March 30, 2006
We're sorry--what was the question?
Robert Enlow of the Friedman Foundation said this about polls some time ago:
One word makes a difference to public opinion and allows negative connotations to seep into documents meant to inform the public. That's exactly what happened in the (annual Phi Delta Kappa / Gallup Poll of Public Attitudes Toward the Public Schools). As expected, it showed that the general public does not support school vouchers — 42 percent supported the idea.
Why was it expected?
For years, the word selection in the poll's school-voucher question has been disputed. There have been rumblings that some of the connotation works to artificially lower support for school choice.
These rumblings prompted the Milton and Rose D. Friedman to carry out a study of its own to explore the potential of bias in the PDK poll. Conducted by leading research firm WirthlinWorldwide, the study, using a sound research methodology of a split-sample format, asked half of the participants the PDK question, while the other half was asked a more neutral school-voucher question.
Only a few words were changed.
For example, the PDK question asks, "do you favor or oppose allowing students and parents to choose a private school to attend at public expense?" The Friedman Foundation question read, "do you favor or oppose allowing students and parents to choose any school, public or private, to attend using public funds?"
Did the results raise questions of potential bias? We'll let you draw your own conclusion.
The Friedman Foundation question netted support from 63 percent of Americans. The PDK question resulted in support from 41 percent. By changing only a few words, but keeping the meaning the same, support rose over 20 percent. (emphasis added)
If you think the PDK question is, well, questionable, then look at this St. Petersburg Times poll. The question:
"Some people say that state funds should only go to public schools. Others say the state of Florida should pay for private schooling if the public school a child attends is failing. In this situation, would you be for or against giving state funds to private schools?"
We don't particularly have an issue with the first two sentences of that paragraph. But just who does the Times think it's fooling with that third line? Not surprisingly, 61 percent said they were against.
Actually, this gives us an idea. So according to this, Gov. Jeb Bush is looking to spend 49 percent of next year's budget on education. (Do not look any closer at that page, though--at least, not yet. We are, after all, trying to treat this like the Times treated that poll.) So! How about if the Alliance commissions the following poll question:
"Teachers' unions have said Governor Jeb Bush needs to increase education spending. Since he has proposed spending nearly half of next year's budget on education, do you believe that level of spending is good enough?"
Or how about this one?
"Governor Jeb Bush has proposed spending 49 percent of next year's budget on education. Do you believe his spending proposal will benefit Florida schools?"
No, wait--we love this one:
"The state of Florida is planning to spend nearly half its annual budget on education. Do you believe that level of spending is too high?"
Now, look. We're honest enough to realize that those poll questions are hopelessly slanted. Why? Let's now go back to Bush's budget numbers and actually, you know, tell the whole story by looking at the graph: that 49 percent number is of the general revenue fund, which doesn't include lottery revenue, tobacco lawsuit money, and state trust or federal trust funds. Add those in, and education gets a total of 34 percent of all funding. Still the highest category, but it isn't nearly half the total.
In short, no responsible pollster would use those sample questions and expect to get an accurate response. Which is why we find this poll by the Tampa Tribune a bit revealing in light of the Times poll.
Voters agree with the governor by a plurality, however, on another of his educational goals - reinstating the statewide private school tuition voucher program, which was struck down by the state Supreme Court.
The numbers (they're buried in the next to last paragraph): 48 percent in favor/41 percent against. We can't find the questions, but we're willing to bet they're a little more fair than those of the Times poll. Bottom line: you would be better off trusting an online poll than dreck like the St. Petersburg Times.
UPDATE: So saith Eduwonk.
Posted by Ryan Boots at 08:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)The problem is the sentiment captured in the final line: "giving state funds to private schools." Sure, that's part of the issue with vouchers but it's not a clean way to ask the question because it loads it. I haven't seen the entire poll so I don't know if they asked the question in multiple ways but I'd bet that if you asked it with an emphasis on parents being able to chose schools, even private schools with public money, you'd get a different result.
March 27, 2006
An editorial in favor of NCLB?
