent About Things That Matter”
(Martin Luther King)

The Obama administration, through stimulus funding, the Race to the Top program, its presentation of budgets and proposals for reauthorization of NCLB/ESEA , has moved fast and furiously in the public education policy arena.  It seems very unlikely to me that high aspirations—and hasty action— equate to effective public policy.  In fact, these efforts seem to amount quite clearly to an overreach–strategically, systemically, politically, and culturally

However, what bothers me the most personally is what I consider the most unprincipled action in public education policy since the existence of segregated schools:  The willful decision by the Obama administration, supported by the Democrats in Congress, to kill the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, also called “D.C. Vouchers”

The Obama administration has tied its education policy declarations to a mantra of being non-political and non-partisan, choosing instead a policy focus only on “what works”.  This principle has been repeated incessantly.

However, the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP) is a successful program.

The Department of Education’s official evaluation using rigorous “gold standard” experimental evaluations determined that the OSP has produced significant achievement gains.

The OSP is serving those families and children most in need in one of the worst school districts in America.  Average income of participating families  is less than $24,000 annually and more than 85% of participating students would otherwise be attending a failing school under NCLB guidelines.

D.C. residents polled by three unaffiliated firms in ’07, ’08, and ’09 showed between 66 and 75% support for the OSP.  The D.C. superintendent and the Mayor support the program.

The decision to kill the program is contradictory to anything the administration claims to be its guiding principle.   The cost of the successful OSP is financially very small by comparison to any K-12 standard while at the same time there has been a gigantic increase in education spending nationally— to support status quo systems which are widely considered failures. Strong evidence of success, academically and financially, clearly makes the decision to kill OSP unprincipled.

The reason for killing OSP is the intense opposition of national teachers unions to a voucher program of any kind, anywhere, anytime—even if it is academically successful, financially responsible and so popular with the community served that there are long waiting lists.

If this successful program had been able to be replicated—a fear obviously driving the decision to kill OSP—the number of students from the most disadvantaged families whose life prospects could have been enhanced could be quite large.  This consideration makes the decision to kill OSP even more egregious, although even helping a small set of students is the principled thing to do.

Notably, from the Washington Post, “Duncan had the temerity to admit that OSP students ‘were safe and learning and doing well…but we can’t be satisfied with saving 1 or 2 percent of children and letting 98 or 99 percent down’.”

The effect of the decision to kill OSP on the lives of the students who could have benefited from its continuation is extremely negative.  There is no way to avoid this conclusion. If a social scientist extrapolated the trends of two sets of students, one in OSP and one in a typical DC school, the loss of life opportunities would be stark for the typical set of students.

The inescapable conclusion I reach is that killing OSP is a despicable and unconscionable decision made for political purposes and with cynical disregard for the lives of the children affected.  “Obama could have stood up for these children, who only want the same opportunities that he had and that his daughters now have.  Instead his education secretary, Arne Duncan, proffered an argument that would be funny if it weren’t so sad:  Scholarships for poor students aren’t worth supporting because not enough of them are given out” (Washington Post, 3/8/10)

This when joblessness for 16-to-24-year-old black men has reached Great Depression proportions — 34.5 % last October and estimated to having exceeded 50% by last year end.

The other conclusion I reach is that policy advocates or officials who turn their face away or avoid taking a strong stand against the decision to kill OSP because it is not pleasant or not convenient to their own activities have a hand in the ignoble results of the decision.  “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends” (Martin Luther King)

So, for me personally, I can’t justify supporting such an administration or its policy makers even if some of their other policy choices are more productive, nor can I see believing anything they say or trusting anything they do.  It can no longer be acceptable to be principled just some of the time.   No Mas.

“Cowardice asks the question, ‘Is it safe?’  Expediency asks the question, ‘Is it politic?’  Vanity asks the question, ‘Is it popular?’  But conscience asks the question,  ‘Is it right?’  And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because one’s conscience tells one that it is right.”  (Martin Luther King)

Charles Miller

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Posted by matthewladner

The Slow-Motion Agonizing Death of DC OSP

May 2, 2017

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

David Leonhardt delivers what I suspect will soon become standard talking points on the left: vouchers have failed but the more heavily regulated charters have succeeded with the latest DC Opportunity Scholarship Program evaluation serving as the launch point.

