Can you dumb down those students, please?

Have you heard of Khan Academy? It’s not an elite private school with manicured grounds, ivy-covered walls, and a large endowment. Instead, it’s a series of instructional videos available on YouTube. From humble beginnings, it’s gotten a lot of attention from media outlets such as CBS, CNN, and PBS; leading education reformers such as Bill Gates,

Wiredmagazine has a long profile on Khan. It contains a quote that jumped out to Andrew Coulson. It should stand out to anyone else, too: “Khan’s programmer, Ben Kamens, has heard from teachers who’ve seen Khan Academy presentations and loved the idea but wondered whether they could modify it “to stop students from becoming this advanced.”

Does the school exist to serve the child, or does the child exist to serve the school?

A Breakthrough or a Pyrrhic Victory in the Hoosier State?

Education reformers across the country are looking at Indiana, which on May 5 enacted a new voucher law. Many observers are calling it the largest program in the nation, and the Foundation for Educational Choice heaped praise on the state’s chief political executive: “Gov. Daniels’ signature today puts Indiana at the top of the class for educational choice. Moreover, this sends an important message to families across the country: meaningful education reform is possible.”

According to an overview of the law provided by the Foundation, HB 1003 provides a voucher of up to $4,500 per student in grades 1-8.

It has several attractive features:

• It will be open to 60 percent of the state’s families within the next three years–a wider reach than any existing voucher program.
• Schools are allowed to charge more than the amount of the voucher–meaning that the law does not impose price controls.
• There is no cap on the total amount the state will spend on vouchers–meaning the use of vouchers is limited only to public demand, not political calculations.

There are, however, some requirements that may give reformers pause. Adam Schaeffer, an education policy analyst with the Cato Institute, sees a short-term gain but long-term loss for the idea of school choice. In brief, his argument is that private schools will lose their independence (and thus value) as they comply with the requirements they must fulfill to receive voucher money. He calls it “a tactical victory for highly constrained choice won at the price of a broad strategic defeat for educational freedom.”

Schaeffer is concerned about a “regulatory mountain [that is] being dropped on participating private schools.” New or tighter regulations cover:

• Curriculum, adding some items that are not included in accreditation requirements
• Testing
• State tracking of private-school performance
• Procedures for dealing with over-subscribed schools (stripping schools of their discretion with respect to admissions)

He concludes, “the voucher program will not only expand state control over and homogenize participating schools by requiring adherence to a single state-designed test, evaluation, and curriculum, it will also cut into the market for non-accredited schools.”

Is Schaeffer making the perfect the enemy of the good? You could argue that, and add that advocates of choice should take anything they can get and then work to scale back any regulations that are imposed as a condition of adding to voucher programs. But the history of rolling back regulations, generally, is not encouraging. So perhaps the wiser move is to pursue tax credits–given to parents for tuition, given to taxpayers who donate to scholarship-granting organizations, and so forth–since they have a record of less regulatory interference.

Schaeffer’s colleague, Andrew J. Coulson, has done an extensive review of the question, “How much of a regulatory burden does a school voucher / tax credit impose on a school?” To answer that question, he considers the extent to which the various school choice programs in place today require accreditation, dictate curriculum, or forbid participating schools from charging more in tuition than the state aid it receives through the tax credit or voucher. He also uses statistical techniques (two forms of regression analysis) to account other factors such as the age of each school choice program, Democratic Party dominance in the state, and the number of students in the program.

Coulson concludes that “vouchers, but not tax credits, impose a substantial and
statistically significant additional regulatory burden on participating private schools.”

40 Percent of college students at MnSCU need remedial education

Minnesota has a great record on educational performance. Right? Before we celebrate, consider that 40 percent of students who go onto the MnSCU system require at least one remedial class. Here’s the press release from MnSCU itself:

January 18, 2011

Report on remedial education shows gaps in college preparation, Minnesota State Colleges and Universities officials say

Contact: Melinda Voss, (651) 201-1804, melinda.voss@so.mnscu.edu

Math is the weakest area. Most students take only one remedial course.

Forty percent of Minnesota’s recent public high school graduates who enrolled in public higher education in the state have taken at least one developmental or remedial course within two years after graduation, according to a new report issued today. That is up slightly from a report three years ago, when 38 percent of recent high school graduates took at least one developmental course.

