Tag:

education equity

Why bully the low-income parent?

John E. Coons September 11, 2020

John E. Coons

The rulers of our teacher unions and those of allied non-teaching school staff need at long last identify and explain the justification for their forcing un-monied parents to deliver 5-year-old Mary to P.S. 99 instead of that private, maybe religious, school they preferred but could not afford.

The cost of choice to the taxpayer would not have increased the budget; indeed, a substantial and sufficient parental subsidy can be designed to save public money if that be a civic objective. Religious schools tend to be less expensive anyway.

So, what is the problem? Do we have reason to fear that private schools are bad for inner-city kids? So far at least, test scores suggest the contrary.

And what then does our no-choice military-style draft of the poor for their own “neighborhood” government school gain for either the child or society?

The union sovereigns softly encourage a justification with a more subtle assumption about poor parents. It is one seldom addressed in public or even casual private conversation; yet, from my own experience, it is widely shared by educated middle-class minds, even if seldom uttered in direct conversation.

It is simply the observation of the poor parent as somehow diminished either intellectually, morally, or both. In either case, they are in want of a certain something that only the Hoover public school just down the street can provide.

In short, these parents are viewed as dodos or even bad actors; clearly, that Hoover place is this child’s and society’s single best hope.

Meanwhile, we middle-class folk are sufficiently bright and sophisticated that we are the best judge of just who will serve our own child’s and the state’s interest (and then there is Pierce v. Society of Sisters).

This vague assumption of an incapacity of the low-income parent (combined with unique government insight of this child’s needs) endures today in the unspoken mystique supporting our public school conscription for the children of these impaired city-dwellers. It may constitute a gross defamation of the slum parent, but it continues as one of those subtle diseases of our cultural and civic souls.

It is difficult to recognize its presence and influence in oneself because so often it remains “in the air” but unspoken – an assumption of the true citizen but seldom allowed to emerge as a conscious and express working datum. In the real world, it remains a subtle constant that makes it easier to close our civic eye to the plague we have wrought upon the parent and child of the inner city.

Finally, suppose it to be true that such limited capacity to choose were in fact an authentic characteristic of the poor. We would still have to ask our leaders: Why is it that among all accessible schools, private and public, this one local public school knows best how to maximize the potential of this particular child whom no one of the school folk has even met?

The entire concept is an absurd non-sequitur. The perpetuation of this system of educational strong-arm is strictly a political achievement empowering the teacher unions. It is a uniquely destructive contraption built upon a foundation laid in the 19^th century and prospering since.

Truly, it can claim no justification whatsoever for monopolizing education service to the minds of the poor family, its child, or our civic order.

September 11, 2020 1 comment

Bipartisanship Blog Guest Commentary and Opinion Dan Lips Education and Public Policy Education Choice Education Equity Education Legislation Education Savings Accounts Education Spending Featured Parental Choice Private School Scholarships School Choice

How children’s savings accounts can promote equal opportunity

Dan Lips September 8, 2020

Dan Lips

Editor’s note: In this commentary, Dan Lips revisits an opinion piece Robert Reich wrote 20 years ago about progressive school vouchers in which Reich offered a promising grand compromise between the left’s and right’s visions for education reform. Today, Lips writes, state-funded children’s savings accounts are a new promising compromise strategy to promote equal opportunity.

The pandemic has exposed persistent inequality in American education. All children suffer when schools remain closed. But children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds face the biggest challenges. The current crisis should lead policymakers to consider new long-term strategies to promote equal opportunity.

Twenty years ago, former Clinton Administration Labor Secretary Robert Reich proposed a creative compromise between the left and right’s competing visions for education. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, he made the case for progressive school vouchers.

“The only way to begin to decouple poor kids from lousy schools is to give poor kids additional resources, along with vouchers enabling them and their parents to choose how to use them,” Reich wrote. He proposed providing vouchers to children on a sliding-scale based on parental income with the poorest quintile receiving $12,000 and the richest quintile getting $2,000. Children could use the scholarship to attend any school of choice.

