Category Archives: School choice

School choice

A Brief Meditation on Choice

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Deborah Meier reminds us that “one can’t  ‘choose’ to be the children of the wealthy,” adding later:

You and I—or some other somebodies—are deciding the future of “other people’s children” [hyperlink added] unless we provide ways for “them” to have a voice, a vote, and the resources to decide their own future.   We need to restore a better balance between local communal life (with its power to effect some immediate changes like we did at the small self-governing schools I love) and distant, “objective” moneyed power.  It’s our democracy that rests on our rebuilding strength at the bottom.  If we don’t, we induce a passivity that surely cannot be in the self-interest of the least powerful, but might (just might) be in the self-interest of others.  And then we blame them for being passive?

Without consciously deciding to do so, I have just finished reading the novels of Jeffrey Eugenides in reverse chronological order, ending just yesterday with The Virgin Suicides.

In his first novel, the story of five sisters who all commit suicide, the reader is pulled into a collective recollection that feels invasive and obsessive. We are left with many questions about these lost lives. But central to the narrative is the role of the girls’ parents.

One moment in the novel involves the mother forcing one daughter to destroy in a fire and then throw away the girl’s treasured record albums.

This and other scenes in The Virgin Suicides reminded me of the many situations like the one above that my students experienced in their homes—conflicts that hurt and even scarred young people in ways that almost no one would ever recognize.

My daughter is now 24, expecting a child, and if I have learned anything as a teacher, a son, and a parent, it is that parents are apt to make poor choices for their own children—even out of love, but also out of sheer flaws in their own character.

I have parents who gave me an almost idyllic childhood, but they also chose to smoke in the car with my sister and me in the back seat.

A few years ago, I wrote Parental Choice?: A Critical Reconsideration of Choice and the Debate about Choice, a book that approaches the school choice debate from a critical perspective. And I very purposefully did not use “school” in the title since I believe at the root of the school choice movement is the powerful and idealized view of parental choice as a subset of the larger myth in the U.S. about individual choice.

Also during my 18 years teaching public school in the rural Upstate of South Carolina, I was approached every year by students who were preparing to drop out of high school as soon as they reached 16 years of age. They would explain to me that the decision had been prompted by their parents, who explained that either they had dropped out and were doing fine (they often quoted the hourly rate of their parents’ salaries as evidence) or that they now saw no value in what high school graduation gave them.

When choice advocates discuss the primary importance of parental choice, they tend never to mention that dropping out of school is a form of parental choice.

Just as workers in the impoverished South have been manipulated into voting for and embracing ideologies against their own self-interests—where “right to work” resonates even though the law allows employers the right to fire at will—a populist/libertarian refrain that idealizes “choice,” in fact, serves as a mask for maintaining an imbalance of individual freedom in the U.S.

“Poor and minority parents should have the same choices as affluent and white parents” is a compelling refrain.

But it is ultimately a lie.

Idealizing and prioritizing choice renders choice meaningless—but those arguments do insure that the 1% always wins.

Yes, individual choice is an important part of the human condition as well as a central right of a free people in a democracy.

For choice to matter, though, the Commons, the public good must be established first.

Just as Meier notes that no child chooses her or his parents, home, community, or socioeconomic status, we must acknowledge that no one should be required to choose the basics of human existence.

No one should have to choose a good police force.

No one should have to choose a good military.

No one should have to choose good medical care.

And no one should have to choose a good school.

The implication of having to choose the essentials that should be a part of the Commons is that bad alternatives exist—and they must not.

The only way to honor choice as a free people is to first insure the Commons that allow choice to exist in equitable and ethical ways.

Idealizing choice as a primary and universal good is a lie like “right to work.”

The first choice of a free people, ironically, is to insure those conditions that should require no choice—and public education is one of those foundational contracts among a free people that must be guaranteed regardless of to whom or where a child is born.

