Author

Matthew Ladner

Matthew Ladner is executive editor of redefinED. He has written numerous studies on school choice, charter schools and special education reform, and his articles have appeared in Education Next; the Catholic Education: A Journal of Inquiry and Practice; and the British Journal of Political Science. He is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin and received a master's degree and a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Houston. He lives in Phoenix with his wife and three children.

Money is not the answer

Matthew Ladner June 12, 2019

Matthew Ladner

Decades of cross-sectional research shows a weak relationship between K-12 spending and academic outcomes. During the Jeb Bush era in Florida, for instance, we saw the following outcomes:

For those squinting at your iPhone, that’s a very weak relationship between state spending increases and academic gains. While Florida had the smallest increase in funding, it was among states with the largest academic gains. Wyoming and New York had spending increases six times greater than Florida, but posted much smaller academic gains.

Digging deeper: We’ve seen reporting recently that claims the existence of a much stronger relationship between spending and outcomes. There is this piece, for example, in The Economist. But like a lot of research, it rests upon questionable methodological assumptions. Which are you going to believe: academic assumptions regarding the exogenous nature of court-ordered funding increases, or your own lying eyes (refer again to the chart above)?

· Following the period covered in the chart, Arizona led the nation in academic gains as measured by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) while suffering through some of the nation’s largest Great Recession-induced cuts in K-12 spending.

· The mantra that “money doesn’t matter” also seems over-simplified when examining the international data. It does take money to run a school after all.

Taking things one step further: The Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) published this graphic plotting national averages on spending and how students in both developing and economically advanced nations fared on the Program for International Student Assessment, an international test that every three years measures reading, mathematics and science literacy of 15-year-olds:

Breaking it down: Developing nations show a strong positive relationship between higher levels of spending and higher reading scores. Once countries pass a certain threshold of expenditure, however, the relationship becomes much weaker.

· You can combine these two charts with the understanding that all American states would be past the global point of diminishing marginal utility (the United States is the second highest spending country in the OECD chart).

· In other words, throwing money at American school districts and hoping for the best remains a poor strategy for improving K-12 outcomes. In the end, this largely is a moot point; unless states get control of their health care budgets, they likely will lack money to throw.

Conclusion: State policymakers should focus their efforts on increasing the bang for the education buck regardless of spending level. If increasing spending had a large positive impact on student achievement in the American K-12 system, our African American and Hispanic students would not be posting scores closer to the average scores of students in Chile and Mexico; their scores would be more in line with European, Asian and white American students.

To read more on the topic of education spending, click here.

June 12, 2019 0 comment

Catholic Schools Charter Schools Education Research Faith-based Education Private Schools School Choice

Charter schools without private choice killing private schools in Michigan

Matthew Ladner June 10, 2019

Matthew Ladner

The Detroit Free Press reported last week that Michigan private schools have been closing at a rate of approximately two per month for the last decade. The map below shows the location of these closures.

The article states: “Religious schools make up the majority, but nonreligious schools, preschools, Montessori schools and others have closed as well. In all, more than 200 private schools have closed since 2009, according to data from the Michigan’s Center for Educational Performance and Information.”

Research from the Rand Corporation foretold this Michigan trend more than a decade ago. A Rand study focusing on the impact of charter schools in Michigan found that private schools were taking a bigger hit from charter school competition than public schools on a student-for-student basis.

“Private schools will lose one student for every three students gained in the charter schools,” the study concluded.

Charter enrollment hits private school enrollment harder than district enrollment because it draws heavier from the pool of families looking for options outside their zoned district school. Through residential choice, many families choose to locate within particular school boundaries because they like the district option.

A national study in Education Next released earlier this year found that middle-income families have been losing access to private schools, mostly due to the closure of Catholic schools. The private choice programs in Florida clearly have kept the private school sector as a viable option in Florida, defying a national trend of declining enrollment.

Families desire a wide variety of schools, including private secular, private religious, charter and district. Florida not only has private choice programs, but also has a growing student population and private choice programs, something prohibited by Michigan’s constitution. Michigan charter students schools show very strong academic growth, but a truly diverse set of options as seen in Florida certainly would be preferable.

June 10, 2019 0 comment

Achievement Gap Demographic Research Education Politics Education Research Policy Wonks School Choice

Private school choice in Florida: more programs than rest of American South combined

Matthew Ladner June 3, 2019

Matthew Ladner

I wrote in my last column about a new presentation on education in the American South from Bellwether Education Partners, a national nonprofit focused on changing education and life outcomes for underserved children.

