Charter Schools

Introduction: The Joneses are a fictional poor inner city African American family with two 17 year old daughters (Mary and Sarah) and a 10 year old named Johnny. Mary and Sarah are in the 12th grade and have been attending Broden School (a Charter school) since the 8th grade when they were pulled out of Archers Academy (another Charter school). Before the 6th grade they were forced by the government to attend Hillslane public school.

When Mary and Sarah were in the 5th grade their State Legislature (and/or Congress) passed the Charter School Act, legislation which gave parents control of the money that was being spent on their children at their closest public school. So, if a public school was spending $10,000 per pupil, per year, then the parents of that child could use the $10,000 to keep their kid at his/her current public school or spend it on any other school they wish. They can only spend this money on the education of their child and don't have access to the account; they just dictate to an Administrator which school receives the money. Any money unspent is returned to the government as general revenue. The current public schools retain their full funding as long as parents choose to continue their children's education there. There is no accreditation needed to open a Charter school. Charter schools may be registered as nonprofit (like the public schools), or for-profit. There is no limit on the number of students that may be accepted to any one Charter school, no limit on the amount of profit a Charter school can make, and no conditions on how they spend their money. Charter schools have full discretion to pay their teachers whatever salary they wish and free reign to hire and fire whoever they wish, regardless of background or qualification. Charter schools that falsely advertise or mislead parents about any aspect of their school, from the qualifications of their teaching staff, to the test scores of their students, will be considered in breach of contract and can be sued by the parents and/or prosecuted by the state in a court of law. To prevent fraud and abuse, a parent who homeschools cannot qualify as a Charter school. All private schools are reclassified as Charter schools and may receive the maximum per child funding. So a Private/Charter school that charged $20,000/year tuition would receive the regular $10k from that child's government account and the parents would continue to pay the remaining $10k out of pocket.

Johnny just graduated from a Charter elementary school and Mr. and Mrs. Jones are having a discussion over where to send him to school next year and their thoughts keep drifting back to how things used to be.

"Here it is, this is what I was telling you about," Mrs. Jones said triumphantly. She handed her husband the article by Consumer Report on the top Charter school corporations.

"See, Garner's School of Excellence, is one of the highest rated for math and science, and those are the subjects Johnny says he likes."

Mr. Jones frowned as he glanced at the rankings, "Well, they aren't that highly ranked, St. Marks, Roman Academy, Stratford Prep, and a few others are ranked higher."

Without missing a beat, Mrs. Jones replied in her matter-of-fact know it all tone, "You know those are all out of state schools and we already decided we weren't going to send Johnny to a boarding school. Garner's School of Excellence has a branch just across the county line, so they can come pick him up. Moreover, I just talked to the principal this morning. She was so friendly and helpful. They have a whole slew of programs there that emphasis hands on learning; you should see the pictures of their science and biology labs on their website. They even have a program for the 10th through 12th grade where they visit the labs at the state university and use some of the advanced equipment there."

Mr. Jones and his wife rarely had arguments, but when they did he nearly always lost. "Honey", he whined, "Why can't we just keep the kids together at the same school? Mary and Sarah are doing so well at Broden School."

"There's no rule saying the kids have to go to the same school. Besides, the girls switched out of Archers Academy nearly 5 years ago in the 8th grade. Garner's School of Excellence had just opened and we didn't know what it was going to be like. I've heard great things about it from the Carpenters and, you know the Smiths down at the corner? They told me Garner's was just great for their daughter - she can even call her teacher with homework questions at night. Besides, the kids would only be at Broden together for a few months anyway; the girls will both be graduating soon."

Mr. Jones was glad the girls had gotten out of Archers Academy. The teachers seemed nice enough and the girls enjoyed it, but then a scandal hit and some of the administrators were fired for inflating test scores. When it was exposed that, despite Archers stated policies, two newly hired teachers had criminal records, it was the last straw and the Joneses had pulled their daughters out. He remembered the Archer's Academy principal/owner pleading with him; probably just didn't want to loose his 20 grand. He chuckled, the guy lost a lot more then that, about a quarter of the school's pupils left and Archers hasn't yet built back up to what it once was. They even had to let some teachers go. In fact, that reminded him,

"Honey, what about Hillslane, the old public school, I heard Steve Rangart is head of their science department. Remember Steve, he was the whiz teacher at Archers who got all those awards and then left because Hillslane upped his contract. I bet Johnny would love him."

Mrs. Jones still had bad feelings towards Hillslane. The oldest, and once the only, school in the district, Hillslane had fought the switch to giving parents control of their own tax money tooth and nail. The teachers Unions in particular had been particularly vicious, railing against the idea that parents could choose where they spent the 10k/year that it was already costing taxpayers to send their kids to Hillslane public school. The school was administered by a bloated bureaucracy, many making over 100K and 200K a year, and the school was subject to Federal controls from Washington politicians and influenced by the powerful National Education Association. All of these forces spent millions across the country, lobbying politicians, spreading false advertising, and generally fear-mongering the population, in order to continue the status quo and keep their monopoly on public funds. The national media wrote Editorials opposing the bill, advocacy groups and 'non-partisan' Think Tanks falsely claimed children's education would suffer, and opposition politicians decried the bill's proponents as 'cruel', 'cold hearted', and even 'racist'. Hillslane was located in a high crime area, in the inner city, and consistently had among the lowest test scores in the state and, indeed, the nation, despite spending that was almost the highest per pupil in the country! Mrs. Jones tried everything to get her daughters out of the school, but since she and her husband were poor, they couldn't afford private school and couldn't afford to move. Even when the Unions lost a battle and the Voucher Act was written into law, giving $2000 dollars to each family for education spending, it still wasn't enough to get their daughters out of the failing Hillslane public school.

Mrs. Jones war particularly angry because during these legislative battles the NAACP and other liberal African American political groups lobbied against the bill. Being black, her and her husband had generally supported these groups in the past, but after this outrage they disavowed them. They would support them no longer, not when they acted against their children's education.

Mrs. Jones remembered how the principal of Hillslane had blown her off when she complained about a teacher who Mary told her always gave her science class meaningless assignments and then surfed the Internet. "I'll take care of it," he told her. When nothing changed, she complained again the next week. This time he got angry, "Look lady, I talked to her. What else do you want me to do? I can't fire these people. Your daughter only has a few weeks left in class, so don't worry about it."

What a difference a year made! After passage of the Charter School Act, which stated that parents have a right to spend, at any school of their choice, the money that is already being spent on their kids at the closest public school, parents pulled their kids out of the Hillslane public school - taking their 10K/year per pupil of the school's funding with them - and enrolled them in the dizzying array of Charter schools that sprouted up throughout their community and throughout the nation. Mary and Sarah's new education didn't cost taxpayers a nickel extra. Some parents sent their kids to religious schools; Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim, there was even a Buddhist Academy. Others choose special technical schools, custom designed for kids who knew they wanted to study subjects like auto mechanics and computer programming. Online Charter Schools were quite popular, especially with homeschoolers. Test scores soared and there was a growing number of kids attending college at younger ages. There were year round schools (these increased dramatically), afternoon schools, and morning schools. But the majority of Charter schools were just like regular high schools, middle schools, and elementary schools, except they tended to have smaller class sizes, more personal attention, enthusiastic teachers, advanced equipment, and Mrs. Jones was always impressed with the cleanliness of these schools. The owners of these schools took good care of their property. After all, it belonged to them, not the faceless 'public'...

The same Hillslane principal who had blown her off the year before now called her at home telling her of all the changes they were making at Hillslane. Mrs. Jones didn't care. She didn't like the man and she didn't like the school. Her kids were out.

At first the sheer number of choices was a bit overwhelming. The Joneses received constant mailings and flyers advertising the different schools. A few of the new schools were actually said to be worse then Hillslane (she didn't think that could be possible)! Some were shut down for tax evasion and other code violations. However, after the first few years, the word began to get out where the good schools were. The school their two daughters are now attending, Broden school, started out with less than 100 students, but quickly grew and now over 10,000 kids attend five different branches across two states. The other day she had scoffed at a typical press article decrying the founder of Broden school for 'exploiting' the children for profit - the man had made millions off his schools and apparently, at least according to the reporter, didn't pay his teachers all that much. But Mrs. Jones didn't give a damn how much money the man made or how little he paid his teachers! Broden educated her kids! They had discipline; Mary and Sarah's teachers kept in touch with her and she always knew how they were doing in each class. Moreover, the school also bought her children laptops, which they kept at school and took with them from grade to grade. As an added bonus, Broden provided free breakfast and lunch to her kids, helping the family finances. They also had an excellent guidance counselor who was able to secure scholarships and loans for both Mary and Sarah upon their acceptance into the state university. The counselor had added incentive to do this because the success of Mary and Sarah added to the schools reputation, by both word of mouth (through the ever talkative Mrs. Jones) and via official statistics.

Mrs. Jones was glad that the new discipline in the classroom had the added benefit of making schools much safer. Charter schools could make up their own disciplinary policies, so, of course, they choose policies that worked and that parents approved of. Uniforms were popular with parents and many of the new schools provided them for free. Mrs. Jones had been terrified over the stories she used to hear about Hillslane high school - fights breaking out in the cafeteria and parking lots, drug dealing, and kids threatening teachers. Parents didn't want gangs, drugs, and bullies in school with their kids, so Charter schools simply made sure they weren't. Penalties were harsh - fighting often resulted in an expulsion with no questions asked. There was a no-nonsense attitude to these types of incidents in the Charter schools because their owners had a no-nonsense attitude to loosing money. Sure, the owners might loose $10k by expelling a student, but it was better than permitting a raucous environment to develop, which would result in a far higher monetary losses.

The expelled students did have hope; they were generally given a chance at other Charter schools, many of which employed highly effective counselors, therapists, and even psychiatrists, in order to increase parent satisfaction and assist their students as best they could. For kids with extreme behavioral problems and/or those struggling with other psychological issues, there were specialized Charter schools. These schools ran like boot camps and the teachers acted like drill sergeants. These schools, and even some of the regular Charter schools, often had effective mentoring programs where elder students were paired with incoming students. Some of these schools were boarding schools, and parents who recognized their home situation was hurting their children (substance abuse, physical abuse, gangs, street violence etc..) often sent their kids to these schools.

Shortly after the Charter School Act was passed, Mrs. Jones recalled reading about an incident at one of these boarding schools for 'troubled youths', where a particular unruly kid suffered bruises after he was tackled by staff, handcuffed, and placed in solitary confinement for 24 hours. The press was outraged and politicians and teachers Unions demanded this 'Charter Thuggary' (they always came up with catchy phrases like this) be ended with legislation in order to 'protect the children'. Civil rights groups sued the school (the kid happened to be black), and the kid's parents sued after hearing from lawyers they could win big verdicts. The lawsuits were thrown out, the first was entirely without merit, and the second because it turned out the school had merely been following its own stated policies, which it had described to parents in detail - orally and in writing. In fact, these policies were among the reasons parents liked the school. Despite all the negative attention directed at the school, Mrs. Jones was surprised to find out that enrollment actually soared after this incident!

Interestingly, after the opportunistic parent's lawsuit failed, they still elected to keep their child in the school, but the owner expelled the child! They sued again, now claiming their child was unfairly expelled. This lawsuit failed too. The court ruled that a customer could not demand to be sold a product and that, in any case, there was a clause in the contract of this particular Charter school stating that the owner could expel a student at any time, for whatever reason he desired. The owner then broke his media silence by calling a press conference and read a prepared statement: "I expelled that student because I and the parents of the other students in my school don't appreciate being sued for carrying out our stated and effective disciplinary policies that make this one of the top rated schools for troubled youth in the country. To discourage this sort of frivolous activity we had no choice but to expel the student." He left without taking any questions. His school was never sued again.

However, Mrs. Jones knew that the new system was the most beneficial for her nephew Michael. Her sister was so happy with his new school. Suffering from autism, Michael received special treatment at Hillslane, but his primary teacher was shuffled around between three or four different schools and her sister was never able to coordinate her home parenting and therapy with the school. Hillslane didn't communicate with her, and didn't answer her questions or concerns. The director of the Hillslane program always treated her with aloofness, with a don't-bother-me-with-your-questions-you-wouldn't-understand-the-answers-anyway type attitude. Soon after the Charter School Act was passed, a special Charter school for the autistic opened in the neighboring city. It was actually a franchise of a national chain, which had been founded by a group of prominent autistic experts. Although it was a 30 minute ride on a public bus, the school paid for it, and her sister immediately noticed Michael's improvement and soon was receiving tons of information on what she could do at home to supplement Michael's work with the school. She had a personal relationship with Michael's teacher and the principal of the school actually called her to ask her if she had any questions, concerns, or suggestions on what they could do to improve the program. In fact, before the Charter School Act was passed, many states managed to pass, over the objections of the teachers Unions and education groups, legislation permitting Charter schools for children with learning or discipline problems. Obviously many of these schools had lower test scores than the public schools, a fact that the education establishment falsely used as an argument against any Charter school. The press often regurgitated this rhetoric without mentioning that the scores of the individual kids in these schools often showed good improvement.

Interestingly, few of highest achieving public schools lost students to the Charter companies. Charter schools that tried to open in these areas, mainly in wealthy suburban districts, soon folded. Pre-existing private schools gained the most from the new Charter School Act. Before, these parents were forced to pay double for their children's schooling, first in taxes that funded the public schools, and second in the fees that the private schools charged. In effect, the government had been squelching these private schools by offering a 'free' service that directly competed with their business. The fact that there even were private schools was indicative of how bad the 'free' public schools really were. Some of these private schools, especially Catholic schools in inner city neighborhoods, operated on very tight budgets, often less then half of what taxpayers at the neighboring public school were paying in per pupil dollars. Some of these schools offered scholarships, mostly funded by private donations, to poorer students whose parents were unable to pay the private tuition. The Joneses had looked into this option for their daughters, but there was always such a long waiting list. Mrs. Jones never understood how these private schools, which spent less then half of what Hillslane spent per pupil, always had such dramatically higher test scores. She wondered why politicians were always promising more and more money for the public schools, when money didn't seem to be a factor at all in their performance. The Unions always contributed to and campaigned for politicians that pledged to give more taxpayer money to the public schools. Since this money obviously wasn't improving the public schools, Mrs. Jones assumed it just went back to the Union members. She frowned at the thought. How was this different from stealing?

In any case, after the Charter School Act passed, many of the pre-existing private schools were inundated with cash and rapidly expanded and enhanced their programs. Many of these private schools formed associations and donated heavily to politicians in favor of the Charter School Act. The Unions denounced this as corruption and Mrs. Jones was surprised to see these charges get wide coverage in the press. She was glad that these private schools were finally countering what the Unions had been practicing on a massive scale for years. Mrs. Jones also read that the number of homeschoolers, a group that had been under constant regulatory attack by the teachers Unions and public school officials, who didn't trust that parents were sufficiently 'qualified' and competent enough to educate their own children, dropped sharply after the Charter School Act. Many of these formerly disenfranchised parents were able to find a school that they deemed satisfactory. Some homeschool parents formed their own schools. Mrs. Jones stifled a laugh, the Charter School Act opponents must have been quite embarrassed by the fact that homeschoolers consistently won top academic competitions, including the widely watched National Spelling Bee competition.

"Honey, I asked you about Hillslane and Steve Rangart." Mr. Jones' voice snapped her back into reality. She realized she hadn't answered his question.

"Oh sorry, I was just thinking about the old days. I still don't trust that school."

"That was over 10 years ago. Hillslane has really turned around. 90% of their students graduate now.", Mr. Jones smirked and added sarcastically, "And they fired your favorite principal."

That was true. The exodus of students had threatened the school with collapse. The principal was fired and more then half the teachers had to be laid off. She recalled with humor the Union threatening management with a strike if they went ahead with the layoffs and salary cuts. Management called their bluff; the Union knew that another strike would destroy the school and their jobs. In fact, the Union soon collapsed, its members voted to disband it - its only purpose was to artificially raise their salaries and now, without their monopoly on the public funds, if the Union was successful in that purpose the school would have less to spend in the classroom and would not be competitive with the new Charter schools. The Unions had also acted to make it nearly impossible to fire teachers for incompetence, thus they incentivised incompetence, contributing to the failing system. These rules were soon revised and Mrs. Jones noted with some satisfaction that the science teacher whom she complained about years before was one of the first to go. The woman had over 20 years experience and a PhD in Education.

"PhD, hrumph," Mrs. Jones thought disdainfully. A fat lot of good it did her, or any of the teachers at Hillslane. Many of the older teachers had PhDs and Master degrees because the Union demanded management (aka - the public) pay them more for each higher 'qualification' and pay for all teacher tuition. In fact, the Unions made sure the pay scale was based only on these 'qualifications' and, most especially, seniority. Additionally, the Unions required that all teachers have education degrees and fulfill endless certification steps and other regulatory requirements. All of this kept the number of teachers in short supply, thus raising the salaries even further of those paying the Union dues. The Union leaders used their dues money for a wide range of political purposes, often without the consent or knowledge of their members. It seemed like every other week there was a different scandal breaking out with Union officials mismanaging or stealing Union funds and political corruption. New teachers were routinely compelled or intimidated into joining the Union. But the most galling part of the entire system, in the mind of Mrs. Jones, was that almost half of the teachers who taught at Hillslane sent their kids to private school. With their salaries, they could afford to.

Mrs. Jones remembered the first time she heard about Steve Rangart. Her daughters came home one afternoon from Archers Academy and all they could talk about was Mr. Rangart and his crazy experiments. And it wasn't all fun and games, she never saw her daughters study so hard for a class. Steve Rangart was a researcher with a long and distinguished career at a major pharmaceutical company. But research was only his third love, his first was children and his second was teaching. The Unions barred him from teaching at Hillslane because he lacked the proper 'qualifications'. After the Charter School Act was passed, he inquired if he could teach a class or two at newly formed Archers Academy. The school jumped at the chance, in fact, now it is common practice for Charter schools to pay various professionals to teach select classes, or speak at their schools. Some do it for free. Steve started off working just three hours a week, teaching an advanced chemistry course, but loved it so much he took an early retirement from his research job and accepted a full time contract at Archers. He soon become director of the school's science department and the Archers science program won many awards for its high test scores and Archers students always placed near the top at the regional and national science competitions.