Charter schools, School choice

Pulling a Greene: Why Advocacy and Market Forces Fail Education Reform [Redux]

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Jay P. Greene, Ph.D., is Endowed Chair and Head of the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas.

The Department of Education Reform is heavily funded by Walton money, and it is important to understand that the Walton family (of Walmart) are strong school choice advocates.

In 2011, not long after I published a book challenging school choice through a critical perspective, I warned about the dangers of advocacy for choice in many forms, about the distorting impact of that advocacy on education reform, concluding:

Once again, the caution of evidence – advocacy is the enemy of transparency and truth.

Like medicine, then, education and education reform will continue to fail if placed inside the corrosive dynamics of market forces. Instead, the reform of education must include the expertise of educators who are not bound to advocating for customers, but encouraged, rewarded and praised for offering the public the transparent truth about what faces us and what outcomes are the result of any and every endeavor to provide children the opportunity to learn as a member of a free and empowered people.

Education “miracles” do not exist and market forces are neither perfect nor universal silver bullets for any problem – these are conclusions made when we are free of the limitations of advocacy and dedicated to the truth, even when it challenges our beliefs.

Think tanks have agendas, and when the advocacy commitments of those think tanks supersede the pursuit of knowledge, those think tanks lose credibility. Increasingly, market forces have impinged upon the wall between advocacy and the pursuit of knowledge in university-based research, once the domain of higher education. The Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas, now, functions more like a think tank (pro school choice) than a graduate department dedicated to dispassionate research.

And thus, as chair and head of the department we have Greene, lamenting the negative consequences of high-stakes testing on the prospects of expanding the school choice agenda:

First, testing requirements hurt choice because test results fail to capture most of the benefits produced by choice schools.

What is stunning (not) is that Greene is now raising the exact same caution public school advocates have been acknowledging since the early 1980s when the high-stakes accountability movement built on standards and testing began: In fact, yes, high-stakes testing data are incredibly limited in what they reveal and that data also mask many outstanding effects of all types of schooling while perpetuating some of the worst aspects of education practices reflecting social inequities (since high-stakes standardized tests remain biased by race, class, and gender).

What we have in this blog from Greene, then, is “pulling a Greene”: Raising a red flag only when a policy or practice impacts negatively the agenda for which you advocate, but not when the policy or practice impacts negatively the agenda of others.

It is no conspiracy theory to recognize that the entire accountability era begun under Ronald Reagan was in part designed to discredit public education so that the U.S. public would (finally) be more open to school choice. Gerald Holton (2003) and Gerald Bracey (2003) have exposed the advocacy aspect of “A Nation at Risk,” documenting the direct connection between accountability of public schools and seeking to expand school choice. As Holton revealed:

We met with President Reagan at the White House, who at first was jovial, charming, and full of funny stories, but then turned serious when he gave us our marching orders. He told us that our report should focus on five fundamental points that would bring excellence to education: Bring God back into the classroom. Encourage tuition tax credits for families using private schools. Support vouchers. Leave the primary responsibility for education to parents. And please abolish that abomination, the Department of Education.

Now that bit of political manipulation has come home to roost, and thus we have Greene lamenting the negative consequences of high-stakes testing.

Let me add, here, then, that this is just more of the same. School choice advocacy has been a moving target since the 1980s. School choice, now focused mostly on charter schools, has offered a disorienting array of claimed outcomes and spoken to a scattering of nearly every potential stakeholder imaginable—as I detailed, also in 2011, and now include below.

Shifting Talking Points among School Choice Advocates

Few metaphors could be more appropriate than the “invisible hand” for free market forces, and the constantly shifting school choice movement over the past thirty years (paralleling the accountability era spurred by “A Nation at Risk”) reflects how choice advocates are driven by ideology and faith in market forces regardless of evidence.

