Cairo Association of Teachers - Newsletter

CAT Tracks for July 19, 2006 ANOTHER VOUCHER SCAM

When you commission a study to "prove" YOUR premise that private schools are heads and shoulders above "failing public schools", and YOUR study proves you wrong...

Do you:

a. Back off and chill for a while?
b. Commission a new study?
c. Criticize your own study as flawed...the product of incompetent researchers who obviously attended public schools in their youth?
d. Don your sailor's cap and imitate Admiral David Farragut during the Civil War...he who said "Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!"

Republicans unveil $100 million school voucher plan

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Congressional Republicans on Tuesday proposed a $100 million plan to let poor children leave struggling schools and attend private schools at public expense.

The voucher idea is one in a series of social conservative issues meant to energize the Republican base as midterm elections approach. In announcing their bills, House and Senate sponsors acknowledged that Congress likely won't even vote on the legislation this year.

Still, the move signals a significant education fight to come. GOP lawmakers plan to try to work their voucher plan into the No Child Left Behind law when it is updated in 2007.

"Momentum is on our side," said Representative Howard McKeon, R-California, the chairman of the House education committee.

The Bush administration requested the school-choice plan, but Tuesday's media event caused some awkwardness for the Education Department. The agency just released a study that raises questions about whether private schools offer any advantage over public ones.

Under the new legislation, the vouchers would mainly go to students in poor schools that have failed to meet their progress goals for at least five straight years.

Parents could get $4,000 per year to put toward private-school tuition or a public school outside their local district. They could also seek up to $3,000 per year for extra tutoring.

Supporters say poor parents deserve choices, like rich families have. When schools don't work, said Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, "parents must have other opportunities."

During Bush's presidency, Congress approved the first federal voucher program in the District of Columbia, and private-school aid for students displaced by Hurricane Katrina.

So far, Congress has refused to approve Bush's national voucher proposals. The new one is the first to target money for kids in schools that have fallen short under federal law.

Critics dismissed it as a gimmick.

"Voucher programs rob public-school students of scarce resources," said Reg Weaver, president of the National Education Association, a teachers union. "No matter what politicians call them, vouchers threaten the basic right of every child to attend a quality public school."

Meanwhile, Spellings faced questions about her department's handling of a new study comparing students in public and private schools that had been quietly released on Friday.

The study found that, overall, private school students outperform public school children in reading and math. But public school students often did as well, if not better, when compared to private-school peers with similar backgrounds.

The study had many caveats and warned that its own comparisons had "modest utility."

Spellings said she first learned about the study -- one produced by the Education Department's research arm -- by reading about it in the newspaper. She said the agency must improve the way it releases such reports. But she rejected any suggestion that the department buried the study because it put public schools in a favorable light compared to private ones.

And, from The Washington Post...

$100 Million Proposal Targets Low-Income Students

By Lois Romano
Washington Post Staff Writer

The Bush administration and Republican legislators yesterday proposed a $100 million national plan to offer low-income students private-school vouchers to escape low-performing public schools. The plan was immediately assailed by Democrats, unions and liberal advocacy groups.

The proposal comes four days after the independent research arm of the Department of Education issued a report showing that public schools are performing as well as or better than private schools, with the exception of eighth-grade reading, in which private schools excelled. The results prompted questions from foes of vouchers about why taxpayer money should go toward private schools instead of toward improving public schools.

The National Center for Education Statistics compared fourth- and eighth-grade reading and math scores from about 7,000 public schools and more than 530 private schools. Private-school students historically score higher, but the NCES made adjustments to account for student background -- such as socioeconomic factors and race -- which leveled the playing field.

The report also found that conservative Christian schools -- a constituency that supports vouchers -- lagged significantly behind public schools in eighth-grade math. The report supported similar findings from a University of Illinois study on math.

Education Secretary Margaret Spellings told reporters yesterday that she hadn't yet read the report and made references to the report's "modest sample." The report itself cautioned that because schools are all very different, overall comparisons of the two types of schools may be of "modest utility."

"It was not an evaluation of how school vouchers, how scholarship programs, how additional resources work for low-income families trapped in chronically low-performing schools," she said. "I do see them as . . . apples and oranges issues."

Grover "Russ" J. Whitehurst, director of the Education Department's Institute of Education Sciences, said this was the first time NCES used student variables. He said that while the report shows that considering the variables did change scores, it is of limited value because it's just a snapshot in time -- with no long-term reference points.

Spellings, flanked by Senate and House leaders on Capitol Hill, said the "opportunity scholarship" plan would be aimed at helping low-income students "trapped" in poor schools by offering them transfers to other public schools, tutoring, and scholarships to private schools, up to $4,000 per student. The secretary said the plan would cover 28,000 students.

Spellings said that if schools cannot show progress after six years of required improvements under the federal No Child Left Behind law, then parents must be offered a way out for their children.

The plan will give "the children of lower-income families . . . the same opportunities wealthier families have," said Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.).

Spellings was later pressed by reporters on whether private schools would be held to the same accountability standards under the plan, since they would be taking public money.

"Well, as we have gotten very sophisticated about data and measurements in public schools, I think parents have come to expect that, they have come to expect report cards not only about their child but about the quality of their schools," she said, sidestepping the question. "I certainly am a strong believer of accountability in education."