Garrett: 'Rigor is lacking in some schools'

Oklahoma's latest ACT scores tell us "that rigor is lacking in some schools and too many students are not making the most of the four years they are given in high school," state Superintendent Sandy Garrett says.

Vouchers thwart the special-ed bounty system

A few years ago Greg Forster wrote about Oklahoma's shameful "bounty system." Well, in a new study published by the Manhattan Institute ('How Special Ed Vouchers Keep Kids From Being Mislabeled as Disabled'), Jay P. Greene and Marcus Winters show that offering vouchers to disabled students reduces the likelihood that public schools will label the students as disabled.

Georgia parents overwhelmingly satisfied with special-needs scholarships

According to a new report from the Center for an Educated Georgia, "Education Choice Works: Survey Results of Families Receiving the Georgia Special Needs Scholarship," parents with students using the Georgia Special Needs Scholarship are overwhelmingly satisfied with their child’s new private school.

'The worst scandal in America'

John Fund of The Wall Street Journal says it's "the education monopoly that keeps poor, inner-city kids trapped in failing public schools."

What was the NEA boss doing in Tulsa?

Education reporter Mike Antonucci wants to know.

NEA President Dennis Van Roekel told members of the Tulsa Classroom Teachers Association that the union "will support any compensation system that a local bargains," in response to the Tulsa Teacher Effectiveness Initiative. The plan will include performance pay and eliminate salary increases for advanced degrees and additional certifications.

"Compensation systems, plain and simple, are a local issue," Van Roekel said. "It's bargained between management and the union. It should never be imposed, and it's what you believe is a fair system -- you've got to know what you're paying for, how to measure it, and then you distribute the resources."

If it's so obviously a local bargaining issue, what was Van Roekel doing in Tulsa? There are other places.

Abortion business in public schools?

Pro-lifers are taking a close look at specific provisions of ObamaCare.

Enid editor suggests school choice

In a recent column, Cindy Allen, managing editor of the Enid News & Eagle, wrote: "What about our public schools, which spend billions and billions of dollars, yet our nation continues to flounder at the bottom in educational achievement? Our government has been in total control over public education, and it's a mess." She suggested we consider school choice.

I followed up with this letter to the editor.

Virtual School opens in Owasso

"Owasso Public Schools is traveling to cyberspace to reach a portion of its population," the Tulsa World's Rhett Morgan reports.

Union boss acknowledges problems

The Tulsa World's Andrea Eger reports that NEA president Dennis Van Roekel yesterday "encouraged Tulsa teachers to courageously face the stark realities of the American public education system, including overall high school dropout rates of 25 percent, with rates almost double that for black and/or economically disadvantaged students."

School choice for rural Oklahoma

In an essay collection I edited in 2003, "Why Oklahomans from A to Z Should Embrace School Choice," Chester Finn made the point that school choice can work in rural Oklahoma. His essay is reprinted below.

Oklahoma's rural communities should understand that school choice makes sense for them, too

By Chester E. Finn, Jr.

Among the predictable questions that arise during just about every discussion of school choice is one along these lines: "We live in a rural community and there's no other school within 40 miles. How could school choice possibly benefit our children? We have enough troubles making ends meet and keeping our school open."

Many towns with faltering Title I schools have used a similar excuse for not providing public-school choice to their students, despite the No Child Left Behind requirement that they do so. "We only have one junior high school," went the argument, "so it's not possible to offer intra-district school choice to those students."

How compelling is this claim? What can school choice mean in rural and thinly populated parts of the country, in communities with just one or two schools, and in places where a huge "consolidated" school seems to suck all the oxygen from the education air?

I can think of at least five forms of school choice that can "work" under such circumstances. The contention that nothing is possible thus reveals either a failure of imagination or a mischievous attempt to drive a nail into the coffin in which some seek to entomb school choice.

First and most obvious, allow kids to choose public schools in nearby districts. At least a dozen states already give families the right to select any public school in the state. Even where that's not the case, NCLB says -- and the recent Education Department regulations emphasize -- that small districts with persistently failing Title I schools are supposed to make every practicable effort to arrange for students to opt into schools run by other districts. In the NCLB case, the "sending" district is also obliged to provide transportation and may use Title I dollars for this purpose.