Lubienski and Weitzel (2008) examine school choice advocacy and offer this key point:

This is a notable possibility in view of the claim that voucher programs have not been shown to harm academic achievement. In fact, the “do no harm” promise is far removed from earlier claims about the potential for vouchers to improve student performance. Over a decade into this reform, some advocates are moving away from optimistic claims about school choice achievement outcomes, and many are instead highlighting parent satisfaction as evidence of success. (p. 484)

In the 1980s and 1990s, before a substantial body of research had emerged, vouchers were heralded as the panacea for a failing public school system [a claim made more recognizable by the growing accountability movement based on high-stakes testing]. Once the shine wore off those lofty claims—since research shows little to no academic gains driven by any choice initiatives—school choice advocates began to change claims and approaches, attempting to stay at least one step ahead of the evidence throughout the process.

The evolution of the school choice advocacy talking points has included the following, in roughly the order in which they surfaced in the advocacy reports by think tanks and the media from the 1980s until 2011:

• Public education is a failure because it is a monopoly, and market forces can and will eradicate the problems posed by a monopoly. Vouchers are the solution to public education failures because they will force public schools to compete with superior private schools.

(Subsequently, vouchers proved to be unpopular with the public, and private schools were revealed to be little different in effectiveness than public schools when student populations were taken into account.) [1]

• No vouchers, then let’s use tuition tax credits. . .

• How about public school choice then. . .?

(See evidence from Milwaukee, Minnesota, and Florida—where widespread choice and choice tied to accountability have neither raised achievement nor actually spurred any real competition.) [2]

• Then, how about charter schools. . .and let’s be sure to address children and families in poverty. . .and parents really are happy when given choice. . .and choice might raise graduation rates. . .

• But vouchers/choice “do no harm”! [3]

• Why would anyone want to deny choice to people in poverty, the same choice that middle- and upper-class people have?

And that is where we stand today in the school choice advocacy discourse. The newest talking points are “do no harm” and that people apposing vouchers want to deny choice to people living in poverty.

And throughout the school choice debate, ironically, the choice advocates shift back and forth about the rigor of research—think tank reports that are pro-choice and the leading school choice researchers tend to avoid peer-review and rail against peer-reviews (usually charging that the reviews are ideological and driven by their funding) while simultaneously using terms such as “objective,” “empirical,” and “econometrics” to give their reports and arguments the appearance of rigor.

But, if anyone makes any effort to scratch beneath the surface of school choice advocacy reports, she/he will find some telling details:

In education, readers should beware of research emanating from the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, the Heritage Foundation, the Manhattan Institute, the Heartland Institute, the Mackinac Center, the Center for Education Reform, the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, the Paul Peterson group at Harvard, and, soon, the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas. Arkansas is home to the Walton family, and much Wal-Mart money has already made its way to the University of Arkansas, $300 million in 2002 alone. The new department, to be headed by Jay P. Greene, currently at the Manhattan Institute, will no doubt benefit from the Walton presence. The family’s largesse was estimated to approach $1 billion per year (Hopkins 2004), and before his death in an airplane crash, John Walton was perhaps the nation’s most energetic advocate of school vouchers. (Bracey, 2006, p. xvi) [4]

School choice may, in fact, hold some promises for reforming education since “choice” is central to human agency and empowerment. But the school choice movement and its advocates are the least likely avenues for us ever realizing what school choice has to offer because the advocates are primarily driven by ideology and funding coming from sources that have intentions that have little to do with universal public education for free and empowered people.

And the growing evidence that corporate charter schools as the latest choice mechanism are causing harm—in terms of segregation and stratification of student populations—is cause for alarm for all people along the spectrum of school reform and school choice. [5]

If a school choice advocate sticks to the talking-points script and will not acknowledge the overwhelming evidence that out-of-school factors determine student outcomes, that evidence is mounting that choice stratifies schools, and that evidence onhow school is delivered (public, private, charter) is mixed and similar among all types of schooling, then that advocate isn’t worth our time and isn’t contributing to a vibrant and open debate that could help move us toward school reform that benefits each student and our larger society.

