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Kudos to Del. Nancy Stocksdale for standing up for some of the most disadvantaged in the state ? foster children. The Republican from Carroll County, a former teacher, recently filed legislation in the General Assembly to make scholarships available for foster children in kindergarten through high school. They deserve them. Everything else in their lives works against them. Shuttled from home to home, the 11,000 foster children in the state ? 7,000 in Baltimore City ? lack stability in every corner of their lives. Many move into the system from sexually and physically abusive homes where surviving trumps all other goals. The least the state can do is give them a stable learning environment.
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It is interesting to see a prominent Democrat like Spitzer pushing a school choice measure. While this tax deduction is very modetst, its encouraging that Gov. Spitzer is supporting the idea of parental choice in education.
In addition to asking for a record increase in aid for public schools, Gov. Eliot Spitzer is proposing a tax break for the parents of private school students. And that's "great news" for Catholic school parents as they cope with tuition bills, said Mary Ellen Salanger, who along with her husband, Matthew, sends three children to Broome County Catholic schools. For families considering Catholic schools, the tax break could play a role in their decision, she said.
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According to a recent poll most Arizonans support school choice. There was no funny business in this poll. Prepared for the Alliance for School Choice, the poll asked if respondents supported or opposed school vouchers, and explained vouchers in plain language: vouchers are ?funded by the government, private organizations, or by some combination of both,? and provide money to parents ?to select which public or private schools they would like their children to attend.?
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If the time has come to acknowledge NCLB as joining the large ash-heap of failed education reforms, the question arises: What now? Ultimately, accountability needs to come from the bottom up, not the top down. NCLB was a well-intentioned but ultimately quixotic attempt at improving public schooling through a convoluted combination of testing and public-sector targeting. Assuming the continuing absence of a renaissance of enlightenment on education policy and federalism, a decent exit strategy to me seems to be to allow states to design their own accountability and sanction regimes through a charter state provision but to require public schools to deliver national norm referenced exams to students in return for federal funds. Bottom-up accountability--parental choice--ultimately represents a far more promising reform strategy: not a magic bullet, but a linchpin reform. Higher education provides a chilling cautionary tale of non-transparent markets in education. Give me (reliable) data, or give me death.
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t's been eight years since California voters decided overwhelmingly to dismantle the state's bilingual-education system and replace it with English language immersion. Although English learners have made enormous strides since then, success has remained elusive for several California school districts. In the past, many educators and administrators have attributed the lagging performance of these schools to three main factors, regardless of each district's response to the 1998 mandate: large classes; low per-pupil spending; and neighborhood poverty. But do these factors fully account for the striking differences in performance between some schools? Not according to the latest data.
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The ACLU and People for the American Way are challenging two Arizona school choice programs that allow disabled and foster-care children to go to schools best equipped to meet their needs. The lawsuit, filed Tuesday with the Arizona Supreme Court, argues the voucher programs violate the state's constitutional mandate for a uniform education system and prohibition against using public funds to support religious institutions. This follows a separate lawsuit brought by the ACLU in September against the state's business donation tax credit, which allows businesses to donate money to organizations that provide scholarships to low-income children. The outcome of these two cases will reveal the future of school choice policy. Although the two voucher programs might fall in battle, education tax credits are likely to survive and continue to advance school choice. Arizona is the center of school choice politics, with one of the strongest charter school laws, both personal and business tax credits, and two voucher programs ? by far the largest range of effective school choice programs in the country. Arizona has also pushed the three choice programs under attack through a democratic Governor, Janet Napolitano. Opponents of school choice have chosen to attack their biggest and fastest-growing threat, trying to stop the snowball from rolling on in Arizona. And since the legal issues at play are largely the same across much of the country, one can say that as goes Arizona, so goes the country.
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ow did our public school system get into this mess? Today's system of training and compensating teachers is one reason. Our colleges of education produce too few high-quality instructors. And because teachers are not paid based on performance, we lose many quality instructors to other fields. William Sanders, the nation's leading expert in teacher quality research, has examined the impact of teacher quality on learning. He compared teachers on a "value-added basis," measuring how much students learned over the course of a year with a given teacher. He found that students learning from teachers in the top 20 percent of effectiveness for three years in a row learn 50 percent more than students with teachers in the bottom 20 percent. Sanders also found that given the same quality of instruction, the Black-White achievement gap almost disappears. Far from egalitarian institutions, public schools today incubate inequality. If we tried to design a system that would covertly but systematically discriminate against the disadvantaged, we would have a hard time coming up with something better. Much can be done to improve this situation. Expanding school choice would give disadvantaged students greater opportunity to learn from high-quality teachers. And, liberalizing teacher certification requirements could transform schools.
