Blog Guest

Can an amendment close a state’s achievement gap?

Jonathan Butcher January 17, 2020

Jonathan Butcher

One of several century-old school buildings in Minnesota, where new language is being proposed to the state constitution that would give students “a fundamental right to a quality education.”

A member of the “Purple People Eaters” may have retired from the NFL, but he now has a state teacher union on the run.

Former Minnesota Viking defensive lineman and justice of the state Supreme Court Alan Page is among those supporting a change to the state constitution that has philosophical and practical problems, but the idea has elevated an important K-12 discussion and has unions scrambling.

Page and Neel Kashkari, president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, have drafted a change to Minnesota’s “uniformity clause,” a provision that says the state must have a “general uniform system of public schools.”

Page and other supporters of the amendment argue that the state’s commitment to a system of schools is not enough: “No parent aspires for their child to have an adequate education,” Kashkari and Page told the StarTribune. The system should do more than spend “more and more money and [get] the same poor results,” Page said.

An admirable sentiment, but similar efforts have (appropriately) failed in some state and federal courts. According to local media, the new language gives students a “fundamental right to a quality education,” and the state’s “paramount duty” would be to make sure all children have “the skills necessary for participation in the economy, our democracy, and society.”

Sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen.

Again, this concept has been considered in court. At the federal level, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in San Antonio Independent School District vs. Rodriguez that the Constitution does not guarantee a federal “right” to education. Similar cases in Colorado and Wyoming resulted in debates and rulings concerning how much taxpayers should spend on K-12 schools—not a surprise, because if education is a right, then others have a duty to pay for it. And keep paying until terms such as “quality” and “skills” are fulfilled according to someone else’s definition.

Page and his allies introduced this proposal amidst a longstanding discussion of Minnesota’s K-12 achievement gaps. Recently, Kashkari’s office released a report that found the state has “some of the largest gaps in the nation” in academic outcomes such as test scores and graduation rates. The Nation’s Report Card also shows disparities in math and reading between students eligible for free- or reduced-priced school meals (a less accurate measure of poverty than before recent changes to federal meal programs, but an indicator nonetheless) and children from wealthier families. In 8^th grade math, the disparity between low-income students and their peers is greater than 30 points.

Meanwhile, unions are looking for dollar signs. In its statement against the proposal, the special interest group said educators are “waiting for funding” and the legislature needs to “fully fund public education.”

The union also says the proposal would “bring our state closer to vouchers,” as though taxpayers and lawmakers should fear giving children more access to quality learning options. Left unspoken is that other state unions have used uniformity clauses to challenge education choice—something Floridians may remember from Bush v. Holmes. A revision to Minnesota’s constitution may force the union to adjust its plan for potential litigation.

The union is resisting meaningful, substantive change, which Page and Kashkari told Minnesota Public Radio that they are hoping for, at least in part. “If some kids need more choices, this amendment can support that,” Kashkari said, and if “some kids need more funding for their schools, this amendment can support that.”

In that case, we should applaud half of the intent, even if the means are flawed. Catrin Wigfall, Policy Fellow at the Center of the American Experiment (based in Minnesota) writes, “While I respect that the conversation on how to solve the gap is at least started by this proposal…[solving] Minnesota’s education achievement gap is more complicated than an amendment change.”

Minnesota is home to the nation’s first charter school law, so if this proposal has taxpayers and policymakers talking about more K-12 learning opportunities, including private options, the conversation is welcome. Making education a right is neither a necessary nor sufficient (nor fitting) condition to give students from all walks of life a chance at the American Dream.

January 17, 2020 0 comment

Commentary and Opinion Customization Education Choice Featured Jack Coons Parental Choice Private Schools School Choice

‘You pays your money and you takes your choice’

John E. Coons January 9, 2020

John E. Coons

Editor’s note: In a February 1988 New York Times column, William Safire traces this expression to a cartoon in an 1846 edition of Punch magazine. The cartoon, entitled “The Ministerial Crisis,” features a showman telling a customer, “Which ever you please, my little dear. You pays your money, and you takes your choice.” Safire provided context from Edward C. Stephens, who at the time was dean of Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Public Communications: “The phrase is used today not so much as an invitation to choice as it is a rejoinder to complaint. It seems to be similar in intent to, ‘You made your bed, now lie in it.’ ”

Once upon a time, my late beloved, wife, Marylyn, and I decided to count the semesters that our five kids had spent in “public” and private schools beginning in Illinois in 1963 and continuing from 1968 in Berkeley, Calif.