Meanwhile, Hillslane had undergone rapid changes. Their dropout rates had fallen from 50% before the Chart School Act to 20%, but the new principal needed something to boost the schools reputation and assure parents that the school's troubled past was behind them. He needed Steve Rangart. However, Rangart was a tough customer; he knew how valuable he would be to Hillslane. He knew what he was worth and he intended Hillslane to pay him what he was worth and not a cent less. In the end, Hillslane nearly broke their budget, but they got Steve Rangart. Just in time too, the scandals started hitting Archers not long after he left and the Joneses withdrew Mary and Sarah, enrolling them in Broden.

In fact, the Rangart story was indicative of the changing way that teachers were paid and hired. The number of college students pursuing education degrees dropped dramatically. Most students who wanted to be teachers instead majored in the subject they would be teaching and often settled for a minor in education. The only credentials that mattered to the owners of the Charter schools were the credentials that mattered to parents. Teachers stopped going back to graduate school because the Charter school owners generally wouldn't pay them more for their degrees and certainly wouldn't pay their tuition. Teachers were now paid by their results, by the pure merit of their teaching skill. Hardworking teachers, who put in long hours, whose students scored higher on the standardized tests, whose students had fun in their classes, and who interacted well with parents, were paid more than those who were less successful in these tasks. Of course, the more experienced teachers were still generally paid more - but only because their experience made them better at what they did.

The remaining teachers Unions in the country often disparaged the Charter schools for unequal payment of their teachers. For example, Mr. Rangart made nearly ten times the salary of the lowest paid teacher at Hillsdale. But the Charter schools didn't care what the Unions said, they only cared what their customers said, and parents never seemed to care about much besides that their children get the best education possible. In fact, brutal bidding wars between the Charter schools often erupted over the top teachers. Headhunter type organizations were paid handsomely by Charter schools to seek out and recruit top teachers and administrators from across the country. Although teacher salaries, especially the starting salaries, were often lower then they had been under the monopolistic public schools, with hard work and perseverance, the top teachers and administrators could often make more than ever would have been possible under the stifling Unions. Some teachers quit the public schools to start their own Charter schools. A few of these teachers, through their hard work and successful school design, became fabulously wealthy as their schools prospered. Some of the larger Charter corporations went public and their stocks soared. Billions of dollars of newly created wealth, added to the national GDP, reflected the success of the new educational system. Teachers sometimes owned, or were paid in, stock from the school they worked at. The most successful Charter corporations created hundreds of millionaires among its veteran teachers and administrators.

The contrast was striking. The Union system generated their millionaires by sickly standards rooted in denial, doublethink, deception, patronage, cronyism, exclusion, and outright theft. The Charter system generated their millionaires by righteous standards rooted in ability, talent, merit, imagination, creativity, and the voluntary participation of their customers. The Charter system didn't just educate kids better, it injected society with a much needed dose of moral values.

The Charter schools often had 'open houses' where they tried to sell their school to prospective parents. Mrs. Jones noticed a new attitude among teachers; and it wasn't just for show. They genuinely seemed happier in their jobs. Whether they worked part time or full time, what they did really mattered and was always noticed. The Charter school owners noticed, the parents noticed, and the kids noticed. If they did a good job, they were rewarded; if they didn't do a good job, they either took a pay cut or had to find a new job. There were no more freeloaders. Each teacher had individual value. Mrs. Jones thought of a quote Sarah had read her the other day from the 30th President of the United States, Calvin Coolidge, "Industry, thrift and self-control are not sought because they create wealth, but because they create character."

The teachers were also given more leeway to do their jobs. Many of the Charter school owners came from a business background and recognized that people immediately faced with a problem often find the best solutions. Administrators were more hands-off than they had been in the past and teachers were usually given leeway to craft their own curriculums, lectures, experiments, and interactive games and exercises. Excessive paper work and red-tape hurt productivity, so teachers and Administrators worked to dramatically cut the time wasted on this. Also, the best Charter schools kept the number of Administrators very low in order to maximize spending in the classroom, cut costs, and increase their profits. The remaining Administrators often spent a great deal of time in advertising, public relations, and meeting with parents, so teachers increasingly took on Administrative tasks. They all knew what the other teachers were doing and there was special emphasis on student transition between grades. The system worked from the bottom up, rather then the top down. Washington had no influence at all and, seeing it now had no purpose, Congress abolished the Department of Education. The press howled.

Back when public schools and teachers Unions had their monopoly on the public education tax dollars, the teachers all had specified curriculum and specified textbooks. In fact, teachers used to get into more trouble deviating from the curriculum than if they stuck with it and taught it poorly. Especially upsetting to the old Administrators was when teachers would do something that wasn't 'politically correct', or discussed topics such as religion or politics with their students. The old Administrators would rather have ten teachers like the incompetent PhD teacher Mrs. Jones complained about, and who was eventually fired from Hillslane, than one teacher who 'caused trouble' and 'stirred up the pot' by being 'controversial'.

Mrs. Jones didn't care for 'political correctness', not because there was anything innately wrong with the concept, but because it stifled innovation, discouraged risk taking, and encouraged apathy and incompetence, all of which acted against the education of her children. But this was all a thing of the past. The other day Mary came home talking about the debates they had in class over such normally polarizing issues like gay marriage and abortion. She was happy and smiling and animated, not because they had broached these issues, but because her teacher and classmates actually cared what she thought about them. The new Charter schools cared about what their students thought, because they wanted them to be thinking and creating, not regurgitating. Thinking and creating students were smarter students (higher test scores) and thinking and creating students were happier students (happy customers), both of which increased the profits of the Charter schools.

Mrs. Jones had also read some Editorials from some national newspapers bemoaning the 'politicization' of the new Charter Schools. These Editorials claimed that the Charter schools got rid of many of the old textbooks and the new ones, especially the history textbooks, were too 'rightwing'. Mrs. Jones wasn't very political and didn't know what they meant by 'rightwing', but certain facts did surprise her, such as the fact that Communism had killed over 100 million people, more than in all wars in history combined. Mrs. Jones was puzzled, she never learned about this when she was in public school. In fact, in glancing through her daughter's history textbook, Mrs. Jones found that many chapters had more then one author, each of whom interpreted the historical happenings very differently. The chapter questions at the end (and the classroom discussions), probed the student to make up his/her own mind between the points of view. It was curious, there was always one point of view that she immediately recognized as similar to her old public school textbooks, but it was the other viewpoints she had never seen before that were most interesting to her. For example, Mrs. Jones had always been taught that FDR and his 'New Deal' saved the country from the Laissez-Faire politicians during the Great Depression and that Lyndon Johnson's 'War on Poverty', 'Great Society' had lifted millions of African Americans out of poverty. But these textbooks included an additional point of view, which stated FDR had prolonged and deepened the Great Depression and that Lyndon Johnson's 'War on Poverty', 'Great Society' impoverished African Americans and led to the dissolution of the black family. Mrs. Jones didn't know what to make of all of this, and didn't have the time to dwell too long on any of it, but it was certainly fascinating. She certainly didn't see how adding other perspectives to a textbook was 'politicizing' anything, as these national newspapermen seemed to think. In fact, now that she thought about it, not having these perspectives in these textbooks was politicizing the textbooks. Better to expose the kids to all of it and let them make up their own minds was the philosophy of Mrs. Jones, the philosophy of most parents and, therefore, the philosophy of the Charter schools.

Of course, there were some parents who complained about the new textbooks, and others who didn't want their kids taught about evolution, and still some others that didn't approve of the health/sex-ed classes. These parents were most often in the minority, and most ended up keeping their kids in the offending school anyway because they knew their kids were otherwise getting a good education. However, a few select parents did pull their kids out of these Charter schools and placed them in schools that were consistent with their own values. No one could ever really complain about what was being taught in school because no one was forced to send their children to any particular school.

But the main difference Mrs. Jones noticed in the new system was that her kids were happier. Charter schools quickly discovered that a happy child was the key to happy parents, which was the key to more students, and therefore the key to higher profits. Some schools, especially high schools, let the students rate the effectiveness of their teachers. Classrooms were now alive with richly vibrant and interactive games, often custom designed by the newly endowed teachers. Historical biographies, written by exciting authors who wrote history like it was a story, replaced the droll fact condensed textbooks sanctioned by the Washington bureaucrats and the NEA. There was more emphasis on creative writing, rather than the '5 paragraph formal essay'. Teachers and their classes often made up their own summer reading lists, with most input coming from the students. Kids created their own websites and computer programs. Mrs. Jones thought it was all quite amazing. Her kids now liked to write. Her kids now liked to read. Her kids now liked to learn. They were finally being allowed to think.

Mrs. Jones finally turned to her husband, "Dear, I know it was almost 10 years ago, and your right, Hillslane has improved, and I do like Steve Rangart, but Garner's School of Excellence is where Johnny wants to go, and it's where I want him to go. Won't you at least come tomorrow night to their open house?"

Mr. Jones threw up his hands. "Okay, okay, I'll come and check it out. But no promises." He shook his head. "I just don't like walking through these schools, I feel like they just see us as walking chunks of cash."

Mrs. Jones laughed, "Oh don't be silly, would you rather they not see us at all? You remember what open houses used to be like?"

Mr. Jones shuddered at the memories, "Good point, when your right your right. Ok, we'll go tomorrow night. Will they let us take Johnny with us?"

Mrs. Jones replied, "They'll let us take whoever we want. Remember, we're paying customers; they work for us. They know we don't have to choose them."

Disclaimer: The characters and institutions in this story are completely fictional, any coincidental resemblance to any person, living or dead, or institution was unintended. However, the general themes and patterns found in this story are deeply rooted in reality. I believe these predictions accurately depict what would come to pass if Charter School legislation similar to what I've described was enacted. I also believe my portrayal of today's educational system and the current opposition to real education reform is accurate and, in fact, has played out in political battles that have already taken place. I am hopeful that this will enable people to view Charter school legislation and our stagnating public schools in the proper light.

Note: All hyperlinks lead to further stories and research that have been published throughout this website. These links generally illustrate underlying patterns or expand on other unrelated concepts readers might find interesting. A large number of relevant news articles have been posted at the end, with commentary, as further evidence emphasizing key arguments found in the story.

If current private schools are allowed access to the 10k in Charter school money it will cost taxpayers a fair amount of money. Much of this might be raised by eliminating Federal fundings for a wide variety of Education programs that the Charter schools could implement more effectively (if they choose). Headstart, school lunch programs, after school programs, even daycare programs, and a plethora of wasteful grants and other programs could all be eliminated. Eliminating the Department of Education would save billions. It may also be the case that legislators (and parents) will be so surprised at the excesses of services provided by the Charter schools that they decide to cut funding of their public schools, which also cuts the funding of the Charter schools. It would be best if all of these decisions were made by state legislators and county commissioners, not the Federal Government. In fact, it would be best if the Federal government had no part of education at all. Considering that the Constitution leaves education to the states, this shouldn't be too much to ask. It is disappointing that the courts have not declared the Department of Education unconstitutional (along with the many other Federal programs and regulations).

Admittedly, there is a strong temptation to advocate national legislation to setup and implement something like the 'Charter School Act', but I feel the setup and running of these programs should be left largely to the states. If the Federal government screws it up, and judging by its past track record and the special interest clout in Washington, this is a distinct possibility, people will have nowhere to run. It would make things easier on the Charter school chains and franchises to have standard regulations (if any) and procedures in every state. One can easily imagine Charter schools already established in a state lobbying the state legislators for increasing regulations, fees, and licensing in the name of 'the public good' or 'public safety' in an underhanded attempt to stop new startups and keep out-of-state competition from encroaching on their profits. Federal legislation, possibly filed under the interstate commerce act, may be required to put a stop to some of this nonsense and to enable students in a state to attend schools in neighboring states, or even boarding schools across the country. These sorts of things need to be looked at in more detail and fleshed out (especially the question of the constitutionality of these laws).

I have also mentioned standardized test scores throughout this story. This might imply I support the continuation of nationally standardized testing, which may seem to contradict my disdain for Federal involvement in Education. However, there is no need for Federal involvement because the Charter schools are plenty capable of constructing their own tests, driven by parental demand for accountability. I'm guessing that various Charter school associations would most likely contract out the tests to a reputable company. These tests might be state based or nationally based, or perhaps parents won't demand testing even take place and rely more on standards like graduation percentages or SAT scores. By presuming parents want national standardized testing ,I am, perhaps, committing the same mistake that the folks in the Education Department or the NEA make everyday, taking the elitists attitude that I know what is best and that I know what parents want. This is especially egregious considering I personally disdain standardized testing and don't believe it is a useful barometer for much of anything. A better approach is to assume parents will want some sort of statistics to go on and that the market will filter a satisfactory way of doing this to the top.

I would support a Voucher program over the existing public education debacle, but I view it as only a half-hearted step towards reform. With Vouchers, the government returns to parents, oh... about half, or maybe, if they're lucky, three quarters, of their own money to spend at the school they please. With Vouchers, the argument that parents of the poorest children might not be able to afford the extra money actually has some merit. These students would continue to be stuck in the failing public schools with no way out.

The pure libertarian view, whereby control and jurisdiction over Education policy is taken from the Federal Government, the States, and the Counties and given directly to the people, is an interesting one. In such a scenario there would be no taxes, regulations or requirements for Education and every school would be truly private. Private foundations and charity organizations would exist to help the poorest areas. My gut feeling is that this may indeed prove to be the best scenario for permanently improving education in this country. However, legislation repealing all the old education laws and taxes is certainly not politically feasible at this time. The 'Charter School Act' legislation that I've described is politically feasible (as it is really just common sense), provided the proposal is not skewered and slanted and demaguaged (and rest assured, it will be). After this legislation is passed, and people adjust to the idea of (gasp!) being able to spend their own tax dollars where they desire and see the benefits of (gasp!) having more control over their kid's education, the pure libertarian view can be more closely examined and (perhaps) pursued.

The public school system is already so beleaguered by bureaucracy; so cowed by the demands of due process; so overwhelmed with faddish curricula that its educational purpose is almost an afterthought.
-CA Justice Janice Rogers Brown

I suppose it is because nearly all children go to school nowadays, and have things arranged for them, that they seem so forlornly unable to produce their own ideas.
- Agatha Christie

Just as eating against one's will is injurious to health, so studying without a liking for it spoils the memory, and it retains nothing it takes in.

Do you think nobody would willingly entrust his children to you or pay you for teaching them? Why do you have to extort your fees and collect your pupils by compulsion?

It's time to admit that public education operates like a planned economy, a bureaucratic system in which everybody's role is spelled out in advance and there are few incentives for incentives for innovation and productivity. It's no surprise that our school system doesn't improve: It more resembles the communist economy than our own market economy.

- Albert Shanker - During his time as head of the American Federation of Teachers

When school children start paying union dues, that's when I'll start representing the interests of school children.

If the only motive was to help people who could not afford education, advocates of government involvement would have simply proposed tuition subsidies.

Despite a documented low correlation between money spent and improvement in the quantity and quality of public education, the reform of public education has focused almost exclusively on the financial issue.

As for money, the relationship between it and effective schools has been studied to death. The unanimous conclusion is that there is no connection between school funding and school performance.

To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical.

The more subsidized it is, the less free it is. What is known as `free education' is the least free of all, for it is a state-owned institution; it is socialized education - just like socialized medicine or the socialized post office - and cannot possibly be separated from political control.

If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their own hands; they may appoint teachers in every State, county and parish and pay them out of their public treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union; they may assume the provision of the poor; they may undertake the regulation of all roads other than post-roads; in short, every thing, from the highest object of state legislation down to the most minute object of police, would be thrown under the power of Congress. Were the power of Congress to be established in the latitude contended for, it would subvert the very foundations, and transmute the very nature of the limited Government established by the people of America.

Wherever is found what is called a paternal government, there is found state education. It has been discovered that the best way to insure implicit obedience is to commence tyranny in nursery.

At every hour of every day, I can tell you on which page of which book each school child in Italy is studying.

The education of all children, from the moment that they can get along without a mother's care, shall be in state institutions at state expense.

Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.

Ideas are more dangerous than guns. We don’t allow our enemies to have guns. Why should we allow them to have ideas?

In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then he made school boards.

I agree with Boortz, and I'm happy to say most of the readers at Digg.com do too.

Personal Observations and Experience (This has been put on a separate folder because, in retrospect, I don't feel my personal observations add a great deal to this piece. I'd recommend this only if you've read everything else and still have time.)

Guest Commentary: Geoff Dobson, also known as 'Dobber', is a former Charter School teacher who is

interested in Educational reform and was generous enough to offer valuable feedback in the writing of 'A Charter School Tale' and volunteered to share his personal observations:

After I graduated from the University of Pittsburgh, I decided that before starting a career that would fulfill my own personal goals, I wanted to spend some time working for the betterment of society. I researched different “volunteering” (not totally free labor, but extremely low-pay) options; two of the most prominent being the Peace Corps and Americorps. I ended up deciding on the Americorps program. I was offered a ten-month position as an Americorps domestic volunteer with an inner-city Philadelphia Charter School called YouthBuild Philadelphia. My position was officially called Technology Educator. I ran a non-profit computer refurbishing outfit, through the school, and a group of students were my workers. The “company” was called Urban Tech, and you can check out an advertisement here, www.urbantechproject.org, that pictures some of my former students Raphael, James, and Maria, working on the donated computers.

