I’ve recently directed readers to a few videos from the Oregon School Choice Contest. There are so many good ones that I’m sorry I can’t blog about them all. Anyone who’d like to watch more clips of kids learning outside of traditional schools should check out the YouTube page (or just search that site for “school choice”).
This cartoon is a little bit different from the other entries:
I found this link through the Panama City Renaissance School blog: an article about the virtual school controversy in Oregon. Oregon’s virtual schools have been bogged down by regulations for years. Virtual academies in Oregon operate as charter schools; like other charters there, they have to enroll half of their students from a single district. (The state made an exception for the first virtual school, which is now the largest one in Oregon.)
A new bill would prevent existing virtual schools from expanding, or new ones from opening, for two years, until the state has decided how to regulate them — as if the current regulations weren’t enough of a hindrance. The enrollment rule makes no sense for virtual schools. The whole point of online learning is to give kids from many different places access to the virtual school. Why should half of them live in one particular district? And why does Oregon need two whole years to consider new regulations? It takes about two seconds to see that the current regulations are overly restrictive. Imagine if the state forbade traditional public schools to enroll new students for two years while it contemplated reform!
This bill is a thinly veiled attempt to shut down competition to the traditional districts. Here’s what the lobbyist for school administrators in Oregon says about it:
“We’re not going to wait until it is out of control.”
He’s on the right track. Traditional schools shouldn’t wait until the virtual schools attract all their students. Nor should they fight change with regulations. Instead, they should start offering a better education right now. Traditional schools have an advantage over virtual schools in some respects — they can provide lots of face-to-face contact and hands-on lessons, for example. They can focus on those strengths to compete with the virtual schools.
So far, Missouri’s Virtual Instruction Program hasn’t been confronted with such strong opposition. Then again, we have only one Virtual Instruction Program, administered by the state. Missouri’s online education system doesn’t provoke animosity from unions, but the downside is that we don’t have the competition between virtual schools that Oregonians do.
For more on virtual schools in Oregon, watch this cute clip of a student explaining why he likes his online school.
I’m of two minds about the underground restaurant movement. On one hand, I’m sympathetic to chefs who want to do something fun and different. Forcing underground restaurants to settle down in one place and get a permit would defeat the purpose. And I don’t think you should need a permit just to serve dinner to a bunch of people in someone’s living room.
On the other hand, it’s unfair for these chefs to take “donations” under the table while everybody else is complying with the law and paying taxes.
Anyone want to convince me one way or the other in the comments?
I love reforms like merit pay, flexibility in hiring and tenure, etc. I thought any idea that held teachers accountable would be fine — until I read this proposal. Scott McLeod of Dangerously Irrelevant suggests schools adopt this approach to weeding out bad teachers:
Every year fire the worst teacher in the school. If you don’t have a robust teacher evaluation system (or if you’re worried about administrator bias), do it like they do on Survivor: everyone gets a vote and the one with the most votes leaves the island. Administrators, teachers, staff, students, parents–everyone involved with the school gets a vote.
Yes, perennially bad teachers can be a problem, but this is not the way to deal with it.
First, this procedure is too rigid. Why fire exactly one teacher every year? If two teachers are terrible, they should both be fired. And some schools probably have a few teachers who would benefit from training or mentoring, but nobody who needs to be fired.
This plan would have a devastating effect on teacher morale and cooperation. Everyone would try to identify the one likeliest loser and give up on that person as soon as possible. Teachers would sabotage each other and point out their colleagues’ faults.
Furthermore, one vote each for all those people doesn’t make sense. A bad fourth-grade teacher won’t get voted out if the kindergartners and first-graders haven’t even met that person yet. And six-year-olds shouldn’t be making decisions about adults’ jobs.
As a consequence of kids voting, school would become a popularity contest. Teachers would be reluctant to discipline students or challenge them, lest they be voted out.
No district is considering this idea (I hope), but I still think it’s worthy of discussion here on Show-Me Daily because it illustrates how difficult it is for organizations to evolve and improve in the absence of market forces. Businesses that have to compete in the marketplace have no qualms about firing workers who aren’t doing their jobs. The flip side of that is, a business that has to compete would never be attracted to a crazy scheme to fire one person each year no matter what.
Public school districts have so much difficulty getting rid of bad teachers that voting someone “off the island” once a year may sound good in comparison. At least they would get rid of one bad teacher every year. The vote would also take pressure off administrators, who don’t want to be the ones to make controversial firing decisions.
If traditional public districts were less like islands and more integrated into a fluid market for education, they would have to adopt flexible rules for hiring and firing teachers. Bad teachers would be let go when necessary — unlike the current practice of keeping them until they retire, and unlike the Survivor scheme of firing one each June as a ritual.
Missouri locavores are collecting signatures to petition Gov. Jay Nixon for a share of the stimulus funds. They want the state to spend money on local food, and to coerce other people into doing so as well.
The letter states that there is increasing demand for locally grown food, then reports:
This growing demand, however, has been difficult to meet.
No kidding! Is that because nothing grows in our climate when there’s snow on the ground?
I don’t know anyone who doesn’t enjoy fresh produce that was picked just minutes before. The thing is, it’s costly to provide that, and consumers are turned off by the price. So the locavores want the state to step in.
Almost anything can be produced locally, for enough money and effort. We shoudn’t do that, though. Imagine if all our oil had to come from inside the state. We could maybe find some … if we drill deep enough.
The locavores assure us that state spending would improve the “long-term profitability” of local food production. It certainly would, to the detriment of taxpayers. And take a look at this sentence:
You will be facilitating a new economic engine for Missouri based on local values, local ingenuity and local relationships.
