COLUMN -- charter schools should be seen as complements, not threats

Thursday, March 29, 2007


A scribe writing for the venture-capital asset across the river took recent delight in goring the "sacred cow" of charter schools. The Minnesota Senate's education budget bill, which caps public charter schools at 150 (the current level plus those scheduled to open in the fall), logically makes sense, he wrote. The "experiment" is out of control. With Manichean paranoia he warns:

"The charter-school movement has been hijacked by people driven by ideological beliefs. For too many, charter schools are accomplishing the cherished goal of dismantling the state system of public education."

Casting the charter school cap as a battle between good and evil reveals a visceral, and, I fear, all-too-common attitude. Some policymakers think "public education" is exclusively the state-district run system. Charter schools, private schools, religious schools and home schools are feared as threats rather than befriended as valid and valuable complements to that system.

For some, distrust of charter schools reflects a distrust of private choice, and the notion of marketplace decisions motivating the fast growth of charter schools is uncomfortable. Nonetheless, reasonable people concerned about providing the best education for Minnesota children raise questions about charters that, if given some thought, tend to support encouraging, not discouraging, charter schools.

*Are charter schools handling their finances in a responsible manner?

Some charters have run into financial problems. According to Commissioner of Education Alice Seagren, the Education Department has taken steps to reduce recurrence of the problems. As part of its approval process for charter schools, the department now requires charter school board members and sponsors to attend seminars on school finance. The state's effort is a good step, but the best check on charter schools is the vested interest of parents and teachers who sit on charter school boards.

Charter schools are funded much differently than traditional schools. District funding is determined using a complex formula that yields a deceptively precise "per pupil unit" funding amount. Money flows from the state through the local district to individual schools, which ultimately have little discretionary authority over their budgets. Charter school funding flows from the state to specific schools. Charter school administrators are accountable for how funds are spent. Charter boards have instant and direct access to financial information. Charter budgets and expenses are discrete, transparent and independent of one another. Financial problems, if they exist, are limited to individual schools; they do not indicate a systemic problem.

* Are charter schools producing increased student performance?

Comparisons of student performance among district schools are always couched in caveats about students' social baggage, positive intangibles not measured by test scores, appropriateness of standardized tests and the like. In that context, how do those questioning the performance of charter school students propose to measure it when traditional schools haven't figured that out?

Like all public school students, charter school students take standardized state tests. Results show some charters perform better than others, some better than district schools, some not as well. The more interesting comparison is how might students have fared had they remained in their assigned district schools. Charter enrollment is voluntary, and families seek out charters looking for better performance. Ultimately, a school that meets and exceeds parental expectations is a good measure of how the school is doing at the job of educating children.

That brings us to perhaps the most important questions that might seem to justify a cap on charter schools:

* Are charter schools hurting district schools? Are they doing more harm than good to the overall education system?

Increasing enrollment in charters compared to decreasing enrollment in some district schools, most notably Minneapolis, indicates charters might lure students (and consequently funding) away from district schools. Clearly, that's not good for the affected district schools. But should we be looking at what is best for traditional schools or what is best for kids?

Charter school enrollment is voluntary and increasing. That some charters have waiting lists upward of 100 indicates they are doing something right. If students are migrating from schools that aren't meeting their needs to schools that offer alternatives, why does the Senate want to cap the movement instead of looking at why it is occurring? Is the problem that charter schools are too successful or, perhaps, that the narrowly defined system is not successful enough?

Charter schools create opportunities that a single-system monopoly simply can't offer. Innovation is risky and will not always succeed. Some charters are bound to fail - which is a buyer-beware disclaimer for families considering charter schools. But overall, charter alternatives enhance education in Minnesota. Rather than questioning the motives of those supporting, founding and sending their children to charter schools, Minnesota is better served by acknowledging the value and encouraging the charter school movement.

Pioneer Press Comment Link

Test results add up to a good case for vouchers

A good commentary from Mitch Pearlstein --

An urban, low-cost private school did a lot to reduce the achievement gap for blacks.

As Gov. Tim Pawlenty and legislators consider how to improve urban education, they may want to ponder research findings like these:Citing data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), political scientist Abigail Thernstrom and her historian husband, Stephan Thernstrom, have written about how African-Americans, by the 12th grade, "are typically four years behind white and Asian students," with Hispanics "doing only a tad better than black students." Translated, this means that black and Hispanic students are finishing high school, on average, "with a junior high education."