Why would such a proportion have mattered to us? I suspect that Marylyn’s years as a public schoolteacher plus her strong sense of parental and civic responsibility had, for that moment, made yesterday’s decisions seem a matter for self-examination. I’m not clear that our answer (precisely, a 50-50 split between public and private schools) was directly relevant to the ongoing quarrels over “school choice,” but it can serve as a specimen of the control so cherished by parents like ourselves of middle or higher incomes, over where their child shall spend his or her 2,340 days experiencing the formal schooling required of all kids.

We were buyers in that market of schools, all of which were competing for our business; and those labeled “public” were every bit as dependent upon our personal decisions as were Montessori or St. Ann’s. That’s the way it was, and to this day remains, at least in the sort of neighborhoods we preferred and could afford to inhabit.

From the start of School Year 1968 (our first in Berkeley) we elected to send all the kids to the newly racially integrated “public” schools. We were enthusiastic customers, as were most of our neighbors. This was expected to be an experience we wanted for our children, even though, at least for our two older boys, it would mean getting bused to a school well outside our neighborhood.

Over time, this system has, to a degree, served the purpose of integration, at least at John Muir, the K-5 elementary just up the street. Our three younger children remember it in mostly positive terms. Sadly, the older boys who were bused to Malcolm X (originally Lincoln) found a strange atmosphere of hostility and blame from some of the faculty.

After two years, we switched our children to a racially integrated Catholic school, which then served all five children until each moved on to high school. The boys all spent grades 9 through 12 with the Christian Brothers. For one year, our youngest tried a co-ed Catholic high school which disappointed; then to her – and our – satisfaction, she shifted to Berkeley High.

Thus, we made our choices, some perhaps to be regretted, but I think we learned from our mistakes. The responsibility for decision-making was good for all of us.

What is the point of this ramble? Simply that parents like ourselves have not merely the abstract legal authority to choose the school but the means to do so, either by moving to the neighborhood of our preferred public school or paying private school tuition, as we did for one-half of our children’s school years.

But the children of the poor also have to be schooled; in truth, their need is often greater. And their parents’ authority to choose could be realized, just as our own, without increasing the total cost to the taxpayer – if that be an object of reform. The dignity of the poor could be realized as was ours; their domestic roles could be validated and celebrated. And our government schools could, at last, deserve the title “public.”

The loser, obviously, would be the officers of the teacher unions for whose welfare the poor have been kept in bondage. I can’t shake the memory of my friend Albert Shanker, president of both the United Federation of Teachers and the American Federation of Teachers, and his oft-repeated slogan: “I’ll represent children when they start paying union dues.”

Of course, each child does exactly that when forced by family poverty into a school the parent loathes.

January 9, 2020 0 comment

Blog Guest Commentary and Opinion Education Spending Featured Jonathan Butcher School Choice

Guest commentary: Setting the record straight on K-12 funding

Jonathan Butcher December 18, 2019

Jonathan Butcher

A recent Education Next poll found the general public, parents, teachers, Republicans and Democrats underestimate per-student spending by approximately $6,000.

In Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, Viola asks to see the face of Olivia, a grieving countess who wears a veil.

“Is’t not well done?” asks Olivia. “Excellently done, if God did all,” Viola replies, slyly suggesting Olivia’s good looks would be impressive if they were natural and not due to the generous application of makeup.

Last week in the Washington Post, the University of Virginia’s Robert C. Pianta got his facts wrong, and he could not add enough color to the supposed benefits of socioemotional learning or the shortcomings of No Child Left Behind to obscure this simple truth: K-12 spending has not decreased over time.

And whether due to pressure exerted through social media (more on that below) or otherwise, the Post issued a correction to the spending claims this week. But Pianta’s position that increased spending should drive policy choices still drives his column and weakens some of his otherwise sensible proposals.

Pianta’s argument begins naturally enough. He points to the same examples of low test scores and uninspiring examples of student performance on the Nation’s Report Card and international tests that are cited by nearly every commentator on K-12 district schools in the U.S. (“ever-growing achievement gap,” “public schools in a state of crisis,” etc.).

Then come the cosmetics, poorly applied.

“This issue has been recognized for decades,” he says, but “politicians neglected to consider the thing that might improve education the most but never emerged as part of a far-reaching solution set: investing more public money in our teachers and children.”