“Ingenuity” must refer to their lobbyists. It doesn’t describe the farmers who prefer to rely on state handouts rather than on their own initiative.
The St. Louis Language Immersion Schools blog has posted a series of essays describing immersion schools the faculty have visited recently. These will be of interest to anyone following charter schools and language immersion.
Several people have responded to my writing about charter schools and languages by pointing out the existence of language programs in traditional public schools. In some cases, these programs are indeed comparable to charter schools, like SLLIS. I believe SLLIS has visited some immersion classes within traditional districts.
However, most of the traditional public schools’ language programs are not as innovative as SLLIS and other charters. Often, schools recognize the value of immersion, but students are only immersed in the language for one class period each day — not enough time to gain fluency. Many international magnet schools, such as Bunche International Studies of SLPS, conduct the majority of the school day in English. Students are able to choose from several languages, and the school incorporates different cultures into activities and special events, but a science or math class there looks the same as in a traditional public school.
Charter schools have the flexibility to center the entire school day around a foreign language. They also have the parental support for long hours of immersion. These aspects of the charter model let them adopt immersion programs more completely than traditional districts — and with greater success.
I blogged about David Nicklaus’ immigration column a few days ago. Now I see that he’s returned to the topic, directing Mound City Money readers to some surprising numbers about immigration. He quotes L. Gordon Crovitz:
Half of Silicon Valley start-ups were founded by immigrants, up from 25% a decade ago. […] A recent study by the Kauffman Foundation found that immigrants are 50% likelier to start businesses than natives. Immigrant-founded technology firms employ 450,000 workers in the U.S. And according to the National Venture Capital Association, immigrants have started one quarter of all U.S. venture-backed firms.
Nicklaus also highlights a National Bureau of Economic Research paper that documents immigrants’ exceptional productivity.
Just as fascinating as those numbers is the reasoning behind the first comment to the post. “Ted44” argues that we should send foreign college students back to their countries of origin, so they can start their innovative businesses and employ thousands of people in those places rather than in the United States, because if they stay here they’ll be competing with Americans for “limited resources.”
Knowledge and industriousness are limited resources too, which immigrants can provide in abundance.
One unfortunate consequence of inflationary government spending is that it gives people that crazy idea that it’s good to spend money you don’t have. The government spends in hopes that things will get better, so why shouldn’t you? This thinking has even made an impression on a Harvard student who should know better. Here’s a quote from his column in the Harvard Crimson:
Because of the service it provides, Harvard should think of itself more like a government than an individual or a business firm. With its reputation and available funds, the university is not going anywhere, but delaying improvements will have dismal effects on future endowment performance.
In other words, Harvard is too big to fail.
I almost expect the column to suggest Harvard should wage wars or establish a post office “like a government.” Instead, it acknowledges a downside to spending during lean times (only to conclude Harvard should spend anyway):
Crises often spur efficiency reviews that help organizations in the long run by improving performance.
True. And, I might add, when governement officials — or Harvard administrators — spend without regard to current resources, they tend to fund hastily-adopted schemes, which become firmly entrenched by the time the economy turns around.
State Sen. Jeff Smith writes about education reform in the St. Louis Beacon and touches on several different ideas. I agree with many of his statements, but I don’t know why he backs off from endorsing parental choice.
Smith mentions choice (“vouchers,” in his words, but he could just as well be describing tuition tax credits) in the opening of the essay, and comments that neither choice nor more funding will fix the school system. I’m with him on funding. Now, here’s how he defends his opposition to harnessing market forces in education:
Competition for competition’s sake doesn’t necessarily mean that kids will perform better in private schools or that surrounding public schools will improve. Plus, diverting public money to selective private schools can’t pass in the Missouri Legislature in the near future.
We see from places where choice has been tried that students do learn more, parents are more satisfied, and the public schools do improve. There’s no guarantee that will happen, but it’s highly likely. Perhaps Smith’s judgment that choice isn’t politically feasible here prevents him from considering it further.
Smith goes on to discuss KIPP charter schools and says that they prove choice isn’t the answer. The conclusion makes no sense, because families choose KIPP and can choose to go back to the traditional public schools if they don’t like it. KIPP is an example of choice that works, albeit on a smaller scale than a citywide tuition tax credit program.
Smith struggles to establish KIPP as distinct from other schools of choice:
KIPP schools are public schools that accept all comers on a first-come, first-served basis. They do not teach religion.
Not entirely true — KIPP students have to agree to KIPP’s policies or they’ll be turned away. And so what if they don’t teach religion? Not every private school teaches religion either!
Smith next praises the quality of teaching in KIPP schools and identifies it as the key to their success. He’s right, but he leaves out a crucial point. Good teachers can be found anywhere, whether in traditional public schools or in choice schools. However, choice schools tend to seek out those teachers, support them, and retain them, because they have to if they want to keep operating. Traditional public schools never go out of business, so they don’t face the same pressure to help their best teachers. Yes, at the classroom level, good teaching is what helps students learn — and that good teaching is encouraged by a parental choice system.
Smith goes on to describe some excellent proposals for merit pay, charter schools, and open enrollment. He laments the fact that politics stands in the way of these reforms with one of the best lines of the op-ed:
The first education hurdle Missouri must overcome is in Jefferson City.
My question for Smith is: Since even these proposals to inject a limited amount of competition into schools face opposition, why not support the equally maligned and potentially more beneficial tuition tax credits idea?