Now here's something you don't see every day:
Much of the pushback against No Child Left Behind comes from teachers and school administrators. Some object to the accountability it has imposed. Before it, there was little accountability in public education - astoundingly little, given the billions of dollars involved and the importance of the enterprise to our collective future.
And No Child Left Behind is, undeniably, imperfect in design and execution. The biggest flaw is the mishmash measure that is the centerpiece of its accountability scheme, the one that gauges whether students, schools and school districts are making Adequate Yearly Progress, or AYP.
But many of the criticisms levied against No Child Left Behind are unfair and untrue. It is not massive federal intrusion. States devise their own standards, craft their own curriculum, set their own goals, write their own tests and concoct their own definitions of progress.
Not something you read every day...
Posted by Ryan Boots at 10:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)March 24, 2006
the meaning of words
New York State United Teachers (the state arm of the AFT) has launched a "massive campaign" (their words) to fight Gov. Pataki's education tax credit proposal. And judging from their online campaign, they aren't kidding. Like many such unions, a significant portion of their website devoted to the struggle against the nefarious cabal looking to demolish public education.
Continue reading "the meaning of words" »
Posted by Ryan Boots at 04:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)just what the world needs--more Eduwonks
Our warmest congratulations to the inimitable Andrew Rotherham of Eduwonk for his newborn bundles of joy (yes, plural).
Posted by Ryan Boots at 08:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)March 23, 2006
they have met the enemy...
What Florida's teachers unions consider a menace, and what Florida's Supreme Court considers an affront to the state's Constitution, weighs 105 pounds, smiles shyly, speaks softly and wants to be a nurse. Octavia Lopez, 17, an 11th-grader at Miami's Archbishop Curley-Notre Dame High School in the heart of this polyglot city, was enabled to come to this school because of the smallest of three school-choice programs enacted under Gov. Jeb Bush.
The Opportunity Scholarship Program currently serves just 733 children statewide, 62 of whom are at this school of 416 students. The program provides vouchers, redeemable at private as well as public schools, to students at schools the state says are failing. Archbishop Curley, which in 1960 - just its seventh year - became the first Florida secondary school to be racially integrated, has grades nine through 12 and sends more than 98 percent of its graduates to college.
But Florida's Supreme Court fulfilled the desires of the teachers unions, and disrupted the lives of the 733 children and their parents, by declaring, in a 5-2 ruling, that the voucher program is incompatible with the state Constitution. Specifically, the court held that the Opportunity Scholarship Program violates the stipulation, which voters put into the Constitution in 1998, that the state shall provide a "uniform, efficient, safe, secure, and high quality system of free public schools that allows students to obtain a high quality education."
(snip)
All of Archbishop Curley's 43 Opportunity Scholarship children who are not graduating in June are going to stay in the school. The voucher is worth about $1,800 less than the school's $6,400 tuition, and about $3,400 less than the $8,000 cost of educating a pupil. But Brother Patrick Sean Moffett, the head of the school, says "we're going to keep them all, somehow."
It is stirring to see the quiet tenacity of persons whose lives are disrupted by other people's political struggles. When Octavia and her mother - and David Hill, 14, a ninth-grader, and his parents, and several other parents and relatives of students - recently gathered at the school to discuss the end of the choice program, there was no rancor.
The children and parents at the table were black. None were Republicans. The NAACP, as usual, is in lockstep with the Democratic Party, which is in lockstep with the teachers unions. But the people at that table spoke only words of gratitude for the school - its small classes and respectfulness. All displayed the dignified patience that ordinary people often display when they are buffeted by the opaque storms of politics.
Enjoy.
Posted by Ryan Boots at 11:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)another voice from within the union
Today's guest blogger over at Mike Antonucci's Intercepts, a present AFT member in West Virginia, is a must-read:
In WV we join unions by "choice," not by law. We do not have collective bargaining for school employees. So why join a union at all? Protection. As a teacher, it only takes three words to ruin your career: "They touched me." You don't have to be guilty. You can be completely exonerated. But you are marked for life. Legal bills can go into six figures in a flash. A union will provide legal aid and insurance.
