PATHS

Arizona schools chief Tom Horne stood at the microphone last December, flanked by 25 of his top staff members in folding chairs.

Five members of the Roosevelt School District governing board sat nearby. None were smiling. A few held written rebuttals.

The gym was buzzing with nervous conversation among 200 parents, teachers and others.
For the first time, the troubled Roosevelt district of south Phoenix was facing the hammer of the state. In an unprecedented move, the Arizona Department of Education had ranked 10 of Roosevelt's 21 schools "underperforming."

No other district in the state had ranked so poorly. The rating meant the state would intervene, applying pressure to overhaul practices and deal with weak personnel. The district is trying to replace its superintendent and other top officers.

Perhaps no other challenge could test Arizona's education-reform initiatives as much as Roosevelt, a primarily low-income district that has grappled with turmoil for years.

On this night, what Harvard-trained lawyer Horne had to say wasn't startling. It was the giant numbers and graphs he splashed on the wall that stunned most in the crowd. They showed that Roosevelt's neighboring elementary districts had just as many families living in poverty and kids learning English, but had twice the percentage of students performing at grade level.

In reading, 67percent of the three districts' students were performing at grade level compared with Roosevelt's 34 percent. Roosevelt receives per-student funding above the state average.

Bethsabel Santos' jaw dropped. Santos, 35, has a kindergartener and first-grader in the district and volunteers at their school. A district official had asked her to come to the meeting.

She was carrying a friend's toddler, who fidgeted and demanded attention. But Santos was engrossed in the numbers and bars. Her eyes widened as more slides passed. "It's a disaster," Santos said.

School officials don't use the word "disaster." But those who worry about the district's plight know that things must change rapidly for its 12,939 kids. Otherwise, they will face frustration and failure. And Roosevelt will face being taken over, school by school, by the state.

District board President Ben Miranda, a lawyer and state legislator, said if the district is going to change, now is the moment. But he is not convinced it will.

"Incompetency protects incompetency in this district," he said.

School choice opponents argue that school vouchers offend the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause and therefore their use is unconstitutional.  Vouchers violate the Establishment Clause, opponents contend, because the use of vouchers channels public monies into private religious schools. 
However, on February 20, 2002 the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a Cleveland, Ohio school voucher case, Zelman v. Simmons-Harris.  The court ruled that the “state creation of private choice does not offend the Establishment Clause” because as in other areas of constitutional law, i.e. freedom of speech and equal protection under the law, the “fundamental requirement is an equality of opportunity, not a pre-ordained outcome.”
In deciding this case, the Supreme Court used the precedent set by the 1971 Lemon v. Kurtzman decision, the so-called “Lemon test,” which states that a program must have a “secular purpose” in order not to offend the Establishment Clause; vouchers meet this test because vouchers are used for the education of all children.
Similar voucher programs that meet this test include the GI Bill and Pell grants, which provide college students public monies to attend the college of their choosing, whether it is public or private.

Opponents of school choice excel at finding reasons to deny disadvantaged children expanded educational opportunities.  But even the fiercest partisan may shy from blocking the latest school choice proposal. 
Arizona lawmakers have proposed an opportunity scholarship program for the state’s 7,000 or so foster children. The plan would offer $5,000 scholarships to children in foster care to attend a school selected by their guardians. The measure passed the Arizona House of Representatives last week and awaits consideration in the Senate.
This targeted school choice plan would benefit some of the most at-risk children in Arizona. Adults formerly in foster care are more likely to be homeless, incarcerated, and dependent on state services. They’re also more likely to abuse drugs and alcohol and to have poor physical and mental health. Girls in foster care are more likely to have early pregnancies and see their own children enter the foster system.
Early warning signs of these problems are found in the classroom, where foster children lag behind their peers. The National Conference of State Legislatures reports that foster children exhibit “high rates of grade retention, lower scores on standardized tests; and higher absenteeism, tardiness, truancy and dropout rates.” The American School Board Journal reports that “foster children often repeat a grade and are twice as likely as the rest of the population to drop out before graduation.”
Too often, schools are part of the problem. Low expectations at school play a role. One survey of older youth in foster care conducted found that foster children “have high educational aspirations” and “resent the fact that more is not expected of them.”
Another problem is instability. About half of all foster children spend at least one year in the foster system, and 20 percent remain there for more than three years. Frequent out-of-home placements lead to regular school transfers, learning disruptions, and emotional insecurity. One survey of adults formerly in foster case found that they “strongly believed they had been shifted around too much while in care, and as a result, they suffered, especially in terms of education.”
The U.S. Department of Education estimates that students lose 4 to 6 months of progress each time they transfer to a different school. Not surprisingly, researchers studying foster children’s educational attainment have found that frequent school transfers cause serious setbacks. No less devastating, school transfers mean breaking off friendships with fellow students-relationships that are critical to children without strong family ties.
As a response to these problems, scholarships make a lot of sense. For a foster child, a scholarship could provide critical stability, allowing him or her to stay in the same school even when switching homes. And a scholarship could provide access to a better learning environment than may be available in the local public school.
Research of existing school choice programs suggests that students benefit from the new options that choice allows. School choice leads to higher family satisfaction, improved academic achievement, and higher rates of parental involvement. According to Jay Greene of the University of Arkansas, students in the Milwaukee voucher program are about twice as likely to graduate from high school as their public school peers. Dozens of studies confirm that school choice benefits participating children.
With so much upside, what’s the risk of a new voucher program for foster children? Critics will find it hard to come up with a downside: Arizona’s scholarship program for foster children would be voluntary. Children who are happy with their current schools would not be affected. The program would just provide new options for some of the state’s most vulnerable children who are ill served by the current system. The strange politics of education aside, this seems uncontroversial-or at least, it should be.
Potential critics should remember that foster children are charges of the state, relying on the state for opportunities their families could not offer. And for too long, state directed education has failed them. After decades of learning what doesn’t work in foster child education, Arizona is poised to try a new approach. Do anti-choice stalwarts really want to stand in the way of that? 
Dan Lips is policy analyst for education at the Heritage Foundation, www.Heritage.org .

Spellings Speaks on School Choice
Last month, Secretary Spellings delivered remarks at a forum on school choice at the Greater Allen A.M.E. Cathedral of New York. The following is an excerpt of her remarks.
  
    
  

... It used to be that if a parent asked how a school was doing, we couldn't really answer the question. We had almost no data and no benchmarks for success. That's why when we passed our landmark education reform law, the No Child Left Behind Act, four years ago, our first priority was to help states develop strong accountability systems and high standards for all students. We set a historic goal to ensure every child in this country—regardless of race, income or zip code—can read and do math at grade level. And we gave ourselves a deadline to do it by 2014 because parents have waited long enough. ...
Over the last four years, we've learned a lot about what works in our schools and what doesn't. And we've reached a point where we're starting to face some tough decisions about how to fix schools that are falling short of standards [for adequate yearly progress] year after year. We're committed to working with states to help turn around these low-performing schools.
But at the same time, we have a responsibility to give parents and students in these schools lifelines to help them now. That's why No Child Left Behind gives parents options like public school choice and free tutoring. These options are unprecedented in federal education law. ...
... [However,] too many parents never hear about these options because they don't see the letter that comes home in their child's backpack or they can't attend the informational meeting at the school. All of us—from the federal government to the states to districts to schools—must do a better job of reaching out to inform parents about their options. And we must work with community groups and faith-based organizations to help spread the word. ...
... In some districts, public school choice is non-existent because no public schools are meeting state standards, and waiting lists for charter schools are out the door. I've heard stories about parents cramming into rooms like this one to draw numbers to see which students will make it off the waiting list. You shouldn't need to win the lottery to send your child to a high-performing school. ...
We've seen the power of choice in Washington, D.C., where the first-ever federally funded opportunity scholarship program has given low-income families the same choices other Americans have. Almost 1,700 disadvantaged students have received grants of up to $7,500 to attend the private or parochial school of their choice. ...
... Before No Child Left Behind, we had no idea what we were getting. We could just see the system wasn't working. Now for the first time, we know exactly what we're getting from our schools. ... We've set out to do something that's never been done before. But I know it's possible with your help. Together, we'll rise to the challenge.
Visit http://www.ed.gov/news/pressreleases/2006/04/04052006.html for the complete April 5, 2006, remarks.