This unique experience was considered “alternative education” and part of their quite radical curriculum. All of the students at this school are aged 18-21 and were formerly expelled from the public school district of Philadelphia, for a multitude of reasons ranging from violence, to truancy. This school was started in 1991 to address the ongoing problem of a large number of inner-city youth not graduating from high school. In 1991, the dropout rate was hovering around 50%, since then, it has only gotten worse. To learn more about this school check out its website here: www.youthbuildphilly.org.

I am a proponent of education reform. I have not yet decided on a policy that is best, but I recognize that the current system needs change. Many argue that charter schools and school choice in general is the way to go. I see reason to believe school choice is worthy of more consideration. I will give some positive observations of my own, from working in a charter school for one year:

1. First and foremost, the school exists. Without the charter school legislation that most states have adopted in the past fifteen years, this school would not exist. This school provides education for a specific demographic: eighteen to twenty-one year old, inner-city, drop-outs (and/or kick-outs). After spending one year at this school, the former drop-outs (approximately 62% graduation rate) now have a high-school diploma, and many aspects of support for success in life. This school offers everything from SAT preparation, to psychological services, to drug and alcohol abuse prevention and help, to career services, to furthering education placement, and many more.

2. Since the school is a Charter School they can offer teaching jobs and other faculty positions to anybody. Some of the teachers there are former successful CPAs that want to switch gears in life. Some of the teachers hold teaching certificates and enjoy working with that specific demographic. There is no tenure at this school, and teachers that don’t perform well are fired. In my experience, the faculty that wanted to do well and truly cared about the students, excelled, and therefore, continued to have a job. Those that didn’t, were let go.

3. The teachers enjoyed the fact that they could adapt their curriculum as they saw fit. Each teacher was charged with coming up with new and innovative ways to engage the students, and they adapted to the students’ needs. They were relieved of the bureaucracy of the Department of Education telling them what they had to do, what they had to teach, and how to do it. When techniques worked, they were pursued. When something didn’t work, it was dropped. All techniques were discussed (with other teachers, principals, students, etc) and examined.

4. Since the program I taught (technology job-training) was only one year old, I was able to try out radical (I would call them common sense) teaching practices that would not be possible under State guidelines. For example, I abandoned the traditional ABCDF grading system for a credit based system. My students had already all failed in schools that used the standard practices. If these students were going to be successful, I had to think outside the box. So, I explained to them that necessary skills that they needed to learn. They were given time frames (usually 6 weeks) to learn them within. There were no tests, no homework, no quizzes, and no memorization; just constant learning. I explained to them that it was in their best interest to spend the time that we were allotted for class, approximately five hours per day, actively working and learning. As long as everyone was on-board with this mindset, the class was successful. Every student worked at their own pace, and smarter students were encouraged to help slower students, for credit. I put up a “scoreboard”. It was a large poster board with everyone’s names as rows and every possible learning experience or completion of a task that had value, as columns. I identified tasks that must be completed, at some time during the six week period, and it was up to the student when to do it. Those tasks were listed first on the scoreboard. But, it was a dynamic scoreboard, in that it was often being changed. I allowed the students to offer suggestions, and if I thought that their suggestion merited educational value, I added it. For example, two students got credit for fixing the school secretary’s CPU fan. Another student got credit for networking a new computer lab. At the end of the semester points were awarded for every task completed. It was easy to see who the “A” students were. And for the students that didn’t pass, all I had to do was point to the scoreboard and say “you better do more next rotation.” They couldn’t say they were cheated, or it wasn’t fair, because the policy was hanging on the wall, and I (and other students) was available to help them with any task they had trouble with.

That experiment was only possible because the only educational authority I had to answer to was the school principal. She loved the idea. I documented everything and provided an analysis paper at the end of each month for her. I can only imagine what education would have been like if my teachers were allowed to think outside the box.

Now, don’t misinterpret me and think I am suggesting that we throw out the system entirely. The situation I was in was extremely unique, and drastic measures had to be taken, if my students were to have any success at all. I am simply pointing that exciting possibilities exist, if the reigns of control are only slightly loosened.

5. Smaller class sizes and more faculty makes for better relationships. One thing I definitely learned through my experience was the fact that a good student-teacher relationship is much more important than material, curriculum, or even teacher expertise. This seems obvious to me, so I will not elaborate. Charter Schools can address this problem because it is up to their management what ratio should exist. In Williams Arizona, maybe a 20 – 1 ratio is perfect; but in Garwin, Iowa maybe a 16 – 1 ratio yields better results.

6. Discipline can be handled more on a per-case basis. I think back to middle school, and remember the “bad kids” always getting the same punishments. Week in, week out, they do something wrong, and then they get one of the standard punishments. In charter schools, the management decides how the school will deal with unruly students, and the parents decide whether or not they agree. Should the punishment for throwing globes out the window be tar and feathering? I don’t know. But if it works, and a charter school employs that tactic, and parents see results, and choose to send their children there, then so be it!

7. Way less paperwork. I’ve heard horror stories about all the worthless paperwork that some of my friends have to mindlessly deal with just to satisfy some government standard. At YouthBuild, paperwork was secondary. The management team decided what things needed to be documented, and that’s what we documented. No unnecessary busy work for employees. What was really great, was if I had a problem with something, I simply walked upstairs and poked my head into of the management offices and talked it over! If I were in a public school, I would have had to take a personal day, drive to Harrisburg and hope to get a meeting with a bureaucrat, who would probably just re-direct my concern to some committee that wouldn’t do anything about it. And why should they? They don’t care about little old me, when they have thousands of teachers to be in charge of. But, at YouthBuild, the executive director did care about me! In fact, we were in the same lunchtime aerobics class!

8. Standards, hah! Why should Johnny, who lives in Alburg Vermont, be taking the same standardized test as Jenny, who live in Ramah, New Mexico? Every year I hear bad news about test scores. Basically, here’s how I observe it:

1. Give students national, standardized test. 2. Score tests. 3. Display bad results.

The easy way to fix the problem of displaying bad results, is to simply knock out step number one! Don’t give the tests!

Well, needless to say, YouthBuild de-emphasizes standardized tests, which exist in the interest of bureaucrats, and focuses its energy on learning, which exists in the interest of the student.

These are just some of the observations off the top of my head. YouthBuild was no utopia, and problems came up. But, it was great to know, that we both created the problem and solved the problem. In public school, in many situations, the employees do not create the problem (they are just following guidelines) nor are they allowed to solve them (the solution might break a guideline).

An interesting graph showing the inverse relationship between spending and test scores. If one considers tests scores to be an indication of academic success, a dubious assumption, but a premise embraced by establishment educators and politicians, then should we not cut funding from public schools to raise those tests scores? :)

Sometimes all it takes is a bit of simple math. I'd like to apologize to readers, as I quoted the $13,00 number repeatedly in 'A Charter School Tale'. Coulson makes a pretty strong case here that the number is actually twice that:

We're often told that public schools are underfunded. In the District, the spending figure cited most commonly is $8,322 per child, but total spending is close to $25,000 per child -- on par with tuition at Sidwell Friends, the private school Chelsea Clinton attended in the 1990s.

What accounts for the nearly threefold difference in these numbers? The commonly cited figure counts only part of the local operating budget. To calculate total spending, we have to add up all sources of funding for education from kindergarten through 12th grade, excluding spending on charter schools and higher education. For the current school year, the local operating budget is $831 million, including relevant expenses such as the teacher retirement fund. The capital budget is $218 million. The District receives about $85.5 million in federal funding. And the D.C. Council contributes an extra $81 million. Divide all that by the 49,422 students enrolled (for the 2007-08 year) and you end up with about $24,600 per child.

For comparison, total per pupil spending at D.C. area private schools -- among the most upscale in the nation -- averages about $10,000 less. For most private schools, the difference is even greater.

The school, which will run from fifth to eighth grades, is promising to pay teachers $125,000, plus a potential bonus based on schoolwide performance. That is nearly twice as much as the average New York City public school teacher earns, roughly two and a half times the national average teacher salary and higher than the base salary of all but the most senior teachers in the most generous districts nationwide.

The school’s creator and first principal, Zeke M. Vanderhoek, contends that high salaries will lure the best teachers. He says he wants to put into practice the conclusion reached by a growing body of research: that teacher quality — not star principals, laptop computers or abundant electives — is the crucial ingredient for success.

“I would much rather put a phenomenal, great teacher in a field with 30 kids and nothing else than take the mediocre teacher and give them half the number of students and give them all the technology in the world,” said Mr. Vanderhoek, 31, a Yale graduate and former middle school teacher who built a test preparation company that pays its tutors far more than the competition.

In exchange for their high salaries, teachers at the new school, the Equity Project, will work a longer day and year and assume responsibilities that usually fall to other staff members, like attendance coordinators and discipline deans. To make ends meet, the school, which will use only public money and charter school grants for all but its building, will scrimp elsewhere. <.>

Ernest A. Logan, president of the city principals’ union, called the notion of paying the principal less than the teachers “the craziest thing I’ve ever heard.”

Randi Weingarten, president of the United Federation of Teachers, called the hefty salaries “a good experiment.” But she said that when teachers were not unionized, and most charter school teachers are not, their performance can be hampered by a lack of power in dealing with the principal. “What happens the first time a teacher says something like, ‘I don’t agree with you?’ ”

Only when teachers and the educational system is outside the control of the teachers unions can these sorts of experiments happen. This decentralized control, bottom up approach to education with the money going strait to the classroom might just work.

Signaling deep discontent and a possible spreading revolt among the city's public school teachers, faculty at two more Los Angeles high schools met this week with a leading charter school operator to discuss alliances aimed at breaking away from the school district.

This is truly an amazing phenomena, especially as it attacks a central plank of the teacher's Unions arguments against charter schools: that private companies provide sub par working conditions and benefits. Even some proponents of charter schools mistakenly acquiesce the benefit of unions to teachers, and instead trumpet the gains made by students, which if one considers, is really the whole point of education anyway... However, as stated in 'A Charter School Tale', the basic human instincts of justice, fairness, and happiness stemming from quality, competence, and hard work, are both emotionally and financially beneficial.

The educators also responded positively to Barr's claims that the group's small central staff allows more than 90% of state funds to go directly to instruction and higher teacher salaries. Significantly less money reaches district classrooms, largely because of the L.A. school district's sizable bureaucracy. <.>

District officials have been reluctant to grant teachers and principals the freedom to run the schools and unable to provide the support needed to carry out the transformation smoothly. <.>

For Barr, the interest comes from two very different schools. Taft is a racially diverse school with middle-of-the-road test scores and a largely veteran, stable faculty. Santee, by contrast, serves poor minority students in one of the city's most gang-infested neighborhoods. Student performance is some of the lowest in the district, and at the end of the campus' first year, roughly 40% of its teachers left — several of them taking jobs at Green Dot schools.

The United Auto Workers has launched a big new push to organize the plant, trying to capitalize on fears of lower pay, outsourcing of jobs and on Toyota's treatment of injured workers. <.>

At a new factory being built in Mississippi, Toyota plans to pay workers about $20 an hour in a region where many people earn $12 to $13 an hour.

If teachers are better off without public school unions, maybe autoworkers are too, and it just might save their jobs in the long run...

A good article on the recent decision by the (liberal) Florida Supreme Court to overturn portions of the recent Charter/Voucher education reforms passed by the Republican legislator and signed by Gov Jeb Bush (who. IMO, is one of the best governors in the nation). I especially like this article's emphasis on race and that it was featured in an African American magazine. Since Conservative/Libertarian philosophy is race neutral, this might seem hypocritical. But this approach is necessary, as seen throughout this website, in order to refute those on the left who constantly emphasize race:

Florida's voucher program was challenged in court by the usual collection of school choice foes, including the state teachers' union and the NAACP.
It's interesting that the NAACP backs the education establishment on vouchers, given that polls show most blacks favor school choice. In several states, voucher programs have been established to serve minority students in troubled inner-city school systems.

Black parents tend to support school choice because their children are disproportionately affected by the failures of the public school system. Against that, it's curious that the Florida Supreme Court -- at the behest of the NAACP -- has ruled that poor minorities must keep their seats in the back of the public education system's bus.

The Florida program was in its infancy, but almost 95 percent of the students who were receiving state scholarships to attend private schools were black or Hispanic. A pioneering school choice program in Milwaukee, Wisc., was championed by a black activist who battled the state education bureaucracy and its allies in a successful effort to expand educational opportunities for poor African-Americans.
Could you imagine the outrage if Conservatives/Libertarians abolished a program which benefited 95% minorities? Conservative/Libertarian policies nearly always result in positive outcomes for minorities, yet for some reason the debate is always diverted to center on the intentions of the proponents of these positive policies. In another article, Florida Libertarians call the ruling "bizarre, unrealistic, and a new form of Jim Crow to keep the poor out of private schools."

The court found that taxpayer support for private schools in general is unconstitutional because Florida's constitution requires "a uniform, efficient, safe, secure and high-quality system of free public schools." Private schools aren't "uniform when compared with each other or the public system," the justices wrote. They're also exempt from public standards on teacher credentials and requirements to teach about a wide range of subjects, such as civics, U.S. and world history and minorities' and women's contributions to history.

Milwaukee's innovative school choice program has become a beacon of hope for reformers everywhere. But the educational establishment has never accepted its success and is now striking back. A cap on the number of students that can attend the city's private choice schools has been reached, and starting Feb. 1, education officials will implement a rationing plan to allocate the program's available seats. That could disrupt up to 4,000 families and create such chaos among the participating schools that several could be threatened with closure.

In 1995, then-Gov. Tommy Thompson joined with state legislators to expand choice in Milwaukee to include religious schools, but a compromise set a limit on the number of participating students at 15% of the enrollment in Milwaukee Public Schools. Today that means some 14,500 students, and demand is now higher than that for the slots which give $6,351 annual scholarships to students opting for choice schools (The public schools' per pupil spending is about 80% higher).

"You could not design a more fiendish way to cripple Milwaukee's choice program while still claiming to keep it alive," says Father Bob Smith, who heads Messmer.

Next Tuesday, Utah voters go to the polls to decide if their state will become the first in the nation to offer school vouchers statewide. Referendum 1 would make all public-school kids eligible for vouchers worth from $500 to $3,000 a year, depending on family income. Parents could then use the vouchers to send their children to private schools. <.>

But wait. Arrayed against the vouchers are the usual opponents. They call themselves Utahns for Public Schools. They include, predictably, the Utah Education Association (the teachers union), Utah School Boards Association, Utah School Employees Union, Utah School Superintendents Association, the elementary and secondary school principals associations, and the PTA. No to vouchers! they protest. Trust us. We know what's best for your kids.

Following in the footsteps of my 12/16/05 post on American Indian Charter School, here is another profile of a successful Charter School:

1/17/05 Washington Post Jay Mathews (education writer) is writing a book on KIPP, a charter school chain with 47 schools nationally:

The report says in 2004-2005 more than 80 percent of the KIPP students were eligible for the federal free or reduced-price meal program -- the usual criteria for designating which students are low-income -- and more than 95 percent were African American or Hispanic.

The achievement figures for American students who fit that profile nationally are, on average, abysmal. The achievement figures for American students who fit that profile but have been in KIPP are, again on average, quite the opposite.

"While the average fifth-grader enters KIPP in the bottom third of test-takers nationwide (28th percentile), the average KIPP eighth-grader outperforms nearly three out of four of test-takers nationwide (74th percentile) on norm-referenced reading and math assessments," the report card says. "In the fifth-grade year, approximately 40 percent of KIPP schools outperform their respective districts on state reading exams, and just over 60 percent do so in math. By the eighth grade, 100 percent of KIPP schools outperform their districts in both subjects."

It is encouraging to me that in several instances KIPP principals and teachers whose students were not improving have been shown better ways to do their jobs, and if that hasn't worked, have been fired or allowed to resign.

Two schools, the KIPP Chicago Youth Village Academy and Atlanta's KIPP Achieve Preparatory Academy, have had the right to use the KIPP name revoked effective at the end of this school year.

Private ownership and dedication to results means that those in the system will be held accountable for their performance. As documented, public schools are hardly ever closed for poor performance and subpar teachers often cannot be fired.

What kind of folks established KIPP? If we are to believe the rhetoric of the Teachers Unions, media, and Democratic party, then we must assume these folks were eminently qualified, with PhDs in education and many years of experience and research. Of course, they were not:

KIPP, a way of teaching low-income middle-school children, grades 5 through 8, was invented in 1994 by two Houston elementary school teachers in their twenties who were, they freely admit, making it up as they went along. The KIPP founders, Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin, had at the time no foundation support, no well-known advisers, only two years teaching experience each and almost no support from the various principals and school district officials they had to deal with.

These 'average' folks who created KIP were anything but average. Without government imposed barriers, many more 'ordinary' people would rise up to fashion these storms of 'creative destruction', uplifting and educating millions and spreading prosperity, leaving behind them only the carnage of socialism.

10/4/04 Neoperspectives.com - Describes the similarity of the political battles between Welfare Reform and Education Reform. Focuses on Washington D.C., which is actually the area I was thinking of when writing about this hypothetical black family.

How the Unions Killed a Dream
10/26/03 Time magazine - Joe Klein details the sad story how inner city Detroit schools lost $200 million: In 1999, an unassuming Michigan road builder named Bob Thompson sold his construction company for $442 million, an amount he and his wife Ellen believed was far more than they needed for retirement. <.> After doing some research, he offered $200 million to build 15 small, independent public high schools in the inner city. A few weeks ago, Thompson withdrew his offer after the Detroit Federation of Teachers (DFT) led a furious, and scurrilous, campaign against his generosity. The philanthropist is in seclusion now—friends say he is stunned and distressed—but his is a story that deserves telling.