As I noted, Bellwether Education partners tabulated the number of K-12 students participating in private choice programs by state. Florida has the largest scholarship tax credit program for low-income families, the largest voucher program for students with disabilities (the McKay Scholarship) and the nation’s largest Education Savings Account program (Gardiner Scholarships), also for children with disabilities.

Have Florida students benefited from this embrace of private choice?

Louisiana has the second largest number of private choice participants, but a large majority of those students participate in a tuition tax deduction program providing a limited amount of assistance. If we excluded this program from consideration, Florida would have several times more private choice program participants as the rest of the region combined. Georgia, Louisiana and North Carolina each operate multiple private choice programs. Tennessee passed a second program in 2019.

Texas and Florida are the two giants of the American South. Both states have large, rapidly growing and highly diverse student populations, and both states earned reputations as national leaders in K-12 reform efforts during the 1990s. Florida, however, has been an enthusiastic adopter of private choice programs for low-income students and students with disabilities. Texas has yet to pass a private choice program of any kind.

Back in 1998, before the advent of choice in Florida, Texas had a higher percentage of students eligible for free- and reduced-price lunch who scored Basic or Better on eighth-grade reading than Florida (58 percent compared to 52 percent). Both states had a dismal 33 percent of students with disabilities scoring Basic or Better on eighth-grade reading in 1998.

Based on the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress “report card,” however, Florida outshone Texas in regard to students eligible for free- or reduced-price lunch (69 percent to 62 percent Basic or Better) and even more so in regard to students with disabilities (53 percent to 35 percent Basic or Better). Policies and factors other than choice programs obviously influence these outcomes, but disadvantaged students in innovative Florida have seen substantially more progress than in the more status-quo oriented Texas.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis spearheaded the creation of a major new choice program for waitlisted students in 2019, while Texas lawmakers concluded their session once again standing pat on education choice. The South has long been a region containing visionary leaders of change, but also is shackled with laggards who cling too tightly to the past.

June 3, 2019 1 comment

Achievement Gap Demographic Research Education Research School Choice

K-12 education in the New South

Matthew Ladner May 27, 2019

Matthew Ladner

Bellwether Education Partners, a national nonprofit focused on changing education and life outcomes for underserved children, has published an interesting new presentation on education in the American South.

Although I now live in a distant and pleasant patch of western cactus, I grew up in the South (Texas). My parents and siblings attended a Southeastern Conference university – Ole Miss, which may not win every game, but has never lost a party. My parents, in fact, were students at Ole Miss when President John F. Kennedy sent in the National Guard to allow for the enrollment of the first African American student.

Color me interested in how things are going in the American South, and nerdy enough to read all 114 slides of the Bellwether presentation.

To this day, people have very different readings on southern history. Mine goes like this: The American South’s pervasive practice of slavery in the antebellum period, followed by a reckless and destructive decision to go to war against the United States followed by a largely botched Reconstruction, left the South as a poor backwater by the mid-20^th century.

The industrial revolution took deeper hold in states open to the waves of 19^th century immigrants who did not flock to the South at the prospect of becoming sharecroppers. White Southerners held too tenaciously to the past, replacing slavery with sharecropping and Jim Crow. In the process, the world passed them by as they desperately held on to the past.

The South continued to grow more cotton but found itself increasingly being left behind as the economy advanced. A brilliant strategy of non-violent resistance to Jim Crow during the 1950s and 1960s, however, set the stage for social and economic progress in the region.

Obviously, the scars of this difficult history run deep, and the legacy of slavery and racial discrimination remain, including in the K-12 results, as many of the Bellwether slides demonstrate. But the news is not all bad. By the early 1990s, the South as a region had pulled into rough income parity with the rest of the country once controlling for the cost of living.

Education results, however, have yet to catch up.

College completion rates for black and Hispanic students in the South are lower overall than national averages. Source: Chronicle of Higher Education

All of which leads to the above chart on six-year college competition rates. It’s difficult to read, but the chart shows college completion rates by ethnic subgroup (white, black, Hispanic and Asian) in the columns and compares those respective rates to the national average (the lines).

To keep from causing squint damage to your eyes, all four Florida subgroups exceed the national average for each subgroup in college completion. Stare long and hard at the chart and you’ll see some other interesting details: the six-year college graduation rate for Florida Hispanic students is higher than the national average for Anglo students. Florida’s black student graduation rate is not only above the national average for black students, it also is above the higher national average for Hispanic students. Florida’s black students have higher graduation rates than white students in Kentucky, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Tennessee and West Virginia.

