The Race is definitely on…and the finalists are: CO, DE, FL, GA, IL, KY, LA, MA, NY, NC, OH, PA, RI, SC, TN, and DC.

At first glance, there seems to be no common patterns among these states for the phase I competition — about half of them are right-to-work states; some have charter school laws; some don’t; some have policies that link student achievement to teacher evaluations; some don’t. However, geographically, they tend to be from the south; Colorado is the only state from west of the Mississippi.

Boardbuzz was encouraged to hear Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, say that no one element is a make or break factor for states to be selected to receive a portion of the $4.35 billion RTTT funds. For example, Kentucky, which has no charter schools, was among the chosen. “Folks didn’t understand there are many factors (the peer reviewers) are looking at,” Duncan told reporters on a press call yesterday. “Every state has relative strengths and weaknesses. Charter will never be a determining factor.”

Neither will a state’s ability for mayoral takeover be a determining factor, Duncan added.

NSBA had been concerned about the tone of the administration’s emphasis on charter schools when the RTTT criteria were first proposed. There appeared to be a push for more charter schools regardless of whether they are of high quality.

The finalists will come to Washington to present their proposals on March 15. Duncan predicted that there will be “very few” winners for phase I and plenty of funds will be available for phase II. States that did not receive funds in phase I can apply for phase II.

To learn more about these competitive grants, NSBA has created numerous resources concerning RTTT.

Do charter schools pose a threat to public education, or can they play a part in improving it? What about giving financial rewards to districts that demonstrate they are willing to implement reforms?

These topics are being debated across the country these days, as Arne Duncan and the Obama administration promote their ideas for public school reform. Education historian and former federal education official, Diane Ravitch tackles these ideas head on in her new book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System.

A recent article in The Washington Post examines Ravitch’s new book, and points out that many of its ideas are not in line with those of the current administration.

Ravitch believes the new methods rely too much on business principles, such as pay for performance, and standardized testing. Instead, Ravitch believes public schools need to adopt a national curriculum that covers a full range of arts and sciences. She is also a strong defender of teachers’ unions, which puts her at odds with the proposed move toward more charter schools.

Diane Ravitch is one of the featured speakers at NSBA’s 2010 Annual Conference in Chicago, April 10-12, 2010, and she will also be signing copies of her new book at the Conference bookstore on Saturday, April 10.

There has long been a debate over school vouchers in the U.S. , but many other countries have also been experimenting with vouchers. In Chile, vouchers have long been available to provide parents the opportunity to choose their child’s school regardless of ethnic or socioeconomic class, but recent research has shown that such programs may still be promoting segregation.

The National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education has posted research by Gregory Elacqua  on their website reviewing  school choice and segregation between public and private schools in Chile and among different private sectors. His research revealed that even with vouchers, private schools serve a lower proportion of vulnerable and indigenous children than public schools and among private schools, those for-profit were more likely to enroll vulnerable and indigenous students than non-profit private schools.

BoardBuzz finds this research from Chile interesting and hopes future research is done reviewing the effects of voucher programs around the world.  NSBA continues to oppose private school tuition tax credits and vouchers which divert funds from public schools in order to help subsidize the tuition of private and religious school students. For more information against vouchers, visit NSBA’s Voucher Strategy Center.

There is the argument that private school tuition tax credits save the state money; then there are the numbers to show otherwise.  A recent analysis by the Arizona Republic showed that Arizona’s tuition tax credit program, depsite what propononts have claimed, has resulted in a net loss of $21 million in state budget, see the article here.

The analysis concluded the failture of the program to save state money indicated that a large amount of scholarships funded by the tax credits went to students who would’ve attended private school regardless of the program.  What’s more, the state’s tuition tax credit program is under scrutiny by lawmakers who are considering changes to beef up oversight, see here.

The study is an example that private tuition tax credits programs do not do what proponents claim they do – saving the state money and offering options to students attending public schools.

NSBA continues to oppose private school tuition tax credits and vouchers which take public funds away from public school to benefit a few in private school. For more information against vouchers, visit NSBA’s Voucher Strategy Center.

If you surveyed all the new studies that came out this week, you’d find everything from the prevalence of ghostwriting in medical journals to how TV affects our intelligence.

Thankfully, the Center for Public Education has picked out the really interesting ones for you. The past week’s posts on the Center’s blog, The EDifier, have included quick summaries of studies on these topics:

• Whether good teachers have any effect on the teachers around them.
• How charter students may have fared had they attended their regular public school instead.

Intrigued? So were we. Check them out!

A major argument often heard by BoardBuzz from proponents of private school vouchers is that it’s less costly to educate a student in private school than in public school.  The bad news is they can no longer cite that as a reason for supporting vouchers.  This article in the Washington Post talks about a new study that found non-religious private schools actually spent almost twice as much per pupil as their public school counterparts.  In addition, Catholic schools (nonparochial) tended to spend about the same as public schools.

Bruce Baker,  author of the [independent] study by  [using data from] the National Center for Education Statistics, said in the article:

“There are a lot of urban legends that drive the policy discussions,” he added that ”private schools tend to be costlier than the commonly accepted figures in policy debates, especially conversations about school vouchers.”

