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Mechanisms---School ChoiceSchool choice is a ruse perpetuated by the business interests that want to make money in education—so-called “choice” leaves students more segregated and less educated.Berliner & Glass 14—David C. Berliner, former professor and dean of the Teachers College at Arizona State University, PhD in Educational Psych from Stanford, authored more than 200 articles, books and chapters on education policy, co-editor of the Handbook of Educational Psychology, former president of the American Educational Research Association, member of the National Academy of Education and the International Academy of Education, and Gene V. Glass, former professor in Educational and Policy Studies at Arizona State, senior researcher at the National Education Policy Center and a research professor in the School of Education at University of Colorado Boulder, 2014 (“Chapter 2: Myths and Lies About Who’s Best: Charters, Privates, Maybe Finland?”, 50 Myths and Lies that Threaten America’s Schools: The Real Crisis in Education, Teachers College Press, Kindle Edition) MYTH 7 School choice and competition work to improve all schools. Vouchers, tuition tax credits, and charter schools inject competition into the education system and “raise all boats.” If there is one thing that the majority of U.S. politicians seem to agree on, it is that public schools are failing and that the remedy is school choice. And politicians aren’t the only ones. Films like Waiting for Superman made the case that school choice is only fair. Why should the right to choose a school for one’s child be available only to families that can afford to live in affluent suburban school districts or to pay private school tuitions? Media reports on highly acclaimed charter school networks like KIPP suggest that school choice is simply logical. Shouldn’t we be doing everything we can to support innovative, hardworking educators who are helping kids in places like south Los Angeles actually graduate from high school and go to college? Business leaders contend that the evidence for competition, and hence school choice, is obvious in every other aspect of American life. When, they ask, does a government monopoly ever benefit consumers? Aren’t you glad that the U.S. Postal Service has to compete with FedEx and UPS to provide you with quality service at the best prices? Research reports from Stanford and Harvard and various think tanks argue that the data are clear: Charter schools and private school voucher programs “lift all ships” by forcing traditional public schools to become more effective and efficient (Hoxby, 2001). In an era of intense political polarization, Americans of many stripes seem united in their belief that our nation’s children and taxpayers will be better served by introducing choice and competition into the public school system. Before we accept school choice as a panacea to the troubles of our public schools, however, it would be wise to consider two key questions about what is actually happening in regions where school choice programs are being implemented: Has school choice increased academic achievement across the board by forcing traditional public schools to compete with charter and private schools? Has school choice increased equality of educational opportunities for low-income and minority students by giving all families the chance to choose a school for their children, regardless of location or cost? The answers to these questions, in turn, raise two additional questions: What are the motivations of the politicians and businesspeople who are promoting free-market ideology and funding the research to prove its effectiveness in education? And, does competition in the educational sector exacerbate rather than solve our most difficult challenges in public education? Consider academic achievement. It is widely assumed that private and charter schools outperform public schools, and that the goal is to get public schools to perform more like these autonomous schools. But a growing and very convincing body of research is calling that assumption into question. Private schools do produce higher test scores—but they also serve a significantly more privileged student population (see Myth 2). It turns out that when you compare apples to apples—that is, similar student populations—public schools actually are outperforming private schools (Lubienski & Lubienski, 2013). This might be because private school teachers tend to have fewer credentials and to cling to traditional teaching styles, such as lecturing while students sit in rows and take notes. Public school teachers, by contrast, are much more likely to be certified, to hold higher degrees, and to embrace research-based innovations in curriculum and pedagogy (Lubienski & Lubienski, 2013). Perhaps for reasons like these, results from Ohio and Wisconsin show that students who used vouchers to attend private schools did no better academically than comparable students who remained in public schools (Richards, 2010; Witte, Sterr, & Thorn, 1995). A long list of studies also has demonstrated that public schools perform on par with or better than charter schools, despite the fact that public schools serve a larger percentage of students who are harder to teach because of disabilities, English language learning needs, or behavioral and other challenges (see Myths 3 and 4). Once again, this may be linked to the comparatively weak credentials of charter school teachers and administrators. All of this research calls into question the very idea that public schools even need to be competing with private and charter schools in the first place. That’s the big picture. What about local contexts where the neighborhood public school is floundering and some students have been able to transfer to local charter schools or to private schools through voucher programs? Do the public school administrators and teachers, seeing families “vote with their feet,” and feeling the threat of “going out of business,” finally get their act together and provide students with better instruction? Not quite. The students who leave are often the ones with the most resources: better academic skills and higher motivation; more involved and better educated parents with valuable social networks and connections; and access to personal transportation every day so they can get to and from schools that are not in their neighborhood. Along with the funds local and state governments pay for their tuition, these students take with them the positive contributions that they have been making to their public school community, including positive peer influence on their lower achieving classmates, and the effects of parent involvement and volunteerism. In their absence, the public school finds itself struggling even more for resources that are so badly needed to serve their now increasingly poor and underperforming students: special education services, English language learning resources, counselors, school psychologists, and a wide array of instructional supports. In this challenging environment, it becomes harder to attract and retain experienced teachers and to foster achievement that attracts and retains parents equipped to exercise their right to school choice. How can a public school possibly compete with private and charter schools that, unlike the public school, have no obligation to accept every student, regardless of learning needs and challenges? Some public schools have found two ways to compete. They may subtly practice the same exclusionary practices as their autonomous school counterparts, or they may divert funds from instruction into marketing targeted at parents of high-performing, well-resourced