Wondrous the stone of these ancient walls, shattered by fate.
The districts of the city have crumbled.
The work of giants of old lies decayed.  —The Ruin

During the eighth or ninth century, an unknown author is thought to have surveyed the Roman ruins in Bath, England. The author composed an elegy in Old English, starting with the above lines. Today we know the poem as The Ruin. In the future, 2022 will be remembered as the year where we learned the ruinous academic consequences of the COVID-19 shutdowns on American schoolchildren.

Since the publication of the A Nation at Risk, Americans have been furiously buying various ACME legislative products in the hope of both improving the quality of K-12 education overall and of closing the achievement gap between White and Black students. The NAEP exam results released this year reveal we have little to show in aggregate for our efforts:

The above numbers should be put into context. Equating studies between international exams and NAEP had about half of students in high-performing nations and states like Japan and Massachusetts respectively scoring at the “proficient or better” level on NAEP. Given that Japanese students attend after school “cram schools” and Massachusetts is a demographically advantaged state with a reputation for effective schools, I’m inclined to view any expectation of 100% NAEP proficiency as unrealistic.

I’m more interested in how progress and fate (more our own ineptitude) began crumbling progress approximately a decade ago, as you can see in the above chart. Students of all three race/ethnicities peaked on either the 2011 or 2013 exam, but results have been sliding since. There is not much Japan or golden-age era Massachusetts to be found in the 2022 results.

These mere numbers speak to great human tragedy, unrealized potential, a poorer future. The public education system, like the structures in Bath, won’t be going away, but our progress and the futures of a great many young people have been ruined. Awash in unspent federal money, school districts continue struggling to perform tasks as straightforward as running mere bus routes.

More complex tasks, such imparting literacy, numeracy, and civic knowledge, have also been going poorly and have worsened over time. American parents and grandparents should make their plans accordingly.

Editor's note: With debate heating up over a proposal to expand Florida's tax credit scholarship program, a good amount of misinformation is circulating too. C.E. Glover, senior pastor and CEO of Mount Bethel Ministries, based in Fort Lauderdale, penned this op-ed in response to an editorial in the South Florida Sun Sentinel. The Sun Sentinel published Dr. Glover's piece today. (And again for the record, the school choice scholarship program is administered by Step Up For Students, which co-hosts this blog.)

Since we opened Mount Bethel Christian Academy in 1990, we have worked with a steady stream of students who arrived in our classrooms academically behind. Many of them were in danger of falling through the cracks in school – and in life.

In recent years, many of them were able to come to us only because of Florida's tax credit scholarship program, which offers educational options to the low-income parents who need them the most. And, I'm happy to report, many of those students have gone on to excel not only at our school, but in other schools both public and private.

I bring this up in response to the Sun-Sentinel's editorial, "Make testing a part of state vouchers." The suggestion that tax credit scholarship students should take the same standardized tests as public school students is worthy of serious public debate. All of us want to make sure that all students, whether they are in public school or private school or some other sector, are learning enough to succeed in a world that's getting more competitive and complicated by the second.

But the Sun-Sentinel omitted some important details about the scholarship program that are vital to having an informed debate.

To be clear, tax credit scholarship students are not exempt from accountability tests. Since 2006, they have been required, by state law, to take a state-approved standardized test. At our school, they take the widely respected Stanford Achievement Test. The results are sent to a top-notch education researcher for analysis and comparison to public school students. Since 2010, state law has also required the public disclosure of average test score gains or losses for private schools with 30 or more students in tested grades.

We know two important things from the test data. First, the students who use tax credit scholarships tend to be the lowest-performing students in the public schools. That finding is in sync with our experiences. Second, scholarship students are making the same annual learning gains as students of all income levels nationally. That should be encouraging to parents, taxpayers and policy makers.

It's worth noting that scholarship students are achieving these results with much less public funding than children in public schools. This year, the scholarship amount was $4,880. And though that's roughly half of total government spending on children in Florida public schools, it still comes with meaningful requirements for financial accountability. (more…)

For the last 150 years, we have assumed “public education” meant publicly funded education, but in this new age of customized teaching and learning this definition is too narrow. Today, it’s more useful and accurate to define public education as all learning options that satisfy mandatory school attendance laws, including those that don’t receive public funding, such as private schools and home-schooling.

Education - especially public education - has taken many forms in the United States over the last 300 years. According to Pulitzer Prize winning education historian Lawrence A. Cremin, in the 1700s education encompassed institutions “that had a part in shaping human character - families and churches, schools and colleges, newspapers, voluntary associations, and … laws”, while public education referred to formal instruction in public settings outside the home.

Public teaching became increasingly common in the latter half of the 18^th century, and by the early 19th century most communities had at least one free school open to all white children. These free schools, which operated independently much like today’s charter schools, became known as common or public schools. They combined with religious schools receiving public funding to educate the poor to comprise public education.  As Cremin notes, in 1813, most New Yorkers saw publicly-funded religious schools “as public or common schools.”

Over the next few decades, public funding for religious schools - most notably Catholic schools - became more contentious and rare. By the mid-1800s, free public schools and public education had become synonymous. Schools not receiving public funds were called private schools, even though they provided public instruction outside the home.

The birth of public education as we know it today occurred during the 1840s and ‘50s. (more…)

Standardized test costs. They total about $1.7 billion a year nationwide, according to a new report from Brookings that includes state-by-state figures. Not much, concludes researcher Matt Chingos, who adds “perhaps we’re spending less than we should.” Coverage from Education Week and Huffington Post. Former Florida education commissioner Gerard Robinson tells the latter about test anxiety: “I won't pretend that tests don't matter and there's no anxiety -- but I also tell people there's anxiety with sex. There's anxiety with sex, but there isn't any talk about getting rid of that.”