Without collective bargaining, we have to lobby the legislature and the governor to effect changes in our salary and working conditions. This gets us into the sordid world of politics.
I am a staunchly conservative person, both fiscally and socially. So I have had to sit and stew on many occasions when my union decided to "enter the realm." When I joined the AFT in 1988 the union stayed out of all non-school issues. Their attitude at the time was that members were intelligent enough to make their own decisions concerning personal beliefs and that there was enough room in the AFT for teachers of every political persuasion. The NEA was seen at the time as being the political body that was constantly meddling into matters that didn't directly pertain to teaching.
But oh, how times have changed. Even at the state level.
His candor is incredible. Go read.
go on--take up the challenge
One of our colleagues, Matthew Ladner, has thrown down the gauntlet:
The first person in the nation who can send me two random assignment school-choice studies showing significant declines in either academic performance or parental satisfaction will win a steak dinner. I'll even throw in drinks and dessert — the whole nine yards. You have one month to send the studies to Mladner@goldwaterinstitute.org. Feel free to forward this to your anti-school-choice friends and invite them to play. The more the merrier.
If opponents of school choice can offer no proof to back their assertions, they deserve neither my steak nor anyone's confidence, leaving everyone to wonder: where's the beef?
What do you have to lose?
March 22, 2006
end run around reform?
That's the ominous opinion from the L.A. Daily News (hat tip: Charter Blog). Upshot: an LAUSD school looking to go charter is running into a number of procedural obstacles from the district. But the devil is in the details:
Instead of making Parkman a charter, LAUSD and UTLA (United Teachers of Los Angeles--ed.) brass propose making it a "waiver" school. Although short on specifics, the idea is to keep Parkman under the control of the LAUSD - and with a UTLA-represented staff - but extend it some of the autonomy enjoyed by charter schools.
Union and district officials make no secret that what they do at Parkman might provide the model for how to extinguish the charter movement and block Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's plans for taking over the LAUSD. And that ought to make anyone concerned about the future of public education in Los Angeles nervous.
If what the union and district are proposing is to undermine public enthusiasm for charters by coming up with something even better, well then, by all means, let's see what they have to offer. That's the sort of innovation charters are supposed to foster.
But given that both organizations have spent decades fighting reform, it seems they may have something more nefarious up their sleeves, namely, thwarting charters through a combination of bureaucratic obstruction and smoke-and-mirrors PR.
We're shocked, shocked.
Posted by Ryan Boots at 10:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)doom n' gloom from within the NEA
You gotta hand it to Mike Antonucci--he sure knows how to pick his guest bloggers. This anonymous writer has nothing nice to say about the NEAAFTAFLCIO merger.
NEA leaders refuse to organize mass actions of teachers, parents, students, and others over issues that clearly tie them all together: class size, books and libraries, free supplies, a just and fair tax system, etc. Indeed, the necessity of the strike weapon even as a vital bargaining chip simply drifted out of NEA leaders' minds, to the point that there are very few people in NEA, or anywhere in the labor movement, who actually know how to conduct a strike.
It is clear to me that since the rank and file members of NEA rejected the merger with AFT-AFL-CIO, the NEA bosses have worked hard behind closed doors to achieve what they could not win in the open. I feel very strongly that the democracy that once characterized NEA is vanishing fast.
So, unless a rank and file uprising moves to overturn this maneuver, I can easily see NEA slipping fast into the same irrelevance that characterizes the AFL-CIO, following the United Auto Workers, once the most powerful union in the U.S., now having lost a million members, and doing nothing at all as those members still employed kiss away their wages, health benefits and pensions, while the UAW bosses plan their retirements. Today, the only people the AFL-CIO bosses can beat up are their own members.
The AFL-CIO cannot offer solidarity in labor struggles. It never has. Now, with about 1/3 of its membership gone, it cannot offer numbers. It cannot offer political action aid. It cannot even stop its own members from voting for George Bush.
