Jonathan Butcher

Should students be graded during the pandemic?

Jonathan Butcher May 26, 2020

Editor’s note: The Philadelphia Inquirer recently encouraged a debate between a local parent and veteran policy analyst and redefinED guest blogger Jonathan Butcher on the question of whether grading is necessary to keep students on track amid arguments that grades during the pandemic are ambiguous and unfair. Butcher argued in favor of the former. Here is his commentary.

Most of us will spend at least a dozen years in school starting at age 5. For an increasing share of young adults, the education experience lasts 16 years or more, as the percentage of 18- to 24-year-olds enrolling in college has risen from 35 percent to 41 percent since 2000.

Pandemics, mercifully, do not last as long as our school-age years.

Each school year builds on the prior one, so officials must prevent the 2019-20 school year from becoming a lost academic experience for Philadelphia students. Abandoning student grades during the pandemic would put everyone — policymakers, taxpayers, parents, teachers, and students — at a disadvantage next fall.

Thousands of students will return to physical, hybrid, or virtual city classrooms in August. Without some measure of how children finished the year, teachers will not be able to match instruction to each child’s needs.

Continue reading here.

May 26, 2020 0 comment

Blog Guest Commentary and Opinion Coronavirus / COVID-19 Customization Education and Public Policy Education Savings Accounts Featured Jonathan Butcher School Choice Special Needs Education Virtual Education

COVID-19 has accentuated value of education savings accounts

Jonathan Butcher May 12, 2020

Jonathan Butcher

Children who make use of education savings accounts, like JoEllen Talley of Mississippi, are one step ahead of many families who are struggling to find resources for their children with special needs.

As of today, school buildings likely will be closed for the rest of the academic year in all states except Montana and Wyoming. Ready or not, if you are a parent or guardian, you may be spending the next few weeks rotating from your household and work assignments to your child’s virtual school assignments.

Some parents of traditional school students are reporting frustration. An April 21 headline from the Associated Press read, “’I Just Can’t Do This.’ Harried Parents Forgo Home School.” The featured parents expressed great concern that “their kids are falling behind.”

The day before the AP story, an article in The Atlantic encouraged schools to do more to help parents by giving students more space between assignments and urged parents to “take charge of their kids’ schooling.”

The scenario can be a frightening prospect for parents of children with special needs.

At the outset of the pandemic, the U.S. Department of Education issued two “fact sheets” so that schools could attempt to move instruction online without fear of violating traditional equity requirements for these children. The fact sheets urged parents and educators to switch from “business as usual” to being “creative” to reconfigure learning during the pandemic.

The small cadre of parents and children using education savings accounts in Arizona, Florida, Mississippi, North Carolina and Tennessee are one step ahead here. Because these families can use their accounts to pay for learning services and materials in and outside of their child’s school, they have been able to adjust their student’s instruction according to his or her needs.

An education savings account ensures that Anna Ragusa of North Carolina can continue to receive needed therapies during social distancing.

“We’ve been busy,” says Cara Ragusa, whose daughter, Anna, was diagnosed with Down syndrome. “I’ve got two kids who have a full day’s worth of work every day.”

The family was one of the first in North Carolina to use an education savings account when the option became available two years ago.

“Because of the account, Anna’s been able to continue to get her therapies online through Zoom and different platforms for 30 minutes at a time,” Ragusa said.

Alisson Talley, whose 12-year old daughter, JoEllen, uses an account in Mississippi, said the essence of an education savings account is to pull in the right resources “to keep children learning the way they learn best.”

“This pandemic has accentuated what an education savings account is, that one-on-one attention,” Talley said.

She explained that JoEllen, who lives with Down syndrome, has been forced by the pandemic to learn skills many children take for granted, such as proper e-mail etiquette. JoEllen has video conferences with her teachers in the morning, and they try to “simulate as much as they can from the regular classroom,” Talley said.

Meanwhile, Anna has meetings each week with a speech therapist and an occupational therapist.

“They share their screens and try to do interactive projects together,” Ragusa said.

Like everyone, the girls have had to adjust over the last two months.

“Anna thrives on repetitive routine for academic success, so that’s been a big setback while distance learning,” Ragusa said. “But having her teachers and therapists work with her regularly helps.”