Second, deploy some form of voucher to enable children to enroll in private schools -- in their own community or nearby. This already happens in parts of northern New England, where small towns, instead of operating their own high schools, "tuition" their youngsters into the public or private schools of their choice. Though rural America is not awash in private schools, it has some -- including boarding schools that also take "day students" -- and might have more if education funding were portable and could be used in this way.

Third, encourage charter schools. Although there aren't huge numbers of rural charters, I've seen enough of them operating successfully in the Colorado mountains, the Arizona desert, the Minnesota woods, and the California canyons to know that this is possible. The "Annenberg Rural Challenge" gave this development a boost and it continues in such organizations as the Colorado Rural Charters Network. Few places are more rural than Idaho, which now boasts some 15 charter schools open or on the way. Alaska is also making good use of this opportunity to bring educational innovations and improvements into remote places.

Fourth, run multiple schools under the same roof, like a cinema multiplex. "Schools within schools" are not a new idea. That's how public-school choice in East Harlem got started, with kids changing schools by climbing the stairs within the same building. But this could also work in rural America -- maybe not in wee village primary schools but surely in those big "consolidated" schools. Of the 10 new "specialized" public schools that opened in the Bronx last year, seven are operating within the walls of larger public schools. Medina, Ohio has four high schools functioning in a single building. Why couldn't something similar happen in the middle of Kansas, Oklahoma, South Carolina or Montana? A child might attend a "math-science" school in one wing of the building or switch to an "arts and humanities" school in another. One mini-school might emphasize Core Knowledge while a second does Expeditionary Learning.

Fifth, make use of distance learning and virtual education. These were made to order for rural America because they don't require the child to move at all. Staying right at home -- or at the neighbors', the day-care center or a parent's workplace -- a youngster can change schools by changing the URL on his computer screen. Sure, especially for small children, there also needs to be a competent adult nearby, but if the "virtual" program is solid, the adult-in-the-room-with-the-kid need not be a full-fledged teacher. And older pupils can do a great deal of virtual learning on their own.

This isn't a new idea, either. "Correspondence" courses were invented ages ago for youngsters lacking ready access to an acceptable brick-and-mortar school. In the Australian outback and remote corners of the Falkland Islands, classes delivered by radio have been available for decades. Today, though, the Internet makes so much more possible. The "APEX" program beams Advanced Placement courses into high schools that lack the staff or enrollments to provide their own and now offers customized virtual school programs as well. Florida has a statewide virtual high school. Virtual charter schools are proliferating from Pennsylvania and Ohio to California, Colorado and Idaho, as several firms develop Internet-delivered education programs and as more families -- some but by no means all of them former "homeschoolers" -- discover this way to bring a strong curriculum into their living rooms, even if they live on the remotest mountain top or at the end of a dirt road. (Full disclosure: I'm on the board of one such firm, a terrific outfit known as K12 and led by former Education Secretary William Bennett.)

In sum, education choice makes at least as much sense -- and is now as feasible -- for rural America as for inner cities and suburbs. The "no other school within 40 miles" argument should be seen for the red herring that it is.

Rural students in charter schools

It's happening in Ohio.

Cash, clunkers

"Studies by ACT have shown that fewer than one-fourth of high-school graduates who take that organization's tests -- presumably because they intend to go to college -- are academically prepared for college-level work in English, math, and science," Chester Finn wrote last week. "That means three-quarters of them bought a lemon of a K-12 education."

Competition should play a role in early education

Friday, a weekly newspaper in Oklahoma City, recently ran a house editorial entitled "What price saving children?" I submitted a letter to the editor, which I have posted here.

Dear Editor:

Thank you for your July 31 editorial, "What price saving children?" Though I don't fully share your confidence in the salvific powers of "early childhood education," I think it's important to note something Dr. James Heckman mentioned at the recent early-childhood summit in Oklahoma City: School choice is important.

"Competition plays a role" in good education policy, said Dr. Heckman, a Nobel Prize-winning economist. In early childhood education, there ought to be "multiple, diverse modes of delivery." He said such programs can and should accommodate the interests of "Orthodox Jews, Mormons, Southern Baptists, you name it."

Fortunately, some Oklahoma school districts already collaborate with daycare centers to serve a share of Oklahoma's preschool children. Policymakers should now provide Oklahoma parents a tax credit for educational expenses incurred in private preschool programs or home schools.

Sincerely,

Brandon Dutcher
Vice President for Policy
Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, Inc.