“The biggest problem plaguing U.S. public schools,” he says, is “a lack of resources.” Funding has decreased since the late 1980s, Pianta said in the original column and cited a study by Rutgers Professor Bruce D. Baker—who proceeded to refute Pianta’s contention via twitter:

Baker’s comment is notable because he has argued that spending does matter in order to improve student outcomes, but even he took issue with this part of Pianta’s analysis.

In fact, Baker’s figures are too tame. After adjusting for inflation, K-12 spending per student has nearly doubled since 1980 and is nearly four times greater than 1960. Spending has increased in every category, from administration to instruction to plant operations. The financial crisis more than a decade ago temporarily stalled annual increases, but the downturn did not erase years of increases, and spending graphs are pointing up again (in May, the U.S. Census announced “U.S. Spending Per Pupil Increased for Fifth Consecutive Year”).

Even with the Post’s correction, Pianta’s column still says schools “have been starved for funds.”

Still, Pianta is not alone in his error. A nationally representative poll finds the general public, parents, teachers, Republicans, and Democrats underestimate per student spending by approximately $6,000. Borrowing from the Bard again: In Pianta’s hit, he misses. Once actual spending numbers are provided, fewer survey respondents say that we need more money in education.

Despite his creative accounting, Pianta closes with a welcome call for teacher unions “to become more responsive toward performance evaluations.” If policymakers want to increase teacher pay and benefits—which make up some 80 percent of school budgets—then taxpayers and parents should have better ways to measure teacher effectiveness. Across-the-board pay raises, as awarded recently in San Diego and in states where teachers went on strike earlier this year and last, are sloppy ideas that reward poorly-performing teachers as much as effective teachers. District officials should treat educators like professionals and compensate them accordingly.

And we should put this debate to rest. Pianta’s inaccurate claims of K-12 spending cuts cannot support his sensible plea for compromise over teacher evaluations and some of his other ideas, such as “inspiring talented people to enter the teacher workforce.”

The countess Olivia assures Viola that her good looks are natural and says, “’Tis in grain, sir, ‘twill endure wind and weather.” Pianta’s claims that K-12 spending has decreased were clearly less robust. Spending has increased over time, and the ways in which school leaders and lawmakers use these resources still matters more for student success than how much is spent.

December 18, 2019 0 comment

Blog Guest Commentary and Opinion Dan Lips Education Equity Featured School Choice

The state of equal opportunity in American K-12 education

Dan Lips December 13, 2019

Dan Lips

Editor’s note: Like many education policy experts, redefinED guest blogger Dan Lips closely monitored recent results of the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), particularly the fact that four in 10 lower-income eighth-graders scored “below basic” in reading. Lips concurs with others that these disappointing results indicate the nation has failed to achieve its longstanding goal of promoting equal opportunity in K-12 education.

In a new report for the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, I reviewed the state of equal opportunity and identified key trends after studying a half-century of federal education policy. (FREOPP’s research mission is to understand the “impact of public policies and proposed reforms on those with incomes or wealth below the U.S. median.”)

In one key respect, national policymakers have been clear. While federal funding remains a small fraction of total education spending, the national policy of the United States is to promote the equal opportunity for all children to access a high-quality education.

Decades of federal reforms and funding have focused on assisting children at risk of being denied equal opportunity to a good education. Children from low-income families, children with disabilities, American Indian and Alaska Native children, migrant children, bilingual children, and English language learners, foster children, the homeless, and others have been the focus of various federal initiatives.

In some respects, the United States has narrowed inequality in K-12 public education for poor and non-poor children, at least in terms of key school inputs. Average per-student revenues in high-poverty school districts are only $500 (or 3.5 percent) less than the average at low-poverty schools districts, according to the U.S. Department of Education. While equity in school funding differs by state and locality, the U.S. has made progress ensuring that differences in school funding and other resources do not exacerbate inequality.

Moreover, the United States spends more per-pupil than most developed countries, or about 25 percent higher than the average spent by Organization for Economic Development and Cooperation (OECD) countries.

In all, the average low-income child who finished high school in 2019 will have had more than $146,000 invested in her prekindergarten and K-12 education, according to a conservative estimate of national per-child education spending from 2002 to 2019 that I calculated.

Yet achievement gaps between rich and poor students persist. And national outcome measures, like the NAEP test, show that many low-income children do not master basic skills.