Nearly two months into school closures, things are beginning to feel “a little bit normal,” she said, explaining that Anna sometimes has four calls or video chats each day involving work with her classroom teacher and different specialists.

Talley said the online coursework has been effective for JoEllen. But she worries that Mississippi lawmakers will try to cut online expenses from the list of available learning options next year, which would be “devastating.”

“It’s been refreshing to know that what we are asking for [to continue to purchase online services] works now,” she said. “It’s become a reality because it had to.”

What may not work for a child in one state will be a success for another with a similar diagnosis somewhere else. The same can be said for mainstream children, too.

This is why education savings accounts are so valuable to students from all walks of life, with or without special needs, inside or outside of a pandemic.

May 12, 2020 0 comment

Blog Guest Commentary and Opinion Education and Public Policy Education Legislation Education Savings Accounts Education Spending Featured Jonathan Butcher

‘Bad education’ underscores why public schools shouldn’t get big bailouts

Jonathan Butcher May 8, 2020

Jonathan Butcher

The financial crisis ahead gives state lawmakers the chance to reconsider notoriously complicated school spending formulas to get the most out of available resources and to consider alternative options, such as education savings accounts, that put spending decisions in the hands of families.

Editor’s note: This post from redefinED guest blogger Jonathan Butcher published earlier this week on The Federalist.

With students quarantined at home, is this really the right time for a movie about public school fraud? You bet.

After getting an extra $13.5 billion in March’s “Phase 3” stimulus bill, the education lobby is now asking Congress for another $175 billion as it ponders a Phase 4 bill. With that kind of money on the line—about three times Washington’s annual K-12 funding—a film on school fraud should be considered essential viewing.

HBO’s “Bad Education,” released April 25, dramatizes a real-life incident of school funds embezzlement in Roslyn, Long Island. In telling the tale, the film indicts an entire education system, one plagued with a morass of forms to fill out and weak oversight that makes it easy for school bureaucrats to fudge the numbers and pay for a beach house, a sports car, and more.

As the plot unfolds, the school district auditor tells Hugh Jackman’s character that the state comptroller could “barge in this office at any given moment” to review their finances.

“Has he ever done that in your 30 years of experience?” Jackman’s character, district superintendent Frank Tassone, asks. The auditor shakes his head.

“Exactly,” Tassone says.

May 8, 2020 0 comment

Analysis Blog Guest Customization Education and Public Policy Education Choice Education Equity Education Savings Accounts Featured Jonathan Butcher School Choice

Victory for Utah students and families

Jonathan Butcher April 27, 2020

Jonathan Butcher

Benjamin Franklin Academy in Salt Lake City is an assistance program to homeschooled children with special needs.

Around the country, talk of closures and quarantine is giving way to plans for re-opening. Despite moving in fits and starts, Utah officials found something unique for families and students to look forward to even if schools are closed for the rest of the year.

On Friday, state lawmakers approved a proposal to provide flexible learning scholarships to children with special needs. The Utah account-style scholarships combine the features of what are commonly known as tax-credit scholarships (like Florida’s scholarships for children from low-income families) and education savings accounts, as found in Arizona, Florida, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Tennessee.

Individuals and corporations will receive a dollar-for-dollar tax credit for donations to scholarship account-granting organizations. The scholarship organizations will use the contributions to award accounts to students. Parents can use a scholarship account to find educational therapists that meet a child’s unique needs, buy textbooks, and pay tuition at a private school or for online classes, to name a few possible uses.

Utah’s new scholarship offers families and students multiple private learning options, similar to education savings accounts. By funding the accounts through charitable contributions, Utah officials connected the scholarships with the private choices of businesses and other donors.

In 2016, Jason Bedrick, now policy director at EdChoice, Clint Bolick, former Goldwater Institute vice president and current Arizona Supreme Court Justice, and I described how such an arrangement could work in our research for the Cato Institute. We wrote, “Tax credits simply leave money in the hands of taxpayers who are free to choose which scholarship organizations to support with their own money,” and by adding the savings account component to the scholarships, Utah families can challenge their students or otherwise design a learning experience for a student.

Utah’s scholarship accounts followed a winding path to approval. Gov. Gary Herbert vetoed the proposal near the end of the legislative session, suggesting the scholarships would require new taxpayer spending. State analysts, however, had already reported that every child that leaves a public school to use a scholarship would save the state $1,871. While estimates were not available for existing homeschool or private school students, children with special needs often require expensive interventions no matter their school or learning routine.