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So what is Hong Kong's formula for creating top-performing schools? Basically, the same factors that help produce winning businesses: choice and competition. In the U.S., there are just 19 "school choice" programs in the entire country, serving approximately 100,000 students in 11 states and Washington, D.C. Efforts to expand this are being spearheaded by the conservative Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation, established by the Nobel Laureate and his wife, but opposition from teachers' unions and other members of the education establishment is fierce. In Hong Kong, by contrast, every student has a choice of schools. This is one of the defining businesslike qualities of a Hong Kong education. School choice in Hong Kong is made possible by a voucher system, known as the Direct Subsidy Scheme, in which students and parents choose their schools and the government pays.
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A budding effort to send Indiana children to private school at taxpayer expense got a nudge this morning from a group that represents Hoosier Catholics. The Indiana Catholic Conference?s public endorsement of school vouchers could have larger implications for the movement, which has grown since the 2006 legislative session ended in the spring. Catholic support has been viewed as the turning point for voucher movements in other states. The group, which represents about 767,000 Catholics in five Indiana dioceses, contends ?ordinary? Hoosiers don?t have the same educational options as wealthier families who can afford private school tuition.
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In recent weeks, several prominent Democrats have thrown their support behind education tax credit programs that would bring school choice to families that have little if any such choice today. In New Jersey, state Sen. Raymond Lesniak and Assemblyman Joseph Cryan, both Democrats from Union County, are among new and powerful backers of a scholarship dona tion tax credit. The proposal would encourage businesses to donate money to private scholarship- granting organizations, which in turn would provide tuition assistance to low-income families. Yet another high-profile New Jersey Democrat to come out in favor of the policy is popular Newark Mayor Cory Booker, who sent a letter to state legislators urging them to support it. They aren't alone. Elliot Spitzer, another Democratic darling, and New York's newly minted governor-elect, has also voiced support for education tax credits.
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With Eliot Spitzer running almost 50 points ahead in New York?s gubernatorial ?race,? it seems safe to crown him the winner. Most of us know Spitzer for his anti-corporate adventures as the state?s swashbuckling attorney general, but although he might be bad for business, he could be surprisingly good for kids. As Kathleen Lucadamo reported in Monday?s Daily News, Spitzer, ?speaking to Orthodox Jews at a Brooklyn yeshiva, said it is unjust that private schools educate 15 percent of the state?s students but get only 1 percent of the education budget.? Spitzer couldn?t be more right. He supports encouraging public education through private means, and is increasingly unabashed in saying so.
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Sanford said it's true those with high incomes can buy homes in the district of their choice, but what about those families without adequate incomes who can't buy homes based on where they want their children to go to school, or in the district that offers the best learning environment for their child? "We think that's an issue of social equity, and therefore very, very important," he said. "Bill and Melinda Gates have put $2.2 billion into the small school initiative because they've seen a clear correlation between educational performance and school size for some kids." Through the S.C. Tuition Grant Program, the state already offers school choice when it comes to higher education, offering a state subsidy for students to use at the college of their choice. While the private school subsidy is less, Sanford said it's still an option. "And nobody talks about you're wrecking higher ed, or you're destroying higher ed," he said. "We do it all day long." Sanford said consistency is the key, not saying that it's fine for one level of education and not fine for another. School choice, he said, is a tool that could stimulate education.
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The cost of a college education continues to climb -- and with it the amount of debt that students and taxpayers assume to pay for this stepping stone toward the American dream. Near-universal access to higher education has been a national policy priority since the 1960s. Everyone deserves the opportunity for a college education and the financial boost that it provides, goes the rationale. But few have profited from this educational egalitarianism more than America's student loan leviathan -- SLM Corporation, better known as Sallie Mae. Managing $123 billion of educational debt, Sallie Mae is considered the country's largest private provider of student loans.
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nstead of fighting so hard for the notion that a street address should be the only determination of what school a child attends, we should allow for the idea that parents are best qualified to choose the mix of teachers, academic settings and education emphasis for their children, because those parents know their children like no one else in the world. It might be a particular teacher at another school, a more disciplined setting or just an emphasis on music or science that makes that child come alive to the possibilities of learning. Educators should embrace, not condemn, such choices by parents, because it is yet another chance for that child to grow into the enriching possibilities that the right education can provide. School choice can save a child ? or generations of children ? from being lost in a one-size-fits-all education philosophy that is clearly not working.
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Before Utah?s June 27 primary election, a group advocating school choice ? using public money to pay for private school tuition ? drew up a hit list of at least 11 lawmakers they wanted to oust. The sole casualty was House Republican David Cox, targeted because of his 2005 vote against a vouchers bill. Another candidate backed by the group, Parents for Choice in Education, won the nomination for an open House seat vacated by an anti-voucher lawmaker ? meaning a likely gain of two seats for their cause. Parents for Choice is hoping for further gains on Nov. 7, joining efforts of well-funded and increasingly politically savvy pro-voucher organizations in other states.
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