For (vocational) school choice

A certain Oklahoma vo-tech school with an ample marketing budget is using all sorts of media — mail pieces, ads at movie theaters, billboards, and more — to inform Oklahomans that "It's About Choice." Which got me to thinking ...

If the vo-techs are really this fond of giving people choices, I'm sure they'd be happy for the legislature to enact a voucher or tax-credit plan allowing Oklahomans to choose the public or private vocational school of their choice. Surely the public vo-techs — seeing as how they're the nation's best and all — wouldn't for a moment be afraid to compete for students. If the schools are as good as their tax-funded PR campaigns would suggest, surely they wouldn't have any trouble attracting students. Surely they could provide a better product at a lower cost than their private counterparts. Surely they would be eager to compete on a level playing field.

After all, "It's About Choice."

Bad news (for now) on school choice

I went to Room 419-C of the state capitol building this morning expecting to hear debate on Senate Bill 2148, an important piece of school-choice legislation. Didn't happen. The bill didn't even receive a hearing.

Reflecting on this at the water cooler later this morning, I told one of my colleagues that poor kids will continue to be trapped in rotten (and unsafe) schools that aren't teaching them anything. The labor unions don't care -- they simply cannot allow any child to escape. What's worse, the unions don't even have the decency to be ashamed of themselves.

Stay tuned ...

Shumate on school choice

In the current issue of Perspective, state Rep. Jabar Shumate (D-Tulsa) discusses school choice with OCPA research fellow Patrick McGuigan.

School choice bill to be considered Monday

Senate Bill 2148, the school-choice legislation being sponsored by Sen. James Williamson and Sen. Judy Eason McIntyre, will be heard in the Senate Education Committee on Monday, February 18 at 9:00 a.m. in Room 419-C of the state capitol building.

Bipartisanship ... for the children

Everyone down the street at 23rd & Lincoln is talking about the need for bipartisanship. In this column in Sunday's Oklahoman, I make the case that a perfect place to start is with a school-choice bill authored by a conservative Republican and a liberal Democrat.

Washington U. in St. Louis to sponsor KIPP Academy

According to Monday's edition of Student Life, Washington University in St. Louis, a private institution, will sponsor a new St. Louis-area public charter middle school, the latest KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) Academy, to open in the fall of 2009.

Trina Clark James of St. Louisans United to Attract KIPP told the paper, "These kids will learn about college and get the feeling that they will go to college.... To have a partnership with one of the top universities of this country, it makes it more real for them." KIPP spokesperson Debbie Fine said, "The primary mission is to get these kids to college and to prepare them for success in college life.... The basic premise is a lot of hard work to provide a high quality education."

If the middle school is successful, KIPP hopes to add an elementary and middle school in St. Louis.

KIPP has two charter middle schools in Oklahoma: KIPP Reach College Preparatory in Oklahoma City and KIPP Tulsa College Preparatory.

As of July 1, 2007, Oklahoma's comprehensive and regional state universities are eligible to sponsor charter schools in the larger school districts in the state's two largest counties; private colleges and universities are not permitted that opportunity. (Here is the Oklahoma State Department of Education's page on charter schools, with links to the applicable legislation.)

A school-choice progress report

Our friend Dan Lips, an education policy analyst at The Heritage Foundation and co-author of the OCPA study "The Oklahoma Scholarship Tax Credit: Giving Parents Choices, Saving Taxpayers Money," gives a helpful big-picture overview of where things stand today.

Charter schools keep families in the city

To keep families in the center city, offer them real school choice. It's working in Cleveland:

When Citizens' Academy [a Cleveland charter school] surveyed its parents, more than 40 percent said the school -- consistently among the state's top performers -- played an integral role in their decision to remain in Cleveland. To Perry White, the East Side charter school's director, that means successful schools are as much an economic development issue as an education issue.

"To stem the exodus of families from Cleveland, we must leverage our best public schools -- charter and district -- as catalysts for creating neighborhoods of choice," White said. "The future of our city and region depends on it."

Josipa Peric can vouch for that. Peric, who works as a waitress, has a fourth-grader at Citizens'. Another son graduated from the school two years ago and was awarded a scholarship to attend University School, a prestigious private school.

Peric said she and her husband had planned to leave Cleveland and move to Eastlake with other Croatian immigrants. Through friends, they discovered Citizens' and transferred their two sons there from Catholic school. Now, they plan to stay in town and open a bakery here.

"We were planning to move, too, but the school is great," Peric said. "They are like family to us."

That kind of symbiotic relationship between parents and schools, which died in some neighborhoods decades ago, could be the greatest legacy of the charter movement.

