On March 1st of 2011 the Pennsylvania Legislature and its Senate Education Committee will demonstrate its inability to avoid following failed or unproven programs and initiatives.
The vote on Senate Bill 1 is a vote which could potentially remove 1 billion dollars from already cash strapped school districts in our state.
Local school districts must pay for each student who uses a voucher out of its funds. The cost is often more than the real dollars allotted for each public school student. Therefore, the local district ends up spending much more of its monies on students going to other schools than it does on its own students.
The following Tuesday our new governor will introduce his first fiscal budget, by all accounts that budget will reduce spending on public education by another 1 billion dollars! A situation he did not create but has inherited do to the kick the can approach of many Governors and Legislatures before him.
So in a matter of two weeks public schools in our state could get hit with a loss of 2 billion dollars in revenue that will be added to the current 4 billion dollar state-wide budget shortfall.
For what? So that a number of centrally located school districts can provide vouchers to some of their students! Senate Bill 1 would institute state sanctioned and funded vouchers. Who will make up this budget shortfall in areas like ours where the districts will receive little to nothing in real or perceived assistance from this initiative?
The history of the state funded for-profit vouchers and their related success is at best unclear and at worst another mythical success akin to the great for- profit Charter School experiment. The limited research we do have tells us that vouchers are directly linked to for-profit Charters or Catholic schools in that there is where most students wind up going.
The history of State funded vouchers really begins with the Milwaukee Experiment in the 1990; therefore it has been the most studied. What does the research tell us about the success of that great experiment? In truth not very much because after 1995 the State of Wisconsin ironically embargoed and or suspended progress reports on students’ performance due to fears of religious entanglements. From the outset Catholic Schools declined to share their students’ progress. Voucher student reports only ever included about 8% of the public school students eligible and well below the 15% cap permitted in the legislation. Therefore, we have little to no specific data as to its effectiveness. Research on student achievement can best be characterized by stating that it is inconclusive: The Witte study found no significant improvement in math while Rouse and Greene found improvement. Green found significant improvement in reading while Rouse and Witte did not.
The next grand experiment occurred in Cleveland in 1995. The Cleveland experiment at one point included about 7% of the eligible public school students. This current year’s data clearly demonstrates that Cleveland’s public school student’s do as well as or better than their publicly funded voucher program students. A similar set of data results as found in the Stanford University study of Charter Schools. In grades 3 to 8 Cleveland’s public school students had on average 56% of its students perform at the proficient level while their counterparts in voucher programs had 49% score in the proficient range. The data is even more compelling in math with public school students having 42% on average proficient while their counterparts in voucher programs had 27% proficiency average.
Ohio hired Indiana University researchers to sample and analyzes Cleveland voucher students' academic data from 1998 through 2004. The work evaluated the performance of 4,000 students in 100 schools.
The study, which followed individual students over time, found that when researchers controlled factors such as minority status and prior academic records, there was no significant variation in achievement.
“The study found no significant differences in achievement between the two groups at the end of the first year. By the end of the second year, the study found positive effects in language and science for voucher students on average. But according to this study, voucher students in new private schools performed significantly less well by the end of the second year than either the public school group or voucher students in pre-existing private schools. Students who left the voucher program after a year also performed less well than those who stayed.”
The program in Florida was the first state-wide initiative. The Florida program requires students receiving vouchers to take state assessments but the rest of the population of the schools they attend are not required to do so. As was the situation in Cleveland; Florida had its Voucher Program declared unconstitutional in 2000! Florida has commissioned The Universities of Florida and Princeton, as well as the Urban Institute to complete research on student achievement. The research data is best characterized in the report done by the Center for Educational Policy when it states:
Publicly funded voucher programs in the U.S. have been subject to surprisingly little research compared with the attention they have attracted.
Much has been made about the relatively few studies of publicly funded programs. A lack of cooperation among people on different sides of the issue has probably inhibited researchers from undertaking other studies. There is a need for additional high-quality research.