More progress is needed, but …

Bellwether rightly gives credit to a “first wave” of K-12 reform-minded Democrat governors like Mark White, Bill Clinton and Jim Hunt. This, of course, also is the case with Florida. Shifting partisan allegiances brought in a Republican K-12 reform wave during the 1990s featuring George W. and Jeb Bush.

A new wave is needed, as the region remains a long way from providing globally competitive education.

May 27, 2019 0 comment

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The problem with education reform’s deep blue hue

Matthew Ladner May 20, 2019

Matthew Ladner

In a compelling 60-second video, Frederick M. Hess, resident scholar and director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, outlines the results of a study he co-authored with Jay P. Greene, distinguished professor and head of the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas.

The study tracked the personal political contributions of the staffs of education reform organizations. Despite years of right-wing conspiracy accusations, it turns out the party education reformers overwhelming support has been the Democrats. Greene and Hess summarized their case in the Wall Street Journal:

Political homogeneity helps explain many of the setbacks the reform movement has suffered in recent years, including the collapse of Common Core, the abandonment of new teacher evaluation methods, and a national stall in the expansion of charter schools. It is losing its ability to forge new coalitions and find new converts. Those who care about the effectiveness of K-12 education should think about ways to inject some red—or at least purple—into a movement that has become monochromatically blue.

So: What should we make of these findings?

Hess used his Twitter account to provide a fair summary, from what I could tell, of the reaction to the findings of the study:

Two major public takes thus far –

Greene and Hess are crazy. I know lots of Republicans active in school reform.
Republicans are now merchants of hate. OF COURSE they’ve bailed on school reform.

It may be most productive here to focus on the phrase “school reform,” as it has had a very rough decade overall, and Democrats and Republicans alike should be learning. It seems clear to me that the ability of the capital (whether of the state or federal variety) to positively influence the quality of education delivered in the field (the vast system of public schools) is real, but so too is the ability to do harm.

If the capital is on its “A game,” it can get a few incentives pointed in the right direction, provide new opportunities for educators and families, provide some transparency, and stay out of the way. Attempts to micromanage the operation of the field, however, often fall somewhere on the pointless to counterproductive spectrum. If Republicans are bailing on that version of “school reform,” bully for them, and plenty of Democrats are joining them.

In my “Two Minutes Hate” post, I shared a deep concern with the revival of nativist rhetoric in our politics. You don’t have to be left of center to find the use of foreigner-bashing rhetoric dangerous, destructive and distasteful; I find it dangerous, destructive and distasteful. A combination of stepped-up enforcement on illegal immigration coupled with a substantial liberalization of legal immigration represents, to me, a plausible path forward on what has become a festering wound in our politics.

Our democracy is designed to create settlements of issues, and a great many Americans feel differently on the issue of immigration than I do. If our alleged Olympians in the U.S. Senate could spare a bit of time away from greeting themselves admiringly as “Mr./Madame President” when they look in the mirror in the morning, addressing the issue that’s tearing the country apart would be a fantastic idea. I do not, however, start with the presumption that those who have a different point of view on this issue are heathens. Rather, I view (most of) them as potential converts.

But I digress; back to K-12 reform.

There are very good people in both political parties passionate about expanding opportunities for families. Due in part to the current configuration of interest supporting the parties, the Republicans support such efforts at a higher rate per member than Democrats. So, dismissing Republican lawmakers as “Merchants of Hate” sadly but elegantly sums up the gist of the Hess and Greene report as broadly accurate. K-12 reformers depend heavily upon the support of Republicans in just about all states.

A genuinely bipartisan reform movement cannot afford to dismiss either of the major political parties and is at risk of obsolescence from the sort of groupthink that comes with a lack of political and intellectual diversity. Elected officials do not owe us their support any more than they owe it to our opponents.

We need to go out and earn the changes we support. Martin Luther King Jr. had less cause to worry about Lyndon Johnson’s long history as a racist once he signed the Civil Rights Act.

May 20, 2019 0 comment

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Will Florida editorial boards always be at war with Florida families?

Matthew Ladner May 12, 2019

Matthew Ladner

‘When I was arrested, Oceania was at war with Eastasia. With Eastasia. Good. And Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia, has it not?’

Winston drew in his breath. He opened his mouth to speak and then did not speak. He could not take his eyes away from the dial.

‘The truth, please, Winston. YOUR truth. Tell me what you think you remember.’