•

As a follow up to the points above made in 2011, the entire charter school movement as a mask for the school choice agenda also fails when it begins to seek different conditions for those charter schools than those under which public schools must function. Greene’s point about standardized tests applies to all types of schooling, but to suggest standardized tests are a problem only if they impede the spread of choice is as tone deaf as calling for charter schools because schools need less bureaucracy.

So two concluding points:

  1. If standardized test data are harmful for determining educational quality, student achievement, and teacher impact, let’s end the inordinate weight of standardized testing, period. And let’s acknowledge that the past thirty years of high-stakes accountability has misrepresented the quality of public schools and likely inaccurately increased public support for school choice.
  2. If charter schools are a compelling option because they allow schools relief from burdensome bureaucracy, just relieve all public schools from that bureaucracy and then no need for the charter school shuffle.

Neither of the above will be embraced, however, by school choice advocates because they are not seeking education reform; they are seeking a privatized education system.

So expect many more shifting claims from school choice advocates, and at least a few more of those advocates pulling a Greene here and there.

[1] Braun, H., Jenkins, F., & Grigg, W. (2006, July). Comparing private schools and public schools using hierarchical linear modeling. National Center for Educational Statistics. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education. Retrieved 28 December 2008 from http://nces.ed.gov/… Lubienski, C., & Lubienski, S. T. (2006). Charter, private, public schools and academic achievement: New evidence from the NAEP mathematics data. Retrieved 28 December 2008 from the National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education Web site: http://www.ncspe.org/… Wenglinsky, H. (2007, October). Are private high schools better academically than public high schools? Retrieved 28 December 2008 from the Center for Education Policy Web site: http://www.cep-dc.org/…

[2] Dodenhoff, D. (2007, October). Fixing the Milwaukee public schools: The limits of parent-driven reform. Wisconsin Policy Research Institute Report, 20(8). Thiensville, WI: Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, Inc. Retrieved 6 August 2009 from the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute Website: http://www.wpri.org/… Witte, J. F., Carlson, D. E., & Lavery, L. (2008, July). Moving on: Why students move between districts under open enrollment. Retrieved 6 August 2009 from the National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education Web site: http://www.ncspe.org/… Failed promises: Assessing charter schools in Twin Cities. (2008, November). Minneapolis, MN: Institute on Race and Poverty. Retrieved 6 August 2009 from:http://www.irpumn.org/… Belfield, C. R. (2006, January). The evidence of education vouchers: An application to the Cleveland scholarship and tutoring program. Retrieved 6 August 2009 from the National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education Web site: http://www.ncspe.org/… Bell, C. A. (2005, October). All choices created equal?: How good parents select “failing” schools. Retrieved 6 August 2009 from the National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education Web site:http://www.ncspe.org/…

[3] Lubienski, C., & Weitzel, P. (2008). The effects of vouchers and private schools in improving academic achievement: A critique of advocacy research. Brigham Young University Law Review (2), 447-485. Retrieved 26 April 2011 fromhttp://lawreview.byu.edu/…

[4] Bracey, G. W. (2006). Reading educational research: How to avoid getting statistically snookered. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