Washington Times - Nationwide, public school teachers are almost twice as likely as other parents to choose private schools for their own children, the study by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute found. More than 1 in 5 public school teachers said their children attend private schools.
In Washington (28 percent), Baltimore (35 percent) and 16 other major cities, the figure is more than 1 in 4. In some cities, nearly half of the children of public school teachers have abandoned public schools. In Philadelphia, 44 percent of the teachers put their children in private schools; in Cincinnati, 41 percent; Chicago, 39 percent; Rochester, N.Y., 38 percent. The same trends showed up in the San Francisco-Oakland area, where 34 percent of public school teachers chose private schools for their children; 33 percent in New York City and New Jersey suburbs; and 29 percent in Milwaukee and New Orleans.
Michael Pons, spokesman for the National Education Association, the 2.7-million-member public school union, declined a request for comment on the study's findings. The American Federation of Teachers also declined to comment. Why do teachers pay dues to organizations that destroy the opportunities they afford their own children? "Public education in many of our large cities is broken," the surveyors conclude. "The fix? Choice, in part, to be sure."

Feb 03 Reason.com A long, but great read detailing Edison Charter school's triumph and the backlash of the powerful teacher's Unions. And a follow-up.

11/9/05 Washington Post Philadelphia's School Reform Commission had decided to turn over 45 of the city's 265 public schools to such groups as Edison, a for-profit company, in the hope that outside managers with new ideas would succeed where a succession of school boards and superintendents had failed. Teachers union leaders predicted that the approach -- alternately known as a "partnership management model" or "diverse provider model" -- would lead to more disappointment. <.> Overall, Edison's 20 schools in Philadelphia averaged a gain of 10 percentage points in the portion of proficient students last year, compared with an average annual gain of less than half a percentage point in the previous seven years before Edison took over, company officials said.

11/15/04 Boston Globe - Massachusets state legislators, beholden to the special interest teacher's Unions, have capped the number of Charter schools that can open. Charter school advocates, emboldened by a major Beacon Hill victory last summer, want the Legislature to clear the way for more students to attend the quasi-independent public schools in Boston and dozens of other Massachusetts cities where waiting lists are large and growing. Leaders of Boston's charter schools have met twice in the past month to weigh strategies for raising a state cap that limits the number of students who can attend charters in each school district. Boston reached the limit over a year ago, so existing charter schools cannot expand and no new ones can be created in the city, even though there are more than 6,000 students waiting to get into Boston's 18 charter schools.

A total of 152 communities around the state are at the ceiling. Currently, there are more than 15,000 students enrolled in 56 charter schools in Massachusetts. "Parents and students are definitely banging on our doors to get in," said Michael Duffy, executive director of Boston's City On A Hill Charter School. The school, which has roughly 250 slots, has 325 students on its waiting list.

The fight pits charter school supporters such as Governor Mitt Romney against opponents such as the Boston Public Schools and the teachers' unions, who are generous campaign contributors, especially to the Democrats who dominate the Legislature. <.> Backers also believe that a revised charter school financing system, designed to [permanently] shield traditional public schools from financial harm [A bad idea, but the only way to get the bribed lawmakers in the pockets of the Unions to vote for the law], will make the idea of creating additional charters more politically palatable on Beacon Hill. Earlier this year, lawmakers agreed to give school districts more money for the students they lose to nearby charter schools, and to adjust the amount of money that charter schools get to more accurately reflect the actual students they enroll. But opponents, who believe charter schools harm traditional public schools, are vowing to fight any expansion. Despite the fact that public schools currently don't even loose any money when they loose students to Charter schools (the more the public schools fail the more they will be rewarded in what they can spend per pupil), Richard Stutman, president of the Boston Teachers Union said, "But it's not a level playing field for us." No, it's not a level playing field for the Charter schools and they're still gaining students. As CA Justice Janice Rogers Brown said, "Government is the only enterprise in the world which expands in size when its failures increase."

5/1/05 Town Hall - Debra England gives an overview our educational system and charter schools.

Washington Times - By improving our education system we improve our children's lives and our society in more ways then one might think: Poor children who attended a premier preschool in the 1960s were more likely to graduate from high school, hold a job and stay out of jail than peers who didn't get an early education, says a landmark study that tracked the children for 40 years.
"The bottom line is that high-quality early care and education programs not only raise high school graduation rates and test scores but, decades later, they lead to higher incomes and lower crime rates," said Lawrence J. Schweinhart, president of the High/Scope Educational Research Foundation, which yesterday released the study of the Perry Preschool program.

The study shows a $17 return for every tax dollar invested in high-quality early education. It also urges policy-makers to offer similar preschool programs to all low-income children.

12/1/04 New York Times The courts in New York have tyrannically and unconstitutionally usurped the power to tax. It is not up to the legislators or the people to determine what should be spent on Education, but an elitist judge. The report is a major turning point in a lawsuit that could reshape the way education is financed in the state, and is being watched closely by politicians and educators around the nation. <.> The report is a significant step toward a court takeover of what has traditionally been a legislative role: deciding exactly how much money should be spent on schools. <.> The figure the panel recommended - a 43 percent increase to the city's $12.9 billion school budget - came very close to what the city said it needed. It was almost identical to the amount sought by the plaintiffs [I wonder how the Lawyers made out...] in the case and nearly tripled what Gov. George E. Pataki's lawyers had proposed in court. But how much of the money should come from the state or from the city itself the panel did not say, leaving unanswered one of the most daunting and contentious questions facing the lawmakers responsible for coming up with the money. <.> On virtually every major issue, the panel - which sought dozens of opinions during three months of public hearings - sided with the plaintiffs and dismissed the state's arguments. On the question of running the schools, the state argued that an extra $1.93 billion would suffice, but the panel chose a figure that exceeded what either the plaintiffs or the city demanded. Amazing, how the heck do they come up with these numbers! And the court doesn't even care how the money is spent: And while the state argued that more layers of oversight would be necessary to ensure that any additional money was well spent, the panel rejected the state's idea to set up a new statewide office that would monitor spending and wield the power to shut down failing schools. The governor's office called that aspect a particular failure of the report. "We are particularly concerned that the recommendations appear to reject any type of real reform and fail to overhaul the current accountability system, while recommending a substantial infusion of new spending," said Kevin Quinn, a spokesman for Governor Pataki.

6/4/05 Witchita Eagle The Kansas Supreme Court ordered the state Friday to spend $285 million more on schools this year --twice the increase lawmakers approved. That would boost education spending to about $3 billion, a 10 percent increase. We already saw a similar situation develop in New York: Court Panel Says New York Schools Need Billions More. What can one do when unelected officials usurp the power to tax? Sen. Tim Huelskamp, R-Fowler, said there has even been talk about impeaching justices. "This is not a case of judicial activism. This is a case of judges out of control," Huelskamp said. "We're facing a constitutional crisis that's been forced on us." He is right. What will the courts do if the elected legislators ignore them or take action against them? The state, a defendant, is also the owner of substantial assets, he said. "Those are subject to seizure and distribution. Putting their hands on money is not an impossible task for courts," he said. So, unelected officials demand to thieve other people's money to spend at their whim and then threaten to seize the property of citizens if they don't comply? Are these the actions of a Representative form of government, or a property respecting Republic - or a Tyrannical Dictatorship?

3/28/05 AFP via yahoo - It's a mix of a sob story about the plight of our 'underfunded' public schools and a hit piece on President Bush. The nation's public school systems are sinking further into debt, the Census Bureau reported Thursday. They were saddled with over $250 billion in red ink in the 2002-03 school year, up 11 percent from the previous year. <.> Democratic leaders angry with the first go-round of the education law say schools have not received enough money and that Bush's latest budget proposal would make it worse by cutting overall spending. <.> The data, the latest available, also reflect the first full school year after the No Child Left Behind Act was signed into law in January 2002. <.> The sweeping reforms aimed at upgrading school performance are a cornerstone of President Bush's education policy. Recall that, unfortunately, under President Bush education spending has risen by over 40%. By trying to slow his own massive and foolish increases, Bush gets labeled as 'cutting overall spending' on Education.

Considering the above sob story, wouldn't you think it's worth mentioning that the 100 highest salaried public school teachers in Illinois have a pay grade ranging from $173,077 (high end) to $132,940 (low end)? Check out this site, they list every one. And click here for the 100 highest paid Illinois public school administrators who make from $302,746 (high end) to $194,822 (low end). Pretty amazing huh? This is just for Illinois, I'm sure other states have similar problems. I'll post any other sites I run across here.

Here's a story from New Jersey detailing how teacher employment differs from regular employment and how pay is broken down in a wealthy suburban district.

6/5/05 New York Times In Scarsdale, 166 teachers - nearly half - have base salaries exceeding $100,000; for more than a dozen, base pay tops $120,000. Notice that there is some semblance of competition among these wealthier school districts because wealthier people can afford to not only move to a better school district, but their choice of where they can move expands the more they earn. This is why school choice, via charter legislation, aids the poorest communities the most. It is stunning that those who live in poorer communities elect leaders who will not stand up for their rights. This is most likely because they are constantly fed false information and ensnared in the elaborate and deceptive waves of cognitive dissonance generated by the mainstream media and our public education system and have difficulty coming to believe the initially counterintuitive truths of Conservative/Libertarian thought. Why would the Club For Growth, an outstanding political organization founded by a bunch of rich white guys, support school choice, while the NAACP and the Black Caucus are opposed to it?

5/8/05 Pittsburgh Post Gazette Added to 'A Charter School Tale'. Details the success that Pennsylvania Cyber Charter schools are having. Pennsylvania now has 11 cyber charter schools -- and a 12th has applied for a state charter -- with more than 10,000 students enrolled statewide, an increase of 50 percent over the last school year. <.> But the impact of the schools is felt in other ways, from the choices available to parents and students to the effect on traditional public schools, which have to pay for the charters and are gearing up more cyber offerings of their own to compete. Lol! 'Public schools, which have to pay for the Charters..'! This is the mindset that gave us our failing public education system. Public schools do not pay for Charters! Parents pay for good education, wherever they can find it. Notice how the public schools are now offering cyber applications of their own? Do you think this would have happened without competition? The number of cyber charter schools nationwide has nearly tripled in two years, said Anna Varghese of the Center for Education Reform, a pro-charter school reform group based in Washington, D.C. Nationwide, about 31,000 students are in 86 cyber charter schools, according to the center. <.> "There's always going to be demand for new alternatives. It's the same with McDonald's and Burger King," Varghese said. No, it is not the same. If Burger King lobbied politicians to close McDonalds while serving rotting food, THEN it would be the same. I'd be willing to bet every last nickel that the teachers Unions in Pennsylvania lobbied against these new Charter schools. This reporter doesn't state this once in the entire story. However, Popular Cyber Charter Schools BEWARE: A state law passed in 2002 requires any new cyber charter applications as well as any renewals to be decided by the state Department of Education. If you can't beat 'em, regulate 'em to death. I'd also bet every last nickel that this is what the Teacher's Unions are trying to do right now in Pennsylvania. You Pennsylvanians better fight for your freedom - it never comes easy.

3/8/05 ChicagoBusiness.com More on perks for some of the aforementioned Chicago Public School teachers.

This headline should read: 'Thieving teachers Unions in corrupt deal with mayor to steal more taxpayer money'. Some highlights: Chicago public school teachers would be eligible to receive up to $7,500 toward a housing mortgage under a new program announced Tuesday. Mayor Richard Daley said he will ask the City Council to appropriate $250,000 for the program. Chicago Public Schools is expected to match that amount. <.> The grants could be used in conjunction with existing housing incentives for teachers. For the past couple of years, the Teacher Housing Resource Center – a joint effort between the school system and the city – has offered discounts on housing costs, including rents. More than 600 teachers have saved money through the program, according to officials. Oh? There are existing programs on top of this? HUD, a bloated wasteful government agency whose primary function was/is concentrating welfare recipients, has a program called 'Teacher Next Door': The Teacher Next Door program was established by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to offer single-family houses, townhouses and condominiums for sale to teachers at a 50 percent discount. <.> For example, if a HUD home is listed for $100,000, a teacher can buy it for $50,000. To make a HUD home even more affordable, you may apply for an FHA-insured mortgage with a downpayment of only $100 and you may finance all closing costs.

1/17/05 San Francisco Chronicle - Lawyers who recently won a very big public-interest lawsuit to make San Francisco schools more accessible to the disabled apparently hope that the case will produce some very big benefits for themselves as well -- like $9 million in fees. And some of the hourly billings are pretty eye-popping. Jose Allen, a partner at the San Francisco firm Skadden Arps, is asking for $810 an hour. Mary Gillespie of the San Francisco Legal Aid Society-Employment Law Center, is seeking $588 an hour. And her public-interest firm colleague, Patricia Shiu, is asking for $552 an hour. The other lead attorney, Guy Wallace of Schneider & Wallace, is requesting $522 an hour. "It's a travesty,'' says school district spokeswoman Lorna Ho. "Here they are said to be representing the kids, and yet the money is going to come straight out of the kids in the classroom.'' <.> After more than five years, the district, facing the prospect of a costly trial, agreed recently to a settlement. The deal calls on the district to shell out $300 million over the next 10 years to make classrooms fully accessible to the disabled and blind -- and that doesn't include all the legal costs of the case.<.> Allen is a local partner of the giant, New York-based Skadden Arps firm - - whose Web site touts its commitment to pro bono law work. "I have never known of any pro bono lawyer doing work at $800-plus an hour,'' Renne said. "To me, it's the height of hypocrisy.'' <.> Looks like the city hasn't heard the last of Wallace and his attorney friends. Wallace recently filed another, potentially much bigger claim -- this one alleging disability problems citywide, ranging from inadequate pedestrian traffic signals to noncompliant office buildings. And you can bet the meter on this monster claim is already running.

9/29/1967 Time magazine archives - Some 11,000 Detroit teachers, including 6,400 members of the American Federation of Teachers, will get raises of $850 annually for two years, work one week less a year, enjoy a bigger voice in textbook selection and curriculum changes. They also won a 30-child limit on class size in the first three grades of ghetto schools and a 39-student limit in all other classes. Unhappy school-board members could only shrug their shoulders when asked where most of the $18.7 million for pay raises will come from, nod hopefully toward the state legislature. So, apparently teachers Unions, not elected officials, decide what taxes you will pay. Taxation without representation?

9/2/04 Washington Post Maryland School districts try to sneak a raise for Administrators and got busted: Owens was upset that the money included about $625,000 for what she considered "excessive" and "improvident" salary increases for many school administrators. Matt Diehl, a county spokesman, said the raises ranged from $4,000 to $16,000 and in many cases were going to administrators who already make more than $70,000. <.> In an interview, he said the council felt blindsided by the raises. "It was never communicated that this was going on," he said. "We've been trying to put money back into the classrooms," Middlebrooks said. "Then along comes these administrators, a lot of whom are making $90,000 or $100,000, and you give them off-the-chart raises. It just sends the wrong message." Owens, too, voiced frustration with the school system, saying in a statement that the raises came about "in a manner that was not explained to the county budget officer, to the county executive or to the County Council." <.> The money for the raises was part of the $3.5 million appropriation, which would have paid for a school summer program, a program for gifted students and library materials. Owens called on the school system to submit a new proposal to fund those programs. I hope you don't mind that I didn't even bother posting the rebuttal for the other side.

Oakland Teachers And Students Protest Charter School Plan
1/13/05 KTVU 2 - More protests on school choice from the teachers Unions: OAKLAND, Calif. -- A large group of Oakland public school teachers and students is attending a school board meeting at Oakland High School tonight to protest plans to turn 13 schools into charter schools. At a news conference before the school board meeting began, Ben Visnick, the president of the Oakland Education Association, the union that represents school teachers, said teachers oppose the proposed move to charter schools because recent studies show such schools don't increase student achievement. <.> Ward has said change is needed because there is "a culture of failure" in Oakland schools, but Visnick said Ward is merely engaging in "teacher bashing." This is a typical ploy, character assassination, name calling, and demagauging. The same thing happened with Welfare Reform. Teri Hudson, a teacher at Sobrante Park Elementary School, one of the schools slated to become a charter school, said test scores at her school have increased 34 points a year for the last four years. "We don't promote a culture of failure - we have a culture of success.", Hudson said. <.> Katrina Scott-George, the school district's spokeswoman, said the 13 schools slated for reform "definitely are not succeeding" so change is needed. Ok, who is right then, Hudson or George? Again, this reporter doesn't tell us. Carla Farrell, a teacher at Hawthorne Elementary School, another school slated for charter conversion, charged that Ward's decisions "are based on economics, not on providing a better education for students." Translation: teacher salaries are more important then education.

6/30/05 Associated Press For $10,000, Kari Smith has gone ahead and had her forehead tattooed with the Web address of a gambling site. Why does this women need this money so bad? Does she have a:

Bountiful, 30, who sold her unusual advertising space on eBay, said the money will give her 11-year-old son a private education, which she believes he needs after falling behind in school.

You see, the government decided that Kari is too stupid to spend her own money on her school of choice so, under threat of imprisonment, Kari's tax money is stolen from her and conscripted to be wasted at her local, bloated, and failing, public school. In fact, even as her son now goes to a private school, her money will still be forcibly taken from her and squandered at her local public school. I say 'squandered' because teachers and administrative salaries are ridiculously inflated (per productivity) at the failing public schools and, since poor parents are forced to send their kids to the failing public schools, the public schools cannot be hurt by their abject failures and thus remain totally unaccountable.

Now, it might be the case that Kari is so poor that she pays no significant taxes (besides the taxes the government takes from her, wastes a good portion, and then returns to her in the form of shoddy health and shoddy retirement). If this is the case, then wealthier individuals are having their money confiscated and given to the failing school, which Kari's son is forced to attend. So, instead of forcing her to shoot herself in the foot, the government forces the better off citizens to do it.

Kari has a 'Teachers Union problem' because local and national teachers unions fight desperately to keep the educational status quo and donate huge sums of union dues to politicians, mostly Democratic, to sabotage any attempt at reform.

5/25/05 Associated Press Added to the article collection in 'A Charter School Tale': The Constitution long has ensured that Congress can't tell schools what to teach. But that's no longer the case for at least one topic -- the Constitution itself. The Education Department outlined yesterday how it plans to enforce a little-known provision that Congress passed in 2004: Every school and college that receives federal money must teach about the Constitution on Sept. 17, the day the document was adopted in 1787.