“This report points out the need for all students to prepare for college,” said Chancellor James H. McCormick. “Parents, teachers, mentors and others should know it is important that all high school students take rigorous courses, particularly in math. Even now, workers should have more than a high school education to get good jobs. In the future, that will be even more true as technology continues to evolve and global competition grows.”

The report, “Getting Prepared: A 2010 Report on Recent High School Graduates Who Took Developmental/Remedial Courses,” was released by the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities and the University of Minnesota. Highlights of the report include:

• 45 percent of the nearly 13,000 recent high school graduates taking developmental courses needed only one course, most often in mathematics. Thirty-nine percent took two or three courses, and 16 percent of the students took four or more such courses.

• Of all the development credits taken by the class of 2008, 50 percent were in mathematics, 23 percent were in writing courses and the rest were in other subjects, such as reading or study skills. Developmental mathematics ranges from basic arithmetic to the equivalent of high school intermediate algebra.

• The increase in the percentage of students taking developmental courses does not necessarily mean the college readiness of new high school graduates has worsened. One likely reason for the increase is that more recent high school graduates are attending public colleges and universities.

Enrollment in public higher education institutions within two years of high school graduation has risen from 45 percent of the class of 2000 to 53 percent of the class of 2008. Many recent high school graduates who need developmental courses did not anticipate and prepare for college throughout high school. Students who have been out of high school for a year or so also may have lost skills they once had mastered.

• Students who take developmental courses are increasingly concentrated in the two-year colleges. Of the 2008 graduates who took developmental courses, 87 percent attended a two-year college, 12 percent went to a state university, and 1 percent attended the University of Minnesota, which is a separate system.

The two-year community and technical colleges are “open access” institutions, which means that anyone with a high school diploma or GED can be admitted. A more selective admissions policy in recent years at the University of Minnesota’s Twin Cities campus has continued to shrink the number of University of Minnesota students who take developmental courses.

• The Minnesota State Colleges and Universities now require most first-time students to take placement tests before they enroll in college-level courses. If placement tests indicate they are not ready for college-level work in a subject, they now must take a developmental course.

“Our colleges and universities are working hard to make sure high school students and teachers clearly understand the level of readiness necessary for success in college,” McCormick said. Currently, more than half of the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities give trial placement tests to 10th- and 11th-grade students, so they have time to improve their college preparation.

“Teachers, parents and students should understand that developmental courses do not count toward a certificate, diploma or degree,” said Scott Olson, the system’s interim vice chancellor for academic and student affairs.

“At the same time, the need for developmental education does not necessarily mean college is a poor investment for them and for the state,” Olson said. “Many of these students go on to succeed in college. The Minnesota State Colleges and Universities also provide other programs and services to help students succeed.”

The legislatively mandated report provides data on public high school students in Minnesota who graduated between 2005 and 2008 and enrolled within two years in a public college or university in the state. The class of 2008 is the most recent class for which data is available for the full two years.

Each school superintendent in the state receives summary data on graduates from their high schools who took developmental courses so teachers and administrators can look for opportunities to improve their educational programs.

The report is available at: Click here for the report.

The Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system comprises 32 state universities and community and technical colleges serving the higher education needs of Minnesota. The system serves about 277,000 students per year in credit-based courses and an additional 157,000 students in noncredit courses.

Why school choice is a free-market issue

Though people can have many reasons for supporting school choice, it’s commonly supported by free-market institutes. Why is that? The answer may be obvious, but then again, maybe not, so here’s an answer: An advocate of maximizing the role of markets in public policy should support such a policy because it maximizes the role of individual choice in the distribution of goods and services in education. It also recognizes the role of the parent. As a bonus, it promotes equality of opportunity and improves educational outcomes.

Generally speaking, choice is a good thing. In the realm of ethics, we can’t do (or be) good people unless we have the choice of doing bad. Allowing someone to make choices is also an acknowledgement that he or she is competent to do so. (Parents, for example, give their minor children more choices as they gain maturity.)