With a global financial crisis settling in, lawmakers everywhere should be looking for effective, cost-saving ideas. The scholarships will be worth different amounts based on a family’s income, similar to K-12 private school scholarships available in Indiana. Utah children from families with income levels at or below 185 percent of the federal poverty line will receive scholarships worth approximately $9,000 per year, according to Utah Policy, while students from wealthier families will receive scholarships worth between $5,000 and $7,000, depending on a family’s income.

States around the country need innovation such as this. Before the pandemic, families of children with special needs were already aware of the kinds of products and assistance their children need to be successful and, if possible, learn to be independent. But during the recent shutdowns, meeting the needs of children diagnosed on the autism spectrum or living with Down syndrome presented a challenge to parents and educators. Families using accounts in North Carolina and Arizona have reported that they can continue many services for their children because the accounts are so versatile. Families of these children celebrate when their students make progress and are justifiably fearful those improvements will be lost when normal routines are interrupted.

Utah’s scholarships will be active in January 2021, which gives officials time to sort out some of the features clearly available to children using education savings accounts, such as the ability to save money from one year to the next to prepare for future expenses. Utah policymakers should look to the states with accounts to find answers to common questions about how students can access more than one product or service.

Good ideas like this have a way of breaking through, despite a governor’s veto pen. And this one arrived just in time for Utah families who are ready for life after the pandemic.

April 27, 2020 0 comment

Blog Guest Charter Schools Commentary and Opinion Coronavirus / COVID-19 Education and Public Policy Education Politics Featured Jonathan Butcher School Choice Virtual Education

Charter schools adjusting instruction during pandemic

Jonathan Butcher April 7, 2020

Jonathan Butcher

Families will remember March 2020 for how quickly state officials closed schools due to the coronavirus outbreak. If schools want to offer parents and children continuity and stability, educators and policymakers must focus in April on jump-starting instruction while students are at home.

Yet some state policymakers are finding new ways to limit learning options during the pandemic. A Portland, Ore., news source, the Willamette Week, said Oregon officials closed brick-and-mortar schools along with full-time virtual schools – “the definition of social distancing,” according to the news site.

Now, state officials are calling for districts to submit distance learning plans by April 13, but as the Wall Street Journal reported, along with at least one virtual school in the state, the Oregon Department of Education is not allowing students to transfer into virtual schools while schools are closed.

Back east, as of April 1, all Pennsylvania schools, including virtual charter schools, are closed “until further notice.” Gov. Tom Wolf even signed a bill that will withhold state spending for new students who enroll in virtual schools.

David Hardy, founder of Boy’s Latin of Philadelphia, said in a webinar last week focused on charter school activities during the pandemic that Philadelphia district administrators told teachers to stop developing online resources.

“Some teachers who, as soon as this thing hit, they were good teachers and were already connected with their classes,” Hardy says. “They didn’t have to wait for somebody downtown to tell them to do that.”

Hardy continued: “What happened, though, was that the [Philadelphia] school district stopped them from doing this.”

Hardy, who also serves as school board chair for Ad Prima Charter School, said his school is not waiting for the state to issue instructions; the school plans to distribute laptop computers to students without devices at home.

“When you look at how people have responded, it’s my opinion that the charter schools are really out front in this, right away,” Hardy said.

As adults scramble to help children adapt to changes brought on by the virus, our K-12 students do not need perfection. But they do need parents and teachers alike to try.

In Maryvale, Ariz., west of Phoenix, teachers at Western School of Science and Technology (WSST) made sure students could use school devices at home while schools are closed. Eighty percent of WSST students speak a language other than English in their homes, and 95 percent qualify for free or reduced-priced meals, said school director Peter Boyle.

Prior to the pandemic, WSST students divided their time between online instruction and interactions with their teachers.

“We have a significantly high degree of technology penetration and familiarity that allows for a pretty quick switch to this remote learning plan,” Boyle said.

His teachers developed a system of academic playlists, where students access instruction in small bits – 1- to 2-minute segments in some cases.

“A playlist is a personalized learning plan,” Boyle said. “Each teacher populates a playlist, which has about 200 minutes of content, from the online learning programs or from reading materials that we can push out to students.”

