Thomas B Fordham Institute - Advancing Educational Excellence

Santorum lends extremes to a movement that should find a center

yes Adam Emerson / February 21, 2012

The GOP presidential hopeful is both a blessing and a curse for home-schooling advocates.  Photo by Marc Nozell

The spotlight shining on Rick Santorum’s educational philosophy is both a blessing and a curse for home-schooling parents and their advocates. As the Los Angeles Times noted over the weekend, the Republican presidential hopeful has emerged as the most prominent home schooler in America, a fact that gives momentum to a movement that is growing in popularity to include, by some estimates, nearly two million people nationwide. But the same story also identified Santorum as the GOP leader who “bashes public schools” and disparages the government’s hand in keeping education mired in the Industrial Age.  

A greater range of home-school practitioners is making it harder to draw broad conclusions about the movement, but most commentators and journalists still see it far enough outside the mainstream to develop anything more than a caricature. Hence, readers end up with nonsense like that from Dana Goldstein, who writes in Slate that liberals who home school their children are violating their own progressive values by sowing distrust in public institutions. But however unreasonable it might be for Goldstein to draw upon extremes, Santorum’s weekend jeremiad only invites a similar inquisition.

That’s unfortunate for a home-schooling movement that demands more

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Santorum lends extremes to a movement that should find a center

A price tag on misbehavior? An embattled Chicago charter network isn’t alone

yes Adam Emerson / February 16, 2012

A high-performing charter network in Chicago cherished by Mayor Rahm Emanuel got some lowbrow attention this week. The city’s esteemed Noble Network of Charter Schools has been charging fees of children who rack up a sizable share of demerits, and a group that would never be confused as a friend of charters and choice thought it would bring some attention to the practice. The Chicago media have lapped it up, mocking Emanuel’s previous reference to the school’s “secret sauce” for student success while pointing now to evidence that Noble is nickel-and-diming poor kids. But a cursory search through any number of Catholic school codes of conduct shows that Noble’s policies aren’t so extraordinary.

A cursory search through Catholic school codes of conduct shows that Noble’s policies aren’t so extraordinary.

Let’s set aside the fees for a moment and consider the “sauce” that makes up this particular charter network. State achievement test data show that Noble beats the public school test score average. Families have lined up for entry and the school has a long waiting list, despite – or maybe because of – its strict disciplinary policies. It boasts a 90 percent graduation rate, compared to 54 percent for Chicago Public Schools, and 91 percent of its graduating seniors go on to college.

It also puts a price tag on misbehavior. The student who collects four demerits in two weeks will be sent to detention and charged $5. Twelve detentions require a behavior modification class that costs $140. A group called Parents United for Responsible Education, or PURE, tallied all the fees

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A price tag on misbehavior? An embattled Chicago charter network isn’t alone

Adam explains voucher cuts on WSJ.com

yes Tyson Eberhardt / February 15, 2012

As Adam wrote on Monday, the budget proposal that President Obama released this week zeroes out federal support for the D.C Opportunity Scholarship Program, backtracking on a budget deal the White House made with House Speaker John Boehner last year. Yesterday, the Choice Words editor explained Obama's decision and what it means for school choice in a WSJ.com interview, which you can stream below:

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Adam explains voucher cuts on WSJ.com

A bill targets the charter inequities wrought by political compromise

yes Adam Emerson / February 14, 2012

Maybe now’s not the time for charter schools in Florida to ask for parity in funding, but it’s unlikely that a move to seek local revenues from school districts would be welcome in even the best of times.

The passions stirred by a legislative effort in the Sunshine State to direct local tax revenues to charter schools show just how hard it is for charters to find equity in school systems that rely on property taxes to fund most of their needs. A Florida senate bill would make it mandatory for districts to share as much as $140 million in local tax revenues with charters on a per-pupil basis for construction and renovation. State law currently allows districts to voluntarily share that money. Not surprisingly, few volunteer.

A senate education committee passed the bill recently along party lines, and the reaction from school districts and newspaper editorial boards was apoplectic. “Wait. Rewind,” read the Orlando Sentinel editorial page. “Didn’t charter school prophets pledge to do more with less? Wasn’t less regulation supposed to deliver greater efficiency?”

The charter school must pledge to do more while others determine how much less it’ll get.

Yet it’s the charter school that must pledge to do more while others determine how much less it’ll get. A report released last week from Florida TaxWatch, an independent think tank and government watchdog, found that the state’s 517 charter schools perform their work with about 70 cents on every public school dollar. Some charters are able to access the state capital outlays that districts receive

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A bill targets the charter inequities wrought by political compromise