School Choice Rejected by California Legislature

April 29, 2023 By Editorial Board 10 Comments

Across the country, states are embracing the concept of education savings accounts as a means of empowering parents to decide where to send their children to school.  In the California Legislature, though, the idea is a nonstarter.

Last week, the California Senate’s education committee rejected Senate Bill 292 by a vote of two in favor and five opposed.

The bill, introduced by Sen. Shannon Grove, R-Bakersfield, proposed offering parents who wish to opt their children out of the government school system the equivalent of what the state spends per student. Parents would then be able to use that money to educate their children as they see fit. Such funds could be used to pay for a private school education or other related education purposes.

According to reporting by Elissa Miolene from the Bay Area News Group, under the plan parents would be able to receive around $17,000 per K-12 student, based on per pupil state funding in the current school year.

“California’s government-run schools are failing too many students,” said Sen. Grove. “Any company that failed 84% of its customers would be run out of business, but in California the legislature rewards failing schools with even more funding. The government focuses more on funding institutions than students, and most parents have no other options.”

Indeed, as this editorial board has long written, California’s K-12 educational system consistently underperforms the rest of the country on standardized national tests.

Most students in recent years have failed to meet the state’s own standards in mathematics, English or science.

Troubling racial and economic disparities have long persisted in educational outcomes in California, despite continuously rising education spending.

In recent years, the state has curtailed alternatives to traditional government schools, namely charter schools, and has seen greater and greater spending on teacher pensions and other post-employment benefits.

Despite this, as this editorial board has noted before, the concept of providing funds directly to parents has widespread support across California. In 2017, the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California found that 60% of Californians supported the idea of “providing [vouchers] to parents for use at any public, private, or parochial school.” Support was even higher among Black Californians (73%), Latinos (69%) and public school parents (66%) of all backgrounds.

You would not know that though based on the behavior of state politicians, many of whom are ideologically aligned with and/or financially tied to the state’s teachers unions.

Click here to read the full article in the OC Register

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The School Choice Battles Ahead

January 24, 2023 By Larry Sands 2 Comments

As we transition into 2023, we can see that the field of education will once again be a contentious one, as too many government-run schools are failing, and parents are not happy. In Chicago, for example, great numbers of students are avoiding their local schools. In fact, more than one-third of the city’s public schools are at least half empty, with high schools the most vacant. Douglas High School has a capacity of 888 students, but only 34 students are enrolled. Manley High School can seat 1,296 students, but just 70 attend. On the k-8 level, the Mason School can accommodate 1,710 kids, but has only 187 enrollees.

With 11% of black and 17% of Hispanic students reading at grade level in Chicago, the above numbers should not come as a surprise. And the funding hawks can’t whine about money as the district has now increased its spending to over $29,000 per student – a 40% jump since 2019.

California isn’t much better than Chicago, where just 34 percent of the state’s 4th graders scored proficient in math on the pre-pandemic 2019 NAEP, placing the state 44th nationwide. The formerly Golden State also has the lowest literacy rate in the country. While that may be due in part to a large immigrant population, other similar states like Texas, Arizona, and Florida have fewer illiterates.

And like Chicago, California can’t use a lack of money as an excuse. Even before the latest barrage of post-pandemic money, California was in the middle of the spending pack nationally, yet way below average in student proficiency. And families are noticing. Between the 2019-20 and 2020-21 school years, public school enrollment in California dropped by more than 175,000 students.

As always, the progressive teachers unions, channeling George Wallace, are standing in the school house door doing their best to stifle educational freedom.

In Chicago, the union is doing what it can to kill the popular Invest in Kids Act, which provides a private school choice for families who are trying to escape their local public school. The Chicago Teachers Union asserts that public funds should be used for public education.

The union is wrong, of course. The Invest in Kids Act is a tax credit scholarship program, which means that it is funded with private pretax dollars.

Unlike Chicago, California has no private option, and the mighty California Teachers Association will do everything in its power to keep the status quo intact.

The CTA website purports to give us “facts, based on research.” But, in reality, their “facts” are cherrypicked. For instance, CTA claims that “Voucher programs are associated with reduced educational outcomes.” The union goes on to site a few outlier studies which support their case, but overall, privatization works. Ty Cobb struck out on occasion also, but looking at the whole, Ty Cobb and school choice have been raving successes. As researcher Greg Forster reports, the latest empirical school choice research finds that of 19 studies, 14 showed positive results and 2 found no difference. (Due to design flaws in the D.C. and Louisiana programs, 3 studies showed negative effects.)

Also, at a speech to the union’s State Council in October, 2021, CTA President E. Toby Boyd proclaimed, “Vouchers Rear Their Ugly Heads: Two school voucher initiatives have been submitted in hopes of qualifying for the November 2022 ballot. Both would use public funds to send students to private and religious schools, taking money and vital resources away from public schools.”