A policy of school choice also acknowledges that while there is a public interest in seeing to it that children are educated, the parent, not the state, is the chief guardian of the child. It respects the principle of subsidiarity. Now, some people can and do exercise choice through the selection of the school district they live in, but that’s hardly ideal, as there are significant emotional and financial costs to moving.

School choice efforts also promote equality of opportunity, a value widely shared in American political thought. The well-to-do and middle class family can pay private school tuition or at least move to a different public school district. But poor families don’t have the opportunity to make choices–unless they they are given the chance to do so through charter schools, tuition tax credit programs, or at the very least, inter-district school choice.

Finally, school choice is good because it promotes good educational outcomes for parents who exercise choice–and even those whose children remain in their district school. But even if it were to have a negative effect on student performance, school choice is morally superior to a system in which children are assigned to a school by their residence.

I will conclude this short commentary with remarks that Patrick J. Heffernan made in 2009:

No child should have their choice of school decided by a stranger if it’s within our power to have that decision made by the child’s own parents. Any system that gives more parents more say over where their children go to school is to be preferred over one that gives little choice to parents. Why should anyone other than the mother or father decide where their child should go to school? It comes back to the question: What is the purpose of the tax dollars that we raise for education? Are they to support government schools or to educate children? Rather than sending our tax dollars to government schools, whether they’re successful or not, we want our tax dollars to go to successful schools, whether they’re government or not.

Freeze Teacher Pay: Star-Tribune agrees with conservative Republican

Here’s an interesting coincidence that speaks to the financial state of Minnesota:  Sen. Dave Thompson, a free-market kind of Republican from Lakeview, has called for a freeze on teacher salaries. (Click here for Senate File 56, which would do that.)

THE BASICS

What’s remarkable is that the Star-Tribune has endorsed the proposal. It recognized the following facts:

1. Teacher pay makes up a substantial portion of any district budget, so any attempts to deal with financial shortfalls will have to address teacher pay.
2. School boards often implement “budget-busting salary and benefit increases that result in staff layoffs or program cuts that hurt students.”
3. Even though many people have incurred minimal pay increases–or worse, lost their jobs–teacher pay has increased. (The rate was 6.6 percent for 2007-090 and  3.8. percent for 2009-2011 contracts.)
4. The “steps and lanes” provision of most (all?) contracts locks districts into increased financial obligations whenever teachers take more graduate courses. (Incidentally, the link between further education and better teacher performance is fairly weak.).
5. There’s an indirect relationship between teacher pay and the size of the teaching force: A pay freeze, by the estimates of the administrators’ association, would save about 1,000 jobs.

The Star-Tribune concludes that for the public good, teachers ought to take a hit, much as the taxpayers do. It also hints that it endorses a proposal, offered up by some metro-area superintendents, to engage in price-fixing by creating “regional bargaining” on the theory that doing so will “reduce pressure to pay on par with neighboring district.” The editorial board says, “Short of that more complex legislation, the temporary pay freeze makes sense.”

ANALYSIS

1. Is suppressing teacher pay by legislation a good thing?

The idea that the state should ensure that districts don’t have to compete with each other for teachers should be anathema by anyone who appreciates the value of free markets. In effect, it says that teachers should not be able to fetch as much as they are capable of on the open market. Then again, there are already so many ways in which the labor market for teachers is not free. (The state heavily regulates who can become a teacher; it requires union membership as a condition of employment; the purchase of educational services isn’t voluntary but compulsory, and so forth.)

2. The freeze is not as dramatic as you think.

Thompson’s legislation calls for a freeze through June 30, 2013, though it also allows pay increases scheduled in current contracts to continue. It also allows for districts to increase compensation by increasing their payments to health insurance premiums. This is relevant because half of recent increases in compensation have come through increased payments for health insurance.

Given the fact that they are strongly influenced by Education Minnesota, it’s no surprise that compensation increases become outsized. After all, it’s the job of a union to seek to get as much as it can for its members–not worry about the financial health of whatever party is paying its salary. Thus, a freeze that still allows for increased payments for health insurance policies is less draconian than first thought.