Mind you it takes a severe case of recency bias in order to reach this conclusion. Previous evaluations of DCOSP found a very large high-school graduation rate advantage at a fraction of the overall cost per pupil, but never mind that the more recent evaluation found lower math scores after year one-FAIL! Get more charter schools in here stat!

The thinking in the piece is both flawed and shallow, but private schooling in the District of Columbia is in fact in a death spiral, and one of our tribe’s own making. The Urban Institute has been tracking private school enrollment in DC, and it has been in steep decline despite the existence of OSP. OSP in short is far too weak of a policy to compete against DC’s charter school law.

The Opportunity Scholarship Program lacks crucial features that would give it a chance to compete. First and foremost DC charter schools have higher and far more reliable per pupil funding. The reliable part in the long run outranks the amounts in importance. DC OSP budgets have been a political football over the years. You would not only be nuts to start a private school in preference to a charter in DC, the finances have given hard nudges for many private schools to convert into charters-which has in fact happened.

Second charter and district school funding in DC is universal. Donald Trump can send his son to a district or charter school in DC and no one would blink. For some reason however DC OSP is limited to only a small number of low-income families on the basis of a continually imperiled appropriation. Stare long and hard at the above chart if you’d like to see how this strategy works out politically over time, but self-marginalization looks pretty accurate term to these eyes.

Let’s imagine a counter-factual in which a wiser Congress had created a DC Opportunity Scholarship program with a dedicated funding stream, had equalized funding per pupil across schooling sectors, and had reflected equity concerns with larger scholarships for low-income families rather than a self-marginalizing means test. I’m willing to guess that the trends would look a bit different than:

If we had this wiser Congress, DC parents would be in charge of what sort of schools survived and thrived in the District. If parents chose to shutter private schools under such a set of circumstances, you would hear no complaint from me. With our current set of policies, it should be obvious that a charter sector with more secure, more generous and universal funding has been and will continue to crush a sector with politically insecure, less generous and very limited funding. Meanwhile back at DCPS, the district continues to produce Detroit-like results for low-income kids despite enormous resources.

Now some of our Congressional Olympians would like to bring their wise and benevolent private choice policy making to the rest of the country. Pay no attention to the complete hash Congress has made of DC OSP for the last decade-this time it is going to work out swell. Congress has unwittingly presided over the extinction of the private school sector in their own city and either did not care or did not notice. Call me a cynic, but skepticism seems abundantly warranted regarding wide-ranging federal adventures into private choice policy.

Congressional supporters of parental choice who want to !do something!  should start by fixing OSP before it is too late. Show some success in crawling before you attempt to run a marathon, please.

 

 

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Posted by matthewladner

Policymakers are Doing their Part to Kill Private Education in DC

December 30, 2015

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

I’ve been taking a close look at DC education, and I must say I’ve learned a lot- both good and bad. One of the bad things would be these charts from the Urban Institute showing that private schools are going the way of the Dodo in the District of Columbia. K-5 is above and grades 6-8 below:

 

A couple of notes: we’ve known for some time that charter schools hit private schools harder than districts- and well here you have it again. Also note that the collapse comes in spite of the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program starting in 2004. DC’s charter school law effectively operates as a universal school choice program that reliably delivers more than $14k in funding to all comers, but limits the universe of schools to young and/or startup schools.

Now mind you, this is less than half the revenue per pupil in the District of Columbia Public Schools (traditional district-see Census Bureau second bullet Tab 11) and they get better academic results than the district at this lower cost. Bully for them. The law of unintended consequences however is a cruel mistress and she has been whipping DC private schools with a bloody cat o’nine tails.

No but you can have this…

The DC Opportunity Scholarship program meanwhile only offers a maximum of $8,381 per child for students in K-8, and unless it is both reauthorized and redesigned one cannot help but wonder if there will be many private schools for these students to attend in the years ahead. Please someone explain to me how it makes sense for a charter school law to operate as a defacto universal choice program at $14k per child, while the private choice program offers substantially less per child and only to poor children. The Urban Institute data clearly indicates that this is a recipe for extinction of the private school sector outside of elite institutions. To put matters bluntly- who in their right mind would seek to open a private school in preference to a charter school in DC under this system of finance? Did you miss the part where private schools have been dropping like flies while charter schools proliferate? The funding for charters is large, universally available and reliable. The funding for DC Opportunity Scholarships is small, restricted and uncertain.