 
Contact: Larry McQuillan, 202-403-5119, or Lauren Fischer, 202-403-6941, both of the American Institutes for Research
WASHINGTON, April 24 /U.S. Newswire/ -- The American Institutes for Research (AIR) is releasing a first-ever scientifically based review providing comparative ratings on the effectiveness and quality of seven widely adopted education service providers that generally serve low-performing schools in low income areas.
The findings by AIR's Comprehensive School Reform Quality (CSRQ) Center, which reviewed all publicly available research and information on each model, found that despite their popularity, there is only limited scientific evidence of their effectiveness. Six of the models are for-profit entities, while one -- Imagine Schools -- changed its status to nonprofit during the review.
The report, titled "CSRQ Center Report on Education Service Providers," concludes that only one model -- Edison Schools -- currently has a solid body of evidence of its efficacy.
The seven models operate in approximately 350 schools nationwide and collectively serve a significant portion of the total number of schools using education service provider models. Each model was profiled and rated in the following categories: evidence of positive effects on student achievement, on additional outcomes, and on parent, family, and community involvement; evidence of a link between research and the model's design; and evidence of services and support to schools to enable successful implementation.
"The evidence for education service providers is emerging, so the jury is still out on the effectiveness of many of these models," said Steve Fleischman, a vice president at AIR who oversaw the report. "All programs claiming to improve student achievement, including education service providers, will be increasingly challenged to demonstrate effectiveness based on rigorous studies."
One of the seven models, the New York City-based Edison Schools, received a "moderate" rating in "Category 1: Evidence of Positive Effects on Student Achievement." No models received a "moderately strong" or "very strong" rating.
Four models earned a "zero" rating: The Leona Group, in Phoenix, Ariz./East Lansing, Mich., Mosaica Education, based in Atlanta, National Heritage Academies, located in Grand Rapids, Mich., and White Hat Management, which is based in Akron, Ohio. A rating of "zero" means that evidence was found to provide a rating for this category, but none was of sufficient quality to be counted as reliable.
Imagine Schools in Arlington, Va., and SABIS Educational Systems, based in Eden Prairie, Minn., received a "no rating" because there was no evidence available for review in the category of "Evidence of Positive Effects on Student Achievement."
According to Fleischman, "The release of this report is particularly timely given the increasing numbers of schools facing 'restructuring' as part of the accountability provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) as well as the growth of the charter school movement." In both instances, decision makers may consider education service providers a viable option in their search for support to improve student outcomes.
Increasing numbers of schools are entering their fifth year of not meeting Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) under the federal law, triggering a requirement that the schools enter a restructuring phase.
The report defines an education service provider as a for- profit or not-for-profit organization that contracts with new or existing public, charter, or private schools and/or school districts to provide comprehensive services to schools, including educational programming (such as curriculum design and professional development), or administrative services (such as operations or human resources management).
AIR's CSRQ Center created the guide to provide education stakeholders with a decision-making tool to sort through the range of education service provider models available to support whole school or district improvement, and does not endorse one particular service provider over another.
The CSRQ Center screened approximately 900 studies and documents to use in rating the seven profiled models. The CSRQ Center, a multi-year project funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of Education, developed its review framework in consultation with an Advisory Group consisting of leading education experts and researchers, and is closely aligned with NCLB requirements for school reform based on scientifically based evidence and on accountability based on results.
The report builds on AIR's pioneering work in conducting consumer-friendly research reviews. In November 2005, AIR released a similar report evaluating the quality and effectiveness of 22 widely adopted elementary-school comprehensive school reform models.
AIR hosted a panel discussion on the report's results on Monday, April 24, at its corporate headquarters at 1000 Thomas Jefferson Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. Panel participants included: John Chubb, chief education officer of Edison Schools; Michael Petrilli, a vice president of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation; and Nancy Van Meter, director of the American Federation of Teacher's Center on Privatization.
Interested parties, including representatives of the seven models studied, were invited to attend.
To download the full report, visit AIR's Web site: http://www.air.org or the CSRQ Center Web site: http://www.csrq.org.

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Editor's note: This is the fifth installment in a seven-part series showing why charter schools do not have the freedom needed to create significant educational improvements through innovation.
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After a century of failed public school innovations (see Diane Ravitch's Left Back: A Hundred Years of Failed School Reform), pressure is increasing for education reforms to be "research-based." Although education professors--most of whom have pedagogically progressive instincts--don't like to admit it, "direct instruction" is the most robustly validated pedagogical approach.
In some versions of direct instruction, every aspect of the lesson is scripted: The teacher stands in front of the room and reads line-by-line through a manual, and students recite the correct answers in unison. This updated version of the very traditional recitation technique of teaching is easily replicated (almost anyone can do it), and the results are predictable: When students repeat answers over and over and over again, they tend to remember them.
This approach, although effective at preparing students to memorize material on tests, is unlikely to produce students who are exceptionally capable of learning how to learn.
Not surprisingly, critics of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) and direct instruction complain such approaches destroy creativity and independent thought. However, after 100 years of failed school reform, public school accountability is here to stay.

Teacher Commitment Essential
The Socratic Practice approach Michael Strong uses more closely resembles pedagogical approaches such as Whole Language reading and New Math, both of which have been robustly rejected by parents and research results alike. NCLB, a potent symbol of "seeing like a state" that passed through Congress with widespread bipartisan support, will increasingly force progressive, open-ended pedagogies out of the public school classroom and push public school pedagogy to more closely approximate direct instruction.
Moreno Valley High School (MVHS) in Angel Fire, New Mexico was a highly unusual but suitable place to implement Socratic Practice. In addition to Strong, who had defined the practice, two of the teachers, Brad Kloeckl and Barb Browning, were experienced teachers who had each been trained by Strong for at least a full semester, four days per week in their classrooms, 10 years earlier in Alaska. Thus, both the English and history departments were taught entirely by faculty with unusually deep training, both of whom were sufficiently committed to Socratic Practice to move from Alaska to New Mexico specifically to teach at MVHS.
During the school's second year of operation, Lea Brock taught additional English and history classes. Brock had both a bachelor's and a master's degree from St. John's College in Santa Fe and had spent a year teaching in Alaska with Kevin Holthaus, from whom Strong had learned his practice. In a world in which one or two days of in-service training is the norm, with two week-long summer training sessions an unusual phenomenon, the MVHS humanities team had all had at least a full year's training in a very sophisticated pedagogy.