Clearly, education workers and others are going to have to find new forms of organizations, outside the NEA-AFT-AFL-CIO, that can unite those in the community, teachers, parents, and students, in a common struggle for justice.So, this is my small tear shed for what could have been with NEA, and with that pause, I plunge ahead to see what might be in a new organization, with one toe in, and nine toes out, of the fraudulently termed "organized labor movement."
Read the whole thing.
Posted by Ryan Boots at 08:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)March 21, 2006
unions show their true colors (again)
Imagine, if you will, the following scenario. You live in Pasadena, California. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which has been running the ongoing exploration of Mars, is right in your backyard. Your high school junior has a chance to have regular visits from a real, live, currently employed NASA engineer for more instruction in physics and calculus.
And your friendly neighborhood NEA union local moves to shut the program down.
This sort of collaboration might sound non-controversial, but it's not. Teachers' union leaders are resisting a plan by President Bush to build an “adjunct teacher corps” of 30,000 experienced scientists and mathematicians, like those at Aberdeen, to assist in the nation's schools. The union leaders say raising teacher pay and improving working conditions, not bring in outside experts, is the way to enhance math and science teaching. (emphasis added)
Those objections miss the larger point. The USA faces a challenge to its technology leadership that can't be ignored. Although this country was built on innovation, it now risks passing that mantle to international competitors, according to several recent credible reports.
Business and government leaders say retaining a creative edge requires doubling the number of math and technology majors by the year 2015. Meeting that goal requires reaching students early with instruction that is both competent and inspirational.
As it is now, fewer than a third of U.S. fourth- and eighth-grade students score at the proficient level in math. And U.S. students score below the international average on tests of math and science knowledge.
Inadequate instruction is at least part of the reason for those scores. An estimated 38% of math teachers in grades 7-12 lack either a major or minor in math.
Just sit and absorb this situation a minute. The government is trying to bring in the brightest minds we have to offer to teach in U.S. schools, people whose business is science, math and technology--and the unions are so bloody busy gritching for more money that they see such a move as a threat rather than an opportunity.
Moral: the spirit of Albert Shanker is alive and well.
a voice from the inside
Whatever you do, never call teachers' union watchdog Mike Antonucci intolerant. While he's out on vacation, he's invited a couple of guest bloggers to take the helm of Intercepts, and this week, it's...a member of the NEA!
The transfer of authority from appointed staff to elected leadership within the NEA and its affiliates, whether it has arisen organically or as a result of the increasing connections between NEA and other more traditionally structured unions, has taken place within the context of an organization that is passionately committed to its culture of term limits. Regardless of whether or not one supports term limits, the approach clearly limits the quality, range, and extent of actual work that these leaders can experience. The clear advantage of the traditional NEA staff-driven system in this climate of term limits was that there was always a "grown-up" in the room when elected leaders were considering the strategic options facing the organization. And it is equally clear that that advantage is being sorely missed at all levels by the Association at the present time.
Go read. And also check out today's post about this individual's job within the NEA. See, like we said--tolerant.
Posted by Ryan Boots at 02:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)public schools: parents, please go away
This story just comes out and says it: parents just need to quit poking their noses where they don't belong!
They are needy, overanxious and sometimes plain pesky -- and schools at every level are trying to find ways to deal with them.
No, not students. Parents -- specifically parents of today's "millennial generation" who, many educators are discovering, can't let their kids go.
They text message their children in middle school, use the cellphone like an umbilical cord to Harvard Yard and have no compunction about marching into kindergarten class and screaming at a teacher about a grade.
To handle the modern breed of micromanaging parent, educators are devising programs to help them separate from their kids -- and they are taking a harder line on especially intrusive parents.
At seminars, such as one in Phoenix last year titled "Managing Millennial Parents," they swap strategies on how to handle the "hovercrafts" or "helicopter parents," so dubbed because of a propensity to swoop in at the slightest crisis.