Of course, many factors affect students’ educational experiences, including family background and corresponding life experiences. Significant education opportunity gaps also persist within American education, including whether students have the opportunity to attend a school of their parents’ choice or be taught by an effect teacher. Important educational and opportunity gaps also exist in students’ educational experiences outside of school, including large differences in the resources available for enrichment.

Readers of redefineED are rightly focused on identifying solutions in education, rather than simply diagnosing the problem. Reviewing the state of equal opportunity in American K-12 education shows the traditional approach to establishing fairness in American K-12 education — working to create a uniform, high-quality public-school system — has been unsuccessful.

Reforming American K-12 education to establish equal opportunity is a project that involves more than 132,000 schools, 3 million schoolteachers, 3 million school employees, and — most importantly — 50 million children and their families. Such a large and complex challenge requires prudence, humility and recognizing that there are few simple answers.

Nevertheless, in a key respect there is broad, bipartisan agreement: All children deserve the opportunity to access a high-quality education. History suggests new approaches and policy reforms must be considered to make progress toward achieving the national goal.

December 13, 2019 0 comment

2020 Presidential Election Chris Stewart Education Equity Education Politics Featured School Choice

The system is winning. For now.

Chris Stewart November 29, 2019

Chris Stewart

More than 100 mainly black and Latino parents and education advocates from around the country attended an Elizabeth Warren event in Atlanta Nov. 21 to share how Warren’s recently unveiled education plan shortchanges children of color.

Editor’s note: In this commentary, originally published Nov. 26 on Education Post, Chris Stewart shares his thoughts on Elizabeth Warren’s recent encounter with charter school supporters and expresses gratitude for those individuals who had the courage “to take their grievances directly to the source of political power that seeks to deny them agency and a fair shot at finding options for their youth.”

It must have been mortifying for Democratic presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren to have a loud group of Black parents—mostly mothers and grandmothers—shout her down at a campaign stop that was meant to highlight the importance of valuing Black women. As they chanted “our child, our choice,” a mantra in support of school choice (and against Warren’s proposed curb to federal charter school funding) she stood immobilized. Ayanna Pressley had to step in with a wagging finger to sternly lecture the protestors.

In that moment the Democrats’ battle over public education was on full display.

This reminds me of Fannie Lou Hamer who in the 1960s brought plain talk to the Democratic party that was ignoring the needs of southern, poor Black folks. The establishment worked all of its angles to silence her. They sent Roy Wilkins, the educated negro from the NAACP, to tell Hamer that she was ignorant and she should leave politics to the people who know best—people like him.

That encounter caused her to cancel her NAACP membership and say, “There ain’t nothing I respect less than the NAACP.” The Southern, poor and country Hamer would not be turned back, belittled, or silenced, even against crazy odds and the most powerful people.

I can’t help but think history repeats itself until we learn from it.

Today, Warren, a wealthy, White woman candidate who once supported and used school choice to her advantage—but now takes her cues from the unions representing America’s Whitest, most female profession—can’t handle the Black folks, so she turns to a surrogate.

That’s where Pressley, a college-educated, middle-class Black woman, whose hard-working mother living on the South Side of Chicago sent her to a prestigious private school that today costs $37,000 a year, eagerly volunteered to play the role of Wilkins.

And these mothers, fathers, grandmothers and guardians, who live in some of the poorest, most incarcerated zip codes in the country, traveled long distances to Atlanta, only to be told they are ignorant, like Hamer.

Those who wish to be president on the Democratic side want the most economically insecure families to wait for better schools. A fix is coming, they promise, like they promised for years. More money, more services, more staff in the same system of miseducation will make it all better. No need for expanding school choices, or for improving and diversifying the teaching profession, or for improving and modernizing our standards and curricula to better serve the needs of each and every child.

Be patient.

But how patient would middle-class people be if their kids were falling years behind in school? What do they do when the system isn’t working for their kids? Warren’s case is instructive. When the public system didn’t work for her son she put him in a private school. Ambitions for higher office have recast her as a champion of public schools who gets her education policy wholesale from unions and Diane Ravitch, the ranking leader of the unreform movement (and another private school parent turned public school zealot).

The education establishment, its unions and the politicians it controls are working to dismantle two decades of progressive education policy that offered families options beyond bureaucratized, politicized and unionized district schools. The public’s sympathy for striking teachers, the universal belief that the biggest problem with schools is lack of money and a general disregard for the experience of marginalized parents makes it an opportune moment to roll back education reforms.