Administrators Determine Quality
Strong is highly aware of the difficulties of quality control in applying his Socratic Practice approach. As a public school consultant, he saw it was impossible to ensure quality control by merely offering consulting services. In the business world, quality control is ensured by distinctive certifications, by franchise arrangements with inspections, or through outright ownership (restaurant and retail store chains).
Prior to Strong's departure in 2004, MVHS was writing grant proposals to create a Socratic Practice training center that would provide the full-year training required to staff new schools with comparable pedagogical expertise. With MVHS's controversial track record, for now Strong is unable to continue developing teacher training programs or new schools with adequate quality controls in place.
Philanthropic foundations and the government expect solid "research-based" results in education these days. Entrepreneurs, by contrast, are often individuals who don't require external validation in order to believe in their visions. And in the marketplace, as long as they can find customers who value their products, they don't need research.
In his early days, simply based on his vision of the future of the oil industry, John D. Rockefeller famously encouraged his people to buy oil regardless of what the data said. Politicians and bureaucrats (including those bureaucrats who work for private foundations) cannot afford to take such risks.
Ever since Milton Friedman wrote the first article advocating school choice in the 1950s, the primary argument for the policy has been that it will encourage innovation in education. By and large, the national experience with charter schools has been disappointing in this respect. Although there has been some innovation in charter schools, and although charter schools disproportionately serve at-risk students, the vast majority of charter schools are more notable for their conventionality than an innovative nature.

Create Markets
One of the arguments Friedman made was that school choice would support innovation by allowing parents and students who preferred one style of pedagogy over another to attend schools specializing in that pedagogy. From this perspective, the bifurcation of opinion regarding MVHS is natural, good, and to be expected. Product differentiation and specialization occur in a market precisely because consumers have different tastes and preferences.
Friedrich Hayek, whose views on "the creative powers of a free civilization" influenced Friedman's understanding of the innovative powers of free markets, was known for his idea of "spontaneous order." One aspect of that idea is that in a free market, entrepreneurs find ways of giving customers what they want more effectively than the government can. This allows for greater innovation because small, specialized niches can arise in markets, whereas governments have to pass legislation that applies to everyone in the same way.
Some of these small, specialized niches will grow, and their products will become increasingly sophisticated; indeed, this progression from small niche to dominant player in the marketplace is a fundamental dynamic of innovation. Thus a market that can allow for the possibility of an MVHS that strongly satisfies some consumers while appearing to be a poor product to others is precisely the kind of place that might lead to substantive innovations on a broader scale.
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Michael Strong (michael@flowidealism.org) is CEO and chief visionary officer of FLOW, Inc., a group working to achieve peace, prosperity, happiness, and sustainability in 50 years.

In a clear voice bursting with energy, fifth-grade teacher Lori Moisoff asked her students to answer a series of multiple-choice questions - using their fingers to represent the letters.
The creative approach fell flat as Moisoff, just 26 and fresh out of college, struggled to show her students how to twist their fingers into a "B." Focusing on their finger contortions, the students' attention drifted away from the lesson on reading comprehension.
Such rookie mistakes are plentiful in the Sacramento City Unified School District these days because, as of the 2004-2005 school year, one out of every four of the district's teachers had fewer than three years experience, according to a Bee data analysis.
That rate tops every other large district in California and is double the state average.
The situation is even starker at poorer urban schools like Pacific Elementary, the south Sacramento campus where Moisoff teaches. There, 44 percent of teachers in 2004-2005 were in their first or second year on the job.
Part of the local trend stems from a common dilemma: Many urban schoolteachers move on to suburban districts as they gain experience, while union contracts typically prevent forced transfers of veterans back into the poorer, urban schools.
But the large number of new teachers in Sacramento also resulted from a calculated choice by school leaders. To save money, school district officials offered retirement incentives to experienced teachers in 2004. About 200 veterans took the buyouts, often to be replaced by lower-paid newcomers.
Sacramento's problems could become the state's next major challenge. About a third of California teachers now are over the age of 50, according to a recent study by the Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning, leading to the expected retirement of 100,000 teachers in the next decade.
Rise in rookie teachers worries experts
New teachers encounter a mountain of struggles. On top of the avalanche of paperwork and lesson plans, Moisoff said she's found it particularly difficult to cope with the behavior of her 10-year-old students.
"Talking back, refusing to do things, giving attitude constantly," she said as she nibbled on a sandwich during her lunch break. "I knew I was going to have that, but I didn't know to what extent."
One student threw a pencil at her, she said. Others have announced they won't do their work and walked out in the middle of class. And most surprising to Moisoff is "the lack of interest they have to be in school."
"Even if you say, 'Take out your book and turn to page 325,' they moan and complain," she said. "I was not prepared for that."
Relying heavily on rookies to overcome such large obstacles concerns some education experts. New teachers, they say, often aren't as good at disciplining or educating kids - an argument borne out by lower scores on standardized tests at schools with more neophytes both statewide and, based on The Bee's analysis, locally.
Even looking only at schools serving predominantly poor families, students at campuses with large numbers of inexperienced teachers generally do worse on the basic skills tests than those at schools with a more experienced work force.
Take two schools where more than 90 percent of students receive subsidized lunches - the standard indicator of school poverty.
At A.M. Winn Elementary, near Bradshaw Road, fewer than one in 10 teachers were new on the job last school year. About 30 percent of the school's second-to fifth-grade students performed at or above the proficient level on that year's standardized English test, compared to the state average of roughly 40 percent - a relatively good showing for a poor school in California.
But at Freeport Elementary in the Meadowview area, where one in three teachers had little experience, just 14 percent of second-to fifth-grade students performed at or above proficient on the English test.
"As wonderful as many of (the new teachers) are, there is still a learning curve," said Freeport's principal, Debra Dillard.
Academics who study the effects of teacher experience on student learning agree with Dillard's view from the ground.
"It takes a while to figure out what you're doing in a classroom, how you manage a class and how you present the material," said Eric Hanushek, a fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution.
Time management often causes trouble
That learning curve was evident during a recent spelling lesson in Moisoff's classroom at Pacific Elementary.
"Number 9 is potato, number 10 is potatoes," she said as children copied down the words. "Number 11 is halo, number 12 is halos."
"What's a halo?" a student blurted out.
That question set Moisoff on a tangent, asking students to think of something that flies around, wears white and has wings. While the spontaneous discussion took only a few minutes, it was enough to set her behind.
Her stopwatch began to beep.
"OK. We have five more (words)," Moisoff said to the class, turning off the timer. "I was supposed to finish in 10 minutes. We need to hurry up."
Time management is a common problem for new teachers, said Moisoff's boss, Principal Kathy Kingsbury. Teachers starting out frequently allow students to steer them off topic, she said, or teach at a pace too slow to keep kids interested.
It's a worry because getting bogged down in a morning spelling lesson can mean skimping on a math or science lesson later in the day.
Just a few years ago, teachers like Moisoff made up a smaller share of Sacramento City's corps; there were many more veteran teachers. During the 1999-2000 school year, almost 30 percent of the district's teachers had 20 or more years' experience, and 18 percent had two or fewer years on the job.
By 2004-2005, those numbers had almost flipped: Just 15 percent of Sacramento City Unified teachers were veterans and 25 percent were rookies, state data show.
The big change, school officials say, was the retirement incentive taken by 200 veteran teachers in June 2004. That was on top of a smaller buyout taken by several dozen teachers in 2003. All told, the district spent less on teacher salaries during the 2004-2005 school year than it did in the 2001-2002 school year, even as the amount spent on teacher salaries statewide increased sharply.
Under the 2004 retirement incentive plan, the district offered a bonus of 7 percent of teachers' final salaries each year for the rest of his or her life. That means a teacher earning $60,000 a year at retirement would get $4,200 a year on top of regular retirement benefits.
District officials said they needed to save money because student enrollment was dropping, and along with it the state funds based on that enrollment. They touted the buyout as a way to cut costs without reducing the total number of teachers.
Some experts criticize such fiscal decisions, saying it creates a lopsided work force that relies too heavily on inexperienced teachers.
"I often think that districts that do early retirement for teachers with 20 years of experience or more are really missing a bet because what they're doing is getting rid of some of the folks who have the most likelihood of being good mentors and excellent teachers," said Linda Darling-Hammond, an education professor at Stanford University.
Sacramento City Unified officials say they expect the experience level of their teachers to rise steadily in the years ahead. But a recent study by the Public Policy Institute of California indicates that once a district is populated with a lot of new teachers, it's likely to remain a district with a lot of new teachers.
Inexperienced teachers tend to quit more often than veterans, the study found. In all, 13 percent of teachers statewide during the 1990s quit California public schools altogether during their first two years and 22 percent left by their fourth year. New teachers also transfer often between districts, the study found, with many leaving poorer schools behind.
Once they leave, even newer teachers are often hired, the study found, and the cycle starts again.
Turnover comes in other forms at schools with young staffs. Kingsbury said she hires many long-term substitutes to accommodate the life changes people tend to experience in their 20s and 30s.
"I have a terrific young staff," she said. "The biggest hassle is everybody having babies all the time."
Order in classrooms far from automatic
Often, the biggest challenge faced by new teachers is keeping order: They just aren't sure how to calm a rowdy class.
Danny Lee knows how difficult it can be. When Lee started teaching at Oak Ridge Elementary in Oak Park last school year, 36 percent of his colleagues had two or fewer years of experience.
Lee said his college classes had trained him how to teach a child to add and subtract, but left out direction on how to handle difficult students.
"They didn't teach you how to be a social worker or a parent to these kids," he said.
Like Lee, Moisoff said she struggles to keep her class under control. After the spelling lesson, she asked students to put their pencils down and place their hands on their desks.
One girl continued to play with her pencil. Moisoff asked her again. The girl spun the pencil between her fingers.
But Moisoff simply moved on to the next lesson.
Later, she explained her dilemma. If she had dropped everything to discipline one child, she would have compromised the lesson for the rest of the class. On the other hand, she knows her authority is diminished when she doesn't punish students who disobey.
New teachers often wrestle with such conflicts, says Kingsbury, the principal.
"They tell the kids what they want, but they don't know what to do when they don't comply," she said. "It's not easy when you're a new teacher."
These days, Moisoff is trying to improve student behavior with a system of rewards. Students who behave well all week get to pick out a prize on Friday from a cache of toys Moisoff bought with her own money. Next year, she said she is determined to be firm on discipline from the first day of school.
New teachers provide passion, diversity
Despite all they have to learn, new teachers are valued - for more than just their low salaries.
Kingsbury said she loves her "baby teachers" because they are enthusiastic, creative and nurturing. Stephen Lewis, principal at Oak Ridge Elementary, said new teachers are more willing to try different approaches.
The biggest advantage of hiring a lot of new teachers, Lewis said, is the chance to make the staff look more like the student body. About two-thirds of the students at his school are still learning English, but until recently, Lewis said, "We were a pretty white staff."
In the past couple of years, Lewis has hired young teachers who speak Hmong, Spanish and Mien. Their abilities are reflected in their classrooms, where some have words in other languages taped to the walls.
Still, Sacramento school officials recognize that they must compensate for the district's large class of rookies. The school district is providing training and mentoring to its new teachers, said Associate Superintendent Carol Mignone.
Emphasis on professional development is evident at Pacific Elementary, where a private grant paid for the construction of a meeting center where teachers gather weekly. The cottagelike building with large wood tables allows teachers to spread out their work, brainstorm ideas about how to best reach their students and display demonstration lessons for their peers.
Third-grade teacher Kieu Nguyen, in her second year at Pacific, says learning from more experienced teachers has helped her run her class better.
"(We) have a lot of team meetings and grade level meetings where you meet and plan together," Nguyen said. "So that's a really big support. You're not isolated and you're not on your own."
The teachers union is trying to reduce the concentration of new teachers in low-performing schools by urging the district to hire experienced teachers, said Marcie Launey, president of the Sacramento City Teachers Association.
"We have credentialed teachers who apply to the district who are passed over for the interns," Launey said. "We can't do that."
The union is not bending on its labor contracts, which prevent the district from assigning tenured teachers to schools where they don't want to work. But Launey says the district can lure teachers to tough schools by improving the working conditions there and by advertising those jobs before openings at other schools.
Ultimately, she said, something needs to change.
"I believe experienced teachers really have a sense of what's good in the classroom," Launey said. "If we have a continual revolving door, it's difficult to build that experience base."