Two decades later, progress has been made expanding disadvantaged children’s opportunities to attend higher-quality schools through open enrollment, charter schools and scholarship programs. Moreover, national data show that past differences in public funding available to schools serving children from poor and rich households have been narrowed.

But large educational achievement and attainment gaps between rich and poor children persist. And no grand bargain between the Left and Right has been reached to create progressive school vouchers to promote equal opportunity.

Former Secretary Reich probably isn’t surprised. At the time, he described his proposal as “a very long shot for now,” since it would require pooling and redistributing property tax revenues, boosting federal and state funding, and overcoming teacher union opposition.

But the former Labor Secretary’s proposed compromise is worth remembering as policymakers search for new solutions to promote equal opportunity.

A new approach to addressing inequality could be to create progressive children’s savings account programs to improve long-term access to college and job training and expand choice in K-12 education.

Across the United States, states, cities, and nonprofit organizations are making direct investments into young children’s savings accounts, often starting at birth. For example, all children born in Maine are eligible to receive a $500 investment into an education savings account funded by the Alfond Scholarship Foundation. Kindergartens in Nevada receive a $50 investment into a savings account upon entering school. Rhode Island’s College Bound Baby program provides every baby a $100 education savings account investment.

These programs are premised on the idea that seed investments will encourage parents to continue saving and lift children’s expectations for postsecondary education. Washington University researchers studied how such programs affect children – holding a lottery and awarding $1,000 investments to randomly selected children in Oklahoma. Years later, they found that these investments increased children’s college savings, raised parents’ expectations, and improved children’s social-emotional development compared to their peers.

Looking forward, children’s savings accounts programs have the potential to do much more to address inequality.

Programs that encourage investments into children’s savings accounts generally use the state’s 529 account program to manage investments. Under federal law, 529 accounts now allow tax-free savings for college expenses, job training, and K-12 tuition. More than 30 states and the District of Columbia currently offer tax deductions or credits for investments made into children’s 529 accounts.

Federal and state policymakers could establish new mechanisms to encourage or provide direct investments into disadvantaged children’s accounts to promote equal opportunity. Over time, investing in these accounts would give lower-income parents more flexibility to overcome poverty and ensure their child receives a high-quality education.

Congressional lawmakers have proposed expanding allowed uses of 529 accounts to include tutoring and other outside-of-school learning costs, which could be particularly helpful to address long term learning loss from the ongoing school closures. If allowed uses are expanded to include tutoring, investments in lower-income children’s saving account could reduce differences in outside of school learning opportunities and narrow achievement gaps.

Unlike former Secretary Reich’s proposal, progressive children’s savings accounts would not pose an immediate threat to teacher unions by redirecting existing school funding. To be sure, there will be challenges, including competing for government funding during an economic downturn with overburdened federal and state budgets. And as Reich wrote in 2000, “[t]he largest challenge is to convince each side in the current education battle that they have only part of the answer, and their opponents have the other.”

Democrats often express a desire to reduce wealth inequality. Republicans speak often of expanding educational choices for disadvantaged parents. Progressive children’s savings account programs can advance both principles and should be a solution that both sides can support.

September 8, 2020 1 comment

Achievement Gap Commentary and Opinion Education Choice Education Equity Featured Parental Choice School Choice

Education choice gives Black students a way out of ‘achievement gaps’ – and the systems that cause them

Keith Jacobs September 1, 2020

Keith Jacobs

A recent article on The 74 noted the controversy over using the term “achievement gap” to describe learning disparities between Black and white students, with critics arguing that the education reform movement’s focus on “widespread, high-stakes standardized testing” heightens racial stereotypes.

This is like blaming a thermometer for a fever while ignoring the virus that caused it – in this case, systemic racism and inequity in education. Giving families in underserved populations more choice in how and where to educate their children must be part of the cure.

Standardized testing can be a blunt instrument that fails to capture the individual circumstances of the learner or the inequity in the system, and too often emphasizes failure rather than student gains. However, we must have a standard by which we can measure learning across all spectrums.