Now, given all of my lamentations about how little people understand the Constitution, my belief that many of our public schools propogandize liberalism (the Constitution is a very conservative document), and my deep respect for the Constitution, some of you might suspect I would have a very positive reaction to this story. Wrong. I have a very, very negative reaction.

[Democratic Senator] Byrd inserted the Constitution lesson mandate into a massive spending bill in 2004, frustrated by what he called a huge ignorance on the part of many Americans about history.

First, it is humorous to see Sen Byrd talk about ignorance of history and respect for the Constitution. Second, if Byrd can insert this sort of thing into a spending bill, then what's to stop someone else from sticking in something delegating, say, April 22nd, to lament about global warming and how greedy and reckless America is causing it and insinuating that more environmental regulations are needed and.... Oh, whoops! We already do that (Earth Day)? Well, you get my point... In 10 years how many school days will be totally controlled by the Federal Government? 5, 10, 30, 50? Third, notice how a faceless and un-elected government agency, which is unconstitutional in its existence, is charged with enforcing, according to their whims, an unconstitutional law! Our founding fathers must be rolling in their graves. Fourth, notice how this must have passed the 'Republican' house and senate and escaped veto by the Big Government Education 'Republican' President. Another pattern, these 'Republicans' always try and 'tweak' and 'adjust' and 'reform' government and often support expanding its powers when Big Government works to further their own agenda.

The Federal department of Education should be abolished, the Unions which stagnate our public school system should be stripped of their power, Sen Robert Byrd should be educated, and true Conservatives should run against the Republicans that acquiesced to the passage of this act. In a perfect world...

At every hour of every day, I can tell you on which page of which book each school child in Italy is studying.
- Benito Mussolini

9/9/05 Waternbury Republican-American Americans are opposed to school choice, declares Phi Delta Kappa, the international association for "professional educators" who believe it their mission to advocate for "publicly supported education." To bolster its position, PDK annually trots out a poll showing Americans oppose vouchers and other forms of choice in ratios approaching 3 to 2. True to its unflagging belief that the only good monopoly is the public-school monopoly, the news media annually report those biased results uncritically, even though the numbers are intuitively wrong. After all, America has witnessed in the last decade growing criticism of the performance of the public schools, as well as a groundswell of support for school choice. If Americans are so opposed to school choice, why do they keep demanding more choices?

So how does PDK get its polls to reflect a different reality? By loading the question to provoke the response it desires. The Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation (I highly recommend Friedmen's Free to Choose), which seeks to improve the quality of education in American by giving parents of all income and social classes the economic freedom to choose where to enroll their children, notes that PDK phrases its question to produce artificial opposition to choice, especially school vouchers. The PDK poll asks, "Do you favor or oppose allowing students and parents to choose a private school to attend at public expense?"

To test its premise about the PDK's loaded question, the foundation ran its own poll in which it asked half of those surveyed the PDK's question and the other half a question that reflects the truth about choice and vouchers:

"Do you favor or oppose allowing students and parents to choose any school, public or private, to attend using public funds?" Fifty-five percent of those asked the leading question opposed choice, while 37 percent favored it. Of those asked the accurate question, 60 percent supported choice and 33 percent were opposed. The wording change produced a 23-point shift.

Their conclusion: But Americans won't get the straight scoop as long as biased polls capture the headlines and lazy, ax-grinding journalists refuse, as the foundation put it, "to look at both sides of the issue and to scrutinize all research by the prevailing standards of scientific accuracy."

9/20/03 CBS Most Americans oppose voucher programs and think teachers aren't paid enough, a poll finds.
Support for a program that allows students and parents to choose a private school to attend at public expense dropped to 38 percent from 46 percent last year, according to the poll conducted by professional educational association Phi Delta Kappa International and Gallup.

This is why Conservatives/Libertarians believe there is a bias in the media. CBS news is doing nothing more than parroting the talking points of a hurtful, liberal special interest group, and working against the education of American children.

This sort of polling skewing is common in the media and by politicians of both parties, but especially the Democratic party, I recall it was heavily utilized when President Bush was attempting to explain the idea of private retirement accounts. This was added to 'A Charter School Tale'.

1990: 0 charter schools
January 2004: 684,000 students in 2,996 charter schools
October 2005: 1,076,964 students in 3,625 charter schools

1. New Orleans, LA 69%
2. Dayton, OH 28%
3. Washington, DC 25%
4. Pontiac, MI 20%
5. Kansas City, MO 20%
6. Youngstown, OH 20%

I still wonder how many of the nearly 4000 charter schools in the United States are really free. After all, it is the tendency of politicians and government to appease the people by changing the labeling of an issue. For example, fascists, in contrast to communists, appear to allow ownership of 'private property', but then the state contrives so many rules and regulations around what property owners could do with their property that, for all intents and purposes, the state owns all property in all but name. This difference of perception, brought about by psychological sleight of hand, still results in many believing there is a significant difference between fascism and communism.

Very interesting report from a great site, which was cited by numerous news reports, including the Washington Times (via the Club For Growth website). They obtained a leaked NEA survey given to its members. The NEA's own findings:

One question asked members how involved they were in the union at either the local, state or national level. Thirty-six percent of them said "not at all." Right away, you can write off approximately 972,000 NEA members who do nothing to affect the union's direction one way or the other. Among new members, those who have been with NEA for three years or less, the "not at all" group rises to 48 percent. When these new members were asked why they joined NEA, the top answer (20 percent) was that they had "no choice."

I highlight this because this is a figure I have been looking for a long time. Thus far, I've found varying answers in different states. Sometimes people are allowed to not join the union, but still forced to give some of their salary to it, as a condition of employment! For example, from a Chicago legal case (the Union lost):

Approximately 95% of the employees are members of the Union. Until 1982, the members' dues financed the entire cost of the Union's collective bargaining and contract administration, and nonmembers received the benefits of the Union's representation without making any contributions to its cost. In an attempt to solve this "free rider" problem, the Union and the Board entered into an agreement requiring the Board to deduct "proportionate share payments" from nonmembers' paychecks. The Union determined that the "proportionate share" assessed on nonmembers was 95% of union dues, computed on the basis of the Union's financial records.

Without knowing more it is difficult to do further analysis of this 20% number, such as if this represents just the number opposed to joining, those who were forced to join but would have joined anyway, or some combination thereof.

Still, when you consider that the NEA has given over $25 million dollars (over 90% to Democratic candidates) since 1989, the third highest of any organization (and actually even higher than this because of how campaign contributions are defined), it is apparent that somewhere in the area of $5 million dollars was conscripted from members who were, in all probability, forced into membership (not withstanding that a vast majority of Union members would opt out of the Union using their money to make political donation if they could).

The surveys also asked both members and local presidents to self-identify their political philosophies. This may well be the most controversial finding of the surveys, although it is consistent with previous surveys of NEA members.

Respondents were asked if they were conservative, tend conservative, liberal, tend liberal, or don't know. Fifty percent of NEA members said they were conservative or tend conservative. Only 40 percent described themselves as liberal or tend liberal.

Of course, local presidents are not at the top of the NEA pyramid. There are state and national representatives, and state and national executives. There is no comparable survey of their beliefs, but it isn't much of a stretch to infer that all these tendencies would continue as we moved further up.

As you can see, from my 7/25 post containing the link: 'These are your Teachers', the NEA agenda includes many things outside of education and that would probably be opposed by their members. Or would they? What do NEA members want their union to do?:

However, in a relative sense, their marching orders to NEA are obvious. "Improve/protect medical insurance" and "protect members against unfair actions" were deemed important by 90 percent of member respondents (local presidents agreed by 94 and 95 percent, respectively). Eighty-five percent want the Association to "provide legal protection" (local presidents agreed at 88 percent), and 84 percent want NEA to help "increase salaries" (local presidents – 93 percent). The only meaningful divergence of opinion between the two groups was on class size reduction. Seventy-five percent of members thought this should be a priority, but only 52 percent of local presidents thought so.

Hmmm... So teachers Unions look out for the interest of teachers. This isn't a criticism, it is just what a Union is supposed to do. So why does the NEA, the Media, and the Democratic party (which are pretty much one and the same) always talk as if the Teachers Unions care about the education of students? Why are Unions a credible source when discussing Charter Schools?

Of course, individual teachers care about the education of students, and I'd think even the Union bosses personally care about the education of students, but the goal of a Union is not improving the education of students, especially if it conflicts with improving working conditions of teachers (as it frequently does). I am attempting to demonstrate why one aspect of the many feedback loops in our horrid public education system is broken.

"When school children start paying union dues, that's when I'll start representing the interests of school children."

So why does the 'Conservative' membership not care about the direction the Union takes politically? Well, some do care and are acting bravely on their convictions. Others are apathetic and aren't really that politically active and are so are unaware. However, from my (limited) experience, a large group of these 'Conservatives' see local benefits of the Union doing things like legal representation, good salary and benefit negotiations, and have decided that these things are in their interest and so they put up with their National Union's liberalism... Many of these teachers oppose Charter Schools and other education reforms...

So, in conclusion, we have conclusive proof that Conservative Teachers are being forced to support the Democratic party and that parents of Conservative parents are forced to pay taxes that do the same. How do you feel about this? Is this is freedom? Why is this allowed to continue?

In California they are attempting to do something about it, via Prop 75, which requires that Unions obtain written permission from members to use their dues for political purposes and even the Liberal Los Angeles Times agrees:

However, the Unions have raised over $100 million to attempt to defeat this commonsense measure. They have raised at least a portion of this money by levying an involuntary 'tax' on their members (and even nonmembers), which a Federal Judge has upheld.

Interestingly, the editorial contains this: The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that union members cannot be forced to finance political activity. Really? I'd like to know more about his, especially considering that 20% of NEA members claim they had no choice but to join that Union....

However, sadly, even if this proposition passes, I will be surprised if the corrupting Union power diminishes, as they will 'comply' with the ruling in a convoluted way that still allows them access to the money of it's members. Or maybe they won't comply and just take a slap on the wrist fine. Why would I make this prediction? History.

OLYMPIA, WA - A Thurston County Superior Court judge today fined the National Education Association (NEA) $800,000 plus legal fees for “intentional” violations of a Washington state law that prohibits the unauthorized use of agency fees* for political activity. The NEA’s state affiliate, the Washington Education Association, was penalized more than $770,000 last year for breaking the same state law. The NEA’s fine bumps two earlier WEA fines to become the largest in Washington state history.

First it was his world history class. Then he saw it in his economics class. And his world issues class. And his environment class. In total, 18-year-old McKenzie, a Northern Ontario high schooler, says he has had the film An Inconvenient Truth shown to him by four different teachers this year. <.>

In England, the government has made the movie part of the public curriculum. In Spain, the government is buying copies of the movie for all of its schools. In Australia, private donors are buying copies for schools.

The point is not whether this movie or this opinion is accurate or not, although from what I've read there is much in it which is very inaccurate, but whether entire populations should be 'educated' en mass shrouded in such conformity. Especially over the opposition of parents.

Another example:
Students at Roger Williams University in Briston, Rhode Island, were forced to watch Al Gore’s global warming schlockumentary if they wished to graduate.

MINNEAPOLIS--Something momentous is happening here in the home of prairie populism: black flight. African-American families from the poorest neighborhoods are rapidly abandoning the district public schools, going to charter schools, and taking advantage of open enrollment at suburban public schools. Today, just around half of students who live in the city attend its district public schools.

Black parents have good reasons to look elsewhere. Last year, only 28% of black eighth-graders in the Minneapolis public schools passed the state's basic skills math test; 47% passed the reading test. The black graduation rate hovers around 50%, and the district's racial achievement gap remains distressingly wide. Louis King, a black leader who served on the Minneapolis School Board from 1996 to 2000, puts it bluntly: "Today, I can't recommend in good conscience that an African-American family send their children to the Minneapolis public schools. The facts are irrefutable: These schools are not preparing our children to compete in the world."

The school board has promised to address parent concerns, but few observers expect real reform. Minneapolis is a one-party town, dominated by Democrats, and is currently reeling from leadership shake-ups that have resulted in three superintendents in the last few years. The district has handled budget cutbacks and school closings ineptly, leading some parents to joke bitterly about its tendency to penalize success and reward failure.

Parents are particularly angry about seniority policies, which often lead to the least experienced teachers being placed in the most challenging school environments. Nevertheless, a few weeks ago the Minneapolis school board approved a teacher contract that largely continues this policy, along with other union-driven practices that perpetuate the status quo.

Minneapolis families seeking to escape troubled schools are fortunate to have the options they do. That's not the case in many other states, where artificial barriers--from enrollment caps to severe underfunding--have stymied the growth of charter schools.

The city's experience should lead such states to reconsider the benefits of expansive school choice. Conventional wisdom holds that middle-class parents take an interest in their children's education, while low-income and minority parents lack the drive and savvy necessary. Who defined this conventional wisdom? The usual 'experts'? In discussions with opponents of charter schools, this argument is frequently cited.

The black exodus here demonstrates that, when the walls are torn down, poor, black parents will do what it takes to find the best schools for their kids.

1/23/05 Herald Tribune A survey of certification-test scores yields alarming results More than half a million Florida students sat in classrooms last year in front of teachers who failed the state's basic skills tests for teachers. Here's a question, how many of those who weren't allowed to teach because they didn't meet 'certification requirements' would have passed these tests? The Department of Education study, the first of its kind, found that students learn less under teachers who had failed more than three times, said DOE spokesman MacKay Jimeson. Nine percent of teachers failed portions of the tests at least four times, according to the Herald-Tribune study. bearing on a teacher's abilities. The state report, which wasn't released Friday, led DOE officials to reverse statements they had made last spring. The officials said then that they hadn't reviewed teacher scores because the tests have no bearing bearing on a teacher's abilities.<.> Like most states, Florida requires teachers to pass three kinds of tests to earn professional certification. <.> But the Herald-Tribune found teachers who struggled for years to pass the test. Some were never able to pass and received a waiver that awarded them certification anyway.

So, what's the point in even having them? My point isn't that these tests are or aren't a good idea, but that they are a pointless bureaucratic mess because no one even knows if they work and the results have no meaning! Look how much time they waste on it: Hundreds of teachers, principals and university professors get involved in each test. Overall, thousands of people have a hand in writing the questions for all the exams. Is it any wonder they don't want reporters snoooping around?: In fact, the Department of Education refused to cooperate with the Herald-Tribune's investigation, and the newspaper eventually sued the department for failing to comply with a public records request. <.> Many teachers had a horror story about someone down the hall whose teaching skills or enthusiasm for the job were sub-par. This is a long article and goes on to describe how more money is needed etc... Recently Florida, under the excellent leadership of Governor Jeb Bush, passed some of the most extensive Charter school legislation in the nation. So there is hope. We'll see how it pans out.

6/29/04 AP - With all the whining about how underfunded out bloated public schools are, this story might catch you by surprise: The Education Department has found that all the states, the District of Columbia and eight territories have high cash balances left from 2002, including money meant for poor children, disabled students and limited-English learners. <.> More than $2.1 billion is unspent from 2002, or about 8 percent of the money allocated for five broad areas, including special education and adult education. <.> That money must be obligated — not spent, but at least legally earmarked toward a specific expense — by Sept. 30, which is 27 months after it was released to states. <.> States then have two final years to spend the money. Ultimately, school money not committed or spent returns to the federal treasury, as happened with $155 million last year. <.> House Republicans said Tuesday that states have $16.8 billion in unspent school money dating from the former Clinton administration, a figure that the Education Department confirmed but state school officials called misleading without context about how school financing works. <.> School officials say there are several legitimate reasons why money is in the bank, from the government's own 27-month timeline for incurring expenses to federal delays in approving the programs that the money is meant for. So, why can't this reporter straighten this out for us? The department issued its reminder, Jones said, to ensure that states don't miss their chances to use the money. But it's their money in the first place! It's our money - being stolen and wasted by pandering politicians when it often isn't even needed!

Speaking of which, the NEA, the nation's largest Union (composed of public school teachers), recently passed a resolution stating:

The NEA shall research the possibility of offering, as part of the existing training program, either regional or national levels of training that would support the significant history of labor unions. The training will have a focus that emphasizes delivery of age appropriate curriculum to students.

But, of course, the NEA is a nonpartisan, tax-exempt organization, which is only interested in the education of our children. Right. And North Korea is a workers paradise.

4/7/05 Washington Times As much as one-third of the tax-exempt National Education Association's yearly $271 million income (92% to the Democratic party) goes toward politically related activities, according to union documents filed with the Internal Revenue Service. The documents show that the 2.7 million-member teacher's union spends millions annually to field what one critic calls an "army of campaign workers," while maintaining that it spends nothing on politics.

Our tax dollars are currently going to pay the bloated salaries of teachers and administrators at our public schools, who in turn have their money confiscated by the NEA. Many Americans, like me, to put it mildly, dislike the policies of the NEA and the propaganda they are publicly advocating for our children. Don't like it? Tough. What can you do? Well, you could take your kids out of public school, but you'd still be forced to support the public schools, hence the unions. You could refuse to pay taxes, but then you would probably end in jail. See why I don't have respect for the law?

7/1/02 Evergreen Foundation A Thurston County Superior Court judge today fined the National Education Association (NEA) $800,000 plus legal fees for “intentional” violations of a Washington state law that prohibits the unauthorized use of agency fees* for political activity.

The NEA’s state affiliate, the Washington Education Association, was penalized more than $770,000 last year for breaking the same state law. The NEA’s fine bumps two earlier WEA fines to become the largest in Washington state history.

* Teachers who give up their union membership, often for political and ideological reasons, become “agency fee payers.” Washington state law strictly prohibits the use of any agency fees for political activity without first obtaining permission from each individual fee-payer.

Washington is one of only 5 states to pass a law like this. California Unions are terrified that a similar Schwarzenegger backed initiative will become law. So, of course, they accuse Schwarzenegger of being against teachers, against children, against education etc... What sort of society allows thieves to rail against the righteous?