EVER since a 1980s government commission declared this country "a nation at risk" be cause of our schools' failure to educate our children, experts have offered countless recipes for change. Among the most persuasive was E.D. Hirsch's book "Cultural Literacy," a plan for providing all schoolchildren with "the basic vocabulary of our culture" and the common background knowledge necessary to function effectively in our society.
By now his ideas about what should be learned in each grade (but leaving how to teach it up to the individual teacher) have proved successful in several hundred schools throughout the country.
In his latest book, "The Knowledge Deficit," Hirsch takes his recommendations a step further. He explains how not only to improve students' learning but also close the gap between the disadvantaged and those who come to school already possessing language skills they acquired at home.
What Hirsch proposes flies in the face of the current dogma used to train elementary school teachers and administrators. Today's education departments concentrate on pedagogy, while ignoring general knowledge - dismissed as "mere facts." Future teachers are given a lot of instruction on how to teach, but have little knowledge of any particular subject.
The progressive ideology of the moment holds that children learn "naturally," and that the ability to read will unfold spontaneously like walking or talking. So No Child Left Behind, which requires that children be tested regularly to measure their reading proficiency, has led to schools devoting more and more time to "language arts," at the expense of other subjects like history, science, foreign languages and fine arts. But Hirsch argues that these subjects form the core of broad knowledge that individuals need to make it in our society and to communicate with an educated general audience - "what literate Americans take for granted."
Why not, he asks, use the extended period of language arts (two and a half hours a day in New York City) to teach reading in the context of real subject matter? Instead of emphasizing the mechanical skill of decoding words in trivial and boring passages in basal readers, have children read the history of our country, the lives of great men and women, the poems and stories that make up our common culture, starting in the earliest grades. Children would be motivated to understand what they are reading because of its intrinsic interest, and the gap between the disadvantaged and the more practiced would narrow and eventually disappear.
School is the only place for children from reading-impoverished and language-barren homes to catch up on the background knowledge and vocabulary that will put them on a more equal footing with their better-read classmates. What Hirsch is suggesting challenges the way too many schools are trying to meet NCLB standards. He wants to reverse the current emphasis on reading as a mechanical process and replace it with a content-rich curriculum that will turn all children into knowledgeable readers. It's a worthy goal for our schools in an increasingly competitive globalized world.
Rita Kramer is the author of "Ed School Follies: The Miseducation of America's Teachers."

In January 2005, the Goldwater Institute and the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation jointly produced A Guide to Understanding State Funding of Arizona Public School Students to bring simplicity, transparency, and accuracy to Arizona public school finance by detailing the underlying funding formulas and mechanisms. Like the 2005 study, this analysis examines updated financial data from the Arizona Department of Education’s multiple accounting systems: the Uniform System of Financial Reporting (USFR), the Student Accountability Information System (SAIS), and the Superintendent’s Annual Financial Report (SAFR). This policy brief also describes the changes that have occurred in Arizona funding between the 2002-03 and 2003-04 fiscal years.
The state does not synthesize its multiple accounting systems, making it hard for the public to know how much is actually spent on public school students and difficult for policymakers to obtain accurate figures to inform sound education policy. For example, the National Education Association, the country’s largest teachers’ union, says the state spends $5,222 per student, and Education Week’s annual “Quality Counts” ranking claims Arizona spends $6,331.2
The online K-12 Funding Index, available at www.goldwaterinstitute.org/k-12fundingindex, has been updated with fiscal year 2003-04 Arizona Department of Education financial data. With the online database, policymakers and the public can readily access the most accurate per-student funding figures—by both student and district type—for all 218 regular Arizona public school districts. The only resource of its kind in Arizona, the Index breaks down state equalization base funding for students into four categories, and non-equalized district funding into per-student amounts by local, county, state, and federal funding categories.