What do we know for certain about publicly funded voucher programs?
Data supports improvement in student performance in Public Voucher Programs when it is directly linked to small class size and major parent participation and involvement in their child’s education. How ironic, when public school teachers speak of these two issues it is perceived as them scape-goating or justifying their own poor performance.
In order to account for improvement in performance, voucher programs permit statistical considerations for minority status and socio-economic background as well as prior academic performance {something public schools are never permitted to do. we count them all}.
Parents who choose publicly funded voucher alternatives do so for reasons of safety and security. Ironic, did public school teachers and administrators make the laws that make it so difficult to discipline unruly students? No! Was it they who allowed private schools to dismiss unruly students much more readily. No!
Research reports on Student performance success indicators have centered almost exclusively in large urban centers.
Audits of publicly funded voucher programs have shown record keeping, compliance, overpayments, and reporting problems.
Attrition rates range from 44% to 23% depending on the years enrolled in the program. Ironic again in that how will Public, non-Public and Private schools be able to efficiently plan for budget, programming, curricular ,transportation and staffing needs with this kind of fluctuating enrollments! How is this increased efficiency?
Consistent and accurate data collection and reporting has been a major problem.
Another unanswered question is how publicly funded voucher programs impact racial segregation and social stratification.
Publicly funded voucher programs do not and are not designed to save taxpayer monies. In Milwaukee there was not significant change in educational dollars. It was directly related to a significant tax increase passed on to all taxpayers prior to the voucher programs implementation. Thus taxpayers paid more. In some cases local districts paid an additional 0.06 % of their tax base to funding public voucher programs!
I cannot honestly be opposed to vouchers, charter schools and or any other such type of reforms and still be true to myself. I am simply saying that before we head into another piecemeal fix to our Educational System let us get the real performance data before we spend billions of taxpayer dollars!
I am in favor of taking the public school system down to its boot straps and rebuilding it anew without creating another bureaucratic program.
Why not allow public schools to opt out of the numerous ineffective mandates and laws that are strangling them in their efforts to reform! Strip the old model down to its bare bones and rebuild it from the wheels up and not just another paint job on an old and outdated structure! This public education system has been the very foundation of this great Democracy and Nation! It simply needs to be completely overhauled so the new and great ideas and changes don’t disappear and become invisible!
If you think I am blaming one party over the other you are sadly mistaken. They are equally responsible and we allow it! Democracy, by definition, only works when those governed are active, knowledgeable participants in the process of governance. That does not mean watching or listening to the current diatribes of the figure head networks or cable news programs mouth pieces! They are about entertainment and generating market share and nothing more!
In the interest of full disclosure; I myself am a product of a Catholic school education. I recently discussed these topics with one of my sisters who currently has five grandchildren attending Catholic schools. She asked me what I thought of vouchers for Catholic school students. She was herself not sure if this was appropriate. I do not believe that my family’s decision to send me to Catholic school should come at the expense of the State. In my limited knowledge of the law I see it as a clear violation of the “Separate of Church and State Clause of our Constitution” despite the Supreme Court’s 5-4 2002 ruling in Zelman vs. Simmons-Harris. I know the argument that Catholic families give. I pay taxes toward the funding of public education and receive no tangible direct benefit for my monies. Acknowledged!
However, I know many people who rent and pay little to nothing toward the cost of their children’s public education. I also know many people who have paid into the un-employment trust fund and have never received any funds from that program. Our system of Social Security is built on the same principles and would be just fine if our elected officials had not robbed the trust in order to pay for their respective pet projects and then announce to us all that they provided those initiatives without raising taxes! What a distortion! I also know many folks who buy lottery tickets in the hopes of striking it rich despite the ridiculous odds against winning so that the state and local government can provide services to our elderly!
The point simply is that our nation has been governed by the principle that we all kick in to benefit those amongst us who are less fortunate!