‘I remember that until only a week before I was arrested, we were not at war with Eastasia at all. We were in alliance with them. The war was against Eurasia. That had lasted for four years. Before that——’

O’Brien stopped him with a movement of the hand.

-George Orwell, 1984

Oceania’s totalitarian government in Orwell’s 1984 relied on a daily “Two Minutes Hate” to whip people into a frenzy against enemies of the state. As Wikipedia helpfully explains:

Within the book, the purpose of the Two Minutes Hate is said to satisfy the citizens’ subdued feelings of angst and hatred from leading such a wretched, controlled existence. By re-directing these subconscious feelings away from the Oceanian government and toward external enemies (which may not even exist), the Party minimizes subversive thought and behaviour.

If you’ve read the newspaper recently you might think you were living in Oceania, but with the new Family Empowerment Scholarship program serving in the role of the hated enemy of the people instead of Emmanuel Goldstein. I could site any number of examples, but the Tampa Bay Times takes the cake for hyperbolic excess with Death Sentence for Florida Public Schools:

They approved the death sentence for public education in Florida at 1:20 p.m. Tuesday. Then they cheered and hugged each other. The legislation approved by the Florida House and sent to the governor will steal $130 million in tax money that could be spent improving public schools next year and spend it on tuition vouchers at private schools. Never mind the Florida Constitution. Never mind the 2.8 million students left in under-funded, overwhelmed public schools.

The Orlando Sentinel, however, reported the following on the 2020 Florida budget:

In the spending outline, K-12 schools funding landed at $21.8 billion, a $782.9 million increase on the current year, or nearly 4 percent.

Thus, Florida lawmakers signed a “death sentence” for Florida public schools by increasing their funding by almost $800 million. First world problem, anyone? According to my Excel spreadsheet, if the Florida Legislature had diverted the entire appropriation to the public school budget, it would have increased spending by 1 percent.

To the Times’ credit, they did provide former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush an opportunity to respond. Bush helpfully noted that Florida does not have a fixed student body but, rather, is rapidly growing:

The Times assumes that because a child chooses to attend a private school of their choice that public schools will somehow be harmed financially. But according to Florida’s Office of Economic Demographic and Research, over the next four years public school enrollment in Florida is projected to grow by an additional 94,000 students — one of the fastest growth rates in the nation.

The Family Empowerment Scholarship program is capped at around 46,000 students during that same time frame. So where exactly is the harm?

Where indeed? The Florida Department of Education provides a spreadsheet that shows Florida school districts spent almost $863 million in 2017 and created spaces for 30,323 students in the process. Call me crazy (it’s been too long since anyone has been good enough to do so) but it appears to me that the new scholarship program will relieve the pressure on Florida districts, whose enrollment will continue to increase. Funds you don’t have to spend on debt service can be used for other purposes – such as paying teachers.

In addition to electronic surveillance, thought police and 2-minute hates, constantly being at war constituted another trick up Oceania’s totalitarian sleeve. Twenty years have passed since the first Florida private choice program passed; Florida’s academic outcomes have improved all the while.

Ignorance of these facts is not strength, and freedom is not slavery. Florida editorial boards are at war with the right of Florida families to exercise autonomy in education. Will Florida editorial boards always be at war with Florida families?

May 12, 2019 5 comments

Achievement Gap Education Research Policy Wonks

Florida achievement gaps in international context

Matthew Ladner May 8, 2019

Matthew Ladner

Several weeks ago, we looked at American racial achievement gaps in math and reading from an international perspective using data from the Program for International Student Assessment, an international test that every three years measures reading, mathematics and science literacy of 15-year-olds.

In 2012, the PISA exam included subgroup specifically for Florida. Let’s take a look:

So, a couple of notes. This PISA data is from 2012. The National Center for Education Statistics shows that Florida’s white, black and Hispanic students all saw very large academic gains since the 1990s. We have reason to fear, therefore, that if the PISA exam had been given in, say, 1998, the results would have looked very frightening indeed. As it is, the results didn’t look so great in 2012.

Florida’s black students land in the vicinity of students in Chile and Mexico. Chile and Mexico spend only a fraction of what is spent per pupil in the United States and must contend with much larger student poverty challenges. Florida’s Hispanics scored higher, but still performed similar to students in Greece and Turkey, lower-spending countries.

The Third International Mathematics and Science Study exam from 2015 allows us to take a similar look at Florida subgroup achievement in international context. PISA and TIMSS test a different grouping of countries (with quite a bit of overlap) and test somewhat different things. Nevertheless, TIMSS also included Florida subgroups.