But how many local minority students might be "finishing high school" in the first place?
A 2002 report published jointly by Minneapolis Public Schools, the Minneapolis Chamber of Commerce and the Minneapolis Foundation showed four-year graduation rates for the Class of 2000 were 47 percent for "Asian Americans"; 31 percent for both "African Americans" and "Hispanic Americans"; and 15 percent for "American Indians." For "White Americans," it was a still-terrible 58 percent.

What about other achievement gaps locally?

In a 2003 study of 19 states with high school exit exams, as reported by the Minnesota Minority Education Partnership, Minnesota was found to have the "largest achievement gap in the country between African American and White non-Hispanic students in math," as measured on the state's Basic Skills Test.

Might dreadful results like these be caused by financially shortchanging inner-city schools?
A common myth is that schools across the country with lots of low-income students are less-well-funded than schools with fewer low-income students. The opposite, actually, is more routinely the case. Minnesota, in fact, recently ranked fifth best in the nation in terms of "extra poverty-based funding per student living below the poverty line." This (benevolent) gap was $3,075.

But given that African-Americans in Minneapolis are doing unusually poorly academically, how do these conflicting findings compute?

To complicate matters even more, consider Ascension School, a K-8 Catholic school in north Minneapolis. Students are overwhelmingly minority; they're overwhelmingly non-Catholic; and in 2005, 90 percent of eighth-graders there passed Minnesota's Basic Skills test in math and 95 percent passed Minnesota's Basic Skills test in reading.

In contrast, eighth-graders in Minneapolis public schools, in 2003, passed at these rates in math: 82 percent for whites; 57 percent for Asian/ Pacific Islanders; 41 percent for Hispanics; 40 percent for American Indians; and 28 percent for blacks. Please note, though you probably already have, that the 82 percent passing rate for whites in Minneapolis public schools was substantially below Ascension's 90 percent for all its kids. MPS scores were significantly better in reading than they were in math; but again, they were significantly below Ascension's reading scores.

What are tuition rates (for non-parishioners) in inner-city Catholic schools in the state? According to the Minnesota Catholic Conference, they average under $3,200 for elementary schools and under $8,000 for high schools. By contrast, as long ago as 2003 -- in the wake of a recession -- federal, state, and local revenues in Minneapolis Public Schools totaled $13,658 per "pupil unit."

Now consider findings like these on voucher programs across the nation, as summarized by William G. Howell and Paul E. Peterson, both of Harvard:

"Voucher interventions that serve African American students seem particularly promising. ... [A]ttending a private school, compared with attending a public school, boosts African American students' test scores, educational attainment, likelihood of pursuing an advanced degree, and future earnings. Even studies that find little comparable benefits for whites typically find that private schools help African Americans."

This leads the two political scientists to conclude:

"The importance of such findings for the education of African American students has been underappreciated. ... With these new data from randomized field studies confirming prior observational studies, the positive impact of private schools on African American students' educational performance can no longer be dismissed as the product of some mysterious selection effect."

For the life of me, I can't understand how any educator, politician, editorial writer, or anyone else can read all of this and not believe vouchers are worth at least a try. Mitch Pearlstein is founder and president of Center of the American Experiment. The findings above are from his just-released study, "Achievement Gaps and Vouchers: How Achievement Gaps are Bigger in Minnesota than Virtually Anyplace Else, and Why Vouchers are Essential to Reducing Them." The report is also available at www.AmericanExperiment.org.

To read the Hon. Don Samuels's Foreword, click here.

COLUMN -- Can a monolithic school system serve the common good?

Wednesday, January 31, 2007


An indication of the problem we face making any kind of real education reform is in the dueling education reports that recently came across my desk.

From the Center on Education Policy comes a defense of the traditional public school system, "Why We Still Need Public Schools." It declares a primary purpose of public education is "accomplishing certain collective missions promoting the common good." It lists six:

• Providing universal access to free education,
• Guaranteeing equal opportunity for all children,
• Unifying a diverse population,
• Preparing people for citizenship in a democratic society,
• Preparing people to become economically self-sufficient,
• Improving social conditions.

The report admits that public schools are not meeting expectations in these areas and reforms are in order. However, the report notes, "Most current efforts to reform public education have focused on increasing students' academic achievement. … But the reasons given for why it's important to improve achievement often stress individual or private economic benefits, rather than public benefits."

The report makes clear the common good is a primary benefit and justification for a publicly funded education system.