Voters in California had rejected school vouchers twice before, but there was hope of passage this time. Sadly however, neither initiative made it to the ballot.

One of the unions’ most specious arguments is that choice hurts public schools. But as Greg Forster points out, a large body of empirical research finds that “school choice programs improve educational outcomes both for students who use them and students who remain in public schools

Also, a recent study found that in Florida, students attending public schools have higher standardized test scores and lower absenteeism and suspension rates when there is a private option available. The effects are “particularly pronounced for lower-income students, but results are positive for more affluent students as well.”

Union pushback aside, the new year looks promising for school choice. As Corey DeAngelis, senior fellow at the American Federation for Children, explains, “All eyes will be on states with GOP trifectas in 2023, including Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Iowa, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, and Utah. Arizona was able to go all-in with one-seat GOP majorities in each chamber. If Arizona could do it with the slimmest of GOP majorities, all other red states should be able to empower families with universal school choice, too.”

Education freedom was a significant issue in many state legislative races in the recent election, notably Iowa and Texas, where incumbents lost primary elections against candidates who favored expanding school choice programs.

DeAngelis notes that in 2021, “18 states expanded or enacted programs to fund students instead of systems. 2023 is shaping up to be another banner year, especially after the school choice wave in the midterms.” DeAngelis adds that “76% of candidates supported by my organization, the American Federation for Children and its affiliates, won their races in 2022. We also targeted 69 incumbents and took out 40 of them. But don’t just take my word for it. Take a look at the liberal tears in The New Yorker magazine when they lamented that ‘education freedom’ candidates ‘fared depressingly well’ in the midterms. Perhaps we will call 2023 the year of education freedom.”

Worth noting is that in Pennsylvania, new Democratic governor Josh Shapiro has supported the concept of choice, and it is believed that he will get behind Lifeline Scholarships. This program would grant about $7,000 from already-existing education funds to students in low-performing schools to transfer to another school. The money could be used to pay for tuition, tutoring, textbooks, and other education expenses, and students could enroll in a public or private school.

While school board races were a mixed bag in 2022, parents did in fact make great strides in that area. But as important as these races are, what do traditional parents do if they live in a city or town that has a gender-obsessed and/or a CRT-riddled school board? Moving, of course, is an option, but a system of universal choice is clearly preferable.

Click here to read the full article at the California Policy Center

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Supreme Court’s School Choice Decision Opens the Floodgates, but Some States Ignore

July 11, 2022 By Katy Grimes 3 Comments

Blue states like California, Illinois, New Jersey, New York have failed to recognize the school choice celebrations’

California’s public schools were once the envy of the nation. Today, California’s public schools not only rank at the bottom of the entire country, the state spends approximately $22,000 per year for each child in the public school system to accomplish this.

California has approximately 6.6 Million K-12 Students: 6 million attending public schools, 471,000 attending private schools, and 84,000 attending homeschool, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office. The state has 942 school districts operating 8,600 individual schools and enrolling approximately 5.3 million students.

California is ripe for public school reforms, but state and local government and big teacher’s unions are preventing students from receiving a quality education. And it’s not from a lack of demand.

“The freedom of parents to choose the best education for their children has just expanded thanks to a recent Supreme Court decision,” write Lance Izumi, Senior Director of the Center for Education at the Pacific Research Institute, and McKenzie Richards, a policy associate at PRI.

The published June decision by the Court in Carson v. Makin, ruled that the state of Maine could not prevent David and Amy Carson, Troy and Angela Nelson, and other similarly situated families from using otherwise generally available tuition assistance benefits at religious (or “sectarian”) schools simply because those schools provided religious instruction, the Heritage Foundation reported.

The two families challenged Maine’s decision to discriminate against religious schools as part of the state’s system of providing tuition assistance to families who lived in areas not served by a public school.

In the 6-3 opinion written by Chief Justice John Roberts, the Supreme Court ruled that Maine violated the free exercise of religion clause found in the First Amendment.

Only two days ago, Arizona Governor Doug Ducey signed the most expansive school choice legislation in the nation into law, “ensuring kids and families in every corner of Arizona can access the education that best fits their needs,” the Governor’s office announced.

H.B. 2853, sponsored by Rep. Ben Toma, ensures all Arizona K-12 students will now be eligible for scholarship funds to access the education that best fits their unique needs.

Arizona families will receive more than $6,500 per year per child for private school, homeschooling, micro schools, tutoring, or any other kinds of educational service.

But as Izumi and Richards explain, California and other states, do not currently allow government funding to follow the child to a private school, either secular or religious.

“The Carson ruling, in conjunction with previous Supreme Court rulings, will increase the learning options from which parents may choose for their children,” they explain. “In states that have school choice tools, such as government-funded education savings accounts for children, parents may now select from the entire spectrum of private schools, including those that are religious in nature and practice.”

