|
 undits
everywhere have been tying themselves in knots as President Bush
kicked off his tenure without any major hiccups. Instead of getting
distracted by some picayune
controversy, the President spent his first week following through
on his campaign promise to make education reform his first legislative
proposal.
Thus far, Bush's education program has been a smashing success.
Bush's focus on improving public schools through flexibility, high
standards, and accountability has won glowing praise from Republicans
and Democrats alike. Even leading congressional liberals like Sen.
Ted Kennedy have gushed over the man and the program. But the valentine
won't last forever. Especially if Bush continues to push for the
one element of his program that has proven to be a political depth-charge:
school choice.
And yet, he should push on, even after the love-affair ends. President
Bush says he wants an education system that is based on accountability.
That's why he proposes setting high standards and testing to make
certain the students and the schools are meeting those standards.
But for there to be any real accountability for the schools that
consistently fail — even when they are blessed with increased
flexibility and additional resources — parents must be empowered
to say, "No, you're not going to fail my child any longer." That
means giving them a choice.
In just 10 years, the number of students involved in either privately-
or publicly-funded choice programs has jumped from zero to more
than 60,000. Last school year, nearly 50,000 students participated
in 68 privately funded programs, and at least 12,000 more were enrolled
in three publicly funded ones. These days, there are more than 500,000
children in charter schools.
Their collective experience has armed parents and educators with
the needed evidence to bushwhack the claims and myths spread by
the enemies of choice. Meanwhile, the groups most opposed to choice
— many with a vested financial interest in the status quo,
like the teachers' unions — are mobilizing for a blitzkrieg
assault on everything from charter schools to universal vouchers.
But there is plenty more good news than bad. Those who want to sample
some of that good news might wish to read An Education Agenda:
Let Parents Choose Their Children's School, a new book produced
by the NCPA and Children First America. The book brings together
more than 20 of the nation's leading experts on school choice. Its
overall message is delightfully simple: School choice works. Where
tried, it has helped students and it has improved the schools those
students left behind.
Documenting the actual experience of school choice lays waste to
many of the specious arguments used to discredit it.
| “Thus
far, Bush's education program has been a smashing success.” |
|
Take the claim that choice programs will be disastrous for the public
schools the students end up leaving. Not so, says Brother Bob Smith,
principal of a Catholic school in inner-city Milwaukee, the site
of one of the nation's leading choice programs. Smith says competition
generated by Milwaukee's Parental Choice Program forced public schools
to offer a new and improved product to attract students. Responding
to the loss of students fleeing to better schools, the Milwaukee
public-school system guaranteed that each child would be able to
read by the end of third grade. If they could not, the school would
provide one-on-one tutoring after school until they could. Each
of Milwaukee's public schools now offers early education programs,
all-day kindergarten, and increased flexibility for local schools.
As for the children who took part in the school-choice program,
they had math scores, on average, that were 5 to 12 percentile points
higher than their non-choice counterparts, and reading scores that
were 3 to 5 percentile points higher.
The claim that schools will be drained of needed resources is also
false, according to contributor Robert Aguirre, who oversees the
HORIZON project, a choice program in the Edgewood School District
in San Antonio. Edgewood, according to Aguirre, lost 8.4 percent
of its students when the HORIZON project started, but the funding
for every student left behind in the public-school system actually
rose by 5.7 percent.
What about the claim that choice programs will "segregate" our nation's
schools, and that private schools will "cherry pick" or "cream"
the best and the brightest away from public schools? Paul Peterson
of Harvard University, one of the nation's leading researchers on
the effects of school-voucher programs, says students who take advantage
of school vouchers "resemble a cross-section of public-school students."
And Dan McGroarty, veteran of many choice battles, says choice programs
in Milwaukee, San Antonio and Cleveland reveal that "the face of
a typical school choice student is more likely to be African-American
or Hispanic, from a single-parent home, entering private schools
as a below-average student with a history of behavioral problems."
Most public schools that are designated as failing will improve
when afforded the flexibility to innovate, fire poor teachers and
focus on education rather than administration. But it is not enough
just to threaten schools with a loss of federal funding if they
do not improve. There has to be a day of reckoning for schools that
are unable or unwilling to embrace reform.
Ultimately, however, school choice is not about punishing schools
or teachers. It is about ensuring that all children, even those
from the humblest of backgrounds, have the opportunity to succeed.
This is the real civil-rights issue of our time. It's time to unchain
the schoolhouse door.
|