While the article focuses on standardized testing as a measure that propagates racial bias, it barely mentions how few Black and low-income students graduate high school and the fact they get accepted to colleges at lower rates than their white peers.

However we define this “gap” in educational achievement, it remains that many of our nation’s children leave school without high school diplomas and basic reading, writing and math skills. The failures of the schools are not evenly distributed. They fall disproportionately on students of color and low-income families.

It permeates a mainstream school system that was never designed for these populations. Martin Luther King Jr. highlighted these inequities in 1967 when he said, “In elementary schools, Negroes lag one to three years behind whites, and their segregated schools received substantially less money per student than do the white schools.”

If we focus on the instrument that measures this disparity or on what we name it, but not on the inherent inequities in the system, we will continue to fall short of a real solution.

We can call it an achievement gap, or an opportunity gap as referenced in the article, but the results will remain the same.

We can debate whether it is based on race or income, but minority and low-income populations will still be prisoners of their ZIP codes.

We can talk about de jure segregation in the 1960s or de facto segregation today, but Black students will still experience systemic racism and inequity in education.

Income and racial disparities often are interconnected. In 2018, Black and Hispanic families made up 38% of families living in poverty compared to 18% of white and Asian families. Rather than blaming standardized testing and the use of the achievement gap as the reason why whites view Blacks as being inferior, we must decipher the root cause of why these inequities exist and how implicit biases permeate mainstream education.

Education choice is key to exposing and breaking those biases and inequities and helping students actualize their full potential. According to a 2019 Urban Institute study, the low-income students who received the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship were up to 20% more likely than public school students to earn bachelor’s degrees. Annual evaluations of the scholarship by the Florida Learning Systems Institute have consistently found that Florida’s most disadvantaged students have the same annual learning gains as all students of all income levels nationally.

Choice can have a positive impact on public schools, too. A study released earlier this year from the National Bureau of Economic Research found that benefits of the FTC scholarship went beyond students utilizing it. Researchers found that as the program expanded over the years, not only did lower-income, Black and Hispanic students benefit, but public schools most impacted by private school competition had higher test scores, fewer suspensions, and reduced absenteeism.

In The 74 article, Shavar Jeffries, head of the group Democrats for Education Reform, discussed his experience as a first-generation college graduate who received a full scholarship to Duke University. He lamented that he had to consistently inform people that he was on an academic scholarship, not an athletic scholarship. I understand where Jeffries is coming from. I also am a first-generation graduate who attended the highly regarded University of Florida and had to inform people that I was there for academics.

I owe my success to the true remedy for the virus of inequity in education: education choice.

Although I grew up as a recipient of the federal free and reduced-price lunch program, education choice afforded me the opportunity for cross-cultural immersion and an escape from the prospect of generational poverty. When I was still young, my teachers and parents praised my intellectual abilities and scores on standardized assessments despite my relegation to traditional courses that lacked rigor. This all changed when I applied for and was accepted into the International Baccalaureate program. It empowered me to see beyond my current situation and defy the stigma assigned to being a Black male student on free and reduced-price lunch.

At that time, there were not many choice options beyond public magnet schools, but the experience broadened my perspective. Today, there are magnets, charters, scholarship programs, vouchers and other choice programs available to students.

The adversary to progress for Black students is not the terminology used for analyzing standardized testing results, but rather the latent systemic racism that these tests reveal. Education choice gives them a way out of a system that for too long has worked against them.

September 1, 2020 3 comments

Commentary and Opinion Coronavirus / COVID-19 Customization Education Choice Education Equity Education Savings Accounts Featured Homeschooling Microschools Parental Choice School Choice Technology and Innovation

Education transformation, micro-schools and the question of equity

Special to redefinED August 27, 2020

Special to redefinED

Among the remote learning options offered by Wonderschool, a company that matches families to child-care and micro-schools near them, is Base One, a space where students can focus on schoolwork and stay up to speed during the pandemic while receiving access to premium coding education and state-of-the art video gaming equipment they can use after school.

Editor’s note: This commentary from Michael B. Horn, co-founder of the Clayton Christensen Institute and executive director of its education program, first appeared on Substack.