CHARTERS
OH NO, O. Oprah's two-part education special "Schools in Crisis" was an opportunity to show 7 million viewers the poor state of public schools and the innovative opportunities offered by charter schools. While she hit the mark on demonstrating the dismal state of our public education system, the queen of talk failed to show what's being done to fix it. Some reformers interviewed on the show failed on the same score. Interested in how? Look for Chalk Talk later this week for an incisive analysis.
THE ANSWER. The public need look no further for a few real answers to the public education crisis in the country than the 43-page proposal titled "Taking Back Our Schools - Improving Opportunities for the Children and Families of Los Angeles," released last week. The proposal details the education reform initiatives proposed by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to takeover and restructure Los Angeles Unified School District. The valuable reforms detailed in the report include: more charter schools, $50 million to establish additional charter school seats, limiting schools to 500 students, doubling the number of schools to 1,480, extending the school day and academic year, and reducing the school district's central administrative staff from 3,100 to 100. Continuing his effort to takeover the struggling LAUSD, Villaraigosa says he is "undeterred and absolutely committed" to fixing the district and closing achievement gaps. With New York fighting for the charter school cap to be lifted and Villaraigosa using a New York reform model to fix LAUSD, it is hard to believe that both were ignored in Oprah's "Schools In Crisis" special. The real answer to "America's silent epidemic" is more charter schools, less bureaucracy, and innovative curriculum. And there are people all over the country fighting for that as we speak.

PHOENIX—A new analysis of Arizona Department of Education financial data shows per-pupil funding is roughly $8,500 per student, significantly more than the $5,000 reported by the National Education Association and very near the U.S. average. Opening the Books: 2006 Annual Report on Arizona Public School Finance is a joint research effort of the Goldwater Institute and the Friedman Foundation.

Many reports on Arizona public school funding examine only a portion of total school funding. Opening the Books pulls together all sources of funding to give policymakers and taxpayers a true account of the total amount being spent on education.

“We believe Arizonans need to know exactly how much is spent to educate children. You can’t make an informed decision on what to buy if you don’t know how much it costs,” said Robert C. Enlow, executive director of the Friedman Foundation.

The report compiles data from the Arizona Department of Education for all 218 regular Arizona public school districts and shows the changes in spending between the 2002-2003 and 2003-2004 school years.

While k-12 expenditures amount to over $4.5 billion annually, Arizona continues to have one of the highest reported dropout rates in the country and National Assessment of Educational Progress scores are flat.

“Transparency is a first step to accountability. Once we know how much schools receive, we can determine what all this funding buys. Unfortunately, we find increased funding has not led to improved student academic achievement,” says Goldwater Institute president Darcy Olsen.

The report’s findings are available in the online Goldwater Institute K-12 Funding Index. The only resource of its kind, the K-12 Funding Index puts the complex figures in an easy-to-use format so anyone can access the most accurate per-student funding figures. Simply select your local district to see per-student spending in your neighborhood schools.

View the K-12 Funding Index and download a copy of Opening the Books: 2006 Annual Report on Arizona Public School Finance at www.goldwaterinstitute.org.
Contact: Starlee Rhoades, Director of Communications, Goldwater Institute, (602) 712-1257, srhoades@goldwaterinstitute.org.

The nation's oldest and largest school voucher program is about to undergo its biggest expansion yet with no clear-cut evidence after 15 years that sending youngsters to private school at taxpayer expense yields a better education.
Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle signed a measure last month to increase the number of participants in the Milwaukee program from the current 15,000 students to as many as 22,500 next school year.
"This is an educational reform that works," said Susan Mitchell, president of School Choice Wisconsin, a pro-voucher group.
But with hundreds of millions of dollars invested, that assertion is still being debated.
Researchers have done dozens of studies on Milwaukee and programs in Cleveland and Washington, D.C. For every study that shows school-choice students perform better than their public school counterparts, another study contradicts it.
"You've got to wonder about the wisdom of increasing the program by 50 percent when there's no evidence from Milwaukee and no evidence from places like Cleveland that vouchers have succeeded in raising student achievement," said Nancy Van Meter, director of the American Federation of Teachers' Center on Accountability and Privatization.
Milwaukee's program, begun in 1990, allows poor families to send their children to private or parochial schools at state expense, at up to $6,351 per student. This year, the program is expected to cost nearly $94 million.
Supporters say it allows youngsters to escape bad schools and can make the public school system better by forcing it to compete for students. Teacher unions and others complain that voucher programs drain money and talent from inner-city schools and run counter to the principle of free, universal public education.
The governor signed the increase after vetoing two smaller expansions in previous years. Religious and business leaders and other voucher supporters had lobbied Doyle for months, and targeted him in a radio ad that likened Doyle, a white man with two adopted black sons, to the segregationist Southern governors of the civil rights era. A TV ad featured a black student saying the governor was "throwing away my dream."
Terry Brown, president of the Christian school St. Anthony's, said his 800 students thrive because the school focuses on structure and instruction and includes Catholicism in daily routines. This year, 4-year-olds are reading for the first time, and after-school programs were added so parents can work longer, Brown said.
Brown said the fight for students is increasing as schools advertise to attract students and the dollars they bring with them.
"It's so competitive. You've got to create a niche and communicate that to parents so they can decide where to send their kids," Brown said.
Though the school board in the 94,000-student Milwaukee district opposed the expansion, board president Ken Johnson said competition with private schools has helped the public schools.
High school graduation rates have improved, students at all levels are performing better on tests and the schools have become more accountable with tax dollars, Johnson said.
"It can be a healthy competition, not a harmful one," Johnson said.
Harvard researcher Caroline Hoxby found that some Milwaukee public schools raised student achievement when faced with competition from voucher schools. Also, she found that students achieve better in voucher schools.
But the AFT argues that other studies show that voucher programs have no effect on achievement in public or private schools. One study from two Princeton University researchers in 2003 found that students in New York's choice program scored about the same as kids who did not receive vouchers.
Milwaukee's program required standardized testing for its first five years. A new state law requires the city's voucher schools to again administer standardized tests.
A study during the first five years of the Milwaukee program found no discernible difference in standardized test scores between public and school-choice students, said John Witte, the state's evaluator of the program then and a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
"In the process of looking carefully, is it possible to make any conclusions? My gut is it's very difficult to make a good judgment about it," Witte said.
To 17-year-old Jacob Walton, Milwaukee's public schools were distracting and failed to challenge him. Walton enrolled last year at Messmer High, a Catholic school. He has become senior class vice president and plans to go to the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater next year. He would not be heading there if not for Messmer, he said.
"It's about business and it's just a strict learning environment," Walton said. "There's no distractions. The teachers care. Everybody is just so supporting and it's just a great environment to be around."