The system is winning.

For now.

In the past few days, I’ve seen too many messages online scandalously demoting the protestors to ignorant nobodies who are being used by White, wealthy people in an attempt to destroy our perfectly amazing district schools. These claims come without the slightest realization of how much they expose many Democrats for being the elitist, racist people they accuse others of being.

While they constantly profess their love for the little guy, leading Democratic candidates constantly throw that little guy under the union bus if it helps their career prospects.

Families like those who make up the Powerful Parent Network—who are purposely redlined into the school districts where the only people who think the status quo is worthy of loyalty are the adults who draw their pensions from those schools—can’t be bamboozled by the system. They can’t sacrifice their children to some sketchy promise of a “public good.”

To be Black in America is a constant struggle for full humanity. Nobody knows that more than the guardians of the faces at the bottom of the well. Nobody knows that more than the mothers of the poor, the grandmothers of the children left behind, the caregivers to those who are Black, Brown, under-resourced, dyslexic, exceptional, medically fragile and academically thirsty in classrooms built on the lowest of expectations.

This week, I’m grateful for those mothers and guardians who boarded buses or planes, made signs and planned chants, and headed out for Atlanta to take their grievances directly to the source of political power that seeks to deny them agency and a fair shot finding options for their youth. I’m grateful that they spoke plainly, in their own vernacular, and made the leaders hear them—because ignoring them before the cameras and bright lights would have shown them for the classist hypocrites they are.

Hamer wanted a fundamental change in the power structure that made sure the underclass has a direct role in the system governing their lives. We can learn from that. Rather than discounting the parents who demand better school options, fair school systems and more resources, leaders should make sure they are seated in the power rooms when agendas are formed.

Warren isn’t alone in ignoring voices in the underclass about public schooling. Her competitors should be called out too. If Democratic candidates for president—indeed, candidates from all parties—wish to be true representatives of all Americans, they will stop taking sides in the education wars, stop pitting parents against each other, and stop acting as if children are less important the moment they enter a charter or non-traditional schools.

November 29, 2019 0 comment

Commentary and Opinion Education and Public Policy Jonathan Butcher School Choice Testing and Accountability

Guest commentary: NAEP should be a wake-up call for ed reformers, policymakers

Jonathan Butcher November 21, 2019

Jonathan Butcher

A recent comparison of K-12 children around the U.S. brought bad news for education reformers—an amorphous group of policymakers and advocates who are akin to locksmiths searching for the right combination of resources and policy ideas to unlock student potential. The news was bad for students, too, but since the scores do not affect a student’s report card, the results mattered more to the aforementioned locksmiths today.

The results will matter for students tomorrow.

As readers of this blog will know, the Nation’s Report Card, also known as the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), is a set of math and reading tests given to a sample of fourth- and eighth-graders around the country every two years. The U.S. Department of Education also administers NAEP tests in other subjects and specific cities.

The more frequent math and reading results allow education locksmiths to gauge whether any number of inputs in the nation’s schools—from spending increases to new laws—are having their desired effects. With both more money and federal law firmly in place, observers were frustrated that national averages for 2019 reading and math scores fell from 2017 (with the 1-point improvement in fourth-grade math a small exception).

Rigorous research is required to appropriately link policies and school budgets to NAEP outcomes, but Florida’s aggressive upgrade to its K-12 education design in the early 2000s tracked closely with improved NAEP scores among minority students. The additional parent options in education, along with a focus on reading among third-graders and more attention to the use of Advanced Placement testing has been the subject of policy discussion around the country since.

This year, reformers pointed to similar reading-related policies in Mississippi to explain the state’s improvement in fourth-grade scores, while calling for “urgent action” elsewhere. The Council of Chief State School Officers even said the “urgency of improving outcomes for all students” was enough to plan … a meeting. This “urgent action” is why the results will matter for students tomorrow: That is when the changes will affect the classroom. Parents can only hope it is not too late by then.

Nationally, average scores among fourth- and eighth-grade students increased in math by 27 points and 20 points, respectively, between 1990 and 2009. Yet since 2009, and a decade is almost the length of a child’s K-12 career, the improvement stalled. Reading scores have improved by just three points in both grades since 1992.