The Heritage Foundation drilled down on the SCOTUS decision:

“When private individuals use taxpayer funding to choose a religious K-12 school for their children, those individuals are not using public money to establish a religion.

The Supreme Court noted that the state’s interest in not establishing religion and maintaining government neutrality on religion doesn’t justify cutting out parents who want to exercise their religious beliefs by sending their children to schools that provide religious instruction.

Maine chose to operate a tuition assistance program, but explicitly left religious schools out of the program.

…the court made it abundantly clear that picking and choosing who receives public benefits that are otherwise available to all, based on whether they are religious or want to use that benefit in a religious way, offends the First Amendment.

Now the Supreme Court has put the ‘status versus use’ distinction to rest and simultaneously ruled that your beliefs and values matter.”

Former State Senator Gloria Romero, a long time school choice advocate, said in a January California Globe op ed, “blue states like California, Illinois, New Jersey and New York have failed to recognize the school choice celebrations, too-beholden to teachers’ unions which play an outsized role in elections and the delivery of zip-code educational policies in their states.”

“Nonetheless, the fight for school choice continues to grow, with multiple state legislatures seeking ways to revise funding formulas to not only support greater access to charter schools and homeschooling options, but to provide educational savings accounts for parents to choose the best option for their child.”

Romero said rather than funding “the system,” there is a noticeable push to fund “the child,” enabling money to go with the student to the school of their choice.

“Going forward, it will be up to proponents of school choice to ensure that lawmakers allow families to make those crucial decisions to the full extent laid out by the Supreme Court, thus transforming legal theory into a practical reality,” Izumi and Richards said.

Click here to read the full article in the California Globe

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The Education Blob Continues To Fail America’s Students

October 30, 2018 By Jeanne Allen 6 Comments

Charter schoolIt was former United Nation’s Ambassador and U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan who famously said “everyone is entitled to their own opinion but not their own facts.” That quote came to mind in the wake of American College Testing (ACT) releasing their latest batch of test scores revealing American high school seniors readiness for college.

It was not a pretty sight.

ACT reported that only 60 percent of high schoolers met collegiate success benchmarks in English, 46 percent in reading, 40 percent in math and 38 percent in science. Every category – yes every category – showed a decline from the previous year. Our schools are going backward and taking our students with them.

Moynihan’s quote comes to mind because the American education establishment – I like to call it the Blob – tries to obscure continuously falling and failing test scores with a dust storm of opinions from “experts.” ACT doesn’t deal in opinions of any size, shape or form. They deal in facts, and in this case the adjectives “cold” and “hard” are exceptionally appropriate.

The cold hard facts are that only 36 percent of our seniors met “college ready” benchmarks in all four categories tested. That means almost two-thirds of our students are on the path to failure once they get to college.

The cold hard facts are that the establishment is dysfunctional for millions of America’s students, and is giving the worst education to those most in need, as Hispanic and African American students continue to lag behind their peers in every category tested. This is academic malpractice.

Moynihan was a fairly doctrinaire New York liberal for his times, but a thoughtful one never constrained by ideological straitjackets. He was an early and vocal supporter of school choice. The concept – which now applies to a number of opportunities states have created to expand options for students outside of their ZIP code – was a favorite of Moynihan’s. Moynihan passionately believed in giving parents the power to guide their kids’ education. He would be appalled that the ACT scores show that Hispanic and African-American students continue to lag behind their peers in every category tested.

All of America should be equally appalled. For 25 years now the Center for Education Reform (CER) has sounded the alarm about falling test scores and failing students. We believe, and statistics show, that we must transform education – not just tinker with systems and not just give parents more options to choose outside of their zoned schools. That is necessary but not sufficient. No,we must truly redesign the process and what we expect from educators, students and yes, the Blob. Education must become personalized to every child, every student. The vision for a 21st century education system, well articulated by iNACOL’s Susan Patrick, challenges us to use our tools & modern day technologies to help students achieve competency, not just finish a grade, before moving on. “Moving toward a competency-based education model requires fundamental shifts in the systems, structures and assumptions that the traditional model of education is rooted in. We need bold leadership to transform K-12 education systems and policy. We need to build collaborative and distributed leadership at all levels of the education system to lead this transformation,” says Patrick.

And that’s just the beginning. In the coming days CER will release its annual Parent Power Index (PPI), ranking the states on how much power they afford parents to drive their family’s education, and for the first time, taking a look at what states do to foster personalized learning, making schools student, not system centered. Such innovations in teaching and learning, along side the critical lever of expanded education opportunity so that no child is confined to a failing school because of their zip code, are critical to our nation’s future if we are to arrest the lagging education indicators that inhibit a productive future for tens of millions of Americans. As our nation moves toward yet another election, these issues should guide everyone’s decisions. Without informed and bold lawmakers at every level, we simply won’t change the status quo.