[5] Fuller, E. (2011, April 25). Characteristics of students enrolling in high-performing charter high schools. A “Fuller” Look at Education Issues [blog]. Retrieved 26 April 2011 from http://fullerlook.wordpress.com/… Miron, G., Urschel, J. L., Mathis, W, J., & Tornquist, E. (2010). Schools without Diversity: Education management organizations, charter schools and the demographic stratification of the American school system. Boulder and Tempe: Education and the Public Interest Center & Education Policy Research Unit. Retrieved 26 April 2011 from http://epicpolicy.org/… Miron, G., Urschel, J. L., & Saxton, N. (2011, March). What makes KIPP work?: A study of student characteristics, attrition, and school finance. Teachers College, Columbia University. National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education. Retrieved 26 April 2011 fromhttp://www.ncspe.org/…  Miron, G. & Urschel, J.L. (2010). Equal or fair? A study of revenues and expenditure in American charter schools. Boulder and Tempe: Education and the Public Interest Center & Education Policy Research Unit. Retrieved 26 April 2011 from http://epicpolicy.org/… Frankenberg, E., Siegel-Hawley, G., Wang, J. (2011) Choice without equity: Charter school segregation. Educational Policy Analysis Archives, 19(1). Retrieved 26 April 2011 from http://epaa.asu.edu/… Baker, B.D. & Ferris, R. (2011). Adding up the spending: Fiscal disparities and philanthropy among New York City charter schools. Boulder, CO: National Education Policy Center. Retrieved 26 April 2011 from http://nepc.colorado.edu/…

References

Bracey, G. W. (2003). April foolishness: The 20th anniversary of A Nation at Risk. Phi Delta Kappan, 84 (8), 616-621.

Holton, G. (2003, April 25). An insider’s view of “A Nation at Risk” and why it still matters. The Chronicle Review, 49(33), B13.

CCSS, Charter schools, Education, education reform, Educational Research, Incentives, KIPP, Media, Merit Pay, miracle schools, NCTQ, Poverty, SAT, School choice, Segregation, Standards, Statistics, Teach for America, Teacher Evaluation, Testing, VAM

What We Know Now (and How It Doesn’t Matter)

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Randy Olson’s Flock of Dodos (2006) explores the evolution and Intelligent Design (ID) debate that represents the newest attack on teaching evolution in U.S. public schools. The documentary is engaging, enlightening, and nearly too fair considering Olson admits upfront that he stands with scientists who support evolution as credible science and reject ID as something outside the realm of science.

Olson’s film, however, offers a powerful message that rises above the evolution debate. Particularly in the scenes depicting scientists discussing (during a poker game) why evolution remains a target of political and public interests, the documentary shows that evidence-based expertise often fails against clear and compelling messages (such as “teach the controversy”)—even when those clear and compelling messages are inaccurate.

In other words, ID advocacy has often won in the courts of political and public opinion despite having no credibility within the discipline it claims to inform—evolutionary biology.

With that sobering reality in mind, please identify what XYZ represents in the following statement about “What We Know Now”:

Is there a bottom line to all of this? If there is one, it would appear to be this: Despite media coverage, which has been exceedingly selective and misrepresentative, and despite the anecdotal meanderings of politicians, community members, educators, board members, parents, and students, XYZ have not been effective in achieving the outcomes they were assumed to aid….

This analysis is addressing school uniform policies, conducted by sociologist David L. Brunsma who examined evidence on school uniform effectiveness (did school uniform policies achieve stated goals of those policies) “from a variety of data gathered during eight years of rigorous research into this issue.”

This comprehensive analysis of research from Brunsma replicates the message in Flock of Dodos—political, public, and media messaging continues to trump evidence in the education reform debate. Making that reality more troubling is that a central element of No Child Left Behind was a call to usher in an era of scientifically based education research. As Sasha Zucker notes in a 2004 policy report for Pearson, “A significant aspect of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) is the use of the phrase ‘scientifically based research’ well over 100 times throughout the text of the law.”

Brunsma’s conclusion about school uniform policies, I regret to note, is not an outlier in education reform but a typical representation of education reform policy. Let’s consider what we know now about the major education reform agendas currently impacting out schools:

Well into the second decade of the twenty-first century, then, education reform continues a failed tradition of honoring messaging over evidence. Neither the claims made about educational failures, nor the solutions for education reform policy today are supported by large bodies of compelling research.

As the fate of NCLB continues to be debated, the evidence shows not only that NCLB has failed its stated goals, but also that politicians, the media, and the public have failed to embrace the one element of the legislation that held the most promise—scientifically based research—suggesting that dodos may in fact not be extinct.