The Center on Education Policy (CEP) has released its fourth annual report on the implementation of NCLB. From the Capital to the Classroom: Year 4 of the No Child Left Behind Act, is an analysis of how the law is being implemented at the state, district, and local levels. (Mar. 28)
Beginning next year, a new pay-for-performance program for Florida's teachers will link raises and bonuses directly to students' improvement on standardized tests. Advocates believe the initiative is a landmark in the movement to restructure schools because schools would face competitive pressures similar to those in the private sector. Opponents believe efforts to evaluate teachers based solely on test scores is too narrow of a measure. [More-The Washington Post] (Mar. 22) (subscription required)
The SEED Foundation, (School for Educational Evolution and Development), a nonprofit organization that opened the nation's only public boarding school in Washington, DC, is now aiming to replicate the program. The program takes poor students out of often unstable homes and places them in a rigorous, college-preparatory environment. SEED officials are seeking approval from Maryland lawmakers and Governor Robert L. Ehrlich, Jr., to create a state-financed boarding school that the SEED Foundation would manage. If approved, the school likely would be created in Baltimore and would be open to students from across Maryland. SEED officials also are looking at other possible sites, including two in California, and have plans to open a second school in Washington, DC. [More-Education Week] (Mar. 22) (subscription required)
Characteristics of Schools, Districts, Teachers, Principals, and School Libraries in the United States is now available through NCES. This report introduces data from the fifth administration (2003-2004) of the Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS). SASS is the nation's most extensive sample survey of public, private and Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) elementary and secondary schools, teachers, and administrators. (Mar. 23)
A new “Finance Longitudinal Data Tool” has been added to the Education Finance Statistics Center (EDFIN) website. The website now includes two searchable data tools. The “Peer Search Tool” allows comparisons of the finances of a school district with its peers based on the latest fiscal data. The new Longitudinal Data Tool allows comparisons of fiscal and non-fiscal school district data over time from 1989-1990 to 1999-2000. (Mar. 21)
NCES has released Characteristics of Private Schools in the United States: Results From the 2003-2004 Private School Universe Survey. The report presents data on K-12 private schools by selected characteristics such as school size, school level, religious orientation, association membership, geographic region, community type, and program emphasis. In the fall of 2003, there were 28,384 private schools in the country, enrolling 5,122,772 students. (Mar. 16)

Last week, Education Secretary Margaret Spellings unveiled a new school choice proposal aimed at helping low-income children trapped in underperforming public schools.    In New York alone, where Secretary Spellings delivered her speech, an estimated 125,000 students attend persistently failing public schools.  President Bush’s proposal would give thousands of these children-and their peers throughout the nation-the ability to attend a better school. 
“More than 1,700 schools around the country have failed to meet state standards for five or six years in a row,” Spellings explained.  “We’re proposing a new $100 million Opportunity Scholarships Fund to help low-income students in these schools attend the private school of their choice or receive intensive one-on-one tutoring.” Thousands of students throughout the nation stand to benefit from such a program if the legislation is passed by Congress. 
According to preliminary estimates, 170,000 students in Los Angeles are attending persistently failing public schools as defined by the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) act of 2002.  In other large districts, such as Chicago (120,000), Philadelphia (63,000), Baltimore (23,000), and Memphis (16,000), thousands of students are enrolled in persistently failing schools and would be eligible to participate in the administration’s Opportunity Scholarship program. 
The Secretary’s speech followed the release of a new Department of Education report on the implementation of No Child Left Behind, which showed that participation in the existing school choice programs remains low.  Under No Child Left Behind, schools that fail to meet goals of adequate yearly progress for two years must offer low-income students the option to transfer to a better public school.  Schools that fail for three years must offer low-income students after-school tutoring.  Less than one percent of 3.9 million eligible students took advantage of the opportunity to transfer to an alternative public school.  A higher, though fairly small, percentage (17 percent of 1.4 million eligible students) utilized the after-school tutoring provisions of NCLB. 
One of the main reasons for the low participation rates in the NCLB school choice provisions is the failure of school systems to implement the program and communicate its benefits.  The Department of Education found that half of all school districts notified parents about the public school choice option after the school year had already started, when few parents would want to change their child’s school. Secretary Spellings is ordering a review of states’ compliance with the school choice provisions and warns that “withholding federal funds” is a possible consequence for states that fail to meet this responsibility.  
Yet, even if the transfer and tutoring provisions of the earlier legislation were implemented perfectly, they would still only help children at the margins and would limit their enrollment options to choices within the public school system.  Unfortunately, in some communities there are few open seats in high quality public schools. The opportunity scholarships initiative would provide children with expanded options of authentic school choice. 
The plan is similar to the new federal school voucher program for Washington D.C., through which 1,700 low-income children have been able to attend private school. The D.C. voucher program has steadily gained popularity among families.  According to the Washington Scholarship Fund, there were approximately two applicants for every available scholarship.  In all, the Bush administration’s Opportunity Scholarships initiative could fund private-school scholarships for more than 20,000 low- income children in cities across the nation. 
Opponents of school choice will likely argue-as they have against other school choice programs-that, rather than providing vouchers, funds should be used to fix the failing public school system.  But children trapped in failing schools cannot afford to wait until they are somehow brought up to par. Even under the President’s proposed Opportunity Scholarship program, eligible students are attending schools that have already failed to meet state standards for six or more years.  If anything, this proposal doesn’t go far enough in rescuing students from substandard schools. 
Consider the track record of Thurgood Marshall Middle School in Baltimore, Maryland-a school that would quality for the administration’s program-where 75 percent of the 795 students are from economically disadvantaged families.  There, according to a report by Standard and Poors, less than 2 percent of all 8th graders achieved “proficient” scores on the state’s math test and just 21 percent had “proficient” scores in reading.  How much longer must children in this school wait?
Like the children of Thurgood Marshall Middle School, students in the 1,700 persistently failing public schools throughout the nation deserve help right now.  Opportunity Scholarships can give them a real chance to receive a quality education-a chance that only real school choice can provide.  
Dan Lips is Education Analyst at the Heritage Foundation, www.Heritage.org.
 
 
 