I think Daniel Moynihan would agree. These are not opinions. They are facts.

Jeanne Allen is the Founder and CEO of the Center for Education Reform.

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School Choice Matters: Teachers unions still trying to deny parental choice

September 8, 2018 By Larry Sand 3 Comments

shocked-kid-apIn March, six months after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico, the island’s lawmakers approved a bill that offered parents school choice options, including vouchers and charter schools. Hardly radical, the voucher program was capped at 3 percent of total student enrollment and charters could not exceed 10 percent of all public schools.

As day follows night, the teachers union in Puerto Rico filed a lawsuit arguing that it is unconstitutional to use public funds for private schools. And then in April, another bit of devastation hit the tiny island: Hurricane Randi blew in. American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten, still aglow after teacher strikes had crippled the educational process in West Virginia and Oklahoma, decided to direct Puerto Rican educators follow suit.

Weingarten was overheard on a train plotting a shutdown strategy, but the union boss wanted to make sure that it was not called a strike, claiming they never use the “S” word. Instead, she said the public should be told “We are a human shield for the kids … teachers are doing this in the stead of parents and kids.”

On August 10, Puerto Rico’s Supreme Court threw out the lawsuit, allowing the two small choice programs to go on as planned. And as night follows day, the union called a strike to protest the choice law and a few other policy changes. The good news is that it was a one-day walkout which began and ended on August 15.

Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, it’s no secret that the teachers union is in conflict with the school district, and a strike in October could follow. One bone of contention is the staffing of magnet schools, which are public schools of choice with specialized themes – performing arts, science and math, those aimed at gifted students, et al. These schools can draw students from outside the normal zip-code mandated boundaries, are very successful, popular with parents in Los Angeles, and are rapidly expanding.

Since magnet schools offer a specialized curriculum, they need teachers who are well-versed in certain subject areas. So what’s the big deal? The United Teachers of Los Angeles is demanding that if a school or part of a school is to be converted from a traditional program to a magnet program, “certificated bargaining unit employees at the school shall have a right to assignment at the converted school and shall not be required to reapply for assignment to the school after conversion.” This is like saying that if you had heart palpitations, you would have to be treated by a dermatologist because the hospital couldn’t hire a cardiologist.

But of course the union is doing this for the kids!

And what would a month be without a new bogus study on school choice? The latest entry comes from the Network for Public Education, a union-friendly outfit that believes in zip code-mandated government schools über alles. The group solemnly reports that “fewer and fewer states are escaping school privatization’s reach.” I’ll save the details for another day, but for now, let’s just say the National Education Association’s reporton the study makes it sound as if privatization is the equivalent of a bubonic plague that is rapidly ravaging our educational landscape.

But a poll from earlier this year paints a very different picture. According to EdChoice, only 33 percent of parents prefer that their child go to a public school, yet nationwide 83 percent of kids actually do. While 42 percent of parents would prefer to send their child to a private school, only 10 percent do. Also, a recent American Federation for Children poll, conducted by a Democratic polling firm, showed that 63 percent of likely voters support school choice, and among those most in need, the numbers are higher, with 72 percent of Latinos and 66 percent of African Americans favoring it.

In addition to the above, the survey found that 54 percent of Democrats support school choice. In our ultra-politically polarized time, this is very important. School choice has become a truly bipartisan issue, with more and more liberals sticking up for kids and taking on the teachers unions. In an eloquent and powerful piece, Catherine Durkin Robinson, who self-identifies as a “militant advocate, organizer and member of the Democratic Party for 30 years,” has quit her party. She deplores the fact that the Dems toe the teachers union party line because the union provides hefty campaign contributions to them. “This movement has helped me look closer at my side of the aisle. I’m so very disappointed in a party that refuses to fight for the people who need it most – children struggling to break free from generational poverty. Education is the most reliable way to do that. Democrats are blocking the schoolhouse door.”

If Ms. Robinson is any indication, the unions’ loss in the Janus case may just be the beginning of a descent that not even Hurricane Randi will be able to manipulate.

Larry Sand, a former classroom teacher, is the president of the non-profit California Teachers Empowerment Network – a non-partisan, non-political group dedicated to providing teachers and the general public with reliable and balanced information about professional affiliations and positions on educational issues. The views presented here are strictly his own.

This article was originally published by the California Policy Center

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Giving Parents and Children More Educational Options in California

January 22, 2018 By Nicole Conragan 2 Comments

School educationAcross the country and here in the Golden State, a revolution in education has taken place over the past few decades. “Parent power” — both engagement and empowerment — has helped to drive new quality educational options for families. This National School Choice Week, we can recognize the ways in which providing parents with more and better options improves the education — and ultimately the future — of millions of American children.