The study dispelled just one of the many myths surrounding the perceived effectiveness of private school vouchers.  For more information on why vouchers are bad public policy, see NSBA’s Voucher Strategy Center .

BoardBuzz read with suspicion the claim of a new Manhattan Institute report that private school vouchers can “slow the unnecessary growth” in special education.  The report concluded that vouchers deter the financial incentive for public schools to over-identify students with specific learning disabilities since an SLD diagnosis would make the student eligible for vouchers.

This conclusion over-simplified the many complex factors involving a diagnosis such as the characteristics of the student, the services and interventions needed, etc.  Just because a public school saw a reduction in the percentage of diagnoses, one cannot automatically attribute the reason to the presence of private schools.  In fact, the 2004 reauthorization of the federal IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) requires schools to use early interventions prior to identification of a disability. This practice helps schools more accurately identify students who need special education services, therefore reducing potential identification.

The more important question here is whether these voucher students receive appropriate services and education after they leave the public school. Has their performance improved? Did they exit special education because they no longer need it? How are the voucher schools being held accountable? However, there are no answers to any of these questions because the information is not available to make an assessment.

The Manhattan report used Florida’s McKay program (which provides vouchers to students with disabilities) to gauge the changes in the percentage of students diagnosed with a disability in public schools. However, BoardBuzz wonders what good is the program if it doesn’t improve student outcomes but simply reduces the number of students diagnosed? Despite its popularity, the McKay program has not been proven effective, see the research here, and has not held participating private schools accountable for student outcomes.  In fact, when parents take their children out of the public school to attend a voucher school, they  give up a multitude of rights afforded under the IDEA. There are no requirements for participating private schools to report any information on student outcomes or follow any due process procedures.  As much as the No Child Left Behind Act has sparked new attention to raising the academic achievement of students with disabilities, vouchers are taking this accountability movement a giant step backward.

For more information on why vouchers are a bad policy, see NSBA’s Voucher Strategy Center.

Diane Ravitch does not mince words about privatizing education: privatization will not help us reach our goals.   BoardBuzz agrees with this and many of her observations about the consequences of NCLB, the promise and potential pitfalls of common standards and the need for discernment with regard charter schools and other reforms.  Further, BoardBuzz supplements Ravitch’s recent interview with Learning Matters with a few observations of its own:

• Charter schools – Reports on the CREDO National Charter School Study frequently overlook a key finding: that states with multiple charter school authorizers (translation: entities outside the public K-12 system) experience significantly lower growth in learning in their students.  The reasons aren’t completely clear, but the report suggests that multiple entities could permit charter school operators to “shop around” for an authorizer and recommends ratcheting up accountability and transparency.  School districts already are accountable to their communities and remain the logical authorizers for charter schools. 
•  Common standards – A common set of standards, not mandated by the federal government but supported by it, can lead to raising student achievement.  Funding for research and financial assistance to states in developing and implementing standards are appropriate federal roles, but not federal mandates over content or national assessments.  Read more here.   

What’s the buzz on privatization, charter schools and common standards in your state? 

It should come with no surprise that the Florida private school voucher program has not helped raise student achievement, according to this article in the St. Peterburg Times. This latest finding is added to the numerous others that have drawn similar conclusions about the lack of effectiveness of vouchers (see here and here).

The study of Florida’s Corporate Tax Credit Scholarship Program, mandated by the state legislature, showed that students using vouchers are doing no better than their peers in public school. Even voucher proponent Jay Greene was quoted as saying voucher support “promised the moon, and public policy almost never delivers the moon.”

The truth is vouchers are not the answer to improving education for all students and do not maraculously improve public schools. As Congress considers whether to fund another voucher program — the only federally funded voucher program for the District of Columbia –  lawmakers should consider these programs’ lack of effectiveness as concluded by so many studies, discontinue the voucher experiment, and redirect the funds to public schools, see NSBA’s letter to Congress here.  Also check out NSBA’s Voucher Strategy Center for information and resources.

Boardbuzz read with interest the US News & World Report story on a large study of charter schools (”Charter Schools Might Not Be Better“) and encourages a closer look at some of the findings for the good news about charter schools authorized by traditional public school systems.   

Conducted by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford University, Multiple Choice: Charter School Performance in 16 States indeed shows sobering results and concludes: “In the aggregate, charter students are not faring as well as their traditional public school counterparts,” (p. 6).  However a closer look at variations between states, different student demographic groups, academic subjects, etc. reveals a significant finding:  charter school authorizers are an important variable in the outcomes for students in reading and math. 

 The study found that states with multiple charter school authorizers (translation: entities outside the public K-12 system) experience significantly lower growth in learning in their students.  The reasons aren’t completely clear, but the report suggests that multiple entities could permit charter school operators to “shop around” for an authorizer and recommends ratcheting up accountability through authorizer “report cards” or other mechanisms to increase transparency.

Boardbuzz knows that local school boards already are accountable to their communities and as such are logical authorizers for charter schools. 

How do charter schools operate in your state?  Are there multiple authorizers? Is yours one of the five states that experienced gains in student learning according to the study (AR, CO, IL, LA, MO)?