When will business leaders and chambers of commerce in Oklahoma's big cities -- people with an economic interest in the prosperity of the inner city -- start putting the pressure on our public school boards to be more hospitable to charter schools and on our legislators to promote school choice?

(Cross-posted from BatesLine.)

Bipartisan school-choice effort underway

A conservative Republican and a liberal Democrat are teaming up to help children.

State Sen. James Williamson (R-Tulsa) and state Sen. Judy Eason McIntyre (D-Tulsa) have introduced Senate Bill 2148, the Great Schools Tax Credit Program Act. The bill would allow a tax credit for any Oklahoma taxpayer who makes a contribution to a charitable organization which provides educational scholarships to low-income students to cover all or part of their tuition, fees, and transportation costs at a qualified private school.

According to the U.S. Department of Education, similar scholarship tax credit laws already exist in Arizona, Florida, Iowa, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island.

Sen. Williamson, the Senate’s Republican leader emeritus, holds a bachelor’s degree in education from the University of Tulsa and taught social studies in the Tulsa Public Schools. He also holds a law degree from the University of Tulsa and has practiced law in Tulsa for nearly 30 years.

Sen. Eason McIntyre, who earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in social work from the University of Oklahoma, worked for 31 years in the child welfare division of the state Department of Human Services. She also served on the Tulsa Public Schools board of education for 16 years, serving two years as president.

Opportunities and blessings in school choice

[This article by Patrick B. McGuigan appears in the February 2008 issue of Perspective, published by OCPA.]

During last year's legislative session, with his passionate advocacy of Oklahoma's charter schools and co-sponsorship of a bill to make it easier to support such institutions, Tulsa Democrat Rep. Jabar Shumate drew a lot of attention. Some of it was favorable, some of it highly critical from certain public school advocates.

In a recent interview, he explained his motivations for pushing the new charter law, which he described as "a great opportunity and a blessing in so many ways." Shumate said, "My political mentor and dear friend, David Boren, always modeled for me ways to find the middle ground, to work together with others for the common good. I watched him as a student, then as an employee of his at the University of Oklahoma."

Shumate reflected, "I have always based my politics, my work in public life, on working from the middle. This issue was a chance to do that, to make that real. Both Democrats and Republicans, in my experience, want strong education. I applaud my Republican friends for what they've done in the charter schools area. I must say I have no permanent friends and no permanent enemies in politics. I am results-oriented.

"As I looked at this issue in terms of my district, I saw charter schools where the lights are on, when children are learning and where they are safe. I was not afraid at all of fighting for those kids and those schools. I saw too many children in neighborhoods in Tulsa, and elsewhere today, who are going to schools that were not doing them any good. They are not doing those kids any justice, any good in terms of reaching their potential, of finding all their options, of achieving what they can achieve."

For these reasons, he said, "Honestly, defending charter schools and fighting for that bill last year was a no-brainer for me. It was the right kind of issue for my people in Tulsa, and it was a way to put into motion the things that David Boren taught me."

Rep. Shumate said he was disappointed and upset with the decision of the Tulsa Public Schools system to file a lawsuit challenging that new public charter schools law. He called the litigation "very sad. First of all, the law we passed is perfectly good law. It will withstand this legal challenge. In some ways, this lawsuit will hurt charter schools for a time, because it's a scare tactic and we'll be dealing with question marks about these schools. That's not good. This is the epitome of a frivolous lawsuit. It is ludicrous and ridiculous."

"The folks that lose out are the kids," Shumate continued. "With this lawsuit by the Tulsa Public Schools, there is a law firm that will make a lot of money. The district's position is one-sided. They're acting in a vacuum and doing this simply because they can. The lawsuit will take money away from curriculum enhancement, from teacher training, from resources and research that could help our kids.

"By definition, the charter school bill is a middle ground, it is a compromise among all of us who worked for it. I think it's a sad day to look at the lawsuit that was filed. The bill would not have passed, it could never have become law without compromise. The district is turning away from that compromise, they have no broad approach to the issue. This is crying sour grapes, for no reason. It was a bill—something everyone could live with. In the end, it will be upheld."

I asked Shumate why, if the focus in education policy should be on children, it is various systems that get most of the attention and time in public discussion and debate. He answered, "That is an excellent question. In educational systems, you have a large fight, you have large fights over dollars. When it's about dollars, and it's about taxpayer dollars, you get into politics."

When that happens, he said, "People resort to name-calling and fall into a mindset of 'I, me and mine.' They disregard or disconnect form what we should be about, which is the kids. A good example is what happened in Tulsa after our discussion and after the new law that I supported. We've got lawsuits over charters and a mindset among opponents of those schools, people who are saying, 'That's my money.'