* Santelices, M. V., & Wilson, M. (2010, Spring). Unfair treatment? The case of Freedle, the SAT, and the standardization approach to differential item functioning. Harvard Educational Review, 80(1), 106-133.; Spelke, E. S. (2005, December). Sex differences in intrinsic aptitude for mathematics and science? American Psychologist, 60(9), 950-958; See page 4 for 2012 SAT data: http://media.collegeboard.com/digitalServices/pdf/research/TotalGroup-2012.pdf

Invisible Hand, Lady Justice, School choice, social justice

Beyond Choice: The Invisible Hand v. Lady Justice

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Free market advocates have sought a series of talking points and justifications for an equally wide array of school choice formats over the past twenty to twenty-five years, primarily because the public has been resistent to school choice plans.

One tactic common among choice advocates is to associate the Invisible Hand of the market with Lady Justice, blurring the essential nature of choice and competition as sorting mechanisms with the goal of equity among educators seeking social justice: “People in poverty deserve the same choice affluent people have,” goes the claim.

Lady Justice

American capitalism has a long history of demonizing the Commons as “government” and idealizing corporate America as the “free” market, and part of that narrative includes ignoring the place of the Commons as a foundation upon which a free market can thrive.

The Invisible Hand, however, driven by choice and competition always sorts and never attends to social justice or equity.

Take for example the facts around Louisville basketball player Kevin Ware’s broken leg during the Elite 8 round of the 2013 NCAA basketball tournament.

As David Sirota has explained, Louisville does not guarantee scholarships (if Ware’s injury renders him unable to play basketball again, he loses his scholarship) and even Ware’s medical bills may fall on his shoulders.

Yet, the Invisible Hand sees not the problem of equity and justice in Ware’s situation, but that Ware and his injury are marketable, explains Dave Zirin:

On Wednesday we learned that Adidas, in conjunction with the University of Louisville athletic department, will be selling a $24.99 t-shirt with Kevin Ware’s number 5 and the slogan “Rise to the Occasion” emblazoned across the back. His team will also be wearing warm-ups with Ware’s name, number and the slogan “All In.”…

You almost have to tip your cap: no non-profit does buccaneer profiteering quite like the NCAA. What other institution would see a tibia snap through a 20-year-old’s skin on national television and see dollar signs? In accordance with their rules aimed at preserving the sanctity of amateurism, not one dime from these shirts will go to Kevin Ware or his family. Not one dime will go toward Kevin Ware’s medical bills if his rehab ends up beneath the $90,000 deductible necessary to access the NCAA’s catastrophic injury medical coverage. Not one dime will go towards rehab he may need later in life.

This is the ethics of the market: Is there a market? And what selling price will that market bear against the cost of producing the goods?

Little concern for right or wrong occurs unless the Commons are involved.

Commons such as the legal system were necessary to end child labor [1] or worker abuse as portrayed in Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle or American slavery—all of which were beneficial to the market.

Consider the free market police force in the science fiction allegory RoboCop, or that market-based military forces are mercenaries.

The capital-based market corrupts, but the Commons seek, preserve, and spread equity as long as they remain above capital and beyond choice.

So let’s return to the compelling “People in poverty deserve the same choice affluent people have”—to which I say, No.

People in poverty deserve essential Commons—such as a police force and judicial system, a military, a highway system, a healthcare system, and universal public education—that make choice unnecessary. In short, among the essentials of a free people, choice shouldn’t be needed by anyone.

No child should have to wait for good schools while the market sorts some out, no human should have to wait for quality medical care while the market sorts some out, no African American teen gunned down in the street should have to wait for the market to sort out justice—the Commons must be the promise of the essential equity and justice that both make freedom possible and free people embrace.

And then it is upon this Commons beyond choice that the Invisible Hand may create an economy that a free people deserve.

[1] The market-based call for merit pay in education creates child labor.