It is these scores and other comparisons that have not changed that should bother reformers and policymakers alike in 2019. Last summer, Harvard University’s Paul Peterson wrote in Education Next that the test score gap on NAEP and international tests between students from low-income families and their more affluent peers has not changed since the 1960s. Peterson wrote later that the “performances on math, reading, and science tests of the most advantaged and the most disadvantaged students differ by approximately four years’ worth of learning, a disparity that has remained essentially unchanged for nearly half a century.”

Such findings temper enthusiasm for any year-to-year increases. So, too, do the results from NAEP’s other test, the Long-Term Trend Assessment (LTT). Average scores for 17-year-olds in math and reading have not changed since the 1970s (the LTT was last given in 2012 and is scheduled to resume in 2020). Students appear to lose any gains made in elementary and middle school by graduation.

Over time, these results have been depressingly more of the same, which should incentivize education reformers and policymakers not to do the same things. Such as: In the last two years, many state policymakers were either absent or complicit in teacher union attempts to keep students in assigned district schools by curbing charter school growth in Los Angeles and Chicago and blocking new private learning options in Kentucky and West Virginia.

These options are the most significant departures from the routine of school-by-zip-code because parents can help a struggling child immediately by moving them to a new setting with a charter school, private school scholarship or education savings account. Students will not have to wait for the urgent meetings to finish, hoping to find success this time.

Now that would be different.

November 21, 2019 0 comment

Blog Guest Chris Stewart Commentary and Opinion Customization Education and Public Policy Education Equity

Guest commentary: While we get lost in the wrong arguments, too many of our kids aren’t ready for the future

Chris Stewart November 19, 2019

Chris Stewart

Editor’s note: This commentary, first published Nov. 11 on Education Post, reminds us that the best way to prepare students for a rapidly changing world is to empower educators to create more diverse learning options and to enable all parents to access those learning options that best meet their children’s needs.

As a Generation Xer, I was sold the dream in the 1990s that one day we would all telecommute to work, execute our daily duties in our pajamas and never wear business suits again.

Work as we knew it was going to change forever.

For a while, it seemed employers were upping their perk game to compete in a national war for top talent. Boomers had to change their ways if we were going to work for them. Then, reality beat us silly. An economic recession deflated our pipe dreams, a talent surplus ended the talent wars and we were back to the boomer-era job expectations.

With that lens, I’m interested in Matt Barnum’s new piece that rips into Emerson Collective—a philanthropic effort of Laurene Powell Jobs—for its XQ project, which he says is reheating and overcooking the “future of work” story. We need to prepare kids for jobs that don’t yet exist they say. “Humbug,” he replies.

Barnum concedes the job economy is changing (as it always does), but says the “rate” of that change is too slow to warrant the narrative about a “fast-changing future of work” that requires us to remake the education and workforce development systems that prepare students for careers and life.

While this is classic Barnum—a piece intended to take down a prevailing education reform premise that will certainly draw praise for his bravery—I think it misses the point. Yes, it’s true that the public can be too easily seduced by broad arguments for education reform (e.g., we’ll all be gig workers in the future), but the better question to ask is whether our system of education prepares students for gainful and personally meaningful positions in the American economic mainstream.

According to a report by the World Economic Forum, the problem of not preparing young people for the future is a global problem. They make exactly the type of claim Barnum’s experts discount: “On average, by 2020, more than a third of the desired core skill sets of most occupations will be comprised of skills that are not yet considered crucial to the job today.”

Further, as we argue about whether or not the future of work is fast-changing, what do we do about the 3 million workers who were displaced between 2015 and 2017 because their employer closed its doors or “abolished” their jobs? About a third of them were not reemployed, and of those that were, almost half were not at the same pay level of their previous jobs.

That’s a shift in the economy. The kind that repeats itself often and leaves entire segments of society unable to earn enough to live.

Most of us are not experts in economics, but many of us have seen parents, friends and family laid off, dislocated, outsourced or repurposed at a lower cost. In fact, some of us have seen so much of this that as parents we are more sensitive to the reality that the way we consider work today may not be how it turns out tomorrow for our children.

When we hear “the robots are coming” we know it’s plausible that automation could boot many families out of the middle class. As middle-skilled jobs are replaced with high-skilled, better paying jobs for those who qualify—or lower paying for those who don’t—it doesn’t really matter if the rate of change isn’t as fast as XQ says. Working families and their children can’t pay their rent with split hairs in arguments between employed people.

Even if the promoters of “future work” orthodoxy embellish their story, does that overshadow the empirical fact that emerging markets and the churn of economic change create opportunities that rarely give America’s most marginalized children and families a fair shot at benefiting?