CHARTERS
I LOVE NEW YORK. A battle is raging in New York. On the side of charter schools and valuable education reform: Governor Pataki, Mayor Bloomberg, New York City schools chancellor Joel Klein and now - U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings. On the side of the status quo: horribly misinformed Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and who else but the BLOB. The union is coming up with every excuse in the book to stifle the governor's push to raise the cap on charter schools in the state from 100 to 250. The latest excuse, which the union is using to create protests around New York City, is that the city doesn't have enough space for charter schools. The conventional public schools don't want to play nice and share their underutilized buildings with new charter schools. Despite all the bickering, Pataki's plan received national support last week when Secretary Spellings praised the governor's efforts. "We must stop rationing opportunity by arbitrarily limiting the number of charter schools we allow. Parents want options. And we all benefit from them. Charter schools improve education for everyone in the system, especially students. They're laboratories for new educational strategies that can eventually help raise achievement in all our public schools," Spellings said outside Greater Allen Cathedral. The Secretary also praised the governor's work to create an education tax credit for private school and tutoring. Within days of Secretary Spelling's remarks, Silver and others organized protests and stomped and hollered to prevent charter schools. Silver, however, seems confused about what a charter school is, telling the New York Times,  "There is no reason that the mayor or chancellor should be giving away these facilities to a nonpublic endeavor." Correction, please?
$6 MILLION MAN. For months Los Angeles schools Superintendent Roy Romer seemed to be dodging the offer by Green Dot Public Schools to take over at least six of the lowest performing schools in LA. With approval finally in hand, its founder and chief executive Steve Barr attracted a major gift from the Wasserman Foundation. The $6 million solidifies Barr's plan to reform Jefferson High School, one of the lowest performing schools in the dismally underachieving Los Angeles Unified School District. With Green Dot finances more than doubled by the gift, Casey Wasserman, who heads his family's foundation, is confident in Barr, telling the Los Angeles Times, "Green Dot has an opportunity to take one of the worst schools in Los Angeles and turn it, hopefully, into several high-performing, smaller schools." Barr has been struggling for months to take control of the failing Jefferson High. Barr's reform vision was to convert Jefferson into several Green Dot campuses with small class sizes and innovative curriculum. School Superintendent Romer initially rejected the idea. However, in March the Los Angeles Board of Education put kids ahead of systems and approved a plan to open eight schools around Jefferson High, with six run by Green Dot, and another two run by the Alliance for College-Ready Public Schools, a boon for kids in the troubled district.
UNIONS
BAD MONEY. Charter schools serve more underprivileged, minority, and at-risk youth than do conventional public schools, a fact confirmed in CER's "Annual Survey of America's Charter Schools." Meanwhile, Seattle Public Schools have a growing achievement gap, one that may have been on the decline had the state's teachers union not used its millions to overturn the charter school law passed by the legislature three years ago. Now the parent union is making a $250,000 grant to the school system to close the achievement gap, on the notion that resources are the issue. "With this and other grants, NEA and The NEA Foundation have again teamed up to demonstrate how educators' collaborative efforts can improve academic success for all children, particularly those in urban areas," NEA President Reg Weaver said in a press release. Well intentioned, but off the mark, Reg.
SUBSTITUTE STOSSEL. John Stossel is miffed. After his 20/20 special "Stupid in America" aired on January 13, the teachers union protested and waved signs demanding he teach. He agreed, and many observers watched and waited for the big event. But he complained that they were sending him to one of their more unusual public schools, one that actually is selective in its admissions. Says Stossel:  "Like most of my dealings with the union, nothing was easy. It took weeks of phone calls to make any sort of progress…I prepped for my history classes. We had more meetings. The school principal had me sit in on a class with a "superstar" teacher…Finally, after I sent last week's email, they canceled. They said that it might 'set a precedent' that would open their doors to other reporters." Despite the missed opportunity, Stossel came out on top after the typical red tape produced by the union. His willingness to listen to the protesters and to meet their demands has earned him the respect of many public school teachers.

This page, along with a significant and growing number of Americans, has been ranting for years and years about public education's descent into mediocrity, its seemingly insolvable problems, and what it will take to cure those problems. We, for instance, have been saying since at least the late 1980s that the cure is competition, and that competition will only occur when the death grip teachers unions have on the system is loosened.

Our leading prescription has always been vouchers, an idea first proposed by Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman several decades back, but an idea that has been gaining ground only in fits and starts, in such outposts as Milwaukee and Cleveland. The glacial pace of that progress, of course, is due almost entirely to the opposition of the teachers' unions and their marionettes, the national Democrat leadership.

Application of vouchers and similar competitive medicine has always been advocated by the dreaded Right Wing in particular, and conservatives in general. Democrats and liberals have been so cowed by the unions and union money that they've gone along with those unions, whose solution to fixing the system has always and eternally been, "more money."

So it was with a great deal of surprise — and, truth to tell, delight — that we learned there are new recruits now joining the battle, and that those recruits are — Democrats. We know, we know, it's a stunner almost as startling as it would be to learn Democrats have decided supply side economics works. But now, according to Wall Street Journal writer and editorial page deputy editor David Wessel, a band of Democratic-leaning thinkers has proposed a solution to improve public schools. That proposal, according to Wessel, was unveiled April 5, and it's simple: Get rid of bad teachers and reward good ones.

Wessel calls the proposal significant because it "(P)ublicly confronts teachers' unions ... with the fact that bad teachers are part of the problem."

The proposal, Wessel says, rests on several arguments: that the current practice of demanding certification based on teacher-training courses has "outlived its usefulness, that routinely granting teachers lifetime tenure after two or three years is stupid, and that student test scores and other systemic ways to evaluate teachers are now good enough to act on." No kidding.

Those making the proposal cite research done in Los Angeles public schools that "suggests that there is a huge difference in performance between students with the best teachers and those with the worst and that it's possible within two or three years to discern if a teacher has what it takes."

Recall the last election, when one of the initiatives Arnold Schwarzenegger backed dealt specifically with teacher tenure. The initiative would have extended the time it takes for a teacher to become tenured (essentially, unfireable) from two to five years. Naturally, the teachers unions had a hissy fit, spent several million dollars of union dues buying advertising to fight it, and once again got their way.

Wessel says this is all happening because Democrats are jealous that George W. Bush co-opted the education issue with his "No Child Left Behind" program. Could it be, folks, that Mr. Bush, in addition to revitalizing our economy with his tax reforms, may also be the person most responsible for revitalizing our dysfunctional public education system? Could be. Will he get the credit if it finally happens? Probably not. Does he care?

For the answer, recall the words of that rascally old conservative himself, Ronald Reagan, who said: "It's amazing how much you can accomplish if you don't care who gets the credit." We don't give a hoot who gets the credit either. All we want is more bang for our educational buck. Seems like a workable way to get rid of bad teachers is as good a place to start as any.

No word yet on what the teachers unions think, but don't worry. There will be. It will be predictable. And loud.

     Competition and accountability are key in achieving excellence in any endeavor, but most especially in our public schools.  And school choice is arguably the best vehicle to foster competition and accountability in our public school  system. 
     We are lucky that Arizona is a leader in school choice, from open enrollment across district boundaries, to charter schools, to private scholarships funded by income tax credits.  However, the one missing ingredient is school vouchers which would provide private school opportunities to children whom the public schools are not serving.  Public school officials will argue that school vouchers remove desperately needed funding from already strapped school districts. However, this is not true.   
  According to the Arizona Department of Education, depending on grade level, average per-student spending for public schools ranges between $8,000 and $9,000, but only about 50% is actually tied to the student. The rest remains with the district to fund salaries and building costs, i.e. utilities, maintenance, etc.  The schools are not affected by the loss of the funds that are tied to the student when the student leaves because the student is no longer present in the district to be educated. 
   We should all be asking ourselves with per-student spending in our public schools at around $9,000, the cost of some private schools, why are teachers and parents being asked to pay for classroom supplies?  What happens to this nearly $9,000 before it gets to the classroom?

There's no rule that says a top high school education has to cost top dollar, though sometimes it does.
Take the Princeton Regional School District, for example, which spends $14,432 per pupil -- more than any other district in Mercer County aside from Mercer's special services school district.
Even statewide average SAT-score leader Montgomery, Princeton's wealthy and academically high-flying neighbor to the north in Somerset County, is spending $4,778 less per student than Princeton for the current school year, according to the state Department of Education.
And despite the sharp difference in per-pupil spending, Princeton High School students trailed 29 points behind their Montgomery counterparts in average SAT scores, though still ranking an enviable fifth in New Jersey in 2004-2005, the latest year for which statewide data are available.
The two high schools in the West Windsor-Plainsboro School District, which Princeton is outspending by almost $3,000 per pupil this year, held the second and sixth slots in the statewide SAT rankings last year.
That higher-spending districts don't necessarily produce higher-achieving students wouldn't surprise anyone familiar with the research on school costs and student performance, said Stanford University's Eric Hanushek.
"What the research has shown over a long period of time is that there simply is no consistent relationship between spending and the quality of a school," said Hanushek, a leading expert on educational policy who specializes in school economics and finance.
"The research has tried to look at what the schools add to what the parents contribute, showing that there is no consistent relationship between spending on the schools and value added of the schools," said Hanushek, a senior fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution.
"Sometimes districts spend more and do good things with it," he said. "Other times, they spend more and don't do good things with it."
 