The second report, this one from the Cato Institute entitled "Why We Fight — How Public Schools Cause Social Conflict," concludes public schools inherently work against their own collective objectives.

Public school conflicts over intelligent design, freedom of expression, book banning, multiculturalism, mandated integration, sex education, homosexuality, and religion in general are not aberrations. Conflict in a centralized school system is inevitable. Cultural, ethnic and religious groups have no choice but to fight for their values in a system where "unity" is controlled by the politically powerful.

Indeed, community benefit must be part of any discussion of public education — we do spend almost 40 percent of the state budget on education. But the Cato report presents convincing examples in support of an intuitive notion — conflict over who controls policy that governs public schools is inevitable. It creates divisiveness rather than unity. Such conflict diverts time and resources from the mission of educating individual students.

These two reports, read in tandem, raise three linked questions for educators, the governor and legislators.

• How do we reconcile, if we can, the dichotomy of common good versus individual achievement in the making of statewide education policy?
• Is the purpose of public education to serve the individual or to serve society, and if the answer is "both," how do we decide priorities when inevitable conflict arises?
• Can a common good be achieved within a single monolithic education system?

Those are questions neither the governor nor the legislators have wrestled with in public, opting instead for "reform" proposals that are simply new best guesses for achieving politically compromised objectives. We're changing education policy, but not changing the way we make education policy.

Think of our current "obsolete" education system (the governor's word), as a person with a blindfold bumping into a wall. The reform proposals on the table turn the person to the right or the left, give him some walking room, but they don't remove the blindfold. Sooner or later, our guy is going to hit another wall. Therein lies the inherent problem with a monopolistic education system. It is blind to changes in the environment until it bangs headfirst into them.

Reform is not doing different things (turning right or left); it is doing things differently (taking off the blindfold).
If the governor and the Legislature are serious about education reform they will decentralize decision-making — fewer top-down mandates to local districts and schools, more freedom for districts (and individual schools) to respond to local needs (the charter school model).

Beyond reforming the public school system, the governor and the Legislature ought to take a larger view of "public education." Public education for the common good consists of traditional public schools and nongovernmental schools. Policy should foster an environment where private and home schools are healthy complements to the government system.

The more eyes focused on the path ahead, the more likely we can change direction before hitting the wall of obsolescence.

Decentralizing and expanding the concept of public education is a radical approach to reform, but it is also an honest attempt to reconcile two very different perspectives in two otherwise irreconcilable reports. The alternative is the same old debate that inherently produces conflict over who gets final control of education policy. That is not good for children. That is not good for the republic. It's time to be bold.

COLUMN -- State of the State fell short on real education reform

Monday, January 22, 2007

Better government, better energy, better health care and better education are part of Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s vision of a better Minnesota, but in the governor’s state-of-the-state address, the greatest of these is education. The governor spent almost half his speech on education, detailing very specific proposals, which will be debated, modified, rejected or implemented by the 2007 legislature.

The proposals themselves were the focus of post-speech punditry. Legislators liked some, disliked others and were ready with proposals of their own. That’s a good thing in the sense that the more discussion of more ideas the better. But at the end of the day, parents that have packed their kids off to public school for any length of time recognize the pattern – jump on the latest education fad, run with it for a while until something shinier comes along, then lunge at it.

Never mentioned in the analysis of the governor’s education proposals is the far more fundamental question, why does Minnesota’s education system look the way it does? If we don’t someday tackle the “why” question, we’re doomed to that never-ending cycle of fad-to-fancy education policy. Education “reform,” which is what the governor is shooting for, is less about what we do and more about how decide to do what we do.

The beginning is a very good place to start, so let’s start with “dough.” The governor was absolutely correct when he said that debating the level of funding consumes most of the oxygen in the room, and very little time gets spent on reforms. But his solution – “let me address funding up-front” – is exactly the wrong approach. It puts the proverbial cart before the horse.

The biggest criticism of the state’s approach to education is that all it does is throw money at problems. Starting by throwing money is a bad start. Everyone seems to agree that education needs reform, so doesn’t it make more sense to look first at reform in terms of what it is we are trying to achieve? Then we can determine how to measure what we’re trying to achieve, determine what it takes to get to our goals, and finally determine what that will cost and how we will pay for it.

If education is as important as we make it out to be then we should spend no less and no more than is necessary. Education policy should neither contract nor expand to accommodate an arbitrary budget number.

