School Choice

Betsy blogged One of the stronger criticisms of voucher programs is that the money granted poor families will not cover the cost of a decent school. However, in the Washington, D.C. voucher program, this does not seem to be a problem.

A report on the D.C. voucher program issued last month by the U.S. Department of Education said that, "with a couple of exceptions," the participating private schools have agreed not to charge students more than the $7,500 maximum value of the voucher, although federal law allows them to do so.

I suspect that, as voucher programs grow, there will be more and more evidence that low-income families are able to get into and afford nice schools through a combination of scholarships and tuition waivers. What then will voucher opponents use to criticize the programs?

Katie blogged
Arguing that the teacher unions are losing the school choice debate, Ryan Sager points to the charter school application filed by the New York union (the UFT) as evidence that they just don't get it:

• Charter schools typically improve student performance in very a simple way: giving kids a lot more class time.
  Schools like the KIPP Academy in the South Bronx, for instance, run from 7:25 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays and a half day on Saturdays; KIPP also has a mandatory summer school that boosts its school year to 220 days, as opposed to the 180-day teachers-contract year. At its proposed charter school, by contrast, the UFT would give teachers new (paid) "professional development opportunities," while giving students not one extra minute of class time.>li>Another key to the success of charter schools is the wide-ranging freedom principals have to pick their staffs and hire and fire as necessary.
  In the UFT charter school, though, every staffing decision the poor school leader (not a principal, mind you) made would be subject to review by various committees made up of UFT delegates, UFT-represented teachers, parents and other "stakeholders."
• Lastly, many of the most successful charter schools have pursued a back-to-basics approach to the curriculum, making use of traditional, as opposed to "progressive," instructional methods.
  UFT President Randi Weingarten has herself been supportive of such an approach and highly critical of New York City's use of the so-called progressive programs. Yet, the UFT decided to use relatively "progressive" math and reading curricula. Weingarten has admitted that she's uncomfortable with these programs, but she simply doesn't seem able to defy the lefty education-school operatives that have infested her union (not to mention every single major school district in the country).

As Sager explains, the unions are "so tied to their industrial-union model, where job protection is their North Star" that they can't accept the successful new models. If they continute to cling to the models of the past, not adapting, they will be left behind.

Whether through voucher programs and scholarships to private schools, or charter schools children can usually get a much better education outside the Public School system