This worries union officials because they know that workers, when given a choice, overwhelmingly refuse to support union political activity.

After Washington state passed paycheck protection, contributions to the Washington Education Association political committee dropped from over 80 percent of teachers down to 6 percent. Utah adopted paycheck protection in 2001 and now nearly 95 percent of Utah Education Association members refuse to contribute to the union’s political fund.

Workers refuse to support their union’s politicking because the spending is usually at odds with individual member preferences. For example, although at least 30 percent of California Teachers Association members are Republican, the CTA just approved a $60 per-member dues increase in order to raise $50 million to fight paycheck protection and a Republican governor’s education proposals.

This spending discrepancy is consistent with a national trend. The AFL-CIO and affiliate SEIU spent a combined $100 million to mobilize union household voters against President Bush in 2004, but surveys indicate that at least one-third of union voters cast their vote for Bush in the last election.

Forcing a politically diverse workforce to fund organized labor’s single-party devotion is fundamentally unfair. Paycheck protection is a common sense measure that requires unions to raise political capital one individual at a time—just like any other political player—but union officials can be expected to fight the encroachment on their monopoly over California public employees for all they’re worth.

A storm is brewing, given the unrest within organized labor’s leadership and the dissatisfaction among rank-and-file members.

The National Education Association recently concluded its annual meeting in Los Angeles - and you might be surprised what the largest teachers' union in America talked about and decided.

I mean, let's face it. The state of public education in American today is not exactly state of the art. You might think falling test scores, higher drop-out rates, and functional illiteracy of graduates - despite ever increasing taxpayer commitments - would be causes for concern and debate at a forum like this.

You would be wrong. Here are some resolutions adopted by the representative assembly of the professional association responsible for educating your kids:

That's a fair synopsis of the actions taken by the largest "education" association in America - the only union and lobby group that is actually tax-exempt by an act of Congress. What is peculiar about this list? Well, nothing if you are familiar with this thoroughly destructive organization. But, most people are not. Most Americans probably still think the National Education Association has something to do with education. It does not. It is a thoroughly politicized agit-prop group with a radical agenda. Of the nearly 70 resolutions acted upon affirmatively by the group, no more than a half-dozen had anything remotely to do with classroom education. The first 14 resolutions voted on had nothing whatsoever to do with education in the traditional sense. However, one NEA resolution adopted this year did perform a real service to the public. It's the one requiring the organization to make its resolutions more accessible to the public on its website. Check it out for yourself. Do I exaggerate? Is it time to review this activist organization's tax-exempt status? Is it time to start paying attention to the kind of indoctrination to which its members submit your children?

I checked the NEA website for accuracy. From a comment on the thead: The union is funded mostly by dues, which are taken out of our pay - even if we don't join the union, they get 2/3 of the dues cost out of our check anyway. We're talking almost $1000 per year per teacher! So we might as well pay the full dues and get a few benefits.

Let's do a review; we have N.O.W, the Children's Defense fund, NGLTF, liberal Democratic Senators, and African American leaders all opposing Welfare Reform. The worst part isn't that they opposed Welfare Reform, it's that they all purport to represent the groups that were most helped by it! We have a group representing women, a group representing children, a group representing African Americans, and a group that 'supposedly' represents all of these - and all are fighting to hurt their constituents as much as possible! If we were to expand the scene to encompass all the political issues of the day, we will find that all these groups support each other in everything they do, regardless of the interests of their members.

The Democratic party and a small group of liberal black and other minority leaders consider their primary goal, not the advancement and progress of African Americans, minorities, and the poor, but the advancement and progress of liberalism. In their minds the two goals are completely compatible. The idea that they are destroying their own people is alien to their very way of thinking.

Recall the incestuous nature of the NAACP, Children's Defense Fund, N.O.W, other liberals black leaders and Democratic lawmakers who fought against Welfare Reform? Usanewswire:

A group of national leaders in education today announced the largest-ever grassroots mobilization for public education on a conference call with reporters. The National Education Association, MoveOn.org, Campaign for America's Future, ACORN, NAACP Voter Fund and U.S. Hispanic Leadership Institute joined forces to drive the National Mobilization for Great Public Schools. (224)

6/30/05 FEE In creating valid Charter or Voucher legislation, many of the current anti-discrimination laws will need to be revised or eliminated. I see no reason why parents should be prohibited from sending their children to an all male, all female, or a selective cultural/ethnic school, if they so choose. The article ends with this truism:

Like it or not, it should never be forgotten that every government dollar comes with strings attached. Schools dependent on government money can never become the basis of an actual market-based educational system. To develop such a competitive system, we must allow and require schools to operate according to the rules of the market, where consumers—in this case parents—spend their own money. Reminds me of Frank Chodorov, who said:

9/24/05 WISI Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue Friday asked the state's schools to take two "early snow days" and cancel classes Monday and Tuesday to help conserve gasoline as Hurricane Rita threatens the nation's fuel supply line. If all of Georgia's schools close, the governor estimated about 250,000 gallons of diesel fuel would be saved each day by keeping buses off the road. (See previous post 9/1 and story on more gas ridiculousness from 'Republican Gov Sonny Perdue', who, by the way, was rated horribly by the Cato institute.)

Do you want your kid's education at the whim of some governor or some hurricane a few states over? Would you be willing to pay a bit extra to keep your kid in school when the price of gasoline is higher? But, this specific gasoline problem is not the reason I'm posting this story. It is to show the political control and power that government has over the education system. This manifests itself in many ways that don't make the news, but that all work to stagnate the education of our children and limit freedom.

As prices spiraled after Hurricane Katrina, Perdue suspended the state's gas tax and the Legislature quickly approved the measure in a special session, saving motorists an estimated 15 cents per gallon. The tax is scheduled to return a week from Saturday.

Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs lambasted teacher unions today, claiming no amount of technology in the classroom would improve public schools until principals could fire bad teachers. <.>

"I believe that what is wrong with our schools in this nation is that they have become unionized in the worst possible way," Jobs said. "This unionization and lifetime employment of K-12 teachers is off-the-charts crazy."

U.S. public schools should be run by private contractors who would graduate most students by 10th grade, concluded an expert commission sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

While I've been critical, perhaps unfairly because after all it's their money, of aspects of the Gates' charitable foundation in the past here at neoperspectives.com (as they don't seem to place heavy focus on the underlying political and economic roots of poverty, disease, and suffering), this recent proposal is quite interesting. The seriousness with which this analysis and proposal is being taken says volumes about the shifting debate and sentiment towards public 'education' and, if we're lucky, 'public' institutions in general. :)

The plan faces opposition from teacher unions, which expressed concern about the proposal to hand operations over to private contractors, and to shift the structure of teacher retirement pay.

The nation's largest teachers union, the 3.2 million-member National Education Association, said that recommendations such as state funding and private control of schools ``could potentially disenfranchise poorer communities and eliminate community voices.''

Of course, the opposite is true, and feel free to extrapolate this contradiction to policy areas beyond education:

The Education Trust, a Washington-based research and advocacy group, released a state-by-state analysis yesterday concluding that U.S. school funding policies leave poor and minority students with the worst schools, including less- qualified teachers and less-demanding curriculum.

The plan also calls for state funding to replace local property taxes, free pre-kindergarten and higher teacher pay on a merit-based system. The Gates Foundation and other sponsoring groups may pay states to help implement it, organizers said.

This is interesting because in the United States conditions exist that enable a private entity to create enough wealth, through rugged free market capitalism, or something close to it, to influence and shoulder massive costs normally paid by taxpayers. How much more productive is the genius of creative and caring individuals than that of government? Think of all the taxes government has taken from Gates and Microsoft over his lifetime. And for what? What does government actually accomplish with our tax money? Well, they do a good job supporting the Unions whose members have their dues forcibly returned to the very politicians that orchestrated the original theft. Gates and Co and the rest of us are plenty capable of running day to day functions we somehow believe can only be suited to government. In fact, we could easily perform the current (unconstitutional) 'jobs' of government and still have spending money leftover; provided they'd let us keep our own $$$, abolish existing institutions, and keep the heck outta our way!

A rather interesting article. In some instances it verges on conspiratorial, inferring that corporations want a dumbed-down labor force to do their work and buy their products. It traces the founding of compulsory schooling, and it is true, and a little known fact, that many of the architects, viewed the system under the auspices of statism and collectivism, with the following goals:

1) The adjustive or adaptive function. Schools are to establish fixed habits of reaction to authority. This, of course, precludes critical judgment completely. It also pretty much destroys the idea that useful or interesting material should be taught, because you can't test for reflexive obedience until you know whether you can make kids learn, and do, foolish and boring things.

2) The integrating function. This might well be called "the conformity function," because its intention is to make children as alike as possible. People who conform are predictable, and this is of great use to those who wish to harness and manipulate a large labor force.

3) The diagnostic and directive function. School is meant to determine each student's proper social role. This is done by logging evidence mathematically and anecdotally on cumulative records. As in "your permanent record." Yes, you do have one.

4) The differentiating function. Once their social role has been "diagnosed," children are to be sorted by role and trained only so far as their destination in the social machine merits - and not one step further. So much for making kids their personal best.

5) The selective function. This refers not to human choice at all but to Darwin's theory of natural selection as applied to what he called "the favored races." In short, the idea is to help things along by consciously attempting to improve the breeding stock. Schools are meant to tag the unfit - with poor grades, remedial placement, and other punishments - clearly enough that their peers will accept them as inferior and effectively bar them from the reproductive sweepstakes. That's what all those little humiliations from first grade onward were intended to do: wash the dirt down the drain.

6) The propaedeutic function. The societal system implied by these rules will require an elite group of caretakers. To that end, a small fraction of the kids will quietly be taught how to manage this continuing project, how to watch over and control a population deliberately dumbed down and declawed in order that government might proceed unchallenged and corporations might never want for obedient labor.

What this misses is that the vast majority of the Americans did not view education this way. In fact, parents often created their own schools in the absence of government. But the generally principles and theories of national education ensconced above were and are in the minds of many of the governing elite and even among some of our fellow citizens. However, they most often describe it differently, using terms like "good citizen" and the benefits of "having a common experience", "starting from the same page", and of course, "equality".

It is well known that babies and young children develop and learn, in part, by 'modeling', imitating the parents or older persons. In public school, we are all forced into environments with persons our same age.

If children could be cloistered with other children, stripped of responsibility and independence, encouraged to develop only the trivializing emotions of greed, envy, jealousy, and fear, they would grow older but never truly grow up. <.> In fact, until pretty recently people who reached the age of thirteen weren't looked upon as children at all.

One afternoon when I was seven I complained to him of boredom, and he batted me hard on the head. He told me that I was never to use that term in his presence again, that if I was bored it was my fault and no one else's. The obligation to amuse and instruct myself was entirely my own, and people who didn't know that were childish people, to be avoided if possible. Certainty not to be trusted. That episode cured me of boredom forever. <.>

Well-schooled people are conditioned to dread being alone, and they seek constant companionship through the TV, the computer, the cell phone, and through shallow friendships quickly acquired and quickly abandoned. Your children should have a more meaningful life, and they can.

I've concluded that genius is as common as dirt. We suppress our genius only because we haven't yet figured out how to manage a population of educated men and women. The solution, I think, is simple and glorious. Let them manage themselves.

Shaye Carter and Janie Lewis each risked a $300 fine yesterday because they had refused to withdraw their children from Career Connections Charter Middle School and enroll them in Pittsburgh Public Schools.

"I'm more concerned about my child's education," Ms. Carter said of daughter, Ria, a seventh-grader.

Pittsburgh parents said they're standing their ground because they've found a good thing. They said the school's curriculum, small class sizes and welcoming environment are improvements over regular Pittsburgh schools.

Parents who claim that an award-winning film on climate change is inaccurate and politically motivated are threatening a legal challenge over the Government's decision to send it to every secondary school.

The film by Al Gore, the former US vice-president, won an Oscar for the best documentary this year and Alan Johnson, the Education Secretary, says he wants teachers to use it to stimulate children into discussing climate change and global warming.

But a group of parents in the New Forest say the circulation of the film by the Government amounts to political indoctrination and is in breach of the Education Act 2002. Derek Tipp, their spokesman, has urged Mr Johnson to stop the film being sent out.

In my opinion, Liberalism is the ideology of default, what most school children emerge with from public school system. This story provides some reason why this occurs.

Condon recommended 121 firings last year, most of which are still pending due to union procedures. Only 41 of those firings have taken effect.

Let us not get caught up in the fearmongering that kids at public schools are getting molested or at any great risk beyond the standard brain rot experienced from a public education. The point here is that only 41 firings of 121 have taken effect due to union policies.

It's almost impossible because of the rules in the New York schools' 200-page contract with their teachers. There are so many rules that principals rarely even try to jump through all the hoops to fire a bad teacher. It took six years of expensive litigation before the teacher who wrote Cutee101 was fired. During those six years, he received more than $300,000 in salary.

"Up, down, around, we've paid him," said the chancellor. "He hasn't taught, but we've had to pay him, because that is what is required under the contract."

Hundreds of teachers the city calls incompetent, racist, or dangerous have been paid millions.

They're not really made of rubber, of course. They are big, empty rooms where they store the teachers they are afraid to let near the kids. The teachers go there and sit, hang around, read magazines, and waste time. The city pays $20 million a year to house teachers in rubber rooms.

The same thing takes place in the auto industry, and is why unions will drive it to bankruptcy (unlike public schools the auto industry actually has competition)...

4/15/06 Washington Post As mentioned in 'Secondary Problems of Socialism', American public school debates over the pledge, religion, evolution, and sex-ed are all counterproductive, as they skirt the main issue which lies at the root of the contentions: the political control of public school systems by the state. In Iraq, a similar debate is shaping up:

Education officials said they decided soon after Hussein fell from power that the wounds of his rule were so fresh -- and the potential for retaliatory violence so great -- that the subject was best omitted from school texts, at least for now. This year, a committee of experts selected by the Education Ministry will launch an ambitious overhaul of school curricula. The goal is to produce the first broadly accepted history of Iraq's troubled recent past, a formidable challenge in a country split along ethnic and sectarian lines.

"It will be very, very, very hard to represent all the viewpoints. It cannot be viewed as something imposed by the strongest," said an Education Ministry official who will head the new curricular development committee and is already reviewing nominations for roughly 40 other positions. He agreed to be interviewed on the condition that he not be named because of the sensitivity of the job.

"The former regime used the curriculum as a mouthpiece for its own political interests," he continued. "We have to be careful. We have to be tactful. We need to make books that are acceptable for a Kurd from the north, a child from Ramadi and a girl in Basra."

So we can see already what will take shape. A massive politically correct bureaucracy with top down control. Of course, the 'experts' they are selecting for this task will be no more 'expert' than the parents of the students.

Sometimes I think it is interesting to make cross cultural comparisons, as the effects of expansive government are the same.

9/14/05 CNN U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton ruled that the pledge's reference to one nation "under God" violates school children's right to be "free from a coercive requirement to affirm God."

Karlton said he was bound by precedent of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which in 2002 ruled in favor of Sacramento atheist Michael Newdow that the pledge is unconstitutional when recited in public schools.

There has been a torrent of outrage from the Right about this, in fact, I bet most Democrats also think this judge has gone over the line. Why do they think this and why are they angry? Because they like the Pledge how it is. But popular opinion should not dictate judicial philosophy. One of the most important characteristics of a Republic, as opposed to a runway, majority rules, democracy, is that the rights of the minority are protected. Socialism never protects the rights of the minority and this is nowhere more apparent than in our socialistic public education system.

    Socialism has spawned the problem because, under the Constitution, Newdow and the parents he is representing have a right to raise their children in ways consistent with their own values and should be allowed to do so free of government coercion. His point, that he is forced to pay tax money to an institution that flagrantly defies his values, is completely valid. After all, it was Thomas Jefferson who said:
    "To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical."
    Now, on the other side, we have the vast majority of Americans who don't have a problem with 'Under God' and don't mind it being in public schools. Yet, some of these parents have problems with evolution being taught in school and sex/ed etc.. etc.. Their rights are being violated in the same way as Newdow's - opinions they abhor are being taught to their own children with their own tax money. Both of these aberrations are equally repulsive.
    To profess an opinion, or develop legal arguments, one way or the other in regards to either of these issues is besides the point and counterproductive as it misses the bigger picture: socialism of public schools. If charter schools/school choice existed (or government was completely removed from education), then no one could complain about the happenings in the school their kids attend because no one is forced to send their kids to any particular school.
    But our public schools are not run by parents, or businessmen seeking customers, they are run by the government: local, state, and increasingly and most unfortunately, Federal, and so they are not free from political control. Thus, these problem exists. Both Newdow and other parents who disagree with any aspect of the public education forced on their kids should join forces to destroy educational socialism. Yet, because of superficial differing ideology, an alliance of this nature appears to be most difficult. (For more see 'Secondary Problems of Socialism'.

The teachers unions have more influence over the public schools than any other group in American society. They influence schools from the bottom up, through collective bargaining activities that shape virtually every aspect of school organization. And they influence schools from the top down, through political activities that shape government policy. They are the 500-pound gorillas of public education. Yet the American public is largely unaware of how influential they are--and how much they impede efforts to improve public schools.The problem is not that the unions are somehow bad or ill-intentioned. They aren't. The problem is that when they simply do what all organizations do--pursue their own interests--they are inevitably led to do things that are not in the best interests of children. <.>

These interests drive their behavior, and this is not going to change. Ever. If the teachers unions won't voluntarily give up their power, then it has to be taken away from them--through new laws that, among other things, drastically limit (or prohibit) collective bargaining in public education, link teachers' pay to their performance, make it easy to get rid of mediocre teachers, give administrators control over the assignment of teachers to schools and classrooms, and prohibit unions from spending a member's dues on political activities unless that member gives explicit prior consent.