Students can choose the order in which they complete the work. Additionally, the school is building on its existing routine of part-time virtual instruction now that all instruction must be online.

In South Carolina, the Charter Institute at Erskine is encouraging all schools to take a similar approach and learn from existing full-time virtual schools. The school is building a library of web videos using the virtual schools to help brick-and-mortar teachers adjust, said Vamshi Rudrapati, director of the Institute.

Julie Phillips, 2019 Charter Institute teacher of the year, who is a virtual school teacher, said in an interview that the best solution, even for teachers who are not experienced with online instruction, is to help students continue “to master and build existing skills.”

“Look at it week by week,” Phillips said. “Every subject that we want them to work on for Monday, use it as a checklist. Check it off, then go to the next subject.”

Many teachers, especially in charter schools, are trying to reach students during the virus, and state officials should encourage these efforts. The pandemic forced physical separation on family, work, and school communities, but it shouldn’t separate teachers and students from ingenuity.

April 7, 2020 0 comment

Blog Guest Commentary and Opinion Coronavirus / COVID-19 Education Choice Featured Jonathan Butcher Parent Empowerment School Choice

Social distancing: a perfect opportunity for parents to find out what their children are learning

Jonathan Butcher March 26, 2020

Jonathan Butcher

Coronavirus is interrupting life in general and education specifically. As parents in the U.S. adjust to school closures and the potential for their K-12 child’s coursework to continue online, families should come to realize that they will be exposed to more of what their children are learning.

For some, this will be new.

Wall Street Journal editor Serena Ng wrote recently from Hong Kong, where schools have been closed since Feb. 3, that she now can “see every detail of every lesson.” Ng says, “I previously had only a vague idea about what they were learning in school.”

All parents should be able to know what their children are learning, and for those paying attention in the coming weeks, the virus offers a chance for them to do just that. Working parents who juggle jobs and their children’s school activities while managing a home haven’t been neglectful if they don’t know what happened in fourth-period math on a given day (try asking a teenager what happened in class). Some simply have relied on schools to decide on instruction.

For others, this focus on content has been there all along.

March 2-4, the Institute for Classical Education and the Great Hearts Foundation held the National Classical Education Symposium, an event featuring sessions on teaching the Great Books, from “The Confessions of St. Augustine” to “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” Great Hearts’ charter schools, which started in Arizona and have expanded to Texas, base their curriculum on these works. (You can find a complete list of the books students will be studying here.)

School districts are not always so transparent. As Matt Beienburg at the Goldwater Institute explained earlier this year, even if state law allows parents to review their child’s curriculum, they can do so only on school premises; in some cases and in some districts, there are limits set on when parents can see the material. Again, parents are not lazy if they don’t always know what is in their child’s syllabus.

When parents know what is being taught, they can effectively advocate for meaningful change. The reading wars over phonics versus whole language instruction are still with us today, while the Common Core debates over a national curriculum have simmered in time for everyone to scrutinize the New York Times’ 1619 Project.

The Project, a set of essays accompanied by K-12 curricular materials, “aims to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative.” Slavery and the racism that followed are a blight on our nation’s past, but the Times has taken the idea too far according to many scholars. Pulitzer Prize-winning historians, leading intellectuals and even the Times’ own fact-checkers have criticized the essays, citing inaccuracies.

For thousands of parents, the initiative is not just a problem for someone else’s school. The Times and the Pulitzer Center have successfully advocated for integrating the material into some of the nation’s largest and most-high profile school systems, including Chicago, Newark, Buffalo and Washington, D.C. In Florida, Florida A&M University highlighted the Project in September 2019 and has hosted events on the topic with Florida State University.

Critically, the Times on March 11 issued a correction to a central premise of the essays, saying that not all colonial revolutionaries fought the British to protect the institution of slavery. If the Times heeds other warnings from experts, this modest correction should not be the last. Meanwhile, the Times already has disseminated the original curricular materials to schools.

Developments like these are among the many reasons why the next few weeks of school closures and online instruction are an important opportunity for parents to catch up on what is happening at their child’s school. When parents send children back to brick-and-mortar schools, they should do so ready to raise questions, prepared with more information.