Educators worry not only about how their school climates are affected by intrusive parents trying to set their own agendas but also about the ability of young people to become independent.
Spunky Homeschooler is, shall we say, less than impressed:
Educator and author Rosalind Wiseman calls parents who try to set the agenda for schools "queen bee moms" and "kingpin dads." What's ironic about Ms. Wiseman is that she is the co-founder of the Empower Program, a nonprofit organization dedicated to educating teenagers about violence. So it's alright for a complete stranger to fret over my children but I'm supposed to back off or be labeled a "Queen Bee". Sorry Ms. Wiseman you've got it all backwards. It is you and your social engineers who need to quit attempting to parent our nation's children and resenting the involvement of those whom God has entrusted to their care. It is the parents of this nation who need to collectively say to our nation's schools and the "experts" who want to raise them for us - BACK OFF! They are NOT your children!
I hope parents will finally see that our nation's government schools are a conduit for social engineering meant to replace the parent with the state as the primary influence in children's lives. For those who have eyes to see and ears to hear let them understand before it's too late.
MORE: Mwheh.
Sorry folks. You can't have it both ways. You need to decide which excuse you're going to use and stick with it. This will just confuse everyone. How will NEA, CTA, CDE, ACSA, CCSESA, CSBA and others know who to blame? They'll never be able to keep the excuses straight without help.
Now, for a few caveats. Drill deeper in the WaPo article, and you'll find this isn't merely a public school phenomenon:
A number of private schools have added language in their enrollment contracts and handbooks warning that a student can be asked to leave as a result of a parent's behavior. Some have tossed out children because their parents became too difficult to work with. (emphasis added)
Now that's an interesting, albeit heavy-handed, way of dealing with the problem. Rather than the government school trying to mold the behavior of parent and student, the school simply says, "Our way or the highway." In other words, society copes with social problems rather than government trying to fix them. Hmmm...
March 20, 2006
Thomas Sowell vs. unions
Ready, aim, fire:
Workers themselves increasingly recognize the reality that there is no free lunch through unionization and are increasingly voting to be non-union. But the word has yet to reach many among the intelligentsia, who still think of labor unions as institutions that benefit the working class.
You can always benefit particular segments of any society at the expense of some other segment but unions do not benefit even the working class as a whole -- just those who are current union members -- at the expense of other workers, current and future.
(snip)
Teachers' unions fight desperately and ruthlessly against vouchers, because they must maintain a monopoly of school children under the compulsory attendance laws. Their members stand to lose jobs if forced to compete with private schools.
Monopoly is the key to unionized teachers' job security -- at the expense of children's education as well as the taxpayers' money.
In all fairness, Sowell is concentrating on unions generally and not on teachers' unions specifically. But go read the whole thing anyway. (Hat tip to Hispanic Pundit.)
March 16, 2006
Navarrette vs. teachers
Ruben Navarrette goes after his teacher critics with both barrels:
I used to think that left-wing Latino activists, Minutemen vigilantes and politicians in both parties had the thinnest skins on the planet. But now that I've been scolded for criticizing the critics of the No Child Left Behind education law, I'd have to say that public schoolteachers win the prize.
In what became a common theme, one teacher asked: “How many education courses have you taken? Have you ever been involved in education? I cannot respect your writing because it is so simplistic, so uninformed. Why don't you stick to writing about topics you understand?” Another educator wrote: “What are your qualifications to assume you have an opinion on this matter? Because if you have none, your piece is a waste of newspaper space.”
As a matter of fact, I was a substitute teacher for four years in my old school district, where I taught at every grade level from kindergarten through high school. I also taught at the college level. I took education courses both at Harvard and later at UCLA, where I enrolled in a doctoral program in education before dropping out to write a book about my own educational experience.
None of that will placate some teachers. All they care about is that you agree with them. And I don't.
Teachers are so accustomed to being around like-minded people – in education courses, in their credentialing program, in the schoolhouse – that many have become hostile to hearing another view. They will talk your ear off about the shortcomings of students – particularly Hispanics and African-Americans – but they're in no mood to confront their shortcomings as educators. Judging from their complaints, many of them hate their jobs, disrespect their students and resent their supervisors. And yet, they won't leave.