It’s little wonder why a number of D.C. Catholic schools gave up the ghost a few years ago and converted into charter schools. The school financing system practically clubbed them over the head. I’d like to invite my friends from the pro-means testing wing of the private choice movement to reflect upon the viability of supporting DC style scholarship programs when those programs must compete with defacto universal choice programs with far greater funding. Who wins that battle? Sadly the universal program restricts eligibility to young/startup schools with limited curricular diversity- how does this make sense? If parents decide to extinguish private schools as a result of a remotely equitable competition, you won’t see me shedding any tears. Our currently policies however make it look like we are out to quash private schools kind of like, well, this:

 

 

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Posted by matthewladner

Wolf and McShane in NRO

February 1, 2013

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

A few years ago, a rookie quarterback named Michael Bishop was brought into a game to perform a last second desperation bomb before the end of the half. It was his first pass as an NFL player, and against the odds it resulted in a long touchdown. Commenting on the pass for ESPN, Chris Berman said something to the effect of “Completion rate-100%. Pass to touchdown ration also 100%. QB Rating = INFINITY!!!!!”

This came to mind when reading this great piece by Wolf and McShane in that had Congress redirected money from the bloated and ineffectual DCPS for the Opportunity Scholarship Program, then  the cost of the program would have been nothing and the benefits substantial, meaning ROI = INFINITY!!!”

!!!BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!

[Note: This is based on their peer reviewed article that is in the current issue of Education Finance and Policy.]

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Posted by matthewladner

Is the Obama Administration Smarter than a Hamster?

April 16, 2012

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

In the Simpson’s episode Duffless Lisa decides to conduct an experiment to determine whether her brother Bart is smarter than a hamster:

Is the Obama administration smarter than a hamster? The Washington Post editorial board leaves some room for doubt as it pertains to the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program. The administration seems willing to not only play games with the lives of students, but also to raise questions regarding their trustworthiness in budget negotiations with Congress.

Zzzsztzz Ow!! Zzzstzz Ow!! Zzzstzz Ow!!

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Posted by matthewladner

Three Down, Four to Go

April 14, 2011

Will Greg choose this one?

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

The DC Opportunity Scholarship Program has officially been reauthorized! Combined with the new Colorado voucher program, and the new Arizona ESA program, Greg has 3 of his required 7 new programs/program expansions.

Stay tuned for further developments…

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Posted by matthewladner

Big Day for Parental Choice

March 31, 2011

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

Yesterday the Indiana House passed  a bill to create what seems likely to become the nation’s largest school voucher program, and to improve and expand their preexisting tuition tax credit law. On the same day, the United States House voted to reauthorize the DC Opportunity Scholarship program.

Indiana is poised to do something very special. Under the leadership of Governor Daniels and Superintendent Bennett, they are on the cusp of pushing through major Florida reforms: transparency with teeth (A-F school grading), action against social promotion and parental choice. The rest of us are going to have to pick up our games to try to keep pace.

The long-suffering DC Opportunity Scholarship Program children have suffered through the trials of Job. Kudos to Speaker Boehner for putting his back into delivering a happy ending for these kids!

Hold tight reform fans…the best is yet to come.

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Posted by matthewladner

Conscience Asks the Question, ‘Is it Right?’

April 9, 2010

 

gty_martin_luther_king_nt_130823_16x9_992

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

Charles Miller, former Chairman of the University of Texas Board of Regents, sent out the following email to hundreds of people on Easter Sunday, which was also the 42nd anniversary of the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. We reprint the email here with Mr. Miller’s permission:

Early in the Obama administration I was surprised and deeply disappointed by their decision to kill the “DC Voucher” Program.  I wrote most of the piece below at that time and the decision brought me back into the public K-12 debate.  The U.S. Senate recently voted 55-42 to confirm that decision, essentially on a party line vote, so I am sending this to go on record about something I think is horrendously wrong. –Charles Miller
————————————————————————————————————————————————–
April 4, 2010

What Martin Luther King Said About Speaking Out

“Our Lives Begin to End the Day We Become Silent About Things That Matter”
(Martin Luther King)