“American high schools are obsolete,” said the governor. That’s not a policy problem – it’s a process problem. Before we can talk about fixing the current education system, we need to ask how did we get to a point where we’re mandating that our kids attend an obsolete system? How did we let our system become obsolete?

The problem is most certainly an obsolete way of viewing public education.

As long as we view public education as a top-down, expert-driven, one-size-fits-all system that delivers knowledge and skills, we have little hope of any real reform. We’re destined to live with a system that is 75 percent of what anyone wants and half of what anyone needs. Instead of top-down proposals, however well intentioned, we need a bottom-up focus that starts with students.

The governor can tell us, “too many of our high school students are engaged in academic loitering for much of their high school career. In too many cases, our high school students are bored, check-out, coasting and not even vaguely aware of their post-high school plans or opportunities, and they are just marking time.” But only those students can tell us why they are loitering, why they are bored and what would motivate them to check in and make the most of their educational opportunity.

Only teachers, through their local school administrators, can tell the state what each individual school needs to respond to what students want and need. And that will be different for every school district and every school within every district. You want reform education? Turn over responsibility for setting educational objectives and determining and managing budgets to the local school administrator. Make school administrators responsible for justifying their budgets.

You want accountability? Encourage parental school choice so the impact of failing to educate kids is felt immediately at the local level.

Without passing judgment on the worth of the governor’s individual education proposals, what he presented in his state-of-the-state address was an education policy Mulligan, not real reform. Real reform is doing things differently, not simply doing different things.

UPDATE: What Kind of Education Reform Do We Need ? By Tom Neuville, State Senator, District 25.

Dark passage into the liberal mind

Like an overly ambitious pup taking a run at the alpha male, Spotty sends me an email whenever he mentions my name in a post, which does remind of his existence. Like this post on Education Week’s “Chance for Success Index” (which ranks Minnesota third in the nation), Spotty’s posts are more bash than bite and not worth more than quick skim. What inspires my post is not Spot’s rant, but his email, which provides a teachable moment in understanding the activist liberal mind.

The subject of the email Spotty sent me was “More bad news for education!” The first paragraph of his post is --

The bad news keeps rolling in for the governor, Captain Fishsticks, and of course, our dear Katie. They so love to bash public education. It must be dismaying to have public school excellence, especially in Minnesota, continually rubbed in their pinched, sour faces.

Spotty assumes that because I argue that parental school choice would improve overall public education, I must regard any achievement of public schools as necessarily a bad thing. I must hope that public education fails, and consequently I‘m willing to sacrifice a child‘s education for the sake of political points. He assumes that the argument for school choice rests solely on public school failure. Nonsense!

Like most liberals and many conservatives, Spotty is locked into the notion that government-run schools and private schools are not both part of a larger system of “public education.” The more choice a system provides, the more opportunity for positive innovation. Conversely, the more monopolistic a system is, the less innovative it becomes and the higher the eggs-in-one-basket risk -- a single bad government innovation affects every student, unlike the failure of a single charter or private school.

I haven’t read the Education Week study, so I can’t comment on what the aggregate numbers really mean, but one doesn’t need to be a statistician to figure out that Spotty is using the same statistical rationale as Education Commissioner Alice Seagren, whom he deplores.

Seagren rationalizes Minnesota’s low proficiency in math and reading scores by pointing out that this year harder tests applied to more rigid standards and given to more students accounted for lower proficiency scores. Well, that may be true, but those scores still indicate that by the standards we’re using today, students are not proficient. Spot on the other hand, says education in Minnesota is great because we are ranked third in the nation in an index that uses the very same proficiency scores to make its ranking.

In other words, an initial skim of the analysis shows that Minnesota is the one-eyed man in the land of the blind. Hardly cause for celebration. The point is “public education,” in it’s broadest sense of government-run schools and private schools among other choices, needs to improve. The more choice, the more people innovating, the better the odds of that happening.

And now for the teachable moment -- given Spotty’s projection -- that because I support school choice I must hope for public school failures -- what does that say about how Spotty views the economy? The war in Iraq? Does Spotty hope for a higher unemployment rate to prove the Bush tax cuts are bad? Does he desire more body bags to discredit the war effort? Is it any wonder that we would think that is so? That we might question his compassion? Activist liberals, like prostitutes, generally charge (tax) more to display sincerity.