Go read the whole thing.
Posted by Ryan Boots at 12:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)March 10, 2006
The best kind of school choice reax
Now here's a prime example of the sort of thing that's supposed to happen with school choice. First, some background is in order. Massachusetts passed public school choice legislation back in 1991. Upshot on the program: school districts can opt out of the program, parents can elect to take their children to a different school, and the state will even reimburse low income parents for transportation costs.
Well, according to one mayor, the whole thing has been a "disaster":
Mayor James M. Ruberto has classified the volume of students leaving the city's school district due to school choice as a disaster. The Pittsfield public schools have experienced a 21 percent increase in the number of students who have left to attend school in other districts this year, according to Business Manager Sally Douglas.
Douglas said 41 more students had left city schools for other districts as of Oct. 1, the date when the School Department is required to provide the state Department of Education with its official enrollment figures. The total number of those students has risen from 200 to 241 pupils.
Last year, the number of students who left Pittsfield for other districts increased by 27 pupils, from 173 to 200.
241 students may not sound like much, but the article says the district's per-pupil expenditure is $6,000. Multiply by 241 = $1.4 million. So yeah, it hits 'em where it hurts.
Now, the school board could whine about needing more funding. Or it could demand an exemption to the law (or even a repeal). Instead, look at the response.
"It's about time we identify these kids and talk to their parents what it is about our school system that causes students to leave," Ruberto said. "We have to understand what's going on. It's stripping us of money we can use for our own students."
In other words, in the face of declining revenues, the administrators are responding to the desires of the parents! Which, of course, was the whole point all along. Contrast that with the sad story of Dorian Cain for an example on the other end of the spectrum.
Posted by Ryan Boots at 12:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)March 08, 2006
barrel. fish. gun.
As you wish, Concord (N.H.) Monitor.
Continue reading "barrel. fish. gun." »
Posted by Ryan Boots at 08:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)March 06, 2006
Hey lady, your mask just slipped
Some anti-choice types just can't keep all that hostility bottled up:
In December, a Home School Legal Defense Association member family in Fayette County, West Virginia, received a letter from the county's attendance director. The two-page letter demanded that families complete and return a form declaring whether they intended to use the WESTEST or another standardized achievement test for their end-of-the-year assessment.
Furthermore, the letter demanded that a certified teacher complete and send the school district an invasive, four-page form for families choosing the portfolio evaluation option.
HSLDA called the county's attendance director. She repeatedly stated that she thought that homeschoolers needed to have more supervision by the school district. At one point, she said, "You've heard of third world countries? Well, that is what is happening to West Virginia because of homeschooling." (emphasis added)
Can you feel the love? (Hat tip to Kimberly Swigert, who we're glad to see is back and blogging up a storm after spending some time at the hospital.)
Posted by Ryan Boots at 12:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)March 03, 2006
Choice for me, but not for thee
As anybody even remotely interested in national politics is aware, ethics investigations are all the rage these days in Washington. The latest casualty: House Democrat John Conyers, who has been accused by some former staffers of violating various ethics rules, including being required to baby-sit and chauffer his kids, one of which went to the Cranbrook School, a private school in the Detroit area. According to this, tuition at Cranbrook will run nearly $18,000 for grades 1-5, $19,280 for middle school, and $21,730 for high school. All this reflects rather badly on Conyers' stance on school choice.
At a “Stand Up for Public Schools” rally a few years back, Conyers decried educational choice as a “scheme” which “will only harm our public schools” and pointed instead to the sort of “real” school reforms drawn from the educational unions’ playbook – teacher training, reduced class size, and school construction. “It is vital,” he said then, “for parents, educators, and community leaders to join together to strengthen Detroit’s public schools.”
While some bloggers have noted the hypocrisy, we aren't terribly surprised--after all, look what public teachers do!
Posted by Ryan Boots at 12:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