These reforms won't come easily because the unions will use their existing power, which is tremendous, to defeat most attempts to take it away. There is, however, one ray of hope: that the American public will become informed about the unions' iron grip on the public schools and demand that something be done. Only when the public speaks out will politicians have the courage--and the electoral incentive--to do the right thing. And only then will the interests of children be given true priority.

Here is the WSJ response to the American Federation of Teachers 'outrage' at Terry's article.

2/23/05 CNN Education Secretary Rod Paige called the National Education Association a "terrorist organization" Monday as he argued that the country's largest teachers union often acts at odds with the wishes of rank-and-file teachers regarding school standards and accountability. An administration official said the secretary was "clearly joking" but he should not have used the "terrorist" label in taking issue with the NEA -- which is not only the largest teachers union but also a major player in Democratic Party politics. <.> It was an inappropriate choice of words to describe the obstructionist scare tactics the NEA's Washington lobbyists have employed against No Child Left Behind's historic education reforms. "I also said, as I have repeatedly, that our nation's teachers, who have dedicated their lives to service in the classroom, are the real soldiers of democracy, whereas the NEA's high-priced Washington lobbyists have made no secret that they will fight against bringing real, rock-solid improvements in the way we educate all our children regardless of skin color, accent or where they live. <.> The NEA is headquartered in Washington where every year the organization spends about $1 million lobbying, according to The Associated Press. The NEA and its political action committee donated $3.1 million to federal candidates and the two political parties in the last presidential election cycle, the AP reported. About 90 percent of those donations went to Democrats. These dues are, in many cases, required and used involuntarily by the Unions without the consent of their members. Obviously a 'terrorist organization' is not an accurate description of the NEA. But it would be accurate to say they are terrorizing Education Reform in this country.

Home-schooling has been illegal in Germany since Adolf Hitler outlawed it in 1938 and ordered all children to be sent to state schools. <.> Only some 500 children are being home-schooled in a country of 80 million. Home-schooling families are prosecuted without mercy.

    If you suspect Plett is guilty of a very serious crime, guess again. She was arrested and thrown in prison for homeschooling her children.
    Homeschooling, along with any educational institution other than state-run schools, was outlawed by Adolf Hitler in 1938. But a recent decline, both academically and morally, in the country’s public school system has more and more German parents looking for better ways to educate their children.
The Konrads contended that Germany’s compulsory school attendance laws were a violation of their human rights.
    The human rights court ruled: “Parents may not refuse the right to education of a child on the basis of their convictions,” adding that the right to education “by its very nature calls for regulation by the state.”

7/25/05 National Education Association Condescension and idiocy from the NEA. As mentioned, the NEA has fought a decades long loosing battle with the tiny homeschooler associations. More on that:

A number of courts in other states ruled against educational freedom, however. By the early 1980s, homeschoolers in many states were left with difficult choices: hide, move, or persuade the legislature to create a new legal option for parents who educate their own children in their own homes. Remarkably enough, homeschoolers were able to persuade one legislature after another to pass homeschool statutes in the 1980s:

>> 1982 Arizona and Mississippi legalize homeschooling.
>> 1983 Wisconsin and Montana follow suit.
>> 1984 Georgia, Louisiana, and Virginia pass homeschool statutes. Rhode Island gives superintendents the authority to "approve" homeschool programs.
>> 1985 Arkansas, Florida, New Mexico, Oregon, Tennessee, Washington, and Wyoming all enact homeschool statutes.
>> 1986 After homeschoolers won a federal court case, Missouri legalizes home education.
>> 1987 Maryland, Minnesota, Vermont, and West Virginia all permit homeschooling.
>> 1988 Colorado, New York, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania allow parents to teach their own children at home.

"The Evil Empire"
Three states (North Dakota, Iowa, and Michigan) prosecuted homeschoolers so fiercely that they became known as the "Evil Empire." One family after another was prosecuted for teaching their own children in their own homes, and the courts were quick to convict. Finally, in 1989, after seven fruitless appeals to the North Dakota Supreme Court, homeschoolers finally won. The legislature legalized home education.

The next state in the Evil Empire fell in 1991, when Iowa finally enacted a homeschool statute. One official within the Iowa Department of Education still did her best to block homeschooling through restrictive state regulations, but freedom-loving families in Iowa worked even harder to keep the freedom they had earned. (In the end, the homeschoolers won, and the disgruntled official left the Iowa Department of Education to work in another state agency.)
By 1993, only one state still routinely prosecuted homeschoolers: Michigan. Then, on May 25, 1993, five judges on the Michigan Supreme Court overruled four dissenting judges to allow sincere religious parents to teach their own children at home without a teacher's license. It was not until 1996 that the state legislature finally allowed any parent to teach a child at home without some assistance from a certified teacher.

A generation of baby boomers, who were in the thick of parenting and who were dismayed at the bureaucratic mindset that had overtaken American public education, now had inspiration to take the educational road less traveled. <.> Some home educators think of their endeavor as 'family-schooling' or 'parent-funded' and want the practice to remain wholly independent of government money and control, an issue that is often debated by home education bloggers and activists.<.> But in an age of unprecedented technological innovation and mobility, one fact is clear: It’s relatively easy and cost-effective for a youngster to bypass institutionalized schooling and receive a well-rounded education. Online classes, homeschool cooperatives, tutors, internships, volunteer work, travel, home businesses, hobbies, sabbaticals, even the great outdoors - these serve as gateways to the examined, enriched life. The article ends with this conclusion under the 'Strength of Homegrown Versus Mass Produced': When it’s all said - and by now a countless number of articles, commentaries, and research papers have been written about homeschooling - perhaps the greatest lesson to be learned is how important the concept of liberty is to the delivery of education. Parents must have opportunity to do what is right by their children and not be limited by geographic location, punitive state laws, or societal prejudices. When freedom and choice peacefully exist, students thrive, and, ultimately, society benefits. As Dr. Lines (2000) has stated, "The hard evidence suggests that the vast majority of homeschooling families are more active in civic affairs than public school families." As seen in previous articles, the Teachers Unions and the public education system fought against the legalization of homeschooling and today continue to attack it with burdensome regulations.

Associated Press - A hostile article about home schoolers. This entire story is an insult to parents trying to save their kids from the ravages of public school that is being forced on them. Home schooling is growing in popularity in the United States with almost no oversight and little accountability (as opposed to?), leaving the power to educate and raise children solely to parents, the Akron Beacon Journal reported Sunday. The U.S. Department of Education estimated in July that about 1.1 million children are home schooled, or about 2 percent of the nation's 53 million children ages 6 to 18. The number is growing 10 times as fast as the general school-age population, the department estimated. At it's heart, home schooling is a parental rights movement, driven by a growing dissatisfaction with public schools, the newspaper reported as part of a seven-part series. Some home-schooling parents maintain their right to raise their children is God-given. So, the right to take this 'privilege' away from these families is what? State-Given? Researchers told the newspaper that the academic world has been reluctant to study home schoolers because a large number of families resist outside contact (are they a cult?) and prefer not to answer questions. Friction exists between home schoolers, who see their movement as a fundamental parental right, and the social workers, school officials and others who try to monitor the children. Yes, the home schoolers resent the fact that elitists desire full control over their children. James Muchmore, a Western Michigan University professor, has studied the home schooling movement and, without pointing fingers at either side, believes it is emerging as a polarizing issue. "It is becoming almost like the abortion issue and gun control - those perennial issues with fanatics on both sides who don't trust each other one bit,'' Muchmore said. More political correctness - both sides are equally to blame, yadda yadda... Parents trying to protect their children from the government are not 'fanatics'!

2/9/05 HSLDA - In fact, if the AP article posted above this one were to objectively analyze things, they would see that homeschoolers are under assault all across the nation by education interests: Several states have introduced bills that would restrict the freedom to homeschool. Attempts to Impose State Assessments on Homeschools For example, both New Mexico and South Dakota filed bills that would force homeschool students to take state-selected standardized tests in the public school or under the supervision of a certified teacher. These bills violate a federal prohibition in the No Child Left Behind Act that forbids states to require homeschoolers to take the state assessment. (Considering D.C. Schools aren't obeying the law requiring kids be able to transfer schools (see D.C. section below for other violations of NCLB), these folks might as well break the law too!)

New Jersey introduced a bill in 2004 that would give the state Board of Education virtually unlimited power to impose new restrictions on homeschoolers, force homeschoolers to take a state assessment based on public school curriculum and turn over private medical information to the public schools. The bill was defeated last year after hundreds of homeschoolers and HSLDA staged large rallies at the Capitol in opposition. It has been reintroduced at the beginning of the 2005 legislative season. <.> After Democrats took control of the House, Senate, and Governorship in Montana, a long-time anti-homeschool Senator filed one of the harshest bills we have seen for a long time. The bill would transform one of the best homeschool laws in the nation to one of the worst. It would require that homeschools be supervised by a certified teacher and monitored bi-annually by the school district. Among other restrictions, it would even prohibit the homeschooling of any child with developmental disabilities in spite of HSLDA studies proving that special needs students learn better in a homeschool setting. It also prohibits homeschooling by stepparents and legal guardians! <.>

An Oregon Senate bill turns the clock back by requiring families to submit a yearly notice and standardized test results to their local school district. The legislature had previously removed these requirements from the law. HSLDA Attorney Thomas Schmidt is working with the state homeschool association OCEAN to defeat this bill.

Attempts to Expand Jurisdiction over Homeschoolers Besides these legislative challenges, families are also facing major expansion of state jurisdiction over their children in Michigan, Wyoming, Hawaii, Colorado, Indiana, New Jersey, and Iowa. All seven of these states have introduced one or more bills expanding the compulsory attendance age in the state, thus requiring parents to comply with school regulations for longer periods of time. The goal of the teachers unions is to lower the mandatory school age to three years of age and raise it to at least 18 years old. <.> Our legal legislative team at HSLDA, headed by Senior Counsel Chris Klicka, is made up of five lawyers and six legal assistants. They are actively working around the clock to defeat all of these restrictive homeschool bills and continue to monitor hundreds of bills in all 50 states. They are also working on promoting many bills that will advance homeschool freedoms. <.> These are the attacks the tiny homeschoolers associations faces. They have 11 people fighting the millions of dollars of the Unions and establishment education interests. And the homeschooling parents are 'fanatics'?!?

4/2/05 The Southern Illinoisian This story has been added to the collection of articles at the end of 'A Charter School Tale'. Williamson County State's Attorney Charles Garnati is taking a tougher stance with parents who fail to follow established curriculum guidelines when home schooling their children. Who 'establishes' these curriculum guidelines? The state or the parents? If the state can throw mothers in jail who don't follow 'established curriculum guidlines' then it really isn't 'homeschooling', it's state education at home, which perhaps is just what these elitists want. You think I'm exaggerating about mothers being 'thrown in jail'? On Thursday, he announced at a press conference that he has charged Marion resident Kim Harris with permitting truancy, a Class C misdemeanor punishable up to 30 days in jail and a $500 fine. Garnati adds, "Unfortunately, there is no law on the books that criminalizes improper home schooling." This is false, it is exactly what he's doing. Garnati stressed that he supports home-schooling in general, just not for parents who abuse the privilege. You see, by the sheer benevolence of the state, the masses are granted the special privilege of not always having their child forced into compulsory attendance of what they (the parents/masses) might view as a bloated, failing, and propagandizing, public school, which, on a side note, is also forcibly funded with their stolen tax dollars. Marion High School Principal Gerald Murphy said the dispute is not whether or not children are enrolled in public schools or home-schooled, but rather if the parents who choose to home school are trying to get around the system and not provide a quality education for their child. You mean to tell me the very people that have been fighting real education reform tooth and nail for 50+ years are now going to determine what is or isn't a 'quality education'? What is even the point of these 'truancy laws'? Who is the parent of your child? Is it you.. or the STATE?

6/7/05 USA Today We'll give credit where credit is due. This is a pretty fair, thus rare, article on homeschoolers. Some highlights:

There were more than 1.1 million home-schooled youths in the USA in spring 2003, up from 850,000 in 1999, according to the most recent numbers from the National Center for Education Statistics. That's about 2.2% of the USA's student-age population, or one of every 45 students. Most learn at home because of their families' religious beliefs or concerns about the educational environment at traditional schools. (Which they are forced to pay for) emphasis mine.

Three years later, home-schoolers won first, second and third place in the 2000 national spelling bee. And May 25, seventh-grade home-schooler Nathan Cornelius of Cottonwood, Minn., won the 2005 National Geographic Bee.

Despite its newfound acceptance, home schooling has had to battle for legal and social legitimacy.The National Education Association, which represents public school teachers, demanded tighter controls on home schooling, asking lawmakers to ensure that home study is monitored by local school administrative personnel and that students participate in state or locally mandated testing programs in "suitable settings." The NEA still has that position but is no longer lobbying for those tougher rules. (We saw in a previous article that homeschoolers are under attack from all over. I doubt that this statement is true) Coaches and academics say home-schooled athletes have plenty of motivation and superior time-management skills. "The paradox of home schooling is that freedom from adult time management usually results in an increase in time-management skills by the children," Stevens says. "Home schooling makes it possible to develop relationships with a wider range of people. Schools are organized by age and organize kids' lives for them. "Home schooling obliges them to be more responsible." Paul Yetter, who coaches Hoff, says she is a master of her time. "She is always on time, to the minute," he says. emphasis mine This last part is especially interesting to me. Another case of freedom yielding benefits.

Ron Hasley said he's "a constitution kind of guy," who will pursue the issue, not only for his daughter but for other homeschool students. "I pay taxes," he said. "I'm asking for a service, and I'm not getting it. I hope what happens here sets precedence for the state." A 'constitution kind of guy'? Whadayaknow? I thought these sorts were extinct. :)

9/23/05 UC Berkeley News "We don't think they're geniuses," said Pierce [Father], who got his undergraduate Asian Studies degree in 1991. "We think it's a question of hard work and focus."

How these siblings wound up in college at such a young age is actually very simple, according to their parents. Ma and Pierce didn't originally intend to homeschool their children and sent them off to kindergarten and then Montessori school, Charles for one year and Mayumi for two. But the school relocated further away from them and they reconsidered their options, Pierce said. "The whole thing with our kids is that we just found it heartbreaking to see their progress slow down when they went to school," he said. They signed up for a home schooling seminar being held in Berkeley, met some other home schooling parents in the area, and made the plunge. "We were afraid they wouldn't reach their full potential if they went the normal way," Pierce said.

"We went to the library a lot, and I let them just read whatever they liked. On Sundays they went to Barnes & Noble to read new books," said Ma, who eventually received her J.S.D. from Boalt Hall in 2000. "Now, it's their favorite place." Making learning fun and tapping natural curiosities is what government (public) schools generally cannot do because of broken feedback loops in the system. Added to 'A Charter School Tale'.

11/23/05 Agape Press I only posted this because it reaffirms the trend to greater homeschooling and freedom from the public school system, but most importantly, it has a great quote:

Meanwhile, he points out, home schooling has experienced tremendous changes, growing from its early days of being viewed with suspicion and skepticism by government and education officials [This is an understatement, as previously stated, homeschooling used to be illegal and homeschooling parents used to face jail time. Even today they still face regulatory harassment by politicians and teachers Unions.] to now offering large state conventions and curriculum fairs and even exerting influence with state legislatures around the nation.

Home schoolers were once outcasts, Moore asserts, "but the tide has turned, and now Christians who are public schooling their children are on defense." Now it is those parents with kids in government schools, he says, who must "give an explanation of why they're doing such a terrible thing."

Lol, gotta love it. Although, I wish this article wasn't written with such a Christian angle, as not only Christian parents should be asking themselves these questions.... [Of course, a little disclaimer before I get hate mail: I've never insinuated all public schools are terrible, just that a vast majority are.:)]

Boston-based Sherry Robartez noticed her daughter was losing joy once she entered kindergarten, but that her personality change and attitude problem disappeared once school was out for the summer. "So I pulled her out in kindergarten and started her in homeschooling," stated Robartez.

I've created a special section for news articles about these schools because the happenings in the District are most illustrative of the patterns we've been seeing and I've been following developments in the District fairly closely over the years. For background, experimental voucher and charter school legislation were recently passed by Congress (which has the authority to govern D.C.) over the bitter objections of the teachers Unions and, therefore, many Democrats in the Senate. D.C. has the highest rate of spending per student in the nation and the lowest test scores in the nation. Again, money is not the problem. Both of these legislations only passed after the public schools were guaranteed not only not to loose any of their funding, but in some cases even given additional funding!

I visited public schools that were scenes of barely controlled chaos. I walked halls that teemed with students 15 minutes after the bell had sounded for the start of class. I choked on the smell of marijuana in the stairwells. Little had changed when I visited a District high school last year.

I've listened to teachers and principals talk about students with barely disguised contempt, heard teachers gossip about students' sexual activity and had others refuse services or accommodations that they were legally obligated to provide.

When some neighbors considering the school called to schedule a visit, however, the receptionist was genuinely puzzled.

My neighbors and I kept calling. Two or three weeks later, school staff members agreed to let us in. I found the building clean and well-maintained. The classes were quiet and students attentive.

The next step was meeting with the principal. That took more letters and calls; so many, in fact, that Fenty -- then our Ward 4 council member -- offered to call on our behalf. I thanked him but said no. It shouldn't take a council member's intervention to get a principal to meet with parents.

We thought we were going to be able to when our son won a lottery spot in a bilingual Montessori charter school that was just starting. For three years, from preschool through kindergarten, we watched him thrive with the same teacher, who truly valued him. Early in his first-grade year, however, it became clear that while energy and passion were important in starting a school, they were poor substitutes for teaching and administrative experience.

The problems began when the school finally moved into a building of its own. Pepco and Verizon wouldn't start services because a clerk in the District's notoriously inefficient Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs hadn't completed the paperwork for the certificate of occupancy.

Staff members worked to correct this, but it took parents' writing the utilities (I asked Verizon's president how it would look if something happened to a child because no one could call 911) to get the lights turned on and the phones working.

