Double Standard in Voucher Research

Jay P. Greene / January 16, 2002

As Supreme Court justices weigh the constitutionality of Cleveland's voucher program in the next few months, their assessment of the benefits of school choice is apt to influence their decision. If there is evidence that voucher programs offer sound educational opportunities to poor children and prompt the reform of low-performing urban public schools, the "brethren" are more likely to find ways to uphold such programs' constitutionality.

Mindful that the research evidence is likely to carry weight in this important case, many organizations have sought to spin it to suit them. The main strategy of those hostile to vouchers has been to describe the evidence as "mixed" or "inconclusive" at best. Saying that research findings are inconclusive has a reasonable, moderate tone that appeals to journalists who seek balance and tend toward skepticism, even when such balance and skepticism are unwarranted.

In the case of voucher research, those labels are indeed unwarranted, though it's not hard to make it look otherwise. To turn strong and consistently positive results on behalf of vouchers into mixed and inconclusive ones, all that is needed is to apply an unreasonable high standard - perfection - to the voucher research.

One large example of this is "Rhetoric Versus Reality: What We Know and What We Need to Know About Vouchers and Charter Schools," a report issued by the Rand Corporation last month. "For most of the key questions," the Rand authors assert, "direct evaluations of vouchers

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Double Standard in Voucher Research

No Child Left Behind: the untold story

January 16, 2002

"Phonics and testing, we're meant to believe, are an intensive therapy set to turn around laggard schools," writes Stephen Metcalf in The Nation, "But administrators, teachers, parents and children know better." The real story behind President Bush's education plan, says Metcalf, is that "The big players now at the education table, some with a considerable financial stake in the new regime, believe that money is best spent on testing and textbooks, rather than on introducing equity into the system over the long term." Readers may be entertained by the pages he devotes to exposing an alleged plot behind the spread of scientifically based reading instruction, and by the fingers he points (at textbook publisher McGraw-Hill, among others). But they shouldn't be surprised; after all, "to teach phonics you need a textbook," as well as worksheets and tests, all items sold by McGraw Hill, Metcalf points out. "The amount of cross-pollination and mutual admiration between the Administration and that [McGraw-Hill] empire is striking," Metcalf writes, with the McGraw Foundation awarding Bush Education Secretary Rod Paige its highest educator's award and Paige later serving as keynote speaker at a company conference. As for reading, Metcalf is alarmed by the Bush administration's emphasis on phonics and its use of the findings of the National Reading Panel, which he alleges was wrongly presented to the public as an end to the Reading Wars. Not so, accordingly to this screed. Rather, the powerful Washington public

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No Child Left Behind: the untold story

Reform-minded philanthropists need a strategy for education reform

January 16, 2002

Education giving is also taking a hit as philanthropists' bank accounts shrink and some redirect their resources toward fighting terrorism and supporting domestic relief efforts in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. In a commentary in Education Week, the Fordham Foundation's Checker Finn and Kelly Amis express the hope that recession will prompt education donors to focus on high-yield strategies and high-impact projects with the potential to transform the K-12 system instead of just adding resources to it. Many philanthropists place their bets on strategies that Finn and Amis judge futile in most cases - strategies that assume the existing public education system wants to change but lacks the wherewithal to pull it off. Philanthropic gifts based on such assumptions only work when the circumstances are exactly right, they argue. More promising, in their view, are philanthropic efforts that seek to alter how the education system operates by pressing upon it from outside - and force it to change out of necessity - through reforms based on standards-based accountability or competition. The authors identify two philanthropists who have pursued wise reform strategies: Tom Luce, a Texas attorney who used his own time and money to launch Just for the Kids, a nonprofit organization that tracks schools' academic progress and makes it easy for parents to investigate and compare schools over the internet, and John Walton, the Wal-Mart heir who has helped launch charter schools and supported scholarship programs to

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Reform-minded philanthropists need a strategy for education reform

State budgets for education to shrink in lean economic times

January 16, 2002

The faltering U.S. economy has put an end to a decade of budgetary good times for schools, with the recession opening a $40 billion hole in many states' general funds on which schools rely heavily, reports Daniel Wood in The Christian Science Monitor. Among the hardest-hit states are New York, Florida, Illinois, Minnesota, Oregon, and California, where Gov. Gray Davis announced a $850 million cut to public education last week. Belt-tightening moves by districts in these states include laying off teachers, curtailing textbook and other purchases, raising class sizes, postponing repairs, and scaling back teacher training. While the $26.5 billion education reform law signed by President Bush last Tuesday will provide some relief, those funds are largely earmarked for specific purposes like testing and literacy - and implementing the new accountability regime could cost more than Washington will provide. For details see "Recession saps school budgets," by Daniel Wood, The Christian Science Monitor, January 10, 2002.

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State budgets for education to shrink in lean economic times

Using information to enhance the bottom line of schools

January 16, 2002

Data warehousing, data-driven decision making, or business intelligence - whatever its name, it's the latest thing for managing school systems, according to a short article in this Sunday's Education Life supplement to The New York Times. Mimicking businesses, accountability-minded administrators are gathering up the reams of data they collect each year and storing them on centralized computer systems so they can be linked and analyzed for patterns. Such data include test scores, grades, attendance records, and information about teacher certification, student demographics, immigration patterns, medical problems, disciplinary actions, and student transfers, among other things. Once analyzed, administrators hope the data can be used to improve teaching, raise test scores, and deter dropouts (and to justify new programs to the state legislature). Concerns have been raised that such data may be used to take punitive measures against teachers whose students are performing poorly, the author notes, but school systems say that this is not their intent. See "Business Intelligence: Insights from the Data Pile," by Leslie Berger, The New York Times, January 13, 2002.