As pandemic pods have spread around the country and reporters and families are trying to make sense of this moment in the sun for micro-schools, I’ve been talking to the different entrepreneurs supporting these experiences for students, families, and educators.

A central question on reporters’ and educators’ minds has been equity. With over 50% of school districts planning on remote learning in the fall, there’s concern that those with the most resources can find or create good solutions, whereas those with the least will be stuck without any suitable schooling and child-care options.

Given the existing opportunity gaps for students from low-income and minority backgrounds before the pandemic, and the assumption that many have suffered deep learning losses since March while those from relatively well-off families likely found learning opportunities through their home environment if not their school, there is heightened sensitivity around the question.

This feels right on the surface.

But a recent conversation I had with Chris Bennett, the founder and CEO of Wonderschool—a company that matches families to child-care and micro-schools near them, gave me pause (you can watch the interview here on YouTube).

Think of Wonderschool like an Airbnb for launching education programs. The company has been operating since 2016. Before the pandemic it was growing fast, as it helped people start infant and toddler programs and preschools out of their homes.

When I asked Chris about the equity question, he urged caution around making presumptions.

“It’s really hard to get visibility into what’s happening for families all over the country that are coming through this,” he said. “But my guess is [that low-income and middle-income families], they’re figuring this out, just along with, you know, very wealthy families that are out there doing this.”

The son of immigrants from Honduras who grew up in Miami in a large family of 31 first cousins where he was the first to graduate from college, it’s a question Chris takes seriously. He credits his own success with having been enrolled in a great preschool program.

As he said, “It’s something I think deeply about. You know, the mission of Wonderschool is to ensure every child gets access to the education they need to fulfill their potential. And so, we are very, very committed to every child getting access, especially when I share my story.”

That’s where the second point comes in. Low-income and minority parents are far more likely to prefer that their children do not return to school buildings until the pandemic has passed than their counterparts. For example, according to one survey, 64% of black parents want remote learning versus 32% of white parents. Most families making less than $50,000 want remote learning, whereas 27% of families making more than $150,000 feel the same way.

As Morgan Polikoff, co-director of the study, hypothesized, “These communities may have already been harder hit by the virus, and they have seen more of what the actual impact is on people’s health.”

The findings, which have appeared in survey after survey, also suggest that these families do have child-care options in place.

The final thought also goes back to something Chris shared with me.

“What’s really exciting about this movement is this could potentially lead to funding for micro-schools from our school districts, from our state governments, from our from the federal government,” he said. “And if there’s funding for micro-schools, just like there’s funding for public school or funding for charter schools. Then, suddenly, you know, everyone gets access to a micro-school.”

As Chris observed there’s already a vehicle in some states to do just this: Education Savings Accounts (ESAs), which are funded with public dollars that allow families to spend the money on micro-schools and other education services. In Arizona, for example, ESAs allow students to attend micro-schools from Prenda, a hot startup in the micro-school arena.

“All I keep thinking is why isn’t that available nationwide? If that’s available nationwide, then the equity component is solved for,” Chris said. “Now the quality component is the next level, that’s something that we’re going to have to solve for, but that’s an issue about every type of micro-school, no matter how wealthy the parent is.”

Most public schools haven’t eagerly jumped in to support this trend Chris acknowledged, but given the funding exists, he’s bullish about the greater opportunity. And to be fair, there are some districts that have seized the moment to create learning pods themselves and ensure all their students have adequate options, such as the Adams 12 district north of Denver and others featured in this Chalkbeat article.

That resonates because although I’ve argued that disruptive innovation of schooling is unlikely in the United States, I’ve also long hypothesized that if it were to occur, it would come about in the form of an Airbnb platform making home-schooling and micro-schooling far more accessible to many more families who were over-served by the existing schools and just wanted a customized schooling option that fit their needs.