8/11/05 Washington Post Twenty-seven KIPP charter middle schools, including one in the District, have posted "large and significant gains" beyond what is average for urban schools, according to a report by the Educational Policy Institute. The Virginia Beach-based research organization, using data provided by the Knowledge Is Power Program, said 1,800 mostly low-income black and Hispanic fifth-graders showed gains significantly above average in reading, language and mathematics from 2003 to 2004.

It was the largest study so far of KIPP, which has 48 schools in the United States, including three in the Washington area. Some experts have cited KIPP, begun by two teachers in 1994, as an example of what disadvantaged students can achieve if given more time in smaller schools, as well as firm homework requirements and well-trained principals with the power to hire and fire teachers.

I wonder what these teachers think about the teacher's Unions attempts to outlaw and crush their schools. In 'A Charter School Tale' I state:

In fact, brutal bidding wars between the Charter schools often erupted over the top teachers. Headhunter type organizations were paid handsomely by Charter schools to seek out and recruit top teachers and administrators from across the country. Although teacher salaries, especially the starting salaries, were often lower then they had been under the monopolistic public schools, with hard work and perseverance, the top teachers and administrators could often make more than ever would have been possible under the stifling Unions. Some teachers quit the public schools to start their own Charter schools. A few of these teachers, through their hard work and successful school design, became fabulously wealthy as their schools prospered. Some of the larger Charter corporations went public and their stocks soared. Billions of dollars of newly created wealth, added to the national GDP, reflected the success of the new educational system. Teachers sometimes owned, or were paid in, stock from the school they worked at. The most successful Charter corporations created hundreds of millionaires among its veteran teachers and administrators.

KIPP is a real life example of this. It also follows the theme in my story about the poorest of the poor and minorities etc.. being helped the most by school choice:

The KIPP DC:KEY Academy, the first KIPP school in the Washington area, opened in 2000 and has 320 students in grades 5 through 8. It has the highest math scores in the city, though more than 80 percent of its students come from black families poor enough to qualify for federal lunch subsidies.

Shame on the Democratic Party and the Teachers Unions for working against the opportunities these children and their families now have (thanks to Republican legislation).

6/23/04 Washington Post Shorter, 33, could not have afforded the Catholic school's tuition in the past. But her children were among 1,249 low-income students selected last week to receive the District's first tax-funded private-school vouchers, and she wanted them to be first on the school's list. The public schools in Southeast Washington that her children have attended have low scores and limited programs, she said, "and I want them to be able to get all kinds of learning." Shorter and the families of more than 500 other voucher recipients jammed into the small building, now called the Thurgood Marshall Center Trust, Monday evening and yesterday afternoon to visit tables staffed by representatives of 44 private D.C. schools that have agreed to participate in the program. She and the other parents soon learned that arriving early did not boost their children's chances of getting into any particular school. But the line to get into the school fair was an indication of the excitement among the families who will be pioneers in the school-choice initiative, which Congress approved in January.

11/13/05 Washington Post A report on one of the few Charter schools allowed by the teachers Unions and Politicians:

The [Charter School], which offers the standard curriculum in first through sixth grades this year, is distinguished by its rigorous atmosphere, including a restrictive student dress code and a volunteer work requirement for students and parents.It already has developed a strong following; Whitehead said there were waiting lists at every grade level except fifth. Parents still call every day. The families whose children are enrolled, courtesy of a blind lottery [this means there is a waiting list to get out of the public schools], are paying close attention, Whitehead said. There's pressure to achieve test results similar to Pennington, a similar school in Manassas. Pennington students routinely achieve more than a 90 percent passing rate on the state Standards of Learning tests. Parents "are watching you," Whitehead said. <.> It is the atmosphere created by the school rules that is different -- and popular.

12/23/04 CNN from the AP - Gang violence is rising. School buildings are crumbling. An embezzlement scandal plagues the teachers' union. The superintendent abruptly quit. And with a budget deficit of about $21 million, school officials said this month they would cut 771 jobs -- 545 of them teaching positions. <.> D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams recently referred to the school system as a "slow-moving train wreck." <.> Police have gone to schools numerous times to break up fights, some between rival gangs. <.> Devin Fowlkes, 16, a promising student and football player at Anacostia High School, was shot and killed outside his school on October 30. A 15-year-old girl was wounded. Police do not believe either was the intended target. A 15-year-old boy has been charged with first-degree murder. <.> 37 percent of the city's adults read below a ninth-grade level. <.> The problems are prompting some parents to remove children from public schools. Enrollment has fallen nearly 16 percent since 1998, from 77,111 to 65,099. During that period, 10,147 students chose instead to enroll in the 22 publicly funded charter schools created in the city. <.> Under a five-year plan pushed by Republicans and agreed to by congressional negotiators, $13 million would be provided to let at least 1,700 poor children attend private or parochial schools. In return, D.C. public schools would get an extra $13 million in federal funds. Board of Education member Dwight E. Singleton opposed the idea. "Charter schools and private school vouchers are instruments of exploitation and experimentation that members of Congress are reluctant to impose in their home states," he said. Let's look at how ridiculous this statement is. First, 38 states have passed some sort of Charter legislation. Second, long waiting lists have formed for the current Charter schools in D.C., who can't by law take more students because of Board members like Dwight. Third, the public schools will receive 13 million in EXTRA funds, they won't even loose anything when their students flee. They can spend even more then ever (per student)! They would rather fire their own teachers (545) than give parents a choice on where to send their kids! Why are they so scared? The only conclusion I can come to is that they must realize how screwed up the system is. If they know this how can they in good conscious defend it? "It's kind of criminal when you look at the facilities our students have to go to school in," Cafritz said. I'd say its kind of criminal the way these board members and teachers Unions support the stagnation of our children.

11/8/2004 Washington Post - Speaking of Criminal: The defendants include former union officials Gwendolyn M. Hemphill and James O. Baxter II and accountants James A. Goosby Jr. and Robin Klein. They were indicted after the central figure in the case -- former union president Barbara A. Bullock -- pleaded guilty to conspiracy and other charges in the theft of $4.6 million in union funds from 1995 to 2002. <.> The case is one of the biggest white-collar prosecutions launched by the U.S. attorney's office in Washington in recent years. It became public in December 2002, when the FBI carted away truckloads of luxury items, including artwork and furs, in searches of the homes of Bullock, Hemphill and Baxter. <.> Hemphill, for example, allegedly used union money for $29,000 in dental implants and other dental work for herself and her husband. Baxter, the union's former treasurer, allegedly charged the union for more than $31,000 in club seat tickets to Washington Wizards basketball games for himself and friends. And this isn't even counting the millions this Union undoubtedly misspent on political causes lobbying against Charter and Voucher schools.

8/3/2004 Washington Post - And some more criminal news... Students at nearly half of the District's public schools are entitled to switch schools under the federal No Child Left Behind law, according to test scores released yesterday, but D.C. officials said such transfers will be highly restricted because there are not enough open slots at higher-performing schools. <.> Sixty-eight of the 149 city schools that were assessed failed for the second year in a row to make adequate yearly progress in reading and math, as measured by the Stanford 9 tests administered in April. Under the federal law, those schools now are deemed in need of improvement, and their students must be offered the option of transferring. <.> Among the city's 15 traditional high schools, all but three are classified as needing improvement. The remaining three -- Banneker Senior High School, the Duke Ellington School of the Arts and the School Without Walls -- are magnet schools that have special admission standards and are not open to students who don't meet those criteria.

What are magnet schools? From Magnet Schools of America we get this: In other words, if a magnet school voluntarily attracts students and teachers, it will succeed because, more than for any other reason, those in attendance want to be there. They will have chosen that school. When a parent chooses a school for his or her young child, that school is more likely to succeed for that child than would one to which that child was assigned. <.> Milton Friedman, for example, thought that education should be considered a part of the free marketplace with the learners and families as consumers. Mr. Friedman thought that having families shop around for the kind of school that best satisfied their tastes would result in increased options. Quoting Milton Friedman! These Magnet schools are free to D.C. residents, but have special admissions requirements and, we can be assured, long waiting lists.

Returning to the Post story and the D.C. schools: And 18 of the city's 20 traditional middle and junior high schools are in need of improvement. <.> Yesterday's announcement was a stark reminder of the immense challenges facing the 64,000-student D.C. school system. The system's overall performance levels on the Stanford 9 exams, particularly in reading, remain among the lowest in the nation, even when compared with other large cities. <.> The New York and Chicago school systems have had similar problems accommodating transfers. Last month, New York officials announced that transfers would be restricted because of a lack of space at higher-performing schools. Do you see what is happening here? Federal law (albeit unconstitutional :)) is being broken with impunity because the interests that be in these failing school districts are fighting tooth and nail the right for parents to spend the their tax dollars at a school of their choice.

Tommy Wells, who represents Wards 5 and 6 on the D.C. Board of Education, said the federal law imposes new requirements without providing funds to meet them. "It continually forces the school system to try to allocate and prioritize its resources to go to the lowest-performing schools and students, which means that we have less money for the schools that are doing what they are supposed to be doing," he said. "And so it will be difficult to maintain the higher-performing schools." Susan M. Aspey, a spokeswoman for the Education Department, countered that the District's share of money under Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 -- the major source of federal funds for public schools -- has risen from $28.3 million in fiscal 2001 to a proposed $55.6 million in fiscal 2005. On top of this, recall (because it isn't mentioned in this story) that D.C. students spend the most per students of any public school in the entire nation. And they have the gall to ask for more money!

9/2/3004 Washington Post A perfect description of the lack of accountability and apathy at the public schools that these parents are forced, because of political pressure from teachers Unions and Democrats, to send their kids to. Three officials in the District's school system were fired on the first day of school yesterday, after hundreds of students at Eastern Senior High School were turned away because administrators failed to complete a schedule of classes and room assignments. Top officials said they were taken by surprise and were not informed about the scheduling problem until hours before classes were to begin. <.> Back-to-school problems have plagued the District before, notably in 1996, when the start of classes was postponed for three weeks by a legal battle over unsafe conditions. <.> . Janey, who was hired Aug. 11, crisscrossed the District on a day-long tour of school facilities, and Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey and other city officials announced a major reorganization of school security in response to recent violence in and around school buildings. <.> School officials sent faxes to the news media about 7:50 a.m. to announce that Eastern would not be open, but by then, most students were well on their way to school. An automated system that places telephone calls to parents for major school announcements was not activated on time. <.> "I'm pleased that Dr. Rice took the action and took it immediately, because we've been in a situation for years where there's no accountability," Cafritz said. How encouraging...

9/4/05 Editorial by the Washington Post - Slams D.C. public schools. Besides mentioning the lack of a first day of school at Eastern High and low SAT scores the Post says: On Thursday two school system managers were terminated based on internal audits. That case, involving questionable contracting for copy machine services and the possible misspending of millions of dollars, has been turned over to the city's inspector general and the U.S. attorney's office. In addition, the inspector general has been called in to investigate the evaluation and award of the school system's multimillion-dollar security contract. In both instances, school leaders believe the attention of professional investigators and prosecutors is warranted.

9/10/2004 Washington Post Lists some of the disciplinary problems. Under the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, states and the District are required to use data on violence to identify "persistently dangerous" schools and give students in those schools a chance to transfer. <.> Auditors reviewed a random sample -- 119 of the 1,709 incidents -- and examined how the incidents were handled and recorded. Nearly half of the incidents were listed as "pending" as of the end of 2003, months after they were first reported. About a quarter of the incidents were not reported to the city's police or fire departments, as the school system's policies require. In two-thirds of the cases, parents were not notified, again contrary to school policies.<.> The poor record-keeping could have financial costs because it has caused the school system "to lose cases in court and in arbitration," the auditors found, citing education officials whom they interviewed. In two-thirds of the cases audited parents were not notified. No wonder parents are upset with these schools! But it doesn't matter how upset they are, their kids still have to go the same school.

10/6/04 Washington Post Reporters interview the new head of the D.C. public schools. He cautioned that improvement will not come quickly to the long-troubled system, and he was unsparing in his assessment of its deficiencies. <.> "I've been enormously disappointed in the lack of sound management policies," he said, adding that he was particularly upset about the shabby condition of many school buildings and the inefficient operation of food services. "There will be some dismissals in response to some of these audits that have just painfully pointed to irresponsible actions on the part of certain staff." <.> He said he would consider contracting out "those operations that affect the quality of life of students" until the school system's "internal capacity" to run those operations is improved. <.> Janey, 58, said the school system has suffered from "a series of false starts" over the past decade, with the constant turnover in the superintendency being only the most extreme example. He said he has noticed a "deep sense of despair among a wide range of parents, constituents [and] advocates" and wants to hold a citywide education summit this fall or winter, at which residents can express their opinions on the schools. <.> He also questioned the $8 million that he said is paid annually in rent for the school system's central offices at 825 North Capitol St. NE. "I'm hard-pressed to look my teachers and principals in the face when my office looks like a hotel room," he said. "It's a painful contradiction." <.> He said that nepotism and cronyism are "alive and well" in the school system and that he is determined to avoid any political pressure about whom to hire or what contracts to award. <.> Janey said he would consider shutting schools that have low or declining enrollment and in some cases sharing the buildings with space-strapped charter schools, which have soared in popularity since they were first authorized in 1995. With situations like this it's no wonder they became popular. The cap forcibly locking in the enrollment at Charter schools, a cap demanded by the teacher's Unions, are preventing them from becoming even more popular.

Janey's solutions? He would, 'raise teacher standards', 'establish high school graduation exams', 'recognize the need for a core curriculum and greater uniformity in what students study', 'favors a midyear assessment of student performance, starting in January, in addition to the standardized tests administered to all students each spring', and thinks principals 'may have too much leeway in determining curriculum'. Sounds like he is in favor of a monolithic, bureaucratic, uniform, uncreative, bloated top-down, socialistic type system that can only be doomed to failure! He is the person who can solve on the problems by creating a strong central system under his omnipresent wisdom. Does he even once mention the needs and desires of the parents and their kids? Well, he does say he would like to use some of the buildings to create "parent education centers" that would offer classes on effective parenting... Again, condensation and elitism rears its head. It's not the schools fault, it's the parents fault their kids are failing!

10/29/2004 Washington Post Charter schools would not have these sorts of problems with Unions. D.C. school officials said yesterday that they have fired 23 bus drivers and attendants who did not show up for work Monday, when about 260 drivers and attendants called in sick. Why fire only so few? On Monday, nearly 20 percent of the city's 692 school bus drivers and 714 attendants -- whose job it is to ferry special education students to and from school -- failed to show up for work in what school officials called an illegal union sickout. <.> George Johnson, executive director of District Council 20 of the American Federation of State, County and Federal Employees, which represents Local 1959, the drivers' and attendants' union, denied Monday that a strike or work stoppage had been called, noting that it is illegal for public servants to strike. But he complained that the employees have been dealing with chronic payroll problems that he said the school system has not addressed. <.> Roxanne Evans, spokeswoman for the school system, said that Monday's situation "was a major disruption to parents" -- affecting about 13 percent of the bus routes -- and that employees would not be allowed to violate rules with impunity.

4/5/2005 Washington Post A misleading hit piece on the voucher program, but which does (somewhat) illustrate my preference for Charter schools over Voucher schools. Only 79 applications - 4 percent of the total - came from 15 Washington schools designated as in need of improvement under the No Child Left Behind Act. All were awarded scholarships of up to $7,500 to pay tuition, fees and transportation expenses for nonpublic elementary or secondary schools in the current school year. By contrast, 518 eligible applicants came from private schools. Only 43 percent of those students got vouchers. Of the 1,251 other public school students who applied, 85 percent were admitted into the program. <.> Legislators stood by their creation. Try to ignore the editorializing at the end and look at these numbers closer and you can see how they are being skewered. How small are the 15 schools compared to the total? What about the 15% of the public school kids that didn't get them? A better headline would have been 'Demand for Vouchers Outstrips Supply', or 'Hundreds of Poor Parents unable to Attain Vouchers'. However, the valid point being made is that many of the poorer parents might not have been able to afford the additional tuition, transportation, and other expenses, (although the story says 'most' schools would be fully covered by the tuition) and it was unclear if many of these parents were fully aware of their options. Some might have been hesitant to try a new program the first year, or may have been mislead by the term 'voucher' and the privatization demonization campaign of the Unions. Also, if 'most' of the schools were fully covered by this tuition, then what does that tell us about the $13,000+ taxpayer funded public schools these kids are leaving? It tells me we're wasting $5500 per year, per student! But it apparently tells the teachers Unions something else: "Parents whose students are already (in private school) want public assistance to help their students remain there," said Roxanne Evans, spokeswoman for D.C. Public Schools. "That's one of the tragedies of vouchers - that private school students use public money to fund private education." Let's rewrite this so it's accurate: "That's one of the tragedies of a socialistic education system - that public schools use private money to fund public education". And, what about the tragedy of poor parents paying almost double (taxes then extra) in order to save their kids from the $13,000 a year schools they would otherwise be forced to attend?

More evidence that the Vouchers the reporter in the above story disparaged would not have covered tuition in many schools. This WP story says:

Tuition at Archbishop Carroll is $6,975 for Catholics and $7,100 for non-Catholics, and incidental costs are about $700. Parents purchase the books and uniforms. Peterson said she is not certain that the two $7,500 scholarships will cover the costs, but she is willing to make up the difference. <.>

The Baptist school's principal, Shirley G. Hayes, is on the board of the Washington Scholarship Fund and for 23 years was principal of the District's Park View Elementary School. The private school's tuition is $4,100. Fifteen voucher students had enrolled as of Friday, out of 168 children. $4,100 tuition? As compared to $13,000 publicly spent? This school costs 3x less than public schools and parents still scrounge to pay up, some needing Vouchers, to take their kids out of the 'free' public school and into this school. If you have read this entire paper and are still not convinced that our public schools are failing and that competition and school choice is the answer, I suggest reading the previous sentence again.

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