Statewide Poll Offers Findings on New Jersey Citizens’ Opinions on Corporate Tax Credit Scholarship Program, School Funding Options and School Vouchers - News release: An overwhelming majority (74%) of New Jersey residents support establishing a corporate tax credit scholarship pilot program for students in four urban districts, a new poll of statewide opinions on school funding options revealed. A majority (54%) supports vouchers which would let parents "pay for tuition at the public, private, or religious school of their choice.

Teacher’s union files grievances over overcrowded classrooms - The New York City teacher’s union has been up in arms about overcrowded classrooms.

As 2 Bushes Try to Fix Schools, Tools Differ - Many figures say No Child Left Behind, which comes up next year for Congressional reauthorization, could use some improvement. But Bush vs. Bush may be the most striking part of the debate.

Judge Dismisses Most of No Child Left Behind Lawsuit - A federal judge dismissed most of the claims in Connecticut’s challenge to the No Child Left Behind law Wednesday on jurisdictional grounds, the state’s attorney general said.

State’s `No Child’ Lawsuit Still Alive - A federal judge Wednesday dismissed much of Connecticut’s argument for challenging a controversial U.S. government school reform law but left open one avenue for the state’s lawsuit to continue.

Closing the gap - Editorial: Magnet schools are no panacea for bringing struggling schools up to par.  At the highest levels of state government, Florida needs leaders committed to helping struggling public schools, instead of throwing taxpayer dollars through vouchers to private schools that aren’t held accountable for student achievement.

Davis presents his education platform - Democratic candidate for governor Jim Davis detailed a plan Wednesday to de-emphasize the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test and change the way it is used to rank schools on a scale of A to F, a system he equates to a "political weapon."

School choice called too complicated - The current school-choice system and transportation plan for Seattle Public Schools are overly complicated and costly, and need updating, School Board members agreed Wednesday.

School choice: close to home - Pinellas County, Florida schools will likely resegregate if parents get to choose where their kids go to school, because they want to keep them nearby.

America’s educational system is failing its students - Opinion: Unfortunately, school choice programs have been slow to gain political traction.  Until we change the system, we’ll keep pouring funds into underachieving public schools, and we’ll keep finishing in the middle of the pack.

She’s building Bush’s education legacy - Opinion: If Donald Rumsfeld is the face of the war that is President Bush’s most controversial initiative, Margaret Spellings is the face of the education program that might become his most successful.

Palm Beach County board fights to maintain control over charter schools - Florida charter school operators fought Wednesday against the Palm Beach County School Board’s bid to shut out a new state charter school authority.

Davis’ school plan: Reduce influence of FCAT - Florida Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jim Davis said Wednesday that if elected, he would junk much of the FCAT-centered educational plan that has become the signature policy of term-limited Gov. Jeb Bush.

Legal challenge to schools plan is a shame - Letter to the editor: A recent LA Times article about the expected legal battle between Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and the board of the Los Angeles Unified School District leaves out one important fact.

You and I are Part of the School Reform Solution - Opinion: One can help shape and improve schools by being constructive and collaborative or one can stand on the sidelines and complain about everyone and everything. Hopefully, you and I are part of the solution for school reform.

There’s Got to Be a Market - Opinion: School choice is one important step in revolutionizing American education. But it is only a first step.

Teacher-pay increase long overdue - Editorial: Louisiana has suffered in a variety of ways because of a long-time failure to bring teacher salaries in line with the Southern regional or national averages. Refreshing new figures from the state Education Estimating Conference indicate, however, that we are finally on the way to correcting this dangerous deficiency.

Check back later for more education news. 

UPDATE:

Change comes to a Carolina - WSJ (subscription required) South Carolina civil-rights advocate Dewey Tullis explained to reporters a few weeks ago why he’s supporting a Republican running for the state’s top education job, Karen Floyd: "Frankly, I’m tired of seeing our young black men graduate high school without knowing how to read and write."

USC study: What charter schools are doing right - A USC Rossier School of Education professor has identified 20 innovative programs in California charter schools and created a database to share their successes with other schools.

There’s got to be a market - NRO: The supply side of school choice. onservative school reformers love to talk about giving families better options. As President Bush said, way back on the 2000 campaign trail, “If the schools are not teaching children, then something has to happen.

More Michigan parents choose charter schools - Detroit and some of the state’s older school districts may be struggling when it comes to keeping students, but the number of children in Michigan charter schools seems to keep growing.

Ed Week: District chiefs do not share national leaders’ worries about schools, poll finds - (subscription required) Concerns about high school improvement, teacher quality, and mathematics and science instruction may be grabbing headlines of late, but they’re not keeping most of the nation’s superintendents up at night, a new survey suggests.

The results of an E3-commissioned poll indicate strong support for school choice:

An overwhelming majority (74%) of New Jersey residents support establishing a corporate tax credit scholarship pilot program for students in four urban districts, a new poll of statewide opinions on school funding options revealed. A majority (54%) supports vouchers which would let parents "pay for tuition at the public, private, or religious school of their choice." 