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In Princeton's case, Hanushek said students are "going to learn well almost regardless of what the schools" bring to the table simply because Princeton "has pretty good parents" who take an active interest in their children's education.
Even so, Princeton schools Superintendent Judith Wilson contends her district is wise to invest more than most on a per-student basis because the money is spent on programs that make a difference.
For example, she said, Princeton offers more robust early childhood education than is available in many other districts, including pre-kindergarten for 4-year-olds and guaranteed full-time kindergarten. Also, she said, Princeton has among the highest number of advanced-placement courses at the high school in the state.
"In the final analysis, it's about breadth and depth of programs," Wilson said. "It's about maintaining very sound class sizes, and the bulk of (costs for) any district is in personnel."
"If you open a new school and staff it with 50 percent second- or third-year teachers, your costs are going to be less" than by relying, as Princeton does, on more experienced teachers, she said.
Trenton's reliance on more seasoned teachers is one reason the academically struggling capital city school district's per-pupil spending, $13,598, is second only to the Princeton school district's in Mercer County, not counting special services.
"We have a pretty senior teacher staff here," said Nancy Swirsky, the Trenton school system's interim business administrator. "In addition, we have a very strong recruitment for the most highly qualified people we can find. We're not bringing them in right out of college."
Trenton spends more heavily than most suburban districts on support services for students, ranging from social workers to security guards at each school and co-teachers in some classrooms, Swirsky said.
 
-- -- --
 
Hiring younger teachers is one reason Burlington Township's comparative per-pupil cost of $8,447 in 2005-2006 is lower than any of the state's 103 other K-12 public school systems with more than 3,500 students, said Michael Gersie, assistant superintendent for business for the fast-growing school district.
"We have younger teachers because we did grow so much," Gersie said. "If you look at our average age, we're probably on the lower end."
He said he doesn't know if there is a magic bullet for keeping spending low.
"I do believe that we have an ingrained corporate culture (in Burlington Township) that we have to do more with less," he said.
But Gersie said state-imposed limits that over the past 10 years or so have closely linked school spending growth to changes in the cost of living are a disservice to many school systems, especially those with high enrollment.
At the low end of the total per-pupil-spending spectrum among Mercer County school districts, Hamilton schools Superintendent Neil Bencivengo said his district has learned to stretch its dollars without sacrificing the quality of education.
"It is a constant burden," Bencivengo said. "We have to constantly ask our employees to extend themselves, and they are responding."
Hamilton, Mercer County's thriftiest school district in terms of per-pupil spending, allocates about $8,989 per student, based on the 14 cost factors the state Department of Education includes in its annual comparative spending guide.
"We have to be sensitive to being efficient," he said. "But we have to make sure that our students, when they graduate, are competitive. They are; they're getting into some of the most prestigious colleges."
Bencivengo said the district prides itself on being the county's most cost-efficient, as long as that doesn't undermine the school system's effectiveness.
"We have to balance out on what we feel the community we're working on can afford," he said. "We in Hamilton are very proud of the fact that we have very, very dedicated employees."
 
-- -- --
 
Statewide, the average budgeted comparative per-pupil costs are $11,554 for the current school year, about 3.8 percent more than last year, according to the state Department of Education's 2006 comparative spending guide, released in March.
An average of about 59 percent of that expense -- $6,822 per student -- goes toward classroom instruction, while support services, such as guidance and nursing, account for another 15.3 percent, according to the state Department of Education. Administrative costs average about 11.2 percent of the total comparative per-pupil spending.
To put all districts on a level playing field for comparison purposes, some spending categories -- including transportation, construction and facilities or equipment purchases -- that can vary widely from one district to the next are excluded from the state's comparative spending guide for schools.
That means the actual per-pupil spending in each district is higher than the figures shown in the spending guide.
Still, with the state's annual school budget elections set for April 18, the guide serves as a useful tool for the public to stimulate discussions about local school spending plans, Lucille E. Davy, New Jersey's acting commissioner of education, said in a statement.
The comparative spending guide can be accessed online at www.nj.gov/njded/guide/2006/.
 
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Contact Robert Stern at rstern@njtimes.com or (609) 989-5731.

CHOICE
CREDIT WHERE IT’S DUE. For almost a year, the Arizona Legislature has been calling for a corporate scholarship tax credit but as Newswire has previously reported, Governor Janet Napolitano stood in the way and vetoed it once after having given her word she’d approve it. That action forced lawmakers to tuck their program into a bill that is aimed at assisting English-language learners. On Wednesday, Napolitano gave up her fight and let the tax credit program become law without her signature. An estimated 3,000 to 5,000 children will have access to scholarships to help them attend private or parochial schools of their choosing. The corporate tax credits for businesses – also operational in Florida and Pennsylvania— allow businesses to contribute in total up to $5 million a year — and receive a dollar for dollar credit. Each student can get approximately $1,000 in scholarships. Get additional information on the The Alliance for School Choice website.

The Arizona Department of Revenue has released its annual report on the scholarship tax credit program. The report is quite encouraging.

Overall, donations were up 32 percent, to over $42 million. This was in part due to the partial elimination of the marriage penalty in tax credits, allowing married donors to make a donation of $825 instead of the previous $625 (the maximum donation moves to $1,000 this year and hereafter). There was also an eight percent increase in the number of taxpayers making donations.

Beginning this year, scholarship organizations can seek donations for scholarships from businesses under the newly adopted corporate scholarship tax credit, which has an annual overall cap of $5 million.

That is the good news. The bad news? This cup is far from half-full. Even with this growth, the tax credit program’s budget is only half the size of one medium-sized school district.

Arizonans should embrace even bolder school choice reforms. Every parent deserves the ability to choose the best school for their child.

  April Fools’ Day—Celebrate a School Choice Victory!  After sandbagging the Legislature for months, Gov. Janet Napolitano finally allowed a corporate scholarship tax credit (SB 1499) to pass this week--without her signature. If the Governor were not so foolish, she would’ve signed the bill and taken some credit for supporting school choice, which is immensely popular among voters. In last year’s Kenski poll, 91.4 percent of Arizonans supported one or more of the five school choice proposals before the Legislature, with 65.6 percent “strongly” in favor of one or more of the programs. Kudos to Senate President Ken Bennett and House Speaker Jim Weiers for getting the bill past the Guv. The total credits are capped at $5 million annually and are targeted at low-income families. With maximum scholarships of $4,200 for K-8 and $5,500 for high school, the corporate tax credit could help thousands of kids transfer to private schools annually, and save the state millions of dollars in education expenses.
  Arizona PAChyderm Coalition Meeting---Wed., April 12   This month’s dinner meeting features a panel on education policy, including: Jennifer Barnett of the Institute for Justice; Sidney Hay, Arizona’s Premier Choice Advocate; Matt Ladner, Alliance for School Choice; Vicky Murray, Goldwater Institute; and Debbie Smith, Paths2Choice. Gubernatorial candidate Don Goldwater will address “The Illegal Invasion of Arizona,” and guests will also hear legislative updates on the state budget, border security and other issues. The PAChyderm Coalition will meet at 6:15 p.m., April 12 at Q's Banquet Hall, 15440 N. 35th Avenue in Phoenix. The hall is located one block north of Greenway Road. Admission is $5 if reservations are made by 6 p.m., April 7, including a homemade dinner served at 6:15 p.m. Tickets at the door are $8. RSVP to AzPatsFan@cox.net.