As anyone browsing a clothing store can readily attest, one size does not fit all. Every child has his or her own unique talents, needs, interests, and learning style. School choice responds to students’ unique qualities, by providing parents with a diverse array of educational options for their children.

School choice includes charter schools, taxpayer funded academies with more flexibility and accountability than traditional public schools. School choice also includes open enrollment, where parents can place their students in public schools outside their traditional neighborhood boundaries.

Other school options for parents highlight specialized or non-traditional learning. For instance, California’s 567 magnet schools offer programs in math, science, the arts, or other focused topics. And online or virtual schools, along with a variety of blended learning options, give students the ability to study outside the classic classroom setting.

This effort to give parents more options empowers the ultimate stakeholder in a child’s education with the ultimate form of school accountability — the power to select the right school for the right child. No one, however well-intentioned, can better argue on behalf of a student than that student’s own parents. And no parent should face the disempowerment and disillusionment that comes from seeing their child stuck in a failing school, or one that does not meet the student’s needs.

Across the country, parents have led the school choice movement every step of the way—demanding more and better options for their sons and daughters. This grassroots advocacy and movement for greater accountability has transformed our educational landscape. Fully 43 states, including California, have passed laws allowing for the creation of charter schools. And 30 states—but, unfortunately, not yet California—have adopted some form of school choice scholarship program, empowering parents to pick the best school for their child, whether public or private.

The movement for school choice couldn’t have come at a better time, as results indicate the challenges facing our educational system. A recent study of 35 developed countries ranked American students’ outcomes 19th in science, 20th in reading, and only 31st in math. But by increasing accountability, promoting new and innovative educational models, and growing students’ love of learning by placing them in the school that best meets their needs, school choice will improve outcomes for years to come.

This January 21-27, parents, teachers, and students will gather at more than 30,000 events nationwide to celebrate National School Choice Week. These events celebrate the efforts by many longstanding supporters—not least, impassioned parents—to make the dream of school choice a reality for millions of American students. By improving our educational system, these committed parents are making a difference—not just for their own children, but for our entire country.

About the Author: Dr. Nicole Conragan is the president of California Parents for Public Virtual Education, a statewide parent organization with students enrolled in an online or blended-learning public charter school. For over 5 years, she has served as a leading school choice advocate in Sacramento and Washington, DC.

This article was originally published by Fox and Hounds Daily

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Teachers Unions Losing Long War Over Parental Choice

June 1, 2017 By Steven Greenhut 5 Comments

LAUSD school busSupporters of charter schools, homeschooling and other forms of school choice are so used to fighting in the trenches against the state’s muscular teachers unions that they often forget how much progress they’ve made in the last decade or so. Recent events have shown the degree of progress, even if they still face an uphill — and increasingly costly — battle.

The big news came from a local school-district race, although it wasn’t just any school district but the second-largest one in the nation. Charter-school supporters won two school board seats (there’s still some vote counting in one of them) in the massive Los Angeles Unified School District, and handily disposed of the union-allied board president. The race was followed nationally, and set the record for the most money spent on a school-board race in the United States, ever.

The total cost was estimated at $15 million, with charter supporters spending $9.7 million, according to estimates from the Los Angeles Times. Typically, choice supporters get eaten alive by the teachers’-union spending juggernaut. It’s usually good news if our side can at least raise enough money to get the message out, but it’s a shocker — in a pleasant way — to find the charter folks nearly doubled the spending of the union candidates.

Various reformers, including Netflix cofounder and Democrat Reed Hastings, invested serious money in the race. He donated $7 million to one charter group, the Times reported. Another top donor was former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, a moderate Republican, who spent more than $2 million. Once again, we saw that this was not some right-wing attack on unions. Victory didn’t come cheap, but it’s hard to understate the importance, from a reform perspective, of having a major school board run by a pro-charter majority.

LAUSD’s school Board President Steve Zimmer led the board in March to make a controversial — and largely symbolic — vote in favor of one of the more noxious school-union-backed bills to get a hearing in the state Capitol. Some charter supporters say Senate Bill 808 could be the death knell for most of the state’s charter schools, yet Zimmer’s support for it appears to have badly damaged his re-election chances. That’s another good-news event.

SB 808 is a brazen attempt to bring charter schools under the total control of local school districts, many of which are hostile to their very existence. According to the Senate bill analysis, “This bill requires all charter school petitions to be approved by the governing board of the school district in which the charter school is located, prohibits a charter school from locating outside its authorizer’s boundaries, and limits the current charter appeal process to claims of procedural violations.”

If educators wanted to create a charter school within any district in California and that district is run by a union-controlled school board that hates charters, then there would no longer will be any real workaround if the bill passes. That’s because the bill would wipe out appeals to the county and state level, except for some minor procedural matters.