3. Higher teacher pay means bigger classes.

When the Minnesota Association of School Administrators says that freezing the salaries of teachers would save about 1,000 jobs, it indirectly points out that the push for increased pay puts out that two widely held beliefs about public schools are in conflict. On the one hand, we have “the way to improve schools is to recognize the value of teachers by paying them more.” On the other hand, we have the belief that smaller classes are the key to improved student achievement. So which will we have–fewer, higher-paid teachers, or more, lower-paid teachers? For my part, I’d go with the former.

4. The best way to make sure that teachers get paid “what they’re worth” is replace political mechanisms with market ones. Right now, teacher pay is determined by the political process–how much a school district has at hand to pay teachers is based on how much money it gets from the Legislature as well as how much it can get taxpayers to fork out through elections. By contrast, consider the following: The state converts money it sends to districts into scholarships that go to parents. Parents take the money to public schools or private schools, which compete with each other on the basis of programs and other qualities. If some want to charge a lot so as to attract a certain type of teacher, let them do so–and let parents “top off” the scholarship money they receive with their own funds.

For a variety of reasons, I prefer a universal tuition tax credit, but the idea is the same: Let parents, not legislators or school board members, control how the money is spent, decentralize the funding mechanism, and the result will be that teachers who are worth more money (as determined by performance, as viewed by parents) will get it.

6. According to an article in the Star-Tribune (“Bill would freeze teacher pay,” January 18), Sen. Terri Bonoff (DFL-Minnetonka) “said the state should instead reform teacher compensation with more results-based rewards.” There’s a lot of good with reforming teacher compensation this way. I’m all in favor of it, though I should point out that moving in this direction and freezing teacher pay can both be done.

7. Thus, Sen. Thompson’s proposal, while a useful measure, is at best a half-measure, and doesn’t address the major problem of teacher compensation: It’s driven by politics.

THE LEGISLATION

Finally, here’s an excerpt of Thompson’s bill:

This section prohibits any increase including, but not limited to, across-the-board increases; cost-of-living adjustments; increases based on longevity; increases as a result of step and lane changes; increases in the form of lump-sum payments; increases in employer contributions to deferred compensation plans; or any other pay grade adjustments of any kind. For purposes of this section, salary or wages does not include employer contributions toward the cost of medical or dental insurance premiums, provided that employee contributions to the costs of medical or dental insurance premiums are not decreased.

National School Choice Week

Did you know? This is National School Choice Week. There’s a lot of interesting events going on around the country and in Minnesota, to tell the story about parental choice in education.

In the Twin Cities, there are two events to note. Here’s an item from the Minnesota Free Market Institute:

We are co-hosting a free showing of “The Lottery” on Thursday, January 27th. You can view the Lottery Flyer here.

Reception 6:30pm – 7:00 p.m. Complimentary drinks and hors d’oeuvres.  Screening of The Lottery 7:00 p.m.  The screening will be followed by brief remarks on the state of school choice in Minnesota.

University of Minnesota | Carlson School of Management
Auditorium | 321 19th Avenue South | Minneapolis, MN 55455
Directions & Parking Information

This event is free, but you must REGISTER ONLINE
or contact Lancee Kurcab at (703) 682-9320 or LKurcab@ij.org

Hosted by: Institute for Justice, Center of the American Experiment,
Minnesota Catholic Conference, Minnesota Free Market Institute,
Minnesota Independent Schools Forum and Minnesota Family Council.

Minnesotans for Limited Government (MNLG) will be holding its own special event championing parental choice in education as part of National School Choice Week. Here is a message from MNLG Chairman Jake Barnett:

We will be meeting right here in St. Paul, at O’Gara’s, sponsoring a public viewing of “The Cartel” on Wednesday, January 26, at 7pm.

Tickets are $8 at the door but please RSVP.  There will be a social hour from 6-7pm and a discussion group from 9-10, following the movie.

We are pleased to announce that the director of the documentary, Bob Bowdon, will be joining us for the event! He will be on hand to answer question and participate in our open discussion afterwards.

Please click here to RSVP for our event and help make it a success! Directions to O’Gara’s

Disclaimer: A public viewing of “The Cartel” is sponsored by Minnesotans for Limited Government (MNLG).  We are a 501c4.  Donations to our organization are not tax deductible.  MNLG has obtained the proper rights to show this movie publicly.  This event is not sponsored by any political party, candidate, or candidate’s committee