students (Heilig, 2012). Has school choice increased educational opportunities for low-income and minority students? The promise of school choice as a civil right—as an acceptable way to tackle the seemingly intractable segregation that has persisted in our schools even after Brown v. Board of Education—has been one of the more appealing arguments in favor of choice. Choice proponents have long argued that allowing children to attend schools outside of their neighborhoods would allow low-income and minority students to go to school with their affluent and White peers. Unfortunately, what actually has happened as a result of school choice policies is exactly the opposite; school segregation has increased, often leaving the most disadvantaged students in even more under-resourced public schools. The integration picture is no better at charter schools, where students are even more isolated by race and class than are their traditional public school peers (Frankenberg, Siegel-Hawley, & Wang, 2011). This increased segregation seems to have three causes: (1) Parents choose to enroll their children in schools that mirror their own demographic; (2) schools of choice choose which students they want to enroll and retain; and (3) private schools set their own tuition costs. The first cause is most evident in the case of White and upper-income parents who choose private or charter schools that enroll few low-income or minority students. Since the school’s test performance is invariably higher when the percentage of low-income and minority students is lower, privileged parents prioritize academic performance and choose a school that reflects their own race and class. While parental choice plays a role, segregation seems to be intensifying mainly because school choice gives schools more power to choose. School choice is supposed to allow parents to choose a school that best suits their child. In practice, schools of choice—private and charter schools—regularly flip that equation and choose students that will best suit the goals of the school. In a competitive environment, schools face increased pressure to outperform their neighbors, and one of the best ways to do that is to choose students who perform well. More important, it is critical to not enroll or retain students who will bring down test scores, threaten the school culture, or use up too many school resources. While private schools can advertise their admissions requirements more freely, charter schools practice exclusion more subtly. Interested parents of students with special needs may be subtly discouraged from applying, counseled to consider that the charter school has many fewer special education resources than the neighboring public school. Many charter schools also require that students demonstrate motivation to succeed in school, and that parents sign contracts agreeing to check students’ homework, volunteer a certain number of hours to the school each year, and attend parent– teacher conferences. While these requirements certainly foster student achievement, they also weed out students who most need school to find motivation and provide the academic support that their parents cannot. Although particular charter schools may enroll large percentages of African American and Latino students, a close look at the socioeconomic breakdown of those students, compared with their counterparts in the neighborhood public school, often reveals that the students with the most challenging life circumstances are the ones left after their comparatively more well-off peers have been admitted to nearby charter schools. When charter and private schools enroll students whose behavior or work ethic becomes problematic, those students usually are asked to leave. Retention policies, like admissions policies, reflect the great power of choice afforded to schools instead of parents. For example, based on its test scores, one charter school in Arizona was lauded as the best high school in the state. It had class enrollments in grades 5– 11 that showed this pattern: 152, 138, 110, 94, 42, 30, 23. Finally, in the senior year of high school, eight students were enrolled, and 100% of them graduated. Apparently, somewhere along the way, many students were told to leave (Strauss, 2012). The enthusiasm for “school choice” has its roots in the philosophies and arguments of free-market economists, most notably Milton Friedman, seen by some as the father of the school voucher movement. One of Friedman’s last public statements before his death in 2006 was on the occasion of Hurricane Katrina. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Friedman (2005) wrote, “Most New Orleans schools are in ruins as are the homes of the children who have attended them. The children are now scattered all over the country. This is a tragedy. It is also an opportunity.” The opportunity was afforded to companies that rushed into the devastation and set up private schools, taking advantage of the voucher system created by state and local politicians. The effects of this takeover will not be known for years, but it is already mired in controversy and court cases concerning support for religious schools and violation of segregation orders. And the achievement test score data coming out of these schools are not at all what the free-market advocates expected. In one recent evaluation there were 15 state-run schools and 42 charters in the Recovery School District of New Orleans, schools formed by the “opportunity” offered by Katrina. When these schools, which are wholeheartedly supported by the state, were graded using an evaluation system designed by the state, heavily weighted by achievement test scores, 100% of the former and 79% of the latter group of schools received grades of F or D (Strauss, 2012). Free-market philosophy imagines actors rationally choosing to maximize their self-interest from among a variety of options. The application of such a philosophy to the case of parents choosing schools for their children has long been known to be problematic. The famous economist Kenneth Boulding argued some 40 years ago that parents might make the choice but students are the recipients of the services in education. The feedback from child to parents is anything but perfect. And simple free-market philosophies ignore the reality that one person’s successful pursuit of self-interest can lead to a second person’s loss. Do all children deserve the right to attend excellent schools that will prepare them for college? Should educators be striving to provide their students and families with the best possible education? Should taxpayers expect that schools use funds efficiently and effectively? Yes, of course. School choice and competition, however, simply have not helped to achieve these goals, neither in the United States nor in countries like Chile that have wholeheartedly embraced these principles. Rather than offering all students better opportunities, vouchers and charter schools have used tax dollars to help some students while leaving many others even more segregated and disadvantaged. Our nation and our children need a well-funded public school system that provides equal support to all its schools. That is the tide that will really lift all ships. Directory: file -> view view -> Western Europe after wwii view -> Author study: paul fleischman view -> Qpa1 7ela study Guide view -> Arctic Oil/Gas Neg view -> November 1970 Approximately 150,000-500,000 deaths Bhola Cyclone Bangladesh view -> Grade Level: 6 Unit of Study: Caribbean glce view -> Citation: Duffield, Katy view -> Table of Contents Lesson # view -> Chinese Wind Energy Disad Download 1.3 Mb. Share with your friends:
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