The complete poll, including internals, is here.  Obviously support differs across demographic lines, but as the pollsters themselves concluded, "All in all, the survey results indicate majority public support for school choice and alternate funding mechanisms in New Jersey."  Interestingly, support for school choice even held up across party lines–and the tax credit program for urban scholarships got even more support from Dems than from Republicans (80 percent vs. 74 percent respectively). 

Who can blame New Jerseyans for feeling the way they do?  It’s pretty much Milwaukee on a grander scale, and with even higher eduspending.  Bottom line: after skyrocketing spending and nothing to show for it, these folks seem willing to try just about anything. 

(And which organization conducted the poll?  Monmouth University Polling Institute.  Shhhh…nobody tell Jim Horn!)

It’s up over at the Education Wonks.

This op/ed in the State (South Carolina) is a mixed bag.  Some interesting things are happening with choice: using a new charter law, Republican state rep Bill Cotty is proposing the state government start its own public charters in areas with failing schools as a way to sidestep nasty takeover battles, which politically makes sense.  But the writer–Associate Editor Cindi Ross Scoppe–can’t seem to restrain herself at certain points.

Mr. Cotty says his plan would help students in and out of the charter schools because it “says to local districts there’s a new dog on the block and you need to clean up your own house.”

That sounds a little strange too, since “competition will improve the schools” is one of the main arguments put forward by those who want to give vouchers or tax credits to parents who send their kids to private schools — a proposal Mr. Cotty has been at the forefront of fighting off.

I would tend to agree that this puts Cotty in a rather uncomfortable position (if competition is a virtue for public charters, why is it a downside for vouchers?).  But is Scoppe rejecting the notion?  She seems to, but won’t quite go there. 

And the plan is susceptible to one of the same criticisms he and I and others have of the private school plans: It would trap kids who don’t have active, involved parents in failing schools that might become even worse once the best students with the most motivated parents move out.

Translation: we must not make school choice available, because the wrong people might just take advantage of it!  I’ve commented before on similar prejudices against KIPP, and this column betrays a similar (and similarly disturbing) mindset: no matter how badly some parents want options for their children, they must remain confined where they are. 

In fact, I have a suggestion for Scoppe: if those highly motivated parents and their children must remain in those schools, why don’t we do the next best thing: exchange them for your children!  She sounds like a very involved parent, and I’m sure her child will work wonders helping a low-achieving school improve! 

Moreover, his plan addresses what he calls the one legitimate point made by those pushing for vouchers or tax credits — that kids in poor-performing schools don’t have time to wait for those schools to get better.

Mr. Cotty bills his plan as “an alternative, with none of the waste involved in tax credits and vouchers.” Unlike private-choice plans, which would “waste 90 percent of the money” on people who can afford to pay for their private choices, his plan would be limited to poor students in poorly performing schools in poor districts — those who truly don’t have any alternatives.

If you want to make sure low-income families are the primary beneficiaries, there’s a very simple solution that has been successfully applied in lots of school choice programs: insert a means-tested requirement in the legislation.  Cotty’s desire to get kids some educational options is commendable.  But his arguments against vouchers and tax credits are both tired and substanceless, and this one most of all. 

Mr. Cotty is convinced that the anonymous financial interests backing “Put Parents in Charge” would oppose his plan because they wouldn’t get any money, and he might be right. Nor would it satisfy people who simply want to send their kids to private schools, and think the state should help pay for that.

Look, I don’t question that there have been a lot of issues over donor disclosure in South Carolina.  But naturally, Scoppe goes from there to conclude that this is just a money grab on the part of a lot of greedy privatizers, an awfully big jump indeed. 

Unlike the voucher plan, the Cotty plan keeps public money in a system that is accountable to the public for its results. And best of all, it has the potential to actually fulfill the entirely unrealistic promise of vouchers and tax credits — that is, to provide a good education to children who attend those schools that are mired in poverty and thus far highly resistant to improvement.

Finally, buried in the very last paragraph, we get to the accountability canard.  Scoppe is doing her level best to assert that a) school choice programs lack any semblance of accountability, and b) there’s no possible remedy to the situation.  So I’ll just repeat what I’ve said in the past:

• Calls for accountability assume that parents are too stupid to see if a school is doing a good job teaching their children. 

• As I’ve already said in response to the Palm Beach Post (which appears to be the State’s inspiration in writing about school choice), the idea that schools are presently unaccountable or avoid measures like standardized testing is utterly absurd.  The vast majority of private schools already administer accountability measures, because it’s in their interest to do so.  Furthermore, if voucher schools fail, they end up closing down–unlike public schools, which manage to stay open (and have historically successfully lobbied for spending increases) in spite of poor performance. 
• As Scoppe herself said in the second paragraph of this piece: "The whole idea behind charter schools, after all, is to let parents and other interested community members run their own public schools. They can bypass some state regulations as long as they prove students are learning what the state says they need to know."  In other words, charter schools can be held accountable.  Replace the word "charter" with the word "voucher," and Scoppe will have stated my point precisely: set a minimum level for achievement, and let schools do their thing.  But in Scoppe’s world, aside from the recent legislation passed in Milwaukee and Florida, there’s just no way to use the same approach for voucher schools. 

First Ken De Rosa pummeled this guy, now Right Wing Prof delivers a savage beating.  I don’t even want to imagine the carnage that would result if these two started a group blog…