Furthermore, the bill would let school boards decommission or reject charter schools if they are a financial burden. As the 74 Million blog reports, “that argument could be made about any charter, as state funds follow students as they leave school districts.” The bill allows the board to revoke a school’s charter upon a variety of broad findings, including any improper use of funds or “sustained departure” from “measurably successful practices,” or “failure to improve pupil outcomes across multiple state and school priorities…”

So, one instance of improper use of funds could shut down a school. Imagine if that standard were applied to the LAUSD itself, given its scandals. Charters succeed because they have the freedom to have a “sustained departure” from the failed union-controlled teaching policies. Under this bill, the core of their success could be cause for their shut down. And no school can always improve pupil outcomes in every category. These things take time, and measurements can be subject to interpretation.

In other words, the bill would place the fate of California’s charter schools in the hands of those most committed to their destruction. Given that the makeup of school boards can change every election, it would destroy any security parents could have in these schools: one successful union board election could mean the beginning of the end for the school, as union-backed boards use these new “tools” to dismantle the competition.

But there is good news. The bill was recently shelved, turned into one of those two-year bills that is technically alive but going nowhere fast. The Democrats control the state Capitol and the California Teachers’ Association arguably is the most powerful force under the dome, but many Democrats representing low-income districts aren’t about to mess with successful charters.

In other words, charter schools have come into their own, and we’re probably well past the point that the unions could so directly stomp them. They’ll do what they can to harass and hobble them, but such frontal attacks remain symbolic. And the courts continue to have their say, and frequently end up siding with the charter-school movement.

For instance, in late April the California Fourth District Court of Appeal ruled in favor of Anaheim parents who want to use the state’s parent-trigger law to turn a traditional public elementary school into a charter school. Under the trigger law, a vote by 50-percent of the student body’s parents can force low-performing schools to change the administration or staff, or revamp themselves into a publicly funded charter with more teaching flexibility.

The school district was adamantly against the change and made various challenges to a 2015 court decision approving the trigger. This is another victory for charter schools in California, although it has to be dispiriting to parents who have to continually fight in the courtroom while their kids get older. It’s been two years since the court approved changes at the school, which already has delayed improved education for two more class years.

But the court’s decision is still encouraging news, as the cultural sands shift in favor of educational alternatives, especially for low-income kids.

California candidates already are lining up for the 2018 gubernatorial race to replace Jerry Brown, who has been friendly to charters. One of the candidates is Delaine Eastin. She’s a close ally of the teachers’ unions. In the early 2000s, when she served as the superintendent of public instruction, Eastin tried to essentially outlaw homeschooling throughout the state.

California’s education code doesn’t directly mention homeschooling. The state’s compulsory education law mentions only an exemption for “children who are being instructed in a private full-time day school by persons capable of teaching … .” Homeschooling parents have long embraced a state-approved work around: They register as small private schools with their respective county boards of education.

Under Eastin’s leadership, however, those homeschools were required to file with the state Department of Education rather than the counties. And then Eastin sent a letter to district officials explaining that homeschooling as it is generally understood (parents without a teaching credential who teach their kids at home) “is not authorized in California, and children receiving homeschooling of this kind are in violation of the state’s truancy laws.”

Yet I talked to Eastin recently and she said she recanted her position long ago after getting quite an education from homeschooling parents. She even described herself as a supporter of charter schools. As with everything, we must follow Ronald Reagan’s advice for dealing with the Soviet Union (“trust, but verify”). But what does it say when one of the most dogged allies of unionized public schools now takes a position acknowledging the importance of parental choice?

It says that we’re making progress. It’s frustrating, plodding and expensive. But such progress should keep charter supporters encouraged as they head into the next round of battles.

This column was first published by the California Policy Center.

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School Choice Week Aims to End ZIP Code Mandated Education

January 27, 2016 By Larry Sand 2 Comments

 shocked-kid-apYou: I’m going out to dinner tonight.

Me: You are going to the restaurant down the street from where you live, right?

You: No, it’s not very good. I am going to a restaurant across town; it has food more to my liking and superior service.

Me: Uh, uh, you can’t go to that restaurant; you must go to the one closest to your home. It’s the law.

You would proceed to tell me that I am crazy. And I did make a nutty statement, didn’t I? But sadly this is exactly how we deal with education in California and throughout much of the country.

Why do we have Z MESS (ZIP code Mandated Education System) in the 21st century? Because it serves the adults in the education blob, aka, the Big Government-Big Union Complex, that’s why. There is no other reason.