You want irony? I give it to you. The thing Barnum and I have in common is that we’ve been on the vanguard of employment opportunity created by shifts in the world of work. The changing nature of advocacy, activism, journalism, media, social media, blogging, scholarship and education commentary have created jobs, organizations and networks that employ an army of daily workers.

The difference between Barnum and me is that he represents a demographic group that is often a great beneficiary of emerging jobs and economies. I’m grateful representation of the group often left behind. So excuse me if I dismiss Barnum’s piece as the luxury of a leisure class.

I’ll stand alone on this. Others will cheer him on. Reformers can be a rueful, spiteful and juvenile group who love to privately celebrate the failures of philanthropies who have passed them by for grants or failed to recognize the brilliance of their ideas. For this group, Barnum is a contrarian Iron Man. (Barnum’s organization, Chalkbeat, is actually a current grantee of Emerson. Education Post once was but is no longer.)

In this moment of neo-socialist billionaire hatred, takedowns are the skinny jeans of journalism. Education philanthropies that take risks with their investments as a way of spurring change are an easy target. A tougher topic is how our system to prepare youth for life in the American economic mainstream is poorly suited to the task.

Instead of smugly debunking overstatements and lofty predictions about the future of work, our time would be better spent asking how well our children are being prepared for gainful work in the future.

November 19, 2019 0 comment

Charter Schools Customization Education Equity Jack Coons Parent Empowerment Parental Choice School Choice Vouchers

A no-loser solution?

John E. Coons November 15, 2019

John E. Coons

The City School District of the City of New York is the largest school system in the United States, with over 1.1 million students taught in more than 1,800 separate schools. The department covers all five boroughs of New York City and has an annual budget of nearly $25 billion.

New York City’s “public” schools offer many parents a choice among providers – if their child happens to be gifted as measured by scores on a test.

The five most elite of the “choosable” schools require a score in the 99^th percentile for admission. According to the New York Times (Oct. 11, 2019), “ … [D]ozens of other gifted programs … throughout the city generally require students to score in the 90^th percentile.”

Parents of smart kids – and they alone – enjoy what amounts to a voucher. Their choices, it is claimed, can in many lower-income neighborhoods, intensify the racial segregation of those local schools as they are abandoned by the more brainy; or so we learn from the Times.

Any unnecessarily segregated system will be disfavored by many of the public, including those, like myself, who marched in Selma, authored several federal reports on segregation in Chicago and Evanston public schools and served on President Jimmy Carter’s National Panel on Education – and would do it all again.

If New York’s very selective system of parental choice effectively segregated by race, it seems imperative to ask whether this is the only way to respect and preserve the very real value of high intellectual aspiration. Are integration and quality incompatible?

For critical consideration by the professional educator or critic, I cite the half-dozen model statutes and popular initiatives published over three-plus decades by Stephen D. Sugarman and myself. For the curious but busy, it may be more convenient to stick with our explanatory addendum or “Education by Choice: The Case for Family Control” (1978). I regret that this sounds vain; blame it on my age and the despair of watching the city schools and their hapless victims.

Somehow, this society must find ways of protecting the moral, intellectual and stylistic integrity of participating schools while treating both racial and economic integration of families as equally important and compatible with parental authority, which for this observer is paramount. Devices to serve all these values will, of course, require some compromise.

For example:

The school could be free to fill 75 percent of its seats as it prefers; the balance would be selected by lottery among unchosen applicants.

The schools must provide basic information about itself in a public manner.

If the school is private or charter (the teacher unions insist that charter schools are private schools; I agree) it could teach religion to all pupils but could not require an unbeliever to assent or participate in ceremony.

The school could enforce a minimum standard of learning by dismissal (with hearing). Ditto for behavior.

As for tuition imposed by the school above the value of the governmental support for the parent, there are various approaches. One is simply to disallow it for low-income parents, permitting graduated add-ons for those above. Of course, the basic grant should match, or at least approach, an amount sufficient to sustain a “common” school.

Enough. Let the union rise in horror. There is nothing in all we have written that would discourage the formation of strong teacher unions of the sort common to the private sector. There is everything to be said for tough teacher organization that can insist upon a fair share of the good stuff, always aware that, if they get too greedy, their own jobs will cease to exist.

Today’s “public” schoolteachers do not face that risk. They should.

November 15, 2019 0 comment