Ed Reform Minute

Audrey Spalding, Director of Education Policy at the Mackinac Center, talks about her report on schools of choice in Michigan. As the Director of Education Policy, Spalding oversees the Center's education research and publications, including Michigan Education Digest and Michigan Education Report. She started at the Center in 2012 as an education policy analyst.Before joining the Mackinac Center, Spalding worked as a policy analyst at the St. Louis-based Show-Me Institute, where she provided analytical research and legislative testimony on tax credits, land banking and education. Her public policy op-eds have been published in a variety of newspapers, including the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the St. Louis Business Journal and The Kansas City Star. For the latest in education reform news, check ChoiceMedia.TV.  For free karma points, tell a friend about the Ed Reform Minute podcast.© 2013 Choice Media 

One of Choice Media's best Ed Reform Minute Podcasts of 2013.A high school degree means something.  Or does it?Imagine you did really well in high school.  You got good grades in all your classes.  Teachers loved you, and administrators knew your name.  And they all thought you were clearly ready for college.  But then imagine, you found out you weren't.A newly released survey conducted by the ACT reports that in 2012, when you ask high school teachers across the country if their students are well prepared for college, 89% say yes.  But if you ask college professors the same thing about their incoming students, only 26% say students are prepared.And it's a trend.  Colleges are describing student preparedness in a way that bears no resemblance to high school GPAs.The Colorado Department of Higher Education released a report last week that reported that 40% of Colorado’s high school graduates needed to take a remedial course in at least one subject.  Remedial courses cost students extra in the sense that they don't provide credits toward college graduation.  They’re classes designed to make sure you have enough knowledge to even start your college studies.Another way to assess the preparedness of American high school kids would be to compare them to their international counterparts.  Steven Simeona is a counselor at Seattle Central Community College.The international students, I mean what a difference you know? The international students are very well, their math skills are very good.  We had students coming in at 18 years old that can do high level calculus, and you just can't find too many American students that can do that.Chris Baron is an English professor at San Diego City College, and he says sometimes even the students who thought they did really well in high school, still need remediation.I do get the occasional student that will say 'Well I was in AP English, why am I in developmental classes?'  I think for those students it's a conundrum.  'Why am I here?  What happened?'Some would suggest that all of this isn't the high schools' fault, as there are cultural changes that aren't helping matters.  James Mense is an Associate Professor in the English Department at St. Louis Community College.I've received a number of writings that were wholly constructed on smart phones, which does not make for good writing.We asked Professor Mense what's so bad about a student writing his paper on a cell phone.Have you seen people use cell phones?  They're usually walking; they're usually listening to a television show, or some are even driving.  Five to six grammatical mistakes in every sentence.  Almost unrecognizable words that because of wrong letters or transposed letters.We gave you some national data and state data. Now let's kick it down to a city level.  It's about New York City high school graduates who then move on to the City University community college system.  According to WCBS, the percentage of those New York City high school grads who need remedial college course work: 80 percent.All the day's news in education reform at ChoiceMedia.TV.© 2013 Choice Media 