The teachers unions especially are sworn enemies of choice, particularly when it involves privatization. This is totally understandable because, except in rare cases, private schools are independent and not unionized. That’s a major reason why – given a choice – parents frequently opt for private schools. In fact, school choice is really about empowering parents to pick the best school for their kids. As the Friedman Foundation’s Greg Forster points out, “School choice would be a big step toward strengthening the family. It would reassert the primacy of parents over every stage of education until the point where children leave home and gain the rights of adulthood.”

How do the unions try to sell their argument against choice? Feebly.

As a rejoinder to National School Choice Week, which began Sunday, National Education Association writer Tim Walker posted “‘School Choice’ Mantra Masks the Harm of Siphoning Funds from Public Education” on the union’s website. In a piece amazingly devoid of honesty, he rails against charter schools, claiming they are rife with “waste and fraud.” He slimes vouchers, which he refers as “an entitlement program.” (!) He dismisses education savings accounts, asserting that they come with “little or no oversight over student outcomes.” And to top it off, Mr. Walker never gets around to explaining why so many parents avail themselves of choice and eagerly flee the highly regulated, overly bureaucratized, child-unfriendly Big Government-Big Union complex whenever they get the opportunity.

Sillier still is a Huff Po entry by American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten. Writing “When Unions Are Strong, Families Are Strong,” she claims that unions like hers are “strengthening our families, schools and economy – at the bargaining table, ballot box and beyond.”

Union-run schools are getting stronger? Only in a perverse sense. That “strength,” as exhibited by restrictive contracts and tenure and seniority mandates, only serves to weaken education and hurt children.

And Weingarten and her cronies show no love for schools that aren’t organized. The wildly popular and successful Washington D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, which serves predominantly poor and minority kids, has battled the union since its inception. As Michael Tanner writes in NRO, “… to preserve the program for the 2016–17 school year, Congress will have to either push through a stand-alone funding bill in the face of ferocious opposition from Democratic lawmakers and the teachers’ unions, or hope to include the funding in some future budget deal.”

Clearly, Weingarten doesn’t give a rip about “strengthening” the families that want to enroll their kids in the DCOSP program. Just the backbones of their union-owned legislators.

Celebrating Martin Luther King’s birthday last week, the unions were oozing with platitudes about the civil rights leader. NEA president Lily Eskelsen García penned a piece which refers to King’s “legacy in our classrooms.” While it’s true that there is no way to know how King would have responded to charter schools or voucher programs, his oldest son is convinced his father would approve. In fact, Martin Luther King III spoke at the “Rally in Tally” where over 10,000 people converged on Florida’s Capitol building in Tallahassee to urge the state’s largest teachers union to drop a lawsuit challenging a voucher-like education program that benefits low-income families. The state teachers union, the Florida Education Association, is claiming that “the tax-credit scholarships divert state money away from a quality public education system the state is required, under the Florida Constitution, to provide.”

MLK III said, “I just find it interesting that in our country we have the gall to debate about how our most precious resource – our children – are treated.” He cautioned that he couldn’t say with certainty how his father would feel today, but insisted that he “would always stand up for justice. This is about justice.”

The union, undeterred by the rally, plans to forge ahead with the lawsuit, claiming that the “voucher scheme is not legal.” Matthew Ladner, senior advisor at the Foundation for Excellence in Education, snapped, “If there is a moral difference between redneck governors standing at the school house doors to keep kids out of school with a baseball bat, and union bosses wanting to go into schools to kick kids out of schools with legal baseball bats, the distinction escapes me.”

It escapes me too. But what is inescapable is that we are in the middle of a war which pits parents and kids against teachers unions, at the heart of which is our failing, antiquated way of providing education. It is now time to ignore the teachers unions, straighten up Z MESS and give parents the right to choose the best education for their kids … traditional public, charter or private.

Larry Sand, a former classroom teacher, is the president of the non-profit California Teachers Empowerment Network – a non-partisan, non-political group dedicated to providing teachers and the general public with reliable and balanced information about professional affiliations and positions on educational issues. The views presented here are strictly his own.

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Teachers Union Leaders Want to Kill Off Thriving Charters and Voucher Schools

December 24, 2015 By Larry Sand 4 Comments

shocked-kid-apJust last week it was announced in New York City that three failing public schools would be closing. With a total enrollment of 217 students, there really was no other choice. Indeed, it was such a no-brainer that even United Federation of Teachers president Michael Mulgrew didn’t threaten anyone with bodily harm over the decision. But Mulgrew’s acquiescence is a rarity for him and other teacher union leaders.

Like a failing business, when a school goes bad it should close. This phenomenon is occurring more and more in big cities, especially when families are given choices. If there is a charter school available that suits their needs, parents will yank their kid out of the failing traditional public school the first chance they get. But the teachers union bosses’ default position is that a failing school should never be closed; a piece on the National Education Association website tries feebly to make that case. Penned by in-house writer John Rosales, “Closing Schools: Privatization Disguised as ‘Accountability’” is typical union claptrap in which shibboleths and lies predominate:

When they close schools, they are closing hospitals, grocery stores and police stations … . This is a human rights issue … . School closings are not isolated incidents but rather a movement toward privatization.