"We don't think enough about why we have that money. It's not for us, it's not for systems or individuals, it's for the education of our children. Nobody thinks about this. When I hear Tulsa opponents of charter schools say that the charter schools are taking away 'our money,' I point out to them that they should be a lot more worried about Owasso or Jenks, where our kids have already gone."

If one reform other than additional money could be made to empower kids, parents, and schools in public education, I asked, what would that one reform be? Shumate answered, "From the perspective of my legislative district, I would put more power in the hands of principals. I would allow autonomy, strength and the ability to change things for the better at the individual school level."

He elaborated, "As for parents, they need and deserve autonomy. If they are given more power, more control over their lives and over the education of their children, they will have more incentive to get involved. ... I would promote site-based management to give more power to principals and greater support to community leaders and parents to take our schools forward."

Asked for his perspective on other, broader forms of school choice — vouchers, tax credits, and similar proposals — Rep. Shumate replied, "I'll be frank with you. This is a rough discussion, this issue. As we look at anything beyond charter schools, you almost get a brick wall put in front of you. I am at the point of studying options beyond charter schools. My dilemma is that I don't want to advance things that would lead kids to, in fact, leave our neighborhoods in Tulsa, and not be able to stay at schools there in their, in our, neighborhood."

He continued, "Would I have scads of kids leaving north Tulsa to go to Cascia Hall? If you don't have neighborhoods with schools, then neighborhoods will die. I want kids to be educated within the community, so I'm in a careful and 'studying' approach."

There is new legislation supportive of expanded school choice options, a bill introduced this session by state Sen. James Williamson, a Tulsa Republican, and state Sen. Judy Eason-McIntyre, a Tulsa Democrat. Asked to comment on the legislation, Rep. Shumate replied, "I have heard of Sen. Williamson's bill and indeed we have discussed it. It has piqued my interest. My question to him was: 'How do we not get into a situation where we don't first empower kids to look within their district?' I want to create means to help kids get a good education within our community. I would be concerned if the first result was for kids to leave to get their education. But I am very interested in what Sen. Williamson is proposing."

Some voices, including former House Speaker Lance Cargill (R-Harrah), have called school choice "the greatest civil rights issue of our time." Asked to respond, Rep. Shumate replied with laughter: "Actually, I think that Lance Cargill stole that line from me, after I stole it from someone else!"

He continued, "We hope in our educational system to give young people the chance to reach their potential. When we think about civil rights, about a person's advancement and success in life, much of all that depends on the ability to be, and to do, your very best. You must have the confidence to reach up, youngsters need confidence to reach their potential.

"My response on that issue is that every time we help move a bit further on the march to justice, we have done something good. No one rewards mediocrity or failures. To me, charters and perhaps some other forms of school choice are a way to advance civil rights. Whether kids are rich or poor or have some other circumstance, it seems to me that choice can serve us. Educational freedom and choice represent a great civil rights challenge we face today."

OCPA research fellow Patrick McGuigan (M.A. in history, Oklahoma State University) is a certified teacher with classroom instructional experience in urban schools. He is also an editor at The City Sentinel in Oklahoma City.

'Charters challenge the entrenched system'

Charter schools "represent an enterprise where education happens better, quicker and more efficiently," Jeanne Allen writes in Forbes. "Such a concept is not only needed in a nation formed to secure liberty, but is essential to its continued progress."

K-12 philanthropy is changing

[This article by Brandon Dutcher appeared November 26, 2004 in The Oklahoman.]

The Oklahoma City Public Schools Foundation recently celebrated its 20th birthday, and The Oklahoman rightly lauded the organization for its "two decades of changing lives."

But even as the foundation continues its good work, it’s worth noting that there are important changes afoot in the world of education philanthropy. Frederick M. Hess, a scholar at the venerable American Enterprise Institute, describes them in "Re-tooling K-12 Giving," a recent article in Philanthropy magazine.

The old model of education giving "focused on pouring resources into the maw of enormous public systems," Hess writes. Walter Annenberg’s 1993 challenge grant of $500 million to public schools is emblematic of this approach. But 10 years later, Annenberg’s "ambitious effort had produced dismal results, casting a harsh light on conventional philanthropic efforts to improve schooling."

"The Annenberg experience put an exclamation mark on longstanding frustrations regarding the results of philanthropic giving to public schooling," he explains, "and its disappointing conclusion heralded the entry of a new generation of funders eager to try another tack." Exhibits A and B of this new generation: the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation – the nation's two biggest education givers in 2002.