One of Choice Media's best Ed Reform Minute Podcasts of 2013.For several years, the education establishment has seized on the term "For-Profit" as shorthand for greed-driven and resource-starved.  But now, a backlash develops.In education the bashing of "for profit" as a concept is usually offered as so obviously true, it simply doesn't need explaining.  If schools are for-profit, operators will have the prime directive of enriching themselves, and so they'll hoard the resources desperately needed by students to instead line their pockets.  Insert imagery of old men greedily rubbing their hands together with beady-eyed, Ebenezer Scrooge-like, sniveling, rapacious anticipation.The most recent serving of anti-for-profit narrative was in a Washington Post blog of May 20, by David Pickler, President of the National School Boards Association, titled "What's wrong with school 'choice"?  Here's what." (Choice was put in quotation marks.)  He referred to Louisiana's voucher law as "driven primarily by outside forces that want to make big profits on the backs of our nation's most vulnerable children."  Sounds bad, eh?   It was enough to set off Jason Bedrick of the Cato Institute, who published a response the very next day, using a parallel interrogative title structure.  His piece was called, "Who's Afraid of School Profits?"Bedrock pointed out that most of the private schools taking Louisiana vouchers are, in fact, non-profit.  Then he goes on to explain in the piece how selectively people like Pickler   apply their "money is corrupting" logic.  Jason Bedrick explained it to me too.Oh, "outside forces want to make big profits on the backs of our nation's most vulnerable children."  Which is just patently absurd.  Nobody says, "That business, they're making a profit on the backs of their paying customers."  It doesn't make any sense at all.  When you think about it, really, these are schools that these families have chosen.  Who's really benefiting on the backs of these vulnerable children?  I would say it's the people that are fighting to continue to public school monopoly.Meanwhile, the disparagement of for-profit education is de rigueur among the education establishment, if you'll excuse my French.  Most of the people decrying for-profit schools don't say they're oppose for-profit everywhere.  In other words, they don't usually present themselves as anti-capitalist, anti-free enterprise, socialist/communists.  That, after all, would be a clearer debate.  Instead, most of them just don't address the disconnect.  And by disconnect, I mean that at the very moment they're typing their disdain of for-profit schools, they're carrying a for-profit created iPhone or Android on their person that they love, owning a for-profit made car that they think is wonderful, and planning to go eat at a favorite for-profit restaurant that they're happy to recommend.They have been allowed to avoid the thinner conceptual ice of why education is so different -- a particular, special area where the profit motive ruins service -- because there has been almost no pushback .  No one has asked them why the profit motive of FedEx, or UPS, somehow doesn't ruin them in competition with the Post Office, the way they the same concept of profits will allegedly undermine a different service called education.A blog entry this month from one Christine Noble is an example.She writes, "For profit operations are just that: for profit. Their end goal will not be the education of our children, but the increasing of their bottom line."She goes on to further paint her distopian portrait, "You will see gigantic class sizes. You will see parents needing to buy resources like books. You will see less, possibly no, extra curricular activity."She concludes, "The nature of the profit beast is simple, you must raise prices and/or reduce costs…. It is a price the privateers have us convinced we should pay.  (And yeah, I think comparing them to pirates is fair.

One of Choice Media's best Ed Reform Minute Podcasts of 2013.Should local school boards, superintendents and principals have control over Special Education?  Or should the matter be controlled by legislators and state mandates?   A proposal in Illinois would lift state restrictions on special education class sizes, as well as regulations on the number of special needs students who get mainstreamed into a general education class.  The issue is a metaphor for a variety of education decisions that can be decided at the top, through state laws, or by individual schools and districts.  In other words, how much flexibility versus how many rules, is an age-old dilemma in management philosophy.Illinois is one of only seven states to impose regulations on special education class size, which varies by   disability. Supporters of the current state rules say they ensure special needs kids get enough attention, and that education budget cuts won't leave them adrift in a sprawling, oversized classroom.  On the other side, the argument for getting rid of the state rules is that top down regulations can never account for the unique challenges   at a particular school, and forcing these highly expensive student teacher ratios on just slightly impaired learners, may not be the best use of limited resources.  They say   a school or district should be measured by its output -- how much are kids learning – rather than micromanaging the inputs of one-size-fits-all statewide regulations.Mary Fergus with the Illinois State Board of Education believes in this change to the state law, meaning there should be more local district autonomy.I think it’s about looking at what’s best for students with disabilities and giving that decision to the local districts, allowing them to look at their resources, looking at all facets of the decisions and allowing them to make the call.Roger Eddy, Executive Director of the Illinois Association of School Boards also agrees with getting rid of the   policy. He says the state's 70-30 rule, which allows for   30 percent of a classroom enrollment to be special needs kids, creates unintended consequences.I think it makes perfect sense to allow a very arbitrary standard to be replaced with a very thoughtful deliberation by special education group of individuals to determine what’s best for a student, and I think there are a lot of unintended consequences with the arbitrary 70-30 rule. Consequences that result in concerns about   students not being able to be placed in certain classrooms because of restrictions.On the other side, Rodney Estvan, an education policy analyst with Access Living, said this measure is not about improving classrooms, it’s merely about saving money.Our experience is the districts are in such dire shape financially that they’re going to have to try to create an array of classroom sizes and fit kids into those arrays as best they can because they have to reduce the number of overall special education staff and expenses.Mary Kay Betz, Executive Director of the Autism Society of Illinois, also defended the state rules, suggesting that if local districts and principals were left unchecked, they would make bad decisions.You don’t want to have 20 kids with autism in the one classroom. It’s just not going to work because they all have different needs. Usually when schools are planning how they’re going to placing students into different classrooms they look at what teacher is best going to suit the child’s needs.It's worth noting that the entire charter school movement was based on the idea that schools can be more innovative and creative if they're allowed to be free from the choking bureaucracy and thousands of regulations that plague traditional public education.  It's also worth nothing that about 50,000 Chicago kids are in charter schools and about up to 19,000 are on waiting lists.  In other words, parents are lining up for the schools that are based on more autonomy,