And still more Jeb summit coverage. Politic365 on the “Florida Formula.” EdFly Blog on the crucial center. Rick Hess on "The Common Core Kool-Aid."

More protests from Hillsborough parents. They want better training for employees who work with special-needs children, StateImpact Florida reports. More from Tampa Bay Times.

Editor's note: This op-ed ran in today's Orlando Sentinel.

Florida allocates five different scholarships from prekindergarten to college that allow students to attend faith-based schools. They don't violate the U.S. Constitution because students choose, and government doesn't coerce.

Both factors were why, in 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a Cleveland school voucher did not violate the Establishment Clause, even as 96 percent of the students chose faith-based schools. To the court, in the landmark Zelman v. Simmons-Harris case, the program met three critical standards that also apply to Florida: The primary objective is education; students can choose among secular and sectarian schools; and parents exercise an independent choice that is not steered by government.

The article "Many church schools get tax cash" in Sunday's Orlando Sentinel did not mention the Zelman case or that the Florida Supreme Court specifically avoided religion in 2006, when it overturned the private-school portion of the Opportunity Scholarship program. Consequently, readers might have thought that these programs are constitutionally suspect, when they are not.

The tax-credit scholarship is one of Florida's five scholarships. It strives to give low-income students access to the same learning options now available to more affluent families, via a $4,335 scholarship. This program complements other choice programs, such as magnet and charter schools, and is built on the truism that students learn in different ways. Last year, parents placed more than 1.2 million public-education students in schools other than their assigned district school.

In this new world of customized learning, encouraging differentiated instruction while maintaining quality control is a challenge. The tax-credit scholarship does this, in part, by requiring nationally norm-referenced tests that show these students are achieving the same gains in reading and math as students of all income levels. (more…)

Editor’s note: For years, there have been concerns about discordant trend lines for students in many states – rising, according to the state’s own standardized tests, but anemic according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress. In Florida (where we’re based), the lines tend to be in sync. But this post scrutinizes a state where that isn’t the case.

by Alan Bonsteel

The California Department of Education (CDE) just announced it must delay the release of its annual STAR testing results because at least some of the test questions were posted on Internet sites such as Twitter and Facebook. Way back in April, CDE found about 1600 images on the Internet, though many were only of test booklets and student answer sheets rather than actual questions. After investigating, CDE traced the images to 12 schools around the state. It’s now trying to analyze how much damage the leaked questions, at least 36 to date, have caused so it can accurately report scores.

Almost all states do their own testing of their public school students, an obvious conflict of interest that almost always results in unrealistically rosy test results. Tests tied to inherently weak standards that states have been allowed to adopt produce test results that do not correlate with what students actually need to know. Here in California, the STAR has made up nearly all of the misnamed “Academic Performance Index" since 1999. Although the high school exit exam has been added, the addition of graduation and dropout data, called for in the legislation more than a decade ago, has yet again been delayed until next year.

From the outset the STAR results soared, at least in part due to lax security, a failure to change or even rotate questions from year to year, and consequently, some teaching to the actual questions on the test. By contrast, the two other standardized tests given throughout the United States, the NAEP, or National Assessment of Educational Progress, and the SAT, have remained generally flat, showing only very modest improvements over more than a decade in each case.  Both of these latter two tests are given by independent testing authorities, and security has been maintained with them.

California is not the worst when NAEP scores are analyzed; Iowa, Maine, and Oklahoma have grabbed that honor.  Thanks to Education Next, you can find a map with results from 41 states here. California edged itself just above the median.

For years our group, California Parents for Educational Choice, has commented in the news media about the disconnect between the self-administered STAR and the two objective exams, with telling results. (more…)

Editor’s note: Today, we introduce a new feature (even if we’re not sure the name will last) - an occasional compilation of bite-sized nuggets about school choice and education reform that are worth noting but may not be worth a post by themselves.

More anti-Muslim bigotry in school choice debates

It’s nearly impossible to go a month without hearing another example of anti-Muslim bigotry in a school choice debate.

The latest example:  Louisiana state Rep. Valarie Hodges, who now says she wishes she had not voted for Gov. Bobby Jindal’s voucher bill because she fears it will promote Islam. “There are a thousand Muslim schools that have sprung up recently,” she said. “I do not support using public funds for teaching Islam anywhere here in Louisiana.”

The lawmaker’s comments echo Muslim bashing in school choice debates in Kansas, Alabama, Tennessee and other places in the past few months alone. Sadly, religious bigotry has long been a part of the school choice narrative. To repeat what we wrote in April:

The courts have ruled that vouchers and tax credit scholarships are constitutional. We live in a religiously diverse society and this pluralism is a source of pride and strength. We can’t pick and choose which religions are acceptable and unacceptable for school choice. And we should not tarnish whole groups of people because of the horrible actions of a few individuals. In the end, expanded school choice will serve the public good. It will increase the likelihood that more kids, whatever their religion, become the productive citizens we all want them to be.

Jeb Bush endorses pro-choice school board candidate

Jeb Bush doesn’t endorse local candidates often. But last week, he decided to back a Tampa Bay-area school board member who openly supports expanded school choice, including vouchers and tax credit scholarships.

Glen Gilzean, 30, is running against four other candidates to keep the Pinellas County School Board seat that Gov. Rick Scott appointed him to in January. The district in play includes much of the city of St. Petersburg and has more black voters than any other.

I don’t know how much Bush’s endorsement will help Gilzean. He's a black Republican in a district that leans Democratic (even if school board races in Florida are officially nonpartisan). But I do know this: Black students in Pinellas struggle more than black students in every major urban school district in Florida, and frustrated black residents are increasingly open to school choice alternatives. (more…)