The Obama administration, through stimulus funding, the Race to the Top program, its presentation of budgets and proposals for reauthorization of NCLB/ESEA , has moved fast and furiously in the public education policy arena.  It seems very unlikely to me that high aspirations—and hasty action— equate to effective public policy.  In fact, these efforts seem to amount quite clearly to an overreach–strategically, systemically, politically, and culturally

However, what bothers me the most personally is what I consider the most unprincipled action in public education policy since the existence of segregated schools:  The willful decision by the Obama administration, supported by the Democrats in Congress, to kill the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, also called “D.C. Vouchers”

The Obama administration has tied its education policy declarations to a mantra of being non-political and non-partisan, choosing instead a policy focus only on “what works”.  This principle has been repeated incessantly.

However, the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP) is a successful program.

The Department of Education’s official evaluation using rigorous “gold standard” experimental evaluations determined that the OSP has produced significant achievement gains.

The OSP is serving those families and children most in need in one of the worst school districts in America.  Average income of participating families  is less than $24,000 annually and more than 85% of participating students would otherwise be attending a failing school under NCLB guidelines.

D.C. residents polled by three unaffiliated firms in ’07, ’08, and ’09 showed between 66 and 75% support for the OSP.  The D.C. superintendent and the Mayor support the program.

The decision to kill the program is contradictory to anything the administration claims to be its guiding principle.   The cost of the successful OSP is financially very small by comparison to any K-12 standard while at the same time there has been a gigantic increase in education spending nationally— to support status quo systems which are widely considered failures. Strong evidence of success, academically and financially, clearly makes the decision to kill OSP unprincipled.

The reason for killing OSP is the intense opposition of national teachers unions to a voucher program of any kind, anywhere, anytime—even if it is academically successful, financially responsible and so popular with the community served that there are long waiting lists.

If this successful program had been able to be replicated—a fear obviously driving the decision to kill OSP—the number of students from the most disadvantaged families whose life prospects could have been enhanced could be quite large.  This consideration makes the decision to kill OSP even more egregious, although even helping a small set of students is the principled thing to do.

Notably, from the Washington Post, “Duncan had the temerity to admit that OSP students ‘were safe and learning and doing well…but we can’t be satisfied with saving 1 or 2 percent of children and letting 98 or 99 percent down’.”

The effect of the decision to kill OSP on the lives of the students who could have benefited from its continuation is extremely negative.  There is no way to avoid this conclusion. If a social scientist extrapolated the trends of two sets of students, one in OSP and one in a typical DC school, the loss of life opportunities would be stark for the typical set of students.

The inescapable conclusion I reach is that killing OSP is a despicable and unconscionable decision made for political purposes and with cynical disregard for the lives of the children affected.  “Obama could have stood up for these children, who only want the same opportunities that he had and that his daughters now have.  Instead his education secretary, Arne Duncan, proffered an argument that would be funny if it weren’t so sad:  Scholarships for poor students aren’t worth supporting because not enough of them are given out” (Washington Post, 3/8/10)

This when joblessness for 16-to-24-year-old black men has reached Great Depression proportions — 34.5 % last October and estimated to having exceeded 50% by last year end.

The other conclusion I reach is that policy advocates or officials who turn their face away or avoid taking a strong stand against the decision to kill OSP because it is not pleasant or not convenient to their own activities have a hand in the ignoble results of the decision.  “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends” (Martin Luther King)

So, for me personally, I can’t justify supporting such an administration or its policy makers even if some of their other policy choices are more productive, nor can I see believing anything they say or trusting anything they do.  It can no longer be acceptable to be principled just some of the time.   No Mas.

“Cowardice asks the question, ‘Is it safe?’  Expediency asks the question, ‘Is it politic?’  Vanity asks the question, ‘Is it popular?’  But conscience asks the question,  ‘Is it right?’  And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because one’s conscience tells one that it is right.”  (Martin Luther King)

Charles Miller

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Posted by matthewladner

WSJ Video on DC Vouchers

March 11, 2009

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

Check it out.

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Posted by matthewladner

Save the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program

February 26, 2009

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

The Wall Street Journal weighs in here.

Coulson in the New York Post.

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Posted by matthewladner

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