Here are the results for mathematics for nations and Florida racial/ethnic subgroups on eighth-grade math.

As was the case in the PISA data, American black students achieved similarly to students in nations that spend only a fraction of what American schools spend per pupil, and with more severe poverty challenges. Florida’s Hispanic students score higher but also find themselves outscored by countries such as Malta, Slovenia and Kazakhstan, which don’t begin to match American levels of spending. Florida’s Asian and Anglo students didn’t conquer the globe but had scores that were comfortably European if not Asian.

Make what you will of this information, but in my opinion, we have miles yet to go.

May 8, 2019 0 comment

School Choice

K-12 education and the ‘good strife’

Matthew Ladner April 29, 2019

Matthew Ladner

The ancient Greek poet Hesiod wrote in Work and Days that there are two kinds of strife: destructive and beneficial. The ancient Greeks encountered destructive strife on a frequent basis: If they weren’t fighting external enemies such as the Persians, Greek city-states tended to be at war with each other.

Hesiod, however, described a second and beneficial form of strife between people:

She stirs up even the shiftless to toil; for a man grows eager to work when he considers his neighbor, a rich man who hastens to plough and plant and put his house in good order; and neighbor vies with his neighbor as he hurries after wealth. This strife is wholesome for men. And potter is angry with potter, and craftsman with craftsman, and beggar is jealous of beggar, and minstrel of minstrel.

Hesiod and his contemporaries experienced an education system that exemplified this type of competition. Teachers like Socrates, for instance, charged students fees in exchange for lessons, and he had competition. Philip of Macedon hired Aristotle to tutor his not-yet great son. Education was a private activity in ancient Greece and was just as subject to “good strife” competition as any other sector. People educated under this system laid the foundation of modern society in the arts, philosophy, sport and science, and developed democracy as well – not bad, all in all.

Craig Barrett, former CEO and president of Intel, mirrored Hesiod when he noted a need for “tension in the system” for K-12 education. No one should be a captive audience to any service provider by this way of thinking, Barrett said, up to and including government.

Few view competition in K-12 as wholesome today. Florida’s newspapers continue to cry wolf about an alleged “destruction education.” Self-awareness doesn’t seem to be a strong suit of these editorial boards; Florida papers have declared for 20 years that the sky is falling, even as the state’s outcomes have continued to improve.

Florida students demonstrated continuous growth between 1990 and 2017 on the “nation’s report card.” In 2017, Florida was the only state that showed statistically significant improvement on three of the four assessments – Grade 4 and Grade 8 Math and Grade 8 Reading.

“Lost golden age” is not a phrase anyone acquainted with data would use to describe Florida’s K-12 system of the 1990s. The present doesn’t look like a golden age either, but the results clearly have moved in the right direction. The tension in Florida’s system appears wholesome rather than destructive.

Schools are not warring like Greek city-states spreading woe and suffering in their wake. Instead, families are engaging in voluntary associations and selecting schools they feel best meet their needs, and overall academic results have improved. Whether you examine National Assessment of Educational Progress data or college completion rates, the best performance of Florida’s K-12 system is happening now, and hopefully will continue to get better.

Another form of “good strife” is baked into the American political system in the form of federalism. Part of the beauty of American federalism is that it allows people the option of residing in states more closely matching their preferences and values. A great many families have moved to Florida for these reasons.

Florida surpassed New York in population in 2014 to claim the rank of the country’s third largest state with almost 20 million residents. In 1950, New York’s population was five times that of Florida, and as recently as 1980, New York’s population was 80 percent larger than the Sunshine State’s.

One of the big reasons Florida went from a lightly populated state at the turn of the 20^th century to overtaking New York in population recently is simply that a huge number of New Yorkers chose to become Floridians. Congress has never reacted to mobility between states with horror or attempted to bind people like serfs to the states in which they were born. Quite the contrary; it funded an interstate highway system starting in the 1950s (notice when Florida’s population really started to take off, by the way) which made relocation easier for millions.

Most states both gain and lose residents in this process and the net is minimal. Some states, like Florida, are big winners. A few, like New York, are big losers. At some point, New York officials might begin researching why so many of their citizens are anxious to leave and do what they can to address the situation. Florida, however, is not “draining” New York. We simply are seeing the result of millions of free people pursuing happiness.

Choice opponents imagine family empowerment as destructive, like the Peloponnesian War, when the available evidence shows it is beneficial, like the Olympic Games. The good strife should continue.

April 29, 2019 0 comment