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Using information to enhance the bottom line of schools

Absence Unexcused: Ending Teacher Shortages in High-Need Areas

Terry Ryan / January 16, 2002

Beatriz Chu Clewell and Ana Maria Villegas, The Urban Institute December 2001

Many urban and rural school districts today face a serious shortage of teachers, especially in fields such as bilingual education and special education, and in subjects such as mathematics and science. To help bring new teachers into the profession, the Wallace Reader's Digest Fund has invested over $50 million since 1989 in the Pathways to Teaching Careers program, which prepares classroom aides and returning Peace Corp volunteers to become certified teachers. In this report, Urban Institute researchers look at how the Pathways program has done. They find that it turns out teachers who, overall, are more committed, more diverse and more willing to take on challenging assignments than those emerging from traditional preparation programs. Pathways participants are seen by their supervisors, principals, and independent assessors as more effective than the typical beginning teacher in their schools. Over 81 percent of them remained in the field for at least three years after completing the program. And fully 84 percent of Pathways graduates took jobs in high-need school districts. The success of Pathways serves as further proof that drawing teachers from nontraditional pools is an effective way of attracting good people to a field in need of new and diverse talent. To see the full version, go to http://www.urban.org/education/absence-unexcused.html or order a copy by calling 877-847-7377 or emailing pubs@ui.urban.org.

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Absence Unexcused: Ending Teacher Shortages in High-Need Areas

Home Schooling: From the Extreme to the Mainstream

January 16, 2002

Patrick Basham, Fraser Institute 2001

Home schooling, the leading form of education in North America during parts of the 19th century, is making a comeback in the 21st century. Home-schoolers today may make up as much as 3.4 percent of the school-aged population in the U.S. and 1.0 percent in Canada. This report, written by Cato Institute scholar Patrick Basham and published by the Fraser Institute, explores the recent surge of home schooling in the U.S. and Canada. (It should be noted, though, that Basham's estimates for U.S. home schooling are a lot higher than those recently published by the National Center for Education Statistics.) He describes the ideological and pedagogical factors that motivate American and Canadian parents to teach their children at home and he identifies interesting features of home schooling families. (In the U.S., for example, the fastest growing group of home-schoolers is Muslim Americans.) Basham finds that home schooled students - especially in the U.S. - are just as likely to be involved in social activities outside the home and more apt to succeed academically then their public school peers - all for a fraction of the cost of public education. To order a hard copy of this concise report, contact the Fraser Institute at 1770 Burrard Street, 4th Floor, Vancouver, B.C., V6J 3G7; phone 800-665-3558; or download one from http://www.fraserinstitute.ca/publications/pps/51/homeschool.pdf.

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Home Schooling: From the Extreme to the Mainstream

Improving Student Achievement in Arizona: A Call to Action

January 16, 2002

Governor's Task Force on Efficiency and Accountability in K-12 Education December 18, 2001

According to this brief report by Arizona Governor Jane Hull's Task Force on Efficiency and Accountability in K-12 Education, Arizona has no time to waste in implementing standards-based accountability. Citing low achievement, the fact that curricula are not aligned to standards in more than half the state's schools, and a system that is "morally and economically unacceptable," the task force sets forth a series of recommendations to bolster accountability and make good use of the additional funds provided by Proposition 301, which authorized a sales tax increase to support K-12 education. Endorsing Arizona LEARNS, the school accountability plan developed by Superintendent of Public Instruction Jaime Molera, the report calls for: 1) aligning all curricula at every grade level to the state's academic standards; 2) implementing the state Department of Education's "Purposeful Accountability System" which includes greater reporting and dissemination of student and school performance data; 3) implementing a statewide program of student achievement awards and teacher pay-for-performance linked to student achievement; 4) turning underperforming schools around; and 5) directing financial resources toward student achievement. The report describes the "next steps" that must be taken - some requiring legislation, some not - to carry out the task force's recommendations. Puzzled readers may well wonder why this is all again under discussion in a state that's already been through the development of sound academic standards, new tests and accountability

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Improving Student Achievement in Arizona: A Call to Action

Ten Myths about School Choice: Answering the Campaign against School Vouchers

Katherine Somerville / January 16, 2002

Howard Fuller and Kaleem Caire, National Center for Policy Analysis 2001

Co-written by school choice guru Howard Fuller and Kaleem Caire, CEO of the Black Alliance for Educational Options, this book refutes ten of the most widely proffered arguments against school vouchers, promoted especially by the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers. These "myths" include accusations that vouchers "cream" the best students, rob public schools of needed funds, deny service to disabled students, and so forth. Fuller and Caire introduce each allegation with direct quotes from choice opponents and then set the record straight. Myth #5, for example, says that "Tax-funded school voucher programs do not improve the academic achievement of voucher students." The authors found variations on this statement made by AFT President Sandra Feldman and others to contradict the conclusions of several independent evaluations of experiments that have found statistically significant benefits for students who used vouchers. (For more information about these studies, see Jay Greene's editorial above.) Copies of the book - a handy and concise weapon in the choice supporter's arsenal - are available from the National Center for Policy Analysis, 12655 North Central Expressway, Suite 720, Dallas, TX 75243; telephone 972-386-6272.

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Ten Myths about School Choice: Answering the Campaign against School Vouchers