In reality, a public school closes when parents stop sending their kids there because it doesn’t live up to its mission, which is to educate students in a safe environment. In fact, a recent study conducted in Ohio by the Fordham Institute shows – not surprisingly – that displaced students typically receive a better education in a different setting.

Three years after closures, the public-school students had gained, on average, what equates to 49 extra days of learning in reading — gaining more than a year of achievement growth, as measured by state reading exams. In math, they gained an extra 34 days of learning, as measured by state math exams. In the charter sector, displaced students also made gains in math — 46 additional days.

But then again, there are schools that union leaders do think should be shut down – charter schools, especially the non-unionized ones, and especially those run by one Eva Moskowitz. In fact, New York’s UFT has begun that process by calling for a moratorium on new Moskowitz-led Harlem Success Academy charters. The unionistas are ecstatic because they think they finally have something on the operator of 34 extraordinarily successful schools. In late October, it was revealed that one of her schools’ principals had a “to go” list of undesirable kids. The principal was reprimanded by Moskowitz, which should have ended the story. But the unions continue to act as if they’ve discovered the mother lode, which, of course, is silly. Even if Moskowitz is guilty as charged, it should be noted that traditional public schools – with the blessing of the unions – have a long history of removing and transferring undesirables, either to other public, continuation or opportunity schools.

Another example of teachers unions fighting a successful education enterprise is in Washington, D.C. where the Opportunity Scholarship Program has been a raving success. The federally funded program, which has been in the NEA’s crosshairs since its inception in 2004, has led to greater parental satisfaction and school safety, as well as higher graduation rates and test scores than those of the public schools the voucher students had escaped. But despite the program’s success, the DCOSP schools are private and not unionized, and that is what matters to organized labor. The NEA claims that vouchers are not “real” education reform and that “opposition to vouchers is a top priority for NEA.” In 2009, NEA president Dennis Van Roekel wrote a threatening letter to every Democratic member of Congress advising them that NEA “strongly opposes any extension of the District of Columbia private school voucher … program.” And just last week, due to strong union-fueled Democratic opposition and undemanding Republicans, the program was not reauthorized, although its funding has been retained for another year.

So the union fights to knock out successful charters and privatization programs but keep traditional public schools open no matter what miserable failures they are. And they are doing this for the children, of course.

This piece was originally published by UnionWatch.org

Larry Sand, a former classroom teacher, is the president of the non-profit California Teachers Empowerment Network – a non-partisan, non-political group dedicated to providing teachers and the general public with reliable and balanced information about professional affiliations and positions on educational issues. The views presented here are strictly his own.

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Why California is Losing the Competitiveness Race in Education

August 8, 2011 By Lance Izumi Leave a Comment

California’s education establishment dislikes competition but the most recent research shows that, in the education marketplace, competition works.  A March 2011 study by the Foundation for Educational Choice (FEC) analyzed the results of all empirical studies that used the best scientific methods to measure how school-choice vouchers affect the academic outcomes of participating students.  The results should serve as a beacon as California policymakers debate ways to improve the state’s poorly performing government-run school system.

Under voucher programs, a state attaches funding to a student, which he or she can take to the public or private school of his or her choice. The study concluded, “Contrary to the widespread claim that vouchers do not benefit participants and hurt public schools, the empirical evidence consistently shows that vouchers improve outcomes for both participants and public schools.”

According to the FEC study, nine out of the 10 studies found that vouchers improved student outcome measurements such as test scores in the core subjects and graduation rates.  In addition, by increasing competition between public and private schools, voucher programs forced public school systems to improve.

Eighteen of the 19 empirical studies that looked at how vouchers affect public schools found that public schools improved their performance in the face of the increased competition fostered by vouchers.  In fact, every empirical study conducted in states with voucher programs, such as Wisconsin, Ohio and Florida, has found that “voucher programs in those places improved public schools.”  The FEC study said that while there are a variety of reasons why vouchers might improve public school performance, “The most important is that competition from vouchers introduces healthy incentives for public schools to improve.”  Yet, California has erected barriers to widespread competition in education.

Over the last few years, voucher and other pro-school-choice legislation have died in the state Legislature.  Now, with Democrats controlling the Assembly, Senate and the governor’s office, liberal legislators have unleashed a flood of anti-choice bills.  For example, AB 401 by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco) caps the number of charter schools, deregulated public schools started by parents, teachers and community organizations.  Ammiano’s bill targets charters despite the reality that they are four times more likely than regular public schools to be among the top 5 percent of schools statewide in student achievement.  Current California regulations also block students from choosing online and virtual education alternatives.

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