COLUMN -- Science, certainly, but leave space for the liberal arts

Thursday, December 28, 2006



In his opinion piece ("As discoveries multiply, popular understanding of science must deepen," Dec. 22), science teacher Peter Pitman argues that policymakers ought to better understand fundamental principles of science and math on which policy is based; specifically, that judges and lawmakers should understand the science of global climate change.

I've made much the same argument relative to policymakers who unscientifically exaggerate the dangers of secondhand smoke and bureaucrats who ignore scientific evidence about the dangers of universal vaccination.

This is, however, not a column on global warming, secondhand smoke or childhood vaccines. It is not a column questioning Pitman's premise of the need to deepen our understanding of scientific principles, which I wholeheartedly agree with. It is a caution that in the popular rush to promote science and math we don't automatically assume a "clockwork universe" where physical laws are waiting to be discovered and acted upon.

Science can always teach us how we might do something; it can never determine for us whether that "something" is something we ought to do. That is the realm of the liberal arts education, without which science loses most of its humanity and much of its usefulness.

Pitman cites three historical examples, from the scientist's perspective, of the dangers of the "I was never very good at science" rationale too often heard from policymakers. In his words:

• "Hey, Galileo, I was never very good at science, so recant everything you've said about Earth revolving around the sun and we will spare your life."

• "Sacre bleu, Monsieur Pasteur, I was never very good at science but your claim that invisible microbes can kill me is absurd."

• "Say, Charlie Darwin. I was never very good at science, but you'll never make a monkey out of me."

Common to each of Pitman's conflicts is more than dispute over the truth or falsity of a scientific fact. Each of these scientific theories radically challenged man's concept of his place in the universe and his humanity.

• Galileo did not simply draw a new chart of the solar system; he said, "Man, you are no longer at the center of God's creation."

• Pasteur did not simply discover a cause of disease; he said, "Man, your suffering is not a punishment or a test from God — virtue and righteousness cannot spare you."

• Darwin did not simply provide man a view of his past; he said, "Man, you are not a unique creation among the birds of the air or the beasts of the field."

In a "clockwork universe" governed by self-evident physical laws, such distinctions would not matter. But do we really live in a clockwork universe when even physicists tell us, however unbiased our observation might be, by observing we affect what we observe in ways we can never know? In our quest for security have we cast off the pseudo-certainty of our ancestors' superstitions or merely traded up to a more sophisticated mythology?

"A Clockwork Orange," a book by British author Anthony Burgess and a film by Stanley Kubrick, tells the story of Alex, a teenage gang leader into gratuitous violence and Beethoven. He's caught, imprisoned and "rehabilitated" using modern scientific conditioning — he's given a drug that nauseates him and forced to watch violent films scored (unintentionally) with Beethoven's symphonic music. Science triumphs over nature — Alex cannot even think violent thoughts without becoming nauseated. Beethoven also makes him ill.

Science does not immunize man from trade-offs. The "clockwork" Alex was nonviolent, but he also lost his love of Beethoven; eventually he attempts suicide. Galileo, Pasteur and Darwin created more knowledgeable human beings, but what did mankind give up? If we put our faith exclusively in scientific certainty, is there room for Beethoven?

Science can teach us the dangers of secondhand smoke; it cannot teach us the value of liberty and freedom. Science can provide pro and con arguments for national immunization; it cannot tell us whether ignoring evidence of harm to some children is better than jeopardizing a program that is doing much good for many children. Science can indicate the world is getting warmer; it cannot value the human consequences of the myriad policy trade-offs doing "something" might entail.

Education that helps us sort through the values that make good trade-offs is as important, if not more so, as the scientific training that provides data to support our decisions. A scientist may convince us the polar ice caps are melting, but it will be a poet who makes us weep for the polar bear.

Update: PZ Myers, a biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, Morris, rapes this column here. In his first sentence he reflects his intellectual bent by using the objective term “conservative nutjob,” so I would guess I’m on safe ground deducing Mr. Myers viewed the column not as a scientist or a thinker, but as a liberal; that is, not objectively, but as a personal insult, the way a feminist views someone with the audacity to hold open a door.

It’s an interesting critique, and I’d really like to read the article it is based on, because it is not this one. Mr. Myers finds much to criticize me for, most of which is not what I said or implied. However, I do not object to his reference of me as a “kook,” a term that in the vernacular of many eras was often applied to the greatest scientific minds by those whose ideology neutered their minds, robbing them of the cajones to think for themselves.