Stay tuned to what happens to Wonderschool. It was one of the hot startups before the pandemic hit, but in supporting micro-schools, it appears they are remaining relevant and will continue to grow. And in so doing, another part of the Wonderschool story is that they are enabling educators to earn significantly more money by pricing their services in the market. As Chris shared, one preschool teacher on their platform was able to earn the same salary that she earned in a year in just a month and a half by starting her own school.

To attract the talent in the teaching profession that children need to develop, that could also be a game-changer.

To continue reading this article and to learn why Horn believes community colleges shouldn’t be the answer to upskilling in America, click here.

August 27, 2020 0 comment

Commentary and Opinion Coronavirus / COVID-19 Customization Education and Public Policy Education Choice Featured Parental Choice School Choice

Disintermediation grows in K-12 education in pandemic pod era

Matthew Ladner August 17, 2020

Matthew Ladner

Disintermediation: (noun), the elimination of an intermediary in a transaction between two parties

Those of us working in K-12 education policy should familiarize ourselves with this concept, often described as “cutting out the middleman.” Wikipedia helpfully explains:

Disintermediation initiated by consumers is often the result of high market transparency, in that buyers are aware of supply prices direct from the manufacturer. Buyers may choose to bypass the middlemen (wholesalers and retailers) to buy directly from the manufacture, and pay less. Buyers can alternatively elect to purchase from wholesalers. Often, a business-to-consumer electronic commerce (B2C) company functions as the bridge between buyer and manufacturer.

Well hello there, pandemic pods!

This trend has been going on for a long time with regard to enrichment educational activities. The pandemic has accelerated this trend into core academic instruction. If policymakers want low-income children and those with special needs to have the opportunity to participate, public policies allowing dollars to follow children will be necessary.

In the absence of such policies, already gigantic achievement gaps between the well-to-do may widen further still. The Denver school district among others recently essentially cautioned parents against forming pods expressing equity concerns. This is exactly the wrong approach. Rather, the district should be assisting interested disadvantaged families in the formation of pods of their own.

August 17, 2020 0 comment

Blog Guest Commentary and Opinion Coronavirus / COVID-19 Education and Public Policy Education Choice Education Equity Featured Jonathan Butcher Private School Scholarships School Choice Tax Credit Scholarships

Oklahoma homeless students benefit from private school scholarships

Jonathan Butcher August 13, 2020

Jonathan Butcher

Positive Tomorrows, a private school in Oklahoma City, serves homeless students using a multi-pronged approach to address education and social service needs.

Susan Agel wants her students to gain experience. Silicon Valley internships and trips abroad would be nice, but for the students she serves, the needs are more basic.

Like riding in a car. Or going to a store — any store.

Agel’s school, Positive Tomorrows, is a private school serving homeless children in Oklahoma City. She says they enrolled one student who “had never been in a retail establishment. He had never seen his parents buy anything.” His only transportation was the occasional trip on a city bus.

“We’re a little different than most private schools,” Agel says, with a touch of understatement. One out of every five students at Positive Tomorrows is “couch homeless,” which means students sleep in motels, cars, on floors and do not have a home of their own, while another two-thirds live in homeless shelters.

“It’s these children who are living in deep poverty and are bouncing around [from] place to place and attend multiple schools in a school year,” Agel says. “They fall behind academically, they fall behind socially.”

Agel’s school specializes in providing wrap-around services for students and their families. She wants to help families out of homelessness and poverty and set them on their way to financial independence while students pursue academic independence.

“We help them find housing, make sure there is food and clothing and identify some goals that [parents] want to accomplish,” Agel explains — goals such as earning a GED or learning marketable skills.

“Once the families are stable and the kids are doing well in school, we will help them transition back into a public school,” Agel says.

Positive Tomorrows serves the “poorest in our community,” she says, and so her school “scholarships everybody for everything.” This nearly constant state of fundraising makes the uncertain economic times ushered in by the pandemic especially challenging.

“We turn away kids every year, and we don’t want to do that. We don’t like to do that,” Agel says.