One of Choice Media's best Ed Reform Minute Podcasts of 2013.More money, more problems. America spends more than any other nation on education. So where are the results?A study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or OECD, found that the U.S. is the highest spending developed nation when it comes to student education. According to the report, the U.S. spent more than $11,000 per elementary school student and more than $12,000 per high school student in 2010. When factoring in post-high school programs like college and vocational schools, the cost rises to $15,171 for each student in the system. To put that in perspective, the average cost for an OECD nation to spend per student was $9,313.You would think with all that money being thrown around we would have a nation of child savants, but of course, that isn’t the case. The U.S. is still outpaced in international test scores in math and science. The 2011 TIMSS, or Trends in International Mathematics and  Science Study ranked American eighth graders 9th worldwide in math scores, behind Japan, Russia, and Finland. Which is good compared to the 2009, the Program for International Student Assessment or PISA test, in which 15-year-old U.S. students ranked below the international average in math, coming in as a nation at 31st.We also thought it would be fun to show you some of the anecdotal spending levels in case you think more money equals quality. Washington D.C. spent a stunning $18,667 per pupil in 2010. Asbury Park, New Jersey spent over $30,000 per student, according to the New Jersey Department of Education. And on a state basis, there's no one-to-one ratio with spending and quality. Utah is the lowest spending with $6,064 but came in the middle of the pack at 28.The largest issue with spending in education is it’s mostly for show. Neal McCluskey, an education analyst with The Cato Institute.It’s basically good symbolic politics. It’s not to spend more money, it is to connect the money to children in some way, could be vouchers, could be tax credits, and give educators autonomy and parents the ability to choose schools, make sure the schools compete. Then you start to see competition, which leads to innovation because you want to get more students more money, and you want to do things more efficiently so you can make more money. That’s the key to improving, the same thing that’s the key to improving that we accept in almost every other aspect of our lives except education. Paul E. Peterson, Director of the Program on Education Policy and Government at Harvard University, says there is no connection between increased spending and improved quality. We do not spend our money wisely. We don’t have a very competitive system. Anytime a monopoly sends money, and our education system is a monopoly, is not spending money efficiently. We don’t hire our teachers the right way. We don’t pay the best teachers more money and we don’t get rid of our weakest teachers because we pay everybody the same rate except for their credentials and their years of experience. We don’t have a way of easing the weakest members of the teaching force out of the profession.In a related note, tomorrow, Thursday, June 27th will be a national webinar conducted by the people that run the NAEP test.  It will be at 11:30amET.  You can find it on the Choice Media calendar.© 2013 Choice Media