Parents practicing “social distancing” in the coming weeks should use this period to get closer to their child’s school assignments.

March 26, 2020 0 comment

Blog Guest Commentary and Opinion Education and Public Policy Education Choice Education Savings Accounts Education Spending Featured Jonathan Butcher School Choice

Ongoing debate over district fraud in Tennessee shines positive light on education savings accounts

Jonathan Butcher February 26, 2020

Jonathan Butcher

Between 2015 and early 2016, the U.S. Attorney’s office determined that a national insurance fraud scheme involving prescription drugs included Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Tennessee, the insurance administrator for the Hamilton County Department of Education.

Who knew a prescription cream could be so expensive?

Last fall, officials suspended three Tennessee public school employees while investigators reviewed the individuals’ involvement in an insurance fraud scheme that cost the school district some $800,000. The issue dates to around 2015, when two doctors began writing prescriptions for pain-relieving creams to be bought in bulk. Some of the claims were filled through the Hamilton County School district’s insurance plan.

The fraud in Hamilton County, the school district encompassing Chattanooga, has all the makings of a con: Kickbacks, third party-intermediaries in California, and crooked doctors. The movie script writes itself.

Auditors and other investigative offices regularly uncover such illicit activities in school districts around the country. With some $600 billion in federal, state, and local funds flowing to schools every year, district offices, especially, are vulnerable to a wide range of financial crimes, from embezzlement to common theft.

In the 1990s, large school systems such as Chicago and Los Angeles created offices of inspectors general to deal with the problems. Yet some of these offices say that the number of claims is more than they can investigate.

Chicago’s inspector says that the office cannot open enough cases, which “creates a substantial risk, that waste, fraud, and financial mismanagement, and employee misconduct go undetected.” The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) has written similar warnings in the agency’s regular reports to Congress. Chicago is home to one of the largest examples of theft in recent years, as former CPS Superintendent Barbara Byrd-Bennett was sentenced to four and a half years in prison for her role in manipulating district contracts totaling $23 million.

Periodically, districts without dedicated inspectors general consider adding such offices. For example, in 2016, the Broward County (Florida) School Board considered adding an inspector to the district. When board discussion turned to using the federal inspector general instead of creating a new office in the school district, a federal representative said he must “cherry-pick complaints to investigate because there are only five investigators to cover the entire state of Florida,” according to the Sun-Sentinel—echoing the complaints from Chicago and the federal OIG’s home office.

The boxes of pain-relieving cream in Tennessee and Chicago’s illegal contracts help to put claims of misspending among Tennessee’s education savings accounts (called “Individualized Education Plans”) in perspective. Tennessee’s accounts operate similar to Florida’s Gardiner Scholarships, and families of children with special needs can use the accounts to choose a school or customized set of learning services, including education therapy and personal tutors, for their student.

No amount of graft or misuse of resources meant for a child’s education is acceptable. But recurring claims in the media of “serious problems” with the accounts—most recently coming from the Daily Memphian, but Arizona media have made similar accusations—ignore the size and scope of fraud in school districts and lawmakers’ efforts to limit such problems in the savings accounts.

For example, the financial loss due to fraudulent prescriptions in the Chattanooga district described above is larger than all the money parents are suspected of misspending statewide in Arizona and Tennessee’s education savings accounts combined in 2018. Audits of Arizona’s accounts have found that the total amount of suspected misuse hovers around 1 percent or less of the total amount the account awards annually.

Meanwhile, Arizona policymakers have taken an innovative approach to education savings account oversight and contracted with a private firm to monitor individual transactions. As explained on redefinED last year, North Carolina officials have already outsourced management responsibilities for education savings accounts in their state. The new systems can confirm eligible savings account families and their intended purchases before processing a transaction, helping to limit intentional or unintentional misspending.

Now, Tennessee’s Department of Education is trying to do the same. Tennesseans should applaud state officials for upgrading these accounts at the first sign of trouble, as opposed to letting fraud fester for years as commonly happens in school districts. Remember, the prescription fraud in Chattanooga began in 2015. Parents and taxpayers should not have to wait five years for fraudulent use of a child’s education spending to be resolved.

February 26, 2020 0 comment

Analysis Blog Guest Courts Education and Public Policy Education Equity Education Legislation Featured Jonathan Butcher School Choice Unionism

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