The Gates Foundation states explicitly that "certain 'mission critical' policy conditions must be in place for large-scale success: standards and assessments, accountability, need-based funding, school choice, college access." The Walton Family Foundation puts considerable emphasis on school choice. One grantee, the Children's Scholarship Fund (co-founded by John Walton), gives tuition assistance to needy families who want to send their children to private schools.

When Mr. Walton spoke to OCPA in 2002, he said the foundation continues to support public education, but that parental choice is necessary to spur improvement. "In our family business, everyone in operations will tell you that our toughest stores to run are those with the least competition," he said. "I think we just need to create the kind of environment in which the customer is empowered."

In short, Hess writes, "the philanthropic community is in the midst of a slow, difficult evolution from the earnest efforts epitomized by the Annenberg Challenge to a savvier, more politically aware approach."

Why? Many philanthropists are dissatisfied with their return on investment. Inflation-adjusted per-pupil spending continues to rise in the public schools (by a multiple of 3.22 in Oklahoma over the last 40 years), yet student achievement remains flat at unacceptably low levels. Oklahoma's reported public school spending is $6,436 per pupil – though Hess estimates the real number is 20 to 30 percent higher than that. ("The accounting guidelines in schools would bring smiles to the former executives of Enron or Tyco," he says.).

Donors look around and see that private schools are getting results at a fraction of the cost.

Whether one is investing in biotech startups, aerospace firms, or the education of children, there’s no reason to think a near-monopoly, heavily unionized, government-owned-and-run entity is going to be the strongest performer. Leveraged-buyout king Ted Forstmann, co-founder (with Walton) of the Children's Scholarship Fund, observed that giving money to public schools is "like giving money to Brezhnev – it’s the wrong system."

Here’s a sobering fact: Oklahoma's public school system is one which the majority of people would exit if they could. Earlier this year, Cole Hargrave Snodgrass & Associates asked Oklahoma parents: "If you had a school-age child and were given a voucher or a tax credit that would cover tuition to any of the following, which would you personally choose for your child?" Fifty-eight percent said they would choose a private school.

Many of those children are stuck in bad schools, and their childhood won't wait for the school improvements the old model of philanthropy seeks to foster. Here's hoping donors will throw more of these children a life preserver right now.

Choice, diversity in Oklahoma's future

Someone recently asked me what I thought education in Oklahoma would look like, say, 25 years from now.

My short answer is: I don’t know. The God of history—”Divine Providence,” in the words of the signers of the Declaration—stands outside of history and directs it as he sees fit. But there’s one thing I do know: it makes no sense to continue doing what we’re doing.

According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which gives Oklahoma’s school system an F, our public schools are among the worst in the nation—and this in a nation whose schools are among the worst in the industrialized world. As Oklahoma begins its second century, it’s time to move away from our antiquated, heavily unionized, government-owned-and-operated monopoly. We should seek to restore the American tradition of educational freedom and consumer choice, a tradition which predates and lasted longer than our current practice of delivering education through a monopoly.

There’s good reason to believe we’ll move in that direction in the next 25 years. According to the U.S. Department of Education, there are now 23 school choice programs (mostly vouchers and tax credits) in 13 states plus the District of Columbia. As more and more states embrace school choice, it’s reasonable to believe Oklahoma will too.

Even our Democrat state school superintendent has said that more school choice is likely in Oklahoma. “School choice is a reality, and we should just get used to it,” Sandy Garrett said in 2001. “We have a lot of choice already in Oklahoma, but I think we’ll have some sort of a tax credit or something something to let children go wherever their parents want.”

In a recent advertisement in the state’s largest newspaper, an open letter signed by 147 Oklahomans, the signatories declared that “Oklahoma will be, in its second century, a more diverse state than ever.” This is true, and school choice is all about celebrating diversity. Parents and children should have the freedom and the ability to choose from charter schools that emphasize core knowledge, specialty schools that focus on the arts, magnet schools that specialize in science and engineering, and dozens more.

They should be free to choose evangelical Christian schools which equip children to love the Lord their God with all their minds. Or Jewish day schools which provide a rigorous, faith-based education and help preserve Jewish continuity. Or Catholic schools, like Sacred Heart in south Oklahoma City, which provide a safe, nurturing environment. As one Hispanic youngster put it, “My parents transferred us to Sacred Heart because they wanted us to be safe from drug and gang issues. They always wanted us to be able to listen to Christ by going to a Catholic school.”

Oklahoma’s private schools “by definition help fulfill the ideal of pluralism in American education,” says the Council for American Private Education. “They serve diverse populations, and are multiethnic and multicultural.”

“School choice continues to spread, unstoppable now, despite the best efforts of its foes to contain it,” education scholar Chester Finn said last year. Look for it to spread in Oklahoma.