Enter Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt’s decision to use a portion of federal COVID relief spending for K-12 private school scholarships. Stitt set aside $10 million for these scholarships, while traditional schools received $161 million from the federal pandemic stimulus bill enacted in March. The governor’s office estimates that 1,500 students will have access to scholarships worth up to $6,500. Stitts set aside another $8 million for “digital wallet grants,” allowing 5,000 low-income families to use up to $1,500 for “curriculum content, tutoring services and/or technology.”

Gov. Stitt specifically recognized the need to help homeless students and the private schools that serve their families when he announced the scholarships.

Parents also are paying more attention to private schools this summer as traditional districts — such as Oklahoma City Public Schools — reopen exclusively online, while private schools such as Positive Tomorrows are preparing to open in-person. Given these decisions, national media have been quick to cite equity concerns, to which Positive Tomorrows and the new Oklahoma scholarships appear to answer.

“With the students we are serving, it’s highly important for them to be face-to-face in school,” Agel says. Most of the families in her school do not have internet access, nor do they have room to create temporary classrooms in homeless shelters.

Positive Tomorrows has a new facility built with the idea of expansion in mind — Oklahoma has some 26,000 homeless children, and Agel’s school enrolls 118 — so Agel hopes to use the extra space this fall to keep students in small groups.

As explained on redefinED, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster created similar K-12 private school scholarship options using federal COVID spending measures. New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu has also done so. Fiscal hawks (the few who still exist) should be concerned about current congressional debates for more pandemic spending since lawmakers toss around figures such as $3.5 trillion as though there is more to be found in between the cushions of the couch in the speaker’s office.

If more federal spending is coming, policymakers would do well to watch Oklahoma’s example. Such learning options should dominate educational equity discussions, turning the name of Agel’s school from an aspiration to a promise.

August 13, 2020 0 comment

Blog Guest Commentary and Opinion Coronavirus / COVID-19 Dan Lips Education and Public Policy Education Choice Education Equity Education Savings Accounts Featured School Choice

Reducing outside-of-school learning inequality when schools are closed

Special to redefinED August 12, 2020

Special to redefinED

The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis on Aug. 6 held a public hearing on “Challenges to Safely Reopening American Schools,” featuring former U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan; Caitlin Rivers, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security; Broward County (Florida) Public Schools Superintendent Robert Runcie; and Angela Skillings, a second-grade teacher in the Hayden-Winkelman Unified School District in Arizona. You can see their prepared testimony here, here, here and here. redefinED guest blogger Dan Lips, a visiting fellow with the Foundation for Research and Equal Opportunity, also participated. The following is Lips’ condensed spoken testimony.

As we have heard today, communities across the country are facing a difficult decision about how to begin the school year during the pandemic. The prospect of any child, teacher, or school employee contracting COVID-19 and facing the possibility of death or serious illness should weigh heavily on all policymakers involved with decisions affecting schools’ plans.

But it is critical that policymakers also recognize the serious risks associated with prolonged school closures, particularly for disadvantaged children.

Researchers studying the educational effects of school closures warn that time out of school results in months of lost learning, and that the learning losses are most acute for low-income students.

The bottom line is that prolonged school closures will create a large achievement gap for a generation of American children. Beyond these educational effects, prolonged school closures create significant risks for children’s health and welfare.

There is alarming evidence, which I describe in my written testimony, that prolonged school closures since the spring have endangered child welfare. Closures also have significant negative economic effects for parents. Many parents have been forced to choose between their jobs and their child’s care, and this challenge is most difficult for single parents.

The good news is that it is possible for schools to reopen.

Health experts — including the American Academy of Pediatrics — have issued guidelines for safely reopening schools with certain precautions, such as physical distancing, utilizing outdoor space, cohort classes to minimize crossover among children and adults, and face coverings for students (particularly older students).

And we are seeing many school districts choose to reopen across the country with in-person instruction or hybrid learning options.

According to a new analysis from the Center for Reinventing Public Education, 41 percent of rural districts and 28 percent of suburban districts plan to provide in-person instruction this fall. But most the nation’s largest school districts are not reopening with in-person instruction.

Seventy-one of the nation’s 120 largest school districts are beginning the school year with remote instruction and no in-person learning, based on FREOPP’s review. Altogether, these closed school districts serve more than 7 million children — including 1.4 million children living in poverty.

It is important to recognize that children from low-income families have fewer resources to learn outside of school than their peers. According to one estimate, rich families spend more than $9,000 out of pocket on their children’s educational and enrichment outside of school, while the poorest families spent just $1,400.

Today, families with financial means are working to create better options than remote learning — including homeschooling and setting up “pandemic learning pods” by forming coops with other parents and hiring teachers or tutors. But children from lower-income families have few options. Policymakers must address this inequality.

For example, states should use existing CARES Act funds to provide aid directly to parents in the form of education savings accounts or scholarships to support their children’s outside of school learning needs. Oklahoma, New Hampshire, and South Carolina are already doing this. Other states should follow their lead.

As Congress considers future aid packages for K-12 education, you should provide aid directly to parents to help disadvantaged children learn when their school is closed. There is precedent for providing emergency education relief in this manner.

After Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita in 2005, many children were displaced and had nowhere to go to school. Congress provided more than $1 billion in aid that followed affected children to a school of their parents’ choice, allowing them to continue their education.

If millions of children are unable to attend school this year, Congress should focus much of its aid in a similar manner — providing direct assistance to help children continue learning while schools are closed. In my written testimony, I discuss these and other recommendations for how school systems can prioritize and address the needs of disadvantaged children during the pandemic.

Since 1965, Congress has rightly focused federal education aid on promoting equal opportunity for at-risk children. In 2020, this will require focusing aid to support disadvantaged kids who can’t go to school.

The Foundation for Research and Equal Opportunity will host an executive briefing on its recommendations for reopening and continuing American education during the pandemic on Thursday. Visit https://freopp.org/ for details.

August 12, 2020 0 comment

Blog Guest Commentary and Opinion Coronavirus / COVID-19 Education and Public Policy Education Choice Education Equity Featured Jack Coons Parental Choice School Choice

Of clustering, cloistering and class during the pandemic

John E. Coons July 24, 2020

John E. Coons

Little Miss Ruffit

Cried, “Mom, lets slough it

Who needs that school anyway?”

Said Mom, “Dear, we do.

Must work to feed you

You’ll learn your stuff there today.”

I see no handy solution to the “either stuck-at-home or stuck-at-work” dilemma of the Ruffit family. And I have sympathy, not only for the parent and child but, yes, for the public school systems – especially those in large cities.

Experts of every mind are announcing their own version of the ideal technique for reopening schools, and many of these sound plausible. This sort of civic conversation is good. Nevertheless, what stays plain and most regrettable is the continued assumption of most “authorities” that a small collection of government persons who are total strangers to both the individual child and parent still will be deciding where those kids from poor families in this neighborhood will learn their ABCs.

These outsiders will order the child to a school that the parents are unable to refuse because they can’t afford either to move to some well-set suburb or pay tuition at the private school they would prefer. They have tried to enroll Susie in the few charter schools that are allowed by the state over the howls of the union, but all are chock full or too distant.

One can admire the seriousness with which government authorities have taken today’s unique challenge; they have redesigned their programs for public schools with variety across the state. But sheer zeal is no solution to this deeper problem of choice for the poor, which is with us yet from the 19^th century at the dawn of public education as we know it.

The motivation at that time was largely religious prejudice to be institutionalized in the kinds of schools which – with compulsory assignment of the poor – appeared most likely to rescue young minds from their ignorant parents’ un-American ideas.

I wish we could give this sudden swing toward decentralization of public schools three cheers as a retreat from prejudice and a salute to the dignity of the poor. Sadly, it is neither. The union can rest easy. There is no immediate threat to its dominion. And you mothers and fathers – best you keep working. You can still have late dinner at home and listen to your child’s experience of the day, wishing you could do something to help her.

I wonder what she makes of the role of parents in this society.

Pity Ms. Ruffit’s

Fate to go snuff its

Message from who knows where.

Well, sorry, but that’s how

We keep our world now.

Of parents so poor who’